If It Wasn’t For Bad Luck

She steps up the stairs cautiously because her heels could slip and there’s a line of people behind her. After all the mayhem that’s been biting at her rear as she’s moved amongst the nation the last few months Sandra is now finally exercising some caution.

Though the foundation of the stairway is sturdy each step is wobblier than the last. It doesn’t help that she has a duffle bag full of dirty clothes, another even bigger bag full of makeup and hair products, and also a giant backpack that acts as a portable hoarder hive. Whatever debris remained from Sandra’s incursions on other people’s lives has a new home on her back. Except of course for the real messy stuff; she just left that within those people’s personal space to fester and disappoint to no end.

As Sandra finally makes it onto the plane she exhales in immense relief. Now all she needs is a place to sit and somewhere nearby to cram her scourge above.

“Hi!” she says to a flight attendant. “Can I just sit anywhere?”

The flight attendant examines this boulder of a woman, dressed in a bright red dress revealing far more than necessary. Sandra’s cleavage is inches from the attendant’s face. And her purple hair sticks straight up and touches the ceiling of the plane. Her makeup clings desperately to her face in spite of the sweat cascading down it. And of course, there’s the giant bags of “god-knows-what.”

“Uh, no, dear,” the flight attendant says. “Your boarding pass has your assigned seat printed on it.” She grabs it from Sandra’s hand and examines it briefly. “It says row X. You’re in the back.”

“Ha ha! Just like the blacks!”

Sandra mercilessly finds her way to the rear of the plane. Now with a fuselage of strangers that resent her being around she manages to wedge herself into a seat. It’s on the aisle of her row so she tucks her feet in with care so as to not trip any more stewardesses carrying trays of drinks to thirsty and anxious passengers. To her right are a boy and a girl in matching blue and pink Hawaiian shirts respectively, and across the aisle to Sandra’s left are their parents, also in Hawaiian shirts, Dad’s black and Mom’s red.

“Oh, my God,” Sandra says to the two kids. “Don’t the both of you look so cute! You
must be going to Hawaii too!”

“Yeah! We are!” the girl exclaims. “I’m going to get to see a volcano!”

“Hopefully the villagers need a sacrifice and I can push you in,” says her brother.

“Boy!” screams Mom from across the aisle. “What did I say about offering your sister to heathen gods?”

The boy sighs. “Only in emergencies.”

“Right,” Dad chimes in. “And so far we haven’t left the ground so there’s no need to get hasty, Boy. If it looks like a ‘water landing’ feel free to throw juice on her so that Poseidon feels appeased.”

“Dang it,” says the boy, and kicks the seat in front of him.

“Wow,” says Sandra. “You guys are a lot of fun! I can tell this is going to be a really awesome trip. Have you ever been to Hawaii before?”

“Are you kidding?” asks Dad, as he pushes the button for the flight attendant. “Ever since Boy and Girl showed up 8 years ago I haven’t been able to get five minutes away from work to read a sports page, wrench my car, or even take a shit.”

“Oh, Dear, don’t be so vulgar,” Mom says to her husband. “You’ve crapped out on almost everything you’ve tried to do since we’ve been married.” She turns to Sandra. “Don’t mind him, hon. He just gets like this when he’s relaxed.”

“Damn straight,” says Dad. “If the stewardess would show up I could finish myself off and pass out.” He reclines back in his seat. “I hate flying.”

“Oh, me too,” says Sandra. “I’ve been doing so much of it lately. It’s, like, totally insane. I just can’t figure out how to stay in one place longer than, well, let’s see, I was in Oklahoma for, like, a day before the tornados hit!”

“So it was your fault!” Dad jokes.

“We lost our house and our dog!” the girl exclaims.

“My bike flew through the air and hit a grandma!” adds the boy.

“Ugh. I hated that house,” mutters Mom.

“Yeah, well, the insurance paid off big,” Dad says. “That’s how we were able to take this trip.”

“Cool!” enthuses Sandra. “I’m borrowing some money from a friend. I have a lot of friends. I love all of them so much. They’re all so giving, but I’m trying to pay them all back. That’s why I went to Oklahoma, because a friend there said I could babysit for her and that she’d pay me and I could stay at her house. First night there, the tornados hit! I hid in the closet with her baby. I don’t know how I survived. The whole house got ripped right off of us!”

“Oh my god!” says Mom. “What about the baby?”

Sandra looks at her feet. “Well, it wasn’t my fault, I tried to hold on, but the wind tore her away from me. I held on as best I could. But, I was afraid her arms would rip right off in my hands so I let go. She flew away like she was shot out of a cannon. I think she was hit by a bicycle mid-air.”

“My bike!” the boy says. “I got that for my birthday!”

Dad sits up and looks at her suspiciously. “You just… let go?”

“Yeah, or, you know, SHE let go, maybe.” Sandra shakes her head. “It was so horrifying.”

“I’m sure it was, hon,” says Mom. “I’m sure there was nothing you could do.”

“There, there,” says the girl, patting Sandra on the shoulder.

The flight attendant arrives and tells them to prepare for take off. She takes a drink order from Dad, gives Mom a blanket, tells Sandra to move her feet out of the aisle, and asks the boy to please stop kicking the seat in front of him.

Sandra wipes a tear from her eye. “Thanks, you guys. It’s just, that, OF COURSE this would happen to me! Everywhere I’ve been going lately things have just been going wrong.”

“Like your dress shrinking in the dryer?” snarks Dad.

“Maybe she ate the baby,” the boy adds.

“Shh!” quiets Mom. “Go ahead, hon. What else has happened?”

“Well,” Sandra begins as the plane goes into the air. “It started about 9 months ago. I was in Pittsburgh, working at a hair salon. I was doing a dye job on this girl’s hair and I left the bleach in too long! Most of her hair broke off so she gave me and the shop a bad Yelp! Review.”

“That’s not so bad,” the girl says.

“Yes it is! The shop immediately folded under because you can’t have even ONE bad Yelp! review. And so the owner and her husband had to file for bankruptcy and they ended up getting divorced. The husband had nowhere else to go so he had to stay on his buddy’s couch.”

“Oh dear,” says Mom. “That is awful.”

Dad starts to pour himself his first in-flight drink. “Meh. Could be worse.”

