A question

Johnny walked out of the bathroom, he struggled with the small wooden door. Everyone did. It was on some kind of spring that shot the damn thing right back at you when you pushed on it.

“When did I become such a shit factory?” he said when he plopped back down on the barstool next to mine.

“Are we talking about poop or your writing?” I countered pointing at the just placed bottle of Budweiser on the bar.

“Very funny, compadre,” he said. “Very fucking funny.”

“He’s got his moments,” a voice cooed from the corner.

We both turned our stools to the source of this angelic voice. It was 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, there usually weren’t such things hanging out with us and our ever-depleting sources of alcohol.

She was stunning. In every way possible. Legs that didn’t end. Pale skin like just poured milk. A figure that would have made Jessica Alba jealous. And red hair. God damn it was the reddest I’d ever seen – and I made it a point to see a lot of red hair. Even if I have to pay for it.

“Hello trouble, come on in,” Johnny said when he was done observing.

“A Buck Owens fan, I see,” she purred. I was beginning to like this lady.

Silence filled the bar. Sarge, the afternoon barkeep had gone to the back to get something, I don’t remember what it was. The jukebox had stopped. The televisions were all on mute. And Johnny and I were completely in awe of what we were seeing.

“You boys going to invite me over or what?” she asked, slicing that silence like a chef in a Japanese steakhouse – with lots of moxie.

“Oh course, darlin’,” Johnny said. “Come on over.”

“Your friend’s gotta ask,” she replied, looking straight past Johnny and right at me.

“Well?” Johnny said, poking me in the ribs. I hated it when anyone poked me in the ribs. Not just because it was in and of itself an annoying thing to do, but because I’d broken a rib years back in a “minor golfing accident” and it still bothered me to this day.

“Only if you can answer one question,” I replied. “Get it right, I’ll buy you beers all night.”

“It’s actually the afternoon,” she tried to sass.

“That’s my point,” I shot back.

“Ooooh, a confident man,” she went back to purring.

“Not really, just full of enough shit to make it work,” I said, not knowing what to say. “But to continue, get it right, you get beer. Get it wrong, and my buddy John here will pay for the beers.”

“Hey…” Johnny said. “That sounds like a trick.”

“Shut up,” she said to him.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, slinking down just a bit on his barstool.

“Well, what’s this question?” she asked, now a bit of eagerness in her voice. That, I decided, was a good sign.

I racked my brain for something great. Something worthy of the buildup I had given this. But my mind was blank. Like it usually got around a beautiful woman. Completely wiped clean of anything useful.

Finally, I dorked out.

“What’s your favorite Lucero song?” I said.

She smiled. An even better sign.

“Sing Me No Hymns,” she said, walking up and sitting in the barstool next to mine.

“Looks like I’m buying,” I said.

“Leave me be and let me drink, I need none of your good intentions,” she said raising her bottle of Abita amber to my face.

“Well, if that’s not an invitation, nothing is,” I said, clinking my bottle of Shiner Bock to her bottle.

Johnny slinked a little lower in his barstool. I noticed and pointed at him ever so subtlety.

The redhead turned around and gave Johnny a peck on the cheek. Years later, he’d always brag that she kissed him before she ever kissed me.

“Why thank you ma’am,” he said, perking up.

“Listen Johnny, please don’t call me ma’am,” she said. “It makes me feel my age.”

“How old are ya?” he asked. Johnny was never too smooth.

“Old enough, babe. Old enough.”

The next couple of hours went by like lunch period in high school when you sneak out to go to Hardee’s. I looked at the Dixie Beer clock when she sat down and it said 2:11. The next time I noticed it, it read 4:57.

“Damn, the after work party’s gonna be here soon,” I said. “All those, those …”

“Employed people,” she finished my sentence.

“Are you implying, that I have no job?” I retorted.

“Why yes I am,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were so white they scared me. I wondered what she thought of my gold teeth, and I wasn’t talking 14K.

“He’s a writer,” Johnny slurred to her. “Best damn one I’ve ever read.”

“Really?” she replied. “And how many have you read?”

I laughed hard at that. I liked this gal. She had spunk. It didn’t hurt that she was way out of  my league and she was paying attention to me.

