“One day while I was real depressed
I could not even sing.
I thought about the girl I loved, and
bought her a diamond ring.
I sent a package thirty miles
to East Somerset.
Looked at the clock. In one day's time
her package she will get.”
The next day in East Somerset,
where Lily did reside,
She heard a knock upon her door.
A package has arrived.
She moved her hair from her eyes,
while she untied the string.
She was startled by a blinding glow,
of a 3-inch diamond ring.
Her sister came into the room,
after hearing Lily's gasp.
“Who sent you such a lovely ring?
You know I have to ask.
Was it Peter, Frank, or Joe?
Or Willie Connelly?
Or is it from that soldier boy,
from Knoxville, Tennessee?”
“No, it isn't Peter, Frank, or Joe
or anyone like that.
It's from that no-good singin' drunk,
Jim Jehoshaphat.”
“Fat ol' Jim Jehoshaphat?
Who left on your wedding day?
He left town but in the morning,
returned for his pay.”
“Yes, that's the one, I must admit.
Now he lives in reclusion.
Drinking and singing from dawn till dusk
is his only solution.”
“But how could a man so underpaid,
afford such a pretty ring?”
“My sweet sister, I do not know,
but it does not mean a thing.
Since he must haunt me a taunt me
and tease me and vex,
I shall call unto the netherworld
for to cast on him a hex!
Obollo Shee, Karink Karink
Karink Obollo Don,
Fat Ol' Jim Jehoshaphat,
for you this hex is on.
May you feel an deep unholy burden
bellow deep down in your mind.
May your mouth fill up with dirt and sand
when you attempt to rhyme.
May when you drink a drop of whiskey,
gin, vodka, or champagne:
May your ears tickle and your nostrils flare,
until you're hopelessly deranged.
Don't call my name, Jim Jehoshaphat,
you're time isn't very long.
I hope you find time before the coming pain
to sing one last song.”
“My baby put a hex on me,
Demons are talking to me,
I sent the girl I love a diamond ring
and now I c-c-c-c-a-a-n't s-s-s-s-s-i-ing
I got another bottle of whiskey
one of gin, of rum, and schnapps.
But I can't tap into my liquor case,
for it's Hell to drink a d-d-d-r-r-op.
Oh my dear, Lily, this song's for you.
I have tried not to write a rhyming word.
It might be hard not to drink whiskey.
Might be hard not to drink rum.
But there's one thing you've overlooked
So long as I've got my guitar I can-
I can-
I can-
I can s-s-s-s-s-t-t-r-u-m.”
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fair Lily and the Folk Singer
My First Million (Part Three)
You can read part one here and part two here!
“Hey there.”
Startled, I lost my footing on the uneven ground and crashed backwards to the ground, frantically trying to aim my piss away from myself. I heard female laughter coming from a few feet away and looked to see a random girl peeing next to a bush. I quickly averted my eyes in the other direction, and she laughed some more. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were there,” I exclaimed quickly, trying my best to avoid looking like some sort of sexual deviant.
“Are you OK over there?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I think I kinda pissed on my shoes, but I’m unharmed if that’s what you’re asking,” I replied as I tried to push myself up off the ground without getting more urine on myself. I eventually made it back on my feet and faced my back to nature girl.
“You can turn around now, I’m done.”
I turned around as she was pulling up her jeans. She was wearing a pink thong, which I could see clearly as she buttoned her fly up. The cigarette in her mouth lit up her face as she took a drag from it. Her lips pursed tightly around the white cylinder as her cheeks pulled in, and she didn’t break her stare for even a second. She had brown hair that was even shorter than mine, and big doe eyes. She exhaled as she extended her hand to me. “Hi, I’m Jo.”
“Marcus,” I said, as I shook it.
“Nice to meet you, Marcus. Hey, does this look like poison ivy to you,” she asked, motioning to the plants she had just relieved herself in.
