Together They Are Free

The morning was smeared with the colors of forgotten love. Old Chinaski's line echoed through her head on that wintry morning. It had been an unseasonably warm January, the fieriest she had ever felt, in fact, but not this morning. The algor of the old farmhouse was a welcome temper to the igneous night, alight with mania and sweat. The scuffed, well-worn planks that lined the creaky and warped floor were gelid underfoot, despite their caramel hue. The cloud cover cast a grey spell about the day, but inside the incandescent farmhouse, it only added to the fervor between them; a hard chiaroscuro, worthy of Caravaggio's hand. In a perfect world, she would have arose to make a proper and hearty farmhouse breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, from-scratch biscuits and sawdust gravy, but all they had was little brown envelopes of artificially-flavored oatmeal and hot water. It mattered not, as there was nothing artificially flavored about that morning, about them, about any of it. It was more authentic than any morning in its wake.
As she put the paltry spread together, organ music emanated from the drawing room. Is that the theme from Taxi? she wondered. It was. There was something oddly comforting about that particular piece of music, comforting and fitting; in consanance. It lent a romantic gravity to what seemed like a foreign-film dream. She peered down the length that the historied, mahogony swinging door afforded to find him with his back to her, gliding across the organ keys, against a bay of windows, letting in thin columns of grey light, casting beautiful contrasts upon the burgundies, chestnuts, and oaks of the drawing room filled with music and life. He was off in another world. Hell, they both were. They were elevated to a distant plane, some place, where for just the morning, no one could touch them. They were pristine, untapped, unspoiled; cultivating their power unburdened, untethered by a choking reality most can never escape from. There was an effervescence, an exaltation to the freshly chilled air; a purity, a happiness. A bounding, unbridled electric energy enveloped the morning in a viscous love. The crackle almost deafening. It wrapped around them with its unrelenting and capable arms. But instead of a stifling pressure or weighty shackles of iron, there was an inexplicable freedom. Together they were free. Two halves of an ancient brass key. The universe let them in on the joke, if only for a brief, ethereal moment, but they laughed nonetheless. It could have been two people anywhere, but it was them, right then.

Gettin' Fats: A "My Girl Josephine" Listening Project

So there seems to be three general schools of thought to this song penned and originally recorded by Fats Domino, straight covers in a jazz or blues style which comprise the bulk , much like Fats' version, then there are the rockabilly versions, and a handful of 60's mod/garage rock renditions with a few esoteric sub-genre versions peppered in. The playlist is flanked with the Fats Domino version, the original recording and a live version.

Fats Domino's original recording; I have a penchant for New Orleans jazz and Fats so his version is undoubtedly my favorite, but there are many interesting and worthwhile covers.


Charlie Feathers doing a very countrified take, more hillbilly than rock. Whatever they are doing with that guitar to make that "wah" saw-like sound is alright with me.


Lou Hobbs doing another country version, but getting warmer on the rockabilly front. I also kind of dig how he embedded "Your Mama Don't Dance" in there despite Loggins and Messina being pretty lame in my book.


Which brings us to my old frenemy, Johnny Rivers. Is there a song this guy didn't cover? Man. A whole career built on mediocre covers of fantastic songs. I know I use this guy as my musical punching bag a little too often, I mean he's no Pat Boone, but, seriously, nearly every listening project, this guy has covered the song. Every time his versions come on the radio, I just long for the originals, but I'll say this; he has good taste. Here's another tambourine-y Rivers cover.


Jerry Jaye does what Johnny Rivers couldn't with this purist rockabilly version.


Here's a straight rollicking rockabilly take in instrumental tradition, by Hank C. Burnette. (And yeah, I don't know what the stupid yodeling thing is at the beginning, if it's part of the actual track or not.)


Here's that kind of energy with the lyrics by Sleepy LaBeef. It's not groundbreaking by any means, but it's got a ton of energy and it looks like one hell of a concert.


Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers do their neo-rockabilly take, with a little Jerry Lee piana' thrown in.


Speaking of ol' Jerry Lee, here's a duet he did with the King sound-a-like, Jimmy "Orion" Ellis. Supposedly Lewis was the one that originated the "Ha-ha-ha" version of the song.


This is definitely moving into the 60's mod territory, but still has rockabilly tinges and the "ha-ha-ha" has turned into a maniacal cackle. Here are the Scorpions (the UK band, not be confused with the "Rock You Like a Hurricane" Scorpions.)


