Gen X Anthems #2

 For someone who could be classified as a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to music, not in the strictest sense but definitely when it comes to those post-punk years and beyond, it's surprising that i missed this record when it was first released... and maybe this post should be retitled Gen X Anthems International Edition because while this song definitely does have a foothold here in Merica it is damn near ingrained into the fabric of modern Britannia... the year was 1997 and Cheryl, the African American woman who had lived upstairs, the one who used to come down and borrow rolling papers off us and seemed to have quite the social life when entertaining gentleman callers, had moved out... at the time i was a bit concerned cuz the budding contraband salesman was in full swing and the last thing i needed was the headache of a new neighbor, granted in the tenement i lived, owned by Sophia the Greek slumlord and her coke loving son, it was not as if i should have been worried, this was a place for students and/or the down and out who needed a place to live, there was a lovely hole in our kitchen ceiling (a common theme in the tenements in which i'd lived) which let one see practically straight  through to the bathroom above and when said upstairs resident would take a shower there was a nice, slow drip... in three years it never got fixed... 

As fate would have it... or more correctly dumb luck, a young woman moved in, a student at one of the local universities, a lovely girl who was a dating a certain Englishman, a man who would become one of the best friends i've ever had and who was a mad bastard just like the weed slinging chap who lived a floor below and if there was one thing the two had in common it was a love of music and one could say that the Limey aka Gulfboot, was actually a bit impressed by our hero's love of certain bands... The Smiths, The Fall, The Stone Roses, Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy Mondays etc, good old Gulfboot was a bit surprised by the Septics depth of knowledge of Inglaterra tunes, yes some bands like The Smiths weren't exactly unheard of here in the States but back before the internet gave us access to everything all the time to find some of these bands meant one had to work at it, seek them out... it helped i had a radio show for three years (and for a short lived time, two radio shows) but it went back further than that with my teenage self combing through magazines in the hip record stores of Cleveland looking for the "cool" shit... 

And then one day Gulfboot brought down a CD, it was by this band called Pulp and while it was a name i heard and read about in passing it wasn't one that i'd actually listened to... the record was a Different Class and as we all know now it's a classic of it's age, dare i say of any age as one could pull it out now and it doesn't sound dated or anything (unless one counts a song title like Disco 2000) but in fact captures some timeless topics in timeless fashion... in fact just last week i sent the I-mac the song Sorted for E's and Whizz before he went to some EDM show cuz i couldn't stop giggling at the fact not much shit has changed in the last thirty-some odd years... but the song that drew me in, the one that piqued my interest in this band and it's rather very English frontman was what one would definitely call an anthem, and that of course was Common People... 

To once again go all grad school, the lyrics or text as the profs would say, are fucking brilliant... though i don't think the prof would be quite so colorful in their description... a rather scathing cultural critique really of what one might call class tourism, when the rich kids have their own version of Rumspringa and spend a year or two seeing how the lumpen proles live, renting dive apartments and wearing thrift store clothes or better yet the expensive fashionable thrift store style of clothes acquired through glossy catalogs and purchased by a doting mother... and before this all gets a little too Outsiders and devolves into class warfare that is not the intention... or maybe it is... the album as a whole is an interesting examination of what one might term "young adulthood", as we fumbled our way to, well? i don't really fucking know? old adulthood? but it was Common People, the anthem of what the class tourists will never really understand about actually being down and out in (insert city here) or in my case Podunk, Pittsburgh, Ocean City... when really one was always turning their attention to acquiring or scheming for the next drink or drug or meal and we basically entertained ourselves by fucking about, by singing and dancing along to the songs (to steal from Mozza) that saved our lives or as Jarvis put it, to dance and drink and screw/ because there's nothing else to do... 

The moment this song was introduced it was like a lightening bolt because everyone in the 759 could relate... and of course there was the irony of Gulfboot and his girl, she was from a very well to do family and at that time her father was none to fond of Gulf, granted over the the years that would change and the relationship would be solid if not entirely warm and fuzzy but due to the old man's dislike Ms. Gulf, one of the loveliest people i've ever met, was working while going to school cuz dad had sorta cut off the funds believing that Gulf was only after his daughter for money...  a fact that was far from the truth as Gulf loved that woman until the day he passed... but as for the denizens of my apartment, we were all products of broken homes, living on our own and with no real safety net, granted i probably was the only one with none at all to return to though i have no doubt Pops would have helped me but it wasn't as if he was in the best place at the time having recently come out of a divorce... the truth was this song basically hit the bullseye of our existence... we were line cooks and warehouse grunts, we were retail workers and wait staff, who were scratching out an existence... the fact that the most successful among us was the guy who sold weed was basically all anyone needed to know... and  while that guy might have had a little more dosh in his pocket he wasn't getting rich and all the while ran the risk of spending a few years or more in a small room with iron bars... 

The real beauty of it came from the fact that those of us who weren't tourists in this time were a bit like the characters of Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, we looked after each other, even though we were all fuck-ups in our own way we tried, not always successfully but we tried... we didn't discriminate when the class tourists showed up and in my position as weed dealer i saw a whole fucking lot of them waltz through my door... slumming it for fun on their way to some nice, slightly more than entry level position at the firm or business courtesy of mom or dad... 

But the song nailed it... what these class tourists didn't understand was the actual life we were living... yes they may have thought they were exactly like us but then they'd talk of some posh three week vacation in Europe or traveling the US or skiing at Jackson Hole to which they would then bleat on about how great it was and how i (or we if my roommates were around) should really check it out, they didn't understand that to us vacation meant a fucking day off and the ability to get drunk or stoned or gobble a tab of acid and wander about the apartment or streets for a few hours without worrying about shit... though we still had to worry about shit... they didn't get that we were dancing and drinking and screwing cuz that's really all we had... that they never had to worry about failing as their parents would prop them up, never watch their life slide out of view due to being broke or getting busted or a fucking fired or twisting an ankle they couldn't afford to get looked at let alone miss work where they stood on their feet all day... it was different worlds entirely and here was Jarvis putting it all so succinctly into a song, it was glorious and for those of us living it there was a reason we sang it as if our life depended on it, cuz it fucking did, it was four minutes of respite from the bullshit and we sang along and hugged our friends and spilled beer and danced like fools... pure living... 

And of course these days i can't hear that song without thinking of my brother, gone too soon, the 24yr old kid who first played it for me and watched as the grin spread across my face, how we'd get drunk and play it at full volume in the wee hours, cops and neighbors be damned... yes these  days i still sing along but with a mist in my eyes as i miss my friend... and those words hit home even more, they remind me, in the midst of all this middle class comfort i'm sitting in not to forget where i came from and who i am... and maybe to remind me that i miss those days, the days of living hand to mouth and buying a beer for your brother even though that means sacrificing food for yourself cuz what's more important? having a drink and talking with your friend or a fucking sandwich? now pull out the record and set the needle on the wax and sing along with the Common People, sing along and it might just get you through... and then dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do... 