“Uh…”
“I’m just kidding. It’s probably not. I have been drinking though, so I guess it’s possible that my powers of observation are suffering. I didn’t mean to scare you there, I just thought I’d let you know that you weren’t alone. That bathroom line is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.” I was staring.
“Interesting. So, uh, are you just going to stand here for the rest of the night, or were you planning on going back inside, because it’s kind of December, and it’s kind of not warm,” she said as she started leaning back towards the house. She was completely captivating; an ingénue, mysterious, and wholly striking. Entranced, I followed her into the house, where we took a lean against a kitchen counter. “So what’s your deal?”
“What do you mean by that,” I asked.
“Anything, really. What brings you here? Do you go to school here? If so, what’s your year and major? If not, what do you do for a living? Prospects, stock options, income, the like. Did you come with anyone, or are you here by yourself?”
“Are you asking if I’m single,” I asked, trying to be as charming as I could while swilling whiskey from the bottle.
She laughed sincerely, “You wish, buddy.”
Defeating. “Alright, fine. I’m here with a friend, I graduated from UGA two years ago, I live in an apartment a few blocks from the 40 Watt, I work for UPS doing manual labor, and I have absolutely no grasp on finance, nor do I have stocks, bonds, or any sort of investments, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing with my life. Anything else?”
She crinkled her face at me a little bit, staring me down. I laughed as I broke the stare first. “Oh, come on, you’re no good at this game! You gotta at least try. Come on, round two, and…go!”
We locked eyes again. Her eyes were blue. Hazy blue; not too deep, not too bright. Larger than average irises, long eyelashes. Gorgeous. Hypnotizing. During the staredown, I could feel her searching for what was behind the red strains obscuring the whites of my eyes, feeling out my intentions, trying to imagine the flesh color under the circles surrounding my eyes. She began moving her head closer to mine and bit down on her bottom lip. I closed my eyes and moved in for the kiss.
“You suck at this game,” she said, moving her head back away from mine.
I hung my head, defeated once more, and took another swig of the Blue Label. I was sufficiently not sober. I could stand to be more sufficient, though.
“So, who are you here with,” she asked.
“I’m here with Kevin. Red hair, trying to score the holy trinity with Katie and Cathy over there by the beer pong table. Hold on, what’s your deal? Answer me all those questions you asked me before.”
“Hah, and I was beginning to think you weren’t interested. Well, I am a junior at UGA, fine arts major, I live on campus, and I’m here with my roommate, who is upstairs fucking some guy in the bathroom. Your nose is bleeding, by the way.”
“Fuck, I’ll be right back,” I said, working my way over to the bathroom, where I was able to bypass the line by brandishing my bloody hands at the people in line. Inside the lavatory, I used toilet paper to soak up the blood, and cursed myself for being so ill-fortuned. Once the bleeding stopped, I washed my face off in the sink, and examined the damage in the mirror. My eyes were blood-red the whole way around, and my cheeks had sunken. Under my hat, my hair was greasy, and there was a small but noticeable blood stain on my t-shirt. I was a wreck. Everything was fried and out of focus, so I tried to compose myself as I left the bathroom. I walked back to the kitchen, where I had left Jo. When I returned, she had moved from standing at the counter to sitting on the floor.
“Your whiskey disappeared,” she said with a bit of a slur.
“Disappeared where, pray tell?”
“Very possibly, it went into my stomach.”
“Good work.”
“Why, thank you,” Jo said, smiling, as I sat down next to her. “Tell me, Marcus Aurelius, would you like to leave?”
“To be perfectly honest, I’ve been wanting to leave since I got here.”
“I feel as though you may not understand. Would you like to leave here now, and take me with you,” she asked, sitting up and leaning toward me.
“Yes. Yes I would.”
“Excellent, let’s go.”
“Hold on, shouldn’t you tell your roommate?”
“She’ll be fine. Come on,” she insisted as she took me by the hand and led me through the kitchen into the foyer. As we passed the dining room, I yelled at Kevin that I was leaving, and he shouted back that he’d be getting a “ride” from the K(C)atherines. Jo swung open the door, and I shouted “Thanks for the hospitality, Duke,” and as we hurried out the exit, I heard the faint echo of someone yelling, “Townie asshole!”
We made it back to my apartment building after a hilarious parking debacle, and didn’t even make it through the door before we were both halfway undressed. It was nice, being that close to someone again. Sparing the details, she was perfect in bed. She was new, different, exciting. I completely forgot that I hadn’t blown a line of coke in hours, and I came down with ease and without completely crashing. After it was over, we lied in my bed, and she asked me if this is where I saw myself two years ago.
“Realistically? Yes, mostly. Idealistically? No, hardly.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you can either keep chucking boxes at UPS, finishing your night shift with an 8-ball, and sleeping until nighttime just to do it all over again, or you can leave this comfort zone you’re in, and do something with your life. It’s the million dollar question.”
“Well, I guess I don’t really know. It’s not easy to leave it.”
“Leave what? Living alone? The unfulfilling job? The coke binges? The borderline alcoholism?”
“Now hold on. What makes you think I’m unfulfilled in my job, or that I’m a coke head, or that I’m bordering on alcoholism?”
She laughed and pulled her naked body closer to mine. “Well, the empty wine bottles in the trash can next to your bed, and the way you didn’t think twice about driving scream ‘drinking problem.’ There’s a slate of mirror and a razorblade in the drawer in your nightstand where you keep your condoms, which is totally unsafe, by the way. You reach in there in a moment of passion one night and you’re going to end up with an accidental suicide.”
“You know, you’re really much chattier than my other one night stands.”
“Aw, would you look at yourself and your sense of humor? You’re cute when you’re avoiding questions. Besides, the number of condoms in your drawer and the expiration dates on them imply that they’ve been sitting idly for a good while now.”
“You’re the one who’s avoiding questions. How would you know that I’m unfulfilled at my job?”
“Because you just said you were. Plus, come on, a film major doing manual labor? Clearly, your interests are not being fulfilled. And working the graveyard shift? When was the last time you even saw a movie that wasn’t on cable?”
Checkmate.
“I am…speechless. I’ve got nothing,” I admitted.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’ve only got nothing because you’re not aspiring to anything. So, once more, the million dollar question: What are you going to do about it?”
It was almost like she was daring me. Her big blue eyes stared up and met mine. “Well, what should I do about it?”
“You should stop asking me, and make the decision for yourself. If you want to stay in this rut, in your clean apartment, at your dead-end job, then by all means, go right on ahead, but if you want that million dollars, you’re not going to get it by spending your UPS paycheck on booze and coke.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“So come on, then. Million dollar question: yes or no,” she asked one last time as she sat up, covering herself with the bedsheet. It was morning now, and the sunlight was seeping in through the blinds, illuminating the dust particles I had fought so hard to be rid of floating through the air. They swirled and danced through the beams of light like tiny little living organisms, framing Jo’s silhouette as her shadow fell all around me, eclipsing my body as the sun passed from one side of the room to the other, bouncing off the white comforter on to the weathered headboard, and the shadow lifted as the whole room became bright in the full light of day.
My First Million (Part Two)
You can read part one here!
We walked up the stairs to the front door and walked on in. The Duke, almost on cue, was ripping gravity bong hits in the foyer as we entered. The Duke was a big guy in all senses of the word with long, scraggly blond hair, and a former frat brother who still wore his letters proudly, much to the chagrin of his former brothers. As we saw him when we entered the doorway was the quintessential view of Duke: hunched over a large spaghetti pot, huffing weed smoke out of a three-liter soda bottle. He took the hit, expelled an enormous cloud out of his mouth, and spotted us.
“Boys! Welcome to the party,” Duke shouted, dispensing dude-hugs to us. “Get in here, do a shot with me.”
It was hard to say no to The Duke, so we followed him through the throngs of underage Bulldogs and their friends to the kitchen, where he opened his legendary liquor cabinet, and asked, “So what’s your poison, gentlemen?”