Here's a particularly shrill version by Billy Thorpe, with its unmistakeable 60's dance sound.


Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders try their hand more successfully at the tune, but it still has that clear early Beatles-esque/Dave Clark Five sound to it.


Chris Farlowe takes them all to school with this Animal-istic, darker 60's English blues slant with incredible energy. It's just layered with sound, it has both organ and piano, unobstructive percussion, great guitar picking and gruff and believable vocals. I am loath to admit it, but this version is probably the coolest of them all.


So I didn't quite know what to follow that musical madness up with, so here's "My Girl Josephine" in espanol. "Mi Chica Josefina" by Los Sonadores. It's about what you'd expect.


So, The Flamin' Groovies did a version, not all that notable, but it's included nonetheless. It makes you almost clamor for it to be even more 70's sounding. It's almost there, but not quite.


So here's a saxophone laden instrumental by Bill Black's Combo


An older reggae version to the Supercat one, therefore with less dub. Ken Parker doing a spin with "Hello My Little Queenie."


Queen Ida and Her Zydeco Band doing a full-on, zydeco version.


Taj Mahal merging blues and cajun' while slipping in some zesty French of his own. This is the tune that started me on this listening journey.


Long Gone Miles going straight blues, finally giving it that much desired blues harp the song just cries out for. (See image at around the 1:20 mark.)


Fat Domino doing a live version of his venerated classic.

Star-fucking Charles Bukowski

"You don't go on 'probably' when love and guns are in hand." -Pulp, 1994.

This is my homage to one of the greatest and most honest writers of modern or any time. The seed, the sleaze, the melancholy, the banal, the exhaustion; he nails it all simply and beautifully. “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” I, in no way purport to have written any of this. This is all reprinted without permission (in full Bukowski tradition) and with the utmost reverence. To someone who has made me better, not just as a writer, but as an observer of the human race. Always on the outside looking in.

Tom Waits reads "The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski


Bukowski on Love...


A smattering of quotes...

On Life
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”

“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Post Office.

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.”

“We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting”

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

“dogs and angels are not
very far apart”

“For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.”

“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”

"Without literature, life is hell."

On Death
“There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

“I was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.”

On Love
"I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”

“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.”

“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”

“Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.”

“She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.”

“your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.”

“But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress…a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.”

The written words of Charles Bukowski, "A Smile to Remember."


Charles Bukowski reads "Love," to a nitwit audience between belches.


I did not write the following story, but, man I wish I had. I did not write the following story, but I wish I did not identify with it so completely. I did not write the following story, but I wish it didn't have to comfort me so.

The Most Beautiful Woman In Town- Charles Bukowski

Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl in town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes to go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that would not hold her. Her hair was black and long and silken and whirled about as did her body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not. And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men.

Her sisters accused her of misusing her beauty, of not using her mind enough, but Cass had mind and spirit; she painted, she danced, she sang, she made things of clay, and when people were hurt either in the spirit or the flesh, Cass felt a deep grieving for them. Her mind was simply different; her mind was simply not practical. Her sisters were jealous of her because she attracted their men, and they were angry because they felt she didn't make the best use of them. She had a habit of being kind to the uglier ones; the so-called handsome men revolted her- "No guts," she said, "no zap. They are riding on their perfect little earlobes and well- shaped nostrils...all surface and no insides..." She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some call insanity.

Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the girls alone. The girls went to a relative who placed them in a convent. The convent had been an unhappy place, more for Cass than the sisters. The girls were jealous of Cass and Cass fought most of them. She had razor marks all along her left arm from defending herself in two fights. There was also a permanent scar along the left cheek but the scar rather than lessening her beauty only seemed to highlight it.

I met her at the West End Bar several nights after her release from the convent. Being youngest, she was the last of the sisters to be released. She simply came in and sat next to me. I was probably the ugliest man in town and this might have had something to do with it.

"Drink?" I asked.

"Sure, why not?"

I don't suppose there was anything unusual in our conversation that night, it was simply in the feeling Cass gave. She had chosen me and it was as simple as that. No pressure. She liked her drinks and had a great number of them. She didn't seem quite of age but they served he anyhow. Perhaps she had forged i.d., I don't know. Anyhow, each time she came back from the restroom and sat down next to me, I did feel some pride. She was not only the most beautiful woman in town but also one of the most beautiful I had ever seen. I placed my arm about her waist and kissed her once.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked.

