A bank of clouds rolled across the sky cashing in the starry azure tranquility for billowing cotton swabs. Blotting out the moon the amorphous fabric began to glow. Shards of golden rays gyrated amid myriad intercourses. Presently a sheeting shower blanketed the immediate dimension. A crisp rumbling would have alerted a sharp observer to a crack in the sky.
    There... on the horizon; a small aperture had formed just above the tidal wave of the beach. A mist soon sublimated towards the abrupt openning. In exchange for the departing matter a small object was deposited onto the beach. The thing was quite unremarkable except for its keen resemblance to a human being. The rumblings became muffled and distant while the object rustled and moaned.
    "I am not an object groaned the creature as it stood erect and began to orientate itself, to be thrown about like a pachenko ball!" The sand stretched infinitely in all directions.

    One man alone on a beach-head. Deserted like a five course meal the rags and dags of civilization all around him. Not very interesting is it; the man muses. He is pensive thinking about his name Dan. Short for Daniel. The girls used to call him "Danny-boy." At least it got his attention but he was a man now. Immersed in the jet-lag of society he examined the details around him. He sees a group of people loosely scattered; are the watching him? Who cares? All Dan worries about is the next step besides... he recognizes one of them. He comes towards Dan and wordlessly offers him a cigarette. They jump start the cancerous cylinders good and hearty... a real delight and walk together.
    "What's the haps?"
    "Lookin' for some babes," Earl responds. "You hangin?"
    "Waiting for the sun." Dan glances to glowing east and keeps his pacing vigil. He doesn't mind talking to Earl, because they are some of the few people who can understand each other.

    With their feet on the paved road, they are walking the streets of a medium sized metropolis. Some of the streets were paved with modern cobblestone. It wasn't much different from old style, except women could wear spikes and not walk like they were drunk or something. Some of the alleys were still old-style or just gravel. You know, the fine sand and rocks they lay just before blacktopping or just the remnants of years wearing. A shooting star flashed towards the horizon.
    Yeh she'll be here observed Dan. So where's the action?" He knew what he was ordering but still there was no harm in looking at the menu in advertising.
    "Yeh I know the menu and all... you're a girl scout quipped Earl.
    No man I'm F.B.I. female body inspector Dan paused.
    Ya' mon. You have one fine vixen a fox. Let's party." Emphasizing the let us Earl maneuvered them into a skanky bar and ordered three glasses and a pitcher.
    The place was decorated in the restlessness of the period: holes in the wall; diner tables and benches that were sunken from being sat in too long and slashed symbols that were carved and forgotten; two bars and a VJ station with enough power to broadcast.
    Dan is moody and begins to sing. A song about a luminous spectre of a woman appearing to a man on a lonely walk at night. A song of lost love or never finding love or losing love take your pick... all of the above. Broken hearts are funny things. They can be mended or totally severed just like promises.
 

"You're the right kind of lover
but you're lookin' for cover."

    He had a tenor voice with a wide range and questionable pitch but his tone was more like mating cows upon climax. He considered himself a musician having studied at many universities. On his own he learned to play guitar flute trombone clarinet oboe saxophone. Piano he picked up in his first year of college.
    "Look at those babes!" Earl blurted, and then in a sugary southern voice: "Hey, baby." Of course they were ignored by the group of girls but noticed all the same. "That's the trouble with chicks, man. They're all bitches."
    "Yeh but..." pointed out Dan by the same concession, all guys are assholes.
    "Yeh it's just a matter of degrees." The two friends laughed and clasped hands in arm wrestling fashion trying to pull each other over. They cut loose some howls and laughed releasing each other.
    "What're you waiting for Earl pointed out, that babe wants to boogie." Dan could always applaud his friend's enthusiasum and sharp eye. On the other side of an empty dance floor was a girl about Dan's height. Gyrating her near perfect frame she was doing her best to be noticed by everyone yet seeing no one. It's a game everyone plays: looking for the right one whether its for a dance love or anything one might desire.
    "Man how many times do I have to tell you? I'm waiting for April."
    "But that's seven months away snickered Earl. Dan grinned in return and ordered another pitcher and glass. The two had staked out a booth halfway down the dance floor. This way they could get a quasi-stereo effect from the joint's quadrophonic system. They were set for checking out all the camp in town.

    Another deserted beach with waves lapping the shore. This time, two men watching what the tide washes in. Shells and fragments of frustated crustaceans, driftwood and discarded clothing line the precipiece of the ocean. Suprisingly, there is no trash.

