So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends?

The man crouched on the stool atop the stage touches the strings with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall on which his boot rests beside him doesn't care. The Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson connected to the amp does, and just as the old rocker who cradles the classic guitar to his breast does. And just like the other two, the aged amp still works fine, which it proves by ejecting the single chord through the “business end” of it’s speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights his fingerprints and sweat streaks besmudge the guitar’s fire-burst design, soiling it, the same as the man’s blue jeans are soiled, and the boots beneath them. His hair is long and unwashed, and his beard, and his shirt tails hang too long as well, (the tails left untucked so as to hide the unwelcomed paunch above his biker belt). The man appears very comfortable in his place upon the stage, comfortable being spotlighted in the skuzziness surrounding him, glowing in the raunchy smells and dim lights made dimmer still through his dark glasses, and through his hazy, three-quarters of the way there drunk.

He steals a moment to read the room. He could take that single chord he’d opened with in a myriad of directions. His catalog is extensive, overflowing with both self-written and cover songs, but he waits before continuing, counting heads. He’d drawn seven people. Seven. Not so long ago he’d drawn 17 thousand. Or maybe it was “so long ago,” considering how the world had changed in that seemingly short amount of time? In any event, this must be where it all really ends, he thinks, all of the rehearsing, and travelling, and playing. He is down to an audience of seven.

Hidden behind the glasses his eyes pick out the only one in the tiny audience who is paying attention. He begins to play nothing in particular to that one, just old finger exercises he’d invented long ago when learning to play, tricks designed to impress, but “nothings” which also allowed him the freedom to take flight in a million different directions, just as the single chord had. It is an old game to him, showing out, a game he plays very well.

She is young, the one paying attention; dark eyed and olive skinned. Big, frizzy hair and sandaled feet stick out either end of a long, shapeless, hippy-looking dress. He can imagine her with actual flowers in her hair, can remember other girls just like her, in other times. She is the sort he used to easily have. He wonders if he still can. Looking at her, he decides on an old song, but a goodie; a song that the girl might even have heard before, written by his favorite songster, way back when. Even if the songs are dated, you can never go wrong playing Kris. Once the song is decided the man in the spotlights begins searching for a jumping off spot from his riffs and rips. Finding one, his transition is seamless into a finger-picked intro in the key of E.

He has chosen the song for her because she has reminded him of it, she has the “look” of it, so he is disappointed when she throws back her drink and stands, but she doesn’t leave, as he half expects her to. On the contrary, she makes her way over to the one step stage, climbs aboard, and without asking for permission pulls the microphone from it’s chrome stand. Intrigued and up for anything, the man slides into the opening chord, nodding her along with him into the song.

She must be Capricorn, he thinks. Her voice is deep, sultry, much smoother than Janice’s, reminding him for some reason of silent snowflakes touching down in a wooded, gray, and wintry world. She keeps it simple, which he appreciates, singing the song as it is meant to be sung, though her lyrics are not quite right;

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for the trains

I’s feeling nearly faded as my jeans

Bobby thumbed a diesel down, just before it rains

It rode us all the way to New Orleans

She is good, so he tones and tunes down, allowing her room to work.

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose

And nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain‘t free

He joins in where she needs a push, his harmony mixing nicely and naturally with her melody, even though his voice is unamplified. His fingers fill in the breaks, running free at the song’s high point while she lays low, a soft and mournful hum in contrast to the bedlam which Janice’s crescendoes had made famous at this point in the song;

La la la, la da la da, la dee la dee la dee la…

His smile remains inside. An experienced poker player, he knows when to bluff. Hers is on the outside, where he can see it, glowing brightly as the song nears it’s end. They have found something, this old man and this girl; a connection that only music or lovemaking can allow two strangers to share. He wonders if one might lead to the other?

When the final notes tinkle from the amp, in that briefest of moments before the spatter of unexpected applause, while respectful silence still reigns supreme, the two of them share a look, both seeing something fascinating in the other, and wondering “what could have been?” The startled few at their seats, they who have only now realized that they had just unwittingly witnessed one of those special, unforgettable moments in life that are oh-so difficultly found, rise and begin to clap. As she hands him back his microphone he notices her wetted cheek, and longs to swipe it away with a hopeful thumb.

“Thank you, Dad. I‘ve always wanted to sing that with you.”

With that she walks away, leaving him suddenly older, sober, and even more alone.

“Dad?”

Can this be where the year's wind up? Is this where it all ends?

Not on your fuckin’ life, it’s not. The guitar man lovingly lays his smudged instrument down atop the well-travelled amp and leaps a little too exuberantly from the one step stage, so that he is forced to limp hastily through the maze of tables in his pursuit...

(For my friends, TheEnigmas... "words, words, words of shame.")

I know exactly what you mean when you say you don’t like dogs. My dog General Sherman doesn’t like dogs either. He especially doesn’t like all the butt sniffing, although he will get carried away on occasion, particularly with that cute little doodle dog down the road, but he’s always ashamed of himself after, you know, when he drops down to the olfactory level. But then we all have moments we are not proud of, don’t we?

But then, The General is not your typical dog. In fact, he is a-typical in that he not only considers himself above other dogs, but above humans as well. No small part of his uppitiness stems from his law degree, which he shamelessly acquired just to prove a point to me, