When you step out onto the wet concrete you realize just how much nature has a choke-hold on our existence. For me to say it's rained would be understated. Try to find a collected step and make your way out into the night. There's about 14 billion things going through my head. I'm joined by the guitar man, my brother, my best friend, the cabbies in the street, and the hopeful lovers holding hands on their way to drunken exploits as the night falls closer into the depths of uncertainty and splintered pathways.
We make our way like a Tarantino film in slow motion through the streets of downtown in the city that cradles me at this point. The point is, this city is where I've chosen to make my launch. To find the finer points of life and be a corrected human being, not a human doing, but a human
being. Within the grasps of reality. But what the
fuck is reality anyways? It has so much to offer. So much behind the curtain that only takes an inquisitive mind to search and destroy. You can get your kicks here. You can find them in every alley, every restaurant, every club, and on the radio waves. But before there is solace in the fact that you've found a home, you must accept the fact that you are an individual living amongst other individuals. If you can't find that, you've missed this city, case and point, and disallowed everything this town was built on. It's a shaky foundation for some, but for others it's a mecca of sorts.
We stumble through the streets and exchange pleasantries with one another. Telling accounts of our days, and work situations that make no sense, neither do they matter. We live in our own little controlled circus. Show an ID with the doorman, tell him it's nice to meet him, and wander up to the bar to lay a tab. It's a retro-fashioned bar with a 16-bit video game system that seems to peak the interest of every patron...people lined up to get past the dragon and be the hero for a moment. People lay dollar bills down on the bar to take bets like it's a digital-block game of billiards.
The guitar man has his girlfriend with him. She's a lovely blonde sweetheart, one that has little to say, but faithful nonetheless. Always at his side and continues to be his number-one fan. The music isn't really my bag, but to deny his talent is to bring a forthright arrogance to the matter. He is talented, and he is humble, and he is a great friend with whom I feel fortunate to know. My brother wears his mountain-man garb, only caring about that which is to be cared about. I feel somewhat envious of his personality, and can carry on a conversation with him like no person I know. Accepting is his nature and relation is his weapon. He is the
only person I know
that close to zen. My best friend has big eyes that have big buildings giving them their sparkle. He knows of other places in the world that beckon his talents and he will soon join with them in a marriage that was meant to be.
I lay my card down and answer the obligatory text messages with mild anticipation on my mind. I know what walks through that door, in time. I know that I haven't figured anything, and there's always the possibility of let-down on the horizon, but tonight I've had enough to drink to stay positive about the prospect of keeping my thoughts in-line about a singular someone. We all talk of music, we talk of congruence with this reality we see and enact. We talk of girls, and football, and shit that you talk about when everything melts away and you can find a moment to breathe. After about four drinks, and enough of me staring at the door with my anticipation and brain in high gear, I look up to see her walk in. On this night, my girlfriend is very striking. She brings to mind certain characteristics I find in Audrey Hepburn (a tall brunette with legs that cover more ground than that which is legal), and on this night she reminds me of her, as if she just stepped off the set of Breakfast At Tiffany's to have a cigarette or run a wand through her eyelashes in a nearby vanity mirror. Following closely behind is "the lap-dog." A diminutive guy, smaller than me and less built, who has found success at every corner, like he was anointed for an elevated experience in life. He's lucky in life but not in love, but how prophetic this night would turn out to be...because it's on the way. If I had a crystal-ball, or perhaps a palm-reader, or maybe a Magic-8-Ball, I could've asked questions till my heart was content and reassured every suspicion I had, and asked the questions I already knew the answers to. To drop him like a sack of hammers with a swift hay-maker, or punishing uppercut, crosses my mind and it still does...it may come to fruition still...if I'm given the chance. Finding my knuckles pulsing in outward violence that knows no end would make a good story, if not a vengeance-filled appropriation, for everything that would come to pass. I am reminded of just how resourceful some critters in nature are. Carrion eaters, the vultures hovering and spiraling in the sky. Limitless patience to wait for their bounty to die. They...don't...ever...leave...until their bounty has fallen and taken it's last breath. He is a vulture. Eventually, I'll leave him with his prey. Open and gasping, looking for the first thing to stumble onto the scene of emergency. Eventually, I'll get tired of him circling above me...blocking out the sun, and with it, any chance for growth.
Conversation is awkward and it's because of the limited
impatience I have with boundaries of authority. To be caged, by anyone, is my largest and most imposing fear. No matter how hypnotizing or fascinating I find the person. And fascinated I was. My French-Canadian Princess sits quiet with her head hitting the ceiling of the American Dream, but without hesitation she denies her heart and can't connect (separate) it to (from) her mind. It operates on an unfamiliar level that is foreign to me. I say two sentences to her before she finds the situation below her conceived status and sachés out of the bar with "the lap-dog" in tow. She's mad at me anyways for something I did, or rather didn't do, earlier in complete innocence, but from her perspective it doesn't seem to be that way. I think I know what I'm doing...I think. She kisses me on the cheek and turns to the "lap-dog" to lead her out. To be in his position is beyond me, and there are reasons to talk amongst the crowd they're in with.