“Yeah, well, the buddy had a bad gambling problem. He owed a bunch to the Chinese mafia. They came to the house one day looking for the buddy, and they cut off the husband’s balls instead!” Sandra starts to cry.

“Jesus,” Dad says. “Right when he got them back, too.”

“Sometimes,” the boy says, “when I sleep on my Buddy’s couch I just stay up late playing XBOX. Did his buddy at least have XBOX?”

“No!” Sandra says, still mortified with herself. “No XBOX!”

“Fuuuuuck,” the boy says, eyes wide.

“What happened after that?” asks the girl.

“After that I didn’t have a job, but my friend in Miami said she was going to visit her mom in Yonkers for a while who was dying of blood cancer and that I could stay at her place until I figured out my next move.”

“You gave her mom cancer?” asks the boy.

“Shit, I didn’t even think about that! But, no. No. She is, er, was, Jewish and I think they have weirder blood than us, so that probably had something to do with it.”

“Ok, so you’re in Miami,” Dad says. “What’d you do next? Bet on the Dolphins to win the Super Bowl?” He chuckles to himself.

“No,” Sandra says. “Fish can’t play baseball.”

Dad shakes his head and sips his drink.

“What happened, hon?” asks Mom.

“Nothing at first. Everything was great. I was taking care of the house, watering the plants, feeding the cats, taking out the garbage, doing all the things you’re supposed to do when house sitting.

“But then I met some kids who liked the same music as me and liked partying and I got kinda sucked into their whole thing. Instead of looking for work so I could start saving up the money to pay back people I still owed I spent all the money my friend had left me for cat food on booze and cocaine!”

“Drugs!?” shrieked the girl.

“Hey, hon,” Mom interjected. “Can we try to keep the stories PG-13?”

“Oh, shit! I’m SO sorry! Sorry, Boy and Girl. Don’t do drugs, ok?”

“Yes, kids,” says Dad. “Listen to the crazy lady.”

“Anyways,” Sandra continues, “I don’t know what happened. It was like I blacked out on life completely. I didn’t show up to interviews, I quit working simple jobs people got me as favors, I even burned a pile of the remaining money my friend had left me! I literally set fire to cash!”

“Did you light a cigar with it like Uncle Scrooge?” asks the boy.

“No!” Sandra says, hysterical. “I didn’t even think of Duck Tales!”

“Shitty,” says the boy, and kicks the chair in front of him.

“Go on, hon. What happened next?”

“My friend finally got back from New York and I hadn’t cleaned a thing! The cat was missing, there were empty vodka bottles everywhere, trash had piled high to the ceiling, the toilet had overflowed with raw sewage inches deep all over the carpet, kids were squatting in her bed, and the city had condemned her house! I had been sleeping at my friend’s place down the street because I was too lazy to clean up. It was horrible” She wipes some tears off her face. “I just love her SO much, you know? And I couldn’t do anything right. What is wrong with me? Why am I like this?? I just keep disappointing the people that mean so much to me!”

“If you did that to my house I’d beat you like a runaway slave,” Dad assures.

“I know,” sniffs Sandra.  “I fucked up. But that’s not even the worse.”

“Worse than eating the baby?” asks the boy.

“She didn’t eat the baby,” says the girl. “She fed it to a tornado.”

“Yeah,” says Sandra. “Worse than all of that.”

Mom is munching her honey roasted peanuts and watching Sandra like a $3 movie.

“So what happened next?” she asks.

“I had no choice. I had to go back to Sacramento.  I dreaded moving back in with my crazy mother but I didn’t know what else to do. “But then I called this guy I met at a party once in San Francisco and he said I could come stay with him. I barely knew the guy, but he wanted to help and I was so excited to go to a new city. A new start, you know?

“I promised I’d find a job as soon as I could and pay him back for flying me out and everything. But, I had so much trouble finding a job. Everything was so far! Like, so many blocks. I just started partying and trashing the place again. He was gone at his girlfriend’s a lot and then just stopped coming back hardly at all.

“So one night I decided to finally try and figure out what my deal is, why I’m cursed with this Sysiphisian landfill of an existence.

“I encircled myself in black candles, burned a bundle of nightsage, covered myself in pigs blood, and carved a Oijoia board into his hard wood floor with my nails.”

Dad sits up again. “Say what?”

“I asked the Oijoia if anyone was there for me to talk to. My hand pulled from my body and slapped ‘yes’. I asked who it was and then the room dropped like 60 degrees. It was freezing. A wind blew through the candles and knocked me over, but the candles stayed lit. When I sat back up I asked again, ‘who are you?’ My hands started slapping down on the letters again.

“A. S. T. A. R. O. T. H.

“I asked what he wanted. Why he had been tormenting me. Then all of a sudden I started hearing laughing, like, cackling in my ears. So many different voices all at once just screaming in laughter.

“Laughing at me.

“That’s when I blacked out.

“When I came to I was naked and upside down in a giant rosebush. I made my way back to my friend’s apartment. All my stuff was piled up outside the door.

“I kept on banging on the door and begging him to explain to me what happened. When he finally let me in he recounted how I showed up at his girlfriend’s house, naked and covered in blood, claiming that I was his dead wife Julie who had killed herself two years earlier.”

“Now that’s fucked up,” concludes the boy.

“I didn’t even know the bitch!” Sandra buries her face in her hands. “And now
Astaroth is living at his place, haunting his dreams, attacking him in his sleep and telling him he’s going to rape his soul in hell!”

The family stares at Sandra, blinking, all wondering what’s going to happen next.

“Anyway,” Sandra continues, “I’m just really glad I met you guys. I just need a little
help to get my shit together now that I’m in Hawaii. Thanks, you guys. I won’t disappoint you.”

“Excuse me?” asks Dad.

Sandra looks at the kids.  “We’re gonna have so much fun, you guys! Ever had a Mai Tai?!”

——————————————————-

The plane lands safely in Hawaii a few hours later. The rest of the flight was uneventful. Dad drank and eventually slept. Mom tried reading the latest Stephen King, but things got a little too real so she took a Valium instead. The girl colored in her books, and the boy played his video games. Sandra just sat there and smiled the whole way.

“Well, uh, Sandra,” starts Dad. “Looks like you got a lot of bags.”

