Tonight i'm going to sit here and drink this cup of coffee and i'm going to tell you a story, a story about a summer, see if the summer of 93 were the halcyon days then those simmering months of 95 were the summer of my discontent, i was holding shit together with duct tape and shoestrings, a large hairy boy in the body of a man trying desperately to make sense out of this world, trying more than anything to hang on and make it to the end while everything around me crumbled and burned mainly with my hand on the match and the hammer... and so it goes...
That spring i had dropped out of graduate school and found myself wandering the streets of a small Pennsylvania town, i was hiding out in the library and washing dishes off the books and selling the shittiest weed i'd ever seen all in order to survive, a Raskolnikov walking the streets thinking of murder and the sweet release, grad school having been a colossal failure, a place i found stifled of any creativity or original thought, my loans fucked and me broke i was holding on for the beach and the beauty of the waves, holding out for Ocean City, the cesspool that i was hoping was my savior and with every last penny i had i got a place and made it to May and left the little Pa. town for good, disenchanted with everything and everyone i knew i moved in with a bunch of people and a girl, moved into a place that would be condemned before the middle of June, another tenement run by another slum lord, more interested in the dollar than building codes and safety, in the zoo known as downtown OC, a stones throw from the beach, it was in this apartment in my shared shit room that i would sit on the floor and cry when all i had left in the world was 4 dollars, a fucked relationship and a roof over my head until at least September, the sum total of my life a trunk of books, a suitcase full of clothes, a beat up radio and some records, at times that list would have made me smile but at almost 25 it seemed i'd had enough, the last 8 years spent wandering having taken there toll on me, my saving grace was work (i can't fucking believe i wrote that)...
I worked at the Fry Hut at the pier and the boys of the Fry Hut were a brotherhood, a collection of fuck-ups, drunks and drug addicts and half-wits and the occasional college kid, we worked everyday in extreme heat making fries for the masses, i also worked next door at the open pit beef restaurant and between the two i managed to keep myself fed and ended up working 80 plus hour weeks, no days off, it was early doors when the hinges started to come off my relationship and at one point i walked into a shelf because i was that lost in thought about how fucked i was, how the thought of being womanless and homeless were looming, the shelf was at nearly shoulder level which meant that i was physically slumped as i watched the duct tape come loose and the shoestrings untie, a knock that left me with stitches and a concussion i hit it so hard, a knock that sent me into such a rage that it took three guys to hold me down in order for my boss to look at it... it was also at this place early on where she of the white-hot blinding love came walking around the corner of the building, we hadn't seen each other in almost two years and it was at this point that i left my post in front of my six fryers and ran to the back to scoop her up in hug and swing her around, me covered in grease and sweat and her just being beautiful, it was the first time i had smiled in a week or two and as we stood there beaming at each other we made plans to meet and have a drink, plans that would turn into us sitting on a bench by the bay and spilling our hearts out to each other, all the hopes and thoughts and dreams that we'd had since we last met, the bench i would steal away to and write in a yellow steno notebook when i had the chance, then bench where i watched the sun set over America, sitting there listening to the gulls and smelling the salt air and thinking about a better time and a better place and better me but this is a fable for another time...
So there i was, down and out in Ocean City, compounding problems by creating more for myself and since it was hot in the Fry Hut we worked an hour and got an hour off and were paid for all of it, the famous Cork Bar was right around the corner and those of us of age would often go over and drink on our breaks and after work, the beer was served in an icy mug and was so cold that a thin layer of ice would form at the top. I was broke but still managed to stay drunk most of the time, spending money i couldn't afford to spend, being bought beers by friends, co-workers, bosses and bartenders, as the one bartender told me one time when i was asked to open a tab to settle up when i got paid, he said "you got an old soul man. whens payday". Tomorrow i mumbled and he looked at me and said "dont' worry about it" and proceeded to let me drink for free the rest of the afternoon, it was like my second home and every time i worked nights i closed the place because i didn't want to go home, at times it seemed i didn't much want to live, which brings me to the title of this post...
