Lover

Note in a Bottle 6

By Joe Nasta | Seattle foodie poetPublished about a year ago • 5 min read

April 18, 2022

Vesuvio Cafe, North Beach

Lover,

I’m drinking an Irish coffee at Vesuvio Cafe, sitting upstairs in the window gazing out at Jack Kerouac alley longingly. What a freaking cliché, but honestly I love myself right now. Over the past few months, I have been spending time with pieces of me that have been hidden away for various reasons. I’m enjoying using things like wounded masculinity, a boyish sense of humor, and undeniable love for Jack Kerouac (lofl) to generate new writing and multimedia performance.

This is my third visit to Vesuvio for a picture with Jack’s Navy snapshot to post with the caption, “Visiting my boyfriend.” I first started reading him because of a guy called Mike, which is apparently a common occurrence. Someone who thought they were better than me pointed it out and laughed in my face after I admitted my desire to write a book about my relationship with the idea of Jack and his work. Ok, maybe literary types are quick to laugh without engaging with the object of their scorn because we all develop ideas of art and artists so completely separate from reality, the people who created it, and their intention. Relating to art is so human and impossible to separate from our own life experiences — maybe it’s not the correct way to connect with art but it’s what many of us do without realizing. I don’t feel bad about relating to Jack Kerouac’s work in my own way and feeling parallels between my own life experience and his writing. I’m grateful that it has played a role in guiding me as a writer, artist, and person in significant ways. On the other hand, guys called Mike should maybe be a bit more careful around me.

I couldn’t read “On the Road” lounging next to the community pool at my parent’s sub development when I was back home in North Carolina for one summer week. There was no place for me to enter at 20 years old. I had trouble identifying with that brand of masculinity, had issues developing close relationships with most male people, and the brashness of the first few pages turned me off. A few years later a man I had long been infatuated with (Mike haha) told me to read “The Sea is My Brother,” pushing me into one of the most important ghost relationships of my life.

It’s complicated. Of course, he was a man and therefore an asshole but when I think of Jack I think about his lyrical longing for his deceased angelic brother in “Visions of Gerard,” the relatable way he idealized close relationships with other male people early in his life (which he described as “the brotherhood of mankind” with his childhood friends from Lowell and in his letters to Sebastian Sampas, who also died tragically young), and his correspondence with Joyce Johnson as published in her “Doors Wide Open.” I was reading Joyce’s commentary on the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco and she inspired me to reach for impossible love. “Please believe that an awful lot of people love you,” she wrote in a letter.

I want to be more present. In “Some of the Dharma,” Jack turned inward at his sister’s property in North Carolina and eschewed phone calls, letter writing, and engagement with his friends in order to achieve some idea of enlightenment — I don’t want to do that. I want to be terribly connected to people, even when it’s messy or difficult. Maybe especially so. It’s easier to be alone, but we don’t have to be. I’m trying to push myself towards connection instead of keeping my admiration and emotion to myself. I won’t describe that as remarkable: I guess we’re all just trying to move beyond our little visions of the world to communicate, connect, and love other people who live in their own little worlds the same way we do.

A tour group has entered the alley. The guide’s boots are fastened with chains as she stands on top of the Lawrence Ferlinghetti quote while the people laugh a bit and nod their heads. They are right next to the love poem I have left in a bottle under the Chiapas mural, but no one has noticed it. Maybe nobody will, and I’m okay with that. The group heads down the alleyway to the next place they can learn about the past.

I went to the Bay for less than a day to leave love poems in some places my memories live, one written by me and one by a poet I’ve been studying recently. I put the handwritten pieces with a collaged secret message into a bottle and left them in different places around Oakland and San Francisco that have been special to me: Jack London Square, the Ferry Lawn in Oakland, the San Francisco Ferry Building, the Beat Museum, City Lights Books, Jack Kerouac Alley. At times it felt unhinged to fling my love into the world, using one object of my affection to write poems while allowing anyone at all to engage with it outside of my control. But isn’t that what writing any poem is like, expressing an intense desire and showing it to strangers with the hope that they will see something of themselves in the naked expression?

It was just my triplet younger siblings’ birthday, and my twin texted two of them (the numbers she had) even though we haven’t been a part of their lives for years. My brother responded to thank her and even spelled her name correctly. I was on the text thread but I didn’t say anything, and neither did my younger sister. It made me realize what I’m longing for, but I don’t have words for all that just yet. My other brother, who wasn’t on the text thread, has been looking at some of my Instagram stories. I don’t know if they will see this or anything else I send out into the world, but I am reminded why I need to speak so publicly about myself, my art, and my life — you never know when someone you love will be watching.

Woof,

Joe :P