“Is that where you stash the bodies, you loony bitch?” asks the boy.

“We’re just going to get out of your way, hon, and meet you down at the baggage claim. Take your time though. This airline always takes FOREVER to unload the baggage. Come on, kids. Grab your things. We’re outta here.”

“K! Thanks guys.”

The family snatches their belongings and books it pass the passengers in front of them for fear of their lives.

Just then Sandra notices that the girl left her coloring book behind. Being the gracious and eager leech that she is she grabs the book and races to catch up with the family.

She takes the first step off the stairs out the plane and raises the book above her head.

“Hey! Little girl!” she screams. “You forgot your–”

And with that Sandra slips and tumbles down the stairs, letting nothing stand in her way. When she hits the bottom the earth begins to shake.

The girl points up at the large hillside just north of the airport.

“VOLCANO!!!”

Steam starts fuming out of the top of the mountain.  The ground starts shaking harder. Everyone in the vicinity is panicking, travelers and natives alike. Women are screaming, kids are running frantic, men are desperate to figure out what they can do to protect their families and are scanning their surroundings for anything that may provide safe shelter. Dad’s family huddles around him, and he points at Sandra.

“It WAS your fault!”

Sandra is lying on her stomach looking around aghast at the chaos she has caused. She can taste the seething hatred in the hearts of this family she loves, and she can sense that everyone else around her, all know, all can feel, that she is to blame for their forthcoming demise.

“Oh, no, not again! What is wrong with me?!”

“Nothing is wrong with you, my child.”

An old native Hawaiian man presses his hand reassuringly on Sandra’s shoulder. She feels an overwhelming calm envelop her body.

“You are the one the prophecy foretold.”

“Oh, god…” Sandra moans.

As the earth continues to shake, and the beast within the mountain pushes itself closer to its emergence, several other natives walk confidently toward Sandra. They encircle her and lift her carefully over their heads and begin walking to the volcano.

“Be still, my child,” the old man says. “You have been blessed by our gods. Your death will be a glorious and an envious one.”

“My DEATH?! Where are you TAKING me?!” Sandra screams. “Somebody help me! PLEASE!!”

“No can do, hon,” Mom shouts at her.  “But, it was such a pleasure meeting you!”

“Yep!” Dad agrees. “I’m not wasting my insurance settlement money on saving your cursed ass!”

“Watch your step, guys!” shouts the boy.

“Yeah!” agrees the girl. “She’s forsaken!”

After a few moments, with the earth still shaking, the villagers have taken Sandra so far up the mountain with such haste that she is no longer visible to the family.

“Mom?” asks the boy.

“Yes, dear?”

“Why can’t I push her in?”

“Aw, honey. Normally I’d let you, but I don’t want you to fuck this up. I’m here to work on my tan, not burn alive in an lava landslide, you know?”

“Aw, dang.”

“Hey,” says Dad. “Maybe next time you can push your sister in. Whaddya say, Champ?”

“Awesome!”

“Man,” says the girl. “Fuck you guys.”

Sandra is screaming like a banshee being slowly crushed feet first by a steam roller. She struggles to free herself from the clutches of the natives beneath her but it’s impossible. They do put her down a moment and she stops screaming. Once they pry the enormous bag from her back they pick her back up again and proceed to the top of the volcano.

“Hey, you guys,” she pleads. “Please, we don’t have to do this. I’m not the person you think I am. I’m just Sandra. From Sacramento!”

“We know exactly who you are, Sandra from Sacramento, “says the old native man. “You are the feast our lord has been craving. The one he awaits.  Only you may satiate his hunger. There can be no one else. He grows angrier the longer he waits.”

As they reach the mouth of the volcano the earth begins to shake even more violently.

“He knows you are here.”

The villagers hoist Sandra even higher up above their heads. She peers into the volcano and can see the lava roiling below. The heat is unbelievable. Sandra is sweating so profusely her makeup finally begins to wash off. As her hair starts to singe the Aqua Net fused into it ignites and all of her mane catches afire. Sandra screams even louder.

“Oh, God, why is this happening to me?!!”

“This is not happening to you. This happens because of you. When you arrived on our island you awoke a sleeping giant who’s slumber alone is powerful enough to wrought much destruction here. Once you have given yourself unto him then his ferocious snores will end and our island will be at peace forevermore.”

“Well,” Sandra, accept as she stares out across the beautiful Hawaiian sky. “At least it’ll be nice to be wanted for a change.”

And with a few words from the old man in his native tongue, Sandra is heaved into the volcano. Her screams falls into oblivion and then abruptly end, echoing upward until, at last, only silence remains.

Birds return to their trees. Rolling rocks find their mark. Waves are heard  in the distance.

And all the world is still again.

Help!

“So. She finally left you.”

 “Finally?” Jimmy demanded. “We were together for barely 5 months. And I use ‘together’ loosely.”

 Woody takes a pull from his joint. “I think Barrett would say you two were together.”

 Jimmy picks up a pebble and tosses it down the hill. “She would say we were obligated to tolerate each others’ space.”

 ”Oh come on, Jimmy. Barrett really loved you.” Woody passes the joint to Jimmy. “She was always all over you. I can’t recall a night out she didn’t try to suck your dick at the bar.”

Jimmy squints, staring into the sunset. “She was trying to overcompensate. Trying to get me to reciprocate the affection she feels people in couples are entitled to.”

Woody takes the flask from Jimmy and drinks, then turns his attention away from the sky high view of the San Gabriel Valley toward Jimmy. “Couples are supposed to be affectionate toward one another.”

“I guess. I don’t think you should do it just because you’re supposed to. I like to do it when I feel it, in private. And definitely not when I have something more constructive to do.”

Woody guffaws. “Really?? Dude, you’re never going to be in a fulfilling relationship if that’s the way you feel. You can’t just go around chasing ass forever. It’s like that guy in the Wedding Singer said. ‘No one wants to see a 50 year old dude hitting on chicks.’”

Jimmy inhales the smoke, then while exhaling, “It works for George Clooney. Not that I’m comparing myself to him.”

“You’re not even Matt Damon, bro. Come on, man, you have to want more from life than just a new face each night.”

“Bold words from you, my friend.”

