It didn't have a name. It was within walking distance of the comic shop. It was back in the day. I wasn't Jonny Algiers yet. I was the schizophrenic Fugitive, both Richard Kimble and the One-Armed Man. Bipolar med fifteen years in the future, the car accident a year in the past. The present pure crazy. I'd escape the voices in my head, the one that talked about the drill bit, the other about the noose, and disappear to the second floor of this joint. I'd carry my old Smith-Corona Galaxie Twelve and type about The American Dream or my werewolf with Huntington's chorea. Some good stories came from that room, where I vented out the insanity in my veins. I was lucky enough to take photos of the place a few winters back, wondering if my characters' voices still could be heard in Room 2B. The place is gone now, the land a development for Park Place, even though there is no park and the only place nearby is the elevated train. I miss that joint.
4 comments:
Ah! Like something from Bukowski's Planet!
I wonder sometimes if the places we live shape us or we shape the places that we live more.
Funny how an old dive can stick w/a person, eh? I was just recalling a horrendous apartment I had in Canada about 17 years ago now...
Good thing you got those photos.
I took a trip back to the States a few years ago - too many, to be honest. I'd only been gone five or six years at that point, but a great many of my old haunts were gone...
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