Oh. . I know where to start. Hot dogs, hamburgers. . . we ate it all. Me and mom. We were too full to eat the watermelon. Later that night, though, I wished I hadn't left the Mayfield's mint chocolate chip ice cream at her house.
That's about all I've got this morning. Just the usual driveling report on how I slept, what I drank, what I fear, what I desire. It's difficult to write every day sometimes.
That's o.k. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That's about right.
Happy 4th.
What could be more patriotic than hot dogs, hamburgers, coleslaw, and watermelon?
"Potato salad."
Oh, yea. And maybe this.
"USA! USA!"
I mean, for accuracy's sake. . . name that viewer!
I had lunch with C.C. yesterday. Fun.
And delicious.
We got there early, C.C, first, and secured seats at the corner of the bar. I need the corner of the bar, really, so I don't have to turn my head so much, bad neck and all, so this was the first victory of the day. The second was the present C.C. brought back for me from his monthlong trip to Scotland. He knew I didn't like peaty scotches, so he got me one with a more citrusy flavor.
I was going to write out the name, but I can't do it without looking at it. Oh, those crazy Scots.
Our bartender was new to the restaurant, and of course we chatted her up. She was swell. She said it was an employers market right now. She'd applied for about a hundred jobs before she got this one. This was her second job and she drove for about an hour from a distant town to get to work. The job market thing surprised me. I thought employers couldn't find people to work. She said she had a child, a three year old son, and she didn't want to work but her husband had lost his job. He'd just found a new one, though, and she planned eventually to be a stay at home mom.
"I won't ask you who you voted for," I laughed.
"I'll be honest," she said. "I didn't vote, and my husband can't."
"What? And you still live in this state!"
She laughed. "He's German."
I laughed too. I had been bad and asked C.C. what he thought her ethnicity was. His answer was that he had written a play about two assholes sitting at a bar wondering about people's ethnicities. He said I was the inspiration for it. Holy shit!
I guess I could have kept that to myself.
After a long lunch, I said goodbye to C.C. who is leaving on Monday for another monthlong domestic trip.
Mid-afternoon. I drove to the grocers to get food for the 4th. Just mom and me. I had ordered a new George Foreman grill for my mother, and it arrived early yesterday the morning, so we were all set.
As reported, I'd taken a P.M. the night before, and yesterday morning, I couldn't move. I barely got showered and dressed in time to make the noon lunch with C.C. When I got home, I thought about getting some exercise, maybe just a long walk. But it was hot. It was more than hot, it was humid and the air pressure was surely higher than a Pascal barometer could possibly measure. And of course. . . I'd had wine with my lunch at noon, so. . . a nap seemed more than reasonable.
When I got up, and here's a big surprise. . . I drove over to my mother's. The air being so miserable, we sat inside in the cool interior conditioned to our liking. My mother was watching "Gunsmoke." She grinned.
"Do you want to watch something?"
Really?
"No. I just came over to watch you watch television."
She turned it off. The air inside the house was silent. I asked her something. She couldn't hear me. I asked her again, more loudly. Still. . . . Once more, I shouted the question.
"It must be you. . . your voice. I can hear other people fine."
And so we sat mostly in silence, me thinking that maybe I should make hand puppets. . . something.
When I left, she said, "I'm sorry I can't hear."
I reminded her again that they made hearing aids.
I was thinking of getting up early and driving to the coast to take some 4th of July photos today, then leaving at noon to get home to cook for mom.
I did get up early, but I am not going. C.C. said yesterday that I needed to get away for awhile. I confessed that it had been so long, I wasn't sure I knew how to anymore. I can't seem to even get away for half the day.
Some things have got to change.
But not today. Change is something that can always be done tomorrow. Today is a day of reverence. I'm going to ask every person I see today who is under twenty-five what we celebrate on the 4th of July. I'm guessing most of them won't know.
Since it is Independence Day, I think we need something a little patriotic, just something to make us proud to be Americans.
So either buckle up or exit now. God knows what is coming out of this drugged bucket of snakes this morning.
Here, now, I have just deleted a large chunk of writing connected to yesterday's post about the women I know. Yea. . . not making the best decisions this morning.
Some people say that Diddy "got off." I don't think so. His next freak off will be with his prison mates, I think.
I'm not even sure how Elvis got away with this. Really? Gay Elvis?
I've continued my journey through the old pictures. The one above is a scan of a glossy print from a photo lab. I can't find the negatives. I took that picture at Q's apartment long, long ago. There was a pair of ballet slippers on the window ledge. It must have been the '90s. No, maybe the early oughts. Q was in his heyday. Q was having fun.
I cooked a spaghetti dinner for my mother on Tuesday night. I made a steak and potatoes dinner for myself last night. I'm hungry, I think. Tomorrow it will be hotdogs with mom. There is a brand new George Foreman grill sitting on my porch right now, delivered at 7:01 this morning. My mother asked me to order it for her. I'll probably cook the hot dogs on it tomorrow.
This is my heyday. I'm just having fun.
Oh, heck. . . I just remembered what I was going to write about this morning. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Their first three albums thrilled me. Nothing in the late nineties sounded like that. They were all under Welch's name then. Rawlings was considered her "musical partner." I used to fall asleep to "Revelator" every night. I would be asleep before the song was over. I was married then. Hard to believe.
Later, after the divorce, after everything, I was driving my by then piece of shit Volvo home from work. It was raining, the first rain of the summer. The roads were slick with built up oil. I was listening to Welch's "My Morphine" when something seemed to take hold of the rear end of the car. It just started sliding sideways. I cut the wheel in what I would later learn was the wrong direction, and the car went into a spin through an intersection with ten lanes. The light was red. Round and round I spun, slowly, as the CD player bled the slow motion hillbilly tune. Miraculously, every car avoided me, and I spun until I hit the large roadside curb. The car bounced up and then came down and buried itself in the very soggy sod stopping mere inches from the huge silver electrical box standing before the giant concrete power pole. I sat there for awhile, windshield wipers thumping counterpoint to the music.
"My morphine. . . why are you so mean?"
The curb being so high, I couldn't go over it, and I had to drive the sidewalk for a block until I could get back to the highway. The car wobbled. The wheel rims were bent. I see-sawed my way back home.
When I got there, a tee limb had been blown down on top of the apartment roof. It had penetrated it all the way through.
Some days are like that.
I went to see Welch and Rawlings play at a medium sized venue in the "downtown" portion of the famous theme park here in my part of the world . They were opening for Nora Jones weirdly enough. After their set, David Rawlings came out to get a drink at the bar, so I went over to talk to him. Usually, and Q can attest to this having seen it with his own eyes, famous men don't like me. Rawlings, however, was swell, and we talked together for quite awhile, right up until Jones came on for her set.
They have gotten old now, like the rest of you. Welch and Rawlings are now married, and their music is published under both their names. If you watch this Tiny Desk Concert I am posting, you will see they are still good. Rawlings guitar work is still amazing, but it is still the same, too. He changed the way a lot of people play, not as much as someone like Mark Knopfler did, but still. . . . Welch would have been as big without him, I'm sure, but Rawlings. . . we'd probably not know his name. The third song of this set will tell you why. He sings great backup, but solo, his phrasing is not good. The words just don't come out right. Welch's phrasings carry their songs and rights their harmonies.