You see i was a guy who grew up listening to Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Joy Division, The Smiths, Jane's Addiction and the like, i was a fucking hipster before they coined the word but this bar didn't have any of that on the jukebox, not that i had any money to play the jukebox, basically i was at the mercy of the other patrons and since this was the beach it was a jukebox stuffed with Buffet, the Dead, the Eagles and a bunch of shit but i kept hearing these songs by this one band, a band i wouldn't even give the time of day to normally but since i was here so much i heard the whole album over and over because though i think it had come out the year before the local natives loved to play it and sitting on your own drinking while your life falls apart around you sometimes you need something to hold onto, in fact it was then that i decided i would no longer worry about what people thought about what i listened to because literally this album may have saved my fucking life, August and Everything After, the fucking Counting Crows, i mean even i thought i was a pussy because i liked it so much but day after day i would sit drunk and listen to the words, understand why the girl in Round Here felt like jumping cuz at times i felt like walking out to the Rt. 50 bridge, blow a kiss to the blood red sunset and never hear my splash, i understood that maybe i could be the Rain King when i was drunk and high and ranting about something to a friend or a strange tourist girl, the sadness i felt when Sullivan Street came on and i had to think about my walk back to my crowded, condemned apartment... it was an album that ran the gamut of emotions and at the time i was running that same gamut on an hourly basis, a fucking wreck still looking for that savior because the waves hadn't saved me and of course there was the last song on that album...
It wasn't played often but i heard it a few times and then one day i actually broke down and put a dollar in the jukebox and played it twice in a row to the consternation of all the other late night drinkers, of course it was raining that night and i sat and listened to the words and my fucking eyes were getting misty, it's raining in Baltimore/ 50 miles east/ where i need you/ no one's around/ i need a phone call/ i need raincoat/ i need a big love... fuck i needed all of those things and i had none, no one to call, no one to love basically cuz i couldn't even love myself at that point, and then of course there was the end, there's things i remember/ things i forget/ i miss you/ i guess that i should/ three thousand five hundred miles away/ what would you change/ if you could... those fucking words, i thought those words were about me, i wasn't singing them to some lover i was singing them to me, i missed me, i missed smiling and living and though i had quite possibly achieved my dream, the dream i had five summers earlier of living like Hank and not giving a fuck i don't think i quite wanted that dream anymore, i wanted my family back and the girl back and a place to live that was quiet, where i could lounge in the window with my cats and daydream about nothing, i didn't want this fucking months long drunk, i didn't want to self destruct but of course i didn't know how to stop it, so i kept drinking and working and showing up every day and taking my seat in hopes that someone would play the songs i wanted to hear, songs that were saving my life...
And so the summer was winding down and i was still a beaten wreck and of course if one really wants to be a professional fuck up one must try with all his might and so i picked up a new habit, began scoring shit smack from a friend driving down from Baltimore in order to kill any feeling i might have had left, it didn't work but at least i felt better for awhile, things were still crumbling but the duct tape and shoestrings were somehow still holding it together however loosely, it was one of my last nights in Ocean City and i was up on 8th St. high on dope and drinking Jager, a deadly combination except for the fact the dope was ridiculously impure, i was waiting for Capt. Cock, a friend of mine who unbeknown to me had earlier in the day been picked up by the police by request of his mother and driven to the psych ward, he said he needed to see me cuz i'd be the only one who would understand, when i finally got the news that night i was crushed, literally and figuratively, i was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the only person who really wanted to hang out with me was clinically whacked, i walked out of the bar and right into my friend Ray...
