seagull

It’s surprising sometimes exactly what makes you fall back into bad habits.

Today, it was walking on the beach and hearing a seagull cry. That lonesome wail that come out of its beak forced me for just a second to think about what I haven’t thought about. And I started to cry myself. Alone on the beach on a warmer than it’s supposed to be day in February I stood on the beach wailing like a small child.

So, I went home and started drinking.

I don’t like drinking alone like I used to. At one point, it was a ritual. I did it out of habit instead of want. I can’t say it wasn’t a need, however, as it probably was sometimes. Sanity is a tough thing to walk the fringes of and not falling down on one side or the other.

Much like if you travel the same roads of your past, you’re going to see ghosts. Or feel them. Deep in the bones. An ache that won’t go away. It hides sometimes. But it usually knows when to show up again.

I stopped crying for a moment and watched the seagull. It hopped on one foot for a bit, adding a bit of tragi-comic effect to the moment. Then the other leg popped out and he started walking away from me. He’d done his job, I figure. Stirred up something inside me that needed stirring. So he was off to do whatever it is that seagulls do when they’re not annoying you on your beach blanket or following behind a boat looking for food.

Staring into my fridge, I see the many six packs of beer that my girlfriend has brought me over the past few weeks. It’s a tradition of sorts. There are beer stores worth a damn in Raleigh where she lives. Here at the beach, not much to speak of. I can get Shiner at the Food Lion, and for most of my two years here, that’s been enough.

I pop open an Abita and it starts to flow over the rim of the bottle. I curse the foamy remnants that cover my hand and I go to the sink and wipe it off. I think for a moment about how not too long ago, I would have just flicked it onto the carpet or just patted it on my clothes.

After a couple of beers, and some Lucero music blasting, I start to calm down a bit. I begin to make my plans for returning to the scene of heartbreak in just 13 days – New Orleans. I bought tickets to a Lucero show at Tips in December. Figure I should use them. The long-ass drive will do me some good. As will re-visiting the scene. I have a thing with returning to the places that remind me the most of the pain. I guess it’s good that I don’t go back to Gainesville, Fla. But seriously, that would be stupid. She’s in Alexandria now anyway. Working just down the street from my best friend’s apartment. Funny how that all works out.

Now, with the mind distracted just enough, the tears start to evaporate. I hope the hate doesn’t rise. It caused me to lose a friend, well, in the way someone loses a friend now-a-days with the deletion of self from social networks. But, I’ve decided that yes, I could chase after him. Apologize. But why? He is one of a very few who knows how I’m hurting right now. And he chose to be an ass because I was an ass. But taking it a step further. Maybe it’s a joke and I’m too fucking sensitive. If so, jokes on me Sasha Baron Cohen. If not, jokes on you.

The beer isn’t as effective as it used to be either. Or the words of Ben Nichols. But the pain inside right now isn’t about a girl. It isn’t about being a fucking asshole. It’s about life itself. Just not mine. Which makes it really hard to figure out, being the narcissistic fuck that I am.

So I turn my attention to finding a way to stop thinking about trying to figure it out. It never works, but you can’t say I haven’t tried. Well, some would say that, but fuck them.

The CD ends and all I hear is the ocean. Waves slowly breaking against the sand. This time of year, it’s easy to hear. Which is nice. The tourists and jarheads are nowhere to be seen, and especially heard right now.

fuck that shit

I walked through the old pink doors, Social Distortion’s “I Was Wrong” blared from some shitty bar speakers that had blown out a long time ago. I winced at a bright light from above. I hate lights in bars. They serve no purpose other than to expose the ugliness that you go into the bar to hide.

“Shiner and a Jameson,” I say to Luther, my favorite bartender of the moment.

“You got it Jonesy,” he replies with a finger point, he’s no longer my favorite bartender of the moment, but he does deliver the goods. Which I tip accordingly for.

“You ever going to replace those speakers?” I ask in a raspy, I just took a shot of Jameson voice.

“Nah, you’ll just blow them out again.”