Gen X Anthems #1

 Maybe this shit should be called, hey you damn kids! get off my fucking lawn!! or maybe it stems from my love of music and riding around in cars humping groceries for the bourgeoisie... driving around gives me time to think and remember and every so often shit pops into my head and think, damn? and of course sometimes i think, damn i'm old and so if i'm gonna call this new little thing here Gen X Anthems i might as well start with what popular culture would consider the anthem of disaffected youth circa 1991... and yeah kids, if you guessed it was Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit you would be correct... surprised some aging hipster dickhead like me would pick what might be the obvious choice? well yeah, i was even surprised myself until driving some tree-lined suburban street in some new development, in a new suburb recently built by decimating some woodland area in order to put in more McMansions so while i rolled down said streets replete with yellow signs telling me to slow down while silhouettes of white kids frolicked happily in my optic nerve i found myself thinking back to my tenement years, right around the time the suburban home i grew up in came crumbling down... 

This story begins in the fall of 1991, i was living in the ghetto of Podunk U. known as College Park, paper thin walls of plywood and vinyl floors, drafty windows that kept it roasting in hot weather and freezing in cold, barely functional appliances, the kind of shit today's university student would scoff at as unacceptable living conditions... needless to say i spent most of my time out of that apartment as i had one roommate who was about as weird as they come and one who thought he was a rockstar and insisted on his own room as he would be bagging the most babes (to steal a line from Farmer Ted), to call him an arrogant shithead would be close to a compliment as that's actually bordering on polite when it came to my ex roomie... 

I used to hang out and party at the good Doctor's house way back when, an abode dubbed The House of Gay Love by none other than Cowboy Dan, he of weed dealer and somewhat mentor fame, granted the guys who had lived there which had prompted Cowboy Dan to bestow this name had moved out and now it was more a bunch of skaters and such who i was friends with... and it was here, that one early September Thursday night party, one of them pulled out a CD single, remember those? it was three songs? if i remember correctly but the single was to the forthcoming album Nevermind... it wasn't that any of us had never heard of this band as one of the guys used to play the first record, Bleach, though the response was nowhere near what would happen when this new song was played... in those early weeks of the semester on those Thursday nights when suddenly as the guitar strummed and the drums kicked in the living room would suddenly become a pit with bodies slamming into each other as if suddenly there was some cathartic release from the shit and grind of everyday living... or what music is known to do especially to the youth... because some scrawny blonde haired guy from a shit town in Washington was articulating the anger and frustration that a whole lot of us were feeling... and this was before it became the mega-hit, before the album was out... like a primal release from a cage that we didn't build but were shoved into, the so-called first generation to do worse than their parents (though i believe that can got kicked down the road to the next one) but here we were... shit economy, on the brink of another war, the end of 12 years of the Reagan/Bush regime and now here came Slick Willie promising us all what? same shit different wrapping... 

And so we let loose... we'd learn the words and realize this was our music... at least until it resonated with more than just our island of misfit toys and suddenly the world wanted a piece... something that would drive poor old Kurt to the brink... or more correctly past it... we had come out of the first summer of Lollapalooza, the danger of Jane's Addiction (a band i was far more into than Nirvana) and in a way us weird kids were finding a place in the world... and then of course the rest of the world found out about it and crashed the party ruining it for all the weirdos and the guy who wrote the song... capitalism loves to cash in on a good story and this was no different and of course there were suddenly expose`s on the nightly news about this new phenomenon, which was hardly knew at all but just another in a cycle of music and culture and disaffected youth colliding... and it must be fucking dangerous and it must promote drug use and it must encourage sex... as if every time something like this occurred the same warnings weren't direly issued to and by parents, politicians and preachers alike that this would be the downfall of civilization... 

If one is so inclined, go and have a look at the lyrics, but don't forget this was pre-social media and Kurt here had tapped into something, something not laid out explicitly in the text (to get all grad school) but for those of us who lived it we knew what it was about, Gen X kids were a bit like a lost generation, we were left on our own, alot... we didn't have computers in our pockets to keep us from interacting with others so we were forced to interact with others, to fumble our way through sex and drugs and rock and roll, we couldn't look shit up on the internet or think that sex was akin to a porn video, hell back then we had to go to the porno store and hit the little booths if one wanted what is readily available today with the click of a mouse and hell i can't say it wasn't a laugh to check out the vids while stopping in to load up on whippets and balloons when we were going highbrow fucked up instead of just buying cans of whipped cream from the grocery store, but i digress, what i mean is we had no guides or instructions and had to figure shit out on our own which lead to some rather interesting and albeit embarrassing situations... add in the fact there was no anti-bullying campaigns and being made fun of or insulted or sometimes running home in order to not get one's ass kicked was just another day in school...  so what the song summed up in feeling/emotion more than words was what is sort of felt like to grow up and be alive in that time... and while i still find it fascinating that i see kids wearing Nirvana t-shirts these days i often wonder what the music and that song means to them... 

Of course then MTV got the video and the masses caught on that this was "cool" and hence began the downward spiral of poor old Kurt, when the popular kids all pushed their way to the front at his shows instead of the kids wearing thrift store clothes, in fact some of those thrift store kids decided this shit was overblown and moved on the next and by the time In Utero appeared (which in itself was a great record) it was only a matter of time... i was working in the bagel store the day the news came down that Kurt had checked out, i remember the one baker being distraught, a guy i sold weed too (who in the world is a small place would bring his girlfriend along, a girl named Jen but who went by Diva, shit maybe she was ahead of her time with her stage name drama, she was social media before social media, and once Diva had dropped The Baker she took up with Sneaky Pete who would tell Gulfboot to talk to the guy in the apartment below)... i was working in the Land of Oaks near the university and there were a lot of upset teens and twentysomethings milling about as i walked home... for the record i was far more distraught the day one Henry Charles Bukowski died roughly a month earlier... 

By the time the song really blew up i myself would be one of those kids from a broken home though i was really just past 21 so technically not a kid but still living at home when not away at school, something that would change at the start of 1992... by the time both Kurt and Hank checked out in spring of 94 i was applying to grad school while slinging weed out of my third floor tenement walkup... i also had a little scam at work where i'd pocket the dollar in the three bagels for a buck coupon found in the local free weekly, usually netting me from between 5-20 bucks a day while also raiding the cooler for lunchmeat and cheese to put on the deformed bagels we got for free cuz they couldn't sell them... hand to mouth was a way of life back then and a skill i think has been lost on this current generation... or at least the ones i'm exposed to out here in the lily white suburbs... before the Year of our Grunge 1994 was out i'd be writing a paper for Dr. Rockstar on the commodification of punk rock thus practically laying out the future business model of fucking Hot Topic... and of course having 8-10 weeks to write it i did it in roughly three days... 

