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I’ve been everywhere

The number one song in the country at the moment of my birth, just finishing up a six-week run at the position, was Bridge Over Troubled Water. Sort of. That week, officially on the Saturday after I was born, the number one song became Let It Be. I find that two-song playlist oddly appropriate to my next 50+ years.

I started listening to Simon and Garfunkel on Spotify and it reminded me of my life in the ’80s and ’90s. I can’t count how many times I criss-crossed the country. “ʻKathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I knew she was sleeping. ʻI’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.’” But I did know why. And I do know why.

It’s a cliché to repeat how songs invoke memories. I can’t listen to Band of Horses without seeing J flit back and forth across the bathroom, momentarily visible in panties and my t-shirt, then disappearing from view. I can’t hear the Hold Steady without remembering looking at the back of my hand staring drunkenly at the veins and noticing how empty my hand seemed. “Sometimes she thinks she sees these things, right before theyʻre happening” was the repeated soundtrack driving under the influence to work, simultaneously struggling through my divorce. And I can’t play Simon and Garfunkel without also hearing the clacking of train tracks or the groaning of diesel-engined Greyhounds riding across the plains in the middle of the night, stopping in cities so small there was only a snack machine in the depot to get a bite, and crossroads with a flashing yellow light in lieu of one that changed from red to yellow to green.

I was on Trip Advisor the other day and I got bored of clicking when I had hit 500 cities, towns, and hamlets in America, Canada, and Mexico. Johnny Cash sang “I’ve been everywhere” and between two precise latitudes, it seems so have I. “We’ve all gone to look for America.” And so we have. What did we find? What did I find? You?

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Memories of Jaron’s

You won’t remember this. There was a place once called Jaron’s. And as much as there might be such a thing as privilege, I had it here. These names are real. I was just off the plane from Texas with a black, felt Stetson and a shirt that said “Listen to Black Sabbath” and I meant them both. We had crab cakes and whatever was on tap. I was drunk on the plane. Now, it was just a slip. The bouncer knew me from ’93, the bartender was my cousin, and his wife ran the kitchen. I was, as much as any place, home. The band that night was ‘Ale’a, sweet voiced in Hawaiian, and they were. Kala’i was fresh off his falsetto win and they were confident and the notes were true. In the bar where I was born. And they dedicated Hula o Makee to me and I knew I was home. I wasn’t yet married to Effie, but she knew about my stories and it was nice to have proof, right off the plane, that I was from where I said I was from. This small-town encapsulation. This Kailua. Around the corner was No Name Bar where all the marines chose to brawl. Down Oneawa from Fast Eddies where Willie K played Hi’ilawe and Hey, Joe. But Jaron’s was ours.

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String theory

Baseball, the Stoics, calculus, Euler’s formula, punk rock, quantum entanglement, aloha ‘āina, Siddhartha, the James Webb Telescope. I don’t know how they all fit together yet, but I know they do. They are all vibrating on the same invisible string.

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Both porn and punk

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” – United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964.

In the same way that the exclamation point in the name Panic! at the Disco precludes any further disparagement of the band, the adjectives porn and punk free their correct usage from any further explication. As Justice Stewart (literally) observed, there often exists an archetypal shorthand for concepts that at first seem too subjective to define.

The ethos themselves are anything but capricious. And they are uniquely valid descriptions of many things beyond the sub-genre of two aesthetics first described as hardcore in the 1970s, then proactively, and retroactively, applied to their influences and influence. Anyone that truly knows their meaning, however, will inherently know that Hank Williams is punk, with no further explanation, in a way that Blink-182 is not. Sonically, this doesn’t seem to make sense. It just is.

For the same inexplicable reason, The Evil Dead Part II is both porn and punk. I didn’t invent the rule. I just know it when I see it.

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Cats

I watched movies all day on Christmas Eve 2019, three months before COVID closed Consolidated Kapolei, perhaps permanently. I don’t remember what I watched. Maybe Cats. I do remember being woken up with the house lights on and the police telling me I had to leave. But after 8 hours in a theater chair, and 750 ml of vodka, I couldn’t use my legs. Not for any kind of meaningful support. I had kicked over a large soda cop full of urine that I had been using to avoid stumbling through the lobby. It was in my best interest to comply, but I wasn’t lying. I couldn’t use my legs.

They ended up removing me on a gurney and I rode in an ambulance, sirens blaring to Queen’s-West. And that is where I spent Christmas detoxing through the new year.

It gets better. Sometimes worse. But better lasts a lot longer lately.

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The summer after COVID

I never told you this, but before I knew about your June and July, when you let me stay at your house while you were in Europe, I almost took everything that was mine. Had I known while I struggled with loyalty, you were struggling with Ioan and what position worked best for your needs, I might have done something differently. I might have chosen me over we.

You can’t have it both ways every time. If you choose this, know that you are choosing a life you do not recognize. And in two months when it’s inevitably over, if it starts, well, you can regret using a nuclear bomb. But you can’t take it back.

The biggest difference between men and women is what happens at this point. We break up and I swallow three bottles of wine and listen to Audioslave. She puts on yoga pants and goes to 7-11 and practically gets molested buying Doritos. If you’re a woman, you have struggles. I’m not saying you don’t struggle through this. Trust me, this particular one isn’t yours. If someone calls at midnight, they want to fuck. Every time. I promise. Men calling and women calling at 11:56 is the difference between men and women. Yes, there are outliers. But nine times out of ten, she is not the one texting, “You up?”

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Drugs of choice

Every time before the feeling was exactly the same. The names were different, but the feeling was the same. That feeling in my chest and stomach. Evil butterflies swooping dark, not the kind that make giggles. This time everything else seems familiar. Except there are no butterflies. After Romania and the preschool incident, this almost seemed inevitable. Like I need alcohol to cope, she needed new male attention. And she will say “fuck it” to everything else. Your marriage, me, they don’t matter. We all have a drug of choice.

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Baseball (part 19)

I love football, but there’s always weird luck bounces, luck plays, Hail Mary’s, immaculate receptions, et al. Baseball is a game of intent. You can’t hit a 98-mph fastball by accident. Your life is literally at risk even looking at one from a batter’s box. And the game isn’t slow; it slows down. There is a difference. Walking around the mound. The batter adjusting his glove before every single pitch. One more conference with players who haven’t touched the ball in hours. The relief picture faces one batter, strikes him out, and gets pulled because the next hitter is a lefty. Ten more premeditated pitches. Even when it’s a tie game in the tenth. Everyone has to grow a routine while their fans are developing bleeding ulcers. It’s like grunge music. Fast slow fast. The game isn’t boring. It’s like your first girlfriend. It’s beautiful and excruciating.

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Catahoulas

“Did you see those pretty, blue-eyed things?”
“The catahoulas? Yes.”
“Some wild-ass, crazy bitches.”
“Yes.”
“Their eyes, they’re like different colors.”
“Yes.”
“From Louisiana.”
“So are you.”
“Marilyn Manson eyes.”
“I’m familiar with the breed.”
“God, they’re beautiful.”
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”