I still like them here. The first song is new. The second two songs are not so good. The last is from the '90s.
Probably, though, not so many of you are as interested in them as I am. Such is life.
It is too late now to do anything but shower and get ready for lunch with C.C. I will make no more sense there than I have here, I'd wager.
This is Brando after he'd gone "bad." He was a fun guy before his aunt died. He was a huge figure, nearly more gesture than human in some ways. "Larger than life." He was an architect who "studied at Taliesin," Frank Lloyd Wrights home in Arizona. Lloyd was long dead, of course, but Brando spoke much of his widow.
Who knows how much of it was true?
What I do know is that--and this he told me to keep secret but since he fucked me over--he never graduated, never received a degree in architecture. He had a checkered academic career, having gone to the University of Florida where he had what he claimed to be a "nervous breakdown" and had to leave school and return home to Coral Gables. He took a job with a surveying company for a year. There is some confusion here. He said his mother taught painting at the University of Miami, but I don't think she had a degree and I always suspected that she taught painting in a community program, but I could be wrong. He had several of her paintings and I liked them a lot. They reminded me of Cezanne's landscapes.
After that year of surveying, he took some courses at U of M, but he never matriculated.
Rather. . . he decided to take the AIA exam. He passed.
This was in the era when you could do such things as take the Bar exam, pass, and practice law. Degrees weren't part of the requirement as they are now. For better or ill.
Brando worked in an architectural firm for some time after that, but eventually he opened his own. He had the idea that his company would spend half the year in Florida and the other half in Santa Fe and he managed to do this for several years before the firm dissolved.
You had to admire his extreme romanticism.
After that, Brando worked out of his house on his own. That is when he decided to become a travel guide. It was just on the front side of travel companies becoming big business. He was by and large a pioneer.
It was at this point that he won some unlikely honors, one of which is astounding. Truly. The City Beautiful awarded him "The Key to the City," and there was an official "Brando Day" celebrated downtown. This is the same guy who went to his ex-girlfriend's house, walked up the stairs, pulled her naked from her bed, and put her in his car right in front of her cardiologist father.
"It's alright," Brando reportedly told him, "I'll bring her home."
He couldn't drive for shit, but he bought a little red MG convertible sports car. One afternoon, drunk and showing off for his girlfriend passenger, he drove through a tent the Ralph Lauren store had erected for a street party on the Boulevard that night. Fortunately, nobody was in it.
"Christ," he said. . . "I could have killed somebody."
So yea. . . larger than life and luckier than a two dollar bill.
At this point, he was not concerned with money in any serious way. He made enough to rent small studios and apartments and keep himself fed without cooking. You see. . . he was his aunt's only living relative. She owned, according to Brando, "all the land surrounding Atlanta," and she was, he said, worth a fortune. She was very old and needed care, so she hired a live-in nurse to look after her. Brando, in his magnificence, would drive up to see her for a day or two once or twice a year. Sometimes he would pen her a letter.
When she died, he went up for the funeral and the reading of the will. He came back an utterly changed and bitter man. She had left him the same things she left his children--ten thousand dollars and conjoined property outside Atlanta in the foothills, three houses surrounding a small lake. The rest of her property and fortune went to her longtime caretaker.
At this point, Brando was living in the house his parents had owned when they died. He did not take good care of it, and when it needed a new furnace, some repair of the wooden floors, and a new roof, he sold it. He also sold his land in Georgia. Both of these things devastated his daughter, but maybe more on that later. He moved into a duplex he had designed, a Frank Lloyd Wrong design, and rented from a wealthy woman about town he referred to as "Baby." I don't know how he did it, but he pissed through the money until there was no more. He was dating a woman at the time who had been a big time banker in Las Vegas handling gangster money. She "retired" at an early age. Just fled.
I was with Brando at one of our favorite restaurants sitting at the bar on a New Year's Eve when he met her. She just came right up and introduced herself. When we left, she handed Brando her number.
"Call me," she said.
We had left before midnight, of course, not wanting to look like two losers when the party hats came out. Back at my house, we drank, smoked some pot. . . and then my phone rang. It was Skylar. She was in town.
"Happy New Year. . . ." She called me by her pet name for me.
"Come over," I pleaded.
"I can't. I've got to go."
Oh, fuck. . . .
The photo above is one of the early 2000s photos that I have just discovered that have never been scanned. Until now. There are other photos of Brando and his girlfriend, the woman who approacehed him at the bar. I have a lovely photo of her with her arm in a sling. I can't remember if he had broken her arm or merely dislocated it one night when he was drunk. Brando was becoming more and more of a louse until he turned into a downright scoundrel.
This photo was taken shortly before he cheated a group of us out of a safari trip to Africa. Travis and I were two of the three he never paid back. He had one more trip after that. Egypt. In order to make that trip go, he used his girlfriend's credit cards to charge up what was rumored to be $50,000. That was the end of it. I am pretty sure he paid her back in order to stay out of prison.
And that was the end, too, of my twenty-plus year friendship with Brando. His girlfriend, then in her 60s, decided to join the Peace Corps. Brando took a room in a friend's house in another part of town and kept a group of travel friends who he had not yet cheated. For them, who had lost nothing, those last few fuck ups were nothing more than part of Brando's colorful legacy.
Some of the cheated hounded him, however, and eventually he moved to Greece. He was given a room in a hotel in Santorini owned by someone he knew. Later I found out that people were pooling their money and sending it to Brando to live on.
He was a scammer in the end.
There were other images on that roll of film that made up the story I sent to friends that I couldn't tell here. Skylar and I had only intermittent contact, but I was still deeply head over heels in love.
If Brando became a scoundrel, I was scandalous myself. I was divorced, living alone in the house I had to buy from my ex. Skylar was becoming what she would eventually be, a rock star in the fashion world. It was a Saturday night. I was on my couch watching t.v. alone when there was a knock at the door. It was a pretty dark haired Italian girl who worked for my then tenant, an interior designer who was out of town just then on a job.
"Hill said she needed something from the apartment and that I should get a key from you."
I eyed her for a moment, then got the key.
"I'm moping and watching tv. I'll leave the door open, so just come in when you are done."
When she came back, I asked her if she wanted a beer. She did, she said.
"What kind?"
She thought for a moment. "I'll have a Blue Moon."
I NEVER had Blue Moon beer in my fridge except for this particular night. Fate. She was impressed.
We chatted. She was a music major at Country Club College. She had her violin in the car and brought it in and played for me. The night had gotten interesting. We chatted for awhile, but it was Saturday night and I'm sure she had things to do.
"I'd better go," she said, and I walked her to the door. She took out a piece of paper and a pen from her purse, wrote something and handed it to me.
"I'm busy tomorrow night, but after that call me," she said.
I did.
Skip ahead. Spring break. I was going to the little beach motel on Singer Island, just north of Palm Beach, as I often did to decompress. The Italian girl was going to see her family in Naples. She wanted me to come and meet her parents. I said I would come on the weekend.
I was meeting another girl, however, who went to a small private college just south of Palm Beach. She would be arriving before me, so I gave the hotel her name so she could get the room key. Now here's the problem. I can't tell this story without reservation as I don't want to piss off Skylar. I still love her and need her to be. . . what? Around? Yea. It's complicated.