“Is that a bottle of fucking Blue Label in there,” I asked.
“It most certainly is.”
“I’ll take that, then,” I said, reaching for it. Kevin seconded my choice, and The Duke, indiscriminate powerhouse that he was, happily filled three two ounce shot glasses, and handed them around to us. The Duke was an enthusiast of excess.
“Down the hatch,” Duke commanded. I hated lame college clichés like that, but abided anyway. The whiskey burned on the way down, and the shot was way too big. I’d be feeling it later, no doubt. “Alright, boys, I gotta move on to some other d-bags, but there’s beer pong in the dining room, wine pong on the second floor, and if you wanna drop some acid, there’s some cats doing it up in the attic. Shit’ll freak you out, man,” our host informed us before parting ways.
“So what now,” I asked Kevin.
“I don’t know, I think I’m going to see what’s up with beer pong. You want me to mark us down?”
“Nah, I think I’m going to go steal a bottle of wine from upstairs and suck on that for a while.”
“Wanna go do a bump first?”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
The only available bathroom was on the third floor, so we walked in and shared it with a tripping couple who were making out in the bathtub. Tripping or not, I was a little jealous that this unwashed dickbag could find a mate who wasn’t just an ex-wife looking to make herself feel young again, although the circumstances were probably strikingly similar. Kevin kindly closed the shower curtain to give them (and us) some privacy. While Kevin searched under the sink for a handheld mirror, I took out my driver’s license and my baggie. Kevin found a mirror, and we cut out two lines each, blew them, and left the amorous couple to their business.
Kevin and I parted ways at the second floor landing, and I snatched a bottle of red wine from the wine pong room. I was by no means a wine connoisseur, but drinking wine in such a way seemed frivolous and wasteful. My train of thought told me that I was liberating this bottle of wine from people who were just going to chug it out of red plastic cups. Honorable. I left the room, and began walking down the stairs to the ground floor, when I heard a voice from behind me yelling, “Hey, you can’t just take that!”
I turned around. She would have been cute if she hadn’t had so much to drink already. It was a real shame. The kinds of girls who start shit at parties are never good company. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I doubt you’ll miss this one.”
“Don’t fucking sweetheart me,” she said, and laid a hand on the wine bottle.
“Tricky situation, Marcus,” I thought to myself. She had the higher ground, and by putting a hand on the bottle, she’s already implied that she’s ready to use force to get it back. If I had pulled back, I’d have been putting myself in any number of undesirable situations. She could have an angry and overprotective boyfriend, or worse yet, a knight in shining armor could spot us wrestling over this bottle and try to make himself a hero. Getting into any sort of physical altercation with a girl at such a public occasion is always asking for trouble. Reluctantly, I loosened my grip on the bottle of Yellowtail, and acquiesced control of the situation.
“Townie asshole,” she muttered as she walked away with my wine. I wished I had stayed home.
Slightly fazed, I walked back down and met Kevin by the beer pong table, where I filled up a red cup with whatever watered-down piss was in the keg. Kevin was talking to two moderately attractive girls, who would have been knockouts by the end of the night. The one on the right, to whom Kevin was directing most of his attention, had long straight blonde hair that swayed when she nodded her head, which she was doing quite a lot, and was wearing a shirt that was just a little too short for a girl of her build. Not to say she was fat, of course, just that the shirt probably didn’t fit her the way it used to. The one on the left was a brunette, shorter than her counterpart, and noticeably less interested. She was slightly more attractive from where I was standing, but Kevin always had a thing for blondes.
“Ladies, this is my buddy Marcus. Marky, this is Katie and Cathy,” Kevin said, motioning towards me. I fucking hated that Marky shit, and he knew it.
“Katie and Cathy? Seriously?” I asked without thinking.
“Dude!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, but how often is there an occurrence like that, you know?” I said. “Nice to meet you both.”
“So do you go to UGA too,” Katie (the blonde) asked me.
“Uh, yeah. Well, I used to. I graduated in 2005.”
