Jockey full of Bourbon

“You’re not drinking too much now are you?”

I get this question about once a month when I get the ‘how’s everything going over there in Colorado’ call from my mother. I think it’s funny that she asks me this all the time. The way I see it; I’m not dead yet, not in the tank every other night, not beat up, or thrown out of anywhere, still employed obviously (she calls me at work every time) and I haven’t knocked up some bird who I met one night at the pub while sucking down my tenth shot of whiskey with a PBR on the side, so I guess I’m not drinking too much.
I usually hit the pubs about twice a week now, for a while there I was getting calls almost every night from various people I knew:
“Hey man, ya going to the pub tonight? You should come out.”
“Nah.”
“WELL WHY NOT MAN?” (I put this in caps because my callers get riled when you say no to anything they insist upon.)
“I’m taking it easy tonight, I was out the last night, got a little too stinko, gotta recoup.”
“AWWW, C’MON MAN!”
“Can’t do it buddy, you have fun though.”
Then I usually hang up and go back to whatever the hell I’m doing, which is usually having a beer and watching something on the TV. Yeah, taking it easy indeed.
It’s more comfortable for me to drink at home most of the time, saves me the trouble of talking to people I have nothing in common with, trying to scarf free drinks from the bartender who knows all of my scams and excuses, and flirting with the waitresses who’ve seen me at my best, but mostly at my worst.
I can also go past that 2am curfew, which after eight years of living here I still can’t get around. Everything goes down at 2:30, everybody knows that!
When I was living in Chicago the bars were open until 4am, some went to 5. We had a system then, it worked pretty well for a while. Pop a few uppers, drink and schmooze all night, find some 24 hour diner at 5, eat and drink coffee (take more pills) until 6:30am and drive (or hop the subway) to the 7am bar across town, start it all over again. That was the weekends; Sundays were left to dealing with the massive hangovers which would consist of falling out of bed (or waking up on the floor) around noon, and meeting up for bloody Mary’s, eggs, coffee and piecing together the events of the previous night.

I ran with a tight crew back then; Punk Rock Stan, Sandy, Conner the Mick, Pam and Dylan (the only couple), Stanko, and myself. We ran all over the Bucktown/Wicker Park area, looking for kicks, luck, love, and the all mighty drink.
Monday nights we spent at a dive joint called Sweet Amy. Chuck, the owner of the place had a thing for poetry, crap ass wanna be Beat poetry at that. He claimed to have drunk Kerouac under the table in San Francisco, shared a needle with Old Bill in Algiers, and bested Neal C. in a wrestling duel while hanging with the Merry Pranksters. None of us believed his crackpot stories but he was fun to listen to on quieter times (During the early hours of the bar before the crowd showed up). Monday was open mike night, all the cheap hoods in town showed up with notebooks full of their weekend forays into the night, Casanova swing tips and rumblings and grumblings about the sufferings and trails of the under of the poor and subnormal; swigging shots and buying rounds for the other fellow “poets”. These nights did have their entertainment value due to the buggers getting piss drunk before their time on stage and failing to handle the heckling that would come from the audience. Some of them would challenge their hecklers to fights out back, those were best of all; drinks and fights. What a pleasure. It made the beginning of the week more exciting that the weekends. The applause really blared when someone got into it in back. Punk Rock Stan and I would make bets on who was going to win; sometimes we lucked out, sometimes not. We came to realize though that some of those damn poets were some mean mothers. We began heckling some of the weaker willed ones, just to see what would happen. We get them to buy us drinks afterwards, pulling the ol’ line of:
“Hey man, I’m just fucking with you, no hard feelings right? It’s all a part of the game; ya gotta be a tough bastard if ya want to make it yeah? So, hows about that next round? You’re a good kid, don’t worry about it, next week is your week baby!”
And so on and so forth.
Some Mondays we’d lose Sandy, and find her out back getting a tongue job from one of the younger-more drunk than he should be-poets. I mean younger by they were younger than twenty five and with Sandy being twenty seven they thought she was this queen of the scene, she knew her shit all right, and knew how to play those little chumps for a few drinks and a little on the side if she wanted. She never brought them home though, just out back and for her pleasure only. One night she came in though the back door with some young buck; he was wild eyed and sweaty. She sat at our table, pulled a smoke and told us that a round was coming. Sure enough, the wiled eyed, sweaty buck cam back with a round of shots and a pitcher of Guinness.
“He was pretty good.” She said.
“Fuck should we care?” Punk Rock Stan yelled, “We got his next round!”
Sandy reached into her jacket and pulled out a fresh pack of smokes.
“Got these too, they fell out of his pocket.”
Ah, Monday nights.

