Bakersfield welcomes a stranger
Bakersfield had a windstorm New Year’s Eve with palm trees and flags lashed to flag poles whipping ridiculously above the fire station that was blacked out like that whole half of downtown…we laid down in the flowers beneath those flagpoles and kissed while hamburger wrappers blew past us and tin cans made their music as they rolled…the strongest wind she’d seen…”I’m only two blocks away! Let’s go!” but I wouldn’t stop kissing her until a car came towards us, headlights the only light on the empty streets, the traffic signals empty three eyed animals hanging from a wire. “Have you noticed all the birds in town lately?” she asked me. “Have you noticed how they line up on the wires?” she was connected to some alternative frequency. Nothing was resting on a wire tonight, anything without an anchor picked up and drifted…I was feeling responsible, a stranger in town with some disruptive wind behind me…”Why hide from this weather, it’s one in a million”…she thought about it and agreed, so we tucked in between the shrubs and the building’s stone foundation while Bakersfield wondered what ’08 had in store for itself and we kissed, so much kissing, just the tips of tongues flicking so that you lose track of everything and when we stopped so had the wind but it took a minute to notice…
We walked that block back to her place and there were candles for light and a glass of water by the bedside and it was a new year. I was a stranger in town. In a town not much different from the towns I did know. Her house had a lawn that hadn’t been watered, the front steps were rotted, the living room had everyone’s stuff in it: old roommates, friends from out of town, things off the street, old couches with lots of blankets on them facing a tv with books piled on top, people coming and going, losing things, taking what might not be their’s, giving generously of what is, strange animal behavior of those who aren’t sure where they’re heading. Bakersfield welcomed a stranger. Not every town does.
