I needed the light. I can usually write in the dark. When I was seven, my bedtime was seven, when I was eight it was eight, and so on. I was still Catholic then, so it took a long time to say prayers, and ask God to bless everyone and for eternity. I would squint under the blanket and write shitty poems about gothic, Catholic monsters outside the blanket that protected me. The real monsters didn’t have horns or wings or pointy tales. They had nice dispositions most of the time and their fists didn’t always hurt. Just at first.
MxUxG
I’ve been to a million parties in my life. I’ve only given names to three. I’ve spoken here previously about Mean Ugly Guys (MxUxGx, pronounced mug like the root beer, who became Chokebore with reasonable success in Europe), and the Rastafaris and Laurie; that one is The Party Laurie Gave Out 97 invitations in Waikiki before we saw Who’s That Girl with Madonna at Waikiki 3 when they still had actual theaters and not 300-screen complexes and she promised to go easy. Very cool ‘zine-style invite. We had 100. When we got back to the car, “How many invites are left?” “3.” And the dice were cast. Was it a good idea to have mud wrestling in a kiddie pool because I wanted to see Nicole in a bikini? In hindsight, probably not. But, people still talk about that party 33 years later; most of it sounds like a lie, but I was there. And it happened. It happened.
Lo, tangentially related to our mind set, remember midnight Rocky Horror at the Queen Theater in Kaimuki and walking in early to the porn scenes from Caligula? Let’s do the Time Warp.
There was the Godzilla party; so named because there was a six-foot inflatable Godzilla in the pool. And all the drunk, mostly hot, haole Kalaheo girls stood smoking and drinking in feathered hair fading 80’s glory. Whoever’s house it was, ate some serious shit because her parents came home in the middle of it to find their yippy dogs yipping in the hall closet where someone put them in the course of the party. I’m pretty sure we were in Aikahi. We scattered like roaches when the blue lights flashed. H3, then Alan’s Bridge. But on our way out, I did see the biggest asshole who ever was, Officer Bohol of Honolulu’s finest. Uncompromising and jealous of the life force of teenagers. Earlier that year he had issued me a no seat belt ticket and asked me how tall I was.
“Height?” “Five, ten.” “No. You five, eight.” “Then why’d you ask?” He scraped my face with my driver’s license. Later that year or maybe the next, after the MUG party, he punched my friend Dylan at Alan’s Bridge. Long story short the guy was a dick.
The third party was Megan White Fox. It was the first time I ever smelled sex. And the first time I’d ever seen cocaine. Megan was this super-hot, impossibly blonde white girl at a time I still self-identified as brown.
So it all makes sense.
Tampa General
Back in 2012, I was dead for 12 hours in Tampa, at Tampa General. Not dead really. If you’re alive now you were never actually dead. Unresponsive and with no ID, they cut my only pants off. I was minutes from not waking up. I woke with a foley coming out of me and an urge to urinate. I pulled at the tube.
“No, you don’t want to pull that out.”
“Where are my pants?”
“They had to cut them off. Don’t pull that out. I promise you’re not going to like it.” I pull it out. He’s right. Fire shoots up and down my penis with every breath. Still no urine.
“I need pants.”
“What?”
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday. You came on Sunday.”
“Fuck. I need pants.” Breathe. It’s only time. It’s supposed to go by. “I need pants.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m leaving. I need pants.”
“You’ll be leaving AMA.”
“I don’t care what I am. I don’t know where I am. I need pants.”
And this is how I ended up in New Port Richey. I suppose I should have been scared of alligators or snakes, even wandering, hungry pumas existed in the vicinity. But I grabbed some half-length blue scrubs, took an actual piss, walked to Target and bought some sweatpants and a bottle of wine (no vodka at Target in Florida), then crawled into the woods.
The weird part is that this actually happened. Florida incites the crazy, and at this point of my life I didn’t need incitation.
The whole point of this story is not my past insanity or the consequences of mainlining fifths of vodka straight to your esophagus after missing your Greyhound to Sarasota. My point was, in my customary roundabout way, about death, or near-death. For me, there was no white light. There was nothing. And then there was the monitor’s beeping representation of my tachycardic heartbeat as my eyes opened. I’m super convinced when you’re gone that’s it. This experience convinced me. It wasn’t sad. I didn’t feel sad. It was nothing. Like the 14 billion years or so before my third birthday and conscious memory. It was just nothing.
