heard about the letter you wrote me on the radio.

sometime within the first two years i lived in austin i ended up with a roomate named pauly...boom boom for those at casino el camino. boom boom and i met one night when i was in casino, drunk and drinking, ordering a burger. pauly was in the kitchen.
i yelled over the music.

b: "i want a buffalo burger and i want it rare!"

he looks at me. he's a big boy. not some skinny fucker in hip huggers. he is roly poly and tattooed and full of 'tude.
he looks at me. he throws down his pen. he says:

"look. i get a lot of chicks in here sayin' they want a rare burger and then they come back here cryin' to me that it's not cooked enough. are you gonna do that shit to me too?"

i look him in the eye as best i can considering my alcohol intake. i sway. only slightly.

"i want it rare, i want it bloody, i want it to say moo...walk it by the fire."

he looks at me with even more doubt.

"alright, sister, but i don't wanna hear your bitchin about it later."
"you won't."

swear on my mother's soul that this was the best burger i have ever eaten in my life. it melted in my mouth. i walked right back up to that kitchen window and desperately tried to focus on his face while i told him about my burger feelings. "what's your name? i promise i won't forget."

he told me. i forgot it.

months later we ended up living together. he needed a place and i had a dining room. a friendship forged out of booze and burgers and it was a great one. it was like living with a kid. we'd come home late at night and watch e.t.
we'd go out drinking.
we ate wings. we rode bikes. we talked about his increasingly unhealthy relationship with his now ex-wife/baby mama. i reminded him to brush his teeth. to flush.

one day we were sitting in the living room together and i was going through a box of stuff i had moved to texas with. a box full of paper. a box full of pictures and love letters from a man that i had moved there with. someone that was no longer a friend or part of my life in any way. i looked to pauly and asked him...should i keep these?

he looked at me. took a bite of a bologna sandwich and laid it down.

"who is this guy, b? so what? so he wrote nice letters. where is he now? where are you? what contribution is he making to your life right now that makes you feel like you should keep them? do you have a good reason to hold on to them? because if you do, by all means. but why?"

i was shocked.
and i am so grateful.
i burned that shit asap.

when he had a baby i wondered how it was going to be...him having to tell someone else to brush their teeth...
but boom boom laid some hot wisdom on me that day. and more than once over the past 9 years i've had to remind myself that boom boom knew what was up. at least as far as a fucking purge went...i wonder where i'd be now if it hadn't been for boom boom...