The Elevator

 Today, I walked into the elevator and it smelled of urine.

Yesterday, I walked into the elevator and it smelled of skunk week.

The day before, I walked into the elevator and it smelled like bleach.

As I head to the parking lot, elevator smells were not what I expected to be thinking about every day as I leave my new job. After 8 years of the same building – albeit one time completely gutted for construction, a year and a half of COVID-19 working at different desks in different buildings, and three different office spaces, I don’t remember ever smelling the elevator unless I farted in it.

Now, walking closer to my car, I start to think about things I’ve done in an elevator…

·       Pushed all the buttons as I was leaving it

·       Kissing a bunch of women

·       Staring at the floors instead of people in them

·       Barfed

·       Jumped before it hit the final floor

·       Looked at people’s butts

·       Watched people make out

·       Watched people pick their noses

·       Watched a dude pick his ass

·       Stepped on a dirty diaper

·       Listened to elevator music

·       Listened to non-elevator music

·       Asked former NFL quarterback Phil Simms is his son was going to Alabama for college

·       Farted… a lot

·       Smiled as I was leaving a job for the last time

·       Frowned after being laid off from a job

·       Wondered if the gymnastics team would come back to my hotel room for a beer? Answer – no.

·       Held a drunk girl that I was falling in love with

·       Written down quotes or scenes on scraps of paper or notepads

·       Forgotten what room I was in

·       Wondered what it looks like at the top of the World Trade Center

·       Talked

·       Yelled

·       Laughed

·       Cried

·       Contemplated suicide

·       Contemplated a first move

·       Chickened out on a first move

·       Seen blood

·       Seen poop

·       Seen most likely semen

·       Been stuck in one – twice

·       Ate food

·       Drank beer

·       Drank soda

·       Drank water

·       Broke a bottle of Jim Beam – full

·       Mouthed I love you to a complete stranger after she left on a different floor

·       Wondered what I’d do if the door opened and it was hell

·       Never given an elevator pitch

·       Looked at myself in the reflection of fake brass and not being impressed

·       Thought about peeing

·       Been annoyed

·       Been intrigued

·       Been speechless

You get the picture. Nothing too exciting has ever happened to me in an elevator. Certainly, I’ve never been Steven Tyler.

I almost feel like a Samoan who showed up to be in the Price Is Right the day after Bob Barker retired. Whatever that means.

I thought a lot about nothing when something was on my mind.

Take it or leave it when I already lost it.

Eating when I’m not hungry. Starving when I’m full.

Stale cookies full of almond joy wrappers on the curb.

A Styrofoam copy of the bible.

Being cast in Hellraiser 7 on vacation to Burbank.

I saw her standing there and I wasn’t thinking so I sat down and watched until she left. Dustin Hoffman asked me if I was going to come back tomorrow. I said sure. But I didn’t.

 

On the next day’s news, she was struck by a bus. Would I have stopped it from happening? Probably not, I once saw a girl get run over by a bus in college. A few weeks later, I met her and kind of fell in love.

 

I say kind of because I told her I loved her, but she never told me. A whole lot of sadness, a whole lot of regret. But not a whole lot of courage. Maybe that should be the opening of my book, not “I should have never left New Orleans.” But that one has been the one since I uttered those words in Austin, Texas during a doomed bachelor’s bachelor’s party.

 

I wish I’d check out the locations for the Clash’s video when I was there. Pre gentrification. Most, if not all are rubble and memory now.

 

I wonder what it will feel like when I’m just a memory. I guess I could write a letter and ask. But does that instantly make me no longer a memory and ruin the chance to know?

 

Dustin Hoffman plays the same character in most movies. Just looks different.

 

I play the same role in my life. But I don’t have a script to know how it end.

 

Improv, baby!

 

One day, you will see how it ends. Most likely shitting my pants. I hope I have something in me to shit out. Seeing what it looks like when there isn’t haunts me, and will always haunt me. Just like being in New Orleans in 2013 in February will always. Thanks for the memories you fucking place that has ghosts, little ghosts.

