Its 7am on a Saturday and I am not hung over in a hotel bed. And I wonder what that means. For so long, my life was double-stapled to a few sure things, things that defined the road I'd taken. Bleary eyed early mornings in far flung places was my thing. With last night's sweat caked to my skin like a fried trout, I'd bounce out of a bed I'd never sleep in again and prepare to travel hundreds of miles away from that place fast. Playing in a rock'n'roll band meant moving, always. Stopping, pausing was suicide. What love and money had been available to you a few hours ago were completely gone now. To survive, you had to go.
But here I am this morning writing on a laptop by a muted TV. I am not still drunk from last night. I didn't drink at all. There is no mysterious hot woman here looking for her other Chuck Taylor. There is a woman who remains a mystery to me and she's sexy as fuck and all, but she is sleeping like a stone in the bedroom, there's an empty wine bottle by the trashcan in the kitchen, and if she's dreaming at all right now: it ain't about me. And there's my peanut here too; Violet...passed out in her electric swing. Milk drunk. And the whole little vignette has got me positively confused this morning as to whether or not all my youth is dead.
Its the stuff of so many novels and memoirs, I know. The whole searching your heart for the truer meaning of life. Family is everything. Strength and Honor. But its all so exhausting too. At what point did I actually make the decision that seems to have somehow been made here? At what precise moment, at what exact second, did my mind and my heart and my gut all limp over to the same beater convertible, climb in with resignation faces, and head off over the proverbial distant hills dipping below a sunset horizon and pointed at the fairytale cities of FinallyGrownUp and BitterFucker...uncertain which one they'd eventually settle on. And where the heck was I when this was going down? How come I keep missing these somewhat monumental decision-making Pow-Wows that decide, like, everything.
I don't know what I really want and that pisses me off. I am probably supposed to have it somewhat figured out by now. I don't. In my adult life I delivered auto parts and then played guitar. For years. So, I wasn't exactly your Mr Career Path. Don't get me wrong either, I had a blast. A sensational blast. And what's to come...it will be a blast too. Maybe even more of a blast, but different. I know this. It's just...oh forget it.
What I don't know for certain is what I'm supposed to do today. It's going to be a rainy Saturday and I am in a city I never dreamed I'd live in with a wife and a baby I'd never dreamed would know me and actually love me with serious dependent love and we can't just go around killing time walking around the damn mall or whatever now can we?
Dude, dude, dude. Of course you can.