Ray was a fucking gem, 6'2 and strong as iron, a working class kid putting himself through school, he was one of the few people i wouldn't want to fuck with in the town of Ocean City, his roommates were all frat boys and they saw me and were joking around and Ray noticed i was a bit out of sorts so he steered me back to his apartment where he and his roommates and a bunch of pretty young co-eds were going to smoke some pot, of course i went with them and we ended up in the attic passing the pipe while i listened to the mindless chatter, the girls all pretty and smelling sweet and the boys all tan and buff from their workouts, most of them had spent the summer working in bars, the glitterati of OC, Ray worked with me at the Fry Hut, they all knew each other and as i sat there i wondered what it was like to be them, to be so carefree, to be down here for fun, to go back to the lush green lawns of the suburbs before they drove to whatever expensive eastern seaboard university they attended, i sat there with my large dreadlocks and cut off shorts, in shoes that were falling apart, i sat there because i had nowhere else to go, because i was down here to try and survive, the girls i don't think even knew i was there until Ray said, "he's the best writer i've ever read", Ray had read some of my shit one day when we were all getting drunk at a co-workers apt., i don't think he read a whole lot, they all stopped and looked at me and i sat there staring blankly, barely able to remain conscious with my pinned out eyes and boozy breath, "he writes about the fucking working class, real people, not like you yuppies in training" and then he grinned and they all laughed and the conversation started and i couldn't understand a word and before i knew it they were filing down the stairs and heading to some club, they asked if i wanted to come but i couldn't even stand up, i asked Ray if i could just sit there for a few minutes and leave when i was able and he said it was no problem and they left and i fell back and stared at the ceiling and listened to my heartbeat...
I don't know how much time passed, don't know if i was awake the whole time or not but when i became aware of my surroundings i staggered down the steps and into the empty apartment, i stumbled towards the door and saw a rack of cd's, my first thought was to take the whole thing and sell them for cash but i figured they'd know who did that, it wasn't that i wanted to fuck over my friend it was just that i was fucked and life was fucked and i didn't really fucking care anymore, it was then that i saw it, third shelf down, i knew it wasn't Ray's cuz he was a metal-head, knew one of his roommates probably played it to bed sorority sisters, i looked around and listened and then plucked it from the shelf and stuffed it into my shorts, August and Everything After, at some point the title even had become a mantra, my thinking being that after August things would get better, August and everything after, life would be good, shit wouldn't be crumbling, i teetered down the steps and vomited Jaegermeister on a back alley, i was shaking, it was the first week in September.
That spring i had dropped out of graduate school and found myself wandering the streets of a small Pennsylvania town, i was hiding out in the library and washing dishes off the books and selling the shittiest weed i'd ever seen all in order to survive, a Raskolnikov walking the streets thinking of murder and the sweet release, grad school having been a colossal failure, a place i found stifled of any creativity or original thought, my loans fucked and me broke i was holding on for the beach and the beauty of the waves, holding out for Ocean City, the cesspool that i was hoping was my savior and with every last penny i had i got a place and made it to May and left the little Pa. town for good, disenchanted with everything and everyone i knew i moved in with a bunch of people and a girl, moved into a place that would be condemned before the middle of June, another tenement run by another slum lord, more interested in the dollar than building codes and safety, in the zoo known as downtown OC, a stones throw from the beach, it was in this apartment in my shared shit room that i would sit on the floor and cry when all i had left in the world was 4 dollars, a fucked relationship and a roof over my head until at least September, the sum total of my life a trunk of books, a suitcase full of clothes, a beat up radio and some records, at times that list would have made me smile but at almost 25 it seemed i'd had enough, the last 8 years spent wandering having taken there toll on me, my saving grace was work (i can't fucking believe i wrote that)...
