Saturday, March 14, 2015

Misleading The Way




“Gin martini, straight up, heavy on the olives.”
“How many’s heavy?”
“I don’t rightly know. Three. No. Five.”
“Let’s agree on four, then. I gotta watch the inventory on garnishes best I can. Gin’s a-whole-nother thing.”
“You know what they used to call gin?”
“What?”
“Blue Ruin. And beer was Heavy Wet.”
“Have another, will you?”
“Well, you know, these things probably ain’t cheap. And besides, I’m going steady with another bottle of gin. Don’t want to make it jealous.”
“Gosh bless you.”
“Gesundheit.”
“Nobody sneezed.”
“I’m preparing for an unknown future.”
“Settling in, no?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps the mood’s defunct, or at least deficient in airy wonder.”
“All I notice is all I got.”
“Cherries are all picked. Better back that rig up.”
“Hedge all the bets, too. Fearlessness backs up worry’s tough-guy stance with cashless transactions of kill-or-be-buried-alive politics.”
“Hell, put the artillery away, will you? Somebody’s going to get an accidental bullet to the chops. Besides I’ve got a heavy date coming in here in a bit.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know. It just happened. She’s a tiny wisp of a thing, just under a bill, and she dresses like a Russian Peasant. The kind of girl you wouldn’t think twice about hefting up over the threshold.”
“I’m getting in of there.”
“Trust me, it’s a bargain to be born this late into things. A real inert reaction to medicinal motivation. I just can’t get myself to believe that it’s butter, or whether it makes a difference, or if butter’d be better, or if not believing that it’s not butter is the better option to retreat with. And guffawing’s all I’ve got to show for it.”
“Don’t let the NSA catch you crying. Hold your phone at arm’s length. Place all the trinkets of your past in recycling containers. Be false to all senses of self, or selves, or others who categorize your delicately applied indifference as being a sucker for a girl in cowboy boots.”
“But just think of all the displaced citizens currently residing in a tent city beneath a freeway overpass who go batty with waiting. Are we blaming the right structural fixtures for the complacency of the passed-over many?” 
“I’ve got to just start being more daring.”
“Therein’s the rubric we are too shallow to follow. All the whimsy’s in the getting. And we get by with it for the satisfaction of appeased appetites and unruly sight-setters.”     
“I’m in desperate need of a guru.”
“A watchful, mindless grace imbues your lackluster spirit. Keep rummaging around in the red. Empty’s just a clear-cut in the forest of glum, aspirational, dance-move gestation. So, go ahead and shortchange yourself. What’s the point of all this itch-scratch-scratch-itching that you’re plying.”
“Better get a refill, here.”
“Who’s babbling?”
“I left this conversation a good while ago.”
“Who?”
“Another necktied bastard with his thumbs up.”
“Is that bartender ever coming back?”
“The chances are extremely unknown. Maybe we should take matters into our own fists.”
“I’m giving myself a standing ovation.”     
“Who?”
“Not you. Does it really matter after that?”
“Praise be the holier momentum of these wishy-washy times we abide in.”
“I’m back.”
“I’m front.”
“Well, competition’s the gray day’s wane, and I’m none for it, any of the ways. Been beaten down too much to care what I’m being kept from. Get me another and another, and then another two, too.”
“Thought you split with that bowler from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.”
“Nope. I left him for a bottle of Pernod and a rack of flashy gowns.”
“Play it perilous, kid. We’re all from not-around-there. And they're playing craps in the drained fountain on Boardner's patio again.”
“The sky’s sweeter than a bagful of jelly doughnuts, bursting apart all pink and orange flames, scratches of bright streaking through baleful tatters of cloud, and we’re stuck in here discussing and ordering our own demise. Misery loves its own kind.”
“Well, the water pressure’s been downgraded to low in my building. Showers are a sad affair again.”
“Nobody lives the magic long.”
“I’ve just become a stock character witnessing these live events of my life unfold.”
“Where’s Lady Addendum?”
“Not far off, I figure.”
“Or left, or rights away, too. Maybe the culled stoicism of reformed lunatics will assuage the guilt of grumbling through the years. Man’s inhumanity to God and all that blowharding. Fellows, we should all take that drink now.”
“That last long swim.”
“To cash-hungry rapscallions on a scarecrow’s diet with an easy touch.”
“To last laughs and later loves.”
“To be restless moonlight resurrected by daylight.”     
“To fishy love: an old relentless song a drunken fiddler plays.”
“To air-conditioned cocktail-lounge songs and more foes than any honest man could count.”
“Patch it up. Down the gullet. To triumph and broken chains.”
“Playing quiet?”
“Another hard night to get through.”
“A voluptuous crucifixion: the featherweight burden and bitter beauty of being alone.”
“Did you hear the one about the nihilist who found meaning in nihilism?”   
“He imploded with importance, with…mattering. It was all, well, not enough?”
“One is always, at best, alone.”
“Where’d that old blonde girl run off to?”
“Some place sadder. Somewhere more kind and gentle, and less human.”
“To outrun a few more devils before injuring any more of God’s creatures.”
“Just more betrayal of despair. Blanched sky and all, we get the least out of it, not so courageous now, are we?”
“One of these days we’ll stop running at our loosest ends. We’ll rest well and often. We’ll scrub the mud from our worst deeds and get set free.”
“A woman’s presence is required.”
“Of course. Of course. Of the most casual and complacent course.”
“You know what I say?”
“Too much.”
“I say this: dance with beautiful girls. The rest works itself out.”
“So you say.”
“So I do.”