Godspeed

We hadn’t talked in a year. Hadn’t seen each other in two. But the world as small as it is held hands with fate and decided to put us in the same room together.
I was alone and didn’t mind. She was alone and seemed indifferent. Then our eyes cut to each other and neither engaged.
What was to be said? Everything comes to an end – nothing lasts forever. That’s why I never got a dog. Just another thing to lose.
The next thing I knew a pack of Camels were being pushed down the bar in front of me and she was in the chair next to me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“I figured you still didn’t smoke,” she said.
“Some things change,” I said.
“Some things don’t,” she shot back, then she hugged me.
There was nothing between us. Nothing from the past, nothing in the future. We were content in just being. Maybe that was worse than anything.
“You didn’t make it to Daniels birthday bash,” she said between blowing smoke at the yellow ceiling.
“When was it,” I asked.
“Tonight.”
“So you missed it too?”
“No, I’m here and there at the same time.”
I used to love her quick wit until it was pointed at me.
I don’t respond as I had learned from many lessons before. Her words can dig a grave, and I learned not to give her a shovel to speed up the process.
“I liked the guy, but not that much,” I said, paying no attention to her response.
She put her cigarette out under the bar and crushed the butt into the ashtray. She always used to do this. Anytime I saw someone with black on the thigh of their jeans I knew she was around. It was also my cue to leave, for fear of letting memories fill me up, only to be deflated shortly after.
After my senses have almost shut down, here she was. Next to me. Lighting another Camel Turkish Gold and drinking Hornsby’s.
“See, some things never change,” I said looking straight ahead and sloshing my drink at her same choice of vices from years ago.
“Good memory,” she says.
I fight everything in me that wants to rehash all the good times. I’ve learned that brain cells cling and divulge positive memories, 99.9 percent more than negative memories. I stop myself and search out the negatives. I take another drink.
“So, how ya been?” I asked her.
“Don’t act like that,” she said.
“Act like What?”
“Act like you care.”
It’s a trap I tell myself. She’s try to make me the bad guy. She’s trying to point everything wrong that ever happened to us at me. I still remember her telling me I didn’t understand her. That was why it was over.
The opposite was true. I cared for her so much that she didn’t get under my skin – she was born there. She had always been apart of me and filled that spot in my rib cage God had broken off to create her. That was His wish. I thought it was mine, but she didn’t believe.
“Sometimes someone just needs to feel wanted,” she told me. “I’m sorry that what we had ended, but that’s all it was. I just needed for someone to want me. To smile at me.”
I got up and walked to the jukebox. I flipped through the albums but the titles and artists were a blur. I put in a dollar and punched in four numbers. Then flipped a few more, then punched in four more. Then flipped more and without thinking I punched in the last four digits of her phone number – 5480.
I can’t believe I still remember.
I walked slowly back to my chair and looked up. She was gone. But her Camels were still there with a piece of paper stuffed in the plastic outer wrapping. I pulled it out and it said:
Tit Milk Emporium.
I cracked a smile. This sounded familiar, but I tried not to care. My days of cat and mouse were over. Especially when this cat turned out to be a lioness with teeth bared.
A song begins to play on the jukebox:

she lifts her skirt up to her knees,
walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing.
i never learned to count my blessings,
i choose instead to dwell in my disasters.
i walk on down a hill,
through grass, grown tall and brown
and still its hard somehow to let go of my pain.
on past the busted back of that old and rusted cadillac
that sinks into this field, collecting rain.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged

well i looked my demons in the eyes,
laid bare my chest, said do your best, destroy me.
you see, i've been to hell and back so many times,
i must admit you kind of bore me.
there's a lot of things that can kill a man,
there's a lot of ways to die,
listen, some already did that walked beside me.
there's alot of things i don't understand,
why so many people lie.
its the hurt i hide inside that fuels the fire inside me.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged

Then, all of a sudden I realized what her note meant. I got up and walked to the bathroom. The heavy wooden door seemed locked but I shoved it harder and it slammed open. I walked to the farthest stall and slowly pushed open the door. It’s empty and written in White Out on the black wall above the toilet read: Tit Milk Emporium.
I took a deep breath and exhaled.
“WHY would a mouse run into the lions mouth?” I said out loud to myself.
“Maybe death is warmer and more familiar than life,” said a voice. Then I turned and saw the bait as she slid into view and into the stall. Then she locked the door behind her.
It didn’t take long until everything we were wearing was on the floor. The heat rose and everything went numb. I pushed my hands through my hair and it was drenched. She was still sitting on my lap when she reached down into the pile of clothes and pulled out another pack of cigarettes and lit one. I took it out of her hand and gave it a long pull. Then I turned around and wrote on the wall with the burning ashes: The Milk is never free.