Yeah, I was a writer, I went on to explain to her. I wrote mostly about heartbreak and sadness. But my published work was about travel. I went on road trips and wrote about them. I’d stop at the ugliest, most beat up roadside diners or wig shops and find a story. I’d hang out for a couple of days, drink with my subject matter – sometimes I’d go to church with them instead – and the write up a couple thousand words. Slip it in the old electronic mail and a couple days later, I’d get a check.

“What do you do with the checks?” she asked.

“Half in the bank, half to Mick.”

“Mick?” she asked.

“He owns this place. He’ll be in here any minute now.”

“Mick doesn’t own this place,” she said puzzled.

“Huh?” I could only muster. I’d been coming here for two years now, and Mick always told me he owned the place.

“No, my father owns it. His name is Sid. He owns the taco stand a couple blocks from here too.”

Shiners and Chevettes

It was our anniversary. Not really, though, since there was no our anymore. But it didn’t stop me from doing what I did every year. When we were together under the same roof, when we lived 764 miles apart, and after she dumped me.

I’d go to a bar, a new bar. One I’d never been to. I’d order a Shiner Bock, drink it slowly, and put a quarter in the jukebox to play a sad song. I never had a song picked out. Mainly because every bar has a different jukebox. Some had old school ones – played 45s still. Most had Internet ones, so you could pick whatever song you wanted to hear. But, to pick a new one cost a dollar, which violated my quarter rule.

This year, I was in a place called May’s Picket Fence. It was in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The shithole of a town I found myself working in at the moment. For some reason I’d never left eastern North Carolina. Not even after. It was why things happened the way they did. Or at least as soon as they did. I’ve come to the realization, or rationalization, that it would have happened anyway. No matter what I did.

This year I’m sitting on the brown wooden barstool, one of the fancier ones with padding on the back and the butt. I’m drinking my Shiner and listening to American Aquarium talk about antique hearts and such. I wonder if B.J. Barham has really ever been in love. He’s too young to have had so many broken hearts, right? But hell, I’m just doing what everyone does to me. They don’t understand me, I don’t understand him.

I turn to my left and see a gal looking at Craigslist on her laptop. She’s about 25, maybe 30. Lots of bad tattoos up and down her back and arms. One is a bible verse in all black lettering. It takes up her entire shoulder area. It makes me wince. I still go up to her.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey yourself, cutie,” she responds. Up close, she’s at least 40. Lots of years on those eyes. But they’re blue, and piercing. So, I take a seat beside her.

“Cutie, huh?” I reply. “It’s been a long, long time since someone thought I was cute.” I smiled at her. I figured she’d see my golden teeth before too long, might as well get it out of the way. The last girl I talked to didn’t see them until we went outside. “Are you on meth or something?” she asked. I said no, and that seemed to be enough. We had sex in her Brat. I had never had sex in a Brat before. Hell, I’d never been in a Brat before. Those car/truck/whatever they are, they’re strange little autos.

I told her I’d like to buy her Brat. She said no. I asked why.

“Because you suck at fucking,” she said.

“Well, thanks for being honest,” I replied, getting out of the Brat. It was purple on the inside and brown on the outside.

“Just kiddin’,” she said with a wink. “You want to go to the Waffle House?”

I weighed my options, going with this girl I’d just met, and fucked, and sitting in Waffle House for about an hour, or going home and watching an episode of Jason of Star Command. Sid Haig won out.

But before she pulled away, she asked me: “Why do you want to buy my baby?”

This startled me. First, I had no idea this girl had kids. Second, I wasn’t in the market to buy anyone.

“Uh?” I muttered. “Not trying to start a family,” I finally managed.

“No, stupid,” she said. “I’m glad you fuck better than you think. My car. Why’d you want to buy it?”

“Oh…I wanted to buy it tonight, drive to wherever it dies and start living there.”

“That’s weird,” she said, giving me the wary once over.

“Yeah, I’m a little strange,” I replied. “But, at least I’m good at one thing.”

“And what’s that?” she laughed.

“Writing.”

“I hope your pencil’s always full of lead,” she said, starting the car and pulling away. She had Michigan tags on her car. I figured I’d never see her again. Even in the Facebook age. It helped we didn’t exchange names.

