2003-03-28 - 4:05 a.m.

So I had to work today. 11 to 6. No big deal. i don’t think its going to be that busy at ben and jerry’s. Its a college town, its half dead. the hole city is a glass of water spilt, students stain the world. i know people drinking in mexico, eating in france, stuck Pasadena with a curfew, traveling the rails of California and beyond aimlessly with a monday morning deadline, solitary and stuck up in a bed room with mono in livermore, and myself - driving from sacramento to scoop ice cream in Davis.

In the first few hours of work i write a poem for Aisha. I’ve gotten 2 e-mails from her while she’s in Pasadena. Enough to - as MLK would say - “keep hope alive.” I work with Christine today. i tried to get Christine fired on Sunday because she isn’t that bright. But she’s smarter than i thought. she worked her for a couple of weeks a few months ago but left and now that she is back she is trying to learn. i misunderstood that as stupidity on Sunday. she’s a nice person, but I told my boss that I think that for every evil genius there is a perfectly polite moron. She’s slow but i think she may learn. The problem is that she doesn’t fit in though. She has a 9 and 11 year old. She’s a mother - it changes how i talk to her. Believe it or not, but I try to be a gentleman. She complains that her husband is a bum. she doesn’t get much sleep because she has to cook for her family, her kids are picky, she works and has school and is addicted to a korean Soap opera that broadcasts at 3:20 in the morning on the internet. i tell her that she has more power than she thinks. Woman have the power all they have to do is harness it. i’m tired of the white man being in power of America, we’ve had our chance and fucked up enough shit - give some one else a shot at ruining things. All her husband does is watch the war.

I tell my idea about the war. i like my idea to alleviate the problems Bush is having with dissent about the war. I told my republican mother, she reluctantly agreed. My father, the Democrat and army veteran liked it, Aisha my Egyptian and Iranian infatuation liked the idea. i call it Blame Ronald Reagan. George Bush should go on TV and apologize for the actions and inaction of Reagan. He should say that Reagan wasn’t that great of a president because of his middle east foreign policy. Reagan shouldn’t have funded Hussein to fight iran while covertly funding Iran to fight Iraq. Admit that it is subtly racist to give Arabs weapons in hopes that they will just kill each other off. And then apologize for Reagan giving money to bin laden, which he did in the 80s. But really he should Blame Ronald Reagan for not taking Saddam out in 1987 for gassing iraqi Kurds. Saddam tried to stage his own mini genocide and that is not cool. Reagan should have taken him out right then. But he didn’t. Bush needs to apologize for America’s inaction. Apologize to the iraqi people. He needs to admit that we are there because of oil but then just keep Blaming Ronald Reagan. like old ronny boy would car. He’s all fucked up in the head now, he thinks its 1945. If Bush did this all of the liberal would freak out in joy. We don’t think Reagan was a great president. The rich just got rich and the poor struggled to keep the color in their television. And the cold war was just an argument between the UC and the USSr over dick size. Bin laden got funding to fight the soviets in the cold war. The world trade center is blood on Reagan’s hands. The liberal would be distracted. Its just good politics to distract your opposition and Blame Ronald Reagan.

After work i walk to school to see if any computer labs are open; no. I’m planning on going to Luna’s Cafe to see about their open mic night. I walk to my car and my cell phone rings. Its 818 area code. it has to be Aisha. She tells me that she heard that i was lonely. i’m a firm believer that everyone is lonely. i can’t believe that i’m alone in my loneliness. She tells me about a Freudian idea that refers to my over exposure of sex as a child. I tried to turn that around on her. i figured because of her Islamic up-bringing she hadn’t been as exposed to sex. I figured her with not enough and me with too much - we would be a perfect fit, and i just wanted to say it. but she denied being under exposed to sex. Layer on i worked into the conversation, ever so subtly, that i think we fit together. i think it is because we bother lack inhibitions. We both have inablities to censor ourselves. I like a woman that speaks her mind. Fuck the meek, lock them in a room and no one will notice. Give me a woman with an opinionated lead me to her orgasm. We talk about poetry and i tell her about Jearme butchering mine while he read it a few days ago. I ask her if she wants to crash the poetry work shops that go on at Delta Venus Cafe on mondays. Fuck with the poets. Fuck the poets. We talk about talking. About how i can’t shut up but i prefer to listen. i’m just afraid of silence and assume that if no one is going to talk then i have to. I want her to talk though. i want to listen. everything that she knows, I want to know. God damn this woman intrigues me. She talks about how she may go to a rave on friday with an ex-boyfriend. i wonder if she was trying to make me jealous. i didn’t want to be over bearing. if she wants to go then i want her to. But when she gets back to Davis, i want to date her.

I can only hope that the feeling is reciprocated. it just seems so chicken shit to ask it over the phone or by e-mail so i’ll wait till i see her in person. i regret not talking to her earlier in quarter but hind sight is the vision of the god’s. I wonder if we never would have hooked up if alcohol wasn’t involved. maybe she was just drunk (well yeah she was) and lonely and i was a warm body near by. I’m reminded of Jerry’s Seinfeld’s joke that 90% of the population is undateable and only get together because of alcohol. Aisha’s in the other 10% but i’m biased because i want to date her even though my low self opinion puts me with the 90%. Maybe booze was a necessity. After all Aisha was interested in Dan. i’m not going to lie to myself. but on Saturday Dan was buying Alcohol. I truly didn’t know where he was so I wasn’t trying to be sly taking her to the park on Saturday night, but fate but as together and comfortably naked. Dan has women that i want him anyway. kristin wants him. i think Eloise may want him. i know that if Azver wasn’t there that Lisa may want Dan. and then there is me. i hadn’t kissed some one since last September. i’ve lost 50 pounds since then so i’m much more comfortable with myself. The last time a woman say me naked for the first time Aisha was still honoring Islamic Hajib and wearing a scarf over her hair. I think we fit together so damnit, Dan can go off and choose from his options (hopefully he’ll choose kristin), but i want my shot at Aisha. I have the tenacity and the lack of inhibitions to hopefully pull it off.

Aisha has to go because her sister needs to use the phone so after making all this flimsy plans to see each other soon, and I’ll be sure to try to follow through, we hung up. i drive to Luna’s poetry cafe and it isn’t open mic night. Its an annual reading in honor of Caesar Chavez. i stick around for half an hour and split. i go to the true love Cafe to see what’s up there. Nothing. i sit there and read Charles Bukowski for an hour and then drive home. I waste time and mind by watching television and then i do some work on writeclub.net and write this.

here’s the poem i wrote for Aisha

“Jealous of 397 Miles”

I envy the distance between us;

all those hundreds of miles of California.

Jealousy is in my chest spreading like nut grass

to my arms and shoulders and back -

all empty deserts without your blossoming fingers.

I envy the garlic buds in the farms of Gilroy

and the rocks in Angeles National Forest.

I want to ask a grain of sand on the beaches of Monterey,

or even better - on the beaches of Malibu,

if it knows anything about the uncertainty

between you and I.

I even envy the cow shit in Fresno County

because it’s closer to you than I am.

I’m waiting for this distance between the two us us to dwindle down to nothing.

As for now,

I want your breath to be picked up by a gust of wind

and travel from Pasadena up through the valleys,

through Bakersfield and fields of cow shit, all the way up the 5

and into my too-goddamn-solitary mouth

breathing here in Davis California.

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