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I write songs, but only a few stories. I found this one I started a few years back and I forgot about it. I guess I was going through a Jack Karouack stage or something..lol. It's not finished but I thought I would post it anyway because we have some awesome writers here and I thought if anyone could give me shit, it would be them. This was off the top of my head so the grammar and all blows, but the gist is there. Honestly, what ya think? Remember, I'm not a writer, I just like to have fun.
“Keep your ears clean and your eyes on the road” coughed my old man as he threw me a half a pack of smokes and handed me an unopened bottle of the cheapest scotch he could get his hands on. “The world’s a funny place and a man can die laughing if he takes it too seriously”.
I slipped on my boots, notched my heel, grabbed a pen, threw a guitar on my back and stuffed a few half forgotten memories into my back pocket, then headed out into the cold misty morning of the early sleeping sun.
Like underage thinking, thrown into a pile of uselessness until the wisdom of senility brings it to light, I was ready for a moment of clarity, or at least an unaltered vision of life even if it was just for a heartbeat or two. Time becomes a drunken mosquito…sucking the lifeblood out of anything that even resembles a bit of warmth in the coldness of breathing and I wasn’t going to let it ruin the moment.
While the soles of my boots left a bit more dust shaved off with each step I took, I started looking at these streets a little differently than I had in the last few years that I’ve aimlessly wondered just for the sake of travel. The familiarity being replaced by the look of a stranger, with a cynical glance toward an untrusting soul and I once again began to feel like a mountain at the bottom of the sea. They seem to really serve no other purpose than pushing the sea level up a little higher so the beaches have less of a place for us to trounce on. Oh well, that thought flowed through to let others in and I forgot about the reason I was leaving this place in the first place. I guess it’s just to find out if there was a reason for being home, and if leaving would make me miss this place or would it give me the feeling of arriving wherever I end up.
I decided to stop in for a final cold beer at the local cold beer joint and since I was walking past it anyway, it wouldn’t be too far out of my way. I knocked on the door for the sake of knocking and twisted the dented brass handle to the left and pushed open the heavy dark oak door. The familiar light stench of stale cigarette smoke, yesterday’s beer spills, cheap perfume and a lot of bottomed out dreams hit my face as I stepped into the waiting darkness until my eyes adjusted from the morning sun that I left parked on the curb until my mission here was complete. The barkeep grabbed a frosted mug out of the freezer and she filled it with my favorite draft, placing it in front of me as I sat on the stool that always seemed to be empty unless I was visiting. The first taste of the beer stung across my tongue and down my throat but I knew the seal had been broken and that the first drink paved the way for the remainder in the glass.
“Where ya off to?” asked a voice from my right. I glanced sideways first to size up where the voice came from and before the head on look and a full answer to his inquiry. He seemed to be in his 70’s and looked as if he had been to hell and back again a few times, but had stopped in between trips to at least get his teeth capped. His well broken-in pork pie hat hung a bit over his brow and his proverbial old man stubble was just as gray as the hat. Smoke bellowed from between his massive fingers and the ash of the cigarette was about ready to take a swan dive to the half filled tray on it’s own if he didn’t take care of it first.
“How ya know I’m off to somewhere?” I asked back not really knowing how to answer his question due to the fact I had no idea myself. He squinted through the darkness at my belongings I placed on the floor next to me and then gave me a look as if he was insulted I insinuated he wasn’t bright enough to figure out I was off to somewhere. “Oh those” I half-laughed “Well, just seeing if I need to be somewheres else I guess.” I took a drink. “Ain’t much sense in being stuck sticking around if there’s more to there than here.”
He looked at me for a second or two with a blank face then a small smirk built to his comment “Yeah son, I reckon you’re right.” He swallowed a shot of something and lit another smoke. “I wish I would have thought of that as a younger man. I waited for it to come to me, and I’m still waiting” He seemed to be going through his 70 odd years as he spoke.
To be continuated....
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