After a few months of patronizing, spilling my weight in scotch, breaking glasses, and picking fights with every so called poet with a goatee and a copy of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell in his back pocket, Chuck was foolish enough to offer me a job as a door guy.
“Goddamn kids man, I can’t find anybody to keep track of the intake at the door.”
“You should stop hiring youngsters’ man, they don’t know shit.”
(Just so ya know I was twenty five then and talking like I was a big shot)
“That’s right! That’s why I’m offering you the gig, ya want it?”
I was working part time at a frame shop and not making much bread, I did make a lot of cuts on my hands though, people must have thought that I was the dumbest suicide there was. I was never good at manual labor, so I took the job.
Four nights a week, decent pay, more if there was a jazz group on that night, and when the owner was out, which was three nights out of the four, all the free drinks I can hold.
I made it a point not to work on Mondays though, there was too much at stake to be stuck at the front. It was too far away from the real action in the back.

My first night on the job was that next Monday; I was called in because the usual guy got busted for driving drunk. I wasn’t too happy about this considering that Chuck and I had a deal that I wouldn’t work Mondays.
“I need you on this one, there’s no one else.” He said over the phone.
“Fine dammit, but I want a little extra since it’s supposed to be my day off.”
“No problem.”
So there I was at the front door, checking ID’s and making sure things were running smoothly. Every now and then when Chuck stepped out on one of his ‘errands’, Big Joe the bartender would slip me a shot, at least I was getting my free drinks.
The stage monkeys were doing their thing, reading wasted lines of the disenfranchised, sucking down watered drinks while hecklers did their thing. From time to time Punk Rock Stan or Sandy would come up to give me an update on things. Stan won twenty bucks on a couple of bets and Sandy found a live one who was buying rounds. And I was in the front, mostly sober and bored off my ass.
At about nine Chuck split for the night; he left Big Joe in charge. I got a beer and a shot as soon as Chuck was out the door. At that time one of the local big shot readers by the name of Rick walked in with his old lady. They’d obviously been out boozing before coming to the bar because his old lady was wasted; she fell over in the doorway, clinging to Ricks’ coat sleeve. He tried slipping her by me as I was standing at the bar, I stopped them both.
“She can’t come in here like that man, she’s gonna drop any minute.” I said to Rick.
“Fuck you man, she’s okay, and we’re in here all the damn time.”
“I know, and your poetry is shit, get her home and you can come back, I don’t care.”
“Screw you door guy!” Rick said and gave me a little push on the shoulder; I guessed he was still upset with the heckling I gave him the previous Monday.
“Is there a problem here Flynn?” It was Big Joe talking, I looked back and Joe was rubbing his hands together, when he does that he seems to grow, almost like the Hulk but a little slower and more menacing, no one wanted to be on the other side of Big Joes’ stare when he was rubbing his hands together. I explained the situation and Joe told Rick to get the girl home and that he could come back after. Rick was pissed, but he took her out and came back a half hour later. I let him pass; Joe had another beer waiting for me.
Not long after Rick walked in he was on stage. His poetry was worse than anything that I’d ever heard, but the women seemed to dig it, the guys didn’t pay much attention. Stan and Sandy I could here back there laughing, clinking glasses. I felt alone up front, sitting on a barstool sipping my beer, every now and then checking the random ID of some young thing with a dope wearing khakis on her arm. It was a strange solitary existence up there. I needed the fire and all I had was bent cigarettes and cheap scotch.
“FUCK THE DOOR GUY!” I heard from the stage, it was Rick, he was drunk.
“FUCK HIM AND HIS STUPID TIES!” He was yelling into the microphone, I couldn’t tell if it was a poem or not, but I looked on anyway.
“If that guy thinks he so damn special, that he came come in here every Monday and try to fuck around with the rest of us POETS, why doesn’t he get up here and prove that he’s better huh? Why doesn’t he put up or shut up? Cause he’s a sissy that’s why! He’s nothing but a cheap bastard with nothing better to do! I wanna see him up here and see if he’s got the moxi to do what we’re all brave enough to do!”
And this chump got cheers from the crowd. Unbelievable. Stan ran up to the front, asked me what I was gonna do, if I was gonna take him out back. I thought about this for some time, I could feel all eyes on me; the joint was quiet except for the clinking of glasses, the sucking of nicotine from Kents, Marlboros’, Camels and Kools.
Rick grabbed the mic and brought it close to his face this time. “If you think you can write better than me Flynn, if you think you can read better than me, then come up here next Monday and prove it!” He stepped off the stage and got a round of applause. I had no idea that I’d pissed off so many people. It felt good and bad at the same time. I hadn’t written poetry since college, and had no interest in doing so again. But I was being called out by a punk with a bad hairdo and worse poetry.
I went to the bar and got another shot from Big Joe, everybody was staring at me. I raised my glass and then took the shot. I tried to think of something cool to say.
“You’re on asshole!” I yelled. The crowd cheered and clapped. Punk Rock Stan ordered two drinks; I took mine and sat at my solitary barstool. I was going to become what I hated, a drunken stage poet. It could’ve been worse I thought, but not likely.

