"Leave your negativity, prejudice politics outside, please."  --a
handmade sign outside the Inter-Tribal Pow-wow

"Do you want to feel my ass?   Do you want to feel my ass, arg? 
Feel how wet it is."  the fifty year old woman with a big nose croaked at
me.  She had sat in something wet.  She'd been eyeing me all night,
and had been holding court at her friend's birthday party, while Mick and I
played.  She had a very tight body for 47, but I just wasn't in the mood
for that kind of kicks.  Cheating with the elderly has never been my style.

"No thanks," I said quickly, politely, "I'm good."

She looked sad at my rejection.  A couple of the other guys sitting
around grabbed her ass while her husband watched.  Her husband had some
great pot, and that had fucked mick up too the moon.  I smelled it from
five feet away as we sat poolside, the pool generating steam in its warmth.

It was a quarter to three, and it was time to go.  I made sure Mick had
a ride and I bid my farewells.  Margie, the free spirited host, grabbed me
and made me hug her.  I ended up touching her breasts incidentally somehow
and pulled away.  She turned and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  It was
destined for my lips, but I flinched.  She whirled around and said
something to a nearby, then tried again.  I flinched again, collected my
guitar and left.  It had been a strange night.

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

"Well, yeah, I'm over here, and there's going to be a party later. 
Remember Margie?"  Mick asked me.  He gave me the details. 
Margie let us play at her bar when we were just starting out to get gigs. 
She's nice, free spirited.  Looks good for her age, and can move her body
in ways that would make some girls envious.  Blonde, in her forties
somewhere.  Barmaid.  Good soul.

I went to her house and collected Mick.  In the process, Margies
retarded daughter ran around cussing like a sailor.  She made me feel the
titanium rod in her leg.  Her cousin made her make some phonecalls and
leave messages on her behalf.  The girl was clearly retarded, but loved. 
All personality, just sloppy.  Stupid.  Inevitably forgivable with the
grace of the protection of the weak and the undeniable appeal of the innocent.

Mick and I went to shoot pool.  I downed a few painkillers. 
Vicodin and Codeine. 

A mullet walked by.  REO Speedwagon was in town. 

I saw the long, grey plumed mullet.  His shirt was left unbuttoned a bit
towards the top, and grey hair shown out underneath a cheap gold necklace.

"RIIII-DIIIN the STORM OUT." I croaked in his direction.  He failed to
notice.

Later on, I believe he was at the party for a moment.  Nobody spoke with
him and he left.

We shot pool for awhile, and Mick told me about a former counseling client
that wasn't doing so well.

"He's going down a bad road." was his assessment.

Apparently my former charge had bought an ounce of bad blow and was going to
make someone accountable for this.  With voilence.

"Hey," Mick said, "I wanna get OUT of here." 

So we got in my car.

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

I turned and pulled into an alleyway.  Mick had wanted to leave because
he wanted to do a bump.  He had fifty dollars worth of some good c and
wanted to hose some of it.

He courteously offered me some, which I declined.

He chalked it up on his briefcase, while I looked ahead. 

"You got a bill?"  he asked.  I gave him a twenty.

A large suburban turned down the alleyway and approached us.

"I hope that's not a cop."  I said.

"If it is, this is gone."  Mick said, but did nothing to cover up.

The suburban charged us, flicked on all its lights.  Bright headlights,
spotlights, blue flickering lights.  All of them.

"Oh shit."  Mick said, "Shit shit shit shit shit."

I turned down my windows and handed the police woman my ID.  She
proceeded to run me through the same questions over and over.  The typical
cop tactic: see if you change your story.  I didn't because I had nothing
to hide.

Nothing much, anyway.

"WHERE'S THE TWENTY DOLLAR BILL?"  the male cop inquisitioning Mick
asked me.

"I...don't know."  I answered.  All the lights were blinding,
disorienting. 

"GET OUT OF THE CAR." he barked.

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

After being frisked and my car thoroughly searched, the police let us go. 
Mick palmed his stash and it melted into his palms.  The cop found the
twenty for me.   They ran us through a million questions, but our
story never wavered.  Anything they asked was answered politely.  And
we ended up giving them access to everything.  But in the end they had
nothing but suspicions to go on.

"Find another place to sit, guys."  they admonished us.

So we went to the party.  I got out the guitar and played.  I
couldn't find a guitar pick.  A girl produced a pick she got at the concert
from REO themselves.  The irony. I had spent most of the night badmouthing
'the Wagon', and here they were making my performance possible.

Mick tried his less-than-humble best, but had trouble keeping with me. 
We hadn't played together in a year.  Maybe it was the booze or the drugs.

Or maybe, just maybe, all this time people had been coming to see me play and
not Mick.  The thought occurred to me that over the year, even though I had
played sparingly, I had eclipsed Mick somehow, or someway.  My talent had
grown while his had not.

Then again, maybe it was always that way, and I just never noticed.

But every band needs a singer...

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

The next day I woke up late, still feeling wound up.  The altercation
with the law the night prior had done nothing to ease my state of mind. 
Looking through a catalog, I decided to go shopping for a good deal on a mixing
board.  I strapped on my usual all-black shorts, shirt and sandals and went
out.

Along the way I saw a sign that said "Inter-Tribal Pow-wow:  this way".

I wheeled around the car and went to the pow-wow.  It was a clear hot
day.  Outside the pow-wow a sign read "Leave your negativity, prejudice
politics outside, please."  I liked the pow-wow immediately.

I paid my two dollars and sauntered in.  In the middle of the grounds
was a tent with a loudspeaker system.  An old Indian rambled on into the
microphone.  Arranged around the grounds were a ring of booths, two for
food and the rest trinkets for the white man to spend his money on.  Junk
jewelry.  Some of the proprietors didn't look Indian, or were only a of
part Indian heritage.

The drums kicked up in a throbbing rhythm as the Indians sang their ancient
songs.  Indians strode around in full dress, replete with feathers and
other adornment.  In the infield, the Indians danced. 

I bought a trinket from one of the vendors, a full-blooded Indian from the
look of him.  I carried the trinket from his table to him.  Before I
could utter a word, he barked "FIVE DOLLARS."

He sounded irritated with the heat, and yet another bullshit customer for his
bullshit wares.  Also, I felt there was an undercurrent of racial hatred,
of 'fuck you, white man' in there somewhere.  If there was, which I think
there was, I understood.  I'd probably feel the same way, too. 
Genocide has a long memory.

I sat and watched the dancing for awhile.  I realized how long music has
been with us.  Man has been beating the drums and howling to the sky as
long as he has been able.  It provides a sense of community.

To think of it now, maybe we're all feeling that sense of incompleteness, and
music provides a small bit of relief from that.  Relief from the lonliness
and the feeling of being apart of something else, something larger and more
satisfying, but not being able to place when or where the separation happened.  
Never really being able to place when we had that satisfying sense of being
complete.  Maybe its our communal way of howling to our gods for our appeal
of innocence.  Of simply wanting to know why.  Why we are here. 
Why we feel this way.  Why we seem to know nothing.  And in a communal
howl, we hope to reach their ears and get an explanation.  An explanation
that never comes, a howl perhaps unheard.  But in making the sounds
together, in making the dance together, we share, we, for a little while, become
one.  And that soothes the savage, lonely spirit within all of us. 
Until the next pow-wow.

I sat on the sidelines as the Old Man called for all to dance.  Then
called for a 'switch-dance', wherein females dance with a certain crest, then
pass it on to a selected male, who must then also dance to the Honor Beat. 
The beat that honors for whom you dance.  The beat on the big drum.

It felt familiar, like being a freshman at a high-school dance, and I thought
of the years that must have passed also as this form of ritualizing the mating
ritual went on, with all the same games, all the same problems.  How they
must have felt in years gone by, probably not much different from a high-school
freshman.

And how slow the time must have crawled from one pow-wow to another! 
Such a magical time in a young brave's life. Hunting and gathering for his
existence, and maybe, just maybe, his girl lived in another tribe, not to see
her until the time is right.

How much of our wardrobe changes but our drama(s) remains the same.