True, one night a few months ago, I jumped behind the bar while American Aquarium’s “Redheads and Adderall” came on. Mostly, I did it to mute the gaggle of sorority girls belting out some Lady Gaga tune over at one of the booths. They had an I-phone with it playing. The worst part of this bar is its proximity to the university. However, it’s also one of its selling points on a cold, lonely night.

“Eh, that was justifiable homicide, Luther. I can’t stand it when I have to hear shrill sounds coming from shallow people.”

“How the fuck do you listen to your own thoughts?”

“Yeah, fuck you then,” I replied, finishing off my Shiner. “Another round, then.”

He took my empty bottle and the shot glass. The bottle shattered in the trash bin after he tossed it about 12 feet to the corner. It amazed me that he never fucking missed that shot. At least when I was around.

“You ever miss?”

“Of course I do. But I’m on my A-game just for you.”

“Fuck off and give me my drinks.”

He filled a shot glass. Then pounded a second on the bar, filling it to the point of overflow, but stopping just in time. “Damn, he is on his A-game tonight,” I thought.

We clinked glasses and downed the shots. It’s going to be another long night, I could tell. At 2:37 p.m. On a Tuesday.

“Where is everybody?” I asked with a grin.

“Guess they heard you’d be here, went over to Charlie’s. A lot less lecherous 40 year olds hanging out there. In fact, I think they don’t let you in anymore, right?”

“Fuck off, Luther.”

“You two bicker like a married couple,” a voice shot out from the darkness. Immediately, I was in love. No matter what she looked like.

“Nah, I’ve asked him at least 100 times. Including the first night I was in this damn bar,” I said. “Dick head always says “I’m not gay, man.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Sure you’re not,” she said. My heart skipped another beat. This lady’s got moxie. You don’t see too many in this place with moxie. Most of ‘em have money, yeah, that and pearly white teeth. Impossibly white. My golden teeth certainly don’t fit into mom and dad’s usual plans for their little darlings. Thankfully.

“I can hear you, but I can’t see you,” I say, looking toward the darkness that is the left side of the joint.

Slowly, a shadow creeps out of the dark. She hits the light for a second, then disappears, then reappears.

“Who are you? Antonio Banderas?”

“You think you’re really clever, don’t you?” she says as she sits down next to me. She smells of watermelon. Her hair is, of course, red. It couldn’t have been any other color. Now, whether or not it’s real, I’ll probably never know. At least that’s what I think at that moment of terror.

“Nah, I’m just an asshole who throws shit out and usually, it sticks.”

“My name’s Maddy,” she says, sticking out her hand for a shake.

“Randy,” I reply. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

“You going to buy me a drink, or do I have to do it myself?”

“Get the lady a Jameson and Shine,” I say to Luther. He cocks his head a bit. I don’t usually order my usual for the ladies. And usually, they don’t order it either. He looks at her, she doesn’t take her gaze off of me. Luther finally gets a bottle and a shot. She reaches over for the shot, clutches it and swigs it back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Was that a test?” she asks.

“Nah, I figured if you didn’t want it, I’d just drink it and then order you a Singapore Sling or something.”

“Fuck that shit.”

I had no chance after that.

“Fuck that shit, indeed.”

the drip, chapter 3

He slumped into his chair. The crickets were out early today. He listened in peace for a few minutes. A car drove past, Dean Martin’s “Memories are Made of This” came out of the speakers.

For just a second, life was perfect, he thought. And of course, by thinking it, it ended.

The blonde haired hooker from General Pershing strolled by just as the car disappeared around a corner. He waved at her. She waved back.

“We need to talk,” he said to her.

She tilted her head as to question why.

“Johnny’s in love with you,” he said.

She slumped just a little in the shoulders. “I know,” she replied, kicking a crushed water bottle around with her right foot. Almost like a cat playing with it, but not quite.

