No keepers anymore

The first day I was here, back in April of 2010, I drank my last Lone Star beer to celebrate. That beer had been picked up by me when my buddy John and I drove across country to take his wife and his old dog to his parent’s house.

I held on to that beer for quite a while, saving it for a celebration. That celebration would only come when I got a job.

Well, I got a job, I moved to the beach, and I drank that beer. Up until a couple hours ago, I still had that bottle. But, I chucked it in the garbage as I was moving my stuff from that house to yet another moving van.

I’ve moved a lot over the years. Less frequently over the last decade than the decade before, but still a lot by most folk’s standards. Since 2002, I’ve lived in Greenville, New Bern, Greenville again, and Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. I also had a year-long stint in Richmond, Virginia. There was also the move of almost all of my stuff to Gainesville, Florida, where I stayed for about the amount of two months, maybe three, over the next three years. Then, I had to move all of my stuff back. That took three trips. That was pretty fucking awful.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving the beach. Well, my stuff will be. I’ll have to come back to get my car and to clean up the place. I may just hang out on the beach those few days. I won’t have anything else to do. All my stuff will be in Raleigh, North Carolina.

For the third time in my life, I’m moving in with my girlfriend. My lover. You get the point. Technically, it’s the fourth time, but she moved in with me the other time.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this move.

I hated my job, and I no longer have it. That’s a good thing.

Not having a steady income, that’s a bad thing. But I’m working on it. Already got some freelance stuff lined up, which is more than I had the last time I got shown the door.

It’s raining outside. It’s pretty much rained every day since I got canned. I think that’s a sign. That even the beach isn’t worth what you went through to live the life.

Driving 100 miles a day. Killing your old car, then putting 70,000 miles on a new one in less than 2 ½ years. Looking at mediocrity being rewarded, hard work not. It was enough to make me quit. And I did, without leaving the job.

I regret that. It was a mistake hanging on “just because I have bills”.  That’s been my excuse for so many wrong decisions in my life. Hanging on to a job, hoping things would work themselves out on the other end.

Well, it never fucking works. Unless you win the lottery. The, of course, you get introduced to a entirely different set of problems and concerns. Ones that, honestly, I wouldn’t mind facing.

So, I’m going into this new chapter of my life – fuck, I’m 41 years old – with my eyes wide open. I am not going to take a job working for slave wages “just because it’s in the business” ever again. And I mean ever.

Yeah, I may get a job in the biz again. But only if it’s one I want. And know that I’ll enjoy.

Hell, one of the ones I turned down I would have loved. But, the place would have made me miserable. So I chose destination over substance. And for a little over a year, I knew I’d made the right decision. Then things changed.

I don’t regret the decision. I just wish I could have that chance again. Right now, not then. I’d go now. I’d kick ass and enjoy myself.

That’s what I’m hoping for wherever I end up. It could take days, weeks, months to find a job. I have no idea. I just know that I want something I enjoy.

Maybe I’ll bag groceries? That Whole Foods looked like an interesting place to be. A hell of a lot more interesting than a newsroom with no reporters, no editors and no one giving a damn at 6 p.m.

I’ve been bitter. Way too many times and for way too long of periods of time in my life. I’m not bitter right now. At all.

The random pop ups of the past still happen. But I smile at them now. I talk to people about them more often. And when I do, I don’t cry. I don’t squirm. I don’t try to change the subject. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure it out, but I did.

I haven’t lived in a ‘city’ other than my little journey into Richmond for a long time. I guess Arlington was it. I didn’t see Manassas as a “city”. It was a suburb.

New Orleans? I didn’t live there very long.

Ditto Birmingham.

Although I loved both of them, for very different reasons.

Tempe/Phoenix was certainly the last I lived in for an extended period of time. Not living on couches or on someone else’s dime, or even on a Murphy bed while one-legged women tried to get me to drink cheap beer with them. Damn, I should have drank beer with her.

Today, I’ll grill up some food and wait for my girlfriend to get here. None of my friends could help me move on this end. I’ll take that as another sign. Two people said they’d be here, both waited until yesterday to tell me they wouldn’t.

On the other end, at least a dozen people are going to be there. Lifting boxes and drinking beer brewed in my new home city of Raleigh. I’ll take that as another sign.

I’ve never been one to be into being positive about things. It’s a flaw, not a badge of honor. It’s taken me a long time to believe that too. Yeah, I’m still a pessimist. Yeah, I think it’s going to be amazingly hard to find employment. But, I don’t want to let it get me down. Not yet. It’s too damn early. And hell, I’ve actually networked some and shown some signs of it actually working. When newspaper guys email me, asking if I can work, that’s a hell of a good thing.

