| This lust for everything beat dates back to the cool cats in Puppetland on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. They'd snap and rhyme rhythmically in cool mellow voices, firing a passion for transcendent poetry within me more intense than the sugar rush from my ritual bowl of Saturday morning Froot Loops.
Something told me to start looking.
I voraciously sought out Kerouac, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti. I had memorized Howl before I hit puberty, dreaming of New York, addiction, and wet black city streets wandered in pursuit of enlightenment.
Jazz. The sound of slate blue rain, echoing through slow trumpet wails and earthy bass.
Dank, smoky coffeehouses epitomized the mecca of my ideal. I imagined smoking cloves and reading poetry to a crowd of the black-clad, falling into step with Miles, falling perhaps in love with a quiet, shy boy in glasses I could play a game of questions with and lose.
Drugs. A mindscape expanded into nauseous lush beauty, stroking planar depths of reality with shaky fingers.
I lost my virginity in a one-night stand. I was in love with someone else, to whom I'd sworn the precious jewel, and wrote volumes to him confessing in the most obscure, byzantine poetry possible.
He'd shift uncomfortably, blinking wetly behind tortoiseshell frames, and begin, "We've had no practice."
He still thinks he's the first.
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