Blue Eyed Seeds
I was sitting there listening to the biggest drug dealer that everyone knows. He was detailing to the owner of the bar that I frequent, that he could help him out with money or whatever he needs. I looked down at my drink and shook my head. I turned to the bartender with a flinch of pain and decided to defocus my brain for a few seconds.
Me: Did you go to North County?
Bartender: Sure did.
Me: What year did you graduate?
Bartender: 97'
Me: Did you know Billy Whitecloth?
Bartender: He's my little brother.
Me: Small fuckin world.
... (minute lapse)
Bartender: That girl is so trashed.
Me: It's ok. Lucky Chucky will take care of her.
Bartender: Oh I don't doubt it.
Me: He's always around hot girls. I guess that's what you get when you carry around 5 8-balls a night.
The bartender walked away on that last sentence and engaged Lucky Chucky in conversation. They had known each for a long time and LC, it looked like, was the one that got her this new job. I continued to talk to myself. I talked to myself for a while.
I looked next to me and there was a run down 50 year old man with a couple teeth missing and a lazy eye. He had on a straight billed Nike hat that could have been fetched from any dumpster and his clothes were poor and ill-fitting. He asked me, "How are the Orioles doing?" I almost wretched right there on the floor thinking about how this man knew me enough to talk to me. "You know I own half that Crepes store up the street?" I did not respond to his attempt to talk to me. I got up and went to the bathroom and washed my face.
LC sat down at the end of the bar talking with people. He was discussing money, houses, stocks and all the things that make my blood boil. He talked about all the things I detest. The poor always detest what they have no control over. The poor never care about something that they will never have. We can live through illusions but eventually when those illusions betray us we have a tendency to despise them. Get hurt by the woman in your dreams and watch you hate women. Get beaten by the system and you all of the sudden hate the world. You just want to be alone. You just want to crawl into a glass and never look anyone pretty in the face. You are afraid they can see the fragile wrinkles on your face that could crack at any time and reveal the hollow fraud within.
I drank more. I drank and drank and drank. Drinks are counting to 5 and then 9 and then 15. It had only been a couple hours but whiskey flows like that sometimes. Whiskey on the rocks in the summertime heat blends so well. It melts at a 4 sips per glass pace. The harder you pound it back into your throat the easier they become to drink. The faster you drink them the more time you have by yourself before it sneaks up on you. The more time you have before the demons come knocking.
You push back your chair and throw a couple 20's down on the bar. You don't say a word as you leave. As you leave you pass derelicts, bouncers, booze hounds, and distant friends who all know your name. They nod or five your passing. You don't want eyes right now. You want a bed and a nice memory to take you away. You want to kill yourself a little more. You want the torture to be real in some way. You want bittersweet torture to take you to a world where you once lived or would like to try to live one day. You can't escape pretty eyes.
I mumble to myself, "If you worry about me, don't bother. There's no time. Before the day fades you gotta pitch your seeds into the ground or you won't get flowers. You won't get no corn to eat. You won't get no woman to bed and you'll be left to feel cold breezes come down on cold days from mountains made out of dreams too high to climb."
You'll notice everything about the world for a time and you won't like it. You won't like whom you know or what you do. But that's all pity for your soul's collection plate. That's all quarters thrown into your heart's wishing well. It only funds some new feeling yet to come about. The pain of hating and wanting fuels your rebirth. You want nothing to remind you of anything you hate for a while. You feel fine in your own skin but not skin that pretty eyes ever see. Shame is a garment that you wear when your memories come to judge you.
