World Wide Web, get Kraken

AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood … You Got It” screamed out of the speakers. He took a swig of Shiner Blonde as his girlfriend’s dog warily eyed him. She had left just seconds before, taking back an expired package of Stir Fry sauce back to the local Food Lion. He would have gone ahead and made the food, but she was a stickler for such things. It was one of the things that made them compatible – having the differences be in such little things.

Of course, their taste in music differed slightly as well. She still listened to a lot of heavy metal and garage music. The stuff he liked in college, but had gravitated away from to enjoying more alt-country music.

But who gives a damn.

They were good in bed together. They made each other laugh. They knew when it was OK to cry.

He didn’t like turning the air conditioning on. Only in hotel rooms. “It’s free there,” he said, justifying his sweaty existence that most folks would deem “eccentric.” He deemed it frugal. And hell, with the coming economic apocalypse, he’d be used to not having air conditioning a lot more so than most of the people he knew. It was a bit of a hipster badge of honor. Like his flip phone and reading “Writer” magazine. Ha. How is that hipster. It’s not.

Getting drunk tonight was a priority. He had to drive to Richmond tomorrow night. Had a job interview set up. Didn’t know if he wanted the job, but figured what the fuck. It was a newspaper job. It was a work from home – mostly – job. Something a lot closer to the General Assignment Sports Writer job he supposedly had in Greenville, North Carolina, about three years prior. Only problem with that job was the sports editor was such a control freak he didn’t allow it to be a free-for-all reporting job – as advertised by him in luring him away from a very comfortable sports editor job of his own – and he ended up sitting on his ass designing the agate pages too many nights.

Photography and video shooting, not so much editing, skills were honed during the time. He won a couple more writing awards. Then he was laid off.

Oh well, he thought when the phone call came to his desk. Everyone else was sitting around on pins and needles. He figured he’d be the one. Newest hire, highest salary. It was a no-brainer, really.

He took it in stride. Even the next day when he was on a list of people not allowed back in the newsroom on the new secretary’s desk. Her eyes bugged out when he said he wanted to go there, and she didn’t quite know what to do. Before long the H.R. lady was there, taking his paperwork and shooing him back out the door.

Thinking about that right now made him chuckle. And take a couple extra sips of beer.

Her dogs stared at the door. Wondering where his girlfriend went. “Did she leave us here?” had to be going through their minds.

Bon Scott says “Shazbot, Nanu-Nanu,” it makes him laugh. Then he gets a bit sad. Bon Scott is dead. Damn. It makes him think of his other heroes, and how so many of them are dead. Joe Strummer. Johnny Thunders. Stiv Bators. Freddie Mercury. All dead. Bill Hicks. Dead. Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando. Brian Jones.

And yet Jay Leno lives.

Yes, God has a very wicked sense of humor. He wants all the good guys with him sooner. The rest have to stay longer. I’m sure they get the same great welcome, but it’s later. Much later. Then he thinks about himself. He almost died once while driving. Twice while contemplating just leaving. Would he have been greeted by God? Or by Keanu Reeves?

Thoughts are a dangerous things.

He doesn’t like thinking as much as he used to.

Nor reading. Books he still buys quite often. Sometimes he starts them. But usually then end up in a pile of others. Or they start a new pile. They get dirty. The salt air here really wreaks havoc on books. Paperbacks especially. He had to write wreaks havoc in a headline at work this past week. It is one of the laziest phrases he thinks, because really, how often is havoc really wreaked?

He wants to buy a book about the author John Kennedy Toole. But he knows he won’t read it. It’ll just sit in a pile, dusty eventually. Much like the Warren Oates biography he got for Christmas last December. His uncle gave it to him. Asked “why Warren Oates?” He replied “because he kicks ass.” They both laughed. The book has sat in a pile ever since. Kind of like Warren Oates in most people’s memories. He’s that guy in a lot of movies. But he’ll always be Sgt. Hulka to most. And he really still wants to see “92 in the Shade.” Why can’t it be legal to get ahold of movies that aren’t digital yet? And why isn’t that one digital.

He wished the internet world would just send it to him.

It worked with Johnny Thunders’ documentary, why not a Warren Oates flick?

Get busy getting busy.

seagull

It’s surprising sometimes exactly what makes you fall back into bad habits.

