attraction gives us the opportunity to pout and preen - to fix up and make ourselves the most of what we are - maybe one aspect, jockeying up the toughness for example, or just smelling nicer than normal.

And then if we have a chance to strut a bit and show our stuff, and we don't find the mate-rial attraction we maybe haven't quite admitted we're looking for we have another excuse

Refused in my desires, I drive with the windows rolled down, cold San Francisco night leaking in through the Creatures and the heat blasting from my dashboard. I take a turn fast and hold my car under control. I don't want to make the cops think I'm worth pulling off the road. But I do want to claim some tiny sense of power.

I imagine myself in the first quiet moment after the crash - so desparate to have speed and eager to keep pushing forward, now in my car where I can make it happen, not like the bar where conversation limited by ambient television and other patrons keeps me from depth charging as I prefer - in my car I can accelerate, and find myself ahead of some cars until I meet cars still faster and maybe take them on. And maybe someday I'll find myself wrapped around a concrete barrier, my hands can't move to turn off the music if the CD hasn't skipped that song might become even more poignant as I feel blood leaking out around my legs and my hair plastered to my face in front of my eyes unable to move maybe paralyzed or just pinned down by my machinery distorted by stupidity, driving hunger

All for the sake of some drama, I would feel dumb afterwards. But still I seek the night.

You have to get up early to drive, don't you? She mentioned after our two drinks had each been drained. Hard to push the dawn and hold all the other life aspects in constellation. I'll put it another way. I have no home, my active belongings are mostly in my car. Some wanderers find affection on the road. I've been working to minimize my impact as a guest, working overtime to land again in my own situation, to have a home I can control for human commerce. Not like a bluesman I remembered who would stay with friends and sleep with them too. That might be easier for meeting some of my needs -

Most of my physical affection in the last week has come from a 15 month old, I told her. All the sense memories came flooding back then, peering up at the jackalope head mounted on the wall of this watering hole. Cradling her diapered bum in my arm as she pointed up the street into Chinatown. Hoisting her above my head cackling as I tried to keep her from crying. Clasping her wriggling body against my chest as she screamed for her departing mother. These are my recent intimate human moments.

Some people seem attracted to me but I don't feel I could take responsibility for them as I feel I should after anything involving fertile fluids. So I tend not to get too physical with those folks. I told her that too. Why are we talking about this? she laughed defensively, though still continuing the topic of living single. I slouched lower and lower in our vinyl bench. I had a giant pimple that had grown on my upper lip. A friend counseled me to pop it. I didn't, I wouldn't. Well, he laughed, that will be a sort of test. She didn't even notice it, she said. I switched barstools to give her the zit-free side of my face.

There wasn't much leaning forward into the unlimited night, into the ice water in her eyes or mine. It was steady conversation, shared life phases, experiences in common and questioning motivation. I wondered if we had divergent ethics. I was looking for a reason that I didn't want to manifest all my desire in her in that moment. Or maybe that I couldn't. I tried to be honest. But I didn't have any goal. As our wandering conversation with little context drew to a close I still wanted something. Sex might have been nice - something taught in my pants under her hand hot flesh against my neck sigh and hand in her hair pulling her towards something eagerly unanticipated.

But instead, I had myself, driving too fast towards no home and someone else's sleeping baby.