Thursday, June 13, 2002

 

Booze Money
You know what I always say. I aint got much money, but what I got – when I got it - I might as well put it towards booze. That’s made it hard on me, of course, having that as a mantra. What with no job and no intentions of getting one. No one is hiring, at least not right now, because it’s the depression and all. And There aint much for shmucks like me to do but sit around and get sauced. I see at least ten other cats at the same bars at the same time every day. We sit down like ole chums, but I don’t know any of their names. We even strike up conversations with each other from time to time. I like to stare off into space and imagine what it would be like to have a job. I like to imagine the perfect job. I’m certain I can’t get paid to just sit and drink, which makes it difficult to think of the perfect job at the moment, but I’ll struggle with the thought of working and can think of a couple of gigs that would suit me.
I watch the Giants game on the tube above the wall of bottles and the mirror that entices me to wonder how many shots it will take for me to see the mirror images in threefold. I imagine myself as a great baseball player who gets paid in the millions of dollars to play short stop. I’ll close my eyes and I can smell the green grass and the popcorn and the hot dogs. The wind whips about and I stand fearless between 2nd and third base, my cap cocked to the side, keeping sun away from my eyes. I lean forward and pound a fist into my mitt.
“Heeeey, batter batter batter!” I holler at home plate, hoping to set the guy swinging the bat off a bit. I’ve really got a thing for razzing the batter, so I give in to my urges and say some awful things to him about his mother. “Aaah, Whitey, yer mom sucks cock,!”
With a deep breath, as that dream propels me into an alternate dimension, I know nothing truer. My life is satisfying. I can want to wake up in the morning, on account of I aint working to get paid, but being paid for my work. (Leonard Cohen said that. He can write like a mother fucker.) Hell, I might could get a job selling hot dogs in the stands next week, right? I wonder if I would get to watch the ballgame? Oh, fuck it, I can always watch the game at the tavern. That –a-way, I get to drink myself into the daydream and no one cares. I aint a baseball player, anyways, and I didn’t get to this bar for any other reason but to get sauced, like I was saying. So’s I go for the whiskey, which should get me going nice-like.
It’s that one–two punch that hits a guy between the chest and the brain a good slug of single malt scotch’ll send to ya. Warmth that slides on down through the lips and to the lungs. I’ll take it straight no chaser, me. I likes it to have a couple lined up next to each other first off. I can eye the shot at the bar as I choke back the first one right quick, slamming it back into my throat and letting it burn going down. It comes right through the lips like electricity, too. Like a sigh of relief, my chest can puff out and my head jerk can back and forth, shaking as if to say “Oh shit, No,” but its only a reaction to the juice, dig? After that first shot, I can’t believe I went as long as I did without it. My head’s shaking is only a testament to my own drunkardness. And that it tastes as good as it does. Even though I shoot it back without being able to hardly taste it, only to feel the repercussions, I know what it is and I know about the back up, second and blinding shot.
Right away I can’t see so well. That first blast blinds me for a few seconds. I begin to see after I’ve had a few moments to gather my senses. Usually, I won’t know where I am exactly. The earth slips away and I’m all warmth and golden as booze falls down my throat. I’m gone, invisible or better yet…dead, but a likeable death cuz its temporary. It lasts only a short while, than its back to reality. Back to reality from a bottle. That and my time. Its None too nice, this, and I know it. I just wanna put as much makeup as I can onto this ugly world.
Why am I so tore up? I aint different from any other monkey on the street. I can chain myself to a grill and serve up a mean burger, or I’ll pack a load of mail over my back and hump it down street after street, stuffing addresses with junk from direct mail coupon books and copies of Vogue. Hell, I can pick up a chamois cloth and buff Jaguars as they roll through the car wash. I can find me a job, there are plenty of shits I can do. I just don’t like to work. But, workin’ gets me a paycheck that allows me to live and to drink. Its a cruel circle I’ve been tossed into. I dislike working, but I need to work to live. The more I work the more I want to get drunk. The more I drink the more I need to work to pay for my drinking and so on it goes.
My local bartender knows my drinks. I’ll take either a dirty vodka martini, or the whiskey. Whiskey is more expensive, and he can tell by the way my face hangs whether or not I got enough money for that. And he knows when I need the whiskey, but aint got enough money. He’s like a sage that way.
Even though I have the luxury of enjoying my days at the dark end of the street in a dirty bar, hiding from the sunshine, I’m a musician. A good one, too, and I’m meaning to get onstage to knock folks out, but being a good musician never did shit for me. I have to hustle to get paid. Gigs don’t pay much these days, and even if they did, clubs are closing down everywhere. No one’s got any money during this here depression. Sounds like great excuses to hole up in front of a glass filled with clean liquor, don’t it? They say I got brains, but they aint doin’ me much good. I’m like every other monkey out on the street, except that most of the bums that hang out in the joints I go to aint just daydreaming but halfway to insanity, or on drugs, or a combination of the three. The liquor we drink evens us out a bit. Me and my fantasies, they and their drugs, our appetite for drugs and alcohol and insanity all serve as a great equalizer. I’d say we’re trying to make sense of it all, or trying to make no sense of it at all.
Business men and blue collar cats come in and sit next to me.

posted by Hog 11:17 PM