Sing a Song of Sixpence

By

Varo Borja

We had a good thing going. Twenty, thirty bucks a day, or just enough for a twelve pack of the Beast and a couple packs of Pantry brand. Mitch did the hustling, I just played guitar and looked young and heartbroken.

One time J. Edgar came down the street looking all spiffy in his Salvation Army duds and demanded to hear one of those old mountain tunes that brought tears to the collective eyes of the locale and made the Floridians dole out pocket change like kids at a candy store. I played a tune by the Velvets instead, half in mockery of the sun shining down on my mauled feet and half in jest at the impropriety of J. Edgar and his gutter bravado senselessness.

When Pat went to jail for knifing that frat boy we threw a little party. Two cases of the finest swill that could be bought for ten bucks and a blowjob from that big tittied freshman (what was her name?) that was always lurking around the corners of King Street. Pretty much any corner you went around. I got sick and slept in the rain that night, damn near catching hypothermia but I guess the booze beat off the cold. My old Gibson got soaked but a few wipes with an oil rag from behind the Shell station and a quick tuning did her up just right.

You wouldn’t have much to do with me then. Sure, you’d invite me to one of your protests and feign a little concern at my state of affairs and the state of the nation, but mostly you just kept on fucking that hippy (whatever hippy it was at the time) with his gold card and his Daddy’s Jeep Cherokee. I was down and out and you were doing it up somewhere in the hills, dancing neath the pale moon and pretending to care about something worthwhile.

Your brown eyes were with me most of the time out on the street and occasionally inside some girl, barely twenty and full of bullshit and the bleeding heart. Big, gold flecked and sad eyes that haunted me in my cups and out, keeping watch over me in the twilight of my youth. Did you care? Were the stars out of order on the night that you told me not to come back to the farm because Tasha’s horoscope had warned her to make better use of her time and resources? I guess love bought with a bag of B.C. and a poem scrawled on a Styrofoam cup (so it would last forever) doesn’t merit marriage, two point seven kids and a picket fence but it damn sure felt right. It damn sure felt like it at the time, but youth has a way of breaking mended fences and letting the sheep out to pasture with the wolves. I saw you today. Not you, really, but a girl that looked just like you. My heart skipped a few beats and I had a hard time focusing on my girlfriend sitting across the table from me. The power of the past doesn’t always fade, even with time. You’re married now with two kids, I hear. I’m glad for you. We all gotta grow up sometime, even me. I just wish growing up didn’t mean growing apart.