A birdhouse in the city rainAt times, there’s no sadder place than a city in the rain. I awoke this morning to a clap of thunder right as my alarm clock was going off at 6:45 AM. G was walking naked through the room, looking for clothes. It seemed as if it were much earlier. The light in the room was all off. I did my morning ritual of Diet Coke and a cigarette , then a shower – all the time worrying that the lightning would come in through the pipes and electrocute me. I wondered what that would feel like. Would my heart stop? If it didn’t start back, who would call the paramedics? I survived only to field a call from an insurance adjuster who needed to take a picture of my car for a claim I recently made. The usual 10 minute drive to work took 30 as Dekalb Avenue was a river due to the stopped up drains and the overdevelopment of land alongside the road. The office windows in my building are tinted, subtracting two hours from morning light and adding two hours to afternoon. It felt as if it were dusk all day. And then finally, I left. Getting out of the parking lot behind the building, I became aware of all of the people that are everywhere in a city. Even in the car, trying to get home, there’s no opportunity to be completely un-self-conscious. Does it look like I am picking my nose? I was , but then I saw you and I don’t know if you saw me, but...
Tommy’s out tonight with this big-eyed girl and I can’t feel my left foot. We had agreed to meet here to do the usual. Play a couple of rounds of pool, drink some beers and shots, wait for the college girls to come in late, stare at the crowd. I had even got us our normal catbird seats in the crook of the bar from which the whole of the place could be scanned with just the movement of the eyes. We were set, and then he text messaged me telling me he’s gonna be late, maybe and hour or two. So I start into it. I start with the the nightly innaugural boilermaker, then a dry martini. Get me there quick. You can’t stand to be in places like this sober. There’s no girls, nobody at all really except the couple of old geezers who always take the booth by the door and spend most of the night just staring at each other. Curtis, the bartender, asks where Tommy is and I tell him that he is out on a date. “That ugly fucker,” he says. “I know what you mean, man, but Tommy’s got the mad talking skills, and it doesn’t hurt that he works at the furniture store. You know how women get around home furnishings.” I order another beer and a shot, then the second text message from Tommy comes. “Paying the bill now then on our way.” Our! What the hell is that all about. This was mine and Tommy’s thing. How are we going to lay in wait for the college girls to...
A happier place and time?Okay, I haven’t been posting much here lately. When I started this blog I had just been through the first of two layoffs that I have experienced since starting it. My at-the-time girlfriend had just moved to Vermont and I was at home alone. Oh, also there was copious amounts of Seagrams 7 being consumed on a nightly basis, and out of this burgeoning alcoholism, the muse began to speak to me regularly (go figure!). I spent nearly a year trying to decide whether I would move to Vermont where I knew one person, or stay in Atlanta, unemployed, where I knew many more people. Inside my head was a rough place to be, and the battleground that was there, combined with the aforementioned alcoholism, led to reglar blog postings of a cerebral/fantastical/metaphorical nature. I was working a lot of things out, and you guys had to be the victims of that process. Much has changed in my life. I decided to stay in Atlanta. Found a job at the newspaper in town. Found a new girlfriend. Moved… twice! Went through a tough process of trying to cut down on the sauce, six months of therapy and more. I still struggle with periodic depression goblins and have yet to find that elusive paradise of being. In fact, I have become increasingly concerned that such paradise may not exist at all. Overall, however, I have found some way of making a little sense out of it all. I have found a place, where not always happy, I don’t seem to emotionally bounce back and forth all...
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