Sounds like a one-night stand

Jean Marc is so darn beautiful.  It's his molasses lashes that curl up into his pale lids.  And his pink lips pout, "I watched my father die for six months."  God, he's grim.  And he blinks twice.  I keep calling him Jean Paul.
He sits next to me on the wood bench, splinters stapling into our thighs, and he tells me that he watched his father die for six months.  Nice to meet you too.  We get along swell and we walk around the grounds of a monastery and a gust of hot halitosis wind (it smells like bathroom here) blows off my straw hat, down into the running stream.  And he dives in after it.  No he doesn't, I'm lying.  He just watches it float away and he blinks.  He's so beautiful.  Isn't it weird that he loses his hat too?  But that happens later.
When does it happen?  I think it's when he's complimenting my teeth.  His face is too close to mine, I can feel his exhale on the ridge of my nose and I can smell his flesh.  He's looking down at my teeth, my gleaming kernels, my pearly whites, telling me that I have the most beautiful teeth he's ever seen, east of the Andes.  It's that moment, him looking down, admiring my teeth, when I kiss him.  After wards, he realizes he lost his hat.  "Isn't that weird?" he asks. 
We know each other for six hours.  I know all about his father and mother and his estranged brothers.  About India and Nepal and those heroin smugglers in Pakistan, who were the most hospitable people you ever met.  At the end of the sixth hour, we're sitting in the open courtyard, just off of the main Khao San Road, drinking a soda and a Singha, and we've already fought twice (I can't remember about what).  And we kiss goodbye because his bus is leaving and I'm going home.  "I'll miss you," he tells me.  And how can you miss someone you just met?  And there's a black-out on the road, while I'm sitting at the last open restaurant, slurping red curry.

And now, while writing this, thinking about Jean Marc, Chelsea comes in, asking me what I'm doing.  "She's a ball of nerves," she keeps saying, and then she adds, "I see that now."  And I keep thinking about that girl, that ball of nerves, with the red rash on her freckled neck and her collar bone; it looks like a hand print.  When we were at the church with the Gothic chandeliers, Chelsea and I partook in the holy communion.  Grape juice and wafer, kindergarten snacks.  But, it's that girl's rash, which Chelsea calls, "a severe case of eczema."

And were you ever speaking to someone and forgot what you looked like?  I remember being in Tel Aviv (or was it Edinburgh?) and speaking to her on my rented cell phone (that I eventually lost) and she was crying and I was crying.  One sloppy sob fest.  The two of us crying like big old babies.  And she's reassuring me, "I'm okay!  Really, I am."  And she's crying in hiccups.  And I'm crying too because it's so damn sad and I don't remember what I look like.  I can give vague generalizations: brown hair, brown eyes, mouth, nose. etcetera.  But, nothing beyond that. 

Before Winter

Outside is missionary-white stucco and a Virgin Mary statue.  But, inside are vaulted ceilings and widow's peak archways.  It's stone and stunning as mosaic light streams through stained glass windows.  The pastor stands at his podium, and speaks in his West Virginian drawl.  And when he speaks, his voice sounds raspy, like a scratched record.  He's talking about Jesus Christ and the apostles, about missed opportunities and the river's ebb.  And he says that Paul, speaking to a jailer, asks "Where is Timothy?"  And the jailer responds, "You did not hear?"  And Paul did not.  "Timothy has been dead for three months."

And the white-haired pastor, keeps chanting the phrase, "Come before winter," and it's harsh the way he says it.  "Come before winter," he says.

I call him, when I'm in London.  "I'm coming," I tell him on his answering machine.  The next day she calls back.  Faye, in her hoarse whisper, asks, "You did not hear?"  "No," I tell her, "I did not."  For three months, my uncle has been dead.  And my bowling-ball gut drops down two stories, rupturing the polished wood floor.

"Come before winter," and the pastor's words spring back and forth, from one stone-cold wall to the other.  And I'm out of place and I don't belong here.

There's the Christian twins with their white turtlenecks and curly bouffants, gold-chain necklaces and cross pendants, who carry clipboards and smile, and you can't tell one from the other.  Four church members stand, two men and two women.  They carry gold-plated trays, Jesus' flesh and blood.  The holy communion.  And wafer sticks to the roof of my mouth and sweet grape juice slips down the back of my throat.