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Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Willies Stories

This was written on January 18th, 2009.

This is how these stories begin. For you, my lady Lisa.



For you, dear reader, who have come here for a tale, you should know that these weekend chapters  originated from my contributions to TDC  during the past few years, and Richie Fowler made me promise to keep writing this tale.  For that, I am thankful.  Whatever you think of my words, I simply can't help but write, and I work to get better at it.  But because of his insistence, I otherwise would not have such a deadline, and I would not otherwise make the time to write.

Thanks Richie.  It's all your fault.  I guess I owe you.  And also, I owe quite a lot to the community members of the Mighty TDC.

Props.


Here we go.  God Help You.










Let's take a walk down a back alley of the Sunday Sideshow, between the tents, I've got something to show you. No, not that sort of thing you naughty person; let's peer into this tent over here. Doing so deserves a caveat, which is this:

"An unexamined life is not worth living." This quote comes from a time and land that existed long ago. It may be all Greek to you, but check this out:

During a distant time, in a land far away from here, village folk would carry out a strange custom after bad luck befell them, such as a drought, or a fire, or an earthquake, for example. The odd custom was this: someone of a lower caste, or social class, was chosen to be stoned and then driven out of the village, exiled. Mind you, getting stoned back then had a very different meaning than it does today. But the purpose was to appease the gods, as a way of purification, to ward off a revisit of the bad luck.

This custom was called, in their own language, “pharmakos," spelled φαρμακος. Other civilizations picked it up, and as time went on it changed as weird, old, popular beliefs often do.

Pharmakos, "driving out the bad," eventually became "Pharmacy," which involves drugs, to heal. But there are drugs that do not heal. There are some that are indeed quite evil. You will see.

In its final incarnation, this concept of φαρμακος, of escaping the bad, evolved into the practice of using a goat that was ushered (to put it kindly) out of the village, with all of the tribe’s sins written on notes which were then stuck upon its back, as described in Leviticus, of the Old Testament. The (e)scape goat was thus born.

If you are not wondering what in thee hell this has to do with The Daily Column, then either you are still drunk from last night, or the morning Java hasn’t kicked in yet. Just hold on. It will make sense, in a bit, if you have the cajones.

Here is a tune that somehow relates to the following true story I will tell you after you have refreshed your cup of Joe, bowl of cereal (or bowl of what-have-you), or maybe you prefer to grab a fresh brewskie. No one here will judge anything that you choose to do with your free time, while you are here at TDC. If you are here, you are not engaging in violent behavior, and that is always a welcome thing.


Soundtrack for your reading, if you care to have that sort of thing...








All set? OK good. Let's go.  By The Way, as we move on, links to tunes will be broken here and there, because folks get in trouble for posting their input to YouTube for various reasons.


Forgive us all for simply wanting to share our finds, almighty Goog.




(Ahem)



My old friend pounded on the sliding glass door at the rear of the house in the dark. Once I unlocked it, he shoved it down the track and burst forth to the light switch on the wall, flicking it off.

“I just shot somebody in the face with a shot gun!” There are no words quite like those to seriously kill a nicely crafted buzz. This was back in the eighties of Fuckno, Californication.

I’d first met Sean back in 1983, when I’d first arrived in Californication. It was while waiting for the city bus, on the way to school, and I was fourteen. He stood there in the bright morning sunlight, judging me from behind his mirrored Ray Bans, smirking. At that age, it is always about clothes, sad as that now sounds to me as I write this for you, dear TDC Citizen.

This was during the early ‘80’s, or gayties, as my lady calls them, so try to put yourself there and judge by that time period, not from now. This was just before I snatched that wonderful job at the bar, and was able to save up and buy a ten-speed to go wherever the hell I wanted.

Sean wore a button down white oxford shirt, faded Levi 501’s, no belt, and dark brown Topsider boat shoes with the white soles, no socks. We were standing in the friggin desert and he was wearing boat-deck loafers, for crissakes.

Me? I was fresh from Maine in my green velour pullover with the neat white stripe across the front, some tan, flaired-leg corduroys, and new ankle-high boots; tan with a big heel, square toe, and zipper on the inside of the ankle. I wrongly thought I was styling. Sean was laughing at my clothing.

He had a bit of a gut then, as he always would, except for when he eventually played nose guard, shot ‘roids, and became a giant monster on the field. But this was before all that. His gut quivered as he snorted. “You wrote your name all over your books? Why?”

I felt a tad embarrassed, because I’d written my name in big letters on the page-sides where it would show up best, as a sort of ice-breaker. Californication, as well you know, has a lot of famous people. Maybe one would talk to me. Hell, it got Sean to break the ice, didn’t it? Of course, he wasn't famous. Someday, he would be a bit infamous.

