a monday kind of love.

Maybe it's like George Sand & Chopin, or Henry Miller & Anais Nin. There's these bright shining passages of transcendent passion, but even if things don't work out, it's the achieving of those highs for a time if you're lucky enough to receive them that will live on in glory in your heart and within the hearts of others, in the story that hopefully gets told of your life.

In my desire for peak experiences maybe that's what I manifest for myself, instead of a long-lasting mediocrity, or hanging onto a faded shadow of what was once a past joy, but unsustainable, as most do.

Still, I miss my marriage, or I miss the ideal of marriage, the construct of permanence, an inviolate safety & sanctuary I'd thought I'd had and have lost through no fault of my own. I bet my emotional bank on my wife, a person who'd oathed by the Gods to keep troth with me, and it didn't work out. It was fucking crushing at a level I'd never experienced before. If after that a divorcé never lost hesitancy, or remained boundaried, or stayed emotionally guarded for the rest of their life, no one could blame them from learning those safeties from their deeply hurtful experience.

What is enough? What is needed? Are those wants just larger fears and shortcomings of self that actually have nothing to do with the other person, or are those needs real? And is my happiness with who I am a strength, or does my self-satisfaction rob me of the ability to change? It's not that I don't change, but my whole life I've changed so glacially, with consideration & care at such a slowly studied degree that my self-love will allow. If that change doesn't come at a rate or time that another person wants me to change, then what does that cost me or protect me from? But if I change for someone else, do I then become someone better or worse, or just someone different, someone less recognizable, a face in the mirror that has kept another's love but in a sacrificial ratio lost self-love, and possibly one's own center?

My writer's logic allows me to understand, to frame it in a way that gives it context, but my unquenchable romanticism, the feelings themselves, break my heart.

Again.

And again.

And I write about it, again, like an eternal return, a fire that never dies, a burning ship, a battle that is instead a brutally wanted kiss.

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[for K and the 68 Mondays.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

You. Me. Us.

Dim Sum. Is She Going? Phone Numbers. Adult Games. Past Date Red Wine. Sexy Candles. Jenga Victory. Study Dates. STD Testing. One Month Later. Viking Metal. Black Metal. Russian Tea. Sailor Jupiter. Postcards. True Love. Oyster Dip. Egg-What-Not. Moving In. Talking Dogs. First Simultaneous Proposal. Bear Tooth Rings. Whole Pig. Irish Shoes. Red Tunic. Fumacabra. Oathmaking. Wifeband. Hoseband. The Mistress. Doctor Buddy. Nurse Lola. Coder Woof. Booley Crocket. Slow Cooker. I Broke It. Destiny. Dogpocalypse. Reading Together. Morning Menudo. Mattress Topper. Smartbone. Cold, Chilly, Chilly. Mountain Fortress. Dissing My Mom. Admiring Your Parents. Kale. Quilting. Pierogi. Backyard Treasure. Backdoor Treasure. Animal Style. Silver. Skip-Bo. Sidecar. Driving Lessons. Fountain Pens. Glitter Ink. Poultices. Molcajete. Chipotle Relish. Grilled Meats. Chiparonies. Moar Coffee. La Fresita. Dwarf Elf Goblin Canine Fellowship. Non-Existent Fun List. Dragoon Quad. Iron John’s. Sherlock Binges. Tea Eggs. Inappropriate Cardgame. Teaching Sux. Stoney Baloney. Another Bath. Wild Garlic Grill. The Abomination. Why Have A Kid When You Can Have a Dog? Brat Nieces. Brahmi For Your Mammie. Curative Phở. Elric Is Metal. Twin Peaks. Chocolate Torts. The Good Oak. The Queen of Cheeses. Odd Germany. Nasty. Laphroaig. Monster Camp. Ooooh Charcuterie. Cast Iron. Breakfast for Dinner. Back Dimples. Chemistry Is The Secrets of the Universe. Vichi Naked. Barrel Of Kimchi. TNG Boxset. Dark Tower. Mom's Cyberknee. Dying Again Father. Good Son. Caring Daughter. Five A Night. Loving Wife. Loving Husband. Desire. You. Me. Us.

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For Michelle.

it breaks my heart.

I would send that photo of you on a clear blue day in SF, holding the flask. It's that bright and shining moment of perfection where everything you feel is unquestionable and more than real and so solid it flays you free of the unimportant past and cracks opens the future like a pomegranate, each bead a sweet red bit of life to come, and you know in your soul it'll all taste good from here on out.

You're holding the flask in your hands, the one thing you wanted more than anything for your 30th birthday, and it reads "fire in a bottle", and it doesn't matter that nobody else knew what it meant, only us, only us, only us, only we knew.