I put on my clothes and walked back into the bar.
Then the bartender asked me if I wanted another drink. I nodded. He handed me a Beam and Coke and ask if I needed anything else.
I closed my eyes and smelled my collar. I could still smell her over the putrid mess from the bathroom floor when my last song came over the jukebox. I wondered to myself what would come from her number. And then it began:

Who's seen jezebel?
She was born to be the woman i would know
And hold like the breeze
Half as tight as both our eyes closed

Who's seen jezebel?
She went walking where the cedars line the road
Her blouse on the ground
Where the dogs were hungry, roaming

Saying, "wait, we swear
We'll love you more and wholly
Jezebel, it's we, we that you are for
Only"

Who's seen jezebel?
She was born to be the woman we could blame
Make me a beast half as brave
I'd be the same

Who's seen jezebel?
She was gone before i ever got to say
"lay here my love
You're the only shape i'll pray to, jezebel"

Who's seen jezebel?
Will the mountain last as long as i can wait
Wait like the dawn
How it aches to meet the day

Who's seen jezebel?
She was certainly the spark for all i've done
The window was wide
She could see the dogs come running

Saying, "wait, we swear
We'll love you more and wholly
Jezebel, it's we, we that you are for
Only"

Wormy Dog Blues

Harper was standing on the street corner talking to two other men when I pulled up.
I guess they were being released from county the same time as Harper. He shook their hands and jumped in my car. For a few seconds we just looked at each other not saying a word. He was a ghost from Wormy Dogs past.
A lot of things go through your head when your friend has gone missing for 12 hours.
Visions of him dead in a field of ragweed crossed my mind, but I’d hoped he’d left the bar with a woman and stayed the night with her. Trading a venereal disease for death would have been a smiling alternative, as long as I could see my friend again.
He was always the emotional one, but now as he’s buckling up in the passenger seat of my car I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze.
“It’s good to see you man,” I say. “I didn’t know where you were.”
His story was one I’d never heard. It was one reserved for drug addicts, thieves, and rapists – criminals. Now it was a verse from familiar lips.
The night before The Eli Young Band was playing at Wormy Dog Saloon and we had decided to go. A normal Friday night as far as a group of twenty-something’s were concerned. Dancing, drinking, and finally dropping at Harold’s house nearby was the plan. But in the midst of the show, with his dancing partner mid-twirl, Harper decided to leave the party for some air. (This has become an ongoing joke that we will someday warn our kids about. It’ll start like this; “Kids … never, never, ever, ever … go outside for fresh air. I’m just warning you now.”)
So sitting on the curb minding his own and smoking a cigarette, a cop approached Harper with questions. How much have you been drinking, how is your night, etc. In ‘cop speak’ that means I don’t care what you are saying, I’m going to smell you and watch your eyes, and in the meantime try to find out how big of a threat you are to humanity.
Somehow Harper took these questions to mean stand up, and that’s when he felt a baton across his forehead (I know this because the next day there was a knot and a red line there).
The cop had taken his standing up as an offensive threat and cracked Harper over the head. Worried, Harper wobbled straight to the brick wall and put his hands up. Now in shock, Harper told the cop he wasn’t fighting back and surrendered in every way his altered mind could think of.
Then the cop pushed him against the wall, cuffed him, and threw him into a paddy wagon crammed with others taken from us too soon.
Our party continued inside with no thought to the happenings outside these reverberating walls, thick with the sounds of Eli Young.
Harper’s walls on the other hand were cramped and cold. Then he began asking the reasons for the altercation and why he was attacked for standing. The only answer he could get was if you continue to ask questions you are going to the county jail instead of the drunk tank.
The differences in these two are the difference in a few hours and a day. Both are cold and miserable, but county lasts longer. The only good thing about county is when you are released, there is bar around the corner that will give you a free shot and beer if you had the proper markings on your hand from being processed and booked. Much like cattle as they are branded, so are the markings of the penal system.

