for once

Tom Petty's “So You Wanna be a Rock'n'Roll Star?” is blasting out of the jukebox as he enters the bar. A cloud of smoke billows around his face as the wind from the open door hits the stagnant atmosphere of the place.

“It feels like home again,” he says to himself.

Three weeks ago, time had kind of stopped.

His dog died first. Ol’ Sidney was just 9 years old when he ran into the street one times too many. That hound had dodged many bullets in his life, but he wasn’t about to dodge one more on that lazy Thursday night.

Two days later, at exactly 6:27 a.m. his boss called to let him know that his job didn’t exist anymore. In reality, as a newspaper reporter, his job hadn’t existed for quite a while. Instead, he was a videographer/paginator/photographer/copy editor/multimedia tweeter-facebooker who every once in a long bit got to actually write something about what was going on in the world. He wondered aloud quite often in the office the last time his pen actually hit paper.

After a three-day bender with an old college buddy, Josh, which saw them aimlessly drive – West, then South – and end up in Sierra Blanca, Texas, he got a call saying his credit card was maxed out.

“Time to go,” he said with a shrug and a pat on Josh’s back.

“Why?” Josh asks as he popped open another Budweiser.

“Money’s gone.”

“Bummer, man. I got the next round.”

The next day, they headed back to Ol’ Virgin-ia. Hung over, but happier.

However, on the following Thursday, the last bomb dropped – Amber, his stripper-turned-accountant girlfriend had decided Randy was a bum and left him for a slide guitar player for one of his favorite bands.

“Can’t get much worse than that,” Randy’s sister had said to him the next day.

And she was right. Since then, nothing had gotten any worse. Not better either, but one takes what one is given. Learned that sitting at the dinner table with my father. You put the Brussel sprouts on the floor for the dog to eat, she ain’t gonna eat them either. Why? Because they’re nasty fucking little pieces of green awfulness.

Once the dog puked it back up with a loud “Ack, ack … Hawfffffff, the smack on the back of the head and then the belt coming off wouldn’t be too far away.

“God damn son! You know how much money I have to spend feeding you? And then you just give it to the dog!”

Always in the back of my mind the thought of “isn’t mom really buying all of this?, was always there, but I never dared utter them. Fear can do that to a person.

“Sooner or later I’ve got to stop thinking about Brussel sprouts and finding a job,” I said to Manny, the bartender here at my favorite watering hole.

“Yeah, but we know that ain’t going to happen for at least another month,” he replied, always rubbing a glass with that nasty old hand towel. “You’ve got what, six weeks of unemployment left? Plus, they gave you a two-month severance package. I know you haven’t blown through that yet, have you?”

He looked at Manny. Some looks are better than words, and this was certainly one of them.

“On the house, man. On the house,” Manny said handing him mostly full bottle of J&B.

“With more friends like you …” he said smiling and drinking.

“I’d be completely out of business …”

“Fair enough.”

Thirty three minutes late, the bottle was done, and so we he. A quick glance around the place told him that staying wouldn’t hurt, but leaving wouldn’t either.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Ramirez,” Randy said ducking out the door. A Nerf football buzzed just inches away from his face as the door slammed. The orange poofy thing sat on the sidewalk teetering back and forth as he walked away.

“Missed me by that much!” he thought to himself in his best “Get Smart” Agent 86 voice.

“That was a pretty bad impression,” he heard from a nearby coffee shop table.

He glanced at the source of the voice and was pleasantly surprised it came from Amber.

“Never thought I’d see you again,” he said.

“Neither did I,” she said. “But Josh called me. Told me what you and him have been up to. Well, you mostly now as he’s in India right now.

“Yeah, making more money this week than I’ll make in three years.”

“You chose this life.”

“Did I? It’s hard for me to remember what I chose and what chose me anymore.”

“Well, let’s get you home. You need a bath.”

“Sponge?”

“Dream on, fella. My sponge days are long behind me.”

“Seriously? Those words?”

“It’s all I know fella.”

He loved the way she called him fella. She knew that. I guess she really was trying to make me feel better. For once.