Nonculture

Yeah, so, I don’t know what the problem with the booze is, but it hasn’t been going down so well the past oh, 10 or so days.  Could be stress.  Or the lack of time caused by the stress.  But I think it’s stress, which is weird, because it is usually stress that causes an increase in the booze.  So go figure on that one, Miss North Carolina.

I didn’t really miss the booze too much.  I didn’t really sit there saying, “Damn, I need a drink.”  Which is super neat and all that, but I seem to have some side effects from not drinking over the past 10 days.  These side effects are not the side effects that I expected to have.  In fact, they are the opposite.  They are:

1. I’m way fucking over stressed.  Maybe I should diet.  Or exercise.  Or generally change my lifestyle.  Alright, that’s a stretch; have they invented a pill that simulates eating a salad and running while you actually drink a rum and coke and sit and write?  I’m a sedentary heart attack waiting to happen. But that’s ok; I’ll still be clutching my lottery ticket in my rigor mortis grip.  Because I am filled with hope.  That is why people buy lottery tickets; they are happy, hopeful people.
2. I’m just a tad bit more impatient than usual.  For instance, I’ve been finishing all of my girlfriend’s sentences for her because I am so impatient that I think I am clairvoyant and I think I know what she is going to say.  So I finish our conversation before she has 3 words out of her mouth, then turn my head and continue what I was doing.  I’m sure that isn’t annoying to her at all.
3. I have this awesome appointment with the toilet from 3 to 4 am for a massive mud shit that is painful, yet somehow gratifying.  Just, y’know, throwing that one out there.  I haven’t figured out yet where this fits in, especially since I used to think that this part especially was alcohol related.  Now I’m really fucking confused.

Needless to say, I finally got some drinks down tonight.  It feels good.  And it’s Friday, but that stress is still sitting there, on my shoulder like a fucking pirate’s parrot, ready to repeat any negative thought right back into my ear.  I want to wring its neck, but it’s imaginary.  At least that’s what my therapist says, but I don’t know if I believe him.  Peg Leg Petey the Parrot is real, I tell you.

Or whatever my job title is.  I don’t even know what it is, because I don’t give a fuck what it is, to be honest.  It doesn’t matter unless there is a “manager’ of some kind in front of it.  I’m a year older and still in the trenches and am not getting glitter on my face tonight.  So, some stripper isn’t singing me Happy Birthday Mr. fucking President, which I guess is good, especially since being the real president isn’t even good these days.

Don’t even know what to say about this birthday.  It’s a weird one, a big number.  I think my father was that age when I began to remember things.  So, is it fitting that I’ve developed a drinking problem that helps me forget things at this age since I have no children at this age?  Can you even follow that line of reasoning?

My girlfriend asked me if I’d have a problem turning this age and I told her in no uncertain terms, hell no.  Well, I’m thinking now that maybe I do.  But I’m not sure if they are issues carried over from the year or if they have to do with the turning of, basically, kind of old.  Old enough where even I feel like creepy old guy when I go downtown drinking and can’t help but look at the 18 year olds dressed in those short short skirts with practically nothing else on.  Let’s be honest; they’re hot as hell and legal, or they wouldn’t be down there in the first place, and maybe one in a hundred could be into older guys.  So maybe you’ve still got a chance, creepy old ogling guys.  Just stop tucking your polo shirts into your hiked up khakis and/or flashing big belt buckles.  It doesn’t work like it did in 1980, hotshot.

 Anyway, all this talk about 18 year olds and strippers is making me want to hit Dancers Royale, the closest strip club.  Except Dancers Royale is also the shittiest strip club on the planet.  Once we took a cab there drunk from downtown, walked in, ordered a drink, saw the girls and walked out.  The cabbie had barely left the parking lot.  Looking at cigarette burned skanks with cellulite can kill your mood pretty quick.

But, by my logic, I could still pull some hot young tail if I played the odds.  I’m going to have to order some Viagra as a present to myself, and as a reminder not to give up hope.  So, happy birthday to me, Mr. Old Ogling Computer Guy!

I’ll tell you one thing; sake does not stay hot for long.  That shit is annoying.  I’m tired of reheating the shit, so it’s back to Asbach and coke for the night. 

I think most of the guys I know, myself included, are going through the mid-life crisis.  But there’s a lot of weird shit about that, especially since it hasn’t been redefined since the last 1970’s Corvette ad.  It’s not like that now, and it happens before you are 40.  Acceleration of culture and all that shit.  And yeah, nobody wants a goddamn ‘Vette anymore.  And we aren’t really skirt chasing either.  Sure, we think about young, tight ass, but the allure is fleeting, pleasant; like the thought of a trip to strip club is, or how driving the latest 6 series would be when one passes us would be is.  But a strip club is out of the way, expensive, and somewhat of a pain in the ass, and a 6 series is expensive and impractical – both are hard to justify in daylight.  It’s not a genuine pursuit. 

We’re half dead; we know it, we accept it.  It’s ok.  We’re not trying to fight it off with sports cars or silicone face slaps these days.  But we are trying to accept it with the proper grace.