 

I get in my car. Start it. Put it in reverse. I think about not looking and just going.

 

The next day, I push the elevator button…

 

Sober, even

 Jesus, the Dave Matthews Band! Is all I can think. I’m sitting in my kid’s dentist office when I notice that I’ve listened to an entire DMB song.

I can’t say it’s the first time, as I think it happened by accident somewhere in my past, but it sure as hell ain’t the third time. It was always somewhat of a badge of honor, being a graduate of the University of Virginia (read as nasally as possible) during the years of 1989 to 1993, and an extra year of being in C’ville while one girl broke my heart and I started another down a path that ended with me breaking hers…

“Does it always go back to a woman, Randy?”

Apparently.

There is ice on the ground and it’s cold as shit outside. I don’t know how I ended up this far north.

“North Carolina is north, Randy?”

Apparently to me it is.

I left Virginia in 1994 to go to Arizona. I remember being in shorts all year long, even on those rare below freezing nights at the bar, that would almost always lead to at least 50, but most likely 70-degree days.

After that, New Orleans. For not long enough. I still dream of that place. Just how magical it was. And just how much I seemed to fuck up the possibility of living there permanently.

“If you’re honest with yourself Randy, you’d probably be dead if you’d stayed.”

Yeah, probably. But damn never really knowing.

I know things wouldn’t have worked out, in my mind it was beyond repair. The redhead wasn’t the cause, she was just there at just the right time.

“Right time?”

Hell, I don’t know how to articulate anything. I’ve never been any good at talking about it, mostly because there was never anyone to listen to me. Not having “die for me” friends, is you don’t get to have those conversations. Internally, yes. But that really doesn’t help.

Eight sessions with a therapist. That’s it.

“I think we should have talked about her,” was her last words to me. That kind of scared me away from therapy. Shouldn’t have. But it did. That and using all my EAP on those sessions and getting laid off for the first time just weeks later.

Two years later, I had shittier insurance. But, I didn’t take advantage of 8 more EAP sessions.

Today, I’m working on myself again. I have too much baggage. I want to do the John Cusack thing, but I think most of the people I want to talk to would be like “who the fuck are you?” except one, who would be “get the fuck away from me.”

Funny. Not funny.

I downloaded any app. Those Instagram ads really work, I tell ya.

A few sessions in, lots of close to tears writing and AI responses and it dawned on me that yep, I need a therapist. Seriously don’t want all of my baggage being absorbed by AI and spit out back at me. I’d guess one day, my AI buddy would suggest a beer, a bullet and a bye-bye. So, doing a quick Google search brought me a bunch of options. But how do you pick a therapist nowadays. Too many options. Too many fake reviews. And who wants to lay it all out, then find out you picked a shithead. Then have to do it all again?

Eh. You are a coward.

“This beating myself up, isn’t helping.”

Thank you mind for pointing out the obvious as I sit here listening to Lucero, not drinking and trying to justify gaining 13 pounds in the last three weeks.

It’s cold.

Been working at home.

New job.

Terror. (GWB voice, please)

I want to get in my car and drive. South. West. Not North. Can’t go much more East.

I had tickets to the Glossary reunion show in Nashville. No one wanted to go with. Then, snow back-to-back weekends and the chance of going solo died in icy roads.

My mom has been gone almost 3 years now. That’s a skull splitter for me. It seems like yesterday. Nothing else seems like yesterday anymore.

Not the breakups. Not the miscarriages. Not the lies. Not the truths. Not even the good times. They’re faded. I think my early stage dementia is real. I have really hard times with words – but only when speaking. I really loathe speaking. Unless I’m drunk. And I don’t get drunk anymore.

I am also promising myself to get off the phone. I’m deleting apps as soon as I reach the end of this typing road. I wonder if I’ll stay committed to finally doing this again?

Sober, even.

By the way, copilot things I should write that “I am considering whether I will remain dedicated to undertaking this task once more.”

How the hell do you follow that with “Sober, even.”???

Drinking hurts now. Maybe that’s fitting. The hurt now lives elsewhere. It’s pretty to think so. Ha!

Choose Your Own Adventure

 

Staring at me through the mirror is Rita. I have not seen her since I was in 11^th grade. We messaged back and forth once when I was in my late 30s and that was that.

She was the only girl I liked in high school. For real liked, that is. I was a teenager after all, so liking and really liking mean different things.

Anyway, I see bad intent in the eyes right now. Eyes I haven’t seen in over 35 years. Eyes I used to be so scared to look into because I was too damn weak to admit what I was thinking.

I flash back to walking home with her after soccer practice one day in school. How excited I was that I was actually doing it, having a real conversation, all that stuff that comes with high school crushes, loves, etc. At least, what all the books and songs and poems told me.

For some reason, that was the only time we walked home together. And oddly, I never really questioned it until just right now as she is staring at me in the mirror of my hometown’s oldest bar.

She walks over. I turn around.

“Hello, Rita,” I say, trying to be the first to speak.

“Hi, Randy,” she says, very matter-of-factly. “You listening to Cinderella?”

“Funny you should say that,” I reply, pointing to my now swollen shut eye that I’m sure is bruised as well.

She looks me up and down. Sighs and sits down.

“So, how have you been?” she replies.

“Been better, but been much worse, to be honest.”

“I’ll bet,” she slyly says. I look a litter closer and see the age of all these years. But I also still see that 17 year old that I used to have feelings for, when I didn’t know what that meant.

Over the next few hours, we talk about how life has shit on us, pooped us out, and propped us up in decent places. I tell her I’ve never been married, close once, engaged once, but never married. Her story varied from mine, with marriages and all that.

I decide I need to take my John Cusack moment, and simply ask… “What do you think would have happened if I asked you out in high school?”

She looks at me, I think sadly.

“I don’t know, Randy,” I asked myself that question in high school. But hadn’t thought about it since, really.

“Really?” I say, my narcissistic heart breaking. “I thought about that question for years after you moved away. Definitely thought about it a lot my senior year when you were gone.”

In those before the internet days, I had no idea where she moved to. I heard rumors of the place, of the why, but, I never knew. I probably could have asked someone, I’m sure someone really knew. But, my nerd self didn’t want anyone to know how much it bothered me… So, I never did.

“Really?” she says. This time, more curious than stand-offish. I see this moment as a turning point for me. I can either keep being curious, and let my mind wander, or I can back off.

At that moment, I think about the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, and wish that live could be like that. Make a choice, and if it sucks, turn back to page 34 and go to another choice.

“Life ain’t like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book, is it?” I ask Johnny. He shakes his head in dismay, as I think even he remembers me as that lovestruck 15, 16, and 17 year old who never had a clue.

“What does that mean?” Rita asks, looking at me with even more curiosity.

“Oh, nothing,” I reply. “You remember those, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she says with a bright smile. Her greenish hair catches in the light. It kind of makes me feel weird. Her skin is pale, with some freckles. Other than gaining a few pounds and not having that 80s curly mullet, she looks the same. Me on the other hand, I’m bald and fat. Although I’ve lost 20 pounds in the last few months.

“Well, I like to sometimes look at my life and wish it could all be that simple,” I start talking again. Someone else from my past walks into the bar just as I’m getting comfortable. She walks up to the jukebox, puts in a dollar and clicks a few times.

The opening drums and chords of “Shake Me” by Cinderella start playing. I wince. The girl who just walked in, she points at me slyly and laughs a little. Of all the places she’d be and I’d be, tonight, we’re both inextricably here.

I tip my now empty bottle of Red Stripe her way. She mouths “Boo Hair Metal, Hoo-ray Beer.”

I look at Rita. She looks bored. Not mad. I wonder again. And I don’t say anything.

Short, with long hair

 

“Do, do, do. You feel, like I do?” is wafting through the air in the Anchor Room on a Thursday afternoon. It’s 4:37 according to the clock on the wall behind Beatrix, the waitress on duty.