I enjoyed all my time here. Yeah, I cried some. I was sad some. But I also had a couple of kick-ass get-togethers, a few latenight drunken stumbles on the beach – both alone and with friends – and hell, I got to live at the beach for two and a half years. Another life’s goal met.

So, tonight I’ll drink the last of another batch of Lone Star beers. This one brought to me in Arkansas by a friend who lives in San Antonio. And I’ll smile when I throw the bottle away.

No keepers anymore.

shopping spree

The beginning of the end was pretty tame.

He walked into the local Food Lion to buy some Pop Tarts before heading to work. The aisle was blocked by three middle-aged women fighting over a jar of mayonnaise. He stopped to watch this spectacular spectacle unfold in front of him. While he stood there, he wondered why anyone would use spectacular spectacle to describe something.

The first woman was big. Not tall, but fat. Her arms were larger than his thighs, but none of it was muscle. She needed mayonnaise like he needed reminders of his ex-girlfriend.

The second woman was tiny. Twiggy tiny. Her legs were as wide around as the cardboard that a roll of paper towels is wrapped around.

The third woman – who happened to be holding the jar everyone so eagerly wanted – had on a Pixies t-shirt and nerd glasses. Her curly hair looked like an afro that hadn’t been combed in weeks.

“I have three kids!” the fat woman said loudly. “They need this more than you do.” She said directly to the skinny woman.

“Well, if we’re going by need, I’d say I need it the most!” Twiggy yelled right back.

“Well, I got to it first, so I’m taking it,” afro woman said.

“Ladies, why are we fighting over a jar of mayo?” I said.

All three looked at me curiously. Then back at each other. Then back at me.

Twiggy spoke up.

“You haven’t heard?” she said.

I stared back in silence.

“He hasn’t,” the fat one said in disbelief.

“Do you not have television?” afro added.

“I have not heard of anything, and no, I do not have a television. They seem so…pointless.”

They laughed at me and went back to fighting. He ambled his way through the melee.

Suddenly, he noticed that the shelves were pretty vacant. As always, the Sex Pistols churned through his mind at the mention of those two words together. He got to the Pop Tarts and saw one measly box of Vanilla Ice Cream flavored ones.

“I guess it’ll have to do,” he said, taking the box in his hands.

Walking to the cash registers, he noticed another thing, no one was paying.

“Odd,” he thought to himself. He found the short, balding manager of the store. He had glasses and a whiny Irish accent – if such a thing is even possible.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The manager looked up at him and started chuckling.

“Here’s two bucks,” he said to the now hysterically laughing polo-shirted man. “You can’t say I didn’t pay whenever the cops show up.”

The two dollars dropped from his hands to the floor.

“They’re worthless kid,” he finally spoke. “You have no idea, do you?”

“Not at all,” he said, not waiting to find out the answer. Why? Because it dawned on him that he needed to get some beer.

He got in his car and drove 20  miles west. There was a small mom-and-pop beer craft beer store down the road. He got there and it was still closed. Lucky for him, he got up early this morning.

Getting out of his car, he noticed a din of activity everywhere. It seemed like the day before Christmas, but it was August 3. All the shops were buzzing.

At the door, he knocked. He knew the owners and knew they’d be there. Gracie came to the door, peered outside and saw who it was and clicked the door.

“Inside, fast!” she said in a hushed, but excited tone.

He slinked inside the door, and looked around. All the shelves were empty, but the floors were full of boxes. Each one filled with bottles and cans of beer.

Finally, his interested was piqued.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked Gracie, who was by now joined by her husband Jeff.

“It’s the end, my friend. The end.” Jeff said.dd

“The end of what?”

“Life as we know it.”

“You’ve got to explain a little better.”

“You really haven’t seen?” Gracie asked as she grabbed two boxes of beer and walked over to the basement entry. He was one of a select few people who knew about the basement storage site under the store. It was an old bomb shelter, built in the 1950s, that Gracie and Jeff didn’t know about until one day when the termite man showed up and asked if they wanted it bombed as well.

“No, I haven’t. I woke up this morning, wanted a Pop Tart and watched three ladies fight over a jar of mayo. Now I come here to get some beer, because some kind of run on stores is happening and I don’t want to be unprepared.”

“We’re all unprepared.” Jeff said. “And if you want some beer, just take a few cases. Pretty soon, it’ll all be gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The roads, they’re all closed going west,” he said. “The military aren’t letting anyone leave.”

“Wait a minute. I drove west to get here.”

“From the island?”

“Yes, from the island.”

“It’s only the main highway. But I’m sure they’ll get to your road soon enough.”

“And there’s a curfew at 5 p.m. tonight,” Gracie added.

“What?” he said incredulously.

“They’re shutting down the entire east coast, my friend. Go home, get ready for the shit to hit the fan.”

