Monday, 30 August 2010

Sides of Me.

Maybe I shouldn’t bathe. It encourages serious consideration. Maybe I should spend every penny of what little money I have on scotch, then lock the doors and drink for as long as it takes. That should stop me musing.

I sometimes have this yen to go and sit in one of those establishments much beloved of American downbeat movies – the sort that have ‘BAR’ and ‘LIQUORS’ in American-sized neon letters to encourage the failed, the footloose, and the fancy-free into the hallowed halls of the real living dead. (I even used an Oxford comma in deference to colonial taste.)

I sit there, a sad and lonely figure, with my equally sad, lonely, and solitary beer, and regard my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. A shabby woman in a short skirt approaches me. She’s obviously in her thirties, but has the air of a timeless, weather-worn and weary waif of an insensitive world about her. She reminds me of the sludge clinging to the piles holding up the dock of the bay.

‘Hey, stranger, you got somewhere to stay tonight?’ she asks with a well-practiced, but shallow and desperate smile.

‘Nope.’

‘Want to come back to my place?’

‘I don’t know. Is it clean?’

The smile dissolves into searing daggers.

‘Buddy, you just passed up the chance of a lifetime,’ she hisses, and then trips with all the grace of superheated vitriol towards the door.

I regard with interest her overdeveloped calf muscles, primed by at least two decades of balancing on pencil-thin stilletos, and then take another sip of my beer. She throws open the door and disappears into a rainswept oblivion.

Normal service is resumed.

I thought I wasn’t going to make any more posts today.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good morning Jeff. I've breezed through some of your latest posts and see you've picked up some new followers. It's all worth it, isn't it? Not sure about this talk of scotch over bathing. Ha. It certainly is a nice photo of the blonde mystery woman, I don't know what you mean. Love Bob Dylan though his lyrics aren't always coherent and I don't believe many westerners who say they're Buddhist, I'm sorry, though it's the thought that counts I guess. Must take a look at your stories at some point soon. In the meantime I'm trying to keep to a strict writing schedule and limit my FB and blogging visits to 1/2 hour per day. Not easy when I seek inspiration, but will manage.

JJ said...

Greetings Della. I made it through the night. Again.

I've met a lot of western Buddhists over the last few years. Some take it very seriously indeed, while others seem to just like using it as a label. But, their choice.

When I listened to It's All Right, Ma yesterday, I realised just what a big influence Dylan has been in my life. I think I last heard it when I was 18 or 19, but it still sounded fresh and familiar. I do agree, though, one or two of his songs are a bit... arcane?

Good luck with the schedule. I've never done schedules. I can be quite disciplined about certain things, but work has always had to be instinctive. I suppose that's why I'm a bum.

Lovely to hear from you again.