“Well, what do you do,” asked Katie.
“I, uh, work at the UPS facility over on the other side of town. Graveyard shift.”
“Oh, so you’re a townie now,” Cathy asked. Kind of a bitch; I liked that.
“According to the angry wine pong queen upstairs, I suppose so.”
“I don’t get it,” announced Katie.
“It’s nothing, just a joke. Some chick up there called me a—“
“Oh,” Katie interrupted, obviously not paying attention. “We’re going to go get some drinks, do you guys want some?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one. You need a drink, bud,” Kevin asked, to which I shook my head no. “Yeah, just one,” he said, handing her his cup as they walked off. “So what do you think, man?”
“They seem nice.”
“Come on, Marcus, I’m trying to do you a favor here.”
“And I appreciate that, I’m just not really that into either of them. I’ll leave it up to you to take a stab at the trifecta though,” I told him, looking off at the living room where a group of designated drivers were quietly watching Old School and ignoring their surroundings. I imagined that Katie was having the same conversation with Cathy, which was comforting.
“Goddamnit, you are so fucking frustrating sometimes, dude. I’m just trying to get you out of this rut you’re in.”
“I’m not in a fucking rut,” I yelled a little bit too loud.
“Alright, alright, fine. Have some more to drink, man, it’ll level you out. You’re high-strung as fuck. Your face looks like death.”
“Yeah…yeah,” I replied, unable to think of any other response, as I walked over to the keg, passing Katie and Cathy on my way.
After getting to the keg, I downed a couple of beers, and then moved on to The Duke’s liquor cabinet, where I pulled out the bottle of Blue Label, and began sipping liberally from it. I took the bottle with me and meandered through the crowds to the bathroom. There was a line, so I went to the second floor bathroom, and was headed off at the pass by the wine girl and whatever boy toy she had on her arm.
“Yo, I gotta use the bathroom,” I told her.
“Well, I was here first. Use the one downstairs,” she said, pulling the male closer to her.
“Oh come on, the line is huge!”
“I don’t give a fuck,” she snorted as she closed the door. “We’ll be a while, so I wouldn’t wait here if I were you. Unless you’re trying to get some sick perverted thrill.”
“Bitch,” I stated as I headed back down the stairs. I wasn’t even going to attempt the third floor bathroom. It was much too late to be interacting with the trippers upstairs. They were easily frightened, and they could have weapons. I exited the house through the back door, and found a nice secluded spot near the back of the fenced in yard in which to relieve myself.
to be cont.
My First Million (Part One)
The tiled floor of the bathroom was exceptionally cold on my bare feet. With it having been evening in December, I should have expected as much, especially since the heat had been off for days. Unsure of whether I was shivering from the cold or from the previous hours of sobriety, I stumbled into the bathtub with my feet hanging over the side, and my head resting uncomfortably against the soap dish. The hot water was refreshing, and I immediately felt cleaner when I saw the dried blood from around my nose washing down my chest. I had put in ten hours on the graveyard shift at the UPS loading dock where I worked, and when I came home that morning, I finished off a bottle of wine and cut out a few lines before falling asleep, or more accurately; passing out. About halfway through the night (or day, rather), I woke up to a bloody nose, which had become increasingly common in the preceding weeks. After a half-assed attempt at washing myself, I shut off the water and dragged myself out of the tub, and back onto the freezing tiles
Dressing myself had become nothing more than routine. I never had anything to get dressed up for. No one was dying or getting married, I didn’t have any job interviews, and the closest thing I’d had to a date was when I made out with some random divorcee in the ladies’ room at a bar a few weeks ago. I probably could have taken her home, but when I asked if I could blow a line of coke off her tits, I probably crossed the line. Usually, older women like her are more willing to let a much younger man attempt such a degrading display. It’s a lot like when my little brother would let my friends and me put him in mortal danger just so that he could hang out with us (although, my little brother probably wasn’t trying to make his ex-husband jealous). Either way, she wound up giving me a sort of awkward “maybe later,” which pretty much meant “fuck no,” and I left one drink later, turned off by the fact that she wasn’t quite prepared to embrace single life like she thought she was. Her constant talk about her kids was wearing thin anyway. Part of me hoped that her revelation might have led her back into the arms of her husband. The other part of me assumed that he wanted nothing to do with her.