He grabbed six cases of really good beer. Put them in the back of his car. Going back inside, Gracie and Jeff were almost done putting the beer in the cellar.

“How much do I owe ya?” he asked.

“Nothing, my friend. Money doesn’t mean anything. It’s just friends and enemies now. I consider you a friend.”

They shook hands and he left.

He had one more stop – the old Roses department store. If things were really about to get “shut down” he knew something else he needed.

Getting to the store, it was oddly open. Cashiers stood at their posts. But they weren’t paying attention to customers, they were watching a television. The president was speaking.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. “This is a time of unprecedented action. We don’t do this lightly.”

He decided to go finish what he came to this store for. He got a shopping cart and headed to the outdoors section. There, he grabbed as many fishing poles and pieces of tackle and fishing line as he could find. If the supermarkets were going to be empty soon, he’d need a way to get food. Fishing was about it, on an island.

Lastly, he grabbed seeds. He took the entire display of vegetables. He found it odd that no one had hit up Roses yet. I guess being in a bad location was good for him today.

As he exited the store, the president continued:

“These are your friends. Your family. Your spouses and your children. But for the good of the rest of the country, North Carolina’s coast must become a quarantine zone.

“I wonder what the fuck is going on?” he thought after those words. But for now, he just wanted to get  home. Call his girlfriend and make sure she was on her way home.

“Looks like I won’t be moving out afterall,” he chuckled as he started up his car. Full tank of gas and Lucero playing on the stereo.

“Punk rock girls and Lone Star beer,” Ben Nichols bellowed. “Tonight’ll be ok…”

Amen

The day started off like most other days, me popping open a beer and taking a couple of pills. After that, it usually got a little bit better. Or at least tolerable.

She came by my place at 10 a.m. It took some doing, but I was able to convince her that coming inside wasn’t too bad of an idea. She’d been there many times before. Most of the times late at night. Most of the times as drunk as me. But she was never there in the morning when I woke up.

Most guys would think that was paradise. All of the glory, none of the fight.

But I wasn’t most other guys. And it pained me every morning when she wasn’t there as I rose. It’s why the pills started. They put me in a better mood and made it easier to face the mundane tasks that the day would throw at me.

I was a copy editor at a shitty newspaper now. I used to be an editor. Used to be a reporter. But I’d lost the fire to chase after it anymore. It happened while I was unemployed. Laid off by a newspaper that I thought I was doing a good job at. Won some state press association awards, covered some shit no one else wanted to. Shot photos. Shot videos. Laid out pages. Read other people’s stuff. Just a little of everything. But, I wasn’t friends with the folks I worked with. Most of ‘em at least. And I guess that wasn’t part of the plan.

Anyways, while unemployed I wanted to do something else. Anything else. So I applied and applied for jobs. Public relations jobs. University jobs. Business and even furniture sales writing ads. Jobs at recreation departments. Jobs at super markets. Jobs in different states. And I didn’t get any of them. In fact, only a couple even bothered to send me rejection emails or letters. Those days of actually contacting folks interested in your jobs are long gone I guess. I once had an opening that over 200 people sent in their resumes for. I sent a message to all of them.

Finally, I had to bite the bullet and interview for newspaper jobs again. I was broke and my time on the dole would eventually come to an end. So, I did it. And immediately I got interviews. At first, I was rejected for the job but only after they hired a friend. Then I got offers. But I couldn’t pull the trigger on them. I didn’t want to move to some shit hole in the middle of nowhere to work at a job that would barely pay my bills.

So, I called a friend and got a job where I’m at now. A shithole little newspaper, but I live at the beach. And that was enough.

For a while.

Now, it’s not anymore. I want to do more. I want to write. I want to get out of my cubicle. I want to interact with folks. Will it happen? Yes. Where I’m at? Only if they let me. And I’ll find out soon if they will.

She looked at me.

“You’re always somewhere else,” she said.

I looked at her and smiled. She got me. But didn’t want anything to do with me. Well, the me that was me now. She’d met me before all of this. Before depression and hatred took their toll on me.

We used to go to the bars downtown and just laugh and smile and have a good time. Then one day I changed. It wasn’t because of her, but it was because of a she. And that she killed me for a long time. I’m not fully recovered from my death yet. But I’m working on it.

That’s why she still comes around. She’s seen the other side of me, and knows it’s closer to being back than it has been for years.

“Did you write last night?” she asks me.

“Of course not,” I say. “I did scribble some, but it’s not much.”

“How many words?” she asked.

“About 3,000.” I stated with a yawn.

“What did you write about?”

“You really have to ask?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “One day you’re going to do it.”

“You’ve been saying that to me for years,” I replied. “And maybe I’m just another one like so many. I’ve only got one story to tell. And I just haven’t figured out how to tell it. Once I do that, I can become the Sparks of my genre.”

