A DAY IN THE LIFE OF NIGHT

May 8, 2007

***transcribed from some bar napkins I scribbled on, some restless fuzzy nights ago***

The weird, the wild, the drunk and smoky...you can't pub-crawl with any meaning unless the emphasis be upon the crawl itself. Learn to crawl before you walk, I say: because seven Irish Car Bombs down the mad and winding road, walking isn't quite all that it was.

Learn to enjoy the crawl, live to love--yea, love to live--the crusty floor you crawl upon; you'll be stretched out, strung out, curled upon its granite before long. Learn to love your neighbor, in that sense.

A pack of Pall Malls to offer up to dear ol'/dead ol' Vonnegut--either to celebrate his life and gift, or gloat upon another liberal gone, either/or like Kierkegaard and just as foreign, if anything is ever truly such: this was all I needed at the moment. Live in the moment.

Love the crawl, love the granite looming ever-near. Live and love the moment.

I suckled that smoke like your mother's sweaty teat. Short breaths, long drags, smoke rings, cancer nuzzled like a lover... "I've never seen anyone enjoy a cigarette like that," the bartender remarked, as I smoked the unfiltered Coughin' Nails to the nub like a joint until it singed my thumb.

"Cigarettes?" I said, "I hardly care. I never really liked them." And then I lit another.

I'm living, drinking, smoking in the moment, in the now. The cigarettes just share that sacred space. I don't enjoy the cigarettes; I enjoy the moment. And next I'll have another double-whiskey, and play some sloppy pool with my limping, leering friend. I'll enjoy it even though I know I'll lose. And then I shall hit upon some random bar slut, whomever might be left or wobbly, whose freckles aren't quite cancerous. Maybe I'll get a hummer in the stall. It isn't quite a honeymoon, but it's pickled drooling refuge for the moments that it lasts. And it's real, unlike the number that I'll give her. Fuck 'er, fuck it all; it's not about tomorrow. Tomorrow is not now. Love the moment, love the now; love the freckles that aren't quite cancer. Love it all, and how.

Some drunken redneck will want to fight; he'll smell like sweat and failure. I'll get caught checking out some girl's behind, because I will not see the mirror. I'll eat some things I shouldn't; the girl may or may not be on that list.

It takes a special sort of Zen to find the beauty in the ugliness in every breath and step I take, lest the next be taken from me. It's a special sort of eyes. Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm down to just one contact, and I've had it in for months. But maybe life is better that way--viewed through a milky, floating lens. At least it is right now.

The gang--those warriors left still standing or not currently vomiting--will gather when all is done, and the Crawl is now just rough slumps against time...stop-sell time, last call for alcohol, and first crack at tomorrow's headache. We'll laugh and do illegal things. The room will move in frames and tracers. Philosophy will soak the air. "It's like...it's the thing," someone will say, "It's everything." In the morning, it's a joke; but I'm sure it will seem quite meaningful at the time. But the best things in life are such, no doubt--deep for a time, and deeply weird forever. The best jokes start out as parables, no?

I'll smoke another Pall Mall, maybe three; I still don't care for cigarettes--and I'll hate them in the morn, but I'm fresh out of cigars. We'll toast one up for Vonnegut again, and talk about Ice-Nine, though some will just pretend to get the joke, and wander, rolling, stoned, into another room. I won't see them again, but they were my best friends in the world. At least they were right then. Someone wants to watch a movie, but they'll pass out on the couch.

Fuck 'em. Fuck it all. Sleep is death. But with every passing movement, dying doesn't seem so bad. Death is just another way of life. I'd pass out sooner, but the cat's left a surprise for me. Every pussy mocks me, even that. Live in the moment, love the moment, yeah...but some moments are easier loved than others by night's end. Still, I'll live it just the same.

Maybe all of that will happen; maybe it already did. Maybe none of it will happen. But I'll still wind up in bed; and the swearwords, I assure you, are the same.

As I nod and drift and cough a bit, fighting back the nausea of the night, losing my gaze as if my very astral form into the ceiling fan whirring above the bed, I'll think but for a moment, Is there something more than this? Surely, there is something more--if not beyond the shell of flesh, if not beyond the silent sky...at least beyond the ceiling fan, I guess.

Of course--and like all fate--it finds me. As I roll and scratch my friendly bits, I'll feel a crunch beneath the sheet. An issue of Blue Blood or some such goth chick porn awaits, perhaps--battered by age and the crusts of countless dead. Ah, something more indeed!

"Thank you, Lord," I'll say within, and jerk myself to sleep.

Amen.

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