Mike Kozak is coming to stay with me for a few days. I was expecting him for the first of the month but he’s only just called now, at one o’clock in the morning. My policy of “you can always call” kicking in. I haven’t properly known the boy for years so, no matter the result, this will turn out interesting. I’ve not any clue what we might have in common still, who we might know in contact.
I was the Goddess Canabasita once to our group of friends, there would always be a pipe, papers, a light in the darkness, the third feedback member, the Technocratic Concubine. This is House of Slack memories and living with Grady and the flaky painter Chris in the worst back alley of Canada’s only slum. Rabbit would spin decks in the renovated bank safe and Merlin and I would dance, throwing our heads back until we sat exhausted on the chroma key green of our studio floor. I grew into godliness on that rooftop my first night, watching fireworks with half a stranger and half myself. We would cook with peanut butter, we would make clothing out of silver tape, we would create something better than the two dollar blow-job with a heroin kick in the street outside our window.
I don’t know if Grady succeeded, I only know that I’m not sure I did. We split ways when he got lonely, when he peeked when I used the shower. I’ve heard since Trypped On is still going, that Merlin had a depressive crash but is now recovering, (recovered?). I’ve heard that Grady and Roz have been together for a few years now and that he doesn’t come to our god-childrens birthdays anymore. Our relatives together see him barely more than I do, and I see him never past chance meeting where we don’t know what to say to each other. I know too much again. The phone number changed, the famous one, 805.trip. When I called it last, the girl who picked up cried with frustration. I imagine she must have received twelve a day for a year after the switch.
Mike is older now and I suppose so am I. A few inches taller, the both of us, he’s got longer hair and spikes in his hat. I remember him as a child genius inventor, always fiddling, making new things. Skully says he lost something along the line, that he lost impetus. They lived in the same building fairly recently, before Mike and his ex broke up. He never contributed apparently, which is why the girlfriend left him to fend on his own. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll comb some truth from the wool of rumour, I hope, though I don’t know exactly how reliable he is these days. So many years apart has left a bit of a gap.