Diners are nostalgic. Maybe it’s the scenes in movies, or maybe it’s the scenes from my own life. I don’t know. After a morning of murder and mayhem, Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta (notice I can’t remember the characters’ names) eat at a diner. I think they breathe, feel at home, during this short exchange. Of course, home is vulnerable to mayhem as well. In college, I would go to a diner, usually in the middle of the night, or in the early morning on no sleep. The red, faux-leather booths and shitty coffee comforted me. At my diner there was this billboard above the parking lot for the show Californication – David Duchovny, cigarette hanging from his lip, underwater, looking straight into the camera, like, “fuck me, how did I get in the bottom of this pool.” I felt like that too sometimes, but I had diners and churches. I would go to the diner in the middle of the night or early morning, usually between finishing a reading, or editing a film due the next day; but there was this one time when my girlfriend drove me to sleepless jealousy.

She blew me off to hang out with this guy – this fucking guy. She was always going on about how smart this guy was. When she did this, that thing she said to me months before would pop back in my head: “ I want to be with someone who’s smarter than me.” So then there was this day when I asked her if she wanted to read this book aloud with me – the Psalms, actually. I know, very Puritan. She had too much to do, she said. You can see why she wanted to get the fuck away. But then she went out to coffee with that guy. Sean was his name, the fucking asshole. My guts felt like they were being all twisted up, and it hurt so bad I couldn’t fall asleep. I laid in bed until the sun came up, and then gave up sleeping and went for a drive. I ended up at this diner down the road – not my normal one. The waitress said “You’re up early” – she could tell I went to the college – and I just nodded. I had french toast, but they never put enough powdered sugar. It should soak up the butter and become a sugary-buttery paste. I just covered it all in syrup instead, but I couldn’t eat very much. My guts were still twisted.

It was Sunday, so I went to church. I knelt and prayed so hard. I didn’t take the Eucharist. I thought the jealousy was wrong, somehow. If I really loved her, I thought, I would want her to be happy. And if she needs to be with some other guy instead of me, then I let her. But the truth was that she didn’t want to be with some other guy. She wanted to be with me. It wasn’t love; she was a bitch that did whatever she wanted. But she wanted me. She really did. We broke up a while later, and all that stuff I was feeling went away. It just slid off. And I wondered why I lived with it for two years. She did still want me, though, and we had outrageous sex drives, so there were a few hangups in the split. You thought I was going to say “outrageous sex”. We never had sex, but maybe that’s being too technical. For two years we danced all over that line separating “fooling around” and penetration without crossing it. The guilt would crash down on me the moment after I ejaculated on the back seat of the car, and then I refused to hug her, or kiss her, or tell her I loved her; I would hate her and want her to get the fuck away. Despite our outrageous sex drives, we remained technically virgins. It nearly drove us mad, I think. Especially me, with my guilt. A little while after we broke up, she started fucking. A couple years later, I started fucking too.

* * *

There was this girl named Ashley that I met at the Matador. She wanted her dream man to save her and take her around the world, and I thought she was attractive. We made out. It was passionate and out in the open. She was slurring her words, but was still able to utilize her mastery of kissing even while her other motor skills were fading.

A friend told me a story about this guy who passed out in his truck while he was driving. He must not have been going fast because he rolled through a red light and came to a stop in the middle of the intersection. When the cops found him, the guy could barely speak, but still had the ability to throw a cigarette in his mouth and light it.

When I came back from pissing she was rubbing her cheek against this other guys’ cheek. When she saw me, she looked down. My guts twisted a little. I asked if she wanted to go and she said, “okay.” She loved seeing the jealousy, but she gave this weak consolation: “He needed help. I was just trying to help him because he was on ecstasy.” I laughed. When we were in my car I started kissing her again and reached under her shirt. She was fine, but then she got this sick look on her face and asked if we could leave. She lit a menthol and said she wasn’t going to have sex with me, even though she was coming back to my place. When we got there she vomited, and I regretted buying her that last vodka tonic. I rubbed her back while she was puking, but then she said she was okay, so I left. I fell into a chair in the living room and looked at my roommate, Nick, and then at our friend, Charlie, who had slowly moved his possessions into our apartment and was more-or-less permanently sleeping on the couch.

These wretched gagging sounds emanated from the bathroom, accompanied by loud, wet coughs. Liquid coughs and wretched gagging. I looked at the floor, considered the absurdity of the situation, and laughed. “I’m sorry,” I said to Nick, under my breath and without really meaning it. After about five minutes of silence I figured she had passed out on the floor, so I knocked on the door. I opened it and found her in a heap around the toilet. She lifted her head and looked at me, then held her hand out. I helped her up and led her to my bed, impressed by her ability to take the whole situation in stride, without shame or remorse. That nauseous look came over her again and I got a bag under her chin just in time to save my comforter. She gagged and wretched a few more times and then immediately passed out. “First time picking a girl up at a bar,” I thought, making my bed on the couch across from Charlie.

Around 6am she opened the door, which sticks horribly, and emerged from my bedroom. Before opening, the door made a creaking sound, like a bent twig, and then the potential released and it shot open with a thud. I sat up. She tiptoed across the tiles, leaned over the arm of the couch and said, “Why are you sleeping out here?” Without waiting for a reply, she tiptoed back to the bedroom, waving for me to follow. I wanted her to brush her teeth, so I started brushing my teeth first, and then casually asked if she wanted to use my toothbrush. She did. Yes, I had a sink in my bedroom. Not a toilet or shower, just a sink. It’s out of place and awkward, but useful in a situation like this. The soft, pre-sunrise light was spilling through the blinds above my bed. We shared my one pillow. I’ve never disliked the smell of a beautiful women’s hair.

She was loud, and I knew my roommates were light sleepers, but I didn’t care. Sweat beads gathered on her forehead. I felt a strand of her blonde hair stick to my face, below my right ear. Before I knew what I was saying, I whispered, “I love you,” in her ear. I tried to catch myself, stop the words, but they slipped out without warning. She smiled, almost laughed, and kept fucking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that.”

She was curvy, had a button nose, and spoke like the girls in Albuquerque that snort coke off park benches and go for joy rides with cholos. She graduated with a degree in Spanish and was going to nursing school. And she was beautiful.

* * *

When I moved to Santa Fe I lost diners and God. You’re probably wondering how one loses a diner when they’re literally in every American city; I guess I’ll get to God later. Well, it’s simple, really. A diner has no meaning in Santa Fe. I don’t understand it, but its true. Here’s my best guess: this city has low class and high class, and nobody’s moving up or down; in California, everybody’s hopeful about something – money, or fame, or art, or, hell, even just “walking the earth.” Santa Fe’s also missing that tension – that somebody’s-about-to-rob-the-place tension. I’m not saying this is bad – it’s just not the kind of place for a ‘hopeful’; it’s more like a getaway – a vacation. But I think you get it now.

I’m not sure when, but sometime in the last two years I stopped going to churches as well. That’s all I can say, really. I could give a philosophical explanation – a damn good one, probably – but it wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter. The truth is, I started acting like I didn’t believe before I realized that I didn’t believe. It sucks; it’s painful; I feel sick; I feel some sort of freedom; I feel despair. I try to bear the tension between hope and the abyss because I believe that tension will strengthen my soul, I guess. Maybe one day I’ll look down on this picture of underwater despair and I’ll slowly light the cigarette hanging from my lip and say, “Fuck me, how did I get outta there?”