Lethe, ND

June 6-8, 20015

Lethe, North Dakota

We’re here for the weekend, to visit a high school friend of Roz’, who, like her, left Kansas never to come back except to visit and then never more than a day or two at a time. “You can’t go home again” is no threat, it causes no sadness if you never want to.

     She lived a while in New York City in a tiny apartment in Washington Heights and tended bar.  She lived a while in Atlanta, a basement room in a big house in Virginia Highlands and waited tables. She ran away with a crazy man to Kampala; he left her there, but with enough to get back to the States. Now she’s here.

     The man she lives with here is rich. He also sleeps like a cat, twenty-one hours out of twenty-four. It doesn’t take long to find out why. The moral weather of the place captures me too, wraps me up, holds me close, wraps me up like an autoimmune disease. And soon enough, however much I kick back, I am most of the time more asleep than awake. I can’t read more than a paragraph my eyes fall closed, write more than a sentence I lose my train of thought. I go for a walk and turn around at the end of the sidewalk.

     Thank God we leave after two days, while I still can. Another day I’d have been stuck to the couch, unable to get up. Even so, Roz drags me to the car; she drives us to the airport. She pushes me onto the plane.