"That different boy I fell in with....my how he thinks. To only calm his thoughts and his fire-ball mind would be nice, but there's bigger fish to fry." Ironically, they make as much sense as Andy Warhol and his soup cans. And ironically enough, how Andy Warhol made his soup cans...with no original thought, but by repetition of that vacant and menial occurrence which was already there. A supportive numbness of that assembly-line thought-process that we try to make fun of, but come all too familiar with. To get their hands around the silver linings of life is the goal of those pre-programmed to see themselves in the mirror everyday and admire their reflection. The one who tries to hide what he doesn't know to begin with. Most people don't know shit about shit. This is disappointing. But neither do I, I suppose. It's the very thing that I had to walk away from. I can't take it. I try to wash my hands in a dirty sink to rid myself of this type of thinking, no matter the consequences or feelings of loss. I keep learning things about myself that excite and frighten me to no end. I make exceptions for nobody and my patience is conversely limitless when it comes to this. I'm not surprised though, and pictures don't lie. Oh how they explain the truth in great detail. This isn't the first time, and I'm used to it. Where others would fold in such a predicament, I feel comfortably at home.
At this point, I am reassured by the fact that I am taking her to see my hero tomorrow. He broke his wrist, and to play his guitar in front of a large audience is a burden of great proportions, but it's not my problem. I want to hear the sounds resonate through the old-style theatre like a fog-horn off the the walls of a partially enclosed cave. I want the words that I've heard so many times to be my guidance and give me comfort in the fact that I can relate to someone of certain fame. My best friend has been known to see the stream of consciousness that runs parallel between my own thoughts and those of my hero. To put it very simply, he says what I want to say. He owns his feelings and there has never been anything different from that course of action that I have done for the duration of my life.
We speak of total defiance and our disapproval of those who with we've been in the company of. I've even been warned on this night about "the lap-dog" and how he is a predator with limitless patience for moving in and scraping what is left of frayed ends because of his sociality. I shake it off as a precept of jealousy, but I know what they speak of. I know how situations are going to play out. Without the arrogance of such statements, I have always known what the next move is with certain people. I can see three moves ahead and while it's not an enviable trait, it is a useful one. It prepares the thought process for rehabilitation. I have
never found the love I want.
My stomach is in knots.
We pay and tip. We decide that ending the night is the best idea that we can conceive at this point. Besides, it's been a wash for me. While walking out, I hear the familiar beep of those trying to contact me. Zeroes and ones flirting with the air, finding their destinations to my phone. I receive what first looks like hieroglyphics on a pyramid wall. "I AIM SITTINH NEXU TN RYAND BEANS." What??? It takes a group of young adult males to decipher such a message, and it's increasingly difficult when this group has been drinking like a divorced, middle-aged prostitute. But try we must.
After decoding the cipher, an excited rush runs through my nerve endings, cause I realize what is at stake and that the hour-glass has been turned over...sand grains falling one by one...losing my time. A quick and desperate glance down the street to count street signs to where I need to be prompts me to hail a cab as quickly as possible. We yell at cabs with swiftness on our minds. If I walked the distance the hourglass would sit idle, with time already vacated. Cabbie stops, door opens, I slide in shotgun, friends fill the back, we bark directions, we weave in and out of lanes, past horse and carriage riders, past petty-cabs peddling through sweat, past fraternity boys, through hipsters walking briskly and with purpose, and listen to the Hootie and the Blowfish song that our Arabian chauffeur has chosen as his soundtrack on this Saturday night of transporting drunks and horny girls across the city.
The cab rolls to a stop and we jump out. I hand the man $10 for our $5 meter. Tell him, "thanks bro," and get to stepping. I'm already looking ahead at the bar without paying any attention to the traffic as I cross the street narrowly being missed by a silver Mercedes with a man driving whose hair matches the color of his car.
The knots are slowly unraveling.
After a concerted effort, we find that he had been sitting next to my sister in a bar that I chose not to patronize this particular night. But it's of little importance when you find that the person who gives you descriptive words for your structure (like a blueprint for a building) is around the corner with the possibility of running a parallel line with that person and striking up conversation. He's left me a voicemail, but it was baited and less genuine than I'd like. Like he was forced to get hyped on the drugs that leave you chained to your couch the next day, wondering why you would choose such a path. Not to mention the fact that Bob Dylan says (and I quote), "...keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes, you don't need a
Weatherman to know which way the wind blows...." Indeed.
