Yma Sumac in Farmville, North Carolina

The girlfriend and I, we used to go to thrift stores all over the little swath of eastern North Carolina that we were sentenced to all the time. Funny, I still live there, and still go to the same thrift stores, though not nearly as much as I used to. She? I don’t have a clue.

But one day we were in Farmville. A small town that I’d never heard of, and wouldn’t go back to again until almost a decade later – for a job.

That day, we just decided to take the road to the town. We used to so things like that. Go to a town via the highway – such as Goldsboro or Wilson or Raleigh – and then take some back roads way home to see where it led us. I saw the sign for Farmville at a blinking red light – it blinked yellow on the main stretch, which we were not on.

“Let’s go there,” I said.

“I’m kind of tired,” she moaned.

“I’ll get you a chick-a-philly!”

“Sold!”

It was a simple barter system we had. If I wanted something, I’d offer something in return. If she wanted something, she did the same. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She liked to play the little game. And seemed to enjoy it as much as I. And, she didn’t mind my searching endlessly in thrift stores for vintage video games, LPs and glasses from all over the country. Such were my passions then. Two of the three still are. Don’t know why I lost the want of video games. I think it’s because the supply dried up. It got too hard to find them “in the wild.” And I hated buying ‘em on ebay and such.

We got to Farmville and it wasn’t much. A pretty little place that seemed to be lost a bit in time. Not like it was the 1950s there or something, but maybe 1987 or so.

I saw a Salvation Army and knew we’d be going in. If it was open.

Pulling up to the shop, the sign said “Yes, We’re Open!” and parked.

“Let’s see what we find,” I said enthusiastically.

“Alrighty,” she responded. I loved the – what I called almost Wisconsiny accent she had, although her mom came from New Mexico and her dad, I have no idea – and smiled at the sound of that reply.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“Just you,” I said, meaning it completely.

We walked in, hand-in-hand, the little bell jingling as we pushed the door.

“Howdy, folks,” the lady at the cash register spoke to us. She had on a green shirt with some kind of logo on it. And purple pants. “Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

“OK,” I said.

We wandered about the place – her looking at clothes, as always – me looking at everything but.

I noticed some LPs and started rifling through them. They were the usual: Roger Williams, Glen Miller, Liberace and lots of Christmas albums. I saw a Pete Seeger one, but it was rough. Then, I noticed a pile of old 78s. And among them was a box set – Yma Sumac “Legend of the Sun Virgin”.

Immediately, I had to have it. The price tag said $10. A bit much, I figured, for some old 78s that I’d never play, most likely, but something that I had to have. A compulsive spender of little amounts of money I’ve always been. And this was just a symptom of the stupidity that would lead to maxed out credit cards, road trips to nowhere and everywhere, rental cars and huge bar tabs.

“What’s that?” she said to me, her red hair shining under the light coming inside the old dusty store from the gigantic front window. I watched the dust in the light almost put on a show around her head.

“It’s some kind of cool old box set. But look at that art!” I said pointing to the box.

“Oooooooh, that is cool,” she responded. She stared at the box, opened it and then shut it. I loved that she played along with my silliness. Didn’t try to change that in me.

“You find anything?” I asked.

“Nah. It’s slim pickin’s over there. Let’s get out of here. You owe me a sandwich.”

“I sure do,” I said grabbing her arm.

We went to the cash register and plopped it down. That’s when I saw it. In the case was an almost brand new looking Intellivision II. Boxed and looking pristine. It also had a $10 price tag. I looked in my wallet. I had a ten, a five and four ones. Not gonna cut it. I’d have to choose.

In my head I debated. That video game was ultra cool. So was the album.

“You have a couple bucks I can borrow?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “I spent the last of my cash in Wilson.”

I then made the decision. I’ll come back later and get the Intellivision II. But I’ve got to have this album. Even though I’ll probably never play it.

I never went back to get the Intellivision II. But I did play the album.