He’d known her when she was at Tulane. She played soccer there. A right fullback. Just like he played when he was young and didn’t fear getting kicked in the face and losing his teeth. They met while he was writing game stories and features on the team for a local web site. It started with the Picayune, but they didn’t want a lot on the women’s soccer team. There was a time in his life when covering smaller sports like that for a big paper was the dream. He’d met a guy in Phoenix who got to do it, and always wondered how he could do the same. It never happened. Supply and demand.

Back then, he just wrote stories for papers and web sites all over the country. Luckily, Tulane played in Conference USA, which was so spread out, no one traveled to games. Making it stringer friendly. And supported him for the most part when he first moved back to the city. He had sex with her three weeks after she blew her knee out during her senior season. He was there to write a feature on the 23 year olds attempted comeback. They ended up going out for drinks, jumped on a street car to her house and one thing led to another.

He told his editor the next morning. He wasn’t allowed to cover Tulane anymore. Things kind of dried up at the paper soon after. Go figure.

Three years and a pain-killer addiction later, she was a Craigslist hooker and stripper. Private parties only. Not in the Quarter. He found out one day and tried to stop her. Instead, he became a steady customer. Life is funny that way.

“He’s a douche,” she said.

“Agree,” he said. “But I told you that.”

“What should I do?”

“Keep them.”

“Them?”

“You’ll have twins. His is Johnny Two Kids, you know.”

“Shit.”

“And then get him to pay for everything.”

“That’s mean. And I don’t know if I want kids. Especially his kids.”

“No meaner than an abortion.”

“Johnny tell you that?”

“Yeah. I know you won’t do it, too. Your mom would kill you.”

“You tell him that?”

“No. He doesn’t deserve that. Yet.”

“Yeah.”

“So buck up and own it, babe.”

“I don’t know.”

“Plus, you won’t have to be on Craigs anymore.”

“That means none for you, too.”

“Poor Bono.”

She laughed. His sense of humor was a bit off. But she liked it. It’s why they’d been friends. Even though she charged him, it never seemed that way to her. In fact, he had insisted on it. Kind of weird, but it helped pay the bar tabs. If he were 15 years younger, she thought, we’d probably have made it. But he’s old. I’m not.

“Listen, Tara,” he said. “Come to Matty’s this afternoon. We can talk about it in a better setting.”

“A better setting?”

“They’ve got a great jukebox. I should know, it’s mine.”

“I can’t drink.”

“I know, babe. We’ll have ginger ales on ice. Just like during rehab.”

She smiled. He always had the right words for her. She wondered why he got her so well.

“Ok, George,” she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheer. He blushed.

“You’re blushing!”

“Every time, sweetheart.”

“You’re going to have to explain that to me sometime.”

“Sometime.”

“Ta Ta. I’ve got to go to the market to get some veggies.”

She closed the gate with her left hand. Oh so gently. She understood how much he hated it when people just slammed the old iron fence. That clanky sound just shot through him like a knife through butter.

He looked at her face. She smiled and waved.

He smiled back, then slumped back into his chair. He grabbed a notepad. It was writing time.

“But first, another beer,” he said aloud to no one but the birds and crickets. He reached into his old metal Dixie 45 ice chest. One of his favorite possessions. Found it in an alley after a couple of warehouses were torn down to build a new parking garage a couple months ago. It was sturdy, with just a little bit of rust. He found a beer, a Shiner Black.

“She was beautiful, but crazy,” he wrote. The day was young still. And the drip had stopped.

why not me?

A half eaten bag of shelled peanuts sits on the table, along with three empty bottles of beer.

She looks down at them, and wonders what possessed him to eat and drink last night. Then disappear. She’d only asked him why he felt the need to write about girls from his past so much and not about her.

“They all ended,” he said. “You and me, we haven’t.”

His pause at the end let her know that he wanted to say “yet”. He chose not to, and then got out of bed, walking straight to the fridge and popping open a bottle of Shiner Bock. Despite it being only 58 degrees inside the house, she knew he couldn’t afford to turn on the heat much higher than that. The perils of living in an old house with high ceilings and big, drafty windows. She sighed and went to sleep, knowing full well that he was sitting in front of his old typewriter now, staring at the keys hoping something would come out.