“Yeah, but I’m me. You don’t want to be like me.” He takes the joint from Jimmy.  “We’re talking about you, douche bag.”

Jimmy sips the whiskey. “I do want something meaningful. I definitely do. I just have high expectations. High standards. Barrett, for lots of reasons, didn’t make the cut as someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, or even the next few months.” He takes another pull. “That’s what I thought, anyway.”

“Well, bro, obviously she could tell.”

Jimmy looks into the valley trying to recognize places that are familiar. In-N-Out, Santa Anita racetrack, the liquor store he and Woody were just at, have been at, hundreds of times. There’s the park his Kindergarten class used to walk to where Jimmy would always stare into the well there and try to find the bottom.  “Yeah, well I was frustrated with my place in life. I loved her, I do love her, but I couldn’t help but project my frustrations on her. I feel that was part of her job, to siphon some of that off so I can be happy and then love her.”

“That’s awful.” Woody exhales, drinks whiskey.

“Shit, I know. But it wasn’t just that. There were just irreconcilable shortcomings that I could not tolerate. I saw them as weaknesses that didn’t just negatively effect me but effected her as well, held her back from achieving anything substantive.”

“She did seem content with the simpler things.”

“Well, she is.” Jimmy holds in a hit, takes a large gulp of whiskey, then exhales. “The bare minimum. The easy route. And in a way I envied that about her. I even tried to emulate it in certain aspects of my life to ease the stress I put on myself. But I finally had it when she claimed she was too depressed to take out the trash or clean the dishes, or do fucking anything except sew patches on her clothes. I don’t accept that.” He takes another hit from the joint. “I’ve been depressed before and you don’t fix it by wallowing in your own bullshit.” He coughs with vigour. “You get your fat ass up and start doing shit. Even the simplest things like organizing your room or just going for a walk. She didn’t understand that.”

“Uh, well, did you ever think that maybe she was actually fucking depressed?”

“She just wanted me to constantly give her the attention she felt entitled to, like a black hole is entitled to gravity.”

” ‘Constantly’? I think it was more like ‘adequately’. She wasn’t asking much, Jimmy. Yeah, you two didn’t seem like the most miserable couple I’ve seen, but you weren’t exactly smitten either.” Woody tilts the flask back but there’s nothing left. “Where’d she go anyway?”

“Mark’s.”

“Mark? Mark… I don’t know a Mark.”

“One of her many exes. He lives in New Orleans. I realized she was gone when I read the note, but first I discovered her phone. A text from me was on the display, just my number, not my name. I figured she forgot her phone when running out for work. I couldn’t figure out why my name wasn’t displayed. So I picked it up. Despite my rule that phones should not be checked, I checked it. There was also a text from a 504 area code saying that they would see her tonight. That’s when I noticed the note. I Googled ‘504’. Sure enough, NOLA. She must be with Christine, I thought. Then some how it hit me on the way here that it was Mark. She’d been texting him constantly the last few days. I thought nothing of it because I don’t dwell on that shit and I hate how she would always flip out over even the most innocuous text from an ex of mine. I should have broke my rule. I should have read those fucking things. This morning I thought she impulsively decided to leave. Turns out she’d been planning it for days, a week maybe. Maybe longer. She had planned to get there just in time for Mardis Gras, the little slut. She was so quick to dump me through text a few days earlier over something I said. I took her out that night and we had a great time. Too little, too late.” Jimmy picks up a much bigger rock and throws it. “We still bickered every day until she finally left. “

“You said she felt you were unwilling to give her even the bare minimum of affection. She probably would have actually appreciated you checking her texts. It would have shown her you cared.”

“I have a dog. There’s only so much affection I can allow in a given day. It’s exhausting.”

“You’re equating her with your dog? No wonder she left you, bro! If I had known all that I could have warned you that you were gonna lose that girl.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you, you didn’t.” Jimmy smokes the joint and pauses a moment. “Did you say, ‘you’re gonna lose that girl’?”

“Yeah. Like the Beatles song.”

“Huh, that’s… funny. I never listen to that album, I hardly ever even put on the Beatles, but today on my walk home, in fact, into the grocery store to buy dinner for Barrett and me, that very song was playing on my headphones. When I got to our place I put it on the hi-fi. The whole album is about breaking up.” Jimmy pauses. He stares at the sun as it makes its final approach toward the horizon. “ ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’. It’s like Mark was singing it directly to me. ‘I’ll make a point of taking her away from you / The way you treat her, what else can I do?’ “

“Eerie.”

“I didn’t even think about that until just now. I just stood there, checking email, preparing dinner, not noticing all her shit was gone, blasting The Beatles. The note was right there in front of me, saying she had a ticket to ride.” He takes another hit from the joint. “ ‘I think I’m going to be sad / I think it’s today / The girl that’s driving me mad / is going away’”

“It’s like the universe was trying to tell you, ‘I told you so’.”

“The universe was totally mocking me. The night before, I actually wanted to cuddle with her. I wanted to be close to her. I was happy we were together. I felt we were happy together. And it’s like she just changed her mind this morning.”

Jimmy looks out over the landscape. The sun is almost completely set now, just a thin pink line that the darkening sky is just about to cross. He can see the house where he and Barrett fucked in the driveway while stumbling to a friend’s house drunk on Four Loko and vodka. That reckless passion was what drew him to Barrett so much in the first place. It’s why they were together. It’s how they got together. Reckless impulses.

 Jimmy takes the joint from Woody and inhales the last hit, leaving a smouldering roach. He spits on it, and crushes it into the dirt beside him.

 Jimmy stand ups, brushes himself off, then looks down at Woody. “Well, I’m ready for the bar now. I gotta go find another girl.”

 

Celebration, Bitches.

What a week. The band hasn’t practiced together for real since we were preparing for the album that we recorded back in February. Since then Eric has pretty much been living on the road with Huntress in order to keep himself from having to float around different girls’ beds in L.A., which he’s quite good at. My plan was to stay focused on things I wanted to accomplish: Writing, my own music, guitar in general, getting in shape. I was on the right track until i got arrested. That was followed by a backside face plant of depression where all I did was eat, watch TV, and drink. No guitar, no running. Just being a piece of shit. Then I met a nice girl and we started getting a bit serious and so of course I pushed her away. I think that’s because being with a girl makes me depressed and I was trying to climb out of my slump. I was determined to get into shape for tour. Eating cheeseburgers and smoking weed and pounding screwdrivers in bed every night watching movies wasn’t going to work.