In a few days, I went to Naples and met my new girl's parents for lunch at their country club. Her father was a successful architect in Philly but had moved to Naples to develop a lot of the homes there. She came from money. As it turned out, her parents were just a bit younger than I. I was fairly used to that. The girl had a fraternal twin sister who wasn't real hip on the whole thing, but her parents were alright and they invited me to come to their home. For most of the weekend, the girl and I hung out on the beach and had fun.
She was from family money, and I was a good influence. Scoff if you will. After we broke up, she was dating an attorney, but she came to me once and said she wanted to get back together.
"We always had fun. Everything was an adventure. You told me once never to compare what you were doing with some other time when you were having fun. You enjoyed everything, every moment. You never compared the day to any other."
Now I have to admit, this was something I got from hanging with Brando. He would cut you out if you were to say, "this croissant isn't nearly as good as the one I had in Paris." Nope. It didn't matter if it was better or worse. . . just enjoy the moment.
That was before his aunt died, though.
"We were always going somewhere, eating, dancing, drinking."
I used to take her to a dive bar that had a group of usual drunks, pool tables, and the best juke box in town. We'd drink cheap beer, play pool, and I'd dance her around the bar floor to Frank Sinatra. The regulars loved her.
"On the weekend, my boyfriend just wants to sit around and watch golf and eat sandwiches. I'm tired of lawyer dick!"
But I was already gone by then.
That weekend in Naples, though, we went somewhere in my car. She picked up a piece of paper. It was a receipt from the hotel.
"Who in the hell is Maribel?!?!?"
"What? Oh. . . hell. . . I have no idea."
Yea. I mean, it was ok. I was still head over heels for Skylar. But more on that later.
The music major ended up marrying an attorney. I don't know if it was the same one. Funny enough, she started her own interior design company, I'm sure with help from her architect father. I've looked her up. She has done very well.
But here's the thing. I've forgotten Skylar's birthday two years in a row, I think. It is terrible. She doesn't forget mine. But I hate birthdays, my own more than others, and I'm sure I don't want her to get older.
Joke.
Kind of.
I have never been good with birthdays. Today is Ili's. When we were together, she almost left me because I thought her birthday was on the third rather than the second. Fuck. My relationship with Ili was much more complicated than I will ever be able to explain, but as we know, she came to me in the hospital when my life should have been over. I blame her for that.
I thought about her recently because a friend of mine has gotten praised for staying with her boyfriend in the hospital for three days before she collapsed with fatigue and went home, "finally," to get some rest. Ili slept in my hospital room for over two weeks. "Slept," hardly. She must have been exhausted beyond comprehension. Whenever I woke in the night, she got up from the portable bed to see what I needed. I was heavily narcotized with morphine. I remember little of what occurred in those two weeks. All I really remember is her.
So. . . I was tempted to send her a Happy Birthday note. Really tempted. I thought and was afraid that I would do so while drinking whiskey last night. It would have been a really bad idea. As far as I remember, I didn't.
But I did listen to music. Lots. Whiskey opens some doors and music some others. I watched a video by a band I'd never heard of before. "Men I Trust." I liked the music and I thought Skylar would like it, too. Ili would have hated it and we would have fought because of the beautiful woman singer. She got angry many times at such inane things, even dead actresses that I said were pretty.
They are of the same age, Ii and Skylar. My aquarian sign is not very compatible with either of them. Maybe there is some veracity to such things if my experience is any indication. And yet. . . .
They are both married now, so I leave them alone. But not in my head. There, sometimes, it is just a dance party of music and joy. I can't dance worth a shit, but I love to move a girl around a dance floor.
This song is kind of 80's Sade/Tears for Fears era sounding. I love live recordings like this. They fascinate me. And of course. . . the girl. What can I say?
After that, a live version of "New Slang" by The Shins popped up. Ili and I used to play it in her car whenever we were taking a long drive. Happy Birthday, Ili. My heart was melting. . . but then again, you know. . . the girl.
I'm a mess, but I'll be alright. Don't worry about me. I'm fine. Things just overwhelm me sometimes. But the day has broken. There's a bright shining there.
All photos are from the same time period, just as the digital photo world was breaking. As you can see, film has its own charm.
What happened to the car project thing--what was it called? It seemed like a good idea, do-able even. But what happened? Where did it go? Christ, I swear. . . I can't even remember its name.
Life piles up? Shit happens? Too much drink and sleeping pills? Or maybe. . . you know. . . the scary thing?
True though. I DID take a Tylenol PM last night at 11:30 and I am groggy still this morning. I only took one of the suggested two tablet dose, but sometimes just one knocks me out. It did last night. Sometimes two won't, but other times I can't wake up the next day after taking them. Strange. No consistency there.
I think I remember the project had the word "America" in it. I can't remember the other one, though. I was excited about it.
Selavy.
Strange happenings all around. The city has spent the past year putting the power lines underground in my neighborhood. They are underground now, but the telephone poles are still standing. There's a clue. They are not power poles but telephone poles. I don't know if the telephone lines have gone underground. Do telephone companies still use lines? I do know that the cable lines are underground now but the cable company isn't ready to hook up to them yet. And, of course, the street lamps are attached to the poles. It seems pretty complicated.
But yesterday across the street, a subcontractor was taking down the transformer from the telephone pole. And when that was done, and I thought this part really weird, they cut about three feet off the top of the pole. To what end, I wondered? They repeated the act all over the neighborhood. The thing is, the cuts weren't even clean. The tops of the poles look mangled and broken.
I think it will be decades before the poles are gone entirely.
More dynamic living. The inspirational photos I put up on the blackboard, you know. I looked through more of the old photo boxes. I found a bunch of negatives that I had taken to the to the photo store to be developed and printed. I had those crummy prints that are difficult to look at from just after the turn of the century. Most of the photos aren't aiming to do more than document my life at that time. No projects, nothing like that. Just photos of who I was with, what I was doing. I found some that I would really like to see more clearly, so I have been scanning them. I'd forgotten how much I hate scanning and how much time it takes. Still. . . .
I went to Michaels, the national arts and crafts store, in the afternoon. I'd looked up magnetic blackboards and tiny magnets on Amazon, but it occurred to me that I might be able to just go out and buy them from a store. You know. . . like people used to do.
It was like adventuring into the past. An afternoon drive instead of a nap. There were things to see. I would have to come back this way, I thought, with a camera, like I used to.
But shopping. . . it takes a long time. In a big department store like that, you don't know where anything is, so you stroll up and down the aisles, ADHD kicking in, and you begin to examine things you didn't come for.
"What's this? This is interesting. It's like a little 3D printer. Whatthehell?"
Half an hour later, I found one of the two people who worked there.
"Hello. I'm looking for little magnets for a magnetic blackboard."
"Oh. . . I'm sorry, uh. . . ha. . . I don't work here."
"Oh my! I'm sorry! I saw the. . . "
She was pulling at her red shirt and grinning.
". . . red shirt and. . . oh, my."
We were by the framing department. Surely there was somebody in there that might help.
An hour later, I was back to the car with a large magnetic blackboard and a bunch of little magnets. The afternoon had slipped away, so I drove straight to my mother's.
In the morning, I realized I needed some vitamins, so I ordered them on Amazon. They were on the porch when I got home. Know what I mean?