Ah, but what is the proper grace these days?  That is what we are trying to find out.  We’re bouncing around like pinballs between depression, rounds of golf, trips to Vegas that are disappointing,  hours spent at poker tables winning or losing (doesn’t matter), fishing, fuck – whatever – we’re fucking searching for what drove us when we were young.  The thing we don’t realize is that when we were young it was blind ambition, the world was wide open – it could be a career, rock star, family, lottery, all at the same impossible, improbable time.  Because we were young and naïve, aka stupid.  Now we have some mix and/or one of whatever of those.  And we wonder what might have been.  Even more importantly, it was ok NOT to have ambition and just be – it was ok to just live and see what happened.  I would be lying if I said I never thought about trying that shit – just being – traveling on a shoestring budget and going whichever way the wind blew, but I know where that road goes.  I’d be writing this on a 2 by 3 memo spiral memo pad from a bench at the bus station with the plastic from the tip of my shoelace if I tried that shit now.  And I’d smell like ass, but you know how it is.

Not that I speak for everybody, of course.  There are those who take risks.  I’ can understand the guy who divorces his wife and kicks the kids to the curb and gets a phat crib downtown to nail some hot talent every night. You gotta look good to try that one though.  Keep trim at Metro Muscle.  Wear expensive dark striped shirts and Lucky Jeans from Park Ave and leather sandals.  Your sideburns and smartly spiked hair should only be done by boutiques from within a 5 mile radius of Thornton Park.  Find a good coke dealer.  If you aren’t individually wealthy enough to tan during the day, self tan at an artificial place, but be sure that it looks natural, because people in that scene can tell the difference between a real tan (money) and a fake tan (has to work).  One misstep can cause a crisis in your carefully planned 2^nd adolescence.

You see, crisis comes in all forms, whether you are sitting on a bench at the bus station, or on your Adirondack on your 2 Million studio balcony overlooking Lake Eola.

The difference is definition of crisis.  To the person at the Waverly on their Adirondack, crisis is dropping a precious Chihuahua into the bushes next to a Mercedes AMG, where the Chihuahua might not feel comfortable because he prefers to only ride in Porches.  Whereas, to the person at the bus station, the crisis is the anal raping that could include getting A.I.D.S.  It’s always important to see things from both perspectives, and the lesson here is that from the perspective of near middle aged guys, they have it tough, but not as tough as near middle aged guys in the 70’s, because they all had to buy Corvettes. 

So shut up about that beating and raping, poor bus station person.  We all have our problems.  Jesus.

I dunno, I guess this is the way the day was supposed to wind up.  My girlfriend has been wanting to throw up Japanese food and Chardonnay all over bums at the crosswalk, and I gave my last two smokes away to some couple at Monkey Bar for some god fucking unknown reason.  I probably gave it to them because I just got paid and I feel rich for a day, and they were out, and why the fuck not.  Now, I’m not only wishing I had those two cigarettes, I’m wishing I had the chairs, and was at the bar, and maybe even wasn’t myself right now.

I’m at that corner of Central and whatever that godforsaken street Casey’s bar meets Central Avenue is.  Most natives know that sinkhole.  There is a bus stop there; usually filled by cabs, bums, drunks, people you don’t want to see at any given hour.  I am in this sinkhole now, having crawled here after slithering out of the elevator of Monkey bar, through Slingapour’s outside bar, and across bum park.

My usually reliable mental case of a cab driver hasn’t shown up, and Faith has slid down to her ass on a traffic light pole, wanting to spew all over passers by.  I’m left with her goddamn Prada purse that I bought her on sale in my hand while her eyes glaze at the passing rims, and I have a half broken cigarette in my mouth that I’ve pulled from my pocket that I’m desperate to light.  I’ve got plenty from my paycheck in my pocket, but at this moment, it doesn’t help me fix my cigarette, light it, get the cab here, fill my drink, help my girl throw up…fuck, I don’t know what the sequence is.  I don’t know what I want the sequence to be.  I guess I’m old now; part of me wants to be home too.  The magic mental midget cabbie carpet should be here already to whisk us home, where the girl will fall asleep in her panties on top of the covers and I’ll stay up writing, drunk, to try to say something interesting about something.

So, here I am, in about that situation. My usually reliable mental case of a cab driver and I got in a shouting match in the driveway because she didn’t like the puking in the cab.  But my girlfriend, it turns out, is very handy with a plastic bag and puke.  The cabbie couldn’t argue with no spillage, so she decided to argue with the possibility of spillage.  Which is a pretty thin argument, but as I mentioned, all of her marbles arent’ there.  So we went round and round, arguing in the driveway about the possibility of my girlfriend having puked on something in her precious cab.  I like those arguments.  Because I win them.  Even with slightly challenged people.  Maybe especially with.  Maybe only with.  I dunno.  I don’t count.

I don’t know what I want the sequence to be.  That’s honest.  Just let me be the DJ.  Let me hold the mouse to the iTunes forward button while it is on random.  Sometimes it has fits, and those fits are unbearable.  Sometimes it chooses exactly what you want, but exactly what you want ­isn’t exactly what you want halfway through.  We’ve all been there.  That song that’s great that turns bad.  That song that has great memories that turns into something else, that turns into regrets, into streams of things that could have been, could have been paths of totally  – whoa, this is getting off on fifty tangents here.  Alright, enough left field for one post. This should come with a disclaimer but, shit.