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.

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.

news...

yeah. you'll come to expect me not to fulfill my promises. but, the last two days, found out news that may change things for me. not for the bad, really, even though it could be perceived that way.

writing is on pause tonight. maybe i'll hit this thing up after the fights tonight. but for now, i'm taking my mind off things with UFC, grilling and beer.