Anyway.
I threw on an extremely faded, black A.F.I. t-shirt that was old enough that it actually read “East Bay Hardcore” on the back, and a pair of unfashionably worn down blue jeans. Before putting on my shoes, I did a bump, brushed my teeth, took a shit, and quickly cleaned up the dishes I had left out that morning. If nothing else, the coke was good for the cleanliness of my apartment. I looked down at my watch; it was about ten o’clock in the evening. I had my first night off work in over a month, and my place wasn’t going to get any warmer, so I called Kevin. Kevin was a dude I had met while we were both students at UGA, and we quickly bonded over a shared love of punk rock and substance abuse. I had graduated two years prior with my degree in film, and Kevin was in his fourth year, working towards super-senior status. Since I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Athens, and most all of my graduated class had either moved back to their respective hometowns or moved on to more exciting locales like Atlanta or Savannah, Kevin was my only liaison to the outside world.
“Big party at The Duke’s place tonight, you should come,” Kevin told me. The Duke was an affectionate nickname for a mutual friend who lived off campus, and had the unfortunate birth name of David Duke. We called him “The Duke” because of his highly eccentric nature, and his predilection towards hallucinogens similar to that of Hunter Thompson’s Raoul Duke, and also because calling him by his Christian name was always kind of terrifying. For as much as we had in common, Kevin was a social butterfly, and I, myself, couldn’t stand most people, so things like this were always points of contention.
“Eh…I don’t think I’m really feeling up to it, man. You go ahead, I think I’m just going to go to the 40 Watt and flirt with the bartendress. I think the Slippery People are playing anyway.”
“No, fuck you dude. You’ve seen the Slippery People like six times now, and you know that bartender has a boyfriend. I haven’t seen you in like two months, now get over here.”
He was right. The appeal of a Talking Heads cover band really lost effect after the third or fourth time, and I was pretty sure that the bartendress severely disliked me. I just didn’t want to go to some absurd party that would eventually get shut down by the cops and end with me running out a back door back to my apartment. I was too old for it.
“I don’t know, man, I just really don’t feel like going. There’s never anyone I like hanging out with there, and I don’t feel like watching The Duke trip balls or huff a bunch of shit all night. I gotta clean the apartment anyway, and that’s gonna take a while, so why don’t I meet you there if I finish early enough?” Foolproof.
“Well, I’ll come help you then, and we can both get there earlier. I was gonna stop by Whitey’s place anyway and pick up an 8-ball, and that’s right on the way. Want me to get you one, too,” he asked. I was screwed. There was no way out of this.
“Uh…Yeah, grab me one, and I’ll pay you when you get here,” I said, reluctantly.
“Sick dude, I’ll be there in like fifteen minutes.”
“Peace,” I said, and hung up the phone.
“Fuck,” I said out loud, looking around at my spotless apartment. Afraid of letting my friend know that I had lied to him, I started dirtying up my three small rooms as best I could. After a few minutes, my drawers were mostly emptied, and the sink was full of clean dishes. I stood and looked at the damage I had caused for a second, before immediately realizing that there was no sense in trying to pass off such an obvious lie on someone who knows me that well. I put all the clothes back into the drawers, the dishes back in the cupboards, grabbed my keys and a hoodie, covered my disheveled brown hair with a knit cap, and walked out the front door just as Kevin was approaching it. With a dour look on my face, I slapped a few twenties in his hand and walked right past him.
“Cleaned up the whole place already, huh,” he snidely commented.
“Fuck you, let’s go. I’m driving.”
“I mean, if you’re not done yet, I can wait. I don’t want to rush you or nothing.” I continued to walk ahead to my car three stories down, as Kevin followed. “Place wasn’t even a little dirty, was it?”