It's easy to become jaded as the years have rolled by, this song today means something totally different than it did back when it was released... or does it? years of debating its merits, arguments in dive bars, the fact this band became "popular" with more than just the pre-hipster hipsters has warped what it was to those of us old enough to be drafted at the time and wondering if Operation Desert Storm was the ending or the beginning (obviously it was just the beginning) but hearing it pop up and thinking back to those early days it reminded me to clear the mind so to speak, to remember what it meant originally to me and countless others even though the years have morphed and changed the meaning into something else... which is beautiful really, each generation has the right to interpret things as they see fit, the fact the kids are still wearing the shirts and hopefully listening to the music is what matters, a bridge between generations that the geezers need to remember that we were them once, way back when, wearing thrift store flannel, wearing Dickies work pants, angry at the world with both middle fingers aimed squarely at the hegemony... then again, the more things change the more they stay the same... and even though this grunge kid became the world's hairiest (former) soccer mom his attitude ain't all that far off from that kid bouncing around and sweating in some run down house all those years ago... strange what one thinks about driving around alone... 

The Wilderness Years - Welcome to the Occupation

 I understand that my worldview is not what one would call normal... maybe like Jonathon Richman and his Modern Lovers once stated, i still love the old world... but what the fuck does that mean... in a way after dropping out of grad school i was nothing more than the Americanfuckingdream, a startup before the term startup had entered the lexicon of the cable business news network, i had a business plan and a sketchy way to finance it (credit card) and hence i took a calculated risk to see if i could get my business up and running, a business built solely on word of mouth and the ability to keep product on the shelf (loosely speaking), a business that was filled with competitors and had a known track record for failure, many a dumb and daring entrepreneur had taken this plunge and many had failed... but here i was, confident in my ability to make it and i had to be, when the whole thing started there was no safety net for me to fall into, no home to return to, i was happy to have a place to live where i could split the rent and bills and try to make my vision a reality... yeah there are those out there who would say i could have used this business acumen and (dare i call it) intelligence differently but that would be anathema to my sensibilities... my views on this culture, the disdain that kept growing in the wake of lived experience, the myths and fables i was fed as a kid had developed in the midst of watching my father be crushed by a corporate world that was fucking bullshit and a familial world that was fragile and most likely built on a lie... i loved my dad more than anything and seeing what he did and what it did to him had changed the way i looked at things dramatically... in my twentysomething mind there was only the mantra... fuck the system... 

Looking around now and hearing the kids all piss and moan, the Millennials and Gen Z crowd, i get it, their Gen X parents were the first jaded generation to stare down the prospect of shit like climate collapse, an economy built by the rich for the rich who had now actively taken to gutting and destroying things like unions, had devised the strategy to ship jobs overseas for cheap labor, had began to squeeze people like my father, the middle management of the world who actually made things run, out of jobs so they could replace them with younger, cheaper workers all the while practically guaranteeing that those older workers now out of a job would be fucked, destined to never make the salary or wages they once did and left to scramble, i had a fucking front row seat and so yes i looked at things and thought how do i survive without playing the game? how do i subvert the system? and of course my answer was get outside of it all while using the tools that were in it... and after five years of hustling, of moving countless bags of grass, i had done nothing but luck into a great connection (though some would say my hard work and business acumen created that luck)... but no matter what anyone says, luck counts too... 

The real job started the day i walked out of that plumbing and hvac supply warehouse, drove home, signed up for unemployment benefits and laughed at the folly of it all... two middle fingers flying high at the capitalist fucking pig dogs... though really what was i? i was really nothing more than one of them, the same principles, the same goals, bank as much as possible, pay as little into the system as possible all the while using that system for my own benefit... don't get me wrong my unemployment checks were fucking laughable, i'd have been selling plasma and sperm had i not had a second gig, a lucrative and tax free cash only business where those little checks went straight into my account and stayed there, everything else was paid in cash... it was easy back in the early aughts... and so i sat back and began to bask in the glow of what would be six months of no actual legitimate job... this as one may recall was my first taste of what one might call total freedom... 

And for the next six months my life was like a well oiled machine... it was the beauty of being the beast... i'd wake up, usually anywhere from slightly hungover to flat out crippled hungover, on most days make my way to the other side of town where i had instructed Red to leave her door open so i could stroll in, i'd walk up the stairs to her bedroom, take off my clothes and climb into bed with her where we'd proceed to our morning workout, then i'd leave and drive back, shower, eat something, nap, and then get ready for business, the weight crew at my place, the nickel dimers at the bar, with my arrival usually somewhere between 7-8pm, i'd work and drink and then head to the strip club for a bit or sometimes another bar, roaming the East End like i owned it... every Tuesday morning i'd head to Stiv's to reup the supply, on busy weeks i'd head back Friday or Saturday to replenish the stock, clockwork, done in the morning when the world didn't think criminals were working, the squares all thought this shit happened at night, as a a matter of fact it didn't, it happened in broad daylight over cup of coffee... in fact looking back it was funny that there wasn't much drama or worry other than my paranoid mind and the occasional blip on the radar... the Disco Dave fiasco was in the past, the hurt of the whole Veronica situation assuaged by Red and her never-ending efforts to please me... it was the life of the Perfect Barbarian, all i had to worry about was getting popped and looking at a long stretch... which of course i tried not to think about... and yes i know much of this was previously covered but sometimes even i get lost and need to go back and see where i was...

As my brother Gulfboot used to say... these were the halcyon days of The King of North Oakland... and as i had stated previously, i had become what i despised (a businessman) while simultaneously becoming what i had set out to become, an excellent seller of cannabis (and at times mushrooms and for a very brief two month stint in order to finance a trip to Europe a certain white powder - of which i'm not proud of but once again did what any capitalist pig dog would do by exploiting a market that was readily available to me) and after five and a half years had landed here, collecting unemployment while making more money than i could have ever dreamed up back when i was starting out, back then i was hoping to make an extra $300 a week and now i was making 15 times that amount on average, sometimes even more... all while driving a $400 car... so what took place over the next six months? really nothing, it was the carefree life of a professional hood, yes i had broken my own rule of holding down a "normal" job but like every would be savant i had the utmost confidence in my ability and decisions... 

