"The old Handful of Light trick was certainly Benway's best. But everything's vaudeville after all."

--William S. Burroughs, The Soft Shoe Biz

Unsettling thoughts occur. I'm almsot cetrain this is an ordinary part of life. My pal the architect, one of those very few to whom I bow, suggests that I have some heat up my sleeve. And my fine friend is right.

Baseball is an interesting game.

And it's a game far more than some mere sport.

The perp walk isn't much fun to watch although it's fascinating. But so are train wrecks. I never wish for one to take place, but if one's bound to occur, I'd just as soon be around when it happens. Interesting spectacles, like the sight of blood.

So there was this one guest who got the whole and total perp walk.

On a Sunday afternoon, visiting day. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but I can see cop cars like like I'm walking around with telescopes in place of eyeballs. Those gentlemen are not among my friends. They hugely suck. They're peons from some long-sunken colony. I'm not. And that's that.

Getting the bracelets and the perp walk gig was a pretty okay fellow. I liked him fine. His name, it turned out (yeah, I got folks who'll check the police blotter for me) was kind of made up. He wanted us to call him Tom so we called him Tom.

No sweat in my book. I had to live for years on end, seemed like, not using my own actual name. Which is Guy Neal Williams. Not the greatest name on earth, but neither the worst. Just prety much the one I got stuck with. You play the hand you're dealt, way I figure it. Sometimes you're golden and sometimes you're mucking stalls. Way it goes, dude. Deal.

Or die. Your call.

So the cops come zooming into our sedate parking lot. Can someone tell me why those fuckers have to drive like fools? Jesus: we can't and most of us don't want to. And these minimum-wage apes are running around with guns. With shotguns in the trunk. It's entirely possible that this is merely another drug-addled screed of mine, but something seems rather addled in this equation.

Cops+Me=doom.

Now, that one I get.

Plenty of proof in that pudding.

So, poor Tom's geting hauled off. And everybody's eyes are jittering around. I know I'm supposed to do something because of their expressions but I'm flat out baffled by what's taking place. From where I sit, I can't see Tom nor the bracelets nor the perp walk. I can only see my wife and my best friend staring at me, looking panicked. It would be safe to say that I would not have behaved according to the societal norm had I seen what was happening.

But I have very restricted vision and my hearing is even worse. What would I have done? Bad stuff. Wouldn't have helped anybody, but I would have broken me some noses.

Cops suck. I guess we get what we pay for, They're not quite as nice as Waffle House fry cooks. We get what we pay for. And we don't pay much.

Poor Old Tom (isn't that a Peter Case song?) got hustled over to the nut ward. My wife, my friend: they were happy. Because I hadn't hurled myself through the plate glass to get their grubby hands off this friend of mine.

This is the way I am.

Don't know no other way to live this life. You fuck with him, you fuck with me.

This is the nature of us.

But rehab joints ain't much friendly to Helen Kellers like me. And this is the nature of them, I reckon. So I didn't figure out what was going on until the going was gone. Way it goes. Play the cards you're dealt. And try not to bite the other children.

Fast ball? I don't know. In my family, we're catchers. Mitts, not gloves. Slow, but sturdy. Just don't let the bsll get by.

Tonight I watched the headlights of my truck sweep into the yard, My son. He's home. Trying to bang the door shut against his own bloody sleeves. He was handsome and tan. Junkie dad, junkie son. An embarrasment.

I tried to unleash the heat, my friend. I probably failed. I know no more than this: we need to build.

We must be the architects of our dreams.

They have to be built.