Joe’s Last Stand

Muddled Ramblings…

I’ve been here for quite a while today, doing some serious deleting. Six chapters: adios. Big chunks of other chapters: ciao. Two characters: beat it, punk. It’s all about purity of essence, so I’ve taken to drinking only rain water and grain alcohol. This is how it’s supposed to be, baby. The synapses are firing with alarming randomness, making pink elephants de rigeur. There is a node in my brain, undocumented, undefined, but up there in my head without a doubt. Its sole purpose is to fuck up the other nodes. It strikes with lightning swiftness and randomness, shutting down the speech center for a few critical seconds when I’m talking to a girl, blasting away my motor control when I try to dance. It is an evil node, or at least a capricious one, bent on making an ass of me.

Like I need its help.

Flashback: months (years?) ago I was here, at this very table, plugged in, writing away. Joe and his band set up on the other side of the bar, and started playing not long after eight o’clock. I listened from my remote spot, pounding with salt and pepper shakers when appropriate. Finally, during a break, I decided it was time for me to go. On my way out I waved to the band, and Dave, the Garfunkel of the group, saw me and said, “Jerry! When did you get here?” The whole bar turned to look at me.

“Uh… two?” I said.

As I was writing the above, Dave came by my spot here, patted me on the shoulder and said, “All is right with the world.” They’re playing on this end of the bar tonight, which probably represents a time limit on my writing tonight. Some geek typing away does not really add to the party atmosphere. Dave’s family is at the table next to mine. Put the condoms on the shakers, we’ll be having some kind of fun tonight. [Note – rather than putting napkins over the salt and pepper shakers so I can use them as musical instruments, this time Leah brought me a pair of mustard bottles.]

Joe is moving to Tennessee, which pretty much puts an end to these parties. Just as well I’m out of here.

I owe these guys a ballad, but it seems kind of late for that now. I’ve got it in my head, a good sad song, an Irish song, but I never got it out on paper. Now they’re all going their ways, and I’ll have to take my ballad somewhere else.

8 thoughts on “Joe’s Last Stand

  1. A few comments about the pictures — one: all of the sunrise pictures are mine — yes, that’s right shot by moi, the person who’s supposedly not capable of rising before noon. Hah! Two: That picture Jer puts on the website of hismeslf without the beard just makes him look way older than he really is. If he’s that old, and I’m two years older, well, that’s unthinkable.

  2. wow. The beard. Striking.

    The running millimeter measurement didn’t do it justice. I think if we’d had these pictures of it, the poll would have been different.

  3. It is indeed noteworthy that Carol Anne was up and about at sunrise. I attribute that to melvillian out-to-seaness. Different laws of man and nature apply on the briny blue.

    I thought I looked younger without the beard. It also turns out Four out of Five Callahan’s Waitresses prefer me clean-shaven. Or at least that’s what they told me after I shaved.

  4. OK, I’ll take that out-to-seaness explanation. But I still believe the beard was good — of course bar waitresses are going to approve of an appearance change after the fact. I just wonder who stuffed the ballot box to let you hack it off.

  5. I assumed that there were hack and don’t-hack lobbies doing the stuffing. It was pretty close the whole time, with don’t hack in the lead most of the time. I did give out the URL to a couple of other people right at the end, that might be what tipped the balance.

  6. I must say that that poll certainly attracted the most votes of any poll so far. The passion of the Beard-as-symbol party and the Beard-must-die parties was powerful indeed.

    I believe that my massive delete-o-rama did resolve many of the problems with my novel, so the current poll may suddenly become moot. We’ll see how much progress I make today.

  7. OTOH, the de-bearded state does increase the resemblance to Kiefer Sutherland. If you got together with the Donald Sutherland lookalike we know, in some touristy public place, I wonder how many autographs you’d be asked for.

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