didn't.I brushed my teeth and my wind blown knotted hair and admired the
keg sitting there as a stranger that I hadn't met before. It was like I
had dreamed it and yet here it was in real life. It was an icon to the
power of alcoholic and drug-fueled thinking.All those anti-drug
commercials made me now ask, now if we had been sober would that keg
have been sitting in our bathtub? If we hadn't gone out and picked those
mushrooms would we have had the money to pay someone to commit a felony
crime for us? Why no, of course not, we'd have been sitting in our room
watching fishing programs and inflating air mattresses.
The coffee did me good it revived the residual effect of the white cross
even before I found three left in my pocket covered in sand. I downed
one with my first cup of coffee and even tried to eat a sausage and egg
biscuit. It went down good and exited just as quickly half way back to
the hotel. I had abandoned my sandal (singular) in favor of my K-mart
buddy boy gym shoes. I was grateful to have had them, as it was, I
wasn't much for styling and vomit on your shoe tips just doesn't much
appeal to the fairer sex, as if K-mart Buddy boy gym shoes might some
how appeal to teenage girls.
I should have been more upset in publicly losing my breakfast but this
was after all Saturday morning of spring break on the streets of Panama
City. Smart city officials should have taxed the activity because I was
far from being alone. Jimmy thought it was funny but laughed quietly
and never repeated the incident.
All in all breakfast was a good thing; I felt much better and could feel the speed kick in again. I felt so good that I celebrated by smoking a joint and popping open a six percenter !The rest of the day was a blur from then
on, on the bed, in the patio chair semi- lucid, semi-out of it. The
power of drugs and alcohol overcoming the body and the mind and putting
to sleep all that I wanted to sleep, even if it took me down with it in
the process I considered it a fair trade.
It was a worthy trade, nothing outside there but sun and sand. A roaring
surf to compete with my roaring head, so I chose to stay hidden until
dark. When I could revive and try again to undertake my own destruction
again all in the name of fun and good times.It was fun and it was good
times, escapist fun, escapist good times, running full speed in the dark
heedless of where I was going and running from the dark.
Running from all life had given to me and had dumped on to me. Life was bullshit, teenage bullshit. So the cells and synapses of my brain must
be made to pay for making me feel, for making life, too real and too
bitter. It wasn't the death of my mother that had jaded me; it was the burial of
my father as well. As the casket closed he ceased to be my father, he
was this broken guy. The relatives all whispered in my ear, "Take care
of your father."
I'll always remember that day as the day when I discovered that my
relatives were full of sh*t.Tell a sixteen-year-old kid to take care of a
fifty-year-old man, an absolutely awesome plan! As if I could, even if I
had known what to do? So I waited and I waited, I waited for one of
them just one to come tell me to take care of myself.
Like a skyrocket of emotion, bright lights, pretty colors then cold ash
falling to earth and no one cares where it lands. My father lost his
wife; I lost my mother, my friends, my family and my school. He liked
Montgomery, he liked being a good ole boy and hanging out at the country
club. He was just too dumb to realize that he was a Yankee just like I
was and he always would be.
We, Wade and I began to move slowly, gradually gaining in speed and
momentum. As the sun started to go down over our shoulders again we
began to rise like a phoenix ready to burn ourselves to ashes one more
time. None of us were in a hurry to frolic with the shrooms just yet.
Not because of the taste but because of the shivers and quivers it gives
you when it goes down like a live virus.
Jim asked, "Did you guys get a tap with this?"
Wade with an air of certainty while laying on the bed staring at the ceiling answered, "Of course we got a tap!" Then he looked at me and asked cautiously,
"Didn't we?"
"Yeah," I answered, "I'll go get it."
You never needed to worry about Wade locking the car because he didn't
believe in it. He well understood that there were nine chances in ten
that the only person to ever to be locked out was himself. Just as an
extra precaution he left a window down. Wade kept about four sets of car
keys and still managed to run out. He kept a lock box as a failsafe
under the fender and I had heard Jimmy ask him about it before we left
town.
I returned with the tap and Wade and Jim struggled with it. I wasn't up for wrestling of any kind. Our two AM tap leaked like a sieve issuing a
constant flow of white foam where the hose connected to the tap. There
was no other alternative but to untap the keg until ready to drink and
then locating a container to catch the leakage.
My humanity had returned sufficiently to the point where I was willing
to try solid food again. Not that I cared for solid food, I would have
gladly traded dinner for another hand full of white crosses but such was
the unfairness of life. This time we found a crappy pizza place. I knew
it was crappy because as a general rule any pizza place located on the
beach is probably crappy. It is instinctive,
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