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the clock got twisted around again... like a figure eight. twenty-four hours felt like five days. that's probably how many i used up. bill rode the eighty miles earlier to get a room (which wound up across from the state capitol). one bed. one couch... my flop spot. a buzzcocks night was sounding bad for the drivers' license, anyway. better to stay put. six hours early. yes, i knew that a bar was going to figure into the equation... an irish one, as it turned out. clock behind the taps and stoli counting down st. patricks day. breakfast didn't have a chance of stemming this tide. bill chatting up the waitresses, driving another nail in his coffin. and what did i do? i witnessed, blurrily. i like bars, but not bullshit. not escaping notice of the old-world dock neighborhood. arch-patterned cobblestones in the street. seventeenth-century jammed next to the twenty-first. people: some polite, some self-affected. trendy eats in old warehouses. harp-G&T-bass-god knows what sloshing in my gut. on foot to the stone-paved alleyway to the club, heat and noise creeping from the doorway into the orangey light like distortion mirage on hot asphalt. inside... a wall of black clothes, tattoos, studs and rings. No AstroGrrl. obigatory spikes. only enough space to not be plastered to someone you don't know for too long at time eight paces from the stage. which was probably not the best place to be. when the whitenoise gate opened, it blasted forward on a mist of beer and flailing limbs and bodies. refreshing noise, it was. and sweaty. very sweaty. cathartic. afterwards, into a rainshower, unsteady Docs tracing a wobbly line back to the hotel... at least my sense of direction wasn't impaired. the cruising cops were a worry, though. no drunk in public cross to bear, thank the gods. i dove for the couch. bill dove for the cologne and was gone. and then i woke up, before the alarm. sat on a bench in the morning grey with my first cigarette, looking up to the state house... flags at half-mast. much like my head. shower. coffee. packing. admissions to the boss. the road... the best curative, after the sun broke out into a kodakmorning. to CVille. short stop to the station for a gift cd, excited noise made about my djing at the club on thursday (which i'm actually putting together, early). home to a reticent miss jane. not fuming, but ignoring the details. that's news, isn't it? reading. hand-rolled sushi. drugstore cowboy on the dvd. i keep having to remind myself what day it is. |
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