“You have a cute smile, too,” the lady at the bar said to me.

“Cutie with some cute, I must buy you a beer my darling.”

She giggled and blushed. I loved making a stranger blush. It meant I was doing something right. For a change.

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“Shiner and whiskey,” she said.

“We’re a match made in heaven.”

“Or hell.”

“Or hell,” I repeated, clinking our now full beers together. She smiled. She had yellow teeth too.

I stared at the television in front of the taps. It had a soccer match on. Chelsea vs. Liverpool. I had no interest. Neither did anyone else in the bar. So I looked back at my new barstool friend. She was looking at Chevettes for sale on the local Craigslist.

“Why a Chevette?” I asked.

“I think they’re cute.”

“I sense a pattern here,” I replied, taking a gulp of beer and then a shot.

“Yeah, I only like cute things.”

“Let’s make a deal then,” I said confidently. It was the liquor and the beer. “If we find one for less than $400, let’s buy it and start driving.”

“Where to?”

“Wherever it takes us. Or better yet, however far it takes us.”

“Then what?”

“Well, I’ll stay there. You can too. If you want to. If not, I’ll put $200 in an envelope, and that’ll be your fare home.”

“Deal,” she said, shaking my hand.

We spent the next three hours looking at Chevettes on the internet. After those three hours – and about a dozen beers – we found one. It was in Beulaville, not too far from us. It was tan. It had “only the original 44,000 miles on it.” Of course it was b.s., but the ad said it ran.

“Meet you tomorrow in Beulaville?” I queried.

“How about we get a cab. That way, we don’t have to leave a car in that God-forsaken town.”

“OK.”

That night, I packed up 17 t-shirts – all of them Lucero, the band not the skateboard guy, shirts. Some underwear, a few pairs of jeans and some shorts. Two pairs of Sambas and some socks. Threw in a toothbrush, toothpaste and an electric razor.  And lastly, my laptop and in its bag 17 notebooks to write in.

I showed up back at the bar, as we’d talked about the night before, at 3 p.m. sharp. We had to be in Beulaville at 5. At 4:30, I called a cab and went by myself.

At the IGA in Beulaville, I paid a guy name Rob $325 for a 1981 Chevette. It purred like a kitten when I started it, and ran like a dead horse when you drove it. I still took it.

Figured I’d make it a couple miles and just go home.

Instead, three years and 145,985 miles later, I’m still driving. Waiting for it to break down. Even the month of only listening to one song – David Bowie’s “Heroes” – didn’t kill it. Or me.

So now, I’m the internet Chevette guy.

Started a Kickstarter page after three months. Said “I need money to drive my Chevette until it dies. I won’t change the oil, I won’t get filters. When it dies, it dies. And that’s where I’ll live.”

The first two months, it raised about $400. Enough for burritos. I ended up working odd jobs to pay for gas. And showers. But not much else.

So, I kept driving. And each anniversary, I stopped somewhere and had a Shiner and played a sad song.

“Where does the love go when it dies?” a singer asked.

I’d say in the driver’s seat of a 1981 Chevette. Until it decides to do otherwise.

mulch pit, chapter 2

I patted Lucy on the back. “Hey, I gotta talk to this one,” I said as she frowned at me.

“Why this one,” Lucy said, emphasis heaving on the this. She’d watched me turn down woman right and left in this place. “Throwin’ that pussy away!” as a friend of mine said to me at my 20^th high school reunion after I’d turned down a parking lot blow job.

It wasn’t the right time to tell Lucy about her. The woman who took out a rusty screwdriver and plunged it into my heart one night. On the phone. I was weeks from somehow finding a way to propose to her, finally taking the step neither one of us had been able to, but wanted to. At least that’s what I thought.

Instead, one night out of the blue she dumped me. And other than two trips to Florida – the first to try and save it, the second to pick up the scraps of a life – I hadn’t seen her since. And she’d made it pretty damn obvious that she didn’t ever want to see me again.

But there she was, standing by my favorite barstool in the world – since the passing of Nick’s on 2400 Tulane Avenue – with that same damn look in her eyes that made me melt way over a decade ago.