Well, believe it or not, Sean became my first friend out there. He went to a different school than I did, because he was using his aunt’s mailing address from across town. He was going to a better school, and I was going to get my ass kicked that day at mine by some Messicans.

Sean will figure prominently in future tales I will share with you, if you would like to hear them. These all are true escapades of a weird town, during an odd era, with strange intoxicants and even stranger people. One time, why he even helped save me and our buds in a punk fight. But that is a story for another day.


Sean is the friend each of us had who lived on the edge, and always had something to prove to himself and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. This is the friend who is a force of nature, the life of the party, and quite often, a fucking nightmare.

So Sean stands there that dreadful night at the back of my apartment, four and a half years after we'd first met at that bus stop. He is breathing hard; his eyes all whirling about like crazy marbles, and I realize that he’s jonesing for rock. Could this simply be crazy talk? Had Sean actually killed someone? What The Fuck? No way.

He'd got his start in Peruvian Flake, and had even begun to deal it, but like everything he did, he always delved further and deeper than any one else did in our circle of friends. He always tested the limits, and when he tried crack for the first time, he finally met his match. He came by less often, and when he did, he’d start looking around on the carpet for something he thought he'd dropped. The first time I saw him do that, I thought that he was looking for his keys, so I started to look as well. But then he picked up a piece of white lint, inspected it, gently blew on it, then angrily wiped it on his pants, and then went on looking.

“Sean, what are you looking for?”

“I thought I dropped a rock.”

That was the extent of his focus from there on in. Rock makes it hard to carry on an intelligent conversation with a crackhead. Like Chris Rock once said, “Crack is not a social drug. When crack makes its first appearance at a party, it’s time to get the hell out of there.”

Here is the point of this story, how it figures in the whole “scapegoat” item I wrote for your consideration above, and why I wish I owned a silver Delorian with seagull-wing doors that would do amazing things at 88 mph. Like go back in time to that moment and do things differently.

This song is for my lady; you may find it appropriate here.





I told my long time friend that he needed to get as far away as possible, and NOW. I handed him a wad of cash and bade him good luck in Messico, then shoved him out from whence he had come, heart a-thumping. If I could go back and do something different in that instance, I would, truly. I'd let him down, you see.

In doing so, I let myself down as well. That is a hard rock to swallow.

Well, here’s the shit. Sean had gone into a nearby convenience store whacked out of his mind and looking for some easy cash to score more rock. He’d “borrowed” an old shotgun from someone, and it was loaded. He didn’t bother with a facemask, and he went to a store where he was a regular.

Clerk looks up when he enters, says, “Sean! What you doing?”

Sean goes right up to the clerk and tells him he wants all the money, laying the gun on the counter. Clerk grabs the barrel, holds the business end away from either of them, and Sean grabs the trigger area and somehow blows a hole in the drop-ceiling, then runs the fuck out of there, thinking he’s killed that dude.

Wrong.

Clerk needs a new pair of tighty-no-longer-whities, that's all.

Sean runs the few blocks over to my place, and gets a wad of cash stuffed in his face from me, and what do you suppose he does next?

He tries to score from a narc to steady his nerves and gets sent up the river, multiple charges. Now, I ain’t one to try to save anyone from themselves, but maybe I could have handled things better.

The scapegoat thing is an idea I have, and it is this. Once spoken out loud, your regret is cast off the cliff never to be seen again. You are free and unburdened from it.


Here is an antidote for the above story.




Now onto some links.

I used to love kitkats.


I love my relatives in the back woods.


They do odd things with trees.


They can't afford ink, but who doesn't have a way to brand themselves? (Do not hit the following link if you surf commando, which means, without a pop-up blocker.) Also, just don't hit this link. It's gross, but in an artful way.

They're so "hungry poor" that they think of food as pron.

Enough about them. What about the rest of the world?

There are always ways around the system.

Just don't get copblocked. That would suck.


Maybe you can get your hijacked ride back with a clever text message. How's that for karma?


But sometimes, perhaps you can, indeed, bank on "forward karma."


You could improve yourself to the level of the mighty Bruce Lee, and play Ping Pong with Nunchucks.



Or not.

( Clue: hit the F5 button for new meaningful/less stuff.)

Or hit 37. Quite weird.

Thank you for tuning in. It was a job to wade through some hellish memories, but I appreciate your patience.

God help you. God help us all.

---willies out.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Right? You never hear anyone going to get lapidated...

TDCwillies said...

Ya know there, ol' buddy Duke, now it's my time. I think I've served the public for enough years, and this is all going to go into a book or two, or...

Glad to to know you all these years, sir.

---tdcwillies