"Yes, of course, but there's something else... there's more than your looks..."

"People are always accusing me of being pretty. Do you really think I'm pretty?"

"Pretty isn't the word, it hardly does you fair."

Cass reached into her handbag. I thought she was reaching for her handkerchief. She came out with a long hatpin. Before I could stop her she had run this long hatpin through her nose, sideways, just above the nostrils. I felt disgust and horror. She looked at me and laughed, "Now do you think me pretty? What do you think now, man?" I pulled the hatpin out and held my handkerchief over the bleeding. Several people, including the bartender, had seen the act. The bartender came down:

"Look," he said to Cass, "you act up again and you're out. We don't need your dramatics here."

"Oh, fuck you, man!" she said.

"Better keep her straight," the bartender said to me.

"She'll be all right," I said.

"It's my nose, I can do what I want with my nose."

"No," I said, "it hurts me."

"You mean it hurts you when I stick a pin in my nose?"

"Yes, it does, I mean it."

"All right, I won't do it again. Cheer up."

She kissed me, rather grinning through the kiss and holding the handkerchief to her nose. We left for my place at closing time. I had some beer and we sat there talking. It was then that I got the perception of her as a person full of kindness and caring. She gave herself away without knowing it. At the same time she would leap back into areas of wildness and incoherence. Schitzi. A beautiful and spiritual schitzi. Perhaps some man, something, would ruin her forever. I hoped that it wouldn't be me. We went to bed and after I turned out the lights Cass asked me,

"When do you want it? Now or in the morning?"

"In the morning," I said and turned my back.

In the morning I got up and made a couple of coffees, brought her one in bed. She laughed.

"You're the first man who has turned it down at night."

"It's o.k.," I said, "we needn't do it at all."

"No, wait, I want to now. Let me freshen up a bit."

Cass went into the bathroom. She came out shortly, looking quite wonderful, her long black hair glistening, her eyes and lips glistening, her glistening... She displayed her body calmly, as a good thing. She got under the sheet.

"Come on, lover man."

I got in. She kissed with abandon but without haste. I let my hands run over her body, through her hair. I mounted. It was hot, and tight. I began to stroke slowly, wanting to make it last. Her eyes looked directly into mine.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"What the hell difference does it make?" she asked.

I laughed and went on ahead. Afterwards she dressed and I drove her back to the bar but she was difficult to forget. I wasn't working and I slept until 2 p.m. then got up and read the paper. I was in the bathtub when she came in with a large leaf- an elephant ear.

"I knew you'd be in the bathtub," she said, "so I brought you something to cover that thing with, nature boy."

She threw the elephant leaf down on me in the bathtub.

"How did you know I'd be in the tub?"

"I knew."

Almost every day Cass arrived when I was in the tub. The times were different but she seldom missed, and there was the elephant leaf. And then we'd make love. One or two nights she phoned and I had to bail her out of jail for drunkenness and fighting.

"These sons of bitches," she said, "just because they buy you a few drinks they think they can get into your pants."

"Once you accept a drink you create your own trouble."

"I thought they were interested in me, not just my body."

"I'm interested in you and your body. I doubt, though, that most men can see beyond your body."

I left town for 6 months, bummed around, came back. I had never forgotten Cass, but we'd had some type of argument and I felt like moving anyhow, and when I got back i figured she'd be gone, but I had been sitting in the West End Bar about 30 minutes when she walked in and sat down next to me.

"Well, bastard, I see you've come back."

I ordered her a drink. Then I looked at her. She had on a high- necked dress. I had never seen her in one of those. And under each eye, driven in, were 2 pins with glass heads. All you could see were the heads of the pins, but the pins were driven down into her face.

"God damn you, still trying to destroy your beauty, eh?"

"No, it's the fad, you fool."

"You're crazy."

"I've missed you," she said.

"Is there anybody else?"

"No there isn't anybody else. Just you. But I'm hustling. It costs ten bucks. But you get it free."

"Pull those pins out."

"No, it's the fad."

"It's making me very unhappy."

"Are you sure?"

"Hell yes, I'm sure."

Cass slowly pulled the pins out and put them back in her purse.

"Why do you haggle your beauty?" I asked. "Why don't you just live with it?"

