Something about the rain that day, I guess.

It turned the streetlights into blind child actors,
and gave all those tortured neon signs
a terrible case of electroshock rabies.

I laughed at first.
Danced poorly through the unrealistic chaos
with my mouth hanging open.
I sobered up
when I remembered that electricity
tastes nothing like a snowflake.

Despair would have set in,
but my friend,
bless him for being one of the few
still living, still playing shows at The Live Wire,
he happened to be with at the time.

He threw an arm around me.
Virtuous Virginia girls were ripping off their business suits.
He told me it was time to get out of town.

I nodded,
and then crawled into the trunk of his car.

Memories of Prince George haunt me still.

I guess he put me in the passenger seat,
because the airbag woke me up
long after we had stopped at some country love shack.

First thing I noticed.
was how it would take at least a day to reach the nearest
trees stripped to their humble bones.

You could see nothing in all its tight-lipped, grief-stricken
concept of everything.

The house itself was a weird mess, man.
I won’t even tell you how many dirty dishes
were in the living room, begging to for the immortality
of what happens when someone brings a rifle to a southern funeral.

I have no idea why my friend knew these people,
but I know a lot of old-timers,
who have write shopping lists on typewriters,
and a lot of smiling couples,
who raise dumpster-diving teddy bears
as though they were their own.

I could judge him for the company he keeps,
but then I’d have to admit I never finished therapy,
and that I’m just as dreadful a never-was,
as I’ve always been.

That I’m obnoxious isn’t exactly a secret of my industry.

Why my friend thought this place would do me some good,
is a mystery to me. He’s a wild boy. He takes his coffee with milk,
and the way most people take bad news,
and go to pieces all at once.

He moved Black Friday to every single Monday,
and he loves to tell me,
how he was once a sadistic deputy
for a Christian rock band.

All things are possible,
and I can’t even remember how we met.

We just had coffee had one day
and somehow spent hours
talking about the old days.

I trusted his reasons for bringing me to that house,
but I was still edgy as to what exactly
was going to go down.

Plenty of good reasons to be jittery.
The old man there wore nothing but boxers,
and a hat that might have been stylish in his railroad days.

He winked,
poured me a scotch and carpet-cleaner
and asked me if I had ever done any modeling.

This girl,
I guess she was his daughter,
weighed five hundred pounds
but walked on her tiptoes every time I saw her.

My friend introduced her as his latest and greatest fiancé,
but I don’t think he was being serious. I know he was being serious,
when he said he didn’t know
when we might be going back to the city.

There were others,
but they were just loud, violent types. I choose
not to remember anything about them.

Your imagination is better than mine.
Think about what might have been coming out of their basement.

I was resigned to being too stupid to learn how to drive.

It’s nice to have friends.
It’s nice to know how much invisible mud
you can get in your eyes and teeth,
I still think I could have been nicer
to those people,
who have to watch their favorite shows as they air.

I won’t go on. Too much history gets lost
amongst thousands of other words
on the thousands of pages
in the index section.

Yessir,
That’s my baby.

Or is it
No, sir,
I don’t mean maybe?

Night was a blanket that came out of the ground
and didn’t even try to shake the Martian dust off.

We all hung out in the kitchen,
drank and got into some really uncomfortable
conversations.

Disturbing to the point
where I elected not to join them
when they went out to the roof
to get approval on their phone sex monologues from the moon.

I turned to my friend,
finished my drink, shuddered a little
and told him he was a real mean son-of-a-bitch.

He laughed,
and told me he knew.

The cat clock on the wall was real vintage hillbilly.
It taught me a new German phrase every hour.

He patted me on the back,
and I guess that might have been
some kind of male-bonding moment.

You tell me. It’s not like I’m the kind of performer,
who’s going to hang around after the hundred-year show
to sign autographs, leave hotel room numbers on tennis balls.

That’s not gonna be me anytime soon.

10/25/2011

Author's Note: title taken from a line in warren zevon's journals, in which david letterman apparently asked him, "waddy's the real deal, isn't he?", referring to warren's friend and frequent collaborator, waddy watchel. i like that phrasing, for some reason, and i have friends who remind me of what i've seen/read about watchel, and this is kind of a blurry combination of several people, and several stories of varying truthfulness.

Posted on 10/26/2011
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