Choke

Being unmarried twenty-five-year-old guys in the eighteenth century,our options were prettylimited. Footman. Apprentice. Gravedigger. Cooper, whatever that is. Bootblack, whatever that is. Chimneysweep. Farmer. The minute they say town crier, De

His Highness looks at De

"Only to see with," De

I took the job because there are worse things than working with your best friend.

Sort-of best friend.

Still, you'd think this would be more fun, a fun job with a bunch of Drama Club types and community theater folks. Not this chain gang of throwbacks. These Puritan hypocrites.

If the Ye Old Town Council only knew Mistress Plain, the seamstress, is a needle freak. The miller is cooking crystal meth. The i

Even Farmer Reldon has his plot of prime weed out behind the corn and the pole beans and junk. Only he calls it hemp.

The only fu

Or through little power and humiliation games. Witness His Lord High Charlie behind lace curtains, just some failed drama major. Here, he's the law, watching whoever gets bent over, yank­ing his dog with one white-gloved hand. For sure, they don't teach you this in history class, but in colonial times, the person who got left in the stocks overnight was nothing less than fair game for everybody to nail. Men or women, anybody bent over had no way of knowing who was doing the ram job, and this was the real reason you never wanted to end up here unless you had a family member or a friend who'd stand with you the whole time. To protect you. To watch your ass, for real.

"Dude," De

So I pull them back up.

The rain's wet De

"Dude," De

From what I remember about physical diagnosis, De

See also: Leukemia.

See also: Pulmonary edema.

It starts raining harder, from clouds so dark that people start lighting lamps inside. Smoke settles down on us from chim­neys. The tourists will all be in the tavern drinking Australian ale out of pewter mugs made in Indonesia. In the woodwright's shop, the cabinetmaker will be huffing glue out of a paper bag with the blacksmith and the midwife while she talks about fronting the band they dream of putting together but never will.

We're all trapped. Its always 1734. All of us, we're stuck in the same time capsule, the same as those television shows where the same people are marooned on the same desert island for thirty seasons and never age or escape. They just wear more makeup. In a creepy way, those shows are maybe too authentic.

In a creepy way, I can see myself standing here for the rest of my life. It's a comfort, me and De

I'm not so much a good friend as I'm the doctor who wants to adjust your spine every week.

Or the dealer who sells you heroin.

"Parasite" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

De

All you can hear is the rain, water falling against puddles, against thatched roofs, against us, erosion.

I'm not so much a good friend as I'm the savior who wants you to worship him forever.

De

Nasal discharge means Rubella.

See also: Whooping cough.

See also: Pneumonia.

His glasses remind me of Dr. Marshall, and I say how there's this new girl in my life, a real doctor, and for serious, worth the effort to bag.

And De

The complete and relentless story of my sexual addiction. Oh, yeah, that. Every lame, suck-ass moment.

And I say, "Everything in moderation, dude. Even recovery."

I'm not so much a good friend as I'm the parent who never wants you to really grow up.

And facedown, De

The first time for everything. The incomplete inventory of my crimes. Just another incomplete in my life full of incompletes.

And still facedown, blind to everything in the world except the mud, De

And I put the rag back around his nose and tell him, "Blow."

Chapter 5

.

Whatever lighting the photographer used was harsh and made bad shadows on the cement-block wall behind them. Just a painted wall in somebody's basement. The mon­key looked tired and patchy with mange. The guy was in lousy shape, pale with rolls around his middle, but there he was, relaxed and bent over with his hands braced against his knees and his poochy gut hanging down, his face looking back over his shoulder at the camera, smil­ing away.