It was Labor Day weekend, the first weekend of September 2001... i was looking at a few more weeks of unemployment before i'd have to find another job, i knew the Waitress wasn't exactly thrilled with my lack of even attempting to seek employment but there wasn't much she could say or do... i had money to burn, could pay the rent for the next year up front if i felt like it off one week of slinging and the truth was i wasn't much interested in finding a real job... work is for suckers... and so as i hung in the local swanky boozer that i occasionally worked out of slinging to my clientele, most of the staff and the stray rich kid, i was enjoying the last of what i thought was Total Freedom... there was a jazz/hip-hop improv band playing that night and as i stood to the side talking to a friend of mine i had uttered the phrase "six glorious fucking months" in relation to my stint on the dole... my friend laughing at my escapades as i relayed how i engineered my layoff in order to go full-time hood... 

As we stood there drinking our beers i was talking to a few more people, let's just say i was pretty well known if you were in the know, when my friend came back up to me and said listen to what the singer is saying... and so i stopped my conversation and turned my ear towards the band... the singer was pacing back and forth over a staccato drum beat, a squonking sax and a bassline holding it all loosely together, the lyrics repeated over and over? "six glorious fucking months"... i started laughing... during a break i ended up next to the singer at the bar and told him jokingly he stole my line, he smiled and said, that was you? i said uh-huh, he laughed and told me when he heard the phrase he loved it and decided to immediately throw it into the song, i said i thought it was great and dug what they were doing and then explained what it related to and how it came about, he smiled again and said, so you're the man i been hearing about, you got good shit, then he winked and headed back to the stage... 

The night would go as most would back then... i closed the place and rolled home, there was only about three weeks left in my unemployment bennies before i'd be officially breaking all the rules i'd set but seeing as i viewed the unemployment stint as still having a job in the eyes of the hegemony i, at least in my own mind, was abiding by my ground rules... granted these days i bent those rules in my mind to justify my actions... i was not the most decent of humans one could say... and so i was staring down a decision, not that it was really all that difficult of one, the main obstacle would be the Waitress and i felt confident i could handle that situation... and so the days came and went... and then one sunny and clear Tuesday morning in my fair city, my 31st birthday to be exact, i awoke to go for my usual Tuesday morning drive to reup the supply, i called Stiv to make sure all was ready, he said it was and then asked, have you turned on your television? 

standing in a bar alone and thinking

 It can't all be kittens and sunshine can it? and to be brutally honest some days it's a struggle to see the good things, they are there but at times i have to remind myself and at times i realize that the shit things seem to outweigh the good, granted that balance, that yin-yang that tilts the scales slightly one way or the other is always drifting back and forth and like Leonard Cohen said, the cracks are where the light gets in... but like Jeff Tweedy once sang, how do you fight loneliness? you smile all the time... a smile that hides that loneliness and feeling of isolation... granted i've always been very comfortable being alone but there are times when some human companionship would be a swell thing... i mean the beings i converse with most have four legs and speak a different language but we still manage to have great conversations... or steal one more line, if you want a friend feed any animal... 

I'm a little less than a month out from the start of the back half of my fifth decade... i read a lot, from my self curated curriculum encompassing cultural and political theory, philosophy, fiction, to articles on shit like mental health, relationships, the importance of friends... as one gets older it becomes a little more difficult to make new friends especially when one if as fucking weird as yours truly... there are not many fiftysomethings who have a predilection for psychedelics and cannabis as i tend to skew, though the latter is more common these days... but then add in my love of music, most of it off the beaten path, my love of reading, again most of which books that one would not regularly find in the average bookstore, i'm also devoid of any career type thing which i find tends to be the topic of conversation most eager to be discussed among my age group and even more so in my current zip code... i actually really love the city i live in but can honestly say not the suburb i currently reside in so much, i dig my house and what has now amounted to the two rooms i sort of live out of, the real problem is when i have to leave it (the house or my room)... 

In the past decade or so all of my close friends have moved away... shit happens... but that has now left me on the Jack Jones permanently so to speak, (hell some of my closest friends aren't even alive anymore) so when i do go out it's usually alone, especially if it's a spur of the moment thing and to be fair i don't really have a problem with that... and so as i dealt with a sore back, mainly due to the fact sometimes around here if i want shit done (in a somewhat timely manner) i gotta do it myself (see mowing the lawn)... i debated whether to drive over to the old hood, to an old haunt, and check out three local bands... and after a Friday that was less than stellar i said fuck it, i gotta get outta here... 

I'll just put on record here that my little Rust Belt city is currently producing some really good local bands, bands that i would go out to see more than once, shelling out a minimal cover, $5-10 or so bucks to see what the kids are doing these days is one of the joys of my current situation, supporting people making art and doing it their own way, fuck yeah i'm gonna support them and the three bands i saw the other night definitely deserved support... as i told the one guy from the opening band as i bummed a smoke (every now and then kids you gotta have one... or as Mr. Tweedy also said, when you're back in your old neighborhood/ cigarettes taste so good... ) i quoted, more paraphrased, the great Kurt Vonnegut about creating just to create, to make something, no matter how "bad or good" people think it is but just the act of doing it and the meaning and purpose and satisfaction it brings us... the guy sorta looked at me  with the realization that the crazy old man bumming cigs and praising psychedelics might have had a modicum of sense... 

And it was a great night, three excellent bands... it's not lost on me though that i was most likely the oldest person at this gig, granted some of us aging Gen X kids are going out on our feet and i do my best not to come off as the weird old guy but then again i sorta am a weird old guy, maybe creepy old guy is what i try to avoid is more apt and sometimes when i'm talking to people (i've always been able to talk to just about anyone most likely cuz when you go 2000 miles away from home for the first year of college one has to learn how to make friends or whatever they call it) especially the younger generations at these shows that sometimes i talk about things that happened before they were born... case in point talking to the guy above about the first three Lollapaloozas... he wasn't even born yet... and while i get that some of the kids are indulging the geezer others are actually genuinely interested to hear the tales of hipsters past... but let's just say sometimes it would be pleasant to actually have someone to hang with (and granted there are one or two people i can call to hang with but on this night it was so last minute and i just needed to bolt before i went bananas..) so yeah sometimes i can feel very alone in a crowded room... probably more often than i care to admit... 

But the real crux of this whole word salad of rambling nonsense woe is me bullshit is what i observed while watching these bands... the band who put the show together was having a video release party ahead of the record release gig next month... what hit home or more correctly, what i was reminded of, was the situation i currently occupy... watching the significant others of the various band members, of the director of the video, and how they supported their partners in their artistic endeavors once again drove home the point of isolation that is my existence at times... i've never gotten really any support from the BW when its come to writing or any other artistic interest i may have, in fact the last time she read anything i've written was now over three decades ago... obviously there is shit that would land me in serious trouble if someone did read it but the fact is the parameters were established long ago... in fact on the rare occasions where she has heard me discussing what i write about with people the usual response is "i don't know why anyone would want to read stuff like that... yes an abundance of love and support but then again i'm used to it, dare i say conditioned and for the most part don't really give a fuck what she thinks about what i do because as Kurt said above, i do it for me and no one else, (except maybe the boyos so they can someday read a bunch of shit their crazy old man wrote)... 