I haven't been posting much, yeah I know, it's been a couple of weeks, sure sure.
Been a little busy, with trying to work on this book of mine, and writing the column for Modern Drunkard (which has been completed and sent but I haven't heard from the editor yet, I don't know if it's actually going in or not, if not you'll be able to read it here), and spending (probably) too much time at the pub, reading a lot from Wikipedia, and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

It's been dull here in ol' Denver the last few days. The only big thing from the last week was meeting this woman in a bar on Friday night, walking with her to find batteries at the gas station, making plans for a date on Sunday, and not hearing from her after leaving a message on the voicemail the day of the date. I figured that she didn't remember me and was afraid of calling back. She was drinking that night, can't fault her for that. But if I see her again (and I'm sure I will, one of the rules of living in Denver is that if you meet someone once, you're bound to see them again within 3 months, it's just how it is) she'll remember who I am, no doubt about that. She was goddamn cute, that's for fucking sure.

But that was the weekend, besides getting a new couch on saturday, and after having it for 20 minutes I look to see that it's covered in cat fur, both of my little creatures are laying on it as if they own it, I saw Radical Edward (the name of my female cat) licking it, then looking at me with that 'Nah nah' gleam in her eyes. Saying 'It's mine now sucka, what ya gonna do about it?!'.

But the great thing is that after today I have one more day before my vacation begins, 5 whole days without the day job! It'll be grand, I plan to have a blackout at least two of those days and spend the rest working on the book. Things should work out just fine and my brain will have a chance to get back to normal while I destroy what remains of my liver. The more I think about it the more anxious I get, I should keep a bottle of scotch in one of my desk drawers, help ease the pain of working.

Eh, I'll just go to the pub after work. It is on the way home.

A little touch of fiction

I found this in a old file, it's about 4 years old.
Enjoy, or don't, whatever...




This is where you break out of your trance. In a meeting room, surrounded by a small group of tabloid hacks. Your coffee is cold, your eyes burn, your tie undone, your mouth tastes of salt water, and you feel as if you've shared a private moment with a pig in its shit pen. The men and women sitting around you reek of cheap cologne and deodorant. They wear pastel lipstick, glitter-gold painted hoop earrings, clip-on ties, gummy bracelets, armpit stains, and rips in old stockings, penny loafers, with pennies included. The man at the head of the table, the important one who talks, then yells, then talks again, carries a mole on his chin, fat in his jowls, heavy gold and silver rings on his Vienna sausage fingers. You can smell him from twenty feet away. You sometimes dream of murdering your editor when you get bored with everything else.
You've been in this meeting for over an hour now and no one has come up with anything to make your editor happy. He yells at you and the others about not having enough copy for next week's edition. He yells about no one going out and hitting the streets, finding the stories and you wonder: What does it matter? None of the damn stories that he prints are true anyway, this is a tabloid newspaper for fuck's sake. Everything is either made up or is simply gossip, with no fact checks or true quotes.
No one cares, and no one listens. Hell, half of the people in this city can't read anyway, they'd rather eat, for every bookstore on one block there's five restaurants. The people in this city are getting more and more corpulent. But are they getting smarter? Of course not, stupid question.
Your editor yells, you yawn, the men undo their ties and the women shuffle in their seat, adjust their stockings under the mahogany conference table. You look around and you wonder why you can't get a job where there are attractive women. Every woman in this meeting room is unattractive, at least to you. You do know for a fact though, that some of the people in here are screwing each other. You've heard the rumors, seen the tell tale signs; the cryptic conversations at certain desks, even caught a few of them coming out of storerooms, claiming that they are looking for paper clips, or binders; flustered and red faced. Who gets embarrassed looking for a binder? Who unzips their pants while trying to find the perfect paperclip? You hate your job more than anything else.
You hate you job until your editor yells to you and the others that he is bringing in someone to shape things up, someone who will put this "office" back in order, like it used to be in the old days, when he was a young reporter working the streets. He slowly rises out of his chair, which you imagine will topple over with relief from his massive frame, and goes over to the door, opens it and makes a gesture for someone to come in; that is when you feel faint. You get one look, and you're finished for the rest of your days, you have fallen in love at that exact second she walks in the room. You notice a shift in the air, a change in the gravational pull of the planet. Her perfume takes over your senses and you feel euphoric. The rest of the men in the room straighten themselves, the women tighten up. Your editor sweats, wipes his forehead with his tie.
You watch her walk in and she sits next to your editor. She smiles warmly and you feel the need to clean up. You want to look presentable. You want to sweep her off her feet in the most pathetic romance novel way possible. For once you want to be noticed and acknowledged during a staff meeting.
Your editor announces her as Valeria Strummer, the new managing editor. There's a lump in your throat the size of a golf ball. Your editor says that she's going to put things in order, make the paper readable again. You want to smell her long, flowing black hair, breathe in her breath, taste her fluids, and lick her thin-rimmed black glasses. You've just seen the woman of your dreams, and she's your new boss.
And you know, from that moment on, that you are completly and utterly fucked.
But you couldn't be happier.