I worked at the Fry Hut at the pier and the boys of the Fry Hut were a brotherhood, a collection of fuck-ups, drunks and drug addicts and half-wits and the occasional college kid, we worked everyday in extreme heat making fries for the masses, i also worked next door at the open pit beef restaurant and between the two i managed to keep myself fed and ended up working 80 plus hour weeks, no days off, it was early doors when the hinges started to come off my relationship and at one point i walked into a shelf because i was that lost in thought about how fucked i was, how the thought of being womanless and homeless were looming, the shelf was at nearly shoulder level which meant that i was physically slumped as i watched the duct tape come loose and the shoestrings untie, a knock that left me with stitches and a concussion i hit it so hard, a knock that sent me into such a rage that it took three guys to hold me down in order for my boss to look at it... it was also at this place early on where she of the white-hot blinding love came walking around the corner of the building, we hadn't seen each other in almost two years and it was at this point that i left my post in front of my six fryers and ran to the back to scoop her up in hug and swing her around, me covered in grease and sweat and her just being beautiful, it was the first time i had smiled in a week or two and as we stood there beaming at each other we made plans to meet and have a drink, plans that would turn into us sitting on a bench by the bay and spilling our hearts out to each other, all the hopes and thoughts and dreams that we'd had since we last met, the bench i would steal away to and write in a yellow steno notebook when i had the chance, then bench where i watched the sun set over America, sitting there listening to the gulls and smelling the salt air and thinking about a better time and a better place and better me but this is a fable for another time...
So there i was, down and out in Ocean City, compounding problems by creating more for myself and since it was hot in the Fry Hut we worked an hour and got an hour off and were paid for all of it, the famous Cork Bar was right around the corner and those of us of age would often go over and drink on our breaks and after work, the beer was served in an icy mug and was so cold that a thin layer of ice would form at the top. I was broke but still managed to stay drunk most of the time, spending money i couldn't afford to spend, being bought beers by friends, co-workers, bosses and bartenders, as the one bartender told me one time when i was asked to open a tab to settle up when i got paid, he said "you got an old soul man. whens payday". Tomorrow i mumbled and he looked at me and said "dont' worry about it" and proceeded to let me drink for free the rest of the afternoon, it was like my second home and every time i worked nights i closed the place because i didn't want to go home, at times it seemed i didn't much want to live, which brings me to the title of this post...
You see i was a guy who grew up listening to Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Joy Division, The Smiths, Jane's Addiction and the like, i was a fucking hipster before they coined the word but this bar didn't have any of that on the jukebox, not that i had any money to play the jukebox, basically i was at the mercy of the other patrons and since this was the beach it was a jukebox stuffed with Buffet, the Dead, the Eagles and a bunch of shit but i kept hearing these songs by this one band, a band i wouldn't even give the time of day to normally but since i was here so much i heard the whole album over and over because though i think it had come out the year before the local natives loved to play it and sitting on your own drinking while your life falls apart around you sometimes you need something to hold onto, in fact it was then that i decided i would no longer worry about what people thought about what i listened to because literally this album may have saved my fucking life, August and Everything After, the fucking Counting Crows, i mean even i thought i was a pussy because i liked it so much but day after day i would sit drunk and listen to the words, understand why the girl in Round Here felt like jumping cuz at times i felt like walking out to the Rt. 50 bridge, blow a kiss to the blood red sunset and never hear my splash, i understood that maybe i could be the Rain King when i was drunk and high and ranting about something to a friend or a strange tourist girl, the sadness i felt when Sullivan Street came on and i had to think about my walk back to my crowded, condemned apartment... it was an album that ran the gamut of emotions and at the time i was running that same gamut on an hourly basis, a fucking wreck still looking for that savior because the waves hadn't saved me and of course there was the last song on that album...
It wasn't played often but i heard it a few times and then one day i actually broke down and put a dollar in the jukebox and played it twice in a row to the consternation of all the other late night drinkers, of course it was raining that night and i sat and listened to the words and my fucking eyes were getting misty, it's raining in Baltimore/ 50 miles east/ where i need you/ no one's around/ i need a phone call/ i need raincoat/ i need a big love... fuck i needed all of those things and i had none, no one to call, no one to love basically cuz i couldn't even love myself at that point, and then of course there was the end, there's things i remember/ things i forget/ i miss you/ i guess that i should/ three thousand five hundred miles away/ what would you change/ if you could... those fucking words, i thought those words were about me, i wasn't singing them to some lover i was singing them to me, i missed me, i missed smiling and living and though i had quite possibly achieved my dream, the dream i had five summers earlier of living like Hank and not giving a fuck i don't think i quite wanted that dream anymore, i wanted my family back and the girl back and a place to live that was quiet, where i could lounge in the window with my cats and daydream about nothing, i didn't want this fucking months long drunk, i didn't want to self destruct but of course i didn't know how to stop it, so i kept drinking and working and showing up every day and taking my seat in hopes that someone would play the songs i wanted to hear, songs that were saving my life...
