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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “the Blind Eye” cc&d (v265) (the September/October 2016 issue, v265) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book After the Blues the cc&d July-Dec. 2016 collection book		get the 318 page July-Dec. 2016 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

David’s Last Party

Patrick Fealey

drinking was in his blood
but when he remembered
his mother’s drunken madness
it kept him out of bars

the first time i met him was one night
i stopped by this used bookstore
at haight and fillmore where i worked
david was talking to the owner
i had a bottle of johnnie walker black
in my pocket and handed it around
david passed

irish parents.
irish neighborhood.
irish church.
altar boy. (the priest once walked back into the candles and set himself ablaze before the silent congregation. david put out the fire and the mass resumed.)
assistant to sam beckett.
trappist monk.

the monk thing didn’t work out when he called pope john paul II a fascist

david was also masturbating too voluminously in the shared quarters, his bed boards slapping while the monks tried to say their bedtime prayers.

he had wanted to be a trappist monk
but he did much better as an existentialist

writer.
aids volunteer.
computer whiz.
a painter’s painter.
a flaneur –
a nocturnal and alienated intellectual
who strolled the city by night
and then got up and drew and painted

the first time i visited his place i saw paintings hanging from clotheslines the length of his huge apartment
i was an art critic
and i had just entered matisse’s studio

later

david lived austerely
made it on social security
on sixth & mission on section 8
dyed his own hair black
shopped out of cardboard boxes
on the steet
rode the night bus home
to his stouffer’s meatloaf dinner
and gave blacks the utter contempt
they were looking for

then his aunt died
and he inherited $120,000

he stayed on the row
where he continued to step
over murder victims
outside his front door
but he started going to bars
mostly the same bar
cassanova’s
where a family of hip, famous, the hoping to be famous, and those with tattoos blossomed
for him
while he drank dylan thomas
more than once below a table

he did buy a new computer
new teeth
and visited me on the east coast
and took cabs instead of buses
always asking the cabby to stop
a block before
they reached his building
we’d exchange emails 2:30 a.m. western time
and he continued sending drawings and paintings of women
david had a masculine hand, but the feminine in his models prevailed

of several thousand works
there remained about 100
and i think this is what broke
his creative heart: he had lost his life’s work
40 years worth of paintings
to a storage place
for the lack of $85

i was glad he had made
many new friends
at cassanova
but i knew these people
were drinking first
and so was he

one bartender, margarita
sucked off as many
men employees at the
bar
as she could
and a sort of rivalry developed
between them
as well as a coke addiction
but she had a liver
that put her in the hospital
routinely

she brought david ensure and cereal
after that doc cut his intestine
and sealed him
to his death
by peritonitis

david’s estranged twin sister
a republican
who was repulsed by gays like david
and knew nothing of art
wrote me to say she had removed 17 boxes from his room
(including 100 pounds of our correspondence, which she was kind enough to mail me)
and she gave his last paintings
to margarita

his sister was perplexed
that she could find no cash in his room
and asked me for help
“where did david put his money??”
she said he could not have
spent it
not the way he lived
i laughed and multiplied
the whiskey and hustlers times three years
and all i could say was
“look in his books” – all 20,000 of them

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