My boss' coffee spoon

My ears were ringing. My shirt soaked with sweat, beer, someone else’s blood and most likely a little bit of spit.

Walking out into the humid summer air, life couldn’t get much better.

The slight distraction of two-plus hours of a Lucero show always does me good. I forget about all the shit in life – the awful job, the empty bank account, the throbbing back, the holes in my shoes, shirts and pants. During that time lost in the crowd, you sing the songs and hug people you don’t know, and sometimes you fight people you don’t know. And you can’t help but smile the whole night long.

I’ve now been to 42 Lucero shows. That’s a decent number. More than most people ever go to any show of their favorite band. I guess I’m lucky that they still haven’t gotten huge. Yeah, I’m paying 25 bucks for some shows now instead of 5 or 10, but it’s still not trying to fork over $150 for a Poison/Warrant/Bullet Boys reunion show.

It seems lately, I’ve been going to shows one night, then going to work the next. That day of work is always a blur.

Today was no different. After stumbling out of bed around noon, my liver and my kidneys asked for the day off. But, being that I never take days off from work – one sick day in my career, and that was to drive to Florida to have my heart operated on with a rusty screwdriver – I wasn’t about to let a little bit of jaundice or kidney stone flailing to keep me away. Hell, one of the first kidney stones I ever purged was at work – in Woodbridge, Virginia. I peed that thing out, looked at it in the urinal, went to my boss’ desk, got his coffee spoon, fished out the kidney stone with the spoon, wrapped it up to take to the doctor later that week, and placed his spoon back in his drawer. Then, I went back to work for another six hours after being there for six already.

Oh, the life of journalism when it was still worth it. I don’t know if I’d come back to the desk anymore. But I’d certainly still use my boss’ coffee spoon to dig it out. I guess some things really never do change.

All of this talk of coffee spoons makes me wonder what I should have done with other boss’ coffee spoons…

There was the mullet. I guess I would have put his in an Asian hooker’s ass, told her to shit on it, then found a few wasp stingers and placed them on it.

Yeah, I didn’t like that guy.

Then there’s the self-loathing boss. He who tried to be a friend, but back-stabbed his way to whatever it is he has today. That guy’s spoon? Well, I probably would have just had one of my other co-workers at the time – well, a certain one – just lick it. Then have her tell him she did just that.

Let’s see. My boss who lived in a trailer in the desert? Eh. I wouldn’t do anything to his. He was an all right guy. I kind of feel bad for feeling bad for him, the way he ended up. Why? Because he had fucking job security. He’d been there 20 years and probably made it the 15 years after I left. At least I hope so. I guess I could Google his name. But, then the mystery would end. I believe the Internet has done a disservice to people by allowing them to solve those mundane, day-to-day mysteries. It kills the imagination. It’s why I’m glad I haven’t been able to find that one gal – who worked with me at Roses back in the day. She told me she loved me, via cassette tape. And I freaked out. Fuck I was immature. She’d probably want to shove all of my bosses’ coffee spoons up my kidney stone filled urethra. Or she hasn’t thought of me in over a decade. I wonder which is more likely? Ha.

I stare at the concert flyer from the Lucero show. I remember the show. It was a good one. Not a great one. The crowd was strange. Not a lot of singing along. Surprisingly, more to the new songs than some of the old ones. Except the classics. Maybe it’s the changing of the tide. Ha. What the fuck does that mean? Combining two clichés into a new phrase keeps it from being a cliché, right?

I told my girlfriend that one song really reminds me of her. She blushed and sort of smiled as she tried to listen to the song. It’ll be the lead to the mix tape I’m giving her for her birthday. Not a CD, though. It’s all in the medium. Of course, I don’t think she has a tape player.  Guess I can add that to the list of things to get her. And make sure she opens the old thrift store tape player (it would rock if I could find a stylin’ boom box) first. Before the other things. All of which I’m pretty darn happy to have found.

Like the old man inside of my head told me “It don’t matter how you die. We all die eventually. You can die a hero or a fucking vegetable in a hospital. You’re still dead. So get out there an live, motherfucker.”

I like the old man inside my head better than the one out here. He’s got it all figured out. I sure as hell don’t. Now, where’s my boss’ coffee spoon?

bill madlock's batting average

Nothing to see here. Just turn around. Keep going. See ya. Bye bye.

It’s telling. The words that someone else wrote here. The entire story of here is there, on the wall. Just waiting for the next person to read it, digest it, and make a decision about what they mean.

For me, they say yep. For the last guy, they may have said nope. It’s the beauty of words. Especially simple ones.

I once wrote a love poem. The girl I gave it to laughed at it. Said it was cute. I never wrote another poem for over a decade. It cut that deep. You could say it’s still bleeding. Things are funny that way. The ones that stick.

You think something when it happens is going to be something vital. Permanent. Then, a week later, you’ve forgotten all about it. Or she forgot about it and you didn’t. Or the dog shit on the exact piece of paper you may have written it on, then ate it just to spite you.

Then there are the throwaway moments. A television commercial. A rip in your jeans. An argument in a bar. Those things, they stick. You remember them for years. Decades. Forever. Whatever that is.

I’ve always had a problem remembering “important” things. The dates a girlfriend’s parents died. The favorite drink of the woman I want to share a life with. Unless I write them down. Then I can look at them. Study them like definitions in my world history class the junior year of high school. When the one-armed teacher would write terms on the chalkboard for the first 10 minutes of class. Then tell us to remember them, read a chapter and then watch some 1940s or 50s film strip about the past. War. Death. Famine. AIDS. Well, no AIDS. It was still new then. Rock Hudson was what AIDS was about, I guess.

But I could always tell you Bill Madlock’s batting average each year he won a batting title. They were .354, .339, .341 and .323. If you want me to sign any lyric from Poison’s first two albums, I’m your man.

I don’t want it to be that way. I try my best to learn a language that I’d already studied for over six years, but never mastered. Yet I could remember the name of any girl that I ever had a crush on from the time I was 9 years old.

It’s a curse. But a blessing. Those things, those random-ass stupid facts and scenes from the past. They fill up gaps in stories. They fill up gaps in conversations. Change a little bit here, a little bit there and it becomes something different to say. To write. Tell that to the girlfriend. Tell it to her when you forget something important. Then, it sucks. A lot.

I guess that’s a guilty conscious. No. I know it is. It hurts to think of some of the stupid things I’ve done. But, there ain’t shit I can do about them now. So, I write about them. I remember them. I try to learn from them. Do I ever? Guess it depends on who you ask.

My old journals and blogs and diaries and notepads were full of confessions. Full of drunken ramblings of a broken-hearted fool. Most of it was shit. Some of it wasn’t. Sometimes people stumbled upon them. Read what I had to say about them, about us, about the things I thought we shared or should have shared. Some shuddered. Some smiled. Some never came back. Some kept coming back. Some came, went, then came back years later. Very few ever asked me about it. That always perplexes me. But what can you do except keep on keepin’ on.

Just the other day. It seems someone from my past paid a visit. I wrote something about this person drunk one night a long, long time ago. The internet is funny. It’s been deleted, but it still exists. They found it, read it, and read some more. I have no idea what the reaction to it was. Although I may be able to hazard a guess. But that’s a futile effort. Why? Because only they know, and if they don’t want to tell, I ain’t going to find out anytime soon.
Damn. I’m uninspired, yet inspired to think.

I did just eat too much bad for me food. And two cans of ginger ale. That also may have something to do with it all.

Bare with me. It will get better.

A boy can dream…