While Harper was being placed in a large holding cell before being booked, I was pushing my car out of the drive thru line at Sonic after it ran out of gas.
Luckily a gas station was across the street, and luckily the workers had a gas can to loan me, so I filled up the can, transferred the gas to my car and I was off again.
That was not the case for Harper.
The next morning I had made many calls to Harper but none were answered or returned. Other calls to friends revealed he had not stayed with anyone we knew of and no one had seen him. That one, notorious phone call an actor makes in the movies never happened.
After riding down the road to 4th St. and Classen and taken into a bland, ten story, brick building, Harper was sitting on the floor while being handcuffed to a long metal bar above his head. So were all the others from the holding cell.
From there, all the men were lined up and strip-searched, one by one. Harper didn’t elaborate on these precious moments, and instead skipped to his personal cell, which was being kept warm for him by two ‘redneck guys’ as Harper referred to them. They had been keeping the cell warm for a year – one for failing to pay child support, the other for outstanding warrants.
The second, and younger of the two, was caught was after a high-speed chase in which the driver was killed after running off the road. Redneck two survived and was jailed after the warrants were discovered.
After the campfire chat and learning of each other’s plight, not one, but both men took horrible smelling craps, as Harper described it.
“They had been eating prison food for a year. What do you think it smelled like,” Harper told me.
The toilet was also in the middle of the cell, in full view. Conversations didn’t stop when one went to the bathroom. Harper cussed the younger of the two for the top bunk and told them, “If either one of you touch me, I’ll knock your faces off.”
Harper slept with both eyes open that night. Not because he had no pillow and a scratchy wool blanket to keep him warm, but because the threat of being willy’d was a possibility.
The next day around 4 p.m. I got a call from Harper while I was worried and watching a matinee at the dollar movie to keep my mind off what could be happening or what had happened to my friend. I left halfway through the movie to pick Harper up.
I bought Harper a burger and took him back to my place where he ate and I played George Strait on the guitar. Harper cried as I sang this song:

I still feel 25,
most of the time.
I still raise a little Cain with the boys.
Honky tonk and pretty woman.
Lord I'm still right there with them.
Singing above the crowd and the noise.
Sometimes I feel like Jesse James,
Still trying to make a name.
Knowing nothings gonna change what I am.
I was a young troubadour,
when I rode in on a song.
and I'll be an old troubadour,
when I'm gone.
Well, The truth about a mirror,
It's that a damn old mirror.
Don't really tell the whole truth,
It don't show what's deep inside.
Oh read between the lines,
it's really no reflection of my youth.
I was a young troubadour,
when I rode in on a song.
and I'll be an old troubadour,
when I'm gone.
I'll be an old troubadour,
when I'm gone.

Oil=Death .... Ideas are more powerful than guns .... Benjamin Franklin was a bon vivant

Things I like to do:

– Watch movies on my laptop in my bed covered up. The key is getting the laptop to balance on a pillow (For my neck and theater-esque perspective) while a glass of water balances on the windowsill on the other side of me.
I've sent my resume to Barnum & Bailey, but I've received no word.

– Play my latest accompaniment, a small piano the size of a backpack. Setting a candle on its top with wax drooling down its backside, I tap the keys for a sinister tone, yet it’s uplifting as it reminds me of the kid from Charlie Brown. I have no blanket, but I have taken to treating the piano as a pet. It’s cheaper than the pet deposit I’d have to lay down and the look on my friend’s faces when I say, “Piano, play nice with guitar.” Or “PIANO, I bet you haven’t moved from that spot all day! Why don’t you clean something or get some fresh air, you look like crap.”

– Burn mix cd’s for any and every occasion. Concerts call for a personal greatest hits mix from that particular artist, road trips call for various up beat stuff, a solo ride back home always deserves some beat your center console songs, as well as a few to think on.
Good beats to beat to, and not in a dirty way. I'll gonna stop writing beat now.

– Listen to This American Life. I’ve found that in any conversation I can call on a TAL episode that relates with the topic, which usually changes the subject to rabid raccoons or how carbon monoxide poisoning is the root of most ghosts stories, but are always well received.

– Wake up early on weekends. To some this is time to sleep in, but for me, it’s my time –not work time – and I vowed long ago to use my time awake and active and productive.
And by active and productive I mean go to garage sales, if weather permits, and try to keep movies watched to alcoholic beverages consumed at an equal number.