Today, it was walking on the beach and hearing a seagull cry. That lonesome wail that come out of its beak forced me for just a second to think about what I haven’t thought about. And I started to cry myself. Alone on the beach on a warmer than it’s supposed to be day in February I stood on the beach wailing like a small child.

So, I went home and started drinking.

I don’t like drinking alone like I used to. At one point, it was a ritual. I did it out of habit instead of want. I can’t say it wasn’t a need, however, as it probably was sometimes. Sanity is a tough thing to walk the fringes of and not falling down on one side or the other.

Much like if you travel the same roads of your past, you’re going to see ghosts. Or feel them. Deep in the bones. An ache that won’t go away. It hides sometimes. But it usually knows when to show up again.

I stopped crying for a moment and watched the seagull. It hopped on one foot for a bit, adding a bit of tragi-comic effect to the moment. Then the other leg popped out and he started walking away from me. He’d done his job, I figure. Stirred up something inside me that needed stirring. So he was off to do whatever it is that seagulls do when they’re not annoying you on your beach blanket or following behind a boat looking for food.

Staring into my fridge, I see the many six packs of beer that my girlfriend has brought me over the past few weeks. It’s a tradition of sorts. There are beer stores worth a damn in Raleigh where she lives. Here at the beach, not much to speak of. I can get Shiner at the Food Lion, and for most of my two years here, that’s been enough.

I pop open an Abita and it starts to flow over the rim of the bottle. I curse the foamy remnants that cover my hand and I go to the sink and wipe it off. I think for a moment about how not too long ago, I would have just flicked it onto the carpet or just patted it on my clothes.

After a couple of beers, and some Lucero music blasting, I start to calm down a bit. I begin to make my plans for returning to the scene of heartbreak in just 13 days – New Orleans. I bought tickets to a Lucero show at Tips in December. Figure I should use them. The long-ass drive will do me some good. As will re-visiting the scene. I have a thing with returning to the places that remind me the most of the pain. I guess it’s good that I don’t go back to Gainesville, Fla. But seriously, that would be stupid. She’s in Alexandria now anyway. Working just down the street from my best friend’s apartment. Funny how that all works out.

Now, with the mind distracted just enough, the tears start to evaporate. I hope the hate doesn’t rise. It caused me to lose a friend, well, in the way someone loses a friend now-a-days with the deletion of self from social networks. But, I’ve decided that yes, I could chase after him. Apologize. But why? He is one of a very few who knows how I’m hurting right now. And he chose to be an ass because I was an ass. But taking it a step further. Maybe it’s a joke and I’m too fucking sensitive. If so, jokes on me Sasha Baron Cohen. If not, jokes on you.

The beer isn’t as effective as it used to be either. Or the words of Ben Nichols. But the pain inside right now isn’t about a girl. It isn’t about being a fucking asshole. It’s about life itself. Just not mine. Which makes it really hard to figure out, being the narcissistic fuck that I am.

So I turn my attention to finding a way to stop thinking about trying to figure it out. It never works, but you can’t say I haven’t tried. Well, some would say that, but fuck them.

The CD ends and all I hear is the ocean. Waves slowly breaking against the sand. This time of year, it’s easy to hear. Which is nice. The tourists and jarheads are nowhere to be seen, and especially heard right now.

a strange thing happened at the food lion last night...

I walked outside to see if the warmth of the sun could somehow offset the coldness in my bones from being inside my house with no heat. Even the 50-degree weather outside felt better than the 59-degree awfulness in my lair.

How long had it been since I’d felt the touch of another? Any gap is too long, but this one is ridiculous. As my 40th birthday approaches, I wonder openly how easy it would be to get a hooker or some bar floozy to give me a blowjob in the alley while my friends think I’m in the bathroom?

It’s come to that.

The mirror screams back at me now. It’s been six days since I last shaved. No one at work seems to car anymore. But hell, when someone wears the same jeans for three weeks in a row and has holes in just about every shirt he owns, the stubble on his face might not be the thing one notices.

Buying a frozen pizza and some blueberries at the Food Lion last night, the girl at the cash register kept looking at me. She followed me around the store with her eyes. She’s unattractive and unkempt, much like myself. When I finally go to the cash register, she perks up and says “Hello!” just a little too enthusiastically. I chock it up to loneliness. Something that I can relate to and recognize. I respond with a “Hello” as well, continuing it with “how are you doing this evening.” I can honestly never remember me saying “this evening” to anyone at any other time in my life. I wonder if that’s what happens when you pass the threshold?