But it hit home... there was a lot of talent on display this night but as we know doesn't mean any of them will ever make a living or a career out of their music, it's not a knock on any of them as they have good songs and when it comes to the main band (TV's Norm, find them on bandcamp) dare i say great songs in my humble opinion but yet here were their wives and girlfriends and boyfriends when it came to one of the bands, all here supporting their partners, having a good time, singing and dancing and not acting as if they'd been dragged along and had to suffer through another show, no in fact it was quite the opposite and it was a beautiful thing to see... i understand what i do, whatever the fuck that is, and bands playing gigs are two different things but i also understand bands have practice, may try to tour, all sorts of things that take support from the person you're permanently or currently committed to... in fact just watching couples in general having a good time, holding hands, with arms around waists or shoulders, laughing, reminded me of just how shit things have become in my current situation...

As i stood towards the back when the final song ended i hit the steps, in a way i needed to get out of there, yes it was a good time but the old stoner's mind was running now and so i hit the street, i had parked a block away which was by design, i wanted to tread the pavement of my old hood, the streets once run by a man called the King of North Oakland, in fact across the street from the bar was the first apartment i ever looked at (but didn't rent) in the city, way back in 1993... and as i walked towards my car i took it all in, i thought about all the days spent in these neighborhoods, i thought about what i'd just seen, i was glad these people had support but a sadness had crept in as i realized how fucking broken things are back in the burbs... broken in a way that probably can't be fixed, for various reasons, but i'll do what i can and i'll keep doing what i do regardless of what happens around here... 

epilogue - on this night it just so happened that it was Disaster's first day of work at his first job... he's washing dishes at a restaurant in a mall not far from our house (which is great cuz it's quick and easy to get to), a place where a friend of his already works, Disaster is a trip and actually wanted to be a dishwasher and why not? he just turned 17 and i explained to him he'll learn a lot about humanity in that position, his old man knows cuz he's done it... on more than one occasion... i made him some dinner and then walked him to the door as we talked, told him he'd be home before me but i'd talk to him when i got home about his first day... well i got home and he wasn't home yet... i thought maybe he went back out until the BW said he was still working... first day and he had to work two hours past his scheduled shift... when he came in the door it was almost 12:30am and i wondered what his reaction was gonna be... he was tired but smiling, he was stoked cuz he was tallying up how much he'd made his first day, i'll just say that had this been his older brother he'd have walked in complaining and stating he was gonna quit and find a new job, the injustice of the whole situation, bullshit really but somewhat par for the course... Disaster on the other hand said he thought it was cool, he liked it, granted it's still new but the next morning as we talked he stated his plans for his paychecks... he was going to invest some, save some and then have his spending money, he cited a finance course he took, his old man was grinning, the boy has a head on his shoulders, i've talked to both of my sons about using this shit system to generate money in order to live and that if you start young they'd be surprised at how much compounding interest generates (as long as the whole system doesn't go up in flames) but the marked difference between the way the boyos think is staggering... the I-mac can't seem to keep a dime in his pocket while spending a quarter while Disaster will talk about not wanting to spend money on dumb shit... but just like this whole thing started, that old yin-yang, cuz sometimes the old universe still gives you a reason to smile... even when you feel like crying... 

Virus w/Shoes

 The phrase "we're a virus with shoes" was coined by the great Bill Hicks and if one is unfamiliar with William i highly suggest you find his old specials or comedy albums and check him out, another in the vein of Philosopher Comics who was really more of philosopher than comic... like George Carlin and Dave Chappelle, they're gonna make you uncomfortable which is a good thing, challenge the accepted norms, point out the bullshit that is being fed to you by both the government and more importantly the oligarchs, those captains of industry who so love to talk of bootstraps while holding out their hand and gleefully pocketing free money (see tax dollars) while lecturing we lumpen-proles on the reasons for our lack of success, wealth, plastic surgery disaster partner who is a few decades younger... all while hopefully keeping us distracted and working to exhaustion in order for the proletariat to not notice just how fucked over we are was and is... but i digress... 

Humanity, for all it's various scientific and technological advances is really nothing more than a raging shit show and more like a raging shit show doused in gasoline and lit on fire... and what does one do when we see something like this? well obviously we pull out our phones and record it dammit! we can create content and get clicks and if enough people view whatever slop we put up on the clock app or Zucky's playland or worse Twatzee (the one Elonia Hairplugz owns)... about the only bright spot when it comes to the mini computer tracking device eternal distraction in our pockets is the fact we can pull it out and record when the orange shirts or magats or fuzz are doing their best to trample rights and abuse the citizens or worse... it's about the one useful thing seeing how certain cameras always seem to be suspiciously "not working" when shit happens... 

Which brings me to something i was shown the other day by the eldest boyo... to the consternation of his old man he joined a frat at his university and has spent the better part of the last two years hanging out with a bunch of fucking muppets... he knows his padre is not a fan of these organizations as they are nothing more, for the most part, a way to buy friends and have a perpetual place to party while doing absolutely zero else... somehow the boyo has managed to be punched in the face twice, have his computer destroyed, and various other fucking idiocy and every time it involves this pack of morons... the last episode resulting in an ER visit to get stitches after his tooth drove through his cheek when sucker-punched by one of his "frat brothers"... needless to say his old man is from the street and about drove up to said house and went to town on these fucking clowns... of course the boyo is not exempt from responsibility here but of course he will try to claim said exemption... he is not... and he's now been told that any monetary needs for said organization will come from him and the parental cash machine will shell out no more... 

Of course one might asked, what happened to the guy(s) who punched him? well the story is the boyo reacted (somehow) hence why his parents couldn't look to get reimbursed for the now thousands of dollars of hospital bills, computer (luckily we had insurance on it so it only cost $300) etc... let's just say i'm not pleased...  

The so called resident bad ass of the frat is some rich kid clown who apparently has done "some time" in county for assault, said clown is the one who started shit which ended up resulting in the boyo's computer being destroyed and when i heard about it and him i was fucking livid... in the old adage "you can take the man off the street but you can't take the street outta the man" i informed the boyo that he should advise tough guy to stay the fuck away from me if for some reason i ever happen to be within arms reach... of course now i probably wont have to worry about that due to the short clip i was shown... 