When I got home from mother's, I was too tired to mess with the blackboard. Not tired, exactly. I'm using the word poorly. What was it? What's the right word?
Kerflumpt?
I had eaten a bowl of the leftover chicken and bean stuff from the night before around one o'clock. I wasn't really hungry and certainly not in the mood for cooking. Did I have enough "fixings" to make a Greek salad? Half a cuke. Sure, I had red onion. Half a green pepper. Feta, yes. I had some leftover garbanzo beans. A little chopped black olives. Oh, my. . . the Campari tomatoes looked bad. Really bad. WTF? I'd try to use them anyway. They squished under the knife blade. Salt, Oil and balsamic vinegar.
It wasn't ideal. I ate about a quarter of it before I realized I hadn't put in the tuna. I got up and added it. It tasted worse.
What happened? A good day gone off the tracks. It was fatigue. Yes, that's the word! I wasn't tired; I was fatigued. Maybe it was hormonal. Maybe it was time for Hormone Replacement Therapy. Everyone is doing it.
When my family first moved here, there were 4.4 million people living in the entire state. Most of the population was centered in Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami. The rest of the state, by and large, was hinterland. Sundays were for "taking a drive." The state was a magnificent checkerboard of lakes, swamps, peatlands, and large, dry, sandy hills where citrus grew, and magnificent white sandy beaches.
Today the state population tops 23 million and is known for its offbeat characters. I think that figure is correct. This is my source (link).
Some of my friends are not able to open the link because they are either technophobes or eschew social media. I'm conflicted on the subject. Not on the technophobic part. Elders have a difficult time with technology. It confuses them as it does my mother. No, I mean the social media thing. I have it, but I am not connected to any of my friends through it. They are faux accounts that give me access to things I want to see. Sometimes people discover my accounts as Tennessee just did. He had sent me a link to an instagram thing, and I must have clicked on the wrong button and sent him an invitation to look at mine. No problem, really, as I don't post anything that would indict me there.
This site is the one I fear people finding. Pictures are one thing, but narratives are something else entirely.
In an effort to become more of the old "me" again, or I should say the younger "me," I went to the Pars Course for an outdoor cardio workout. It is the same course I used to do with my mountain buddy oh so long ago, even before I was married. It is a half-mile compacted dirt track with exercise stations. Back then, we used to run five hard laps with sooooo many push ups, pull ups, dips, squats, etc, that there was no hope of thinking about anything but the next stretch before you. It was a psychic cleansing as much as a physical workout. And there was the camaraderie. For years now, I've done the track alone, and since my accident, the ferocity of the workout has lessened considerably. This was my first time there since my hospital stay. I almost lingered too long in the house and was becoming limpid when I glanced at the pictures of my former self on the kitchen blackboard. Ho! It worked. I put on my exercise costume and headed out the door.
I walked from station to station and did some exercises. I thought I might run certain sections, but I was not ready for that. It would have been a tragic mistake, I could tell. Three laps then a walk to the overpass where I walked the incline and did the stairs once before returning to the car. I'd made good decisions.
And when I got back to my car, it began to rain. I needed to stop at the grocers to get the makings of the evening meal I had told my mother I would cook--chicken thighs, great northern beans, onions, carrots, celery, and russet potatoes pressure cooked in most of a bottle of wine.
When I got home, I showered and chopped and spiced and set the things to cooking in the InstaPot. I wanted to go out adventuring to keep my youthful momentum, but the rain continued. It would rain for the entire day. What to do?
I pulled out boxes of prints I had made of life through the decades. I began with my college years and the images I had scanned and made digital in the early part of this century. I haven't looked at those pictures for a long time, photos I made in college, both before and after I began to study photography in my spare time, taking courses outside my zoology curriculum. There were some very good photos there. I wondered about the kids I'd been in photo classes with. I was good. Some of them were better. Most were art majors, of course. They would be old now. I wondered if they had continued to make photographs or if that was something they left behind at some point in their lives. I wondered if they had kept their old photos and if they, too, pulled them out of closets or down from the shelves to view their former glories. I can't even remember most of their names now, certainly not full names. Here and there a first name, maybe. Jack. His father was an attorney who owned most of part of a small town's coastline next to Cape Canaveral. He was a glitter/glamor kid, handsome, fey, spoiled by money. He had me help him photograph a personal project, his fictional suicide. He climbed into a white bathtub and smeared ketchup over his arms and into the water. It seemed a good project for him. He always appeared world-weary, though it could have been the partying and the drugs.
If I could remember his last name, I'm sure I could find him. He may have become King of the Space Coast.
Or not. One never knows.
Toward five, I put on my Barbour Waxed Cotton Rain Jacket that was given to me as a present by me ex-wife one mid-week evening after she moved in but before she insisted we marry.
"I was going to give this to you for your birthday, but I just couldn't wait!"
Fun days. I was wishing for a Range Rover to go with it back then.
The rain was coming down as I schlepped the entire InstaPot to the car. Back to the house for a bottle of wine. The drive through deserted flooded streets, me in no hurry at all.
Dinner was fine and good, and it made my mother happy. After eating, we sat outside in the open garage and chatted in the cool dampness of the coming evening.
Later, at home on the big leather couch in the t.v. room, I got a call from my California mountain buddy. He was calling from his camping spot in Mammoth. He was worried about one of our old buddies, a former engineer for NASA who ran marathons, trained by not eating all day, running ten miles after work, and then drinking two bottles of wine with his cheese and apple board. He was and is off the chart strange. You've seen him in my "Dancing Larry" videos, I think.
"He's losing his memory," my friend said. "We were talking about a place he used to go to a lot, a place he loved to visit, and he couldn't remember ever being there. And he wasn't even drunk!"
I wondered how much of the life I remembered was simply through photographs and journals and the bits and pieces of paraphernalia to which I have clung.
Later that evening, I watched an episode of "The Bear." Strange, lonely people whose family are the people they work with. It is a show for the estranged, I think. But you know me. My eyes were damp. Silly emo.
My little village was an outpost from growth for most of my life here, but looking back through those old photos, the ones I took just after college graduation, I could see the change. That Pottery Barn picture at the top of the page was once The Colony Theater. I spent much of my high school years watching movies there. The building is owned by my former girlfriend's father. Everywhere I go in this village. . . "there is always something there to remind me."
Life isn't static, of course, but I have been informed by Faulkner's work that the past never lets go of the present. It remains, a consanguinity.
But life is for the living, so I'd better begin.
I still hope that maybe one day, I might get that Range Rover.
I went through my print cabinet in the garage yesterday after having done another chore. I spent about an hour looking at prints, big prints, lovely prints, that just lay in drawers for no one to see. There were beautifully sterile prints I made during Covid of manicured lawns and enviable homes and little railroad shacks that are disappearing rapidly here in my own hometown. There were street scenes, mostly from NYC, that took on a new dimension when printed large. These were made at the end of the printer's life, and in some of the prints toward the end, the colors are not quite right. Then, later, there were lines running through the prints. And then it was done.
Good God. . . I started thinking about buying another large format printer.