"Because people think it's all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won't stay. You don't know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it's for something else."

"O.k.," I said, "I'm lucky."

"I don't mean you're ugly. People just think you're ugly. You have a fascinating face."

"Thanks."

We had another drink.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing. I can't get on to anything. No interest."

"Me neither. If you were a woman you could hustle."

"I don't think I could ever make contact with that many strangers, it's wearing."

"You're right, it's wearing, everything is wearing."

We left together. People still stared at Cass on the streets. She was a beautiful woman, perhaps more beautiful than ever. We made it to my place and I opened a bottle of wine and we talked. With Cass and I, it always came easy. She talked a while and I would listen and then i would talk. Our conversation simply went along without strain. We seemed to discover secrets together. When we discovered a good one Cass would laugh that laugh- only the way she could. It was like joy out of fire. Through the talking we kissed and moved closer together. We became quite heated and decided to go to bed. It was then that Cass took off her high -necked dress and I saw it- the ugly jagged scar across her throat. It was large and thick.

"God damn you, woman," I said from the bed, "god damn you, what have you done?

"I tried it with a broken bottle one night. Don't you like me any more? Am I still beautiful?"

I pulled her down on the bed and kissed her. She pushed away and laughed, "Some men pay me ten and I undress and they don't want to do it. I keep the ten. It's very funny."

"Yes," I said, "I can't stop laughing... Cass, bitch, I love you...stop destroying yourself; you're the most alive woman I've ever met."

We kissed again. Cass was crying without sound. I could feel the tears. The long black hair lay beside me like a flag of death. We enjoined and made slow and somber and wonderful love. In the morning Cass was up making breakfast. She seemed quite calm and happy. She was singing. I stayed in bed and enjoyed her happiness. Finally she came over and shook me,

"Up, bastard! Throw some cold water on your face and pecker and come enjoy the feast!"

I drove her to the beach that day. It was a weekday and not yet summer so things were splendidly deserted. Beach bums in rags slept on the lawns above the sand. Others sat on stone benches sharing a lone bottle. The gulls whirled about, mindless yet distracted. Old ladies in their 70's and 80's sat on the benches and discussed selling real estate left behind by husbands long ago killed by the pace and stupidity of survival. For it all, there was peace in the air and we walked about and stretched on the lawns and didn't say much. It simply felt good being together. I bought a couple of sandwiches, some chips and drinks and we sat on the sand eating. Then I held Cass and we slept together about an hour. It was somehow better than lovemaking. There was flowing together without tension. When we awakened we drove back to my place and I cooked a dinner. After dinner I suggested to Cass that we shack together. She waited a long time, looking at me, then she slowly said, "No." I drove her back to the bar, bought her a drink and walked out. I found a job as a parker in a factory the next day and the rest of the week went to working. I was too tired to get about much but that Friday night I did get to the West End Bar. I sat and waited for Cass. Hours went by . After I was fairly drunk the bartender said to me, "I'm sorry about your girlfriend."

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, didn't you know?"

"No."

"Suicide. She was buried yesterday."

"Buried?" I asked. It seemed as though she would walk through the doorway at any moment. How could she be gone?

"Her sisters buried her."

"A suicide? Mind telling me how?"

"She cut her throat."

"I see. Give me another drink."

I drank until closing time. Cass was the most beautiful of 5 sisters, the most beautiful in town. I managed to drive to my place and I kept thinking, I should have insisted she stay with me instead of accepting that "no." Everything about her had indicated that she had cared. I simply had been too offhand about it, lazy, too unconcerned. I deserved my death and hers. I was a dog. No, why blame the dogs? I got up and found a bottle of wine and drank from it heavily. Cass the most beautiful girl in town was dead at 20. Outside somebody honked their automobile horn. They were very loud and persistent. I sat the bottle down and screamed out: "GOD DAMN YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH ,SHUT UP!" The night kept coming and there was nothing I could do.

Poem from Love is a Dog From Hell

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

“If you are going to try, go all the way or don't even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is.”

Workin' Man's Blues: A playlist for the hard laborers whose sweat and toil make the world go round

Sleepy John Estes- Workin' Man Blues


Alan Lomax Prison Recordings- Early in the Morning


Captain Beefheart- Hard Workin' Man


Bob Dylan- Maggie's Farm


Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee- Rock Island Line


Sam Cooke- Chain Gang


Bob Seger- I've Been Workin'


Van Morrison- Cleaning Windows


Blackfoot- Diary of a Working Man


Merle Haggard- Workin' Man Blues


Johnny Cash- I Never Picked Cotton


Levon Helm- Growing Trade


Woody Guthrie- Talking Hard Work


Jimmy Reed- Big Boss Man


Leadbelly- Line 'Em


Jim Croce- Workin' at the Car Wash Blues


Bill Monroe- Muleskinner Blues


Bruce Springsteen- Factory


Lightnin' Hopkins- I Asked The Bossman


The Exception- The Eagle Flies on Friday


Rolling Stones with Guns N Roses- Salt of the Earth


Mississippi Fred McDowell- Long Line Skinner

Another Sunday Night in Hell

God damn it was cold. The wind like an icy lover's dead kiss. Which was most of them. The bright lights did little to hide the reality. It was still a shithole. Full of degenerates, morons, and losers. Well they (we) were all losers, otherwise they wouldn't be in a second-rate casino, in a two-bit town on a Sunday night feeding quarters ad infinitum. What a joke. What a cruel cosmic joke. Even if you win, you end up losing. Life is one big losing bet, so I guess it's as good as any way to pass the banality. For a place so full of desperation, these people sure were full of hope. Or maybe it was delusion. The delusion that the next pull or deal was going to be the big one. The big payday they've been waiting for. Clawing for. All the buzzers and bells drowning out any semblance of rationale. A subliminal shove to keep emptying their pockets, you're so close, the next roll is it, you feel it. Can't you feel it?

What a character study. A home for the broken, despairing, and failed. No one is smiling. No one is having a good time. Not like on those dazzling highway billboards. Oh no. Those gorgeous youthful yuppies, beaming brightly with their over-whitened horse teeth, heads thrown back, hundred dollar chips in the air. Look what a magnificent life you could be leading if you only unload your savings account. Who's needs an IRA? You'll be blonde, thirty years younger, and forty pounds lighter. Well, your wallet anyway. Man, peering about, it looks as though a few of these people swallowed that poor blonde whole. Or maybe they just ripped her limb from limb and feasted upon her bit by bit. Savoring all that unfulfilled promise. Quite a few look so damned thirsty, they would shiv her for 50 bucks and a 40 ounce of malt liquor. No, there was no one from that planet here. The brow-beaten, the used-up, the crazed, this was their shift. This was their world. Stupefied and blinded by the flashing bulbs and jangling cacophony. Like an infant in a crib, dumbfounded by the whirling mobile above. Even the cocktail waitresses looked spent, in their run-laden stockings, and ill-fitting pewter-spandex mini dresses, the glitter and lurex of which only highlighting the thinly-veiled sadness of it all. Toddling from putz to scoundrel to shithead, with their tray of watered-down cocktails and never-to-be-realized dreams. Each night gone unraped, an answered prayer. Each slap on the ass one step closer to begged-for death. This place reeked of despair. The stone-faced dealers, dishing out cards like automatons, raking in the failed life bets like zombies. Being surrounded by all that untouchable money must make them insane, kill-crazy. Those are the ones to watch. They will be the first to snap come the revolution. The menacing and posturing pit bosses, looking on like snarling Dobermans, just waiting for something to happen, willing it, so they could act half as important as they felt. What a river of misery, flowing down like the tears these people would cry if their emotion hadn't already been pummeled out of them. Nobody here was going to beat the house. Nobody ever did. So pull the handle, roll the dice, take the hit. What did it matter. So Suzy has to strip her way through college, so Billy ends up in jail. They would have made it there eventually. It's just a matter of time. It's better they learn early. Life doesn't pull any punches. Life doesn't give a shit. About your dreams or your happiness, so neither does anyone else. It's all empty. Every gesture, every word. Nothing's real. Of course it isn't. Realness comes in electric waves. And the tide is rarely high. Life's just real enough to let you know what you're missing. Just a breath of ecstasy here and a cheap pleasure there to kill your apathetic hard-on. A hint of joy; handjobs of happiness. Just enough to make it hurt again, just enough to let the pain flood in. Enough to pick the scab, scratching at it, digging with a dull fingernail, slowly, deliberately. Salting the freshly reopened sore until it sears with pain, only to walk away laughing. But they all get up on their sadomasochistic nags and try their best to cross that arid canyon. Good fucking luck. We all fight our losing battles, it's just a matter of degree. Some with vigor and ferocity, others with involuntary blankness, and the smart ones with conscious nihilism. The tenacious ones are admirable, but stupid. As if the universe is really going to acquiesce. The house always wins. Delusion by self-medication is the only honest response.

