I find your face inspiring, you delicious honey comb.-The Expletives

You dated supermodels in the fifties, or so you told me, over clear elderflower wine in your garden before you died in Amsterdam on the 25th. It's strange, I know, but girls go wild for the name Galileo.
I hated you. I still do. You were the man who shattered my mother's heart shaped wedding china on Christmas Eve the night I turned twelve, who flirted with all of my cousins and stuffed twenties down their boat necked sweaters into lacey bras filled with fourteen year old pride stretched over palpitating hearts.
Darcy will never find a woman, you said in front of my family and my best friend, he's already a stiff. I didn't cry. It wasn't my first test of patience.
And who names their baby Galileo? Nobody. You were a fake, and only I cared; you had half of America fooled, brandishing the stubs of movie tickets and cheap imitations of your movie star smile. I would wince at the old movie posters that lined your walls like you were some kind of Italian Charles Heston with nothing left but liquor and stringy, narcissistic pride. No longer beautiful, and what else did you have? You couldn't act. Could never keep a straight face while lying, not that anyone but me was scrutinizing hard enough to notice.
Right before you died, you told me, Darcy. I am sorry if I've screwed you over as much as I can guess. Not a trace of irony in your crinkled tissue paper voice, but I didn't have a reason to believe you. Now be a good Catholic, go to confession, and for God's sake, forgive me, so that I can rest in peace.
At your funeral, I waited for everyone to leave before spitting on your grave.

My first girlfriend was an Irish girl named Corrine whom I met on one of my rounds as a pizza boy in the mid 90's. There was a party on 23rd street and she answered the door, dressed immaculately in purple sequins and white skin with a silvery cast, and invited me in. I'd never seen such cheekbones, and I said yes.
That night we stayed on the roof of that big white house while everyone else left, tracing the shadows of saguaros with our entwined fingertips before we fell asleep. She told me about her dad, a mafia king in upstate New York, and her brother Joshie who was gay and lived in New York City. She described her hometown of Limerick that always smelled like grass and bread and poverty; she talked about her dreams of being a poet in San Francisco. I buried my face in her apple scented hair and listened to the soft, pretty lilt of her breathy voice, and even though the stars had never looked so much like suspended, gaudy rhinestones in disarray, I forgot about Galileo.

Ten years after she left me for a transvestite named Claire and a house on the bay, I found her buying condoms and Otter Pops at a Ralph's in San Diego, humming the soundtrack to Rent. She didn't look suprised, taking in the guitar in my hand and my tattered indie rock t-shirt. She took me by the hand and drove me to her condo on the beach, introducing me to her son and her boyfriend. I noticed a sweet, heart shaped scar in the hollow of her cheek that hadn't been there before. The baby's name was Mercutio, the product of lounge singing in drag queen bars and the after parties of concerts at the Getty in L.A. Her lover was Adrian the olive-skinned painter. She said I could stay with them as long as I liked, sleeping on the concrete floor of the studio, playing on the beach for extra cash. I kissed the scar on her cheek and said yes.

And the next morning, I threw
Your ashes
Into
the Pacific, for
Hollywood to find.