Another Page of Something Different:
So, every once and awhile, I like to step away from the usual contents of this blog and post something a little more personal. I think, with as much as I've been addressing the general issue with vulnerability, with an unwillingness to bring soul to conversation, this is all the more appropriate. So, without further delay and plenty of adieu, here you are. Don't say you haven't been warned.
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Where the fuck I was seemed entirely irrelevant. Much like most products of my time, I'd never had a taste for honest work. Unlike many of the math equations trying to pass off as people, I wasn't content for simply being. It was how I'd come to get lost in streets I probably should have recognized. It was entirely on purpose, a representation of who I was, even if I was too out of my mind to admit it. You see, that was the real problem. I was in love with being lost, with the notion of being gone, and, as I hobbled down cobbled streets I, I had no real choice but to admit this to myself in some kind of blind panic.
I tried to warn people of my blunders, to not get so hung up on love they went chasing it down every rabbit hole known to man, but it was clear it was a lost cause. I could shake all the lapels I wanted, wrap my arms around any calves that passed me at eye level, and it wouldn't have mattered. I was a stranger smack dab in the middle of Generation Stranger Danger. I was completely naked to these people and running around like some, slack jawed, completely intelligible, aquatic creature. To them, I was trying to move my vocal chords like they'd spent a lifetime underwater. To them, I was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen.
This wasn't terribly inaccurate mind you. As I said, I was someone who identified with being lost. This is not the kind of philosophy most people can attach themselves too, even in the most addled of states. This is a world where the very concept of emotion had been replaced by comfort. This was a world where the idea of adventure had been perverted into safe little jaunts barely outside the circumference of known restaurants. This was a world where everyone was a boogeyman, where everyone was expected to wear armor, and the only safe way to exist was inside of what you knew.
This wasn't terribly inaccurate mind you. As I said, I was someone who identified with being lost. This is not the kind of philosophy most people can attach themselves too, even in the most addled of states. This is a world where the very concept of emotion had been replaced by comfort. This was a world where the idea of adventure had been perverted into safe little jaunts barely outside the circumference of known restaurants. This was a world where everyone was a boogeyman, where everyone was expected to wear armor, and the only safe way to exist was inside of what you knew.
I didn't fit in this world and I knew it.
It was how I'd come to be here, face down on the sidewalk and rather enjoying the view. It was a subjective vantage that made things make sense. I saw the world in strange angles. I spent a considerable portion of myself trying to right this with drugs and alcohol, only to realize I was trying to bail out a sinking ship with a shot glass. I'd come to know this about myself and, just as importantly, I'd come to stop caring about it. I was, as they say, comfortably fucked.
It felt all the more appropriate, even as I was surrounded by blurred reflections obscured by the glass etchings of buildings desperate to be noticed. I was, or so it seemed to me, in a place that most people worked very hard to be in their lives. I was uncomfortable but placated just enough by the trinkets and baubles I was willing to accept. I was going through the motions of a life I wasn't living. The only difference, near as I could tell, was that I was actually happy with it -- and I think that should have been the first sign that there was a real problem.
Now, however, was not the time to address such things. Now was the time to raise brown paper bags to tired lips. Now was the time to wander dark alleys and bumble out into the neon trying so desperately to convince you this tired town had some kind of life. Now was the hour when you heard muffled bastardizations of Journey and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now was the time when you knew, if you didn't make it into a bar quickly, there was going to be an issue between you and the bartender over whether or not you'd made it to last call or not. Now was the time when you knew, even with the traveler of Wild Turkey in your hand, you were really going to need another drink.
It's always been my favorite hour of the evening, even if only because it was chalked so full of disingenuous courage. It's the hour where everyone loves everyone or everyone fights everyone. It's Extreme O'Clock, the place where emotions run raw and ragged. It's the time of day when everyone revisits the dog eared pages of their own history, where everyone chooses to embrace or run from it. It's the time of night where the only people left are the ones so mad drunk on wanting that there's nowhere left to go but up to eleven. It's the one time of day where I make any kind of sense when I look at my environment.
It's how I go home.
Even the smoke filled room, with some neglected canine bellowing out a cover of Baba O'Riley from somewhere deep within doesn't shake the feeling. I know, no sooner than I see the spastic shakes of someone trying to find rhythm after one too many Appletinis, that I have found my place. I know, even as I snake my way through the slathering masses of excited and desperate hands, even as I'm forced to kick away the refuse with a bad leg that groans about the impending winter, I have found my place. Its oscillation matches my own and, at least for right now, it's somewhere I can probably find myself a drink.