As I worked my way through the drawers, I found some small prints created WAY back "in the day" of my first digital camera and printer. I had an Epson printer that could do 12" prints, but most of what I did then was smaller. I printed hundreds of small sized prints. Back then, I was enamored with what my Apple computer and Photoshop would let me do, and there was a lot of crazy experimentation. I was in love with putting graphics and words onto photos. I printed on as many materials as I could run through the printer, thick art papers, almost transparent Japanese papers. . . anything. Then, when I got the studio, I was doing transfers of all kinds. A decade ago, I was printing from plates on printing presses and making platinum/palladium prints, as well. They are beautiful, and they, too, live in drawers away from curious eyes.
I felt the sterility of my current predicament. I was moved to bring into the house with me some of the small prints to sift through. They made me happy. There were photos of me at the beach, surfing, hair cut like Hugh Grant's in his early films. I decided to put them up on the magnetic board in the kitchen and in a few other places to remind me of when I was creatively energetic about art and life.
"You don't put up pictures of yourself," I heard you skeptics say.
"Eff off," I replied. "My house, my life. They are there to inspire me."
And indeed, they did. I wanted to get out. I wanted to live again. Oh, sure, I'm a fat cripple who probably would not be able to surf now (I want to find that out), but there are other things I certainly can do that I am not doing. And I would.
So I put on my walking clothes and headed out into the heat of the day. Noon. I was going to take the longest walk I have taken in th two months since I went to the hospital. Has it been two months? God!
O.K. It hurt, back, knee, but I soldiered on, and the further I went, the more the pain subsided, or, perhaps, was masked as the nerves went dead. Either way, I came back home down the Boulevard. It looked new. There is a small bookstore I don't go into much. I would. There was my buddy's funky wine bar I only go to with "the boys." I would go alone. There were places I haven't been to eat in months. I would not stay in the house anymore, I thought. Life is "out here" on the streets, at the coast, in towns not my own.
When I got back to the house, I wanted to hurry and not linger in the manner that has become my habit. I showered and made a quick lunch. I Googled some recipes I wanted to make for dinner, then, as happens, way leading to way. . . I realized I was doing it again. Lingering.
I jumped in the car and drove to the old, wondrous place full of plants and household stuff that had closed. The lady who had owned it told me that the landlords were shits and wouldn't work with her on the rent . They didn't need to, she said. They made their fortune selling land to the giant theme park long, long ago. Now it was family money, legacy money, and they were filthy rich. I'd seen a sign that said the super large warehouse building was to become a gym. "That will be the largest gym in the world," I thought. But the other day, Tennessee and I drove by and in the window I saw the same things I had seen in the old business, plants and planters and household goods. "Black Phin" it said. The place was closed, but outside there were giant truck tires, evidence that there was a "box gym" somewhere inside.
So yesterday, I went back. When I walked in, it looked familiar, but there were a number of tables full of people who did not look cross-fit, mostly--or maybe all--females drinking from small cups, chatting, a few of them looking up at me and smiling right into my very blue eyes. I was dressed in my well-fitted Buck Mason t and a pair of baby-blue linen shorts, and I was feeling almost as confident as I did in those old photos on the board in my kitchen. Fatter, sure, but the shirt was, as I say, well-fitted. As I strolled around the room, I tried not to limp.
I went to the coffee bar and stood behind two women chatting with the pretty barista. She smiled.
"Can I help you?"
It was friendly question, not a hard sell.
"I saw this place had opened the other day and I just want to take a look around. How long have you been open?"
"Since the end of May."
"It looks a lot like the place that was here before. Is this still Jen's place?"
"No. . . it is a cross-fit gym now, but. . . . "
I don't remember what came after the "but," really, but somehow the cross-fit gym and the coffee shop with some very exotic coffees on the menu were connected.
"This all looks familiar. Are these the plants that Jen left?"
Her grin was a little guilty. "Yes, but we get new ones in from time to time."
She was very friendly, and after awhile I said I just wanted to look about a bit, but I'd be back. There were rooms for hosting events, just like the old place, but when I peaked behind a curtain, I saw cross fit equipment and a VERY FIT tall and slender woman in a VERY SMALL bikini lowering herself into an ice bath. I don't know why, exactly, but it embarrassed me. I felt as if I was doing something wrong, so I closed the curtain and headed to the exit.
"Bye," said the barista, and I turned and waved.
When I got to the car, I texted Tennessee describing the weird environment and scene that I had just witnessed.
"When you get back, we'll have to check the place out."
In the past, he had owned a a cross-fit gym that he sold to an NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, so I thought he might get a kick out of this. But I wouldn't wait for him. This was a nice alternative to the Cafe Strange.
I pulled out on the highway and turned toward Fresh Market to get the fixings for the evening meal. I was making Hoison Garlic Noodles to pair with my own Tuna Kobachi. Fresh Market was just the place to shop. I bought a ripe avocado and a fresh piece of sashimi tuna, broccoli which I would cook in a pan of oil with garlic and scallions, and a jar of shichimi togarashi for the kobachi. But that wasn't all. Nope. If you stray from the right hand side of the store, you are in trouble. I did and was.
It was 3:45 when I got everything put away. I decided to go early to see my mother.
That is when the bottom dropped out of the sky. Wind, lightening, thunder, and blinding rain. The streets around my mother's house were beginning to flood so that I had to straddle the middle line to keep from sending up giant rooster tails. This was much like the day before and what was to come for the next week and maybe the rest of the summer. Here in the subtropics we become a little Viet Nam.
I had bought a watermelon at Fresh Market and had brought my mother half. She asked me to cut if for her, so I quartered it and then cut it into eights. It was bright red and juicy. My mother sliced off a small piece to taste.
"Good?"
"Oh yes."
I wrapped the pieces in Sarn wrap and put them in the fridge.
The rain had stopped. It was five. I had done some chores for my mother including fixing her computer which consisted of plugging her keyboard in to charge. It's always something with the computers or the television now. The technology has left her far behind.
Remembering my "life is in the streets" coda, I decided not to go straight home. I went for tea at the Cafe Strange. Luckily, there was a parking spot up front. I was feeling lucky. I walked inside and my luck failed. The line for drink and food orders was long as was the line for the Photo Booth. The air inside was stuffy. It was too much. I decided to bail. I skipped across the street to the liquor store and got a bottle of wine, then went back to my house for a Campari on the deck. The Campari was good, but after the rain, the deck was humid and buggy. I decided to start prepping dinner.
Do you love misery? Do you watch "The Bear"? Yea, that will feed your desire. Season Four. I've watched some of it. It is extended, never-ending misery. It is very popular.
"Yes, chef."
Still, you know. . . cooking is an art, and I like to cook. So. . . chop chop chop. . . eight garlic cloves, six scallions, one avocado, broccoli, splitting each floret so that it would lay flat in the pan. I cubed the tuna steak. I put on the water for the noodles. In a small bowl I mixed the Houisin, soy sauce, sesame oil, and maple syrup. I put oil in a pan at medium heat. Broccoli florets for three minutes, covered, then flipped for another minute. More oil, then the garlic and scallions. Strain and rinse the noodles, then put them in the pan with the broccoli, garlic, and onions, dumping the Housin sauce on top and mixing it in with the noodles. Three more minutes on medium high. Oops. . . add more soy. Oh, shit, way too much. It did not have a stoppered pour top and the soy went everywhere. Piss, shit, fuck, goddamn.
Maybe it would be o.k.
Tuna and avocado in a bowl. Sprinkle with shichimi togarashi and mix soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine to pour on top.
