why don't you sit right down and stay a while?

Hey cats. Living in San Francisco has its perks. Like three fantastic ice cream places in walking distance. Max and I went and got weird ice cream at Harvey Slocombe last night - I had Thai Chili Lime, he had Root Beer.

Next time I'll have Jesus Juice - Red Wine and Coke flavored.

Today, I'm going to hang out in a cafe. Old school. I wrote a story, wanna read it?

Pigeons

My girlfriend likes pigeons. We moved to Venice because of it – she saw my pictures from my trip to Europe and saw all the pigeons and pointed at the picture.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Let’s move there.”

It’s nice to have rich parents, I thought as we boarded the plane. I asked her if she wanted to keep any of her things, and she said that we would buy things in Venice. So we are leaving our apartments fully furnished. I am leaving behind my collection of guitars that I bought at estate auctions. She is leaving behind her bird feeders.

In Venice, we get along great. We have sex with each other with the windows open. She leaves bird seed on the windowsill so that pigeons will come and keep her company while I’m out looking for work. I don’t need to work, and I won’t work, but it’s fun to look for it. I like to get dressed up and present myself to the American ex-patriots and convince them to hire me and then not call back.

While I’m out once I see a pigeon. He’s fearless. He is brown and white and mottled and he is eating off a café table while the people are still there. They are trying to shoo him away, but it’s not working. I walk up and ask them if I can have their pigeon.

“Si,” they say. I pick him up and take a piece of bread from their bread basket and go to my friend’s house. I ask him where a vet is, and he looks it up online, and tells me that the only one in walking distance doesn’t speak English. We tape record his neighbor asking the questions we want.

“Is it sanitary? Does it carry disease? Will it make a good pet?”

I bring the pigeon to the vet and play the questions for him, and then record what he says and take it back to my friend’s neighbor. He smiles and gives me the a-ok sign, so I bring the pigeon home.

My girlfriend loves the pigeon. She names him Pierre. It sits on her shoulder and gets fat and she won’t put a blanket over the cage when we have sex. She says Pierre has no idea what’s happening anyway. I disagree. He snaps my guitar strings with his beak when I leave the apartment to go get another bottle of white wine.

I get bored of Venice eventually, but my girlfriend doesn’t. She has started sending Pierre out with messages, and the bird brings back messages. They are from a stranger, and she thinks it is the person that used to own Pierre. She won’t let me read the messages so I try to follow the bird on a bicycle. I’m too slow for a bird that can fly, so I borrow my friend’s moped and can finally keep up.

Pierre stops at a bookstore and gives the bookkeeper his leg. The bookkeeper is an old man. Bald. White eyebrows. He doesn’t wear glasses but he reads my girlfriend’s handwriting with a magnifying glass.

“Is that your pigeon?”

He doesn’t understand. I point to the pigeon and I point to him, I point to him and I point to the pigeon. He shakes his head. He shrugs his shoulders. I make an angry face. I mime writing a letter. I mime slitting my throat. He looks scared, like I got my point across. I moped back to my girlfriend.

“I don’t think that pigeon is coming back,” I said. I feel sick for being jealous of an old man but she kisses me.

“Tralala,” she says. “That’s why we moved to Venice. There are a lot of pigeons.”

I don’t understand, but I kiss her back.