"You can't bring that in here." No sooner had I hit the bar than the gruff and tumble voice of someone hit by times too hard to afford decent cigarettes punched my ears. I looked up to see that my brown of sacred sanity was not going to be accepted here. His eyes said it all. There was no point in fighting it and clearly there was going to be trouble. Even so drunk it was hard to see, I could work the math. I knew, that if I didn't act quickly, any chance I had of getting myself something sanitary was going to drop to zero.
"What if I leave it behind the bar with you?" I still sounded like a fish but, with the sound of the music, it seemed like it was hard to tell. There was a brief pause where it seemed my logic had struck a nerve and, I knew, I had to jump on it. "It's not like you can afford to turn me away." I added quickly. "I'm the kind of customer who keeps small towns like this floating."
There was a dry chuckle, almost like the emotional side of his beard covered chords hadn't been used since prohibition. "That a fact? How's that?"
"You ever seen a drunk who didn't have to piss every five minutes?"
The laugh that followed was as alien as I was in this room. Nobody heard it, nobody saw it, largely because nobody wanted to -- and because I was still nobody at that moment. He didn't say anything as the wounded dog got off the stage and was promptly replaced with some large bird that hard clearly done too much methamphetamine. Even though I couldn't see her through the buzzing lights that wanted to convince you this bar was something you saw in a movie once, I was certain her teeth weren't the only thing rotten about her.
"You better hurry up and make up your mind. Nobody can be expected to survive this kind of thing sober." I tried to grease the chute that would land me somewhere higher and lower simultaneously.
"You're not sober." He fired back with a knowing look. He'd clearly been at this for awhile, which should have been evident by the tattoos on his arm that looked like someone had spilled a glass of grape juice on a fresh watercolor painting.
"I'm too sober for this." I countered with the very last chip I had to play. "Now, if you're not going to serve me, you're going to have to let me know man. I've got things to outrun and I can't reasonably be expected to do with what I have here. So, you can either take my bottle and serve me a triple gin on the rocks, or I can go somewhere else."
There was a small moment of trumpeting from my insides when he took my paper bag and sat it behind the bar and started pouring my drink plus change. Two pint glasses, half full of ice, and poured generously with the clear liquid of my salvation. He sat them in front of me with barely a word until he'd taken my money and helped himself to the change.
"What're you trying to outrun anyway?" He asked me flatly, the song dying down somewhere in the background, probably because the caterwauling woman was too drunk to see the prompter.
"Myself." I answered honestly, slugging down the first glass without a shred of hesitation.
"And how's that working out for you?"
"Just fine." I swallowed the second glass, shaking my head as the alcohol and juniper punched me square in the back of the throat. I was going to be sick in the morning. That was just fine, it wasn't any different than how I felt if I'd been drinking or not. I'd barely make it to the bathroom sober before I'd have to catch my reflection in the vanity mirror. There was enough there to make me sick and that said nothing of what happened as soon as I look up the window. "Why're you asking?"
"Never seen anybody manage it before and you look like you're trying pretty hard." He made a face when I waved for my paper bag, but I gave him a nod for the door as I awkwardly stumbled onto the plywood of the floor from the comfort of my bar stool. He seemed to understand I was leaving and handed it to me. I probably should have left then and there, but the honest nature of a moment of clarity isn't the kind of thing you can ignore.
"I manage it all the time." I fired with a smirk, the good hand snatching the bar like it was the last cheeseburger on the planet.
"Oh yeah?" The question was smug, like he'd finally managed to decipher the full dictionary of my drunken language -- or my pantomimes were getting better -- but he was was still sure he'd heard it before. "How's that?"
I pulled the bottle back to my lips for an equally smug haul, despite his earlier, non-verbal, warnings.
"You've just got to talk yourself into the fact that forgetting who you are is a good idea and agree that you're not going to remember until you wake up."
"And how's that feel?" He asked with a smug grin and a wave of beefy hand toward the open door.
"About like a hangover." And, with that, like always happened, I was back out into the night. I was revisiting those dog eared pages of myself with an inability to read the words on the page. I was stumbling down streets I might have been on hundreds of years ago. I was right where I needed to be and, by the end of the night I was staring up at the sky by the edge of a river.
I was drunk on strange feelings in a strange place. Tomorrow was going to hurt and I'd need to replenish much of what I'd lost. It was going to be like every other tomorrow, whether I'd been drunk the night before. I could take comfort in that, I could let it be the most human thing I'd ever been, and, like it or not, I was ready to wake up screaming. It was the same way I'd come into the world and, in very different way, those two days would have something in common.
I'd be ready to fall in love with the world all over again.
It's how I go home.
Even the smoke filled room, with some neglected canine bellowing out a cover of Baba O'Riley from somewhere deep within doesn't shake the feeling. I know, no sooner than I see the spastic shakes of someone trying to find rhythm after one too many Appletinis, that I have found my place. I know, even as I snake my way through the slathering masses of excited and desperate hands, even as I'm forced to kick away the refuse with a bad leg that groans about the impending winter, I have found my place. Its oscillation matches my own and, at least for right now, it's somewhere I can probably find myself a drink.