In the annual Conclave of the Imbeciles, yes these muppets actually call their national meeting a conclave (hell the Gathering of the Juggalos seems a more intellectually stimulating event than this nonsense) the dues paying reps of the chapters all met up in one of my favorite places N'awlins, as the locals say... and it just so happens that while there resident tough guy got into a bit of a pickle... the story was he was accosted by this couple but knowing what i know of tough guy i get the distinct feeling that the drunk asshole probably said something smart and the rich kid found out he wasn't in suburban/rural Pennslytucky anymore... and here comes the fucked-up part... 

An altercation ensued between the couple, who were reportedly addicts and hung around this corner quite a bit, and the resident tough guy... the couple were both wielding bricks while tough guy stood there trying to reason with them... what ensued was a lesson in what not to do by every fucking person involved... but mostly by tough guy, the easiest solution would be to hand them your money and a fucking credit card and say, here you go have a nice night and then immediately walk to a phone, cancel the card and find a cop... it's Bourbon Street for fuck sake they're around... if after giving them the cash they persisted? well then you gotta keep your head (though i think they'd have sprinted away if they'd have gotten cash)... instead tough guy stood there pleading with them (i still feel he had mouthed off) and then proceeded to royally fuck up cuz apparently he only is able to punch down... 

And how do i know all this? well you see a bunch of bystanders and one in particular sat there filming the whole fucking thing... instead of doing something useful like say, hmmm, calling the cops, they stood there filming because this is Dumbfuckistan and the only way to make a living these days is by shit-posting the shit show that is post-capitalist Merica dig... and so said not so concerned citizen sat filming and providing a commentary, pertinent observations like "you should run dude" and while that was sound advice perhaps our would be Kubrick could have, i don't know, actually done something to remedy the situation, even a brief distraction would have given resident tough guy a chance to bolt... not to say he was smart enough to do that but... 

What happens next is fucking mad... remember someone is filming this and giggling along like it's a game show... the "conversation" between Sid and Nancy continues with resident tough guy pleading to be cool... and this is where i understood he'd never been in an actual scrap... he's talking to the guy while the woman (carrying a brick) circles around behind him and then clocks him in the head with the brick!! he then takes off stumbling down the street while the would be Kubrick filming the whole thing keeps the play by play going by guffawing and saying things like "holy shit, get outta there man, run"... what in the actual fuck? you just saw a guy get clocked with a brick in the back of the head, something that could have killed him and yet you record and giggle and yell advice? but lucky for tough guy said concerned citizen would run home and post it to social media which would enable tough guy to track them down and use the footage in his police report... and while i'm quite sure resident tough guy talked shit to the wrong couple the fact is even he didn't deserve to get clocked with brick which i do believe constitutes assault with a deadly weapon... he came to in an alley, shirtless and devoid of phone and wallet... 

But welcome to the decline of western civilization... give a person a phone and in a situation like this where they should have been calling the cops, who in the time the whole episode took place probably would have been there and better yet tell the brick wielding muppets the cops have been called and everyone would have bolted their separate ways... granted resident tough guy got a lesson in street life and failed miserably... there are parts of my wasted youth that i'm not exactly proud of but one thing i did learn early on was how to not get my ass beat or worse... of course this was after getting my ass beat at 15 resulting in 16 stitches in my lip but let's just say it was a valuable lesson... Pops also gave me some advice, like don't lead with my face (which was a joke) but in this case resident tough guy committed the cardinal sin of letting one of his attackers get behind him... always keep them where you can see them and always keep your head, granted i'm sure he was smashed but the truth is that's no excuse... though it's often the excuse when this shit happens... 

Luckily the I-mac was safe at home and has managed to make almost zero money working this summer as he had stated he was thinking about going to the Conclave of the Imbeciles but knew he didn't have the dosh and knew the cash machine known as "mom & dad" weren't about to let him sashay off to N'awlins... he hasn't proven to be even remotely close to responsible enough for a trip like that and there is no doubt he would have been right there with resident tough guy because he always has to be the last one at the party... but there is something about karma that keeps popping into my mind... as i said before the gut tells me resident tough guy always punches down... did he deserve to be clocked with a brick? absolutely not but let's hope he learned something from this little life lesson... and as i told the I-mac, he won't be so tough anymore as a hit like that will most likely make future concussions come much easier... that said i explained to I-mac all the mistakes i saw and once again he gave me that look, the "i wonder what the fuck my dad was into when he was young?"... and as i tell him, reading books and writing bad poetry... but still, it's hard to believe i live in a country where "creating content" seems more important than helping someone about to be assaulted, yeah i know sometimes those phones are the most important tool we have, like when it comes to the frozen water boys and the boys who "work forces and burn crosses" but in this instance? it's fucking sad... 

 

The Wilderness Years - my philosophy

 (It's been close to 14 months since the last installment of the old Wilderness Years so it's about time we fucking finish the thing especially as the days of rewrites and revisions and first drafts is upon us... whatever that means... so for the stray reader who still peruses this page i'll help, the last post was from May 9th, 2025... a recap of things up until that point titled The Perfect Barbarian and how our (anti-) hero here had managed to get himself laid off in order to fully enjoy the fruits of his labor... now back to the program...) 

These days with so much shit "legal" in a very fuzzy sense, with the fact that my favorite plant has been for all intents decriminalized in many places, it's interesting to see the changes that have taken place in the old world of slinging... the fact the kids don't have to apprentice anymore, they don't learn from established dealers as the easiest way to learn about dealing was studying the local weed dealer one got their gear from... or the Plug as the kids call them these days... in simpler times when the old Bill and the tough on crime crowd (which amounted to pretty much every elected official) were cracking down on the demon weed one could study the guy they bought grass from or at least those who were thinking about getting into that line of work could study them... call it an apprenticeship, one watched and learned, what worked? how did they handle things? what was the protocol?, on the phone and in their place, each one was different and each depended on where and when you met up with them... when seeing Cowboy Dan back at Podunk U. i knew i had to block out a couple hours as his paranoia level was off the charts, probably a good thing for a small town but in his case it may have been a tad overboard but the fact was when he wasn't cracking up due to hard drug use and a crazy girlfriend one couldn't really argue with his methods... it kept him safe... just to get in the door one needed solid references, then you'd have to go with that reference a few times and hope Cowboy wasn't having a meltdown or a bad day cuz if the juju was off you may be exiled for life... or at least the foreseeable future... if one was deemed "cool" with Cowboy Dan he'd one day say to you that you could call whenever and you'd get his number... then you were in... little did he know at the time that this student would one day take his place... 

