Buffalo Bill's Defunct--or is he?

So this is how it goes, people. You fall in love with a man and he's the love of your godddamned life and he dies. And you've already gone through your self-destructive phase---you're done. Now you live in in your little one-bedroom apartment in Chinatown and you're cool with that. Don't drink too much, don't do drugs, don't talk to anybody who does, You are so on top of it, bitch.

And then you're on a deck of a Seattle waterfront hotel, sipping your Prosecco with a friend whom you used to sell books with, calmly and rationally discussing how The Mikado should be staged for the 21st century--calmly even though you don't agree. What you do agree upon is the importance of clothes and the sheer delight of Seattle's blue, sparkling summer. And then there he is.

The guy is so wasted he can barely stand up but he's smart enough that he gets every fucking cultural reference you throw his way and then he matches them. He's trying to hold up the wall and you offer him one of your chairs. Then you try to play with his mind but he's right with you and god is that fun. You talk and you go into that mental foreplay that only self-destructives really know-- how to fall into check and then checkmate. It's fun--more fun than you've known in a long, very long time.

But you're in your mid-sixties and this dude claims to be just entering his mid-century point. He's been places you might know and then again maybe not. He's not juiced up, he knows opiates and you don't. You're with a friend "more brave than me, more blond than you" and you leave with her, not him.

But the edge is there, again. You never wanted it but it is back. The guy with the teeshirt advertising Guinness in Gaelic is one of your people. And how the hell do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death? Oh much too much--we speak the same language, he and I.