Muriel Hemingway, Tom Waits, and Four Fingers of Jack

Tuesday, August 20, 2013:

It was fifteen years ago this month that my life had taken an emotional tailspin. It was a Saturday… my day off. I had a construction job… a rehab… it was a Dr.’s house on the Riviera above the El Encanto. The day had gone well enough. As was my usual routine on Saturdays, I spent the first couple hours after ten a.m. at Mel’s. Going home early, with a good buzz, I stopped by a shop on lower State that resembled the old “head shops” of the sixties. It was only about a block away from my apartment. Somehow, in there, I met a smashingly gorgeous young woman and had invited her to my place to smoke a few joints. Amazed at my luck, she agreed to go! I don’t remember much of her visit except that I sat at my desk and she sat across the room on my couch. I told her she was as beautiful as Muriel Hemingway.

            She said, "Who?" She was too young to know who the fuck Muriel Hemingway was.

            I had a couple of cameras that I used for talking young women into doing some nude photography... some good friends or flings (but mostly bar-flies, prostitutes, and crack whores). I do know that I tried to talk her into posing for me but she politely declined. Hell, I had just turned fifty-two and she couldn’t have been much older than twenty. What had been a pleasant interlude with a curious, perhaps interesting, ancient, man had most probably become a disgusting proposition for at least three reasons; 1. I remember how I felt about people over thirty when I was twenty, and 2. she was not a bar fly, prostitute or crack whore. 3. A grubby, unshaven low-life with bad teeth was... well, you girls know.

             She left after a few joints and I had given her a few buds in a small zip-lock bag. She promised to come back… I believe. However, she never did.

            After she was gone, I remember sitting at my desk doing what I loved doing the most back then: writing in my journal, smoking bowls of pot accompanied by four-fingers of Jack in a mug topped off the rest of the way with beer, and playing Tom Waits loud!. That girl was gorgeous; the pot and Jack Daniels most likely enhanced how she looked… imagine a dish like Muriel Hemingway in my dive! I put a pot of beans on the burner to make some chili and passed out on the couch.

            I awoke to the smoke of beans frying and popping in the pot on the range. I sat there after dousing the smoking beans and I thought, "Why don’t I go back to the shop and find her. I didn't try hard enough to bag her... maybe if I put on the charm..." It seemed then like a perfectly good idea at the time to me.

           So I roamed State Street looking for her, checking out O’Malley’s, the Alpha and Radd Thrift stores, and all the clothing and antique shops between there and Mel’s with the persistence of a blood hound. I eventually gave up and headed back home.  I checked with the clerk at the "head-shop" one more time. It was then that I blacked-out.

          I can vaguely remember coming out of the black-out... slipping out at the end of a Tourette’s syndrome act…. yelling at tourists scurrying out of my path... staggering toward my place... coming to from a state of mind in which I caught this character in my skin shouting at the top of his lungs; “Don’t you know who I am!” I can imagine the sight… how it must have looked to them… a drunk waving his hands and flipping them off! I was about a block away from home when I spotted the bicycle cop across the street. He was coming right at me.

            I snapped out of my Tourette’s mode politely into my Mr. Manners mode. I  apologized… Amazingly, I still possessed enough sense to do explain to the cop that I had a few drinks too many and that I knew my behavior got out of line. I pointed out that my I.D.’s address showed I was only a block away from home and begged him, "I'll be fine if you would please let me get home… I'll hit the sack," I promised, "I won't cause any more trouble."

           Yes, I went to jail that afternoon. On the way I got pissed that I was going to jail and my Mr. Manners forgot all his niceties and began to rant against my demise into another black-out. My Bad Ass character came out. Cops must get that all the time because they did not respond to his taunts… calling them Communist Nazi’s, challenging their sexuality and so on. Even in the holding cell, he ranted into the night until the Correctional Officer tired of all the noise he was making, “C’mon," he  demanded, "take off that badge and let’s go mano y mano!”

          The officer pretended to accept the challenge, opened the door to the cell, and took off his badge. “Okay, punk. Feel froggy do you? Then leap!”

          That shocked me out of Mr. Bad Ass mode and I immediately, and obediently, shut my mouth.

           Later, as I was being processed, photographed and finger printed (Mr. Bad Ass had refused to do so the night before), I was contrite and embarrassed as I put together the events of the day before. How did I get so crazy? I must have known that much. But, what I didn't know then was that I only had two more good drunks left in me afterwards. I had to suffer some more between that time and ...

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