    Its a lonely October night.
    Too bad the first day in April is for fools." Both men downed another beer. With four mugs on the table they were drawing a lot of attention from the regulars wondering who the extra glasses were for. Knowing this Earl professionally filled the receptacles. Dan took a hearty gulp of his. Placing it back on the table he began to watch the myriad shadows created by the strobe and mirror ball effects on the table. The emanations of the four glasses and pitcher created a psychedelic clock rotating to the right. Dan was getting into the mood so he lit a cigarette and began to twirl it first in a circle then like a moebius strip and finally creating a sphere using the retinal patterns registered by the ruby of the smoking cylinder.
    Dan recalls a time when he was sitting alone in a white room smoking. He observed that the smoke from the lit end was blue whereas that from the filter was brown. He attributed this to the burning agents mixed into the tobacco like butane of some other combustible material. He had been living with a female photographer at the time not that girls were the only thing pictures were made of but she travelled around doing studio portraits. They had a specific living arrangement: no sex with each other that is. Dan had spoken it the night they agreed to live together because he pointed out what was more important... their relationship as friends or sex? They'd known each other for eight years.
    There was that one time though. When they were freshman at college. They used to hangout together having known each other since eighth grade. One night they were in her dorm room a little giddy and he nonchalantly asked:
    "You ever think about us getting together?" Half shaking with anxiety.
    "You have a girlfriend in a teasing manner they always employed. What would she think about it?"
    "She could never know half shaking with desire. She must never imagine..."
    "Besides I have a boyfriend aloofly. If he ever found out...."
    "It will have never happened a cool teasing.
    Will we still be friends?"
    So they had sex. It wasn't anything special. He feeling inadequate because it was only his third time and self conscious with the realization that he was unable to perform well enough to return the sensual pleasures he was receiving. It took him a week before he could even talk to her again ashamed at his own immaturity. But they stayed friends.
    She would teach him some german so that he could impress his girlfriend who was taking german language classes.
    "Deine Augen sind so schoene wie ein Stern im wieten blauen Himmel."
    He tried it on her one night at a party he threw. Too bad she hadn't had enough german to understand what he was saying. He got layed anyway after she left by some waitress. Actually he had been too wasted to say no.
    He had planned and advertised the party a week in advance by posting anonymous notes on bulletin boards like: "You too can do the cube steak boogie this saturday." Interest ran high and he purchased two kegs of beer and a bottle of tequila all of which was drunken (not to mention the guests). She cornered him in the kitchen doorway by rubbing her breasts against his elbow and trying to kiss him everytime he tried to say something. Finally he was able to get a sentence out.
    "Look why don't we go somewhere more private because there were still people partying, and she was making him, as well as some of the other guests, nervous. She looked up at him, he was about a foot taller than her, and said with wide eyes and as innocently as possible: whatever do you mean?" Dan replied the bedroom's around the corner, honey. The party continued and he found out it was over when he came out to the living room to change the record and there was no one there to make a request.
    He was still moody so he began talking to his imaginary girlfriend I've never met anyone like you...
    "Dan... Dan look at that one Earl was excited over a little blonde number in a leather jacket.
    Well ask her to dance."
    "What do you think I'm doing?" Earl took a roundabout way over to her because the dance floor was no longer empty. The DJ was playing more danceable songs and the crowd was responding. Tim the disc jockey knew what to play. He used to spin discs at a country radio station for a living but found that he enjoyed playing tunes in front of a live audience more. Gonna have some fun tonight and the camp was whooping it up.
    Dan thought about the fourth time he had ever had sex.
    "Yeh I fucked an Angel." It was her name and that's what she wanted you to think she was. So he took her on a cold January night out to a park. He showed her just what frigid was because after an hour of talking her hands were ice but his were warm. She was wearing gloves; he wasn't. He took her to his apartment and she layed there like a pillow didn't try to do anything for him though he went through two rubbers before she said her roommate got worried if she wasn't back by midnight. He joined his other two male roomies of the time at a party down the street and joked about his exploits.
    "She did have a rank twat though." She was the only girl he had ever been out with that was almost his height in heeled boots that is.
    Earl returned to the table with his dancer and her friend. She was overweight definitely not his type. So he excused himself to the bathroom while they ordered another pitcher. Instead of returning to the table as was probably expected Dan left the bar. He needed to burn off some alcohol. He walked toward his apartment and recalled the time he had had sex for the first time. Matter of fact at the time he didn't realize he was getting laid. She was crazy. Crazy for sex a nymphomaniac. So crazy she killed herself in a memorial park next to the grave of the wife of the man she was having an affair with.
    Dan knew the chick was whacky but didn't think she would go over the edge like that. They used to play ping-pong in her parent's basement. Once they lost the ball and decided to turn out the lights and have a ball searching for it. After a while her mother appeared at the top of the stairs and said I don't hear any ping pong.
    "Ping he wittily replied, and the girl completed pong." They giggled the parent enjoyed the humor and left them alone. It was so dark and felt so good that he didn't realize they were having sex. He was only into heavy petting at the time and thought the warm moistness surrounding his member was the girl giving him a blowjob. Not till years later did he realize that that had been the first time he had sex.
    Dan crossed the street and went to a video arcade. Upon entering he searched for his favorite game Zaxxon a semi-three-dimensional space quest. Always able to get on the high scores he usually left initialled messages like "WOW" or "OOPS" for the amusement of others.
    "Love will find a way he mused. A yearning for fulfillment engulfed him, and he returned to the beach. Seduced by the surf crashing on the shore, he walked towards their depths.
    She'll find me."