Piss, shit, fuck, goddamn all over again. Rice wine! Where was the rice wine?
It was nowhere. I KNOW I had it. I tore the cabinets apart. Nope. I would have to substitute. What? What could I use. I had a bottle of rice vinegar. Maybe.
I plated everything and poured a glass of wine. It was the worst meal I have ever made in my life. It was almost unpalatable.
I ate it anyway, some of it.
The kitchen was a mess. There was that to do. I emptied the wine and poured a whiskey. To kill the worms, you know?
"Yes, chef."
That's the way things go sometimes. Yea.
But this morning, there on the magnetic black board are the pictures. I'll try again today. Life is out "there." No moping. I'm not to be housebound.
The floor joist. The roof. There is plenty of work to be done all around. But this is my home for longer than any other home I've lived in. I'll fix it, regardless. I'll go on.
 |
| N.Y. Times |
I read the article. They blame a lot of things, but they never mention that reading used to be sexy. When I was young, cocktail parties were full of machismo literary types.
"My god, man. . . you haven't read that?!?"
You'd look around to see if any of the woman had heard the indictment. Then you'd parry with something even more obscure and hipper.
"You've seen the new article in the Partisan on Nelson Algren, haven't you?"
Etc.
Now "real men do podcast." Me, not the Times. Women aren't attracted to readers now. Bohemian is out. Steroids and money are in.
This guy would be considered "gay" today. So much for literary machismo.
But there is something else that has killed reading.
Texting. I mean, it's reading, but it is not literary. LMAO! Why would you want to spend your time reading, anyway, when you can watch a movie or a series with vampires in it?
Dude. Reading's for Incels.
O.K. I'm over riffing. I was really just trying to figure out a way to use the snap I took at the Cafe Strange yesterday. I wasn't reading, either.
I was writing.
"What?" you might ask. "What were you writing?"
Letters to women who no longer love me. Lamentations and declarations. Isn't that always the case? But these were letters that will never be sent among the thousands of letters locked up in my many, many journals.
It's a good thing nobody reads.
Maybe it was drugs. You can read with a cocktail, but not when you are stoned. Oh . . . don't try to argue. You may think you can, but you can't remember what you read. At least I can't.
Maybe it was the banning of cigarettes that did it. People looked so cool reading when they smoked, legs crossed high, cigarette between the middle and ring fingers, a little spiral of smoke rising slowly into the air.
Amazon killed brick and mortar book stores. That might be partly to blame.
I don't read half as much as I used to.
I think people read mostly self-help books now.
Blame Oprah.
That's all I have today. I'm done. The day has broken bright and blue. What should I do? Shall I go hunting or shall I go fishing?
Ain't that what literary men do?
Sons of bitches everywhere are stealing my shit, man. I'll take it as a compliment.
I was kind of happy for a minute yesterday. Yea, it is true. I feel guilty about it. That is a terrible confession, but confession is good for the soul. So they say.
No segue. Or maybe there is. I had a text "out of the blue" yesterday from an old colleague I have not been in touch with for years. He works at a factory in the Middle East now but was back for ten days. Yesterday was his last day in the states, and he said he'd like to get together.
"Sure," I said. "I just need to work around my mother."
"I'll be free after six," he said.
"That works."
I'm taking care of most of my mother's business now. I drive her to doctor's appointments, drug stores, banks, etc. I am handling calls for her therapy appointments. That is a real pain in the ass. The hospital recommended home therapy. It is, by and large, a scam. She has nurses visit and both physical and occupational therapies. They do it for the Medicare money. They do basically nothing. But I am getting calls all the time now about scheduling and rescheduling. If you know me, you know I rarely answer my phone. Now, however. . . .
As I say, it's a pain in the ass.
Yesterday when I went to see her, her across the street neighbor came over. He had bought his wife hearing aids from Amazon the day before, and she had already lost one. He was retracing her steps trying to find it. He sat with us "for a spell," to chat. I told him that every time I take my mother to a doctor, they tell her she doesn't look 93. Blah, blah, blah.
"I don't think I'll make 94," she said. This has become her refrain. Death talk. She does not feel well. She is not happy. She is lonely. But she does not want to go to assisted living.
"I feel guilty," I told my dinner companion. We had decided to eat at the Italian place. We sat at a sidewalk table. I got there first. After I was seated by the young, pretty Russian hostess, I sat without seeing a waiter or waitress ever so long. My friend was late, and I was thirsty. Eventually a waitress came. My knees went weak even though I was seated. She was new. She was young. She was beautiful. She was Italian.
I know about love. I fell in love. But I can do that like falling down a flight of stairs or falling into a deep hole. I land hard. And about such things I am never wrong. Trust me. I am not like the others. . . .
I ordered a glass of Chianti Classico. I always do. I am not a true fan of the Chianti, but I always order it at Italian restaurants. It is easy. I don't have to think. But the Chianti here is rough as sandpaper. Still. . . .
My friend showed up. He had lost 70 pounds. He is gay, so I wondered. He was the first to bring it up.
"Did you do it on purpose?"
"Yes."
"Well. . . that's good. Diet or chemical?"
"It was a combination of diet, exercise, and yes. . . chemical."
"Are you on it for a lifetime?"
"I've been off for a year. Now I'm just trying to maintain through diet and exercise."
His muscles had shriveled. His skin hung. He is 59. I suggested that he might want to "juice again." TRT.
"Everybody here is doing that now," I said. "They get their free testosterone up between 800 and 1,000."
"That's pretty high," he said. "That's at the upper range of normal."
"Yes. It is the teenage years."
My buddy had trained for the priesthood. Gone to school. Whatever they do. He is a Jesuit and went to a Jesuit college, but just before graduation, he asked permission to go to England for his sister's wedding. They denied him permission. Some strange rule about the last year of training/education. My memory is vague on this, but not on the consequences. He left without graduating. Still, I've always thought he has the temperament of a priest, at least as I've seen in movies. We used to lunch together with my gay boss at least three times a week. My friend is a rascal, and I always referred to him as "Dennis the Menace." But when people are in trouble, he is a nurturing soul. So I told him last night just before I showed him a video (link).
"Forward that to me," he said laughing.
We'd always had a good relationship. When he was leaving the country to work in the foreign factory, he had a going away party, then another "after party" with his gay friends. He asked me to come.
"C.S. is a friend of the gays," he said to the room when I walked in. "I tell him things I don't even tell you."
"Ewww!!!"
After leaving "priest college," he trained and worked as a medic for awhile. He is knowledgeable about medical things to a good degree. He'd done some TRT when I knew him which is why I'd mentioned it.
"I've been thinking about it," he said. "I've lost some muscle."
That is what Ozempic and Wegovy and the like does, of course. People lose weight but it isn't all fat. They can't eat and the body becomes a cannibal. Losing muscle fiber is a consequence.
We were catching up. He showed me a big scar on his arm.
"Melanoma," he said, and told me a scary tale of one doctor dismissing it, then another doctor finding it and cutting it out. He didn't get it all. It was my friend's reading of his lab report that caught it. He had to inform the surgeon rather than vice-versa. There were still cancer cells, "in the margin." He went in for a second surgery. It was a long process.
It was my turn. I told him of my rotten fucking 2025 and more. I told him of my non-life.
