Giggling at 42 with Rob Halford and Britney Spears

At 42 years old, I found myself staring at a Britney Spears' team was thrown off by Good Morning American asking a non-scripted question story at 1:11 a.m. on a Wednesday/Thursday night.

What was this question that threw everyone into a sudden tizzy?

"Who was your first kiss?"

Fuck. I don't remember the girl's name. I remember where it was. Exactly. I can take you to the spot in Charlottesville, Virginia. On the corner between two fraternity houses. That's where my first kiss happened.

She was from Richmond. Went to Midlothian High School.

And my roommate Hoon-Na walked in on us when she and I were completely naked in my shitty dorm room bed.

I started laughing almost immediately.

She left.

And she left behind a necklace.

It was cheap. Some kind of black opal on it. I kept it for decades. Threw it away one day in 2008 when I was depressed and feeling bad about myself. A girl -- shock -- had just destroyed my life, or so I thought at the time. One of the reasons, she said at the time, was because I held on the my past.

I have a friend who has pictures of all his exes on his wall in his "man room." He is married. And he sees nothing wrong with that.

When I saw this, and heard (well, read on facebook email) what my ex had to say, I threw away a lot of shit one night.

It felt great that night.

But I do miss my old notebooks,

My friend was right about that one. I'd regret doing it.

I do.

But, I'm much different now. I have a hard time getting motivated to write about things. About life. About the life I wanted to live. About the life I thought I did live. About her. Not the one I was talking about, but the other one.

Which brings me back to my first kiss. I remember it. I was drunk. A couple of college friends, you know, the guys you see when you're drunk and no other time, they were there.

It was cool. It was sweet.

And I don't remember her name. Honestly, don't know if I ever really knew it.

Why I’m thinking about this after looking at a story on Britney Spears, I don’t know.

I have a job. It pays the bills somewhat.

My health the last year has been steadily downhill until the last couple of weeks.

Life threw a lot of curveballs in late ‘ll and all of ’12 and into early ’13.

Now, me and my lover, we’re happy. We don’t see each other enough. She works mornings, I work nights. I rarely get two days off in a row, she works three days a week.

But soon, we’re going to change for the better. I’ve stopped drinking almost completely. I had four beers out with her friends the other night and I was drunk.

I like that.

No more coming home from work, alone, sitting on a couch downloading movies or watching British ESPN on the internet while drinking 12 beers every night and eating a bad of Doritoes.

Nope.

Replaced it with walking the dog every day, looking at the sun and trying to complete the elusive 1987 Fleer autographed set. Nearing card No. 400 out of 653. Not too shabby. Found out today that Wade Boggs and Terry Steinbach sign if you give them a little fee for their charity. Gonna do that pronto.

Brought the doggie around some kids the other day. Testing the waters, as they say. You find out that’s happening right after you get a dog from the pound – part pit bull – and you have to worry.

Not that I think he’s got that in him. But, you gotta find out. So why not use other people’s kids as test subjects. He passed with flying colors.

Irony of all this happening right at this moment makes me giggle a bit.

I wonder if Rob Halford giggles when the need strikes? I’d like to think so. He and Glen Tipton are sitting around in their old flat back in the 1970s giggling while writing songs. That’s a nice image, really.

Then I start to think about how much different things would have been in the 90s and 00s if it had been 10 years later. Cell phones and constant updates and all. Skype to stay close.

The mind, it wonders and wanders too much at times.

Then I look at the empty bag of Cheese Balls from Utz! Sitting on the coffee table, right next to the “Films of Burt Reynolds” book that I put there when I moved in and my angst leaves.

It’s nice to find happiness, even when you find it late.

The struggles have been monumental, but I think it’ll all be worth it.

Jay Leno midget porn

It came down to this: Jay Leno or midget porn.

Smug jokes about people I don’t care about or some chick named Twiget.

Either choice could end the relationship that was just three dates old. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I made a decision, and God damn it, I was going to live with it. What else could I do?

“What the hell are you watching?” she asked as I pretended to not know she was standing behind me.

“It’s redhead midget porn…” I said as numbly as possible to create some kind of illusion that I didn’t actually type “redhead midget porn” into Google to see exactly what was on the screen of my 52 inch television.

“Weird,” she replied and walked into the kitchen. I heard her books slam against the cement floor, then the fridge opened. Some bottles clinked around and one opened with the pssssssssssst sound that I have heard more than any other in my lifetime.

She came back in the den. Took her boots off and plopped down on my ratty red futon mattress with me.

“Is this what’s in store for the next 50 years?” she said.

“Nah, I like this tranny named Bailey Jay a little more than Twiget the Midget,” I replied, taking a small swig of whiskey from my “Makin’ Bacon” glass.

“Nice glass,” she said, pointing.

“Found it at a thrift store a long time ago,” I said. “Was with a redhead. She won’t no midget though. She was normal sized.”

“What the fuck does normal sized mean,” she said, glaring back at me.

“You know, not a midget or playing in the WNBA,” was the best I could do. I took another swig of whiskey. It was a bottle I’d brought back from Ireland in 2011. My best friend from college took me with his wife overseas. They paid for 99 percent of the trip. I’m a deadbeat, but I’m a lucky fucking deadbeat I thought to myself as I watched some guy with an 8-inch penis fuck a three-foot, 4-inch midget.

“This is pretty good,” she said. “I wonder if it hurts?”

“Nah,” I said. “It’s no different than if it was a …” I honestly couldn’t think of anything to say. My dick wasn’t that big, and I’d never fucked a midget. So my frame of reference was slight.

“You were saying?” she asked, taking a long swig of Michelob.