And so the summer was winding down and i was still a beaten wreck and of course if one really wants to be a professional fuck up one must try with all his might and so i picked up a new habit, began scoring shit smack from a friend driving down from Baltimore in order to kill any feeling i might have had left, it didn't work but at least i felt better for awhile, things were still crumbling but the duct tape and shoestrings were somehow still holding it together however loosely, it was one of my last nights in Ocean City and i was up on 8th St. high on dope and drinking Jager, a deadly combination except for the fact the dope was ridiculously impure, i was waiting for Capt. Cock, a friend of mine who unbeknown to me had earlier in the day been picked up by the police by request of his mother and driven to the psych ward, he said he needed to see me cuz i'd be the only one who would understand, when i finally got the news that night i was crushed, literally and figuratively, i was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the only person who really wanted to hang out with me was clinically whacked, i walked out of the bar and right into my friend Ray...
Ray was a fucking gem, 6'2 and strong as iron, a working class kid putting himself through school, he was one of the few people i wouldn't want to fuck with in the town of Ocean City, his roommates were all frat boys and they saw me and were joking around and Ray noticed i was a bit out of sorts so he steered me back to his apartment where he and his roommates and a bunch of pretty young co-eds were going to smoke some pot, of course i went with them and we ended up in the attic passing the pipe while i listened to the mindless chatter, the girls all pretty and smelling sweet and the boys all tan and buff from their workouts, most of them had spent the summer working in bars, the glitterati of OC, Ray worked with me at the Fry Hut, they all knew each other and as i sat there i wondered what it was like to be them, to be so carefree, to be down here for fun, to go back to the lush green lawns of the suburbs before they drove to whatever expensive eastern seaboard university they attended, i sat there with my large dreadlocks and cut off shorts, in shoes that were falling apart, i sat there because i had nowhere else to go, because i was down here to try and survive, the girls i don't think even knew i was there until Ray said, "he's the best writer i've ever read", Ray had read some of my shit one day when we were all getting drunk at a co-workers apt., i don't think he read a whole lot, they all stopped and looked at me and i sat there staring blankly, barely able to remain conscious with my pinned out eyes and boozy breath, "he writes about the fucking working class, real people, not like you yuppies in training" and then he grinned and they all laughed and the conversation started and i couldn't understand a word and before i knew it they were filing down the stairs and heading to some club, they asked if i wanted to come but i couldn't even stand up, i asked Ray if i could just sit there for a few minutes and leave when i was able and he said it was no problem and they left and i fell back and stared at the ceiling and listened to my heartbeat...
I don't know how much time passed, don't know if i was awake the whole time or not but when i became aware of my surroundings i staggered down the steps and into the empty apartment, i stumbled towards the door and saw a rack of cd's, my first thought was to take the whole thing and sell them for cash but i figured they'd know who did that, it wasn't that i wanted to fuck over my friend it was just that i was fucked and life was fucked and i didn't really fucking care anymore, it was then that i saw it, third shelf down, i knew it wasn't Ray's cuz he was a metal-head, knew one of his roommates probably played it to bed sorority sisters, i looked around and listened and then plucked it from the shelf and stuffed it into my shorts, August and Everything After, at some point the title even had become a mantra, my thinking being that after August things would get better, August and everything after, life would be good, shit wouldn't be crumbling, i teetered down the steps and vomited Jaegermeister on a back alley, i was shaking, it was the first week in September.
15 comments:
i want to hug that lost boy... since i can't do that, i think i'll go downstairs and hug the one who came home today instead.
"It's 4.30 am on a Tuesday, it doesn't get much worse than this. In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle of these lives which are completely meaningless.....