She heard the keys punching on paper just before she fell asleep. That made her smile. He’d be in a good mood in the morning at least.

Instead, he wasn’t there when she got out of bed and put on her robe. She had expected him to be in bed, snoring the way he does after drinking a few too many beers. “He must be on the couch,” she thought. But a quick glance in his office showed the couch to be empty as well. On his desk was a ragged pile of typed sheets. They were some kind of screenplay, she could tell by the way they were typed with the centered parts and lots of dialogue.

He hadn’t tried to write a screenplay in years. But here, it appeared, was a completely finished one. One night’s work. About 100 pages worth. Something must have really inspired him. She had to know what it was.

The title simply was “Why not me?”

She dared not ready anymore of it. It had to be about they’re one and only constant fight. Her need, her desire for him to write about her. As far as she knew, he never did. He shared most of his writings with her, when they were done. Very rarely when they were WIPs. It took her three months to figure out that he wasn’t saying whips, but instead Works In Progress. He laughed when she told him that. She felt stupid. But never told him that.

“Maybe that’s why he doesn’t write about me?” she thought. “I don’t tell him my fears. My insecurities. At least about us. Yes, I’ll tell him about my uncle’s advances or my boss’s lies. But when it comes to me and him, I don’t.”

He, on the other hand, was an open book. His stories of past loves that he did not let inside his mind, his passions, his inner-most thoughts filled up the first few weeks of their relationship. He was a failure, by his own admission. Never going after what he knew he should have and could have. She felt sorry for him, and listened to his stories. They drank lots of wine, even though he loathed the taste of wine. But she inherited her father’s collection of wines and his ability to find great wines out of the 1,000s of bottles that even a grocery store had.

He’d told her one night, weeks into their relationship, that wine made him impotent as a writer. That the drunk it provided just made him want to lay about and be with her. She loved that line, and told him so. That sparked something. Her saying that. He wrote it down. And then wrote a story based on that one line. It was the first story he’d finished in years, he told her. The line was the beginning and sort of the end. It was a story of a woman, a man and a six-week long love affair. That was exactly how long he and her had been together when the book was finished. She read it. And was devastated. It was the best thing she’d read in a long time. But it wasn’t about her. It was dedicated to her, but the woman in the story was not the tall, pale, redhead that she was. Instead, it was about a short, black haired, barfly.

She cried after reading it. He asked why. She didn’t tell him why, only that it was a beautiful story.

The next day he sent it out to publishers. Something he’d never done before. Weeks went by, he kept writing at a prolific pace. Churning out story after story on women, men and the lives they wanted and the ones they ended up with. He even got halfway through a novel -- 222 pages worth -- when he received a phone call. An editor had picked up his submission from the pile of submissions on his boss’s desk. It was the pink paper it was typed on that got my attention, he’d tell her the editor said. I read it and knew this was worthy of publishing.

Months later, the book was on the shelves. His editor had arranged to get it in the hands of a couple of important people. It was reviewed in the New York Times. The Washington Post. And most importantly of all, on a small show on the Oprah Network.

From there it sold copies like crazy. Soon, it was optioned to be a movie. He had done what he always wanted to do, be published. The success was an added bonus. If he’d stayed anonymous to most of the world, he would have been fine. Just to see his book on a shelf in a store was enough.

Everything seemed great for him. He wrote more stories. They were published in magazines and in book form. They enjoyed great evenings together, listening to his LP collection and drinking -- her wine, him Shiner. One night, she’d had a few bottles and was quite drunk. They were dancing to Dean Martin’s “Houston”, a song that for whatever reason, made him quite happy. She looked in his eyes and asked “Why not me?”

He looked at her, puzzled by the question. “What do you mean, honey?” he asked with a smile.

“Just that,” she said, stopping the dance. “You’re stories are never about me. Only the woman that you used to talk to me about so much. They inspire you. Why not me?”