"You can't bring that in here." No sooner had I hit the bar than the gruff and tumble voice of someone hit by times too hard to afford decent cigarettes punched my ears. I looked up to see that my brown of sacred sanity was not going to be accepted here. His eyes said it all. There was no point in fighting it and clearly there was going to be trouble. Even so drunk it was hard to see, I could work the math. I knew, that if I didn't act quickly, any chance I had of getting myself something sanitary was going to drop to zero.
"What if I leave it behind the bar with you?" I still sounded like a fish but, with the sound of the music, it seemed like it was hard to tell. There was a brief pause where it seemed my logic had struck a nerve and, I knew, I had to jump on it. "It's not like you can afford to turn me away." I added quickly. "I'm the kind of customer who keeps small towns like this floating."
There was a dry chuckle, almost like the emotional side of his beard covered chords hadn't been used since prohibition. "That a fact? How's that?"
"You ever seen a drunk who didn't have to piss every five minutes?"
The laugh that followed was as alien as I was in this room. Nobody heard it, nobody saw it, largely because nobody wanted to -- and because I was still nobody at that moment. He didn't say anything as the wounded dog got off the stage and was promptly replaced with some large bird that hard clearly done too much methamphetamine. Even though I couldn't see her through the buzzing lights that wanted to convince you this bar was something you saw in a movie once, I was certain her teeth weren't the only thing rotten about her.
"You better hurry up and make up your mind. Nobody can be expected to survive this kind of thing sober." I tried to grease the chute that would land me somewhere higher and lower simultaneously.
"You're not sober." He fired back with a knowing look. He'd clearly been at this for awhile, which should have been evident by the tattoos on his arm that looked like someone had spilled a glass of grape juice on a fresh watercolor painting.
"I'm too sober for this." I countered with the very last chip I had to play. "Now, if you're not going to serve me, you're going to have to let me know man. I've got things to outrun and I can't reasonably be expected to do with what I have here. So, you can either take my bottle and serve me a triple gin on the rocks, or I can go somewhere else."
There was a small moment of trumpeting from my insides when he took my paper bag and sat it behind the bar and started pouring my drink plus change. Two pint glasses, half full of ice, and poured generously with the clear liquid of my salvation. He sat them in front of me with barely a word until he'd taken my money and helped himself to the change.
"What're you trying to outrun anyway?" He asked me flatly, the song dying down somewhere in the background, probably because the caterwauling woman was too drunk to see the prompter.
"Myself." I answered honestly, slugging down the first glass without a shred of hesitation.
"And how's that working out for you?"
"Just fine." I swallowed the second glass, shaking my head as the alcohol and juniper punched me square in the back of the throat. I was going to be sick in the morning. That was just fine, it wasn't any different than how I felt if I'd been drinking or not. I'd barely make it to the bathroom sober before I'd have to catch my reflection in the vanity mirror. There was enough there to make me sick and that said nothing of what happened as soon as I look up the window. "Why're you asking?"
"Never seen anybody manage it before and you look like you're trying pretty hard." He made a face when I waved for my paper bag, but I gave him a nod for the door as I awkwardly stumbled onto the plywood of the floor from the comfort of my bar stool. He seemed to understand I was leaving and handed it to me. I probably should have left then and there, but the honest nature of a moment of clarity isn't the kind of thing you can ignore.
"I manage it all the time." I fired with a smirk, the good hand snatching the bar like it was the last cheeseburger on the planet.
"Oh yeah?" The question was smug, like he'd finally managed to decipher the full dictionary of my drunken language -- or my pantomimes were getting better -- but he was was still sure he'd heard it before. "How's that?"
I pulled the bottle back to my lips for an equally smug haul, despite his earlier, non-verbal, warnings.
"You've just got to talk yourself into the fact that forgetting who you are is a good idea and agree that you're not going to remember until you wake up."
"And how's that feel?" He asked with a smug grin and a wave of beefy hand toward the open door.
"About like a hangover." And, with that, like always happened, I was back out into the night. I was revisiting those dog eared pages of myself with an inability to read the words on the page. I was stumbling down streets I might have been on hundreds of years ago. I was right where I needed to be and, by the end of the night I was staring up at the sky by the edge of a river.
I was drunk on strange feelings in a strange place. Tomorrow was going to hurt and I'd need to replenish much of what I'd lost. It was going to be like every other tomorrow, whether I'd been drunk the night before. I could take comfort in that, I could let it be the most human thing I'd ever been, and, like it or not, I was ready to wake up screaming. It was the same way I'd come into the world and, in very different way, those two days would have something in common.
I'd be ready to fall in love with the world all over again.
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