God all this ad hoc pontificating and unsolicited philosophy while staring at this soul-sucking machine. Cherries, diamonds, bars, and sevens. Peppers, stars, hearts, lions, tits, coins, cars, dicks, clovers, assholes, pots of gold, steaming turds, Old Glory, rainbows. It was all the same shit. Row after row of the same hideous bullshit. I need to get the fuck out of here. This place is a live wire of abject cruelty. You would think with all these empirically-tested distractions, they could keep their eyes on their lives flushing down the toilet, but no such luck. They all look at me as I walk past, like some novelty. They probably think I am a prostitute. They're probably right.

"Hey, where your boyfriend at?" yells a minuscule old black man.
Oh Jesus, can't I just keep walking?
"I said, where your boyfriend at?"
Fuck. At least he has a full set of teeth. Yellow like kernels of fresh-picked sweet corn, but there.
"He's at home," as I try to shuffle past.
"How come you didn't bring him? How come he not here wit chu?"
Sweet fucking Christ. Does every God damned come-on have to be a fucking existential reminder too? Fuck off, old man.
"You know, you have some real sexy knees. I mean some of the sexiest knees I've ever seen."
"Thanks, I guess. I don't think I've ever been complimented on my knees before..."
"You know I don't ever say this to women, but you are one beautiful girl, so I had to stop. You don't have any makeup on, well some lipstick, but that's alright. I mean you real natural-like, ya know. Real nice."
Where the fuck is this going?
"Okay. Thanks."
"So can I buy you dinner sometime? I know you said you got a boyfriend, but where he at? He ain't here."
Fuck you dude. Thanks for pointing that out ten fucking times. If there was ever a time for the adoration taser. Or the adoration Luger.
"I really can't, but thank you."
"Why not? I don't care about race, ya know. I like everybody. Don't matter if they black, white, brown, whatever. I like everybody."
No shit it doesn't matter to you. You'd fuck a hole in a tepid cantaloupe if it were willing. Or not. Especially if it had sexy kneecaps.
"Why can't you just kidnap me for the night? I'm Rufus," or Simon, or Beelzebub or Porky or whatever the fuck pointless name it was. "What's your name?"
"Marilyn." Immediately reminding me again why I need a less iconic pseudonym. I should use Ester or Gertrude, Bev, anything else. Margie. That's pretty awful. Awful enough to equal these dipshits. Awful enough to equal how I felt. Girls named Margie didn't get raped in parking lots. You never heard of a women named Ester getting drugged and sold into the underground sex trafficking racket.
"Oh that's a nice name. I like that," sticking his hand out for me to shake. "So you sure, you can't kidnap me for just one night?"
Ew. Did he really just say 'kidnap" twice during this pick-up? What the fuck.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Nice meeting you."
I silently pay reverence to the casino gods for the touchless hand-sanitizing kiosks. Oh sweet, sweet, alcohol. You save the day again.
I check my messages and call a friend back.
"Where are you at? It's so loud."
"Yeah, I'm at the casino."
"What the hell are you doing down there? Trying to fulfill your death wish?"
Probably.
"Sitting on a bench."
"Uh, rule number one in the jungle is never stop moving."
"Yeah, it doesn't matter. They get you either way." I recount the kneecaps Valentino that I passed up for a laugh to keep from crying.
But like clockwork, another slack-jawed, virulent refrigerator on legs saunters up. Slovenly and panting from that marathon walk all the way from the parking garage. The beauty queens he was with just had to stop and look for something in their knock-off handbags, while he eye-raped me while licking his crusty, mustached lips and elbowing his only slightly less vile buddy.
Like I can't hear him, "Look at this one. This hot-ass elf."
Elf?
"Elf?" the lackey asks.
"With that red and green coat and green dress. She looks like one of Santa's elves. What I wouldn't do to her. She fucking looked right at me. Smiled. Oohh, I'd fuck that smile right off her prissy little face."
"Yeah, she did smile at you Ernie," or Larry or Jeb. "But now she won't even look over this way. She's just a lousy tease."
"Yeah, I don't like teases. Stuck-up bitch. Thinks she's better than me. I should show her. Show her a real man. Teach her a lesson."
"Hell yeah you should. Teach that snotty bitch a lesson."
"I think I'm gonna."
By the grace of God or Zeus or Joe Pesci, the unlucky ladies found whatever the hell pills or meth they were looking for and they mercifully moved along. What a fucking place. What a fucking roomful of dejected, sad sacks and low-down, beastly animals. I fucking hate them all. But at the same time I hate them less than most. They are pitiable and awful, but they are real. They lead shitty, terrible, real lives. Working, cheating the system, knocking over liquor stores, clawing at life's discarded scraps. The vultures. These salt-of-the-earth folks didn't burn the wound as much. They commiserated. They spotlighted, with their shadowy, sleazy lives. These were the people that were supposed to inherit the earth. That's about all they would ever inherit. Besides heart disease and alcoholism. They would become earth soon enough. Religion is for poor people. They need something to believe in because their present, sure as shit, isn't lending any hope. It's a way for people with nothing to go on despite their abhorrent circumstances to keep on and a way for people with everything to justify their guilt until its eventual dissipation.