Scare tactics...

In my office building today it's dull, nothing going on, quiet. That's not really something to feel good about for some people here; too much quiet means trouble is coming.
The more quiet it is, the bigger the trouble it seems.

Everyone is skulking around, hiding in corners, asking in whispered voices if there's something happening or is going to. People here fear the silence. They fear a lot more most days. But silence throws everyone into a panic.

This works for me because they all stay in their office for the rest of the day. The only conversations are through email, it's safer that way. At the end of the day people leave without saying good bye or good night. The Fear has it's grip on them and they rush to their cars, or the closest bus stop. I'm then left to my own devices, so I turn up the volume on internet radio, get a fresh cup of coffee, read the days headlines.

I've come to live for their fear.

Earlier today I came in from having a cigarette in the parking lot in back and saw two witches walking out of my office, they were looking for my boss, he wasn't around. Lucky him; they didn't look too friendly. Dressed in black, big pointy hats with red feathers and frilly things hanging off.

A couple of students came in, asked me what the witches were all about.
I told them that I didn't know, but it was about damn time they came out of hiding.

The students gave me a perplexed look, then backed away slowly out the front door, clutching their backpacks to their chests.

And it was quiet again.

Fear is my friend while at the evil day job.

The time of the season...

The first snowfall of the season is happening right now. I don't mind it, I dig it actually, but don't get me wrong I'm not going out in that shit. Went out last night by request and got caught in the rain, for the second time of the day, and now I'm feeling like I'd been beaten and left for the rats. But the snow is nice, it's a good change from the sunny days that's lasted too long, it feels like it should. That's a good thing.
but I don't like feeling sick, no sir.

Last night was interesting, I got a call at about 8:30pm asking if I'd meet up with my friend Autumn over at the bar across the street. I go because I figure one drink, hang out for a minute then come back to my cop show that I've been watching on DVD; The Wire it's called, great stuff, check it out if you get the chance. This turns into a long night of boozing and bar hopping. I meet a few new people and find myself in this tiki bar talking to the editor of Modern Drunkard Magazine. And guess what? I've been invited on as a new columnist. It's funny how these things work out. I'd never thought about writing for Modern Drunkard, or any other magazine since the demise of my own a couple of months ago. I'd planned on spending the next few months working on my novel and other things I had going, and now there's this. I think it'll be an easy gig, writing a column on my drinking adventures, no big, I have more than enough stories, some I don't want to remember but they're there and now finally good for something. The great thing about this is the Drunkard is a national magazine, that's more exposure than ever. I can honestly admit that I'm a little excited about this. Being a publisher lost it's pazzaz after the second issue. This is something new. I needed something new. So here we are.

And the title of this new column? Jockey full of Bourbon. Kind of fitting don't ya think?

Now it's back to bed and my cop show. I'm feeling useless today.

Still howling at 50

Allen Ginsberg’s epic and groundbreaking poem Howl turns 50 today.

And it still holds true to this day, maybe more then ever.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”

Yeah, go man, go.

Only nerds read the encyclopedia!

Wow, it’s been a while, I know. My apologies. I’ve been doing some research while working on my book. This is not an easy thing, but I gotta say that it’s fun, scary as well, going back and re-examining the past 4 1/2 years of my life. Strange days indeed, but I survived so whatever doesn’t kill me only allows me to drink more than I probably should and show up to the day job hungover 4 days out of 5…

I’ve been reading a lot at Wikipedia today and I gotta say I love this site. Just today I started out reading up on literary theory of anti-heroes and after an hour slipped into transgressional fiction, and later found myself reading essays on temporal anomalies in time travel films.

Crazy.

Other than that today has been dullsville. Not even any whacked students to bug me over silly shit, like if I’ve seen their laptop that they think they left in a study room last Friday evening. One student did wave at me today and asked how I was doing, that was weird. I usually do my best to give these kids the impression that I don’t like them and that they should stay as far away from me as possible. But I don’t think that they’re getting the hint. Next thing ya know they’ll want to know what pub I fall into on Friday nights, when I do my grocery shopping, if I want to catch a movie.

Law students are a strange breed of human. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy.
Really.

Back to time travel.