Back then every morning broke both ways. Salty and sweet

Head already splitting sitting up, sliding into bell bottoms, frayed hems fringed over faded espadrilles

Peasant top, you know how it was, a roach clip on a looooong feather clipped into frantic loopy hair

Sip of last night’s to get me out the door, down to Ruby’s

Step out near the canals, the shaggy likewise join the journey

Who’s holding? Lights up, the high travels along the line of linked arms like a fuse

Snickersnorting to the boardwalk, Jingles and Frank ready for busking

All the lovely boys building bodies to bodacious on the beach, sand sticking to evvvvvery sinewed limb, pump pump bump

Now we can smell the coffee smell the bacon smell half the customers too, or at least their smoke

The clatter of breakfast – and always smiling Ruby (“somebody hit the juke for Ray Charles!” and his voice, “They saaaaay, Ruby, you’re like a dreeeeeeeam…”) She was 100% movement but never rushed us

Lazy, luxurious breakfast, runny eggs, and how they got bacon that crispy while retaining every bit of grease that came off the hog is a mystery of faith

OJ from the carton (back when we still called it that) not fresh, but we only drank it for the sugar hit

And so Sunday began. We were together. We had survived another Saturday night. And as we ramshackled back onto the mostly deserted boardwalk, it never occurred to us that something else might happen. That soon, Ruby’s place would turn into Starbucks; all the trash on the beach would become all the Eurotrash in the tragically samesame cafes; and eventually, Jingles might get a ticket for loitering.

Not yet. We didn’t have a clue that it was coming: the encroachment of developers, the diaspora of cool. I can still smell Sunday morning, the sweet greasy and the sweat weedy.

Thanks to my old friend Roger Green for kicking me in the butt to post something! He’s at www.rogerogreen.com


Posted by in Amy: The Lost Years, Artists, Beginnings, Coffee, Drugs, Seasons, Uncategorized, Writing Tags: , , , ,