Friday Morning, California

There are hangovers and then there are hangovers. This morning it was one of the latter, the big old super-duper crawl to the bathroom, merry-go-round reality, grasp the bowl, tear at abused stomach muscles and wonder if seven cups of coffee and half a three-day bagel just maybe can return this sorry excuse for a human specimen back to something like normalcy. Especially if all seven are sipped and slugged down in the next 90 minutes. So, ya, you read this and likely don’t give a care, one man’s hangover is another’s fun story at the water cooler, that is if you’re an asshole and work in an office or work at anything that falls under working for the man. So maybe I have the head and belly from hell this morning, no doubt there, but my life, which includes my unique and semi-persistent vocational contributions to the planet, is all my own and assuming I actually live past noon, maybe ’til 4 pm you can take to the bank that I’m in a better position for the whole life, liberty, pursuit of happiness thing than the normal hot shots. Which is fun to think about, me trying for an immaculate cure by poking fun at traditional working stiffs, though I always find it interesting when someone goes on a rant and you find within the verbiage and raving on, ranting on, spewing on proverbial glistening nuggets of truth.

Which let’s leave it there, because the second cup of coffee has put a dent in the fog and the menace of long-lasting projectile vomiting seems to have passed. Not sure when the next meal will make its way into my gastric, colonic system, that sorry-ass stomach I was mentioning earlier, or maybe just thinking about mentioning earlier, can’t say, don’t care, the point is that the goal is to pull myself together and throw a few items of life importance into the knapsack – deodorant, the poetry of William Carlos Williams, a tank top (plain orange) and a t-shirt with a wicked cool pic of the Beach Boys in their long hair long beard era, like say ‘Sunflower’ days – and a pair of wool socks, dark green, and go sit on the front steps, maybe another couple of quick whizzes so as to drain the bladder and not have to ask Earl repeatedly to pull over and especially as a long part of the long day will be up the 101 and pulling off the road to publicly pee would be rather exhibitionist-ly unpopular behavior and that means alternately down ramps and nearest gas stations or fast food or coffee places and I do not want to be a drag and a pain in the ass and listen to here we go again and when are you going to get it, Bro, and time to think about growing up, what do ya think? Lines of proclamations and metaphorical inquiries, and here it is 10:17 in the morning, the Mexican chick who stayed the night gone an hour ago to a place she works which I remember she was describing her existential vocational status in detail last night though all those pertinent facts have fled my brutalized brain pan, making me showing up and courting her on the job a non-starter (when you don’t know where to start),

And by now I hope I have painted a picture of how it was and how it is and the possibility of how it’s gonna be, well, here’s that, which is, in summation, Earl is my old running buddy from public school, one through 11 grades before I quit, back in Orleans Mass on the Cape and first it was me moving out here to the greater LA geography – my home address just off Ocean at 4^th in Santa Monica and I wonder how many of those work at a regular office for the big bucks fellas live in such a cool place and with such ease, anyway Earl followed a year later after he’d graduated and subsequently been accepted at UC Irvine (btw that school has this far out nickname – ‘The Anteaters’ — and you have to wonder who came up with it, was there like a formal school committee set up by the University President (’61) or maybe they had an undergrad nickname contest a couple decades (’74) back or maybe the Dean Of Culture and Student Joy (’78) had a mother hangover like the one I’ve been telling you about and Anteaters just kind of floated into his mind after he’d woken on the couch with remnants of puke pretty much here there and everywhere and being in the completely pissed fuck the world and the horse it rode in on spiritual space when that name came into his head – the species Anteater – he figured it’d serve good all those pissant students if they have to wear tees and sweatpants and baseball caps saying Anteaters, so who knows where the name came from). Anyway Earl’s been down in Irvine at the state U there for two years now and this is some kind of spring break and he gave me a call yesterday to check in, what’s up?, how’s it going?, you ain’t died yet I see, and told me about school (electrical engineering) being interesting which I said I was glad for him, school never being more interesting for me than the idea of poison ivy covering my dick, but towards the end of the call he said what are your plans for the weekend and I said we were having a social gathering at the cottage this very evening – which was last night and inevitably led to my physiological Love Canal Flint Michigan water-quality-like body status deal this morning and no further plans other than wondering what to do and he said he had to make a run up to the Bay area and be back Tuesday, his next classes and see that meant he had no classes for four days which is sort of like me and my private detective job and working at my own schedule as opposed to corporate motherfuckers who are always under lock and key, big houses and private yachts be damned,

So I said I’m down clown, in other words give me some time to recoup and have a few coffees and I’m at your service, and all that’s why I’m out here on the front steps and he’s due pretty much anytime the next hour and I’ve had the emotional ambiance to curse every God ever thought up and at the same time rejoice in whoever came up with coffee in the first place which for all I know was a God so what do I know, and minutes to think just a smidge about Rosalina or Consuela or whatever she told me her name was and I remember a little that we had some fun and I think I may have mentioned the L word and I’m kind of thinking she did too, who knows, we meet again we do, we don’t we don’t, and this is not, so as not to give the wrong impression, that I think I’m all that and there’s so many fish in the sea and that kind of big-head thing, nah, because most days and nights and weekends I’m not fortunate enough to have female company other than Gloria – our cat – so I’m grateful and any old Gods want to drop in and possibly intervene and cosmically influence and have her stop by again, feel for it, which will need to be later Tuesday when I get back from the East Bay with Earl, who said we may take a swing out to Yosemite on the way back, he’d like to take in the ambiance and since, he said, I’m such a milieu-gathering kind of guy, it’ll be good for me too. And he’s a college kid, so I didn’t argue.