Golda Fried
and it all went tremola

We're going to play something now a little intimate.
[Heckler in the crowd:] Oh darling!

We're all in the loft. Montreal lofts, they call it the building. Well it's been lofty, maybe we should think about summing it all up.

I go over to check on Mug. She's sleeping or pretending to, because she shakes out sobs. Then I realize a pile of clothes on her treasure trunk by her feet are sobbing too so it's hard to tell what is happening.

Jones probably is figuring that I am fixating on something again, and when he puts his arms around me I can't respond, even though my t-shirt is how I like it --paper thin.

Lark stumbles in to the loft, her purse dangling from the crux of her elbow, her hand a set of keys, and gets me talking faster than a bar bill. She doesn't tense up about Jones and I. He is over by Mug, piling through her sobbing clothes and I try not to look. My words come out maraschino.

Lark checks her answering machine, Hold on Sweetie. It goes, Hi, this is Drane, check me out later. Check me out, the laughs are a bit too heavy and then gone.

She asks me what she should wear on their date. Earlier we took all our papers down to the recycling bin and now there are only clothes, some with patches we picked out. She points to her red stuff saying it makes her a little woozy. My eyes follow her finger a little off to the side somewhere.

I see Jones talking to Mug that time we all went drinking and on top of everything, they are both dressed in stark matching red. The cherry of her cigarette on top of all that exhale or bouncing along with her shoulders and cute giggling. And Jones is making her laugh, you can tell, he's ashing up all the rims instead of the usual floor.

In the morning, when I get to my mail, there are some guy friends of mine who believe in their continuous search for the new. yeah yeah

I avoid Jones when I'm not sure what's going on. This is probably not good but it's my last trip to Ottawa. I go to see my friend Clayton for the weekend. It's a whole other world college town closeness there. He lives in this place called the Glebe. Yeah, and like it sounds, he and his friends've ended up stuck to each other like the white rice they've subsided on for the past four years.

I walk in and it's a house instead of an apartment and there's about eight people in the kitchen just talking pretty much and most of them are jokers. When Clayton offers me tea, there's this plastic container with some magic marker writing on it pushed my way. It reads BROWN SHUGAH.

When I take off the lid, it's filled with rice. The white rice that they haven't thrown at me if I've mentioned the word Jones.

Leah hooks Clayton's arm to go have it out for the fifth time that night on the front porch becauses she knows that he won't write.

They have a porch-- the kind you want to sit around and flick things at the leaves and wait for your friends to come over...

One of the guys gets up every once in awhile to go into the living room, making mixed tapes for a few people before they take off to their various parts of Canada.

Someone opens the back door not knowing. The whole back is pitted. If it wasn't construction, it would be the surface of the moon.

All of our eyes, stars instantly cast out there.

The last night they take me for a walk (to Gore street?) It's sticky. Everyone's going into their own wounds.

Once Jones and I were kissing outside a grocery store and a squeaky lady went, Anyone have a bucket of water?

They don't even have a red face, Are you visiting someone? Are you looking for someone? Yeah, we're looking for God. Well, if you're not looking for someone, I'm going to have to ask you to leave because you're loitering and we have a policy against loitering. Well, we're just deliberating on whether we should leave town or not, we'll just be a minute. WELL, you'll have to deliberate somewhere else because this is private property. You're going to have to leave. Leave now.

I thought Clayton was going to say something hurting at the Greyhound Station like I'll write meaning he wouldn't but he said, Giving back the house keys will be the hardest.

[Heckler, popping up like soda bubbles, asks the band:]
Is it a hurting song?

So now the loft's out drinking again. And everyone's got their tickets to their old bedrooms that are either chicken yellow or pink frilled. And tonight Mug and Lark are getting along. And Jones is there and something's in our cream sodas and we can hardly hold on to the table.

And the singer's got his Fender out and it sounds like SHUGAH.