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Tales of Solitude pt6 before/after Tales of Solitude
part 6: I am a hero to many
Just threw another log onto the fire. Today, I got out the axe and made some kindling, and was the hero of the night down at the Hard Hat Bar, where, in prior times I killed the waitress. Okay, not really. But, back about, say, nine months ago, I was in attendance, and the kindly woman behind the bar told me that, "...any day my feet hit the floor in the morning is a good day for me." Needless to say, she died hours later. But I digress.
It was a chilly day, and the Red Wings were playing, my favorite sports team from the area (which is much better than the bread and circuses from your area...) And I stopped at another watering hole, trying to get the game, when I was involved in one of the stupidest conversations in recent memory. Sometimes, and I have learned this through long experience, some people are just...black holes, and all you can do is not get sucked into the negativity. The encounter becomes something less than convivial. Danger lurks around at odd angles, and rapport is not an option. Being right or wrong is irrelevant. Its more about survival and sloughing off neurosis. "Excuse me, miss?" I asked. She looked drunk. I was slightly happy with the place, as this was the first time in a while that I had seen people up close, as well as people my age. I am not an entire misanthrope. "Yeahup," she said. "Do you have the RedWings game?" I asked. On all the television sets, the New York Rangers played the Philadelphia Flyers. "Yeahup." she said, "That's the Red Wings game," I paused for a moment.
Onscreen, the logo for the score update flashed : New York Rangers 2 Philadelphia Flyers 2. "No. That's the Wings. Its what they told me to put on." she said. I paused again. Its one thing to doubt me, and my hockey acumen, which I don't take personally, people are people. But...the goddam television...it just...doesn't say...what you think it does... I realized she was doing something, and something neurotic that I have run into before in my life. I don't exactly understand it, but I believe it to be a misattribution of arousal maybe crossed with daddy issues. Much like a girl who wants you, but doesn't understand it, and is quite bitchy towards you for no apparent reason. In this case, she was trying something, maybe to be funny, complicated by being drunk, and likely lacking a decent sense of humor. Not an issue. Not many people are truly witty. So. She might have been trying to play off her mistake, or she may have just been stupid. "No...its not the wings." I said carefully. And I felt the tension rise between us, for no good reason, other than I was not agreeing with her. Or something. Maybe I should have hit on her, or tried to be charming. "Well," she said tersely, "Whatever we got, they got red in it." This line of logic had not occurred to me. I realized if I disagreed with her again, she would likely go down to the end of the bar and rabble rouse. Perhaps at another time of life, I would have deliberately set her off. I opened my eyes wide and said, "Suuuurrrrrrreeee." I ordered a glass of water to think about what to do, while the bar watched me. It was shitty well water. I took a drink, slapped the bar, and left, mouthing "fuck this" as I left. Its not that I felt superior, its that I couldn't get the goddam game. One has to have priorities in line before subordinate goals may be accomplished, and teaching rednecks how to socialize was not on the agenda. So I made my way down to the Hard Hat, a blue collar paradise, where they are always friendly to me. A local was playing guitar, an accoustic six string ovation cut away. A nice guitar, but I don't like ovations personally. He was a chubby man with a haircut and side burns that resembled the haircut from the kid who thought he was italian in the film "Breaking Away". Quite the sight as he rested his guitar on his belly, firing away at the entire collection of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Reading from a notebook of lyrics in front of him. Disappointing, old man. In a note of forgiveness, he has a permanent spot on the wall there, and he plays EVERY thursday night. So whatever, chieftan. Play on, your tribal drums and second rate effort are your unnoticed albatross. I sat down at the bar and ordered a glass of water, and asked if they had the game. A busy body next to me told me that she had looked for it, but it simply wasn't on the television. She got the remote, and looked like she was going through the motions for me. When she got done, I asked for the remote, and then I magically witched up the fucking game. I am a wizard at times. I turned to her, and engaged, really, for the first time, even though she'd been rapping a blue streak for a good fifteen minutes about television channels, and her particular skills with a remote, as well as how she likes to befuddle her husband by changing the order of the channels. You wicked woman, you. "YEAH!" I cheered, "The GAME! High five, sister!" I held out my hand, and in her overwieght, anxious, grey haired busy body way, she slapped my hand as best she could. A cheer went up through the bar. And she went on about her television remote skills, which have apparently been retarded by men always demanding control of the remote. I did not care. I had the game on, and other things to think about. It was to be a cold night, and I had the materials ready for fire. I am reminded of when I first came to And her boyfriend had an axe, and was somehow trying to split wood by holding the axe in one hand and the wood in another. I watched him for a little while, waiting for him to lacerate himself, before volunteering. There is much about me that is backward and uncivilized. Non-metropolitan and rural, I believe. Chopping wood is one of them, and I am unapologetic for it. Say what you will, when the deal goes down, I have the skills to survive. It will be me, the roaches, and anyone else I deem worthwhile to keep alive. But, this is irrelevant, and could go a long way without producing anything. I like to chop wood. I am good at it. There is a certain aggressive release that goes with it that I rather enjoy. Sometimes in modern society I feel rather restrained. And there's nothing like laying all your problems on the chopping block, and dropping an axe full strength straight through it. Wood flies to the left and to the right, and I stand in the middle, feeling strangely masculine, much like when I go down on a girl oddly enough. It just seems a fit, and right. As if I am somehow validating that I am a man, and sometimes I am good at it. Needless to say, I do believe that splitting wood is an unrefined sort of thing. The city boys just don't have the know-how. So I grabbed the axe, put the wood down, and laid into it. My roomate looked at me with a mixture of fear, awe, and disgust. Likely wanting to call me a redneck and realizing that I may just be the most animalistic fuck she's ever seen. Pun intended. She and her boyfriend turned a table over and hid behind it. I whacked a few peices of wood, and then split the peices, to make it easier for her boyfriend to start the fire. I looked at them with disdain. "What the hell are you doing?" I asked. "Uhh...nothing," she said, creeping out from behind the barrier. "wow" her boyfriend said, "You really laid into that." He then tried to do it himself, to no avail, trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his girl, too late, too late. So I'm good at chopping wood. I suppose of the many trappings of the past, and the contentious way I relate to my hometown, splitting wood is something I will always have and for which I will never apologize. I believe I have tried to reach for something else, something inside as I have sought myself, and in the process, have picked things up and left others behind. I resemble no one here anymore, and no one there either. And that suits me just fine. Anyway, as I turned to leave the bar, where most of the people had already departed after the guitar singing session turned into that one bad Saturday Night Live skit, where everyone knows two bars of a song, can sing it, and then fades on the rest [Down on the corner, out in the street there's a poor boy...mumble mumble mumble] [Oh, Lord, Stuck in A Lodi ummmmm mumble mumble] [Have you ever seeeeen the raiiiin, coming down.....mumble mumble] and I had a funny exit. There was a woman with a startlingly blond dye job sitting five chairs away, someone's grandma, probably. I looked at her, she looked at me. "Thanks for the company." I said. "What company was that?" she asked. "You sitting over there and me sitting here." I said, pointing at the respective barstools. The barmaid, who was nice and seemed to be sort of cute, laughed. "Oh, well, you're welcome," she said eyeing me up and down. "I'm easy to get along with." "Me too," I said. "I'm here on my days off." she said. "Really." I said, my defacto non-answer. I turned and said goodbye to the barmaid, and left. The taste of victory was in the air. I got the goddam game in eggless nowhere.
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