And was shocked that the music was actually used in the soundtrack to “The Big Lebowski.” And that made my day.

Now, tonight, years and years later I’m watching Charlton Heston in “Secret of the Incas” in Raleigh. “Secret of the Incas” is the movie where old Charlie wears an outfit that had to be stolen by either Stephen Speilberg, George Lucas or Harrison Ford when they made “Indiana Jones.” It’s a dead ringer, proving that nothing is original anywhere, no matter how much you think it is. I’m on a couch, hanging out with two dogs and an empty bag of tortilla chips. The opening credits of the movie feature the exact same song. And I remember that day in Farmville.

Funny how memories come back.

bare minimum hackery

I looked at my bank account today and couldn’t fathom how I was going to pay my bills this month. One check completely goes to rent now. My renter moved out and with him went $250. I started getting health insurance. Another $100. And now, my student loan has come due again. Payment is $280.

That’s $350 less a month coming in and $280 more a month needed. Math isn’t hard when it’s that simple. So…It means I’m running a deficit right now. Just like this fine country I live in.

That won’t last very long. I’ll be drowning soon. Especially when I do stupid things like cut my hand and have to go to urgent care. Boom, another $100 out the window. Which, of course, doesn’t exist.

Ugh.

I watch as a hack, a complete bore of a writer and person and journalist is now writing a novel. I’m jealous. And the only one I have to blame is myself. I’m a lazy turd when it comes to this.

I read his words and I cringe.

But I read my words and cringe.

So, what does that make us? Cringe brothers?

See?

Cringe.

My hand is throbbing. Yet I keep typing. I want to drink a beer, but I can’t afford to buy one. So instead, I stare. At anyone that’s around me. Usually, this will end up getting me kicked out of a place. And in a small town such as this, you run out of places to get kicked out of pretty quick.

The brunette in the corner knows me. We worked together for a moment about a decade ago now. She saw me crumble at the feet of another woman. She knows my weak spot. Yet she has no chance and knows it.

She confided in me once in an online chat. She was thinking of cheating on her (second) husband. I told her it was a bad idea. No matter what. She didn’t get it. And tried to get me to fuck her.

I told her hell no. She asked why. I told her simply “If you ever cheat, you’ll always cheat. And that makes you nothing to me.”

It hurt her feelings, because she instantly told me she’d cheated before.

And you wonder why you can’t find love, I replied.

She got hurt some more.

Why are you mean to me, she asked.

I’m not mean. I’m just honest.

She stopped hitting on me then.

I don’t miss those conversations.

I look at her in the bar light. She’s chubby, but has actually lost about 50 pounds or so since the last time I saw her. She loves to show her tits. They’re big, but not really anything that should be hanging out. She drinks Michelob. That makes me think of another. And it makes me sad.

So, I stop looking at her.

A kid with a crew cut is at the other end of the bar. He’s nervous. I don’t know why. There isn’t anyone in the place. Except for me, the brunette, a toothless guy with a sweatband and the barkeep.

He gets up and starts to shake his hands. Really fast he does this. It’s interesting to watch. For a moment.

Then the doors open. A couple of women walk in. One looks like a girl I went to high school with. She has horse eyes and horse teeth. I thought she was pretty then, but I was a virgin and didn’t know any better. Now, she’s still got horse eyes and horse teeth. And saggy arm fat.

Me? I’m fat and bald and have gold teeth. Not the precious kind. Plus, my heart don’t work very well any more. And I’m not referring to heartbreak.

I don’t know if I can handle being heartbroken again. Too many times a woman has left me. Too many times I thought I’d be a dad. Too many times I didn’t do what was right.

“Guess it isn’t in the cards for you, just like me,” Smitty said to me on that ill-fated car trip with him and my dad back in 2009.

That made me sad. He thought I’d be like him.

Maybe he was right, though.

Maybe he was right.

