compadres

I grew a big ol’ beard, painted my toenails a shear pearl white and started talking a lot more shit. Nearly three weeks into June and not a single night spent out under the stars, there’s something wrong with this picture. I start to get restless. Still I play nice, smile and keep a cool head (most of the time). I spent nearly the entire day looking through images of medical anomalies and scanning texts for relevant info to attach to it. Medical anomalies like conjoined twins and persons with tumors the size of water buffalo, men with no penis and sacks that hang heavy and full down past their knees and double the width. Illustrations and etchings made before the use of photosensitized plates depicting open brain surgery on schizophrenics and public flaying of criminals and prisoners. It’s a mad world but it seems, by evidence of what’s been pictured and there’s a whole lot of it, that it’s been a mad world. It simply just continues to be. I felt pretty damn fortunate that I haven’t to date been flailed alive and the only physical anomaly on this body, besides a single baby tooth that lacked an adult bud, is my double follicle chest hair which on occasion is more sexy than freakish. All in all, a sound enough mind and body to get me most places I need to go. But that’s the big picture, on a more manageable scale I’m a wreck and a real fucknut.

Last night I ended up at some north end bar, a dive that had a name which sounded like the name of a strip joint but wasn’t. I had images and image structures comprising the currents of my frontal lobe and a less than stellar outlook due to recent studio failures. A beer sounded good, as did a new place even if it was a shithole. So Sara, her friend (well a friend of her brothers) and I journeyed there via some shots at the Irish pub on the lake. For my part, when I get drunk usually it’s to get mellow, enjoy it, and that’s the point – I’m not really a drunk in that sense. Some folks get mean or stupid or giddy and their personality does a 180 but that’s not my game really, I just want to chill out and enjoy it and reprieve my mind from it’s looping infanticide. And I expect that of company or usually they aren’t company for long. Understanding, of course, that all of this is under average circumstance, not say after my wife fucks the biggest dead beat cumspot in the city claiming solidarity with “the plight of the black man” while drawing a probably otherwise decent man away from any responsibility to his kids, career or woman. That requires a three month bender, which, I believe, you, my loyal readers (all six of you), caught the tail end of back when these musings began. No, this was to be an average night with perhaps a bit of fun. The fun ended however when between bathroom breaks as Sara was at toilet, the dude (until that moment our drinking compadre) made it known to me that physical harm would come to my person if ever his friend, my lover, were to “get hurt” in any way, shape or form. Ten years ago I might have blinked or taken the advice from youthful inexperience but now, I didn’t even blink. Matter-of-fact I took a step closer and battled every man nerve within me not to punch that motherfucker square in the throat. It was somehow too much, all humor left to make way for shit talking ignorance. Hate burned in my heart as it became clear that not only this man but my lover’s brother somehow “don’t like me.” Men often “don’t like me.” My friend’s say it’s because I’m intimidating, that I focus too intently and look people in the eye too long. This may be but I can’t see it. I think its money, like, if I had it or looked like I had it that evening, shit-for-brains would at least have shut his mouth. I told Sara what was happening audibly in front of the dude when she returned which made it that much more uncomfortable and looked to her for some sign on how to proceed. She politely allowed the talk to continue (what could she do really?) and announced our plans to leave shortly thereafter. Without incident that’s what we did, then departed company early the next morning and haven’t spoken since.