“Hi,” she finally said. “Can I sit down?”

I wanted to say “Fuck You!” and turn around. But I knew I wouldn’t do it. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

“Sure.”

As she sat down I noticed how much skinnier she was than the last time I saw her. But hell, I weighed about 60 pounds less than then too. She had taut calf muscles now. Something she never had before. She also had that cucumber smell. She’d left behind a bottle of that soap she used the last time she visited me in North Carolina. I never thought twice about until she was gone for good. Then I used it, very small dabs, every day. Until it was gone. I told myself when I started that I’d be over her when it was done.

That was the first of many things I did that I said to myself when it was over I would be able to move on again.

It all ended with me masturbating naked in front of a mirror with a gun in my mouth. I was even using a cookie monster hand puppet to stroke with. I’d say that was rock bottom.

More so than when I called my mom with four bottles of pills emptied out on my coffee table/foot locker. More than when I was sitting at a truck stop on the side of I-10 wondering if what was west was better than what was east. Way more than when I told my therapist that I hated the fact that all redheads reminded me of her. They still do.

But now, she’s in front of me. Smiling.

“You look good,” I say with no confidence at all.

“Thank you. You too,” she replies. But I know other than the weight, it’s not true. My hair is gone on my head, growing out of every other spot on my body now. I have early signs of diabetes and my muscles have all but disappeared from living a mostly sedentary life now.

I take a swig of my now warm beer. I figured she’d be the one talking, but she’s not. I order two Shiners, handing one to her.

“Thanks,” she says, drawing on it. “You remembered.”

Ha. I remembered. Every damn time I drink one of these things, I remember. I don’t even like the taste of Shiner. It has a soapy aftertaste that always bothered me. Until it was a way to feel connected, no matter how sad that was.

“Yeah. It’s my brand now too,” I said.

I watched her sit there. She was nervous. And I didn’t understand why. I was nervous, but I’d been building up this encounter for years now. More years than we were actually together at this point. Way more.

My calculations told me this would happen in Virginia. Either on the streets outside where she works – which of course I knew, but not because I sought it out, but because a friend of my best friend worked with her – or at some random place in the Washington, D.C. area. Hell, many times while driving by Arlington Cemetery I thought about stopping at her father’s grave. That went all the way back to when I was going to propose. I took a photo of us there, placed it on his grave and asked for his permission. I left the photo and always wondered if anyone took it away. If she did. Hell, I sometimes doubt she ever went back. Career in hand and all. All she ever wanted, I think.

I looked over a Lucy. She was staring at this redhead. I wondered what Lucy thought of her. I wanted to feel what she was probably feeling. Hatred. But I never could, and certainly couldn’t at this moment.

Finally, I leaned closer to her and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Why are you here?” It was the question that had to be asked. And surprisingly, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted her to say.

“It’s about us,” she said before taking a very long and deep breath. She exhaled and just as she was about to speak again, a loud crash sounded out behind us at the front door.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, but my eyes were glued to her. But her eyes were not on me anymore. They were petrified. And looking straight at the door.

I turned around, and didn’t want to believe what I saw.

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.

Bob Barker's bucks

I’m sitting on a barstool in a nowhere cantina just outside of Galveston. My Shiner Bock is just about empty and I’m wondering what to do.

I drove 1,469 miles here to see her, and of course, she didn’t show up. But maybe she did and I was late, I can’t help but think to myself.

I look at the text she sent me three days ago… “Be there on Saturday, 4 p.m. Don’t B late.”

Now, there was Hitchcock, Texas. A small dump of a town outside of Galveston. I’d driven through one other time in my life, and that was with my buddy Josh back when I was 23 and full of life. Now, I’m 43 and just about done with it. The scars on my heart are deep. As are the lines on my forehead. I noticed the first one that didn’t go east-west, but instead north-south when I was 38. This was after too many years of drinking alone in one-bedroom apartments and sleezy dives that didn’t even have windows, but damn if they didn’t have black jack machines.

As I sat in Louis’ Bait Camp, I watched a blonde with good eyes and bad intentions work her way towards me. I was not excited, kind of loathing her coming up to me.