"I haven't even left town for five years," I said.
"You need to take care of your mother, I understand, but you need to take care of yourself, too."
Yada, yada, yada. It is what everybody says.
"I'm fine."
That's what I always respond. Should I mention my packet of narcotics in the bedside table? Just that afternoon when I was driving back from my mother's house, I heard what I took to be Sarah Silverman on NPR talking about her mother's death and how it changed the way she is living. She took her mother to her house in Hawaii and cared for her.
Hawaii. I was guessing it was Silverman. I didn't catch the beginning of the interview, but it was someone who had a house in Hawaii and sounded like Sarah Silverman.
She talked about how, in the end, once her mother realized she was never going to get better and be as she once was, she began saying that old people were a burden, that she should die. Etc. Then, just before she died--"And I'll never forget this," said the voice on the radio--her mother took her hand and said, "It goes so quickly."
"What goes so quickly?"
"Life."
Mic drop.
Duh.
Life was happening all around us there on a balmy summer evening at a sidewalk table in an upscale part of town amid the clinking of glasses and the soft laughter wafting from nearby tables. A group of beautiful young girls walked by in crop tops and miniskirts. I looked at my friend. He laughed.
"I love this shit," I said. "All of it. Eating, drinking. . . that. I want more."
I asked him about his love life. He had a boyfriend in Germany, he said, a Bulgarian. He went through how it happened, he thinking it was just a hook up, but then. . . it was still developing, but. . . . His boyfriend, he said, was 32.
"Twenty-seven years," I said. "I'm very familiar."
Then he quoted me back to myself.
"Everybody loves a puppy."
I was flattered. But yea, it's a good line. Mine. I made it up. I own it.
He had to be back to his sister's house by eight, he said. It was past eight then, so we called for the check.
"Do you want me to split you in the middle," quarried the waitress.
Oh, fuck. . . I became pudding. She was so lovely, and her awkward use of English. . . .
"I love her," I said to my friend. "I do. I can't stand it."
I walked him to his car and we hugged goodbye. Who knows if or when we'd meet again. Such is life.
I was home before sunset. The light was fading. I poured a scotch and went to the deck. I called my mother.
"How are you doing," I asked.
"I'm just doing some laundry," she said.
"Oh. . . I'm glad you said that. I put my towels wash cloths in the washer before I went to dinner. I need to get them in the dryer. What are you going to do tonight?"
We laugh at that each night, she watching her tv, I mine. There is no overlap there. None.
But when I hung up, I felt the pang of guilt. I'd been out. I'd had fun. I'd fallen in love. All while my mother sat at home alone.
"I understand," my friend had said to me. "I didn't have to go through all that. Both my mother and father died at a fairly early age and I had my sister. But when my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer, I remember one night in particular. I'd seen her earlier in the day and I had been with her the three previous nights, but it was Friday and I was going to go out with my boyfriend. My mother called me and asked what I was doing. I could tell she was lonely, but I had plans and went out. It wasn't really a big deal. I saw her the next day and she was fine, but I still think about that and feel guilty that I didn't cancel my plans and go over to sit with her."
That's how that goes if you are any sort of empath. Me? I am motivated by two things--guilt and fear.
Mosquitos drove me inside. That and the need to refresh my glass. Quarter 'til nine. I'd watch some t.v. I'd drink more scotch. I'd be in bed by ten.
It is morning now. I slept fine, I think, but I am unsure of the day. It is Friday. I can see that on my computer, but somehow it doesn't feel like it. There are things I need to take care of before the weekend, but I don't want to. It is cloudy but I want to lie in the sun and drink margaritas with a group of friends, but none of them live here. Some of them no longer live at all. Later, I will go over and drink half a light beer with my mother. She will not be feeling well. I will ask her the same questions I've asked many times before. I should weed and feed the lawn. There is a chance of rain. I should get back to work on creating a website. Where was I on that? So much interference.
I should have taken that picture above.
I'll have to admit that the 4:55 of the soul is much better than the 3:55 of the soul. And so. . . perhaps I can somehow shape a morass of incidents into something coherent.
Yea. . . I doubt it, too.
Before bed the night before, I had a text telling me that one of our friends "got rushed to the hospital last night and had to undergo emergency life saving surgery. He had an aortic dissection that had to be repaired right away."
He was in surgery for over twelve hours.
After that bit of news, I watched an interview with Christopher Hitchens shortly before his death.
Perhaps these are the bedtime stories one should eschew.
I had spent the day--another day--at the doctor's office with my mother. She was having her eyes checked to see if she could have cataract surgery. We sat in science fiction rooms for two and a half hours. I managed to take that photo of the nightmare machine above with my phone. Perhaps that, too, was part of my dyspeptic psychic mix.
My mother can't see anything. I watched her take the eye chart exam, and she was missing most of the letters. And yet, at the end of it, the doctor told her she had 20/40 vision. WTF?!
"You certainly don't look 93," she said. That is what everyone tells my mother. "You have cataracts," she continued, "but they are like the cataracts of a 70 year old, not of someone 93. Surgery? It is up to you. I can do it, but if you feel you can function without it. . . ."
Outside, I told my mother, "You need to shut the fuck up about how bad you feel. Every time I take you to the doctor, they tell you how good you are. Stop your whining."
This was jocular, of course. I was only trying to cheer her up.
Up at 3:55 a.m., I heard a rat in the attic. Just before the sun came up, in the grey predawn light when there is no color nor clear outline, I saw two lumpy figures walking toward the kitchen door. What was it? No. . . I couldn't believe it. It was the biggest fucking armadillo I have ever seen, and I've seen some the size of border collies, and another half its size. They were heading to the open space that is exposing the rotten floor joist that needs to be repaired, heading for safe harbor beneath my floorboards under the house. Panicked, I opened the door, stomped my foot on the decking, and shouted, "No, no. . . no!"
The little one ran at me. Honest. It was horrific. I ran back inside and closed the kitchen door. I was panicked. No, I was frightened. I reached for my bb pistol. . . oh, you will hate me. . . and popped off a few rounds. That did it. They turned and waddled into the neighbor's yard.
Rats in the attic, a leaking roof, armadillos and rotten floor joists. Tell me what troubles my mind?
I went up the ladder into the attic at dawn to look at the rat trap I had set. It had been sprung, but there was no rat. Twice now. These newer, easier to use traps just won't do the job. They obviously don't break the fuckers' necks. I am either going to need to use the big assed traditional ones that scare the shit out of me when I load them or go buy an electric one. They work like a charm, but they are expensive.
At eight, I decided to go back to bed. That is when the construction crews on the two houses across the street began. I turned up the fans on my air filters and passed out.
I dreamed a dream I told last night to the gymroids, so let's hold off on that for the moment.
When I got up at ten, I drank some kefir and put on my gym clothes. But before I left the house, I once again called the framer who has yet to come look at the floor joist. I can't get him to respond. This, too, is a nightmare. I'd like to get this done before the roof, but the rains are coming.
"Oh, please honey. . . what should I do?"
Silence.
I didn't get home from the gym until one-thirty. Here's a semi-confession--I had half a sub in the fridge from lunch with my mother the day before. What the hell--a combo sub and a glass of wine.
I went back to bed.