And i can't forget the uptight frat boy... he was a total comprehensive lesson in what not to do... definitely greedy... uptight and paranoid and in a way, now that he wasn't in college anymore, ill-suited to the game... in one sense that was a good thing because is was good cover, he was the last guy one would think was slinging but at the same time is nervousness came across as someone who was hiding something... i know that the way i looked had something to do with his sense of unease, a tall dreadlocked white dude rolling into his place with a backpack probably reeked of suspicious activity among his white Wonder Bread apartment building... luckily, as we know, he was kicked to the curb ASAP and years later i was laughing as he talked to me about hooking him up and the like... i didn't take much from him other than how not to act which wasn't hard cuz i was nothing like him... meaning a dork... 

When it came to Hippie Jack and Cocaine Mike that was like advanced studies in the art of slinging... things were different as they both lived in the city, on one of those streets where no one cares, where you can't really open a window cuz a main thoroughfare ran right outside it and during rush hour it was nothing but the smell of exhaust and the rumble of engines, a forgotten and neglected part of town for those who paid rent in cash and who landlords knew might take a flyer in the middle of the night for any number of reasons from not having the (back) rent to legal issues or the ones like Cocaine Mike fell into where it behooved him to get out of town or face the possibility of getting shot... granted in Hippie Jack's heyday aka the beginning of the end, the parking lot next to his place, some uniform company, was usually packed at 3am with those so inclined to watch the sunrise, meaning another gram or eight ball of blow, would be piled into his place reupping the nose candy... it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on but then again the cops didn't much care about what was going on in places like this until they got called... 

Old Jack and Mike were really case studies in what not to do... Cocaine Mike was practically a walking, talking lesson in what not to do and when his deal finally went belly up not one person in the know was shocked, he was almost universally despised by all who knew him and though i found him frightening to say the least i was learning about the world, seeing things in a whole different light, seeing a system that was racist and discriminatory... as for Hippie Jack, everyone like the guy as he was a most loveable fuck-up but by the end even his schtick was wearing thin on those down at old Mitchell's Tavern... but as the student i took it all in... i studied, i honed people skills and bullshit detecting... and once again i learned what not to do... it's where my philosophy on dealing came into focus even if i didn't know it a the time... how having a job helped, how steering clear of certain substances helped (though i can't say i didn't have my dalliances with things at the time), how it was important that any woman one was involved was trustworthy and one had to consider the possibility of what would happen if things fell apart, both in the relationship or businesswise... they also taught me to keep the fucking money straight if one wanted to last because in the end it was their financial fuck-ups that led to them both being exiled... (of course we can't forget that it was a bit of a foregone conclusion that Hippie Jack had let a known criminal, Cocaine Mike, see where he kept his money, which was nothing more than a jacket he never wore in his closet and that when Hippie Jack's place was robbed the only things taken were the money in his jacket pocket and some drugs...which is also why i never let Cocaine Mike know where i lived...)

This was my apprenticeship so to speak, these guys were my teachers, when it came to certain others in the annals of lounge history, people like Max and Ruby and Pizza Joe, they were connections, i didn't learn much of anything from them other than wonder why i didn't have a better connection... Max and Ruby were solid, Max another of the well off suburban kids with a good hook-up although his boy was a fucking nutcase and ultra paranoid but by the time i had come to that connection i knew the type well... it amazed me how so many rich kids dallied in the game, of course in one respect i knew why, it wasn't a way to make a living for them it was a way to be "cool", they did it until they got caught (in which case a wealthy family intervened and said rich kid got out of the game and got off or pleaded down to some slap on the wrist but understood full well from daddy that this was the one and only time this would happen, hence they'd be out of the inheritance... or got threatened by an actual hood or worse, usually a nice little beat down and realized it wasn't the "career" for them...) in my case i was nothing more than a kid/man with nowhere to go so i had to make it... this wasn't a fucking game it was my livelihood and i treated is as such, i've been told that i was a bit of a unicorn back then, a guy with a college degree who knew and understood the streets... book smart and street smart, the combination one needed to get by in this game especially on the street level... hell once i moved up to more like mid-level distributor i could have narrowed it down to a handful of guys but i didn't, didn't even think about it, it wasn't arrogance but confidence in my ability to handle a bustling business and that's what most would be hustlers never understand... it's a business... 

Seeing what passes as dealing to today actually blows my mind... these kids don't understand business, don't know how to cover their tracks, most of them accept fucking venmo or cashapp, a paper trail that no self respecting Gen X dealer would ever fucking do, it was cash and carry, no fucking checks and there is no fucking way, had it been available, that i'd have let someone wire me money, you fucking kidding me? now i hear about Plugs at parties doling out lines for $5-7 bucks and almost exclusively getting the money by app, so there's a 30-40 $5 transfers in a few hours? dumb as dirt... of course they do the same for larger amounts as well and either the Just Say No crowd and their elected officials have thrown in the towel or our society is finally fed up with tossing money at a war that was lost long ago... 

The weed game is for all intents dead... at least the one i knew, when the fucking cartels (a few years back) issue a press release stating that they are out of the weed business due to it not being profitable what else do you need to know? the legal industry had done it's thing but the run-off still makes it to places (see mainly red states) where there is still no legal or medical cannabis, it was like that here until Covid even with the dispensaries but after the pandemic most of the street dealers were done... the new thing was they young bucks getting med cards and then running to the dispensary and selling shit at a markup, problem was the margins are shit, at least to someone who knows what they're looking at but then again the risk/reward has basically bottomed out, the reward is practically nothing and the biggest risk is getting your card revoked and a slap on the wrist... ain't no one moving forty fucking pounds anymore... 

So where does this leave us? back in the spring of 2001, an unemployed derelict running a one man operation out of his second floor apartment, recently laid off due to his enterprising plan to get laid off all so he could drive across town to fuck a stripper in the morning who would then often make him an omelet before he walked out the door in order to go home and take a nap before rising again to do his job of supplying ganja to the masses... who'd then meet with the Weight Crew before heading off to the bar to hook up his nickel dimer clientele and drink and drug to the wee hours before driving his $400 car home, sleeping, and doing it all again the next day... thinking back on it all can bring both a smile and a shiver... i know luck played a part... but man, i don't know how to describe what this really felt like... the most apt words i can apply is, to steal from Johan Cruyff's total football... Total Freedom... i was using a system while living outside that same system... no boss, no chains, no one to answer to except myself... i ain't gonna lie... it was fucking glorious... now on with the show... 

And then came the silence...

 The lack of posts on the lounge over the last six odd months or so can be directly attributed to two things... the first of which started as something with the best of intentions, carried out with the same but not quite sure how it's landed, that was the revising and rewriting of the Veronica Chronicles in order to send them to the piece's namesake herself... the second of course was the death of a best friend, my brother, the brilliant Gulfboot Johnson... the first thing was a labor of love in the truest sense of the word, close to 80 pages and over 50,000 words in total i felt it was only right to get a copy of it to the person who was the main character and the muse behind the whole undertaking... the second thing felt like a sucker punch and thinking back to that day i still can't shake the sadness that my friend is gone... like i said before i still had things to tell him and now i won't get that chance... 