I have to laugh at their grit. They clutch their lucky charms, talismans, and crucifixes, their eyes wide and bright with possibility. That's all it really is. They peddle the illusion of possibility and these people are buyin'. That's how they continue. All the brilliant lights and screeching bells, the free booze, and ambient temperature. All trickery to keep you pouring dollars down the gullet of life. The smart ones, the smart and the tortured ones, the ones with any spunk, they pull out early. They know the house always wins. But the deluded, the sadomasochistic, the incrongruously optimistic, the weak-hearted, they sit in front of that machine, catatonic. Just endure a little longer, the voice whispers. One more pull, the next one, it's going to really pay off for you, just a few more coins, it goads, as it laughs all the way to the bank.

A Stranger's Smile

I found myself beside the sea, or as close as I could come. The clouds veiled the sun, turning it lunar; casting an eerie gray light. The wind was blowing bitter and slapped against my exposed porcelain. I panted and heaved as I raced toward the water's edge. I kept running for something that I couldn't quite catch. I wasn't getting the desperate high I so fervently sought. It had worked the night previous...My mind spun its vaudevillian plates in a thousand different directions, each one wobbly and teetering in taunting anticipation of crashing to the ground. Sometimes I just need to hear that smashing sound. It's so satisfying. But I broke down, the tears streamed and undulated with the waves. I stood there looking out at the sea, atop a bench, staring into some imagined fork-in-the-road; the air icy and callous barring much else than trembling. I couldn't tell whether it was the chill or not. All I could think to do was run, so I took off once again. On the way I saw an older man, someone's grandfather, running the other direction. He had the warmest eyes, despite the cold. He was waving at everyone that passed him by; in cars, on foot. He looked straight at me, and waved with a bright smile. I don't know why, but I couldn't bring myself to wave back; all I could do was grin this ridiculous, sincere smile. Maybe that's when I got the idea, I don't really know. Soon I was heading out, and before I could realize, I had missed my turn miles back. That's when the idea struck, seemingly out of nowhere. I literally had no way of finding the place, which meant I would have to make a call to get directions. Which meant I would have to divulge my intentions. I know the second I placed the call I was to go through with it. It was like I wasn't moving of my own volition. I didn't stop to think for even a paltry second, I just kept rolling forward, how I realize I do anything. I knew it was going to raise some eyebrows and even more questions, but thankfully, they didn't get posed until later. I was oddly nearby. I was there within minutes. I stopped at the corner florist to pluck a single red rose. I felt silly only spending a dollar and half, but it's not like they could say anything. I was clearly distraught, like the few other morose sad-sacks that I'm sure wander in there from time to time. They must grow immune to it after a time. I turned into the huge expanse. The place was rather bustling, which seemed odd. It gave it a rather incongruent energy. I find it without much incident, despite the labyrinthic maze. It was like I was somewhere else. Someone else. I didn't know what I was going to say once I got there, I hadn't planned that far ahead. I also forget about the neighbor. I'd never been there since. But before the inevitable deluge, I did happen to manage a little chuckle when I saw "Whip" on the stone. I had often wondered if it was on there, and was glad to see it. It didn't take long for me to break into hysterics, releasing years and years of pent-up anger, resentment, and abandonment issues. It was so good to just be there, close to him. It's funny but I really don't recall what I said. I know I said I missed him, that's all I can remember. I sat there on my haunches, sobbing uncontrollably, for maybe a full five minutes, I don't know, time was meaningless; the cold unaffecting. It was almost warm curled up into that little ball. I delicately and meticulously draped the rose over the stone, as not to cover up any letters, and so it wouldn't blow into the abyss. I drew my hand to my lips and then to the stone. The last time I was there, I buried Pez. Twenty years coming. Twenty years. I couldn't quite believe it. He would have been a hundred this year. But then again he was always a hundred to me. He is my Platonic ideal of masculinity of what a man is supposed to be. My earliest and most significant role model. He saw the light in my eyes and the sincerity in my heart. I could do no wrong, even when I was turning off his ball game, just so he would chase me around the house. It's no wonder that my favorite meal is still just bread, cheese and salami. It satisfies that deep, swarthy part of my soul, the soul of the child that still radiates within me, that child that would never let anyone else sit in his chair or took comfort in sleeping in the room he died in every night. It all seems very hazy, like I was watching it from afar, not actually experiencing it. I had already left before I had time to even think about it.

