The Colt 45 Chronicle #56

This letter provides what is probably a fairly representative snapshot of a college-educated man in his early twenties -- alcoholic, addicted to watching professional sports on television, drunk with buddy love and spouting on about Plato. 

Well, maybe it is not fairly representative.

In any event, it is who I was when I was newly disgorged from the Groves of Academe, now approaching thirty-years yore.

The opening paragraph elliptically recounts some of my escapades in Los Angeles, where I stayed for a few days at my friend Shale's house after driving across the North American continent during a cold December. This is briefly recounted in "The Colt 45 Chronicle #14." I was on my way north up I-5 to see my girlfriend, Stacy; and then after that on up into Oregon to spend the Christmas holiday with my wife and her family.

My life used to be much more action-packed and complex than it is now.

Spring 1989

Man, those were two solid pages of chicken-scratched magic. Thank you. Yeah, and you're right, that last letter was kinda of forlorn; but it wasn't meant to be. I wrote it around 2:30 AM one night (Neil Young on the turntable) after about ten beers. It was supposed to be about 19, nineteen-years old, as plain and pure as I could remember it; about what it was -- for us; about what it must have been like to feel what we felt then. I gave it a shot; and I guess it's that -- my need to take the shot -- that gives it its forlornness. I never intended making a comparison of that "nineteen time" to my last visit to LA. Man, my last visit to you -- two days or not -- was fucking fantastic. I repeat the stories of our pounding the pot on the white circular kitchen table, and me puking in the spaghetti strainer in the sink after the hefty gulp of JD, and you putting your fist through my makeshift wooden sidedoor VW bus window. I repeat these stories (including the ping pong game in your new and waiting-to-be-painted rental unit, the trip to Oki-Dog in the sister's Capri and the shitdrip geek who came over the morning I left for SF and looked at the new place and acted like he was Marcus Aurelius), I repeat them all the time to myself, in my mind's eye (you see, they were holy experiences).

Listen, man, fuck everything else: WE ARE BLOOD BROTHERS. we're gonna be there at the end together, just like in the "Myth of Er" at the end of Plato's REPUBLIC. We're gonna be waiting for our just desserts together; we might end up as mockingbirds or elephants or turd pebbles or men, but we'll be there together.

LA's playing Detroit; I got it going on the TV in the bedroom; but for some reason I'm not into it. After the third game of the Chicago-Detroit series I lost all interest; I turned it off before the end of the third quarter, only to find out later that Jordan & Co. had made a spectacular fourth quarter comeback to go up two games to one. Everybody said they were going to pull off an upset, beat the Pistons in seven, but I had seen something in that game three to make me think otherwise, something to make me turn it off: Michael Jordan had lost his luster. It was the first Bulls game were the guy didn't have that amazing energy dribble, the one that makes it appear as if he is swimming in the interstices of reality. I had been following the playoffs passionately, watching every game televised by the networks, reading the paper every day, even jotting down lineups and scoring averages during my slow and private moments at work (which made me feel like I was back in 6th grade memorizing NFL running backs: Greg Pruitt, Cleveland Browns; Lawrence McCutcheon, LA Rams; Otis Armstrong, Denver Bronco ). But right then and there my passion died; I could watch no more. Michael Jordan was the only interesting thing in the playoffs (after it was apparent that Phoenix would be eliminated by the Lakers). When he lost the luster, so did I. And sure enough, my lost passion turned out to be pretty damn prescient. Detroit won three in a row after that and put Chicago away in six, shutting Jordan down emphatically. As for LA and Detroit, their act is old, Rough and stingy versus glittery and smooth. Not as old as LA and Boston, sure, but old enough.

I'm still a freelance temporary proofreader, working off and on and reading in the interim; drinking Coors and Colt, and, subsequently, having a prolific girth of shock-white lard to show for it. I do an occasional set of push-ups, run about once a week, read very little philosophy but a lot of Mark Twain. I am basically a pale shadow of my formerness (the person you knew and associated with). But in a lot of ways I'm better off -- you know, being out of Berkeley and academia and being in the big shit-hole city, at least for a while.

I can really appreciate New York sometimes. Like when I finish work and walk west along 42nd to the 8th Avenue subway. Forty-second is always packed and moving upstream. I treat the whole thing like a football drill. I weave and pop and high step in and out of all junkies smoking their crack and the career-track cadavers toting their briefcases. One morning (in the morning I'm more mellow; I just scoot straight along -- no promise of soon-to-be-smoked cigars and soon-to-be-gulped beers means less gridiron prowess is called for) this junkie black woman rushed right up and started beating me with her fists. But I was moving too fast and she was far too weak. So I tossed her a sweet smile . . . . It did indeed trouble though all the finely clothed office-bound employees to my rear.