A Weekend Through the Looking Glass

Bowling. 130, 119, 145...satisfied. Work people are crazy. Crazy blind. Anyways. Johnny Cash bar. They don't serve nothin' but beer and wine. The ex keeps rattling off shit about things that don't mean shit. Why did I come here? Some client shows up, I chain smoke mostly cause I'm bored, pop my knuckles, slam beers, sweat in the sun. The ex keeps clamoring about nothin' that shows nothin' ever changes. God, what a waste of time. Good etiquette and charm keep the desire to stab her eyeballs out with a wine corkscrew in check. Drunk and discordant. Try to pay. Credit machine doesn't work. It's 4 million fucking degrees outside. Good etiquette and charm make me walk to the nearest ATM to pay the nice bartender who always remembers my name and never even asks me what I want. She always just has my beer of choice ready when I walk in. I do it cause I might ask her out someday. I do it cause I'm not quite even with my bearings. Swerve home a bit. Shower up...call the buddy...he's already high (of course). Give it a coin flip if he shows. -----------> Head out to meet the sister and her fiance and an old friend. Find the old friend at the bar where we were supposed to rendezvous. See her mom drive off. It's closed. Some homeless vagrant yells warnings to me about the dangers of crossing the road. I tell him to fuck off. See my friend. She crosses the road. Vagrant yells. We both tell him to fuck off. Irish bar. Mexican beers. Sister and fiance show. Buddy sends text as to his whereabouts and estimated time of arrival. I'm gathering info on the caravan proceeding to the concert. GIVE ME YOUR EYES, I NEED THE SUNSHINE. -----------------> Opening band. Not bad. Beer line. Bad. Meet up with the buddy and another work buddy and another work buddy. Someone who looks a little like Harmony Korine (of course) wanders up with the most intricately-rolled weed cigarette I've ever laid eyes on. I take four or five pro-style rips. Pass to the sister's fiance. Back and forth, forth and back. Sky high. Drunk. Music. My 5th to 11th favourite band (depending on the day) launches into their set with new haircuts. New songs. Wolf. Parade. Is. Fucking. Awesome. Texts flying again. Running into people I sort of know. My favourite person from work (she's an angel) sends word that she's here with her husband at the back of the bar. I'm in fucking outer-space. Which direction is back? I spill my guts in a text message to her about the shit-fucked cycle I'm in. Would later rescind those words in a bout of sobriety. Besides...I'm in no shape to put a face to this circus music I find myself in tonight; for I know that she's hanging out with the girl of my dreams tomorrow. The girl who could halt my ramblin' ways. Settle me down. Calm my mind. Go the distance. Float in the ether. Or at least, that's how I envision her right now. She's perfect. Right now. She's her friend. I wouldn't be a very good report if I were to show face right now. I'll pass. Wait till I'm on top of the game. Spring like a cobra in the tall grass. One leaves, another leaves. WHY'D SHE LEAVE??? WHERE'D SHE GO!?!? I yell. I'm told to stop. The ex keeps sending texts. Relentless. I keep drinking more. Drunk girl drives down from Dallas. Keeps sending texts. Some folks float, some are buried alive. Sweaty. It's hot. Beer is cold. Limes are sour. Cigarettes are burning. So am I. --------------> I launch into a diatribe to some poor fool who unfortunately was standing within earshot and who hardly reasons to hear about how Wolf Parade are "transcendent." Or how "their music speaks." Or some shit. I don't remember. Another leaves. I can't find the sister, or her fiance. I squint ALOT. I stand on tippy toes. Someone asks me if I'm high. HA! Yeah man. WAY up here. ---------------> I hear the closer. Satisfied. I leave. Sweaty nights. I respond to the texts. I respond to the pull. I respond to the cycle. She comes over. I take her home. I leave. I turn up the radio and look at myself in the rearview mirror. I lost my fucking glasses. ---------------> It's god-awful late. I intend to scare up some trouble. No answer. The darkness falls over me. ----------> I find myself surprisingly lucid the next morning, and surprisngly adept at exerting self-control, when my intentions may have been nothing but the contrary. I pat myself on the back. GUILT FREE MORNING!! Then I respond to another text. I laugh at self-control. It's literally 7am. Good shit, I just went to bed. She comes over. She cries. She doesn't like the panic. She doesn't like the anxiety. She doesn't like the existential rambling I wrote up on my mirror at her expense. How she didn't see it last night is beyond me. She erases it. Writes "you're beautiful." Whatever. That ain't the tune you were singin' three weeks ago. She leaves again. I erase it. Now there's smears. Fingerprints need to be introduced to Windex. Drunk Dallas girl lets me know she's in town. Great. I lost my fucking glasses. --------------------> I boomerang to all those things I try to run from. Nothin' changes. I rig up the rod and reel. Stop at the grocery store. Fresh shrimp catches the fish. I stop and pick her up. She wants beers. I want beers. Lake Austin is inviting. In some carpet-grass green patch in the shadow of some oak tree in the shadow of some corporate monolith, we sit on a towel in dry swimsuits casting shrimp heads on the end of hooks into the green water and stare at our red and white bobbers. We watch the bare-chested boys and the overly tan girls speed by in their ski boats, pumping the late-90's hip-hop under the Capital of Texas Highway bridge. Wake-boarders carve up the lake. The waves push our bobbers back into shore. I swat ants off her back and legs, she tells me stories about scuba-diving. We walk in chest-deep to pee and cool off. We talk about renting Juno. Renting jet ski's. Drunk Dallas girl secures time with me the next night. I get a text from the ex's roommate. Apparently my apartment complex is on fire. AGAIN!!!! News crews, firetrucks, policemen. Life's cycles completely amaze me. I need my fucking glasses. --------------> We catch no fish. WE EAT SHRIMP. WE BRING RETRIBUTION TO ALL SEA-GOING ANIMALS WITH HUNGRY VENGEANCE. WE ARE TO BE RECKONED WITH!! Cajun spices are yummy. They filmed Office Space here. South Austin's own. We rent Juno. We SLAM beers. We smoke on the balcony. ----------> Dean Moriarty texts me on his way to Monterrey, Mexico. I check his BLOG to see his travels. He's really doing it. He ain't lyin'. I toast him a fair hand with luck to be had, and send good vibes his way. Farewell amigo!! They always said something was chasin' you. Here's to outrunning it. ------------> Juno gets pregnant. Michael Bluth is a dick. Dwight Shrute moonlights as a convenience store clerk. Diablo Cody watches too much TV. -------------> I backslide too much. -----------> We "pretend." Bottle up that feeling for one more hit. I need my fffffffffffucking glasses. Oooooooohhh. Stomach turns. Raw nerves everywhere. Cramps. Thirsty. Drunk Dallas girl texts me stupid drunk Dallas texts. Eyes roll. --------------> Sunday. She looks good in the swimsuit. 7 foot aerials. Hot sun. Tossing each other off the back like Tornado. This fucking jet ski gets up to 42 miles per hour? Is that safe? Lake water is too hot...need a pool. Arms hurt, smiling faces, stomach is showing signs of going south on me. I almost break my wrist and her finger with an olympic-size vault off of the outside of a wake made by a 40 foot house-boat. Serious wicked air. Wish someone had a camera. Her boob fell out. Decide it's time to call it quits. Carlos and Charlie's for a beer and a meal. Stomach is fucking killing me. Drunk Dallas girl is even more drunk. Tells me how much she can't wait to see me. Can't say I feel the same. -------------------> Try to get into The Dark Knight. When the hell did Batman become so popular? Am I missing something? Finally remember where my glasses are. Arrange deal to secure them. Burned cd's. Deal. Stop to get Imodium. Can't. Handle. Seafood. Stomach. Malfunctions. Losing. Fluids. Rapidly. --------------> Instead of Dark Knight we go to Stubbs. Beers and barbecue. Just what the ol' stomach needs. Good etiquette and charm allow me to cancel (politely) on drunk Dallas girl. Start immediately fielding barrage of text messages from a woman scorned. Misspelled words, cursing and damning me through text message, incomplete sentences, inane ramblings, why? She calls me a "deutsch bag." Drunk Dallas girl is brilliant. And mad. Leaves a slurred voicemail where I can hear her call me a "fucking idiot" before she hangs up the phone. This is utterly hilarious to me. Drunk Dallas girl is a fucking idiot. Always was. ----------------> Forego suggested bar time for imperative stomach rehabilitation. Donnie Darko again. Guilty feeling comes back. She leaves. I shotgun medicine. I growl and moan and double over. I try to find sleep. -------------> 3:30am. Someone is knocking at my neighbor's door. Loudly. I'm in cold sweats. I peek outside. David Berkowitz is standing there staring oh so scarily into the lights on our front doors. I think he knocked on my neighbor's door...I think. He walks slowly down the stairs. Turns around. Walks back up. Paces. Then disappears. My deadbolt doesn't work. Hasn't for awhile. You'd think I'd learn, but I haven't. I have cold sweats for a different reason now. -------> I heave my mattress into the living room floor; place the revolver and phone by the side of my newly made bed. Door. Fucking. Knocks. Again. -------------> I'm at the peephole. Different guy. Hispanic guy stands outside yelling "maintenance." I obviously don't believe him. I remember the fires. I hold a weighty revolver by my hip. He pulls out keys. Inserts them. Opens. My. Door. I stop him from doing this in a particularly violent way, and explain to him in a manner completely void of all politeness and taciturn that he is more than welcome to come back tomorrow to fix whatever malfunction seems to be giving trouble, but that he absolutely will not pass through my threshold on this moment in the wee hours of the newly made Monday morning. And if he does so, he may deeply regret it. He walks off. I don't know what to do. Stomach has knives in it. -------> I call the sister. I need a place to stay. I call the ex. I need a place to stay. I pack the six-shooter in a bag, put on the shorts and running shoes, swallow more medicine, and head out into the night to find somewhere convincingly more safe than my apartment. ---------------> I sweat out 3 hours in my ex-girlfriend's parking lot. At least it's a gated community. It's so hot outside, and infintely moreso in my truck. I'm miserable. I have to work tomorrow and my brain does a bang-up job of reminding me of that fact every sleepless five minutes. The backseat of my truck makes a piss-poor bed. She calls as I'm on my way back home. I tell her the events. She apologizes for not answering. I reach my door once sunlight clocks in for the day. Email the boss...I ain't comin' in today. Throw up. Pass out. The shrimp are victorious. Food poisoning. ----------------> "Slow Night, So Long" sings me to sleep.

Parents call. They're in a state of panic. Appears, word of the burnings have reached the little hometown. However, the prairie fire that should concern them is inside their son.