So this week the band was back to practicing. Monday was shitty so I stayed in at night to practice on my own, but ended up just eating late with my dad and then going to sleep around midnight.

Next day’s practice wasn’t much better so I brought my pedal board home to work on hitting them correctly. That’s how fucking out of proper band practice I am. So i spent like 30 minutes doing that and made the decision I was going to go out to a heavy metal bar and try to have fun. I had talked to my lawyer that day and he reminded me that I fucked my life over and I didn’t want to dwell on it. I had $0 in my account so I got drunk at home negating the need to buy drinks at the bar. As soon as I got to the bar I bought a giant glass of Maker’s. Then another. Then a few more because a girl I like showed up. My brain was getting wet and sloppy so my best game was spending money to get her drunk, too. I thought I was going to score, and by score I mean something retarded and unmasculine like making out, but she went home with some pussy skinny dude with short hair. Then I remembered my talk with my lawyer and all that that means for my future and I wanted to kill myself. I was quite sure I would the next day. Luckily my hangover was so bad all I could manage was the strength to wish I was dead and not the energy to go through with it.

The next day was the most terrible practice thanks to my shakes and lingering anxiety. It didn’t help when my dad texted me to say he’s tired of giving me money and that I can just use my credit card from now on. That reminded me of the debt I’m in and my lack of potential income any time soon. Like a dark rainbow colliding into a big bucket of puke and shit where the gold is supposed to be, that lead to more thoughts of my legal problems. So when I got home I practiced my ass off and went to sleep early.

Practice today was a lot better. Clearly the best of the week. Still a few issues I can’t believe I’m still struggling with. Didn’t I practice for a at least a few hours everyday, metronome, standing up, new scales, techniques, fucking everything I’m supposed to do? I think I did. Did my week in Carmel really set me back that bad? I knew that was going to be a disaster. Worst possible time to do nothing but eat artisan cheeses in the hot tub.

Tonight is  a radio interview at KXLU. I’ll get properly lubed and ready for that on Monster Rehab and vodka. Tomorrow is the show. Been waiting something like 6 months for it. That’s the longest I’ve waited for anything that isn’t something banal like graduating high school. The anticipation for something this concrete and date specific, as opposed to say, losing my virginity which took about 18 years longer than this, is unprecedented. Interviews, photos, friends, family, well-wishers, the record label, who knows who else. It’s a lot of pressure to be awesome especially considering the record has gotten almost an obscene amount of good press and so have we. Expectations must be met. Anything short of perfection will be battered with boos and insults until my throat is sore. Gotta look good, gotta play well, gotta move right. It’s going to take some serious act of god shit to forget all that, fasten my seat belt, and enjoy myself for 30 minutes, ignoring all the trouble that lay ahead of me. At least I probably won’t have to pay for any of my own alcohol, it being a celebration for the band I’m in and all.

The Band’s Day Off

The band had a day off. The tour so far had been one of our better ones, but not our best. Some of our most loyal followers in our favorite cities like Reno, Houston, and Columbus were absent. We had some van trouble in Kentucky that made us 3 hours late to the show that night, and set us back $400, a decent chunk of our merch profit. That night we were in a town we’d never been to before and when we got to the venue it was clear no one was coming. The trials of the road are tough on the strongest men and can turn the most optimistic young soul into a crotchety curmudgeon, bitter and broken. We needed a respite. We went to the movies.

The paper said eleven o’ clock, roughly an hour away. Ian, of course, had to call his mother. The rest of us can rarely tolerate listening to him update her with a minute-by-minute account of our day’s events (Yes, he calls her everyday). So we dropped him off at a McDonalds, his little red head inhaling Camel Lights as it moved back and forth across the parking lot. The rest of us conferred regarding the night’s fiasco and decided we needed to get in touch with the promoters of the following nights to make sure everything was in proper order. Two bad nights in a row on tour sucks. Three or more can be catastrophic to a band’s moral. It took less than ten minutes to sort out any loose ends. Eric was hungry, but didn’t want to eat McDonalds. “Fuck that dirty trash.” He had a craving for Taco Bell. “Yeah, dude. It’s got tomatoes and shit.” No emphasis on ‘shit’?

By the time Ian was ready to go we had forty minutes to get some tacos and make it to the theatre. The GPS on my iPhone said a Taco Bell was roughly four blocks north and ten blocks west. “That’s the complete opposite way of the theatre.” Eric persisted. “Dude, it’s Taco Bell. It’s quick as fuck.” Turned out this Taco Bell was closed. “Is there another one around here?” “There’s a Burger King, like, eight blocks back towards the theater.” Ron was driving. “Well, that’s good because we are running out of gas.” We almost hit empty before we got to an AMPM a block past the Burger King. I didn’t like the lack of cars and lights. “Looks like it’s closed, too.” Eric’s vision isn’t the best, but once he has his mind set on something there’s no dissuading him, and he was dead set on Whoppers. I looked at my phone. “Dude, the movie is starting soon. Don’t take too long.” It didn’t take him long to return, but it took him a while to microwave the Big Bite burgers inside the AMPM, longer than it took to fill up the tank. Once he was back to the van, Ron got a whiff and decided it smelled too good to pass up. “How much were those burgers?” I looked at my phone again. Christ. We’ll never make it.

We still had about 10 blocks to go and 15 minutes until the movie started. We immediately found out where everyone in this shadow town of the American Dream were tonight. The line to get into the theatre was at least 45 people deep, and we could see inside that we’d be lucky if we could get any popcorn. Ron shrugged. “Good thing I got those Big Bites.”  We got our tickets with no time to spare. However, when we got into the actual theatre where our movie was playing there were still so many people trying to find seats that the management decided to keep the lights on while the movie started rolling.

