So, there we sat in Kim’s car, for the hour’s
ride back from New Hope to Center City; drowsy,
all three of us, on a bunch of laced weed, thinking
whatever we were thinking. Kim kept putting
the pedal to the metal at times slightly off. We all
could’ve been as good as dead, if we didn’t have it,
but we did. What we had was a shared pact, into
the air, the spheres, the universe, that whatever befell
us at that time, that place, we would have to survive,
because we just would. And we did. Which didn’t
change the state of affairs, stagnant for both of us
with Kim, not brimful of anything, that whatever
soporific fantasies I might’ve had, our taking her out
to canoe on the Delaware did not result in any
consummation, & with her forgetting her purse on
one of the islands, where we got even more trashed.
We forgot about this, the ride home, Kim’s reflexes, how
the rest of our lives depended on something not proven,
trustworthy. The two buddies had brains circling
similarly: nothing to worry about, go with it, understand
your invincibility, it’s there if you believe, it just is. Where
shields like that come from, I don’t know, but I will
say— exclusivity is the rule. You only depend on it
if you know it’s there. Off the two of them went, into
the late afternoon sun, after dropping me off in Logan
Square. Somewhere, a frequency in the sky consolidated
itself. Gaetan didn’t look like a star-child then, but he was.
His magnanimity, more than a lion’s, granted him nine lives.