What started as a beautiful conversation has come to an end in what might be described as an icy silence... having tracked down Veronica's number i did nothing with it for close to two years, it sat scribbled on a scrap of paper, tucked in with a bunch of other scraps in my wallet, no name necessary just ten digits, many of those mushroom midnights were spent pondering what she was doing and where she was, if she was happy? there were thoughts of texting but the logic was best not to be drifting through the psychedelic wilderness, it was something i needed to do with a level head and so when the opportunity finally presented itself, when things seem to align, i typed out a message, a message in which i thought about every word and what i wanted to say hoping that the meaning and intent wasn't lost in translation... then i hit send and waited... what ensued has been documented previously, an absolutely brilliant conversation and a surprising comment from Veronica about what would happen if we saw each other, a distinct possibility as by chance she was less than two hours from where i lived... but as usual things don't always go as planned and over the next few days that rush of blood to both our heads made things a bit more complicated than they needed to be, when she stated she didn't want to see me and that it was a bad idea (and truth be told she was most likely correct) the bruised ego (that i've been working on shedding) did not understand and so i lobbied, albeit unsuccessfully, for a few days before accepting the situation... luckily a friend of mine, a woman who had read the story, pointed out that maybe my contacting her, while a rush at first had also simultaneously opened up all the old wounds... and the fact is that never crossed my mind as of course i was thinking only of myself and how awesome it would be to see her while believing it would be the same for her.... but it wouldn't be... 

This point would be driven home a month or so later when i got a late night text asking why she was always "the other woman and never the woman"... suddenly what my friend had said became crystal clear... i had opened old wounds, my contacting her now the catalyst for her looking back on things and wondering why now, twenty-five years later she was still alone while the man who didn't choose her sat in some nice suburban home, playing house dad while admitting he was in a sham of a relationship that had more to do with business than respect and love... (another very salient point was my friend pointing out to me that it seemed to her that Veronica would have had supported me, had my back, more than the BW ever did... Gulfboot himself in the months before he passed had stated he always thought V. was a better fit for me than the BW... and while they are both most likely correct the reality was what it was/is...) 

And so i spent months on end retyping and revising in order to send her the story... she wanted a copy... and i wanted to oblige her... it took some time as i worked my way through it... the small font on the printout i was working from straining my eyes, revising and reworking, the fact i couldn't exactly do the work with anyone around as it's a story that most likely would land me in hot water... years ago, hell decades ago, the BW had rifled through my papers, we were living at the beach in a shitty apartment and on the cusp of going our separate ways, i was banging out poems and stories on an old manual typewriter and would leave the work in a folder to which one day she went through and read and pointed to a story about a man and his ex reconnecting... yes one could say it was "autobiographical fiction", one could say it was a violation of trust to read what i wrote uninvited or one could say i should have locked it away, doesn't matter but what was born from that was a conversation with the BW (years ago) about what i write and how and where i mine the ideas from and that not all of it was 100% true... what resulted from it was her then discounting my writing as a whole, in fact she's read nothing of what i've written in decades and has shown no interest even though she knows i still do it... that said, i wouldn't get an honest reading of it or opinion of it as she would mainly nitpick not about the quality or lack thereof but more about the subject matter... in fact the last time i was talking about it to someone and she had overheard her response was "i don't know who would want to read that sort of stuff..." it's easy to see how much love and support i get here at home and one will need a Sham-Wow to clean up the sarcasm dripping off that statement... 

In an effort to get it done before i left for my favorite island i was getting up early and banging away at the keyboard in the early morning silence... once finished i re-read it, printed it out, had it bound at the local Office Depot, included a soundtrack page with the songs that accompanied the posts on the lounge, a thumb drive with some 25-30 albums on it (with many of the songs from the soundtrack), a book because in that first conversation she had asked me to recommend her a book, she then elaborated and stated not one i liked but one for her, so i put some thought into it and then went on to my favorite non-rainforest bookselling site and got a copy (The Dirty Havana Trilogy by Cuban writer Pedro Juan Guitterez) and a letter that apologized for any crossed wires, for the situation i had and then did create, and stating it was never my intention to restart anything i just wanted to see how she was and that ultimately i understood where things stood... not so much a goodbye but putting any sort of, for lack of a better word, romantic aspirations to bed, that we had experienced the 1.0 version 25 years before and then the 2.0 version 25 years later and that after all that we had come out the other side friends... or at least i think we did... 

On returning to the States i did my usual... we walked in the door from the airport and i began doing laundry and putting things away from the trip... in the morning it was back to the usual grind in my role as the hired help, off to the grocery store, more laundry, cleaning, hanging with the cats and once i was caught up and settled in after a few days i sent her a text to see if she had read the story and what she thought of  it... and nothing... i waited a few more days and sent another one... and nothing... when her birthday rolled around a few days ago i sent one more wishing her a happy birthday and asking if she had any thoughts she'd like to share about what i'd sent... once more, radio silence... i won't assume anything as to how she liked or despised what i sent, honestly i don't know how she feels about it but as my friend said, maybe she doesn't either, reading a story where you recognize yourself, seeing all those events play out, the intensity of those events and how they affected your life, getting into the mind of the other person involved and for the first time seeing what he really thought and how it once again brought back the hurt, the anger, the confusion of the whole situation and why it played out the way it did... or maybe in the end she thought, what a fucking coward, he never had the balls to follow his heart but instead only the money, only his mind... what she probably didn't realize was that unlike her, who came from a stable and loving family with parents married over fifty years, i came from a broken home where i saw my father duped and vowed never to end up like that, to keep my guard up so to speak... yet it's quite debatable how that worked out for me... then again it's not like i learned nothing from my mother... 

So now i'll wait... as a writer when you send someone something to read you always want to get some feedback as to what they thought especially when one of the "characters" is based off that person... then again all those things above are valid... maybe it's nothing but a painful reminder of where her and i are both at and what could have been... but i can't worry about what could have been as i can only worry about the now... though i understand the sound i hear is the final nails sealing that coffin shut as the curtain comes down and the lights go up... is there a bit of sadness? absolutely... is there regret? no... was there joy? definitely...  life is a beautiful thing that involves a gamut of emotions all of which should be experienced and this whole things has done just that... and maybe the melancholy that has sorta draped itself over the whole thing is more to do with the recognition that it's over... in the truest sense of the word... and that's okay too... as the esteemed Dan Bejar once sang, all good things must come to an end/ the bad ones just go on forever... and ain't that the truth...