“I’m pretty good,” she says as she scans my frozen pizza, blueberries, grape soda and potato chips. I wonder if she thinks the blueberries are a bit of an oddity in this basket? The total comes out to $14.20. I chuckle.

“420?” she says lightly with a little giggle.

I see where this is going now. We’re on the same wavelength humor-wise, at least. I hand over three five-dollar bills. She counts out the change and puts it in my hand, taking just long enough to touch my hand a little longer than she probably should have.

I look up into her eyes. They’re blue. A very subtle shade of blue. Mixed with a lot of gray. Just like mine. Except hers have something else. Maybe it’s just me looking for something in them. A reason. An excuse?

“I see you’ve got some big plans tonight?” she says, rather desperately, but kind of cute. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

“Yeah, another rocking night at my place. Frozen pizza and downloaded movies…”

There’s a little bit of awkward silence before I hear myself say “You wanna join me?”

I feel a little repulsed by those words coming from me. I don’t want to be this kind of person. Yeah, I’m lonely. But I used to have some kind of standards. I catch myself feeling sorry for myself and being a cruel person all at once. I smile and look at her. She looks scared. Or horrified, even. Guess I overestimated even my lagging talents.

“Mary, you have another customer,” a voice says from behind me.

I turn my head slightly to see who it is that said this. There is the short, bald guy who usually rings me up on my late night trips to the Lion. He always comes up with stilted, awful conversations. I loathe them. It’s one of the few times I wish the automated lines existed here. I make it a habit of never using them. I look at it as 1/a job lost and 2/them having me do their job, and not paying me for it. So fuck the automatic lines!
“How are you tonight, sir?” he says in a derisive tone. Is he mad at me for talking to Mary and never talking to him? Or does he think I’m a creepy, poor, desperate to have companionship loser who is attempting to pick up his cashier. Rather poorly, I might say.

“Yes,” Mary finally says. It doesn’t register immediately that she’s talking to me. I hear beeps from items being scanned. I pick up my two plastic bags worth of junk that will lead to my eventually heart attack -- except for the blueberries -- and begin to leave.

“Yes I would!” she says a little louder this time. It registers finally that she’s speaking to me.

“Cool,” I say. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I go outside. The automated doors whoosh open and the cold air from outside hits me. Hard. “This is your chance to just go!” the little voice of reason inside me says. “But you shop here almost every day. You’ll have to see her and avoid her forever.” The another, more soft voice says. “Dude, you can finally get some” still another voice says. I have too many voices in my head, I think to myself in my own voice.

The key to my car is always a pain. Mainly because I never remember which pocket I have it in. I don’t keep it on my lanyard since the car is so small now that it bonks my knee when driving if I do. So, I put my hand in one pocket. Nothing but a cell phone. Switching the pocket awkwardly, I find the key. Push the unlock button and open the door. I put the bags in the seat and close the door. I think about just leaving, but I know that I won’t. I’m too much of a coward to do that. Or is it I’m too nice of a person? Anyway, I get a piece of paper from my driving journal and write down my name and phone number.

Taking a big breath, I go back inside.

Mary is standing by her register, smiling a big, wide-mouthed grin. I muster up a little bit of a smile, always a problem for me when I think about it due to my mangled teeth, and go up to her.

“Mary? Is that what I heard your name is?” I say meekly.

“Yes! Yes it is!” she exclaims eagerly. It’s kind of cute.

“My name’s Randy.”

“Nice to meet you. Well, name-wise at least. We’ve met dozens of times here.” She points at her register area. That feels very desperate. I feel a little better about my life.

I hand her my number. She grabs it and reads it fast.

“I get off at 1 a.m.,” she says. “I’ll call you then!”

“Sounds great,” I say, shuffling towards the door. I see a clock, it’s 11:23.

Right as I get around her bagging area, she skips over to me and hugs me. I stiffen, as I always do when strangers touch me that way. Then I relax and hug back. The kind with the little taps on the back. Yeah, you know the kind.

She steps back and smiles. I smile. I notice I have a boner. She noticed too.

“See you in a few!”

I go to the car. I’m nervous. A good nervous.