The workers at the plant haven’t gotten off yet, which means it’s just me and her and Johnny, the 71-year-old former teacher who taught me U.S. Government so, so many years ago in this small industrial town tucked away in southern Virginia.

Not sure why I’m here. My parents both died years go now. Which was the main reason I ever came back after leaving for good at the age of 24. I still remember that day. I got into my black Firebird and pointed it towards Arizona.

Made it eventually. After spending a week in South Carolina after the car broke down. Watching Pulp Fiction a bunch of times. In New Orleans, got robbed of half of my worldly possessions while hanging out with the first girl to steal a piece of my heart – symbolism was always hitting me over the head hard in the early 90s. Getting me first speeding ticket outside of Houston. Seeing the Texas Hill Country alone for the first time. And finally, arriving in Phoenix to stay with my great aunt and her mean-ass poodle. Bitchy little thing that just growled at me.

I look around the bar. The décor is gone from my youth. It was a karaoke bar for a bit before the whiny owners sold it to some folks from India. Wish they’d at least put the old booths back in. That would be cool.

I saw a pub in Ireland for sale today on the phone. Little less than 400K euros. Comes with an attached house. That would’ve been the dream at 38 when I was L-I-V-I-N at the beach alone, drinking my life away and ignoring signs. I tend to do that, and I end up either breaking a heart or getting mine stabbed with a rusty screwdriver.

It doesn’t hurt that much anymore. I just think about it too much.

I take a swig of my Mille High Life. Only beer I enjoy anymore. It’s not attached to anything good or bad, so it’s safe.

The bell over the door dings. I think quickly that it’s pretty annoying to have that in a bar. But, maybe this place ain’t really a bar anymore.

It’s 4:51 p.m. The shift will be ending soon. Sending folks my way.

I look at the mirror behind the bar and I see her. She’s short. She’s got long hair. She’s wearing a Kix t-shirt. And I ain’t talking about the old video game.

She ambles over to the jukebox. It’s a vinyl one, thank goodness, and not an internet one. She puts a dollar in the slot. Clicks a couple of buttons and walks over to the bar. She looks at the seat next to me. I look at her.

Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You Got, Till It’s Gone” starts playing. I don’t know exactly what to think about that.

“You mind if I sit here,” the short, long-haired lady finally says.

“There?” I say, pointing at the seat next to me.

She just looks at me. She’s got far-away eyes. I start wishing the Rolling Stones were on the jukebox instead of Tom Keifer.

I don’t get a verbal answer. I get a physical one. From the other side.

“That’s my lady,” a voice says.

I hadn’t noticed that the short, long-haired lady from my hometown came in with someone else.

I also don’t see the fist, making contact with my face.

I wake up 14 minutes later. I know this because Johnny, my old government teacher tells me this as he orders me a beer.

“Two Red Stripes!” he says.

I wince. Not at the beer, but at my eye. It’s swollen shut.

“14 minutes you were out, Randy,” Johnny says. “I thought we were gonna have ta call the cops.”

“Glad you didn’t,” I manage to say. I take a sip of beer. It feels good going down my throat.

“Where did she go,” I ask.

“She’s left,” Johnny said. “But she handed me this before she headed out.”

Johnny handed me a crumpled up piece of paper. On it was this “Sorry about David. He’s a dick. But, he’s rich. Here’s my number. Call me if you want. 804-458-5435.”

I stare at the number. It’s my parents’ old number. It had been our number my entire life. Until my sister turned it off a year after my mom died. A year after we all watched my mom die. In our childhood home. In our hometown.

“You gonna call?” Johnny asks.

“Hell no,” I say. “Sometimes signs are so big you just can’t miss ‘em.”

I go to the jukebox. Put in a dollar. Push some buttons. I walk to the bar, sit in the seat the short, long-haired girl asked about. I feel sometime poke me right in the ass. It’s a nail from the chair.

AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” starts playing. I take another swig of Red Stripe. Tip my bottle to Johnny.

The door bell dings again. I feel a cold feeling and get goosebumps.