“Hey there!” she said with a thick Texas accent. I’d say it was from Denton, but I didn’t really want to find out.

I looked at her chest. She had nice round tits, the kind you dream about when you’re 14 before you’ve seen tits for real. Jessica Hawn tits I used to call them. But real.

“You like what you see?” she asked, this time a little impatiently.

“But of course, hun, what’s not to like,” I said taking my last swig of Shiner. I had about 60 dollars to my name right now and was almost 1,500 miles from home. My old lady, and by old I mean years had passed since she was my lady, didn’t show up despite telling me she would.

And to think, Bob Barker gave over 200 grand to house some chimps in Louisiana back in August of 2011. I think he called it “Chimp Heaven” or “Chimp Haven”.

“I could really use some of that money, Bob,” I said to myself, even as this young blonde was standing over my table.

“Huh?” she said confusedly. “Are you drunk?”

“Hun, not even close, and the way my day’s been going, probably not soon enough.”

“Well, shit in my pappa’s best pants!” she said. That one never made a lot of sense to me, even now, years later thinking about it.

“Hell yeah, soiled my momma’s lilly-white panties!” I yelled.

The bar went silent at that one.

The blonde stared at me, shrugged and handed me a shot of Patron. I fucking hated tequila, but I was broke and needed some booze to get to the next day. I tilted the glass to my lips and swallowed hard. I fought the urge to puke, which always came with tequila, and slammed the shot glass on the bar.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said to the blonde.

She smiled and touched my shoulders. I fought the urge to recoil. It was my instinct. Always has been.

“How about a beer for the fella,” she said to the barkeep. He looked at me, then at her, then back at me.

“You sure Alexis?” he asked her, looking straight at me. “This guy showed up here four hours ago asking about a redhead named Samantha.”

“Who is Samantha?” the blonde asked, pouting her lips just enough to make me want to do bad things to her.

“My ex,” I replied.

“Oh, you have kids together?”

“Not really.”

“What’s that mean.”

“Well, she got pregnant, that’s about it.”

Alexis didn’t know how to respond. She was 20 going on 40 but didn’t have a bit of common sense. I was happy for her. She was blissfully ignorant of the life of the mind.

I used to have conversations with my sister about how lucky those kinds of people were. So easy for them to face each day with such low expectations. Get up. Go to work. Go to church. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. And die.

Me, I wanted to find out the meaning of life, when fuck all, there was no meaning of life except to find someone who loved you and love them back.

I thought Samantha was that lady. But she wasn’t. We still loved each other. Too much most folk said. But we didn’t like each other enough to let it happen again. Or the first time, really.

I looked at Alexis and started dreaming of living in a trailer outside of Galveston with her. Maybe start my own little “Five Easy Pieces” life. But there I go again. That one didn’t end with the guy loving the girl and living happily ever after either.

Or did it?

I’m the guy who thinks Hemingway wrote the greatest love story of all time with “The Sun Also Rises.” But what the fuck do I know?

“I don’t know? What do you know mister?” Alexis asked me.

“Huh?” I said, stunned that I must have been muttering out loud again.

“You asked me what the fuck do I know? But I think you weren’t talking to me. But you.”

“You’re all right Alexis,” I said with a smile and a chug of beer.

“You too sir.”

“Why you calling me sir?”

“Because my daddy always said to treat a man with respect. Until you have a reason to not.”

“We’ll work on that one,” I said smiling.

“Huh?” she said. I hoped she was being coy. She wasn’t.

“Another round, bar man!” I sighed.

“We’re gonna be all right,” Alexis said to me and to no one.

“Always, hun,” I said.

“You got a quarter for the records?”

“They got 45s in that thing?”

“Hecks yeah, they do! Best jukebox in this part of Texas.”

I thought to myself that wouldn’t take much.

“What do you want to hear?” she asked.

“If they got the Kinks, play that.”

She frowned before skipping over to the jukebox. It was an old one. Had a Rod Stewart “Do You Think I’m Sexy?” 45 cover as a teaser.

The first bars of David Watts began playing. Alexis skipped back over.

“This is for you, sir,” she said.

“Well, hun, you chose wisely. Let’s dance.”

Three days later, I needed Bob Barker’s help more than ever.