Sunday, May 27, 2012

using johnny thunders in conversation


I took a swig from the bottle – Jimmie Johnson’s Moonshine – NASCAR and liquor, together again.

I coughed a bit then winced. Everything I did the rest of the night, I knew, would be a blur.

The shit was poured into a pint glass, I figured I’d taken the bottle – not by force or by coerce – but just be asking, that it was meant to be drank that night. So, I set about drinking it.

She looked at me after I took my first drink, “I’m going to take a shower now,” she said. I didn’t know if she was mad at me or happy for me. I never understood which it was. And it never was one instead of the other. It was always one, or the other. Wrap your mind around that one.

The dogs were busy. One was humping another. It was shocking to watch. A pit-bull/Labrador mix being molested by a pug. Over and over again. I didn’t know which was funnier, watching the big dog be raped by a little dog, or the suggestion by me of playing Morris Day and the Time’s “The Bird”, and it being played. One song after Slayer’s “Reign in Blood.”

These are the days I wish I had a smart phone. So I could prove that it actually happened. No one trusts what a writer writes. Why? Because we make up shit. And we take the truth and bend it.

I’m wishing I was drunker than I am. Sometimes being drunk is the best feeling in the world. Other times it’s the worst. I never know which it’ll be until it happens. Now, I’m not drunk. Just buzzed. So, I have to just imagine which it will be. I always imagine it will be the better, not the worst. But, most of the time it sucks.

It’s why alcohol should be the illegal drug, pot the legal one. I never had a bad night smoking pot. Lots of bad ones drinking booze. But the sample size is small, so maybe it ends poorly just as often with the weed, but I doubt it.

I start to wonder what life would be like in an episode of “Dark Shadows” or “The Twilight Zone.” Why not? It would be different for sure, but would it be worse? Would it be better? Would it just be the same? God only knows. And shit, there may not actually be a God.

Someone once said “Failure is not an option.” Right? It didn’t just happen in a movie and became a slogan? There had to be some ass that said it. Right? They said it and believed it. Or wanted everyone else to believe it. I mean, that’s how great motivators work, right? They just say something and it’s taken as the gospel. Fuck yeah! Everyone screams.

I’ve never said those kinds of motivating words. No one has ever said “You the man!” after I said something in front of a group. Even big groups. It makes me wonder what it’s like to be a star athlete or politician. They do that for a living. Idolized until they fuck up. Or until they aren’t any good at whatever they do. I wonder what it’s like finding out you are irrelevant when you’re 40 years old. Oh wait, I already know. I’m a newspaper guy.

I couldn’t even lift up a smile at that one. It’s real. Even if I don’t’ want it to be.

Lovey from “Gilligan’s Island” is on television now. I can never see her as anyone else. Shatner joins her on the stage. Yep. Lovey and Captain Kirk. I wonder how hard it is to be seen only as someone you aren’t for your entire life? I guess most of us actually live this way, actors just do it and then have it seem by millions. We just are seen by hundreds. If we are lucky. Some only dozens. It’s hard to think about or comprehend. I really don’t want to think about it.

I’m surrounded daily by people who don’t really like me. It would hurt worse if they actually were work liking themselves. But they aren’t. So it doesn’t bug me. Too much.

Ok. It does bug me a little. I’d like to be accepted and join in on the conversation every once in a while. How often do Johnny Thunders’ bootlegs come up in conversation? Except for today, because for only the second time in my existence, they came up. And I handled it poorly. Until it shifted to the Minutemen. Then the conversation went well.

Why can’t life be like the conversations in “High Fideltity”? Hell, maybe they are, I’m just missing out on them….

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