I look at the mirror. And I don’t like what I see…

Out on the Weekend

My 2 ½ year old son looks up at me as I stare blankly as Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend” wails along on Pandora Radio on a giant Samsung television in our living room in Raleigh, NC.

It’s a Wednesday night, around 7:30. I start to wonder what the me of even 7-8 years ago would have thought of this moment.

I hope he’d be happy.

Though, I tend to doubt it.

I wonder sometimes if that guy knew how to be happy.

“The woman I’m thinking of,

She loved me all up

But I’m so down today

She’s so fine, she’s in my mind.

I hear her callin’…”

They’re kind of fitting, those words. Especially thinking of me so long ago. Not really that long ago, but yes, so long ago.

If I’d been home at 7:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in my previous life, I’d already be drunk. The stereo would be cranked up, maybe playing some Neil Young, it did happen. Probably blasting Lucero, however, more likely.

Cooking on my mini Weber grill, hoping the sea gulls didn’t steal my sausage. Now there’s a title of a book…

“See the lonely boy,

Out on the weekend

Trying to make it pay.

Can’t relate to joy,

He tries to speak and

Can’t begin to say.”

I like to think back. Always have. Always will. It’s just how I’m wired.

Lately, I’ve been purging stuff. I did one other purge in my lifetime. AC. After Crystal. A good buddy of mine told me it was stupid. Throwing all that stuff away. My writing. My memories. My junk. Yeah, I miss some of it. I’d like to be able to see a picture of Rebecca. She and I almost dated. Well, I guess we did for a bit while I was a drifter in Charlottesville, pining away for another gal that didn’t want me.

We met at Roses. She was a cashier. I was a cashier. We made $4.35 an hour. I had a college degree from UVa. A B.A. in Economics.

We talked at work. She was cute. I liked her.

I wasn’t ready to like someone else though.

We ate lunch in the break room.

Me, always a salad from the Farm Fresh in the same strip mall. Her, something from home.

She brought me lasagna when I was sick once.

We went and rode balloons.

We went to see the movie “Thinner.”

We took a trip to Kings Dominion.

We did other things. I remember riding in her big-ass car.

Wondering a lot about what was going on.

I ended up moving back home.

We played truth or dare via letters.

Then I moved to Arizona.

In 1995 she came to visit.

We drove to the Grand Canyon. It was awesome.

In some retro-not-by-design hotel, we awkwardly sat together. I got wine coolers and beer. I was hoping to get drunk. But we didn’t.

The next morning we drove back to Tempe.

A few days we spent together. We hugged as she left. It was awkward. I think we both wanted to kiss.

We didn’t.

A while later, she sent me a cassette tape. She professed her love for me.

I was scared.

I don’t remember now if I ever replied.

It’s haunted me forever. Whatever became of her.

“Think I’ll pack it in

And buy a pickup

Take it down to L.A.

Find a place to call my own

And try to fix up.

Start a brand new day.”

Today, I hung out with my son at a park. I watched him hang out with other kids. Then we went and had doughnuts.

“See the lonely boy,

Out on the weekend

Trying to make it pay.

Can’t relate to joy,

He tries to speak and

Can’t begin to say.”

Of course, my kid walks up just now, says “Daddy stop. Put the ‘puter down.”

I must listen of course, so I stop typing. Still a few words away from filling the quota.

After a few minutes he asks to watch the robot song, aka, The Beastie Boys’ “InterGalactic”.

Pull up YouTube and we share about 4 minutes of MTV’s heyday.

I don’t think about anything else.

It’s a very good feeling.

“What’s next?” he asks when the video fades to black.

I put on The Chordettes’ “Lollipop”. He digs it. He digs Dean Martin, too. I hope I’m not creating another version of me. “Well, that can’t happen,” I think to myself. My dad never spent that much time with me that didn’t involve a beer in one hand and old guys talking about things I could have cared less about.

My son gives me a side eye when I start singing.

I stop. I smile. I don’t think about Neil Young anymore.

Cock and Balls!

“Cock and Balls!”

I looked up from my stool to see why such things were being screamed. I didn’t really find an answer.

A short, stubby little red-haired girl was sitting at the end of the bar. She was drinking an Amstel Light. I fucking hate Amstel Light. It reminds me of Michelob.

I go back to watching “The Middle.” I want to say it reminds me of “Malcolm In the Middle” but it really doesn’t because I never watched that show. I started watching “The Middle” mainly because it was on when I got home from work. When I had a job.

Now, I drink less-than-shitty beer in my local.

Lately, this stubby little red-haired girl has been coming in. It’s making me reconsider my local being my local anymore.

She’s not ugly. She’s not pretty. She’s that in between that you just don’t understand. I dig her tattoo of a soccer ball being kicked by a crab. That’s what I have deduced about her and I’s potential for a long-lasting relationship.

And she yells “Cock and Balls!” quite often when no one is around.

Except for me.

You’d think maybe she’s talking to me. But I don’t make such jumps. It’s why I was a virgin until I was 20, and then I lost my virginity to a girl who told her friends “I’m going to have him tonight!” and well, she did.

It was great at the moment. But soon became a drag.

She was an awful person. And I’d probably hazard to guess she still is.

Of course, a lot of people would say that about me. And they’d be pretty damn correct.

Ryan Adams’ “Losering” comes on.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“What?” says the stubby red-haired gal.

“I hate this damn song,” I reply, no knowing why I’m opening this line of dialogue.

“Reminds you of an ex, huh?” she replies.

“Nah,” I say. “It reminds me of sitting in my studio apartment drinking over my ex.”

“Touche.” And she goes back to drinking her Amstel Light and I go back to watching “The Middle.” It’s the episode where the mom is worried that the son, older one, isn’t texting her back.

I hate texting. I think. I also hate talking on phones. Fuck phones.

The world outside is wet, rainy and cold. I’m glad I don’t smoke cigarettes. Yet, I miss them. There’s always something wrong about sitting in a dingy bar and not smelling smoke. Now, you just smell it when some ass hat sits down next to you, smelling like an ashtray.

Smokers stink.

But so do people that just fucked in the bathroom stall of a Burger King.

I look at the TV. Charlie Sheen is smiling in a commercial. He’s got HIV, I think. I don’t have HIV, I think next. I’m glad I don’t have HIV, I think even more. Not exactly deep thoughts here, but they keep my mind from drifting too far into nothingness, which shitty beer and chicken wings can do.

I say that about chicken wings knowing full well I haven’t eaten a chicken wing in three years. They give me diarrhea. They haven’t always done that, but I’m 44 years old and they do now. I guess that’s what getting old is really about. Shitting liquid. I guess I expected more. Maybe. But probably not.

I look at the stubby red-haired gal. She’s got a chat pal now. Lost out again.

He’s wearing a ripped Bon Jovi “Slippery When Wet” shirt. I’ll give him no props for that. If he looked like the girl’s tits on the shirt, then I’d give him props. Instead, he looks more like Russ Morman, the former Chicago White Sox player. But 25 years older. Of course, I’m thinking of the Russ Morman from the 1987 Fleer set, so maybe it is Russ Morman sitting in this shitty bar hitting on a stubby red-haired girl that I was thinking about fucking but knew I never would so I just stayed up and watched “The Middle.”

Life is funny sometimes.

At least it is in the moving picture shows. I kind of wish I could afford to go see a moving picture show right now. Maybe trade in one of the 10 or so times I saw Pulp Fiction in my first bit of time living in Arizona. Nah. I enjoyed those times. Sitting alone in a theater, usually almost empty, with my box of popcorn and Coca-Cola. I’m sure I used to dream about some beautiful gal coming in an taking me away. And she probably wasn’t a red head.

And she probably did use the phrase “Cock and Balls!” a lot.

Game Boy

“Never buy your girlfriend a Nintendo Game Boy,” I said to the guy next to me at the bar.

He was wearing dirty camo clothes from head to toe. Probably was going to vote for Donald Trump. Of course, who was I kidding, he wasn’t voting.

