Once Around the Weekend

They always tell you things come in three's or go in circles, i think that was like the whole fucking point of the Lion King if i'm not mistaken and today i was sitting at the park watching the boyos go ape shit all over the place and enjoying the sun beating down on my face, out of the corner of my eye i saw this guy i thought i knew, knew from what now feels like an entire lifetime ago, and it struck how when i was a kid i used to walk past the bars and gaze in wonder at the dimly lit places, hear the music and smell the booze and cigarettes, and then i got to be a teenager, a tall teenager who could grow a damn fine 5 o' clock shadow and soon i was getting into a few of these places and then i turned legal age and for a long time the damn well were my church, a place so holy that i felt the need to go and worship every day, sometimes multiple times depending on the mood and finances... and this from someone who freely admits that booze was always secondary to the drugs, but the atmosphere and the anthropology were second to none, i learned so much in those well spent hours in various pubs, in various cities, countries, backwoods, suburbs...

And yet these days it's back to the beginning, back to not really giving a fuck if i get there or not, back to drinking in my basement or at my friend's place and driving by the neon and gazing in but not really wanting to venture towards the door,  as if i  was a teenager again...  and i know that the main reason is that i like to be home and close to the boyos and for a guy who put running the streets and practically living in bars at a premium it gives me a good chuckle these days when i realize where i'm at now...

And so this guy i knew from another life and i spent a half hour or so cocking our heads and trying to figure out if we knew each other and at one point he walked over and said, "Kono?" and i laughed and said yup and we struck up a conversation about school districts and real estate taxes and the kind of shit you'd expect from two guys standing in a suburban park... and it probably struck us both as surreal, of course not as surreal as the day we walked into Lamaze class and saw each other but back then we were different guys...

You see back then i was on what could only be politely called a serious coke bender, yes kids you may ask how serious could it have been? but when you begin talking years and not weeks or day or months you get the gist, i'm guessing it was close to four and like most benders it starts all innocently enough and then soon snowballs into the abominable snow dude, but that is a tale for some other day, and so here were two former fuck-ups, the last guys at the party, the ones who leave the bar and head straight to the after hours club, the ones you end up sitting on the front porch with or in smoky apartments while the sun comes up and you haven't been to bed yet, there we were talking about school districts and real estate taxes and then we went our separate ways and i came home and threw Mr. Westerberg on the turntable and just like happy accidents should happen, side 2 song 2 kinda sums up how i feel these days, and it feels alright...