Shaken, Stirred Or On The Rocks.

 

Kelley told me she was divorced when we first met. She was sitting alone at the corner bar with a sad expression on her face, absently poking at an over-cooked steak and drinking beer with shots of whiskey. She asked me what I did for a living and I told her that I had just lost my job and had decided to spend my last twenty dollars on getting drunk. When I sobered up, I'd apply for unemployment, but first I needed to get hammered. She laughed and I knew I'd made an instant friend.

She bought me a round to "celebrate" and within a few minutes she was using her fork to hand-feed me bites of her steak. She took me home to her nice suburban split-level that night and I stayed there for a few wonderful days, drinking and screwing and not really caring about much else. Eventually she brought me back to my dismal abode, which she announced "needed a woman's touch".  Kelley planted pansies in the flowerbox outside my apartment, took down my tattered old band posters  and told me to get some paintings. It was good advice and my life began to brighten. I stared caring about things that single men often overlook, like having matching silverware and a shower-curtain that isn't moldy.

Kelley had a nice house but it had the aura of  strong male presence lingering in it, a guitar she didn't play, a toiletries kit in the bathroom and clothes in the closet...in hindsight it should have bugged me that she had chosen to keep so many of her ex-husband's possessions around but at the time I was just glad to have a guitar around her house and didn't give it much thought until  one night just a few weeks after we met when she called me in a panic and told me not to come over that night, to stay home instead.

Oh. OK.

The next day she called me at my new job and told me between sobs that she loved me but couldn't see me any more. She didn't say so, but I got the impression her husband was back.She was good to her word and I haven't seen her since then.


I will be more careful next time. No more married women.


That vow lasted about ten years. I should have known better the second time, but this time it was the most beautiful woman in all the world and we were deeply, hopelessly in love; I knew she would leave her husband soon and all I had to do was stay patient and true and our love would win the day... she did leave her husband, but not for me- she left  him for a third man.

The third and hopefully last time, I just didn't care. My new friend didn't want to know much about me  except that I was from out of town, but she didn't try to hide her marriage from me, in fact she she very colorfully described her husband's dysfunction to me, a revelation which I found off-putting- but not off-putting enough, apparently.

I didn't give a damn about morals at that point, I was still in a state of broken-hearted shock from the end of my previous affair and I was overflowing with anger and stockpiled sexual energy and needed some internal human combustion and controlled explosions ; I felt rough and  luckily my new friend liked it that way, so we got along very, very well as far as that goes.

There was no plan to communicate afterward but she  is smart and easily  found me on-line; after a few exchanges and a hastily retracted invitation, it was determined that we really don't get along in any non-sexual sense of the word and communication was halted with no animosity, just a vague sadness on my part.

I think maybe it is better that way.


_____________________________

Two FABULOUS new  shows for your listening pleasure:

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, MARCH 4 2011 

 Issac Hayes- I Don't Know What To Do With Myself

Gong- Fohat Digs Holes In Space

Traffic- Shanghai Noodle Factory

Moody Blues- Legend of a Mind

Talking Heads- Drugs

Phil Manzenara- Miss Shapiro

Brian Eno- Back In Judy's Jungle



Ozric Tentacles- Chinatype

Fleetwood Mac- Emerald Eyes

Jefferson Airplane- Turn My Life Down

Ten Years After- Hard Monkeys

Marianne Faithfull- She

Stranglers- Ice Queen

Iron Butterfly- Are You Happy?

King Crimson- One More Red Nightmare

Steve Hillage- Light In The Sky

Crack The Sky- Lighten Up McGraw

Atomic Rooster- People You Can't Trust

Magazine- Honeymoon Killers

Moby Grape- Murder In My Heart For the Judge

Stills/Kooper- It Takes a Lot to Laugh,It Takes a Train to Cry

Savoy Brown- Leavin' Again

Cop Shoot Cop- Two At A Time

Download.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB FEB 26 2011






Ozric Tentacles- Floating Seeds

John Cale & Brian Eno- Spinning Away

Carpenters- Superstar

Hawkwind- Take Me To Your Leader

Jim Protector- The Distance

Pink Frost- The Sun

Peter Blegvad- When Work Was New

Freelance Whales- Broken Horse

Al Stewart- Modern Times

Zerfas- I Don't Understand

Black Pepper Sea- Jackson's Car

Monster Rally/Gong/Faust/Tangerine Dream- Mash-up

Steve Hackett- A Tower Struck Down

The Bitter Tears- Starlight

Green Man- A Conversation With Death

Can- I'm So Green

Taxi To The Ocean- Bombshell

The Kinks- Complicated Life

Ozric Tentacles- Sacred Turf

Download.