I like to sit in the very middle and insisted that’s what we do. The guys didn’t put up much of a fight, but it was hard to figure out where the middle was. We decided to split up. Directly in front of the entrance there was a hump of seats that obscured the view of most of the rest of the theater. The people facing us clearly had the worst seats in the house since the screen was behind them. Those wouldn’t do at all. Ian went left down some stairs that looked like they continued 300 feet or so. Eric went forward to zigzag through the seats up over the backwards hump. Ron and I would go up to the right and try to circumvent it. At the top there was a path going left down towards the center of the theatre and Ron took it. I didn’t want to give up a higher position so I kept ascending to see if I could out flank the seemingly thousands of people also pouring down there from several angles.

I got up so high I couldn’t see the screen anymore. I looked back down and saw that Ian was still descending. From my vantage point I could tell that if he were to find any available seats they would be too low to see the screen even if we stood up on the seats. That area didn’t make any sense, yet people were filling it up so I tried waving at Ian whenever he turned to look down a row to see if there might be four empty adjacent seats, but he never bothered to look up to see where any of us might be.

Eric was lost in a herd. After going over the hump he found his way to another aisle that lead to another section carved into the wall to the left that might have had a good view of the screen, but I could see from my position that due to the volume of people also in there his search would be fruitless. I tried to wave him over to the wall perpendicular to the cavern he was about to endeavor. It was so far away I couldn’t tell for sure whether it had any empty seats, but it’s distance gave me some confidence that if there were an available section of this bizarre labyrinth it would likely be it. Unlike Ian, Eric saw me, but headed straight up the stairs of his gut anyway. I shrugged then continued back up.  Maybe I could see where Ron headed down, and I thought I still could have a decent shot of finding us safe haven.

As I went up I looked across each row. People were standing with their backs to the screen, yakking at their sitting friends as the movie rolled on in the background, for lack of a better word. No one really seemed interested in what was happening in the movie but maybe that was because the screen was almost impossible to see from every seat. I was starting to wonder who designed this place. People from the Midwest are weird. I eventually hit the peak of my stairs that formed an arc with a massive sloping segment of more seats that sank into what looked like oblivion. There were some kids without parents running around, but the vast majority of these seats were empty. And instead of facing the screen they faced literally nothing. A void of excess and loneliness was all there was to see here. Yeah, not these seats either.

I turned back around. From where I was now I could see deep into the center of the theatre. I was so far up it was hard to be certain what was down there, but it looked like the seats began to spiral in on one another.  I could see Ron’s massive blonde hair on top of his Viking frame moving down pass all the civilians as he scoured the rows for our seats. I got a text from Eric: “I can’t find shit.” I couldn’t see Ian anymore and hoped he didn’t fall into another void. I looked back toward the center for Ron. He found a solitary open seat, ripped it out of the ground, smashed it back on the floor, and threw it into the center of the spiral where it spun like a top in a blender for a moment before being sucked into the floor. We needed to get out of this M.C. Escher painting before gravity sucked us all into its eventuality. I had tried desperately to steer us toward an agreeable conclusion, but it seemed like none of us could pull ourselves from the bowels of our individualism to arrive anywhere together. I decided to go back down the stairs from whence I came and hoped to meet the rest on the other side.

As my left foot was about to touch the stair the theatre began to shake violently. I maintained my balance and slowly scanned from left to right to see everyone grabbing at each other’s garments to brace themselves as others tumbled down stairs, over seats beneath them, or clinging to their armrests like epileptics having a bad episode. The ceiling started crumbling around us. The screen folded up on itself and fire shot out from behind it scorching whomever chose the ridiculous upside-down seats in front of it. Then chairs started hurtling up into the air smashing their occupiers into large slabs of falling sky. “I need to get the fuck out of here.” Where are the guys?? I Saw Ian come dashing up the stairs in a crimson streak of survival. Eric bounded down from his cavern over chunks of ceiling and under geysers of moviegoers. I turned towards Ron. He looked up and saw the ceiling starting to cave in above him so he grabbed a kid and threw him up into the air to break the descending boulder, its crumbles falling around him like rain. He then leapt like The Incredible Hulk clear up over the hump, the ground buckling beneath his landing. I thundered down the stairs tossing aside any obstacle with legs and met the other three down at the entrance. We stared wide-eyed at each other, all of us desperate for breath. “RUN!!!” one or some or all of us screamed. We bolted at top speed pushing over anything in our path. The earth was cracking behind us. People unable to match our speed were being sucked into the depths of this hell. There was no time to validate our parking ticket. We broke through the front doors, leapt over bushes and bike racks, and knocked over mothers with their babes, invalids in wheelchairs, and even some retard kid on crutches. We sweated in pain as the muscles in our legs gripped our femurs with the intensity of a steamroller. I reached for the van keys clipped to my belt buckle and hit the button to unlock it. Ian threw open the door and we all dove in. The crack in the earth was still hot on our tail. “Andrew, get us out of here!” I slammed the key into the ignition, throttled the engine, and left exhaust and tire smoke in our wake. I looked back at the band. Everyone was packed into the front bench. Sweat drenched our hair like a scalding shower. We immediately ripped off all leather and denim smothering our torsos. I cranked the AC. In my rearview I could see the crack still growing at our heels, but the width was starting to diminish. “Hold on, boys. We still got a long way to go before we’re safe.”

Starry, Starry Night

I think I’ll go out for a smoke. I can’t stand sitting here writing anymore. I just checked the temperature outside. 71 degrees. Another awesome night in LA. Where are my smokes? Ah, yes. Left hoodie pocket. Got my shoes on still from that run I took with the dog. Let’s see, where’s my lighter? Shit. Eh, fuck. I’ll just grab one from the kitchen. No, Ghost. Stay. STAY. Good girl.

Where are you going? I’m going out for a smoke, Dad. Oh, well, be careful. Dude, I’m not going anywhere, but the front. Oh, i know. I’m just, tired of doing all this, fucking work. I’m going to bed.

I’m going to take your lighter.

The front door is locked again. I don’t know why they still always lock this. Anyone who wants to get in isn’t going to go away just because the door doesn’t open when they turn the knob and push. Do i have my smokes? Yes.

Damn, it is nice out tonight. It’s refreshingly cool. I still feel fine in my shorts. Running today was good. The dog kept up at a trot and didn’t just walk fast. It’s been a few days since I’ve done it. Easter weekend at the Packer house is no mere Christian holiday with the family. There is considerable drinking. Not that I get much exercise on the weekends. It’s not like I need to celebrate the actions of Jesus to tie one off at home. I can’t remember the last weekend I didn’t celebrate not having anything to do on  a weekend. Tour, maybe. But I had something else to celebrate then: something to do on a weekend and not being at home. Damn, it is kinda cold out here.

