NEEDLING

(Trying to talk myself into not being depressed or trying to think about a short story subject or trying to find a voice without sounding too fake or the first paragraph to a Hard Boil bourbon drinking novel that I'll never write...)

Set up my file cabinet even though there’s no files in it or beside it or anywhere else that might need filing. That’s all right. Set up my old school teacher’s desk with a grey vinyl top in the back of the room. Before tonight, it was living in the hallway standing on its side waiting till I got the floors done. Meaning sanded them then waxing them to a shining wooden parquet spark. The ceiling fan doesn’t work when the light is on and the light doesn’t work when the fan is on. It’s one or the other. That kind of thing. Cab Callaway is playing on the jam-box loaned to me for the next couple of weeks. And that’s just fine. Got me a glass of Knob Creek on the rocks and am sitting pretty in my boxers on a green plastic garden chair. Hey, man… things have never been this good. That’s what I wanted to say in the first place. Got me a new home all getting ready to promise me a livable totally decent place to take my shoes off every night when I get home, and that’s what I’ve been looking for. Found it. Not without all the regular compromises, as you can imagine, and a few more compromises not so regular on top of that. That’s where I’m heading, probably for trouble. But tonight. Tonight, I’m not going to worry about all that stuff, not right now because tonight is set out just for me and my Kentucky Bourbon. Like good ol’ times. Back in America where the booze is cheap, and that’s the good booze I’m talking about, not the cheap stuff. Inexpensive is what I meant, I guess. Back in America where a man without a car is not a man, where tough cowboy talk however meaningless gets you more places than good grammar and a dictionary. Back in America, man… and I love it.