dire log autobi grafic

We gave up on life, he and I, at the same time. We just didn't know it.

We didn't know much about each other, joined only by a moment's inspiration. But it was enough.

Enough for him to think he'd made it, he'd 'done his duty' as his 'old man' before him did his and now he was free; free to do whatever, and whoever, he chose.

Enough for me to know I'd have a lifetime chasing his memory down alleys I would only find when I came across them and follow until they took me back into daylight. Daylight I'd seen before or which was miles from where I'd thought I'd wanted to go.

I swore I'd never be him, be like him. I never knew him well enough to know what it meant but the tears that were strewn across my childhood like the drunken encounters
in pubs and clubs, random and haphazard had carved a path for me. A path I was destined to follow for as long as I did and as long as I could remember.

In a fashion, I was truly being him, being me.

Word was he was out West, still chasing his dreams, but slowly. Not as befitted his age, but more because there's a lack of available pussy for a sixty-something soak with no money and a line of jokes so old even the barman can't smile at them anymore.
*
I was never gonna be him though. Genes are malleable, that's what I learned at school, as well as how the 'cream' always rises to the top, along with the shit.

And then I dropped out, bored with being a 'problem with potential', if only I tried, if only I gave in and agreed to stay with the faceless ones jostling for position below the cream, or more: the little shits.

But nations are founded on the dreams of the few not the many and I guess pioneer blood, as well as whiskey and a few diseases society hadn't the balls to face up to and deal with, was my legacy.

Kids should never try to compete with their old man. The desire for destruction that they carry within, released like spores to infect those who fly too close to the nectaries doesn't carry a surgeon-general's health warning.

Not that those in the flush of lust would stop to read and consider such, anyway.

Continue on or here

Which brings me to today, Sunday 26rd August 19-- and a sun-warmed morning that invited me out to play while I sat in this unnamed, smoke-filled Greasy Joe's waiting for a plate of stomach cement to slide down my gullet and grease my dried, aching joints and guts into life and movement.
*
The waitress isn't much, but pretty much what you'd expect: she looks like she's lived here all her life, and it's been a hard one: too much smoked sausage, too little fresh air.

Last night was a bit of a downer though and it's the sun, it just does things:

"Hey! How ya doin? Don't I know you from somewhere?"

She smiles. The smile of the 'heard it before, keep it quick and I might stay around long enough to listen' female who's thinking of things to do when she gets off. And you're not one of them.

"So, what's your name?" is trite but early mornings aren't for the snap and crack of convivial partnerships, forged in chemical bonding rituals. Oh for the delights of a name badge and a dumb waiter, bored to be there but 'happy to serve'.

And facing defeat, a quick acquiescence is less painful for the both of us.

"Ma-" she starts to say when "MARISA" is screamed from the nether regions of the smokey pit that is preparing to feed my arteries liquid filler and she turns and leaves, not caring to finish what is no longer needed.

But it still won't stop others asking, I guess, judging by the looks she gets as she returns to her job. Her making money for ... whatever it is she thinks she needs to make her drab existence just a little more - palatable.
***

"It's been a while," I think, my reverie drifting aimlessly like the smoke that's dragged into my lungs through that temporary tube that cures insanity. Still, it keeps me having to fight my querulous intestines, spoiled with years of subsidised offal and processed goodness.

And the day burns oh so slowly, like my roll-up melts to ash.

Service, such as it is, is never quick in these places but that, I decide, is good.

It allows me to prepare my body for the onslaught of badly-washed, barely clean crockery and cutlery that those more 'refined' would fail to stomach.

And it allows my reverie, my chance to look at myself in the shaded mirroring glass and think what a fine man I am.

Black, all black is my choice of colour. With a little unwashed all around the edges to give me that 'just lived' look. The stubble, as dark as my matted, twisting, glistening locks. The keyring hanging by a leather string around my neck. My trousers, neither jeans, nor smart, nor somewhere in between. My narrow eyes, my teeth, my nails.

It's not as bad as it sounds, "I look ok," I think. Well, to most. After all, who am I to tell you what to think?