He hung his head low and sat down in his favorite patio chair. The one he’d written a poem in one night, about her. And gave to her for their anniversary. One of only two poems he’d ever written that he liked. He didn’t bring this up. He knew what she was asking was true, but only in a superficial way.

“All my writing is inspired by you,” he said. “I wouldn’t be doing it if not for you.”

She looked at him. An icy stare. Then walked away.

He stopped writing after that night. They stopped laughing. Until she asked again, weeks later.

And he wrote all night. And now he was gone.

Paper towels and ice cubes

Chapter 1: Opening night

Should I be surprised no one is here?

No. Not really. I spent every dime I had just getting the place suitable for folks to come and drink till they were gone.

Instead, they never came. Maybe an ad in the newspaper wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Or at least some fliers for the kids in the streets to hand out between con games and coin tosses. Yeah, because kids still play that shit. Just like Steve McQueen in the “Cincinnati Kid”, one of the best freaking movies shot in this town. And don’t give me any of that Nic Cage in Bad Lieutenant bull either. The original kicked its ass, even though it wasn’t in the city.

I look around the place. It’s dark. Kind of muddy looking. Exactly what I wanted from the place when I lucked into buying it a year and a half ago. Then, it was just a mold-filled remnant of the storm. Left to rot like so much else. My job wasn’t to save this place. Instead, it was to save myself.

My list of folks I expected to show up read a lot less like the list I expected to show up for my 40th birthday here. I was still living in North Carolina at the time. Sent out invitations and all. Who the fuck does that for their own birthday? Someone who desperately needs his friends to show some love, that’s who.

You spend enough time alone inside your mind, it works on ya. Just like being a POW in Vietnam or Korea would do. Or in solitude in prison. Why the fuck do you think it’s done? To fuck with the mind, that’s why. And if you do it to yourself, damn there must really be something wrong in there.

I can’t remember the last time I really felt a part of something. Yeah, newsrooms always did the job. But that’s exactly what it was -- a job. And most people have the ability to separate the two things. For me, the job was the life. Even in the beginning, in school. I had roommates that sat around smoking’ dope and sniffin’ God knows what up their noses. I once sat in the room with one of them while he smoked a spliff. Or what I thought was just a spliff. Three days later, I’m still awake.

“Hey, man, hope you didn’t mind me smoking angel dust the other day,” Kurt said as he was finally taking a shower after a week.

“Fuck.” was all I really remember thinking.

That’s when I realized I wanted to get out of there. I liked them, and dug the parties and hanging out that happened. And the late night Filberto’s runs for a carne asada plate. But, after that, I really started hanging out at work, all the freaking time. So much so, I put myself in more debt staying in school to stay at the job. To this day, that student loan haunts me. But, it’ll die with me.



Stuff:

About the only thing he’d approve of is having Waylon Jennings’ Greatest Hits album on the jukebox.

I haven’t seen a Mexican girl here since 2009.

She walked in, then went straight to the jukebox, put in a quarter and played David Watts like she knew the opportunity was going to be there. Then, she ordered a Lone Star. I might like this gal.

“You know, I’ve never tried crystal meth before,” I said. “I have had Crystal before. And it left quite a bitter taste. But taught me a damn good lesson about myself.”
Killing cockroaches with a 3-iron is fun, but I won’t make your neighbors think much of you.

“Pork chops soaked in Teriayki sauce. Not bad, honey.” That was the last complement she gave me.

John Gruden may be this generation’s Brent Musburger. He’s that bad.

“You’re a writer? What do you write about?” he said with a swirl of PBR on his chin.

“You,” I said.

The next thing I remember was Daphne from Scooby Doo’s voice. Then, a paper towel filled with ice on my lip.

“That was stupid,” she said.

“Nah,” I replied as the ice broke through the paper towel. “PUtting ice in a paper towel. That’s stupid.”

She laughed and gave me a fresh Shiner. Maybe tonight won’t be so bad after all.

“I’ll write about you now,” I said.

“Why? I’ve got nothing interesting,” she said with a wink.

“Probably right, but hey, the night is young and your ex may show up.”

“That was my ex.”