Travis was a junkie
All my friends were
I was a wallower
I watched them tie up their arms and collapse onto couches
I was never high,
and always on the same strange slow ride with them
Travis rode a fixed-gear bike
He had nowhere to live
But never went without somewhere to sleep
Travis was handsome
He had a backpack and an iPad
And nowhere to take a shower
He would meet old ladies
Whose husbands had moved on or passed
He would make love to them
For a week or two at a time
Hold them in his arms
And stroke their thin hair
Kiss their lips, dissolving vermilion ridges.
He would paint their fingernails and take baths with essential oils
They would give him somewhere to stay and a few hundred dollars
And by Sunday, Travis would tuck a perfumed envelope into his
pocket
And ride off on his fixie
To score
And he would come meet us
With department-store lipstick on his collar
And a pocket full of sour candy and dope.
I asked him how he did it.
How it didn’t rip his heart to shreds.
“I really do love them,”
he told me.
“All of them.”