My mom hates stories like this.
How do you sleep?
No really. How do you sleep? It’s probably so far removed from you unless I bring it to bear. And instead of a blanket, you’ve always thrown poison. When I was younger, handsomer, and dumber we might have ended up in bed together. Now we end up in front of judges talking about things he’s heard a million times and could give two shits about and wants to make it go away and the boy is usually the bad guy. I’ve gotten super broken, but way smarter in the last four years. I’m not a dumb person. In fact, I would say the opposite. Ex-parte may be the worst you can do under new duress. Spend four years at the law library. Watch how courts run. Then it changes. It’s not Law and Order. But everything has patterns. And 90% of outcomes aren’t the same by coincidence. For the record, I never believed in coincidences. The next time, it’s not going to be the same. I just want to know how do you sleep? I did it with alcohol and Drive-By Truckers or The National songs that I had heard that reminded I’m really not the only one. Isn’t that one religions are? To hear your life being said by another. How do you sleep?
I get to judge
There are two kinds of hard rock fans. The first enjoy Brian Johnson’s vocals, as do I. We all loved Back in Black. The second remember when Bon Scott came out with bagpipes and a kilt. That guy gave zero fucks. And Angus Young was thrashing half naked even as a boy dressed like a schoolboy because he was one. Then Kiss blew up and merchandised everything that a logo fits on. And Ozzy was snorting ants in the parking lot on a dare because he said he would do anything, and he certainly did even more than that. I understand that impulse. “You can’t possibly swallow that whole thing.” “Give it to me. Right now. Give it to me.” “I don’t think that’s safe.” “Now you’re the voice of reason? Give it to me.” Oh yeah, Motorhead opened and Lemmy never looked down from the microphone and made punks look like hippies, which in a way they are. I have the word punk tattooed across my neck. I get to judge.
Instant karma
Be here to love, otherwise everything is speculation. I’m not here to be angry, though given the right circumstance I can usually be counted on to be so. Old behavior is extrapolated into guesses about what will happen. Vague memories have a way of becoming hard truth. Everyone knows what happened, but everyone knows differently, passionately. There are no witnesses that have actually seen anything except what they’ve heard. Credibility is a measure more valuable than a credit score. It means more than the truth.
Nothing happens without an equal and opposite reaction. Lies beget lies. Sorrow makes thing sad. Revenge makes retaliation inevitable. I’m not interested in propagating any of that. I realize my choices might put me in the background for now. I’ve never stayed there before. Why would I?
What’s happening outside is not an ever after. Things will get worse before they get better. But things will change.
It always has a way of coming around.
Jolene
So it happened on one of those days when we weren’t really together. Nowadays, that was almost every day. And the calculus of our expected fidelity was never quite calculated anyway. But there was a new glint of something in the reflection of the sun on one of those days. That’s the point, I mean. It only happened because it was one of those days.
I had drinks with a Bumble or Hinge named Jolene, and the first thing I thought to myself, was that she was nothing like the song. Nonetheless, when she spoke, I found myself enjoying listening to her. Maybe the Ray LaMontagne version. That might actually be the perfect allusion, though I always hate when writers I like make allusions to songs I’ve never heard. It is, in fact, how I learned about Nina Simone when I was 15, so there’s that. Always exceptions.
Long way down
The ledge. I remember talking you down from there once or twice. That might be the difference between you and me. You came down.
I’m not quite sure if I enjoy the sweaty-palm excitement of maybe almost falling. More likely the culprit is complacency. A person can get used to almost anything. And after this much time, one might wonder if I didn’t prefer the heights.
It sure does seem a long way down though.
Ways back
Love to me is a filter. Love to me says, “Baby, just shut your mouth.” You and I have come to separate visions of the same truth. You are trying to find peace. I am trying to provoke it.
I was your lifeline out, and you were mine back in, and that was okay. And now it’s not. It’s about as far away from okay as you can stand.
Brown Bags to Stardom 1987