------------------------

Nightmares, Pipe Dreams, Some Technical Notes and a Post-Coital Debriefing

I'm in desperate straits. My money is all gone, my car isn't expected to live much longer, the prospect of a new job seems to be all grin and no cat- other than the debacle at the music store, I haven't gotten one serious reply to any of my dozens of applications- not one.
I am getting more than nervous- I am getting scared.

Monday I called one of the agencies that I contract with. They aren't great with the pay, but usually have something - why no jobs?, I asked.

"We have you as inactive."

"What? I was there two weeks ago- I brought my passport in for my paperwork, took a PC test- inactive? Huh?"

"Who did you test with?"

"Morgan."

There was a pause. Mute. Un-mute.

"She doesn't work here any longer. Can you come back next week? We don't have anything this week anyway."

Aaarrgh. Sure, what's another week without income? I have 28 days before I get evicted- what's the rush?

One thing about being unemployed is that it gives one a lot of time to contemplate all the things one could do if one could ever get one's periods of financial security to synchronize with one's periods of leisure time.

If I could find a good job, I would save up and buy myself a vacation.

---------------------------------------

For three years myself and many others have been busting our unpaid asses to make our radio station the most successful non-profit, listener-supported, independent LPFM station ever.
This week begins our annual Fall Pledge Drive- as I write this, I'm waiting to hear from our station manager.
She is shopping for gear to replace what just broke.

I'm waiting to hear something like this:

"The new console is at the station, along with a box of new cables. Can you come down and install it?"

That will be music to my ears- literally!

I actually enjoy doing stuff like installing audio consoles. I'm also looking forward to something that isn't an Alesis USB MultiMix board. If you are shopping for a mixer, do not buy an Alesis MultiMix. Ours has been repaired twice and replaced once in the year since we bought it...all under warranty, but still...

We've been having endless equipment headaches and the timing on the latest breakage could not be worse. Somehow, the show will go on, but some of us are getting tired of literally duct-taping things together while watching the seconds count down on the studio clock...I feel like the character in a bad TV drama, trying to decide which wire to cut on a ticking bomb...5,4,3,2,1...live broadcasts are not for the timid.


----------------------------------------

For weeks, I've been having nightmares featuring endless chalkboards- old-fashioned classroom-style blackboards spiraling up and down like Escher's staircases, all covered in some sort of scrawl - letters, numbers...I can't tell.
When I wake up, the writing is lost.

The last time I had that dream, the slate had been wiped clean. Just plain blackish-grey with a light tan wooden frame...I think the ocean was in the background.

That morning I woke up in an unfamiliar place. I wasn't alone.

"...mmm...g'morning."

"...mornin' "

"Hey, let me tell you about this dream I had- I've been having- it's about you, I think..."

"About me? You dream about me? Really? Keep talking..."

"Well, yeah...mmm...it's the blackboard one I told you about...it's an equation, I think..."

"Oh, that dream...in that case, keep talking while I make coffee. Be right back."


Long stories are told...

"...so anyway, I've felt like I've owed you something from back then...something good, but it wasn't in me to give that... I was too busy fucking up everything I touched- even now, I'm afraid that I'm messing up your life...it's been bothering me for years..."

"Hey. Enough. My life has always been a mess. I was the one who fucked you over, if I remember...I was surprised that you still talk to me...oh crap, I gotta go get the kids from their dad..."

"But that dream, you see...last night... I..."

"Look, me and [husband] are trying to sort it out. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea..."

"No, not at all...it was perfect- see, the blackboard..."

"...but we can't do this again."

"...was blank. I think that means that we are even."

"Even?"

"Yeah."

"I like that."

Return of the Fling -or- The Devil is in the Decals

Today I had to report to the Employment Commission for a "re-employment interview."
I thought that meant that I would have to provide all the contact info I had collected from my job search, but it turned out to be just a formality- all I had to provide was ID in order to update my contact info- they had an old address on file and some letters they sent never reached me. I spent days making sure that I had my Peas and Queues in order, but the Jobs Lady never even asked about that- I was given a few pamphlets with helpful job-seeking tips (Show up on Time! Wear Clean Clothes!) and dismissed a few minutes later.

The strangest thing about the visit was the location of the office itself. The new Virginia Employment Commission office is located in the old State Farm building where I used to work.
Today's interview took place in the very same cube that used to belong to my ex-drinking partner 'Lenore'; the actual cube walls and filing cabinets were all still in place, the cabs even had the State Farm tags on them.