I haven’t been on the beach for almost a month. I live two blocks away. I thought about going there today, but then a bunch of kids walked by – skipping school, I guess – and it spoiled my appetite for the sandy shores.

sick as a dog

Surprisingly, the credit card doled out fifty more dollars for me. I knew that this was the last of it. My last payment was exactly enough to leave me one dollar under my limit, which I’ve not exceeded. This is the fifth card that I have flown past my limit on now. Using credit cards to live off of and to pay the others’ minimum balance is a fool’s game that has just reached it’s apex.

But, instead of moping about it, I get in my car and go fill up the tank. I’ve got to get to Virginia on this money, so, better spend it wisely.

I buy a 12 pack of beer as well. While I’m driving back to our house, I look at that beer in the passenger seat. I begin to wonder what she’d think if I told her about how much debt I was in. She’s got a great job. It pays well. She’s happy. Me, I’m a bum. I can’t find a job that I like. Much like the spoiled brat that I am, I don’t take one that could have been perfectly good. And in retrospect, would have been better than the one I ended up taking many months later.

Bur right now, I’ve got a 12 pack of beer to drink. Maybe I’ll drink half of it and get on my bike and ride around town. Buzzed bike riding is a beautiful thing. Especially in this city. The Spanish moss dripping down off of every tree. The smells. Whether it’s the river lazily flowing past behind a levee or some homeless guy’s piss from the night before, I love all of it. Call me crazy, but it just fills me with strength, something I need as my troubled existence gets more troubled by the compounded minute.

I should know better than this. I got a decent education. Twice. Even an economics degree from one of the U.S.’ best schools. Some of my professors, I’d learn later, were involved with Bernie Madoff in a bad way, meaning they got snookered too. So, I guess that could help explain things. But the one who made the biggest impact was a Mike Milken lover. Go figure. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write my own Wikipedia page and say that I was a “financier and philanthropist”, but instead mine will read was a “drunken bum and all-around nice guy.”

I decide to just drive around town instead of going home. Waste some more of that last 50 bucks. Good thing as is just a little over a dollar a gallon now. I might never make the trip back to Virginia.

After 20 minutes or so of rambling, I find myself on the Algiers ferry. The Mississippi is dull here. Too many tourists and not enough wooden rafts. I don’t know why I think one day I’ll see Huck Finn piloting on the waters, but I do. Some kind of fantasy. I’ve always wanted to do just that. Jump on a skiff in Minnesota and take her all the way to the Gulf. It sounds great in theory, but I’m sure would be a disaster of epic proportions if this city-fied fool ever tried it. End up dead like Chris McCandless.

One thing for sure on such a trip, there wouldn’t be any fights. No sleepless nights. No fretting when the mail delivers another bill you can’t pay. Just me and my thoughts. Lonely? Yes. Better than what I’ve got? Not really, as being alone is the worst thing one can do to the soul.

After wandering around Algiers for an hour or so, I get back on the ferry to the Quarter side again. The sun is falling, the tourists will be coming out. It’s Friday night. I think I should be at work. I don’t realize that soon enough, every Friday night of my life will be consumed by the job. Something no one should do, when I look back at it. I remember the friends I’ve made along the way. Only two of them are still toiling away in the cesspool of sports journalism. One is an editor for a pretty damn good paper, he offered me a job on his staff not too long ago, I turned it down to chase living at the beach. Smart move? Jury’s still out on that one…The other? He’s in Japan. Living the dream.

Me? I’m a page designer now. I don’t write anymore. I miss it. A little more with every dreadful article I read by the “journalists” that populate the papers I work for. I had a thought yesterday about the newsroom. How not a single soul in there that has a say in things has “it”. My feeling was this is what a newsroom full of citizen journalists must be like. Puppies and kittens and submitted photos and press release re-writes. Cubicle hell, indeed.

And I think about those days when I was free to do what I wanted to do. How I ended up making all the wrong choices. Some that I’m still paying for today. Some that became habits. Some that became patterns. Sometimes the voice in your head, it doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about.

“Sick as a Dog” by Aerosmith plays as I pull into my driveway. I very distinctly remember thinking to myself that life is great, and what I do next will either be a huge step towards getting my life in order or it will further dig the hole.

Wonder how he’d feel if he met the me of today?

you can't clean it up if it's broken inside

I remember being 27 years old, buried in debt that I had no control over. I had no job. I was living in the town I wanted to be in. I was with a lady I loved. And my life sucked.

So, I ran away to a job that paid peanuts, but it was a job. I honestly don’t know why I went for that job. There were at least two others, but in all honesty, this one was the best. The paper was awesome. The two guys I’d be working with were awesome.

And, hell, I got to live on a couch rent free. For six months. OK, that really wasn’t a positive, except for the rent-free part. Because otherwise, I would’ve drown in that shit.

When I finally got a paycheck, I remember thinking “well, by the time I’m 30, I’ll have my life under control, and by 33 all this debt will be gone.”

Ha. Life.

Here I am, almost 40 now, the debt has shrunk, sort of. I hit two walls during that time, walls that made me use credit again. Stupid walls.

Now, I’m hoping to pay them off by the time I’m 43. I send every cent I have available to them now. I used to try to do that, but now I’m doing it. It’s tough. It sucks. But it’s necessary. Biggest problem with the plan is I’m making less now than I have since 2001. That’s a hard pill to swallow. But it’s reality now, so, better get used to it.

By then, I’ll be most likely shaving my head because I’m bald. My front teeth might be gone. The job I’m at won’t exist, I think it’s safe to say.

I won’t be living in the same house, or same town. Unless I meet the woman of my dreams. Hey, as TP say “Even the losers…get lucky sometimes.”

Well, enough of the self-imposed pity party. I created this mess with horrible decisions, both financially and personally. My hole. My shovel. Now, my building a ladder. A little late in life, but I happens.

****

I did my best to bury a memory last night. Hopefully, it stays in that hole I dug over there. Not the one I’m in. Ha.

****

I think I got my opening to a book I may someday write. It was in my head for hours, and finally, right before I went to sleep last night, I wrote it down in my diary. I haven’t re-read it, so I may actually suck. The opening line I can give away, because I’ve said it before…

“I never should have left New Orleans…”

It’s a great opening line. I remember the day Josh and I were talking at his bachelor party weekend in Austin. At some cheesy bar by the lake. I was gushing about the damn town, like I always have and always will until I actually move back. And I said those words…

Josh instantly broke out his notepad and wrote them down, proclaiming that they were the opening lines to his “Adventures of Alligator Jones” story, aka, my biography.

Short. Too the point. Accurate. And true. That’s what a writer should strive for. It’s why I read Hemingway, although “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is a bit raggedy in my opinion.

***

I may try to write something at work tonight. Do it long hand. I so miss writing long hand. I stumbled upon an old notepad a few weeks ago that had someone else’s longhand writing on it. It was strange to see it again. I kept it for a reason I assume. And maybe that reason is just to remind me that it is possible. If you just keep trying.

Don’t quit.

***

Does listening to a band’s music that has such deep meaning to you during a different awful time help erase the deeper meaning? Make it less powerful, somehow? I’m attempting that by listening to Lucero constantly at work. I can’t tell if it’s changing anything at all.

***

Monkeys like rubber-soled shoes,
But not the Beatles.
Stiv Bators was killed by a bus,
Wonder how it felt?

***

Nonsensical stuff makes me happy.
Incense does not.
I wish I had a drug dealer,
‘cause I need some pot.

****

Yep, it gets bad sometimes. But you’ve got to keep typing. Keep typing. Keep typing. No matter how bad what comes out of your mind. Even if everyone laughs at it. Even if even you know it’s worthless pap. Why? Because eventually that one true sentence will come out. And you can add it to the other one. And the other one…