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.”

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.

Bear hunting with Elvis

The second, and so far last time I ran into Elvis Costello was in Richmond, Virginia. Well, not exactly in Richmond, but just outside of Richmond in Goochland County.

He had a shotgun. And was wearing a coonskin hat and singing quite loudly about shooting the bear.

“Hey Elvis!” I yelled, as if I was on a first-name basis with the man. “There aren’t any bears here!”

He looked at me with his hat just a little bit crooked, pushed his glasses up and shrugged.

“Listen, Mr. Jones,” he said matter-of-factly, stunning me that he remembered my name from that bar in New York oh, so long ago. “I know damn well there is a bear here, and I’m going to shoot him.”

I didn’t know if arguing with a man with a shotgun, even a man like Elvis Costello, who remembered my name for Christ’s sake, is ever a good idea. But, if there were bears in these woods, I would give him a blow job. Of course, I wasn’t about to say such a thing because on the off chance and there actually was a pretty good chance there was a bear in these woods, he found one, I’d have to fucking give Elvis Costello a blowjob. Or at least he would always have the ability to say “Randy Jones, you owe me one blow job!” at any bar or tavern or concert hall that we were together at.

So instead, I asked :”May I join you on this quest for a bear?”

“Why of course, Mr. Jones!” Mr. Costello said with glee. I wondered at that moment if he was drunk. I didn’t quite know what to make of a mad British songwriter with a coonskin hat wandering around the woods in Virginia looking to kill a bear.

“I guess you are wondering exactly why I am hunting a bear in these woods, Mr. Jones?” he asked as if reading my mind.

“Yes, yes I am Mr. Costello.”

“Call me Elvis.”

“Well, Elvis, I am a little baffled why you would be hunting bear. It seems out of character.”

“You know of my character from our one chance meeting years ago, Mr. Jones? I’d think not. I am a hunting man. I love the thrill of it. The smells of it. The kill! Yes, I love the kill! The sweet, sweet death of the prey!”

I once again pondered if it was a good idea to be in the woods with a man, his shotgun and a coonskin cap.

“So, I guess I never figured you for a hunter.”

“Well, I’m not much of a hunter, really. I did get a squirrel once. With my car. And I had to run it over twice to finish it off.”

I looked at this man, a man who’s music had been a part of the soundtrack of my life since the first time I heard him in the soundtrack to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” back in the early 1980s. A little late to the Elvis Costello game, for sure, but I was just a wee lad of 12 or 13 at the time, so cut me some slack. I started to wonder if maybe he’d been hanging out with Ted Nugent.

“Just kidding, lad,” he said with a bit of a cackle.

“I’ve never killed anything. But I really want to!”

“Kidding again?” I asked hesitantly.

“Do you ask a man in the woods with a shotgun and a coonskin cap if he is kidding about killing a bear!” he pronounced. It wasn’t really a question, although it was phrased as such. Tone and inflection are very important things, I noted to myself. It’s one of the reasons I have always hated text messages and e-mails. Tone is impossible to project without explaining it. And let’s not even start with emoticons.

“I guess not,” finally said.

“By chance do you have any liquor?” Elvis asked.

“I’ve got my flask,” I said. “Just filled with Jameson.”

He winced a bit. “Well, I guess when you have no choice, you go with the Irish!”

Once again, I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. I didn’t get British humor.

I pulled out the flask and took a swig. Was it impolite to take a drink first, I wondered. But fuck it, it was my flask and my whiskey, which, I believe, he just insulted.

He took the flask and drank a long drink.

“Ahhhhh!” he exclaimed upon finishing. “If it were cold out, that would have been quite a nice refreshing thing. As it is, now I’m ready to go home.”

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

“With you, my friend Mr. Jones. With you!”

“Well, I’m driving back to North Carolina in a few hours,” I replied.

“Why are earth are you in the woods here?” Elvis asked. A very observant question from the man.

“Well, I was here to bury a body,” I said.

Elvis’ eyes widened. He seemed either very curious or very scared.

“And after I was done, you happened along,” I said, pointing at a freshly dug patch of ground a few feet away.

Now Elvis was scared. And I looked deep into his eyes.

“Just kidding,” I said.

“I just don’t get you American sense of humor,” he said with a long exhale.

“Let’s get going,” I said.

“On to North Carolina!” Elvis said.

I put  my arm around his shoulders and we shared a few more swigs from the flask. I was beginning to enjoy my encounters with Mr. Costello.