Miguel

When I unload the bus I notice Miguel sitting on the sidewalk across the street, which is unusual as I only ever run into him at night. “Miguel come drink wine with me, something very strange happened to me today.” Miguel gathers his pencils and his sketchpad, it seems he’s been drawing storefronts and people of the street. “ I didn’t know you are an artist as well as a writer.” “There are many things we don’t know about each other Jack.” “That can’t be more true as I am only now finding out things about myself I didn’t even know.” “Like what?”
Miguel and I return to my musty basement apartment that consists of two small barred windows, a small fridge, hotplate, a bed, small bathroom with a Closter phobic cold water shower, small table and two hardwood chairs. Necessities, simply raw necessities. I clear the contents of the table onto the floor, lay a piece of newsprint down to set the cheese and bread onto and open the bottle of red wine. “Here’s to life!” I raise the bottle to salute then swallow a few good pulls and pass the bottle to Miguel. “Here’s to living writing and fucking, I don’t know in what order to praise.” I fill Miguel in on my experience of the day as we share the wine, fight verbally with the landlord and eat bread and cheese. Miguel shows me the pages of his sketchbooks, what fabulous drawings, pencil, black ink pen and some charcoal drawings.