“No.”
“And don’t tell me: I’m even willing to bet that you considered dirtying the place up before I got here, if you didn’t actually do it in the first place.”
“Fuck off,” I said, as we reached the street, and I unlocked the doors to my gray 1984 Nissan Stanza.
“Wait, wait, wait. Did you actually do that? Because I was kidding.”
“I may or may not have participated in the activities you have just described,” I replied as I slid into the driver’s seat.
“You’re a strange egg, sir,” Kevin told me as he got in opposite me, and tossed the baggie of coke in my lap, his red hair and beard and his white face illuminated by the Athens streetlights. “Did you have dinner yet?”
“Nah, but I’m not really hungry. You want to stop for something?”
“Oh, I already ate, I was just asking,” Kevin said, looking ahead at the road. His southern hospitality was always a little amusing to me. Kevin had lived around Athens his whole life, and it’s always interesting to encounter for a person who grew up in a point much further north. I put on some unobjectionable Al Green song, and started off toward The Duke’s. Almost immediately, Kevin reached for my iPod, and I smacked his hand away.
“Oh come on, man. We’re going to a party! We’re gonna get fucked up! We’re going to have fun. Let’s listen to something fun.”
“What’s not fun about Al Green?”
“Oh no, there’s plenty of fun about Al Green, but that’s if we’re talking ‘Take Me to the River’ or maybe even ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ but your choice in Al Green songs is just sad.”
Utterly confounded, I responded, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Alright, you could have picked any of the what, forty or fifty Al Green songs on here? And you chose to go with ‘Tired of Being Alone’? Consider what that says about your mental state going into this event.”
“I give up, what does it say?”
“That you’re fuckin’ tired of bein’ alone,” he laughed, letting his southern accent slip through. “You gotta find yourself a girl, boy.”
“Not with this shit again, man. I’m fine, dude. I don’t need a girl. My life is fine. I’ve got a clean apartment, a job that pays pretty decently, and I’m happy.”
“If you say so, chief. So how is your life going?”
“I woke up last night, and my nose was bleeding. I think I’m dying,” I told him.
“You see, that’s what I’m talking about, you neurotic sonofabitch. You gotta get your life in order, stop worrying so much, stop avoiding coming out with me, stop hitting on the old ladies at the bar, get yourself an age-appropriate lady friend. And you’re not dying; you’re just doing too much coke.”
“And I’m glad you’re doing nothing to encourage my habit.”
“Hey, you’re as aware as I am that you and I have never been good for each other’s health.”
“Touche,” I responded as “Tired of Being Alone” ended. “Alright, you can change the song now, I don’t care.”
“See what I mean. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy, man,” he said, and scrolled through my iPod for a minute or two before setting on Dillinger Four’s Midwestern Songs of the Americas record. “This is what we should be listening to. It’s upbeat, high-energy, sing-along-y.”
I lit a cigarette and continued to drive, while Kevin sang along with the record as the words of Paddy Costello left my rattling speaker system and evaporated into the night sky. Suddenly, Kevin snapped me out of my haze, grabbed my shirt collar, and shouted along with the song into my ear, “Let’s tie a yellow ribbon around the necks of the motherfuckers living for the giving in!”
“What the fuck, man? You’re gonna fucking kill us tonight,” I said, unable to conceal my laughter as we pulled onto The Duke’s street and parked the car. The Duke lived in a very old-world neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens, which was a drastic change from the college town innards of the city. His house was large and Victorian looking, with three ready-to-live-in floors that were all fully furnished. No one really knew how The Duke managed to live there on his own. There was a revolving cast of roommates, sure, but supposedly none of them ever paid rent. Theories circulated: that his parents owned the house, and just let him live there, that he had won some huge settlement with the school after having been hit by a car while walking from the football field to the student center, that he was selling way more drugs than we thought he was, but The Duke never confirmed nor denied anything. He was enigmatic like that.
to be cont.