Lighter is in my pocket. Pull it out. Pull out the pack with the other hand. Let’s see if I can pull one out with one hand and not drop it. Nope. I’m thirsty. Should have brought a drink out. Cig’s in mouth. Light. Cough. Exhale. Not as satisfying as after that meal. But, still it’s nice to have an excuse to go outside. Is the wind picking up? Shit. Pull the hoodie up over my head. I hope it doesn’t tangle up my hair too bad. Haven’t washed it in 4 or 5 days. Tomorrow, I take a shower.

Pretty quiet tonight. It’s always quiet here. This is the most boring town around. I’m so sick of being here. There’s no bars around, no one my age, no one even remotely interesting. Just churches, old Asian people, maybe some shitty teenagers, but mostly old Asian people. The grocery store isn’t even open 24 hours anymore. Maybe I should have brought the dog out. She could have seen a squirrel. At least I’d have to restrain her while she pulled and jumped. No matter. I have a smoke.

Hey, what do you know? Someone is walking down the cross street. Kind of a big fellow. Big Buddha looking muther fucker. He stops. Looks like he’s checking out the house to his right. Almost like he’s casing the joint. Weird. Oh, there he goes, continuing down the street, kind of  a waddle to his stride. He’s got a black jacket on and dark pants. Keep walkin, fat boy. This is my neighborhood.

I can’t believe I haven’t showered in 5 days. I know I need to wash my hair. It get’s tangled, it looks like shit, more falls out when I brush it if I don’t maintain. And I probably smell. I wonder how many times I’ve got with a girl while as ripe as this. That’s disgusting. Well, it’s not like some 16 year old Chinese girl is going to walk down the street right now, see me smoking on the stoop, and then love me long time. But I’m so depressed right now I just don’t have the motivation to even shower, let alone work or go to the DMV or ride my bike. If it wasn’t for that orange powder crap from the nutrition shop I wouldn’t have mustered the energy to run today. Fuck, at least I got myself to write a little bit, for about 7 minutes, before I earned a smoke break. I can’t see the stars with this damn tree in the way. I’ll go out to the street.

Fuck, they look nice! Everyone hates on LA for having no star visibility, but on nights like this I can’t imagine there’s one extra burning ball of gas above my head that wouldn’t be superfluous. Such magnificent color and wonder in all that black above my head, bespeckled with pulsating white spaces dwarfed by the darkness that surrounds it, and yet so voluminous and enchanting. All those little spots of white: how many might be home to life? There’s got to be a couple. At least…

Is that dude walking toward me? Ugh, I hate these moments. Should I smile, say hello? He probably won’t say anything back. Having to talk to someone casually like this kills a little piece of me every time. He’s approaching me. Maybe he want’s a smoke. No, mine’s been out for a while.

What are you doing? I’m looking at the stars. Yeah, you live around here? Yeah, i’m just walking around the neighborhood. Same as you. Yeah, right. Let me see your hands. Excuse me? Show me your hands. What’s your problem, dude? Hey, don’t get excited. I don’t know you. I don’t fucking know you either, dude. Let me see your fucking hands. Fuck off.

Who is this asshole? Dude, I live RIGHT HERE. Where the fuck do you live? He steps closer.  I don’t know you. You don’t look like you live around here. You look like you’re up to some shit. He’s in my face now. You got a hoodie on, your hair is sticking out. You look like you’re looking for trouble. He points his finger into my chest. You look like a fucking bum prowling for doors to open up.  Oh, that’s it.

I show him my right hand first. He blocks and hits me in the jaw with his palm.  My left elbow is next. Boom. Hits the right temple. He buckles over. Time to show his balls my foot. My blood is roiling now. But my mind is the clearest it’s been in weeks. I’m so ready to fuck this guy up. I’m so sick of the neighbors, of the soccer moms dropping their turd kids off at day care, of the fucking police driving through looking for an excuse for anything, all these civilian assholes looking at me like I don’t belong here. I don’t, but here I am.

I live here, asshole. Get the fuck off my street. I’m going in. He rolls over and looks at me in the eyes with surprise and disgust. I walk past him and head for the door of my house. I can see Ghost looking at me through my window. She’s been barking and I hadn’t noticed. Muther fucker, he says. Ghost’s barking gets more agitated. I turn quick to look at the dude. I don’t need him getting up and hitting me from behind. He has a phone in his hand. Don’t bother calling the police. You accosted m-. That’s a gun, actually. Ghost. Oh, shit. Dad. Should I kick the gun out of his hand? Mom. I need to run.

I turn and bolt. Before I hear the shot I’m on the ground. Went down like my legs left my body. Did my instincts cause me to fall? No. It hurts. It hurts bad. I can’t breathe. I have to get inside. Ghost needs me. I’m crawling for the window. She jumps out and runs toward me like lightning. She buries her face next to mine. I reach for her head. Her ears are so soft. I try to look back at this guy, but it hurts too much. I told you, I live here. The dog licks my face. Ghostie, go get Daddy. But, she won’t leave. She looks up at the night sky. I can see the stars reflect off her brown eyes. They look bigger than I’ve ever seen. She looks back down at my face, her ears perched, and I can’t see the stars anymore. Ghost. Go get Daddy. She won’t leave me. I pull my hoodie up more over my head. She’s such a good dog. I wonder if she’ll ever leave me.

Good girl.

Slings and Arrows

You’ll have to forgive me for the vagaries and ambiguity of this post. I just can’t come clean with the full story yet. My internal attorney does not advise full disclosure at this point. Something about an embarrassment clause. He’s trying to get the case thrown out, but between you, me, and 12 angry men, it’s here to stay. I have been concussed with repercussions comparable to the Soviet bleed out of the Russians. I may yet live, but the former glory, or projected image thereof, will never be remade.