“Don’t drink that!” I screamed, grabbing the bottle away. “It’s old.”

“How old?”

“It’s been in my fridge for about 3 years, I’d guess.”

“Eh, I’ve had worse,” she said, grabbing the bottle back. Some of it spilled on my table/trunk. An old Joe Strummer sticker got the worst of it. I cringed a little bit. She noticed.

“That trunk means a lot to ya, doesn’t it?”

“It’s been with me for a while,” I replied, trying not to look like it mattered.

“How long?”

“After I left New Orleans. So…about 14 years now.”

“You lived in New Orleans?”

“Just a short while. I should have never left New Orleans…”

“You should write that down,” she said.

“I have.”

“Don’t get testy with me.”

“Not testy, just sad. The past does that to me. I cling to it like the Spanish moss does to the trees or maybe how the Kudzu hugs everything around here.”

“Yeah, Kudzu sucks,” she said. She stared into my eyes. I didn’t want to look at her. I wasn’t ready to fall in love again. The worst part about getting your heart broken isn’t getting it broken, it’s falling in love again.  I reached for my notepad and wrote those words down. I had to. While I probably heard them before in some clichéd Americana song in some shitty dive bar in North Carolina or Richmond, Va., over the years, they sounded close enough to good that I figured I could re-write them some other way years later and maybe sound profound.

Not likely.

The notepads full of aimless starts at stories. The blogs full of inane ramblings. The scaps of paper, or receipts or napkins or even the backs of cigarette packs that I never smoked are full of endless words. Usually scribbled while drunk, but never while thinking about Bob Costas. He scares me. Looks too much like Ellen Degenerees. Or whatever.

She watched me put my notepad back under the couch. I left one there for just such moments. It had beer and some kind of peanut residue on it.

“What was that?” she said.

“Annoying habit I picked up from a buddy,” I said, finishing off her beer.

“Did you just write down something I said?”

“Nah.”

“You’re lying.”

“No I’m not. You haven’t moved me that much yet.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you’re really smooth with the ladies, aren’t you?”

“Never.”

wet fart in a sleeping bag

The cold is penetrating my sleeping bag. I fart a drawn out, almost wet fart. I’m inside the bag, and it’s so potent it makes my eyes water. However, for just a brief instant, I feel a bit warmer. Maybe from the fart, but I doubt it. More likely it’s because of the smile on my face. Farts do that.

***

I walk by this guy on the street corner every day. He’s got a beat up cardboard sign. I guess, actually, he has two. One says “Laid off. Need money to pay my rent.” The other says “Bush lied to me. And to you. I need money. Now.”

His old lawn chair is frayed and torn. It probably doesn’t have a lot of life left in it.

He knows my name by now. Eight months of passing and saying hi, dropping some coins in his jar and swapping chit-chat can do that. It still startles some folks when he says “Hey, Randy!” to me.

His name? Joe Riggin. He calls himself Dirt because he’s dirty. Which of course allows folk to playfully call him Joe Dirt. One time someone gave him a truckers hat with a long wig attached. He laughed it up, then tossed it in the dumpster next to the old fish market that he’s staked out as his territory.

***

My feet stink.
I’ve worn the same socks for three days in a row now.
With old dirty shoes.
I can’t remember the last time anyone swept or vacuumed the floor.
Anyone?
I do live alone.
Burnt down match sticks also litter the floor, along with aluminum foil and playing cards.
No drugs, however.
Just empty candle jars, microwave dinner boxes and notepads.

***

What the fuck? It’s daylight? It should be night.
Sleep comes sometimes 16 hours a stretch. Or just fits of one hour spurts.

***

I watched he when she came into the bar. Light green dress on. The kind that lets you see up her leg for a second, then covers itself right back up before showing you too much.

Damn she has good legs. Anyone who doesn’t like a good set of sticks on a lady is a fool. If the legs hold up, you know everything else will too.

***

I found an old notepad. I opened it up because I didn’t remember where it was from. It was in a folder with some handouts and such.

As the words unfolded from the paper to my brain, I couldn’t comprehend ever having written them. But it’s clearly my handwriting. Clearly my scattered way of taking notes. And it’s about my profession. The one I gave up a life for. The one that has died and gone to hell. The one that seems to be so close, yet impossible to reach again.

Finally, I realize this is the notepad from the seminar I went to in April of 2006. A month after one of the worst moments of my life. Which, looking back, really wasn’t so god damn awful after all. If you put it in perspective of other folks’ worst moments.

I don’t remember much of that seminar. It should have been a chance to mingle with the “greats” of my profession. To network. Hobnob. Get my name out there, so to speak. It started with me in line for my hotel room. There was Woody Peele. There was Jim Litke. There was Susan Brennan. And then there was me.

I said hello. Love your work. They made pleasantries. Then I went blank. I started to wander back to my depression. And I just sunk back into line. Didn’t say a word.

Later, at a meet and greet, I saw a familiar face. We shared laughs. We got a drink. Then I slipped back into my coma. He ended up going off to talk to Stephen A. Smith. Me? I went to a table and just sat. I don’t remember much else.

Eventually, I must have gotten tired or bored or paranoid.

I woke up the next day having drank two Red Stripes and started crying.

I cried a lot in 2006. A lot in 2007. A whole lot in 2008. A little less in 2009. A whole lot less so far in 2010.

It still “matters” to me. But I don’t care as much. I guess that’s as good an explanation as there is?

I put the notepad back in a box. The words are unfamiliar and not at all reassuring. But, I still have it, and that’s a rarity. So, I keep it. Stash it away for the next time I stumble upon it.

***