Asleep in perfect blue buildings beside the apple green sea. Gonna get me a little oblivion baby try to keep myself away from me..."
It's hard to pick a favourite song from this album but for me it might be Perfect Blue Buildings.
I never listened to Hootie and the Blowfish. Are they good?
Do you remember Pizza Tugos in Ocean City?!
You are a damned fine writer, Kono. Period.
Daisy- hug him once for me too, then point him two posts down, i'd hate to use me as an example but with a little luck we can come out the other side.
Nurse- that songs a gem and the lyrics were spot on back than for me.
Anon- two words, Spin Doctors.
Sybil- Oh yeah, Pizza Tugos, home of the world's worst radio ads. And thank you for the kind words.
i have some thoughts on this. perhaps i'll share them later....
Thanks for sharing this link, but argg it seems to be offline... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my message if you do!
I would appreciate if someone here at asshatlounge.blogspot.com could repost it.
Thanks,
William
Twin- you know i'd like to hear what you have to say about this post don't you. Good or bad, that's why it's up, you know you have carte blance here Twin.
ah fuck. i don't know. i was probably one of those "yuppies" you looked upon with great disdain. didn't matter that nothing was given to me... but this isn't about me. ;-)
i think it's interesting. ironic. that as a writer...a damn gifted teller...you considered Mr. Duritz only capable of bleating to the frat masses. break down the bare bones of his prose...eh... what do i know. an english major that was never going to write anything creative. i am truly awed jealous enamored of the likes of you. you that is able to spin. simple words that become...oh so much more.
keep'em coming...
btw: August & Everything After...completely encapsulates my leaving & divorcing the artist.
...I need a big love.
Damn i love you Twin but i think you may have mis-interpreted some of that or maybe i just wasn't as clear as i'd like it, Ray was a good friend and those were his friends, Ray was a working class kid who wasn't given anything, kind of like this surfer girl i know so i don't think i would've looked upon you with disdain at all, quite the opposite in fact and the part about them bedding sorority sisters, well that stems from the frat boys not understanding Mr. Duritz,how could they? to me they were all so comfortable and hell if things had gone different in my life i may have been one of them, not likely but possible. i was just a hipster asshole who didn't think i'd like his music until i sat and listened to it over and over and over and in the end he gave me some hope which at that point was something i desperately needed, hope that i could pull out of the mess that was me, i was the guy sitting at the bar lost in thought every time i heard those songs and like many of the characters in them i was dreaming of escape, of something better, of oblivion, when i think back to that summer those songs are some of my best memories, at the time i just thought i was the only one who really got 'em, so i lifted a record that i still have to this day, the exact same copy...
and thanks for taking the time to think about this and respond, i truly appreciate it and value what you have to say, someday if i ever publish that book i'm gonna come out to the Pacific NW and personally hand you a copy.
and i'm curious about that last bit, leaving and divorcing the artist? was that a person? was it you? was it the dream? can/ would you elaborate?
i've re-read this post several times now. clearly...i shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard when my emotions are charged. (i made the mistake of pulling out the album & listening to it...which i hadn't done for several years now) the artist...is the v-man's dad. for 16 years he was my best friend...my knight in shining armor. till i realized that knights in shining armor forget...and fade away. now he's just an asshole. ;-)
my apologies for the misinterpretation....
Twin- no apologies necessary, leave it to this derelict to open old wounds, i should probably be the one apologizing and i thank you for sharing what that record means to you, funny how certain records/songs can throw you right back into something. I haven't listened to Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams in almost 8 years cuz of what i associate it with...
This story makes me feel good. It's beautiful, and it allows me maybe thirty or forty-five seconds of psychological pleasure.
I'm not sure why.
This was a real treat.
Your taking me back with you makes me remember being there too.
I don't know. Every part of it, it's like I'm reading my own memories.
JMH- it is my pleasure to give you 30 to 45 seconds of pleasure... let me re-phrase that.
Blues- Gracias Ms. Blues, gracias.
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