Holidays kind of blow anyway. It's a lot of hassle and pomp for what reason? Everyday should be lived like a holiday. Otherwise, what's the point. Any sliver of happiness should be celebrated with that kind of vigor. They come so few and far between. Twenty five years, and I'm still thinking about him. I'm still feeling about him. I'll never be able to forget. Only children are that open to love, in that pure, undiluted form. Opening your heart to anyone guarantees pain at some point, as we are, but finite. But that which makes us finite makes us yearn to be all the more significant. There would be no real significance or consequence to life if we got all the do-overs we wanted. You have to make what little you have count. But knowing and doing are, what was once described to me as, "two sides of a grand canyon." They set you up with an old nag mule, wish you God speed and with a slap of his ass, you're off, provided you're iron-willed enough to even embark on the journey.

It's funny, turns of kindness never come from where you would expect them to. But every once in a while, someone will take one look at me, and get my number, just like that. It's an incredibly comforting feeling. I am usually quite suspicious of the kindness of strangers, as most people always want at least a little something for their generosity. But, I didn't get that feeling this time. And under normal circumstances, I would never accept, as I would find it impolite, and way too much, but this one, this one is tempting. I could barely hold back tears, even though I had an inkling that's what was going to be offered. I am always surprised when people talk about me at all, but really shocked when all they say are good things. That would have to be one hell of a reputation that preceded me to make that kind of impact. It still floors me every time. Not too often people are willing to give you something with literally nothing wanted in return. Everyone always has some self-serving purpose. It's those incredibly rare moments that just flip my whole cynical world upside down. It only begins to slowly mend the the thread-bare tatters that are my views on humanity, but at least it's something.

Appaloosas and Tumblin' Dice: A Playlist for the Wild-at-heart Gambler

In a world where everybody just wants a piece, it doesn't pay to be an all-or-nothing kind of girl. But you have to bet high to win big, no matter how wild and free.

Woody Guthrie- Gambling Man


Ray Charles- Blackjack


Johnny Cash- Tennessee Stud


Townes Van Zandt- Mr. Mud and Mr. Gold


Sticks McGhee- Whiskey, Women, and Loaded Dice


The Flying Burrito Brothers- Wild Horses


Tom T. Hall- Deal


Dolly Parton- Kentucky Gambler


Marty Robbins- Strawberry Roan


Blood Sweat and Tears- Go Down Gamblin'


Wilco & The Black Crowes- Casino Queen


The Byrds- Chestnut Mare


Steely Dan- Deacon Blues


Kenny Rogers- The Gambler (Oh, come on, don't look at me like that. I had to do it. The video is worth the price of admission right there.)


Bill Monroe- Six White Horses


Blind Lemon Jefferson- Jack O Diamond Blues


Memphis Minnie- Georgia Skin Blues


John Lee Hooker- Two White Horses


Townes Van Zandt- Dollar Bill Blues


Bob Dylan- Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts


Willie Nelson- A Horse Called Music


Rolling Stones- Tumbling Dice


The Black Crowes- Appaloosa


Tom Waits- Mr. Siegal


Hank Williams- Lost Highway