from "The Good Gimmick"

"The metaphor may be a tired one, but damn it--" Frank said, one hand moving along the waist of his guitar as if it were a breathing thing and might stir beneath his touch, "It's nearly impossible for a man not to compare the things he loves to the women he wants to undress."

Frank Gray. All ruddy cheeks and florescent white hair. Heineken foam and tobacco smoke. Worn plaid shirts sloppily cuffed over hands whose fingers, despite their swollen, purplish appearance, could dance like no others. All up and down the frets in a way that was so fast but so smooth that it started to look slow.

Sometimes in the evening it got so that we could hear the music in the floorboards. Pelvic, guttural crashes of purr and static that should have blasted from the speakers of some brow-beaten brown car with the bass turned up too high. If I hadn't known him myself, I never would have believed it was just Frank, alone in his room with his second-hand amp and tenth-hand electric.