TRAVIS

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.”