I'm in a hotel in San Francisco. I call it "Hotel Jazz" because it smells like jazz, it smells like body odor and bad breath, it smells like dirty socks, lipstick, sex and perfume. It smells like dope and wet kisses slowly dripping down my face, dripping down to my boots. I can polish them with the spit from leftover lip locking the night before. If it's lucky, the club smells like money, like history, like a museum. That's the first thing I notice when I open the doors and walk in, the smell of the past, not only the night before but weeks and months and sometimes years before. It's not a fragrance; that's too good a word for it; women wear fragrances, men wear aftershave spray, but a bar has a smell it can never get rid of. "Smell" is like somethng you want to forget but you cant; it gets in your skin, on your clothes, in your hair and in your mouth. There's a smell of a jazz club 6am when the bar opens. It's wet and damp and salty, and always sticky in there; and it's cool, before the sun comes in the tinted windows from the eastside looking across the street where it's still shady and windy and heats up the place. But in the morning the inside of the bar is comfortable and empty. The tables have been wiped up, chairs pushed in, feels quiet and safe. That early in the morning, there's only a few local drunks sitting around talking too much, looking at their drinks like charlatans staring into a crystal ball looking for their fortune, holding their glasses, slowly spinning that crystal ball around on the tips of their fingers. That's how you can tell alcholics from drinkers who arent: they'll hold onto their glass while they sit there, between hits; they wont let the glass sit there without holding onto it. They wont let go of it till it's empty. They'll nurse it along, holding it, protecting it, mothering it, guarding it, keeping it safe. At my favorite bar, the bathroom is downstairs and that's where I go before I order my first drink. After I walk from my hotel to the bar, by the time I get there I need to piss. I feel so relieved afterwards and accepted. I belong there. This is my home. The hotel is just a stop on my way to the bar. It's a place for me to sleep it off or sleep with it and shower, shave, clean my teeth, change my clothes and try to look like I know what I'm doing and why I'm here.
My room is small. I've got a bed big enough for me to throw my legs around and pull on the blankets, pull them up, yank on them, get tied up in them, and messed up. My bed faces a color TV in a wooden box. It's got a remote control. I've got three pillows and I sit myself up so I can sleep or watch tv at the same time. There's a wall right next to my right hand, a blue wall, cool and freshly painted with a painting nailed to it to give it a home atmosphere. I wonder whose home it's supposed to be. I've got a bed table next to my left side of my head. It's got a lamp, a phone, and an ash tray. I dont smoke, so I put it in the drawer. There's bible in there and some information about the hotel. I put my wallet and small change in there. I've got a window with blinds on it. It opens good and the blinds work. I can lock it, and I do lock it whenever I leave, which is all the time, everyday I leave and go out. I'm like a homeless person with a shelter at night and I wander the streets during the day, like I'm getting ready to play my jazz gig at night, to do my hot improvization, or get my blood looked at in the blood lab where I can pick up my perscriptions. There's a desk and I put papers on it and cans of tea and towels. There's a sink next to that, with a mirror. I put my stuff in there and hide it. There's a closet with my clothes hanging. I'm a very neat guy. Very organized. I keep everything straightend out, almost obsessively. But it works for me. I keep the key to the room on the wooden tv box where I wont lose it.
I take photos of this room and me in it. I found all sorts of things to take pictures of, close-ups of things, weird angles, weird shapes, weird shadows. And I started taking pictures of me, of myself, my body, legs, my back, my hands, face, hair.....using a camera phone. I really got into it, listening to jazz and taking it with me to the bar, which I should call the Jazz Bar. Jazz does something to my mind and I work with it all the time and walk with it, everywhere I go I have it with me in my head and I hear it everywhere, that beat, that feeling, smooth, fast and hard and sharp like glass piercing my feet as i walk, like ice covering my body with a numbing sensation. Makes me want to sleep or stay awake for days, like jazz speed, speeding like a jazz drummer. that's what I do, I play jazz drums. I like to play hard and spontaneous anmd move hard with a piano and bass and go outside and never come back. So I get my breakfast ready to eat and I lay out my meds to get the day started, before I walk up to the bar and do my writing or whatever. I put the meds out on the table in a nice orderly line according to color and size: Zolpidem, Clonazepam, Hydrocodone, Morphine Sulfate, MS Contin, Naproxen, Cyclobenzaprine, Lexapro, Propoxyphen, Flomax, Trazodone, Lisinopril, Promethazine, more Morphine Sulfate, Methocarbamol, more Hydrocodone, Meprozine, Oxycotin, Dilaudid, liquid Morphine and water. After breakfast I grab my drums and keyboard and I head on up to the Jazz Bar to do my jazz sets and read some poetry.