I’m trying and succeeding when it’s not 4 in the morning to be positive. I think of all the other things I’m capapble of, will be free to accomplish, and poised to achieve once I have nothing left to lose. And for real this time, nothing. I try and occupy myself with thoughts on how to polish a turd, a stack of shit overwhelming 3-5 or more years of earnest work and imagination. A micro-era of dedication and promise and dreams that created a stairway to a precipice. It was supposed to be a precipice of success, and instead, because of me, it is  a cliff with an abyss that sinks so low that I’m not sure those I drag with me will be able to use my carcass as a safety mat. The disappointment alone that will follow me down will be so crushingly heavy that I’ll be lucky if I’m buried deep enough to never be seen again.

But, like I said, I’m struggling to be positive. I’ll have my freedom torn free, my dignity disengaged, my financial platform ripped out from beneath my feet, and worse. There’s no telling what kind of real emotional baggage I’ll be carrying after this. And, THIS, is me, trying to remain positive. This is the best I can do right now. Grapple with that final stage of grief, Acceptance, that this is as bad as it is, and it can’t get any worse. Life goes on, man. You can’t be worried about that shit. Except, I am worried. I really fucking am.

So, time to focus on what is good. I DO have a loving family, and I know I have to sit there and take their wrath. I’m lucky enough to know that their love is unconditional. And, if by the slim chance, this truly was the final straw, then I must move on. Which means, finally, at almost 29 years old, I will be forced to be independent and in the worst way possible. I’ll have blown every benefit and opportunity that I got: beautiful, enviable things that literally billions of people around the world would murder me for, if not just to have, then just out of general principle for throwing away. In that case, I probably shouldn’t be writing about it on the interent.

I have friends. Amazing friends. And lots of them. I’ve heard it said about times of outrageous fortune like this that this is when you find out who your true friends are. And I think I may be surprised. I’m going to need them. More than ever. Not to pick up my slack, but help provide me the opportunity to pull myself together. To finally grow up. To stop pretending I’m a man and start being one. Even if I am a bum. I will not fail. Though, I might need to start seeing a psychoanalyst to figure out why have this drive toward self-annihilation.

And I can have no more excuses to not be a writer. I love music, I always want to make music, and yes, if possible I’d love to have a career at music. And that will always be the most painful part about this most likely abhorrent, nightmarish, and yet totally avoidable catastrophe of Old Testament proportions. The Seers foretold what the gods would have in store for me if I proceeded through this shadow of death where I should have feared my own evil. But I love living. I was going to do what I was going to do no matter what. I find it unacceptable that the rules, standards, laws, and values propagated by the majority should interfere with how I want to live. But the reality is there are true, horrible, and miserable consequences for our actions. And though mine caused no damage to anyone, no harm to any people, did not offend anyone nor even hurt any person’s feelings, I am forever doomed.

Am I being hyperbolic? I was told when the situation this piece was predicated on was happening that it wasn’t “life or death”. But this certainly feels like, and undeniably is, for now, total death to a very important and irreplaceable chapter in my life. Maybe it’s not life or death; maybe, somehow, it’s both.

We sat around waiting for Lemmy

We sat around waiting for Lemmy to show up. Nicole wanted to see him before she left L.A. for it’s older and more respected sister city San Francisco. If California were the Sopranos, S.F. would be Meadow and L.A. would definitely be Anthony Junior. Constantly fucking up, unfocused, suicidal. But somehow, always manages to score 10s and in the end everything works out because California is a gangster ass state. In case you’re wondering about San Diego, it’s the retarded bastard no one ever talks about.

I was supposed to have said my goodbye to Nicole that morning after I spent the daylight hours freezing to death on the floor. We had slept on the couch together, but when I awoke around 7 AM I had too many body parts rife with discomfort to stay there so i grabbed a pillow and a jacket and made for the ground. Turns out is was a frosty 58 degrees that morning in AJ Soprano. Eventually the exhaustion wore off and I had to beat it. I considered the couch, but Nicole looked too peaceful. She sensed my stirring, gave me a hug and I hit the road. When I woke up in my bed around 1:30 PM I had a text from her. She had left her jacket in my car. She’d be at the Rainbow later, hoping to see Lemmy, and would wait for me to gallantly arrive as well.

Traffic was atrocious. Rush hour. I tried to keep my swearing to a minimum because it was important to me that I show up charming and care free. Not really my style. I spent years hoping girls would find my brooding, cynical attitude mysterious and tortured. A good reason to suck my penis. I don’t think it ever worked. Drunk and boisterous, full of life, love, and revelry always worked way better. No, I was not about to let the Black Sheep’s traffic ruin my prospects of having a great time. I defend great times to the death. I give no quarter to all that may stifle my enjoyment. Say what you will about me, about my family, about my band. But don’t get in my fucking way when it’s time to party.

Nicole is a really special kind of person, special kind of girl. Not only is she knock out beautiful, she has a sweetness to her I rarely come in contact with. There’s almost an innocence to it. Unpretentious but stylish. Confident and sincerely so. No abrasive defensive position. Probably not living up to her highest standards but not cynical about it. Happy to be alive. I really can’t describe what it is I see in her; she’d probably hate everything I just wrote. But whatever this poised-for-life-no-matter-may-come aura she has about her is totally alluring. It’s comfortable and it keeps my cockiness far and away which is where it probably belongs. I just like to be me, too. And I feel like when I’m around Nicole we’re both able to just be like that. The funny thing is, I’m talking about the same girl who a few years earlier was surprised how many people I knew in S.F. “You were such a nobody in L.A.” I guess it’s that kind of boldness and unforgiving commentary that fosters a dichotomy with everything else I had just described that really makes her someone I want to be a lot closer with.

It was a god damn shame that I kept my frustrations with heir apparent’s traffic so well at bay because I had to leave well enough before Nicole. We had laughed, shared secrets, talked about the universe, and were accomplices in a jukebox seek-and-destroy mission. I tried hard not to be sentimental during our goodbye. It’s not that I’m a sentimental person. It’s just that I grew up thinking movies were real so I’ve always tried to live out crucial moments in an Oscar worthy way. “Here’s lookin’ at you, Kid.” That sort of bullshit. (It was so confusing in highschool that I wasn’t Zack Morris.I use not being Italian to explain why I’m not Tony Soprano.) Nicole would be on her plane in an hour. I texted her, asked her if she ended up seeing Lemmy. “No Lemmy : ( . Got to see you, that was good enough.”  To me, that was some real Benny and Joon shit.