April Fool

There are few places i love more on this planet than my favorite watering hole, it's dark and smoky and they serve the world's best wings and have a killer juke (my selections: the Fall, Link Wray, T. Rex, Violent Femmes, Buzzcocks, just to name am few), i've been going there for damn near twenty years now, have gone from hell raising youngster to elder hipster statesman, i've outlived Jesus by almost a decade and soon will pass JFK, i have been in fights, have drank until 5am while pouring my own beers, have made women swoon and been a fucking pain in the ass, in general it's like a second home to me though i don't get there as much as i used to living in the lily white suburbs...

On this fine night i was enjoying a dozen or so cheap cervezas and hanging out with a couple of the burgh's finer derelicts, not really waiting for the local punk bands to start playing but not really being bothered by it either, when the Furious one, who is a known to be a loose cannon came over and was laughing about running into the biggest guy in the bar, apparently the guy was a bit of an ass and was loading in equipment for said bands but it was no harm no foul and i laughed as the Furious one told of sneakily sizing him up and thinking better of it, it pays to get older and have the wisdom that comes with it, i'm sure in the old days it would have kicked off straight away but these days we are not looking to fight or cause trouble just have a few beers and relax...

Of course it was then that i began relating my theory that most bar fights are won or lost before a punch, bottle or knife is ever thrown and it's the psychological edge that determines the winner or even it if takes place long before the dance starts, and so at one point i made it a point to bump into the behemoth and granted he was a big, barrel-chested type but i'm not a wee little thing myself and though he had a good 50 lbs on me i put into practice my theory just to see, there was a moment of locking eyes and sizing up and somewhere in the middle of it he smiled and said sorry man and i was like no worries man, of course it dawned on me that i'm damn near 43 years old and really should not be acting like a fucking knob just to prove a theory but it was proved nonetheless, of course these days i'm fucking fighting weight and as i told my old man it only took 42 years for my shoulders to fill out, my other point to my com padres also being it's not the guy who can go one round you worry about but the guy who can go five, if you make it through the first the tables suddenly tilt, it also helps to have tasted your own blood and some point in your life so as not to shit the bed...

You can take the boy out of the city but you can't take the city out of the boy i guess and the rest of the night was spent making up our own lyrics to the stock and trade Rust Belt punk being blurted out from the back room, it was a right laugh and many beers were drank and one to many cigarettes smoked (i quit you know, sorta) and as i made my way down the quiet streets of the sleeping burbs i could only smile at the serenity of it all, creeping into my house to carry the I-mac to his bed, tucking him in and kissing his head, tip-toeing into Nick Disaster's room to cover him up and kiss his curly mop, it didn't take Al Einstein to point out to me what really fucking matters and to think a bit more before testing out one of my half-assed theories...

and then the sun rose and i spent saturday sitting on a park bench in the sun watching the boyos rule some large wooden castle with slides and swings and shit to climb, playing first pirates, then knights and then a combination of both which i told them might be vikings with a laugh...