Dropping a computer off at Bruce's studio: it's an incongruous piece of debris among all the colors of his canvases and bits'n'pieces - the lite brite many-breasted lamp, the toothy horse and the bride. Bruce and Jerry are smoking cigars. I've known Jerry for about 20 years now and i always forget that he drives trucks for a living. Not that it makes a difference. The air is thick with cigar smoke, and they keep offering us meat. That's the phrase of the evening: Hey, want some meat? There's a grotesque-looking piece of kielbasa in some water in a frying pan on the stove. I sit in the death chair (the one Jerry's father died in) and flip through a book - a history of photographic nudes. Not just Edweard Muybridge, either, but real weird crazy porno stuff. From the 1800's. What great pictures. It turns out the modem had been scavenged from the computer we brought so it's no good to Bruce. Ah well. Before we go, he shows us some of the old men's magazines he's found. On the back cover of Monseiur from 1957, the photo caption reads,
      I'm just a crazy, mixed-up kid
      Who doesn't know her ego from her id
      Nor right from wrong, unless I'm caught!
      That gives a Jung girl Freud for thought.
When i get home i run right back out the door, and wolf a slice of pizza on the way. Cubanismo! is playing at Pearl Street, and it is unlike things i would typically go to see. Abdiel is there and teaches me to say wepa and ay dios mio! Ay dios mio, this band is together. It's supernatural. Hippies are dancing like hippies always dance, but there were people there that could actually latin dance, and that makes all the difference. I somehow cannot allow myself to dance. I guess it's because i sense that Abdiel would dance closer to me, and i wouldn't stop him. And i don't need more complication. Plus there's that whole coworkers thing. But also, i am just self-conscious in public. The timing in this band is phenomenal! There's a small crowd up there acting as a unit. The upright bass is electric and has almost no body. At one point the light changes and it looks like a stalk of celery, being plucked. One woman in the crowd is shaped like slimer from the ghostbusters and has on a tight top and miniskirt; her hair is magenta and she's very distracting. When i can see her. Abdiel translates lyrics for me: the music is complicated but the lyrics are simple. The air is smoky, smoky, my throat feels full of smoke.

Their encore is an afro-cuban jazz rendition of Bob Marley's Get Up, Stand Up. It's hard to grasp that this can exist, yet they are playing it.