Honk if you’re horrendously swell at ignoring road signs

I don’t know about anyone else, but I get pissed when I’m driving and someone honks at me.
This has been a reoccurring situation a lot lately and I’m trying to pull the pieces of this mystery together and solve some shit.
My driving hasn’t altered. I still drive like my dad. I fly when I have nowhere to go and casually drive the speed limit when I’m late.
So what is the difference, why is everyone honking at me when I’m driving home after work?
It usually happens on a certain corner with a certain light. I’m turning left, traffic backs up, and all hell breaks loose.
“I’M TURNING LEFT … THERE IS NO TURNING LANE … WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, PULL INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC!??!” I always yell into my rear view mirror at the truck grill behind me, while I have my arms up like the Y guy in the YMCA dance.
I vent to friends and they change the subject cause, come on, someone honked at you, flip them off and move on. But that’s the deal. I can’t flip someone off cause I always think it is an old man or lady that is a grandmother or grandfather to someone. I wouldn’t want someone making the universal jerking off sign to my granny, and I don’t want to be that guy that did it to someone else’s granny. Or be there when they ask they grand kids, “what does this mean when someone gestures at you like they are stroking a cats tail? Or peeling a banana with one hand?”
Awkward.
But recently I returned to the scene of the honk. Maybe I missed a sign that says, ‘honk if you love garage sales’, in which case I would have, or ‘honk if you like the guys Honda in front of you’, which I would totally get.
Instead I found a modest sign at the top of the light pole that read ‘No Left Turns’.
I’ve been turning left after work for about six months, why haven’t I noticed this? And why has everyone else noticed it BUT me?
Next time I’m honking at who ever it is holding up traffic by turning left at 36th and Walker, granny or not!

I hate this box

There are no rules here. Well, besides those pesky libel suits that may buzz around from time to time, but that’s all, but besides that I can do anything, write anything, and post any pictures I want. Hum, just in case, let me rephrase that…I can do almost anything, write almost anything, and post almost any picture I could ever scrounge up. So now that the three-day rainstorm has finally cleared away, leaving my vintage apartment windows to leak, and practically not stop any water from entering my place, I’ve decided to post a few racy pictures. So racy they have to be black-and-white!
The first, since I'm such a rough brute, with no regard for other's I'll put a nasty pic of my nephew, Jett, running around at the splash pad. This day was so crazy. We covered the water holes and it made the water hoses in the middle spray water harder and swing around really fast like a firehose. Really intense stuff.

The next is Ami’s shoulder, and Matt’s chin. They were dancing here, but their eyes wanted to do something else. That’s when I zoomed in to catch every desire, every whisper, and every whimper of seduction. Then it turned ten o’clock and they went to bed and fell asleep.

The next pic is of two crazy guys looking at a small island covered in birds. They named the island “Bird Flu Isle”.

Wannabe VP's are weird

Biden: Palin, for such a good debate I'm going to reward you with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact!
Palin: ok!?!

Choctaw will never be the same

This first face describes the whole night. Sheesh!

This is my neighborhood. I'm not Hollywood, as Paul Mooney calls it – I'm neighborhood. And as someone told me, "You don't live in Paseo, so stop saying that you do." Actually, they told me I live in Jefferson Park.
And as you can see on the sign, there is a green map of the blocks in Jefferson Park. If this is true, or it could just be a picture of little boxes made of ticky tacky from on high. If so, then I reside in the center of the triangle on the second word.
I think it says SPORE.
Yeah, definitely BURP SPORE.

My tummy is rumbling

I liked her tattoo - Tyler did not.

We had heard there were belly dancers at the Indian buffet on 23rd so we decided to check it out. The food was ok, the dancers were interesting and weren't afraid to get in your bubble and make you feel uncomfortable. There were two, one looked like Viggo from the Ghostbuster painting, and the other was tastefully curvy with a tattoo. We couldn't figure out what it was. We still don't know.

The difference in hiking and walking

This is where it all went down in Beavers Bend. We laughed, we risked our lives in the park bathroom where a giant spider lived, where Tyler almost killed us starting a fire with kerosene, where we argued about tolerance, where we ate good food in a cafe after identical twins greeted us at the door (they were old men and read their bible at the table). It was where Edward vented about not finding a job, where Brock could get away from work for a little while, where Brad could enjoy one of his favorite things in life - nature. Where Tyler could make us all laugh, and where I could get lost during kayaking and find myself in turtle heaven surrounded by turtle heads.

They were curious about their surroundings and how they were changing - so were we.

So for a weekend we got away, popped our heads out of the water for a bit of fresh air and checked our surroundings.

What is the difference in hiking and walking? When you hike you can pee whenever you want. And we did.

Good times in Texas

People are so trusting in Dallas. Do you see these ladies flinching at the possibility of me being a serial rapist with a snazzy mustache? No. Even after JFK, the Mavericks, and Mexico groping their undercarriage, these people no how to make a man feel welcome.

On the other hand these ladies proved the saying "Everything is bigger in Texas" wrong, as you can see.

I take it back, Texas blew.

red rock

Red Rock Canyon was interesting. Nature art is a good term for it. Graffiti of the outdoorsmen. The sandstone made it easy for anyone to carve into for rock climbing holds, artistic recognition, or harsh words splattering mother natures backside like shrapnel. It's as if mother nature got a tattoo during a drinking binge and waking up the next morning with ink she regretted.