It's a Wonderful Life

I'm adjusting kids, don't get me wrong i miss my dirty and littered backstreets of the city proper but i'm adjusting to life in the tree lined and deer flecked drives of the burbs, of course four pints and 15mg of sister morphine in and maybe i'm just being romantic, but as an old, wise bartender once told me he said, "you're the kind of guy that anywhere you lay your hat will be your home, you just make it that way", and you know maybe i didn't want to pat myself on the back and admit the truth but i'm starting to realize maybe he was right, even out in the lily white suburbs, i've become a known face at the Plastic Paddy, a place inhabited by rich assholes and suburban hipsters and in the employ of many twentysomethings but already i'm stood a free pint or two each time i walk in, i'm handed shots of good Irish whiskey on the gratis for no other reason i can figure than the absolute beauty of my large and greying sideburns, and tonight as i sat and listened to some young Asian kid in a Chelski kit no less prattle on about sports and claim he has a photographic memory i couldn't help but smile at the fact that even though the staff knew his name he paid for all his drinks...

and i had the day off and me and Nick Disaster went to breakfast and listened to the Happy Mondays and the girl came home and i picked up the I-mac and we had milkshakes as daddy searched for certain x-mas toys as if his very life depended on it, and let me tell you this as i sit here in all my silly and unkept ways, if you would've told me at 20 or 25 or 30 or even 35 that i would have enjoyed being a dad this much i might have shrugged and laughed it off but fuck if i can't sit here now and do nothing but think of those boys, my fucking boys, the mere thought of them makes that cold deep pit in my stomach evaporate, turning my once cold and dank heart into this big bulging type thing, makes me fucking smile, makes me glad to know that i was fucking wrong about how i would take to this task and how i would gladly give up my life for their happiness, me the most self centered prick on the planet, the two little set of eyes teach me more and more every day, teach about things i've lost or forgot or never knew and goddammit if i'm not grateful for every fucking second...

of course i couldn't really attribute the title to this post if it wasn't for the holy trinity of Gulfboot, Furious and the Kid, three friends, counted on one hand and pretty much all a man could ask for, many faces will drift in and out of your life but i've been lucky enough to find a few that will remain constant, even if we don't live on the same street or state or even fucking continent, my brother Gulfboot came for a visit recently, a short one but one nonetheless and on his last night here i sat in the Plastic Paddy with him and the Furious one and was nothing more or less than a very happy man, the only thing missing was the Kid and if i had the money i would have sent him a plane ticket to be at the meeting of derelict philosophers, so as you see i'm getting back to where i belong, just with a bit more room to roam, who knows maybe one of these days i'll even start typing again but if i do or if i don't it doesn't matter, the demons may still creep around the edges and i may still piss and moan but these days it's a wonderful life even with my melancholy sunglasses on, i got nothing to complain about...