“Fuck that,” she said. “You could write about kittens with machine guns and it wouldn’t be funny. It would be awesome.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

She frowned at me. It made me feel small. She was good at that. I slinked over to a cooler I’d left on the porch last night. I kicked it. The lid fell off and inside were two Lone Stars. I reached in and plucked them out. The water was still cold, and so were the bottles.

“To a great day,” I said handing her one of the bottles.

“Amen,” she said, taking the beer and popping the top off.

“You working today?” I asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“My drive starts in an hour,” I replied pointing at my beat up car. I bought that thing new and it already had over 120,000 miles on it. In three years and seven months. “In my chariot.”

It was a Hyundai Accent. Three doors and a busted air conditioner. I liked going to work all sweaty and gross. It kept the bosses from talking to me. And I liked it that way.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later tonight?” I said in the most hopeful voice I can muster.

“You know you will,” she said with a smirk.

“Amen,” I replied.

dreams of semi - colons

Sitting in my house, staring at the wind blowing the plethora of flags in straight lines away from the coast, I decided I needed to do something.

But first I took my shoes off. I went over eight months without wearing shoes anywhere – work, driving, bars, etc., then I went to a Lucero concert and needed them. And then it got cold. Now, it’ 90 degrees inside my house and 84 outside. I think shoes are no longer necessary.

The first thing I do after taking off the shoes and socks is ball up my toes like Argyle taught John McClain in “Die Hard”. Yeah, that shit really works. You feel the stress of whatever the fuck is stressing you just shoot out of the balls of your feet and into the carpet. Thank god for this area rub. The rest of the carpet in the place is like dried cat turds crushed into a pattern. Yeah, it’s that gross.

After opening up the last beer in my fridge – I stare longingly at the 60 Lone Stars I have that are being saved for a party I may or may not have – and grow a bit ornery. I then decide I like to spell that On’ry instead.

I get on my bike and head over to the local watering hole. It’s a bit of a hike, even on the bike. Especially with the huge bridge one has to navigate. And my days of riding up such a thing are long, long past.

When I get to the pub, I take a seat. I’ve been coming here for two years now, but still don’t count as a regular. Why? Because I don’t talk to many people. I guess they know me, but they tend to steer clear. Good thing it’s summer, then, as the tourists don’t know better. Reminds me of one day in Luckenbach when I sat at the bar and drank all day. More people came up to me and asked questions that day than pretty much any day of my life. Even when I was a front desk clerk. Guess I missed my calling. “Man about town” has a certain ring to it for sure.

I plop down on the stool and order a Shiner. The barkeep comes over and smiles. “We ordered you up a new case of these,” she says.

I’m a bit taken aback. She does remember my surly ass.

“Why thank you, Midge,” I say with a tip of the baseball cap – always on backwards – and a tip of two dollars. She smiles and blows me a kiss. I smile and look at the jukebox. It was an old one, but it wasn’t too old. Meaning it played CDs not vinyl. But it also didn’t have a hook up to the internet.

I looked over at two girls eyeing another guy at the bar. He was John, a local fisherman. He had on a yellow trucker’s hat that said “Going all the way” and a dirty pair of khaki shorts. I looked at his feet. Thankfully, he didn’t have topsiders on. Instead, flip flops. Probably cost him $30 bucks those things. Mine? $2.22 at Wal-mart. One of three things I’ll buy at the Mart of Hell – flip flops, mouthwash and air filters for my air conditioner. Which, I never use, but still have to replace the filters every month.

The girls don’t go to the jukebox, so I do. I plop in five dollars. Enough to play 15 songs. I only want to play 14, but I have a 15^th. I select the entire Lucero self-titled album, plus the song “Sing Me No Hymns” from Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers.

Midge hates it when I play everything at once, it usually drives the regulars away. But tonight, I only see John there. The rest are tourists. Or one-stoppers as I call them. Sort of single-serving friends like in “Fight Club” except I don’t plan on having short conversations with them. I think that it’s too bad Bukowski didn’t write “Fight Club.” It may have had a better beginning, middle and end. And it was a damn good book. Well, mostly.

But what do I know. I scribble notes in notepads, then write drivel about those scribbles late at night or before work every day. Just doing it because I told myself I would. No goal. No plan. No outline. Just scribbles.

I need a woman to let me sit in front of a typewriter all day long, drinking slowly and typing. She can pay the rent and buy the booze. I can type. And that seems perfectly honorable. Hell, I know it is because that’s what needs to be done. I just don’t have the guts. Always been my weakness. Guts.

I was once told you either have ‘em or you don’t. You can’t grow guts. But you can lose them. So that must mean you can find them. Maybe I just lost mine along the way?

I boy can dream, right?

Not that he can punctuate.