by Douglas Kennedy

“She was a bike messenger. I met her because, on that December night, it was she who delivered weed to my apartment. Her name was Shelley. A name which the ageing hipster in me always responded to, as it conjured up an earlier girlfriend who shared the same faux-poetic name. I met the first Shelley around the time we were about to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. She dressed in long-flowing diaphanous skirts and India-pilgrimage white linen shirts. She dreamed of being an ‘abstract expressionist choreographer’ - whatever that was - and fulfilled all those longings I had back then for the ethereal bohemian girl of my dreams. Last I heard she was a divorced accountant living in that capital of depressed mundanity: Hartford, Connecticut. Such is the way of life when you decide you have no choice but to play the American conformist game.

"I should talk. Once upon a time I was going to play jazz piano and become the next Bill Evans...”