“What’s a Game Boy?” he asked through his broken tooth grin.

I was amazed at how white his teeth were, however. My teeth had turned yellow quite early in life. I drank way too many Mountain Dews and Nu Grapes during my childhood for my teeth to have any chance.

Then, I didn’t go to the dentist.

Been five times since 1994.

Now a humblebrag as the Facebook police would say. But a statement of fact. Stupid fact, but fact nonetheless.

Sometime around 2007, I noticed just how yellow my teeth had gotten. I was looking at photos from my best friend’s bachelor part in Austin, Tx. I wanted to put one of them up on Myspace. But they were so damn yellow. So, I made it a black-and-white photo.

Pretty much every phot of me since I’m had this crooked grin. Mostly, covering up my ugly teeth.

This guy, however, had perfect fucking teeth. And he smelled like three-day old burritos soaked in piss.

But at least he’s got a paycheck, I thought to myself.

My last paycheck was cashed on Feb. 22, 2016. I got laid off two days earlier by the last newspaper I worked out. I took out student loans totaling just over $36,000 to get my journalism degree. Really, I took out loans to enjoy my mid-20s, by staying in school, but who is really telling this story. So, I will embellish.

“A Game Boy is a hand-held video game system,” I told Mr. Camo smells like pissed burrito.

“Why’d ya need that? Can’t you use a phone?” he smartly replied.

“That, sir, is why you are a better man than me,” I replied.

He tilted his glass of Keystone Light, yes, a glass of KL, not a bottle, can, etc… and gave me a wink and a nod. Then he wandered off to the bathroom.

I’d never see him again.

The last bit of thinking got me thinking. So I wandered over to the jukebox and plopped a dollar into it. I still hate the Internet jukes, but find me a bar with a 45s juke nowadays in this shit box of a town.

My town, Zebulon, North Carolina.

I did a quick search and hit play.

The Faces’ “Oh, La, La.”

Seemed to fit the mood.

The mood I’m always in now. Sad and pissed off. About a lot of things and about nothing.

I ordered another beer. I drank it. Ordered another.

“You got the money for these beers, Randy,” John, the barkeep asked.

“Probably,” I replied.

I actually didn’t know if I did. Unemployment checks didn’t come anymore. But the occasional royalty check from my one published book did. I know I cashed one recently, but couldn’t quite remember if I’d spent it all yet.

I opened my Velcro wallet with a rip, and looked real quick.

“Yep,” I said to no one. John had walked away. He was talking to some redhead at the other end of the bar. She was not attractive, but she was a redhead, which gave her a chance.

After my song was over, I stared at the TV. There was a Motorhead video on. Hard to believe Lemmy and David Bowie died so close to each other, I thought, then wondered if they went to heaven, hell or nowhere.

I tended to believe in nowhere, but didn’t want to fully pot commit. Kind of my M.O. over the years, never going all-in. And it costs ya.

Just fucking push the chips in. If you lose, you end up in the same place anyways.

At least that’s how it felt tonight.

And has felt for quite a few nights.

I wonder what my son is doing? It’s 2:51 a.m. He’s probably standing in his bed, calling out for one of us to get him a pacifier. I wonder what the love of a piece of plastic in your mouth really is. Suck, suck, suck. Drool, drool, drool. Seems like a Dead Kennedys song.

I stare at my arm. It’s bruised.

I can’t remember where from. I probably fell while sleeping again. Been doing that a lot lately.

It’s an attempt to see if my mom will show up like she did when I was 7. I used to throw myself out of the top bunk of my bunk beds with a thud. I’d hope someone heard. If not, I’d whip up tears.

Surprised I never broke anything.

Only think broken now is my heart. And that got broke a long, long time ago.

“Fuck a broken heart,” John said.

I smiled. But quickly realized he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to the red.

He’d tell me tomorrow about how she squealed when he grabbed the back of her thigh. That got me through the next week of sleeping on a park bench. In fucking Zebulon, North Carolina. Better get moving if I want to make Key West by winter, I thought.

Always said if I ever ended up homeless, it would be there.