The gymroids were meeting for happy hour at five. It was nearly four when I got out of bed. My day had been shot. I hurriedly showered and dressed in one of my fine new Chinese linen shirts and a pair of baby blue Chinese linen shorts. I looked like something you'd want to lick, or so I hoped. I looked nearly impish, a little chubby but tropical.
I took my mother to pick up her prescriptions at the pharmacy. That is always an adventure, and this was no exception. Tramadol and Flexaril. The Flexiril was labelled cyclobenzaprine. She couldn't hear and was shouting that she was supposed to get Flexiril. She said she didn't want the Tramadol and launched into a mean narrative about why.
"No. . . mom. . . you do want the Tramadol."
"No I don't."
"Yes you do. Trust me."
I was looking at the poor girl behind the counter shaking my head yes. My mother was trying to pay with her credit card, but the machine kept asking questions that, of course, my mother couldn't read with her 20/40 vision and corrective lenses (!), and so she began shouting at the counter girl in frustration. By the time we got back to the car, my mother was worn out.
"You shouldn't yell at people," I said.
"I don't want the Tramadol," she said. "It's a narcotic."
"Yea, but I do."
"Oh."
Tennessee called.
"Are you going to happy hour?"
"Yea. I'll be a little late, but I'm leaving in a minute. Are you going?"
"I guess. I'll go if you're going, but I am bouncing at 6:30."
He was meeting Black Sheep for dinner at the Italian restaurant.
"You should come, too. He asked about you."
"Old Cock Breath did?"
"Ha! I'll see you in a bit."
It was the good bar on the Boulevard, the only one I really like. And it was the usual crowd. The Judge had decided to join us. You know him. You've seen him on t.v. Or did. He's retired now.
I ordered a Negroni. Oh, brother, it was good. The bartender used a smoked orange peel for garnish that was just right. Big ice cube, clear as glass. But man, it wasn't like the pour I make at home. Again. And once more.
The Judge looked at me and said, "You need to cheer up. I need to hear a good story."
Yea, I guess I have been pretty glum, so I thought I'd give it a try. I told them about my 3:55 of the soul.
"Yea, what was that about?" asked T. He looked around. "I got a text from him at four o'clock in the morning."
"Were you up?"'
"No. I saw it later."
I gave them the morbid account, then I decided to tell them of my dream. Here we go.
"So I went back to bed at eight, and for the next hour and a half, I had a dream. I was pregnant," I said.
Hoots and agreements--"Of course you were."
"No, wait. . . it gets better. So I am carrying around this fetus or something, I don't know, it is all weird, but I have it in this plexiglass case and I need to get it to the hospital."
"What the fuck. . ."
"Yea, but when it hatches, or whatever, it isn't a baby, it's an insect. It's like a green praying mantis, and so I don't know if I was pregnant or if I had just been bitten and infected."
The shock jock pointed to the scar on my calf where the cyst had been. Everyone was shaking their heads. Thank goodness, the cocktail waitress arrived just then.
The Judge had been drinking cocktails, but he switched to beer. "I've got to drive home," he said.
"Do you pull the judge's card when you get pulled over?" one of the gymroids asked.
"No, never. That's how you get into trouble. I just pay the ticket and forget about it."
"I can't believe they give you a ticket," I said. "Look at me, a fucking hippie. You'd think I'd get them all the time, but nope. In town, of course, when they look at my license and see where I'm from, they tell me to slow down or whatever. But even out of town, I've been pulled over doing a hundred on a country road and the policeman only gave me a warning. That was in California, though, so. . . ."
The Judge told me he was a conservative.
"How'd you get that way?" I laughed.
He shook his head. "I don't know," he chuckled. "When you see the kind of people in your courtroom. . . ." He just shook his head.
T said he had to go and threw down a wad of cash. The Judge said he was out, too, so we called for the check. The Judge pulled out his card, but the car guy said no and pulled his out as well. They decided to split the bill. The Shock Jock and I would get the tip. But T had left a hundred bucks, so the Shock Jock and I got off easy. I decided to mosey down the street with them for one drink before I bolted to the Italian place.
It was our friend's new wine bar and there were people who knew people. There was food, and I lingered. Then our fourth said he had to go and paid the tab. The night had been easy on my wallet. I'd had a good number of perfect Negronis, lobster flatbreads, and two towers of raw tuna something. I was feeling o.k.
Before we left, the car guy said something to the pretty punk hostess with the nose ring, bare midriff, and low-slung jeans that showed her flat belly and skinny hips, a comment about all the douchebag rich guys she has to deal with.
"He's a douchebag," I said pointing to my buddy. "But you know that."
Indeed, I thought, what else is there? Rich douchebags or cocky rednecks in pickup trucks and trailer parks or fey Cafe Strange boys holding confused but adamant ideologies, just the three contestants on The Dating Game show. Everything is a shit show. The thought of it made me smile. Yup. . . it's all a shit show.
I checked my phone. T. had texted.
"Are you coming?"
It was late now, but I thought I might catch them on their last drink. Handshakes and a big hug from the Shock Jock.
"Love you, bud."
"You, too."
I don't listen to his show, but the fellows tell me I'm often a topic on his podcasts. Fictionalized, of course, just like this blog. We're all characters in some narrative we don't even know about.
I limped down the Boulevard toward my car. The bars were hopping on a muggy, tropical Wednesday night. I should get out of the house more, I thought.
The Italian place was almost empty. I texted T.
"We just left," he wrote. He included an attachment.
They had headed over to one of the Billionaire Boys Club's house. He sent were pics of them sitting around the mansion. Big place on the lake. All this money was making me feel small. But the pictures. The rooms were uninteresting, sort of pro shop chic, I guess, devoid of texture of the sort I desire, maybe a copy of Golf Digest sitting on the coffee table. All that money, boats and planes and mountain homes and beach houses and exotic cars. . . and a copy of Golf Digest.
Trump's Golden makeover of the White House.
I poured a scotch and sank into my deep leather couch in my little tv room overlooking nothing, the poorest guy in town. It was my ex-wife's pick, this house. She now lives on that same lake in a similar mansion. I've seen it in the magazines. I've seen the interior. Racket Club chic.
Whatever. I just needed money to get a new roof, fix the floor joists, get a new car. . . . No, don't think about that now. I turned on the t.v. I watched a couple fine art things, a lecture on Spinoza.
I don't think anyone thought of Kafka when I told my dream. They just think me weird, I'm sure, sort of the court jester. They don't read, they admit. I quote H.S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing."
"I loved that movie."
"Oh. . . that was from the book. It wasn't in the screenplay."
Do I do it on purpose? Probably.
But I've gone stupid, I assure you.
Someone texted and said they couldn't leave a voice message, that my mailbox was full. I've never bothered to delete any messages, so it made sense. I started deleting the random stuff, messages from businesses and attorneys and people from the factory and reminders of appointments. There are about a thousand messages from my mother that I won't delete. There are others, too, from people I hold dear. From the way back, there were many messages from Ili. I played one. I shouldn't have done that.
There was a time when I was smart and handsome and loved, I like to imagine. Now I'm haunted by rats and possums and aggressive armadillos and Kafka-esque dreams.
But what the hell. . . those Negronis were tops! Long live the Negroni.
"Smoking, drinking, eating, dressing fashionably. They might have burned out faster but they did burn brightly."