Following my brother, we run like school kids to a playground beckoning them with recess. Why does Goddamn Emo's have three bars? Wrong one. Turn back out the door, get a refund on the cover charge and sprint to the next door around the corner. Run inside and the music fills my ear canal, I've heard this song...it's Jeff Klein on stage. The song is
19th Hole, and while I like it, I've got no time for Jeff Klein. Our eyes scan the room like an oscillating fan. My sister is sitting at the bar with her friends, I run up to her and ask, "Where is he?" And just as I do, my best friend taps me on the shoulder and alerts us that we ran right past him outside at the door. Rookies.
Walk outside with my brother, who shares an equal admiration for this guy's work, and like a bolt of lightning, I'm standing right next to him...I quickly sober-up. He's standing against the wall with one leg propped-up behind him on the wall to stabilize his noticeably fragile frame. His hair is jet black and looks like it hasn't been washed in some time. He smokes a cigarette, a Lucky Strike (of course), and Neal Casal hands him a lighter with an Ace of Spades on the side. Dirty jeans, and a pearl snap shirt cover him up, and he looks like he may have just walked out of Savers with these recent threads. Shit-kicker boots, somewhat like my own, and a worn-out belt from some cowboy who got too fat to squeeze into it again, like retiring a jersey from more bountiful bull-riding days in the past.
We try reasonably hard to look like we're just two guys outside having a cigarette, instead of standing right next to a personal idol. I HATE celebrity worship, but if there is one person I can make that exception for, well...
I look at my brother and we are quick-timing a plan to talk to him through our brainwaves (we communicate this way, more often than standard forms of communication, it's a point of intrigue and amazement at times). Without talking to each other we know best how to play this out. In a move that I would later consider pretty lame and somewhat bush-league, I take a cigarette out of my pack and walk over to him and ask for a lighter. It's dark as shit outside except for the streetlight above us and the neon signs of the bars along 7th, and my vision is blurry. "Yeah man sure...here ya go...."
CORY, "Dude.......................................................but we're going tomorrow night."
HERO, "Right on, we've...................................................it's work you know?"
CORY, "I hear you, so..................................................cause I work up there, and they said you might be..........................................that's the way Austin is."
HERO, "Yeah, I just kinda......................................................cause it's pretty chill."
CORY, "Well, thanks...........................................................luck."
HERO, "Thanks bro."
I somehow restrain myself from vomiting out the 4 million things I'd like to ask him, "How does it work out?" "How do you get through it?" "When this happens, what should I do?" "C'mon man, shoot me straight." But I ease back over to my brother and stand there taking repeated drags from my cigarette, because I already know the answer to every question I have for him (talent divides in certain areas notwithstanding). I look at the sky and at the inside of the bar and see my friends laughing at something someone said. They're at the bar, and they are having a belly laugh. I wish I could say I was sorry I missed it, but in this moment, I would be fine with missing it...I would be fine if meteors came hurtling towards the Earth to collide with existence, sending it into billions of shards across the universe, planes could fly into every tower scraping the sky and topple them towards the gardens below like a timber axe, volcanoes could erupt and drown villagers in the unbearable warmth, my ex-lovers could show up on my doorstep in a bridal gown with groom in hand and ring on finger, the oceans could flood the coasts leaving people in rafts and canoes, the enemies of our nation could touch off the red buttons sending the world into the climax of the fireworks show that ends it all, and I would stand here, and I would finish my cigarette. And I would salute fate. For I met my hero today.
A blonde girl walks up to him and showers him with praise. Too much praise, and she pulls out a business card and hands it to him. I wonder to myself, what would he do with that business card? Is he going to call her for financial planning? Maybe an invite to the afterparty backstage after the concert tomorrow, or does he do something like write the date and city on the back and keep it in some box he has in the top of his dresser at home. Who knows? It looks like he's getting bored with her, turns to Casal and says, "You ready?" They turn and half jog down the block and disappear inside a cab.
The text messages begin. I must alert those I know of what has transpired.
The concert hall is dark...almost too dark, but it's somewhat breathtaking. An old-style theater with a sharp incline for seating. I wish I wasn't so drunk, and I've already spilled wine down my pants leg. Actually I'm really kind of a mess on this night...a burning man. My girlfriend sits beside me, and she's part of the reason I'm such a mess this evening. But we're taking it as it comes, and I take it in stride. I get lost. Really lost. It turns into one of the best nights I've ever had in this city.
Wake up the next day in a bed that's not my own. I roll over and it feels like someone has taken a crowbar to my brain. I see my wine-stained pants crumpled in the corner next to my boots and t-shirt. My phone beeping alerts at me that I missed, and my wallet halfway open. I take a deep breath and rub my eyes. Then I hear her say in absolute complete sincerity, "
thank you for sharing that with me."
The sun rises, but the sun also sets.
Sometimes life bores me to no end. Therefore I have to strike the match against the grain to find my own spark.