I could swear that the cube still had a trace of Lenore's tangy musk on it; a blend of Orangina soda, Stolichnaya vodka and sex. I used to love that smell... I hadn't thought about her for a long time... right now I'm tempted to call her, but I won't.
It would end badly, again. Lenore was married.

Pictured above is the very cube where I started this blog in 2004. The photograph to the left of my monitor is of Voltairine de Cleyre, a 19th Century feminist, anarchist and poetess. I had a hopeless crush on de Clerye in 2004 - hopeless because she died in 1912. Some of my first posts are about her...it was, and still is, typical of me to have a hopeless, unrequited crush on a dead anarchist...

On the weekends I was usually alone in the building- sometimes Lenore would drop by and we'd go to the Cold Harbor Inn for beers and then go back to the office and fuck around. Other days I'd just sit and watch DVDs that I rented from the shop down the road. I've had worse jobs.

Today, there is a 'job-seeker' computer kiosk where my cube used to be and the area is bordered by the VEC reception area- it's not nearly as much fun as it was in 2004.

Speaking of no fun, I've decided that I'm not doing myself any favors by being publicly hopeful or optimistic about anything. Ever.
Every time I say that I think something good will happen, it doesn't. It's a pattern of jinx.

It wasn't long ago that I was blogging that I thought I had a job lined up; that I had also managed to sell some radio ads and that I had repaired my vehicle. I even speculated that my grandmother was to get out of the hospital in the near future. I also had some private hope that I was nurturing...

I was wrong about everything.
-The job at the music store fell through.

-My radio client balked at the last second.

-I paid a Volvo mechanic 85 bucks to diagnose my car's problems.
His advice?
"Drive it until it dies, which will be soon, then sell it for parts. "
It's a rare car, a 1990 Volvo 780, and the seats are worth more than the engine, which is worthless. If I sold the seats, I could pay for the engine repair, but then I'd have nowhere to sit. Fuckity.

-My grandma's parts are all worn out and it's impossible to find replacement parts for a 1920 Appalachian. She's a rare car, my Granma- and a tough one too- but the repairs she needs are likely to kill her- her heart is too weak for more surgery and for the last few weeks it's been a terrible rollercoaster- one day she sounds good, has color in her skin and a strong heartbeat, the next day she's unconscious and being given blood almost as quickly as she loses it. As long as she has recurring hemorrhages, she has to stay in hospital, and she's not gone two days in September without needing a transfusion. The docs have been quite frank with us- this year has been incredibly hard on her, she's too weak for much more and there isn't any good outcome possible, only the inevitable. It's just a matter of time.

Of course, she was given a similar prognosis in 1990...and '92...and '93...and '96...you get the idea.

As for my private hopes? They didn't work out ...sigh. Perhaps I'll call Lenore and see if she's divorced yet...nah.
That fling is flung.
It was a bit discomfiting sitting in her old cube though. I knew the appointment was in the same building, but in her cube- with all the same furnishings? Even the same decals? Unfair, says I.

I can smell her now. I'd better cut the cord on my telephone and fill the wall sockets with caulk because that thing is becoming mighty tempting...

Frustration

NOTE: This is not addressed to ALL dudes. Sadly, you DON'T know who you are. You should.

Dudes. Listen up.

Your girlfriends and wives are not happy. Do you not notice this?
You aren't giving them the attention they deserve.
Are you taking your woman for granted? That is a mistake.

I'm single and have been involuntarily celibate for about ten gazillion years and it drives me crazy when your women complain to me about your lack of enthusiasm and imagination. They tell me how dull you are and I start having detailed fantasies- sometimes I share these ideas with your unsatisfied lover and this is what your wife/GF tells me:
" My man wouldn't do that."

Well, I would.

And I wouldn't stop until your wife begged me - and even then I'd draw it out for a loooong time.... The only thing stopping me is a vow I made to myself to never sleep with a married/attached woman again.
Ever.
For five drunken years, the only women I slept with were sexually frustrated married/engaged women that I met at work. All that repressed sexual energy had to go somewhere- and sometimes it came to me.

For some reason, they felt comfortable telling me how much you suck in bed.

Doesn't that feel nice? Your wife told the file clerk about your "problem"...then she took him to a Motel 6 and used your money to pay for the room. I was siting right next to her while she lied to you on her cellphone. That rattling sound was me fixing her a drink.
Nice, huh?

Nowadays, the file clerk doesn't drink and he doesn't have affairs.

The file clerk is adamant about the drinking, but if he keeps hearing these complaints, he might have to change his mind about that adultery vow.

Better get busy unless you want your wife moaning the file clerk's name in her sleep.