Later, there were moments and pauses where our love flagged. The difference was that I had to try and pay attention to the ones where it didn't: the nights of sweat, breakfasts of unneeded donuts and fritters, you in marabou slippers, us driving out to see that total tourist trap in Dragoon that was so stupid it didn't matter because we were there together snickering among the scorpions frozen in paperweights; leaving the apartment like a dream in the stewardess outfit at 4 in the mornings, sleeplessly sexy, touching down like the setting sun when you got back in the evening, rising, falling, rising again, out into the world and ovaling back to me where I waited with presents washed up on the shore of my nights at the store. In them, I saw you, and the desire I had for you.

It was you who doubted, who saw those same moments not as answers but as questions to be raised but for your own reasons, because in the end security was more important than love for you. Is it? Have you now found it a few just too convenient doors down? I can't say. I've always been secure with myself, safe in my own arms, self-contained. I still am, but you've cracked that container, and while it's all still together in my boundless soul, there's a space where you're missing, where the cold enters, depressurizing my insides when I don't expect it, and I see you through the hairline gap, and I miss you: the bangs, the full smile, eyes of dusk, charms you never even saw, but that never failed to surprise, seen as though it were always the first time. Through the heartfissure I accidently watch re-runs of the Christina channel, and what was once my favourite show now breaks my heart, and the fucked up thing of it is you don't even have to be there to do it again.

Yet I can't tell you, or send you the photo. Pride forbids it, my righteous anger tells me such offerings are undeserved, that they weren't adequate to save us in the first place, that maybe, after it all, they'll signify only to me, and are ultimately unasked for.

I wonder if one night you'll realize that more than that immediate family you love, the shoe leather father of impossibly high regard, self-declared asshole brother, sweater-vested aloofly uncaring younger brother, and especially your unwinnable mommy dearest, that for that time, I cared for you more than all of their small mouths could ever hold, and cared most of all.

And in the end, now a year later, in the wake of your unsober tear eyed unannounced visit to my parents, I'm right: love isn't enough. In the end I was the one left holding the bag, the bag filled with gifts left ungiven, gifts poured back into the oceans of unwanted things, these artfully wrapped presents that weren't just gifts -- they were years of I love yous to come, the red seeds of pomegranate that once shined and burned inside that bottle like a fire, impossible but true, if only for a moment of our lives, flowing away from you,
almost,
but not,
tasted,
given up ...
gone.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

you are all under cardiac arrest.

Dominic stomps his way across the breakroom. A boyish early 20s only reinforced by the baseball shirt and toe cap sneakers.

"I'm just so angry."

I look up from week five's healthy meal selections. "At least you had a choice."

"It was my decision, and somehow I'm still angry, and I don't even know why."

Back down to the plate, I'm confronted by my pile of raw nuts. "What angers you is the futility of it all. All the time, investment of self, and when it should and still doesn't satisfy, it pisses you off."

"Guillermo, you're completely right."

"Of course I am." I am the goddamned cheerleader of broken hearts.

A week ago Abram's live-in lady Sarah kicks him to the curb. Not for the first time Abram reflects: "Think I'm going to be one of those guys who starts cross-dressing in his late 30s and figures out he's gay." I bring him empty boxes for his extensive wardrobe after work. He takes them resignedly in his overly ringed fingers, thanks me, and trudges back inside.

After years of unrequited forests of pining in FriendZonia, Donny's object of obsession Sofi, a svelte 20-year-old dance instructor from Mexico, finally decides to learn him a horizontal mambo. It is two weeks of golden bliss for Donny before she crushes it out as a "mistake".

"I can't stop thinking about it. She even moaned my name with that accent."

"Look at it this way: Most guys never get to have sex with their dream girl. You win."

Chris is given an ultimatum to read New Age books and change by month's end. Mira still uses him for sex, but then throws him out of their apartment come August 1st. He breaks down live on KXCI during his guest set that night, but soldiers on until the end.

By all accounts Mira was on wheels.

"Now you can go find someone who's actually nice."

"But she was the one!" he insists. "And now it's too late."

I sigh for him, but know he'll feel differently when he finds out she was cheating on him by August 25th.


"G, are you married?"

"Why Rose? You asking?" Her boyfriend Paul has the most inexcusable hair. It's like the mange, really. Last week she confessed to planning on leaving him.

She laughs and links hands with me, palm to palm. "No, but I thought you were."

"48 hours ago I just got my walking papers from a two-year relationship."

"Relationships suck."

We smile at each other, pushing away, hands parting.

[Tarjeta de Lotería #27: El Corazón.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the girl who saves the world.

We starve waiting for our order at the Lucky Chinese Food.

Not because they're slow mind you, but because we were too busy fucking to bother eating breakfast or lunch before our $800+ three-hour class on vampiric folklore which we're crashing for free.

The clouds race across a Ford's windshield parked out front much too fast, and people begin to race by as well, looking up at the sky over the building we're haplessly sitting in.

Outside there's a dark torrent of smoke curling up over the row of eateries and shops. Lucky's asian owner runs into the Domino's to tell the counter wage grunt that the building might be on fire.

Rounding the corner we find an amphitheater curve of 20+ gawking, just watching what may as well be the fire channel as far as they're concerned. Atop a huge heap of plastic and cardboard, flames seven feet high begin to lick the side of the rear wall, already engulfing a back stairway and blocking the rear entrance to the Domino's. Aside from Lucky's owner running off with an empty little bucket, it seems the audience has let the fire merrily continue for quite awhile, and if left, that fire's going to win.

Christina, of course, is the first person to note a certain something only 15 feet away.
"Isn't that a hose?"
"Sure is, babe."
"Shouldn't we use it to put out the fire?"
Gods, she's so smart.
"Yes, let's. I'll get the faucet."
Grabbing the hose, Christina strides right up to the blaze in her white Steve Madden hightop wrestling boots, belted black cotton hot pants, and proud pigtails, an exceptionally buxom vision, her powers of reasoning fearlessly focused, and just lets the fire have it full blast.

Over my shoulder an accent matter of factly says, "Fire is a good servant, but a bad master." African student straight out of the veldt, except for his UA football jersey and baggy sag jeans, grins, explaining that it's an ancient proverb. The fire reflects in his dark eyes, and I know it's not the only holocaust he's ever beheld.

Somewhere in the middle of the girl versus flame face-off I get behind Christina to yell over the hissing steam and angry sizzle, "You are so superhero!" The crowd now looks as awed as I feel.

By the time five fire vehicles do arrive, Christina's doused the whole conflagration into wet & smokey submission. She hands the hose to a firefighter, and we thanklessly slink away to the front to pay for our takeout, which still wasn't quite done.

Walking back to the car I can't help re-examining Christina, unable to stop smiling at her.
"What?!?" she says. "Stop staring at me."
"I can't believe it."
"Believe what?"
"That it's somehow even possible to look at you with more admiration than before."
She smiles back, blushing, and we kiss, tasting the smoke on our lips, the shared heroics making our evening all the sweeter, a heat greater than any fire.

We pass by the heart of the sprawling university, looking at the unsuspecting masses who never realized what danger had just been averted a mere half a block away. "You know, all of this would be a heap of blackened rubble if it weren't for you! All these fools owe you their lives!"

"Well, not everybody can be action figure Christina!"

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

an open letter.

One night you will search for yourself, Miss Kris Nicholson, and you will find this, thereby finding me.

Come September it will be 11 years since I walked away from you on the curb of the New Orleans airport, trying my hardest to never look back -- but a part of me has been looking back ever since, unable to forget the splendour in the shadows of that old whorehouse turned hotel on Rue Dauphine. We only stopped long enough to eat oysters in the Vieux Carre, returning for more on bended knees & arched backs, over the ottoman, & upon the silks. 

Talks of literature applied to living. Drama from the page, characters & plots twisted from lips that echoed the leaves even more than mine, so worth the listening as hours became minutes. Your skin, a pallid pleasure wrought in alabaster, hair a red river silted in gold. I never tired of looking at you.

I never got the chance to. You poisoned us. 

You went back to your once-spurned fiance willingly. Know that you were the last person I could love more than myself & you put paid on that innocent mistake. Maybe on some level you felt undeserving, returning to a man who'd hit you, an unimaginative parasite who had already cost you years. I had no choice but to leave. 

Then some odd Thanksgiving I spotted you, a ghost. You looked worn & tired. I was nearly relieved at the sight. Katrina had destroyed 90% of Hattiesburg and even after so many years my first thought worried if you were still in Mississippi, crushed beneath the wreckage of the South. But Tom was near, towing the lesser and later vision of you, and that looked to be a far slower demise than nature could devise. 

You were the love of my life, but you don't deserve such high regard. What is eight months of passion compared to many dedications of three years? Yet I think on you more, for good or ill. Equal measures of pride & self-respect have kept me from actively seeking you out. They still do. They still will. 

In letter & person I was the night to your day. And it seemed to be half you. Was it actually you? Or was it the heaven you made me feel? It was both. Only far later I realized it never really needed you as an external catalyst, because it doesn't come from another -- that bliss comes from oneself. It just wanted you to share with, and that was the miracle we had together. 

But on rare nights it still hurts, the poison, burning that lesson inside me. In turn, remember me on this sainted day of love when we'd first touched one another in earnest. Remember that I bought a star in Scorpio to name after you, lit smaller than a pinhole & greater than all the world.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.