TWENTY FOURTH ANNIVERSARY

                                               SELF PORTRAIT WINTER 1992

   

Requiem Blues
Chapter 1: “This ain’t no fun anymore”

Raw Alcohol Blues

I went down on Thirty First Street to buy me a jug of alcohol
I went down on Thirty First Street to buy some alcohol
Told the man to put in some water but he didn’t put any in at all

I’m drinking my straight alcohol walking on down the street
Drinking straight alcohol walking on down the street
And my head got so heavy my eyes could take a pee

My baby say, “Hey Jamie, Jamie you ain’t no good at all
Baby says “Hey Jamie, you ain’t no good at all
You been fooling around the west side
and you drink too much alcohol

Old Blues Refrain: author unknown

I was as drunk as I had ever been, staggering around in the rain, hitch hiking on a mountain highway in the middle of the night. I was talking to myself and dimly remembered yelling into the night.

“You’ve got to stop doing this! This ain’t no fun anymore”.

My right hand was throbbing from a punch I’d thrown at my now ex-sales manager’s jaw. The manager fell like flop from a tall cow’s ass and I dropped the demo keys on his chest and told him where he could put his job. So much for the celebration of a great month in car sales… It was the company’s thank you, and we’d all gotten very drunk at company expense. Things got out of hand and there you have it.

I was quite a sight, soaked to the ass, drunk and babbling like an idiot. The first vehicle to pass that way in an hour was a Good Samaritan in a pickup truck who took me to the next town and dropped me off in front of the local hotel.

I passed his first test by not ordering a drink although it’s a moot point as I don’t think they would have served me. They gave me the key to the room and I stumbled upstairs after paying some exorbitant sum because I had no luggage.

It was your standard shit kicking small town hotel room complete with black velvet painting and a bible in the bedside table. I hung my clothes neatly on the floor and then went for a good long talk on the big white telephone.

I knew I was in trouble when the porcelain started to feel warm on my cheek. When I finally got into the bed it started spinning like the props on a helicopter, I should have panicked, but I just passed out.

I came to about five hours later just in time for anointer talk on the phone only it was blood and from both ends. I was beginning to think that I’d eaten the glasses that my drinks came in. I was still half cut and was rapidly redefining the word rotten.

I had a shower and tried to sober up. Mr. Bic’s razor took care of my beard and half the skin on my face. It was a race to see whether I would bleed to death from shaving or from my bloodshot eyes first.

My clothes were still in a heap in the middle of the floor. I phoned down  to the desk and got an iron. Have you ever tried to press dry a tweed jacket? I washed the shirt and hung it over the hot air vent to dry and tried to press the water out of my gray flannels. There was evidence that I spilled about as much as I drank.

After what seemed hours I got my clothes from sodden to merely damp. I dressed and, shoes oozing water, left the room to get something to eat.

When I got down stairs the desk clerk took one look at me and reaching under the desk he produced a mickey of cheap rye. “You look like you could stand a shot of this.” he said, extending the bottle towards me.

I declined and passed test number two by turning green and running for the door. I made my way to the combination cafe and bus station and stepped through the door.

It was your usual small town cafe and I was badly overdressed for this locale. The other patrons looked like a road show version of the hillbillies in DELIVERANCE. The jukebox was blasting out country music and I felt like a revenuer at a moonshine convention. I blinked and then checked the crowd for the moron with the banjo.

Then I made my second mistake of the day and ordered the country breakfast. The country must have been called “Grease” because that’s what the main ingredient was in that breakfast and, as my stomach would have had trouble keeping down warm milk, I had set my challenge for the day.

I bought a ticket to Vancouver and found out that I had a three hour wait for the next bus. Check out time at the hotel gave me a chance to get some nod as I really wasn’t feeling very well. I returned to the hotel and after making sure the desk would call me went back up to the room and crashed.

After two and a half hours of fitful sleep I got the call and checked out of the hotel. I met the bus and got on and, as was my luck, the only seat available was next to the toilet. Not that I smelled any better but the stench didn’t help me with my stomach problem. I gagged but still managed to keep the greasy breakfast down.

Now I had the shakes big time and was lapsing into the DTs. The bus trip seemed to take forever and when they pulled into the station I just made it into the washroom where I threw up the breakfast.

I washed my face and washed out my mouth as best I could, then I staggered into the street to catch the sky train for the last leg of my trip home.

The sky train trip was quick and uneventful and as usual there was a forty minute wait for the bus to go the last mile and a half. Then I was on my doorstep fumbling for my keys to the chorus of meows from my two little pals.

They swarmed around my ankles demanding to be picked up. I picked them both up and got inside of my door. I walked to the fridge and got out their food and filled their dishes to accompanying purrs and much face rubbing around my ankles.

God, I was bushed, my head ached and my stomach and throat burned. If I could only get a shower, wash my mouth out for about an hour, and then sleep, glorious sleep.

After unplugging my phone I took the shower and washed out my mouth but he still didn’t feel any better. Not the least of it, my ears were ringing and my thoughts were jumbled and my whole being pleaded for a drink or oblivion, preferably both. I crashed in the bed, and joined by my cats, I drifted into a nightmare sleep.

Damn, my life was a shambles; I was three months behind in my rent. My overdraft was seriously in the red and I had exactly one hundred forty nine dollars and a jar of pennies to my name. This was after making six thousand dollars in the last two months at the car lot. The money had been squandered on booze and tips to bar sluts and not much else. My regime had been the car lot and then the bar. I often made a fool of myself in the strip bars where I would bribe the dancers with twenty dollar bills to display themselves close to me.

I had been alone for six years and the fallout from the split with my second wife still haunted me. I had the understanding that I would probably spend the rest of my life alone.

What to do? My drinking habit and a three bedroom co-op kept me so broke that I had very little time for anything else. So much for romance, so much for a life.

I woke up every morning dreading the day with little or no energy. There was never an upside and everything I did turned to shit. I went downstairs put some music on the stereo and made himself a coffee. I opened the mail and found that I was being evicted in ten days, par for the course. When things go bad they can only get worse.

What to do? I hadn’t got a clue and my hangover was not about to let me off the hook.

*revised from third person to first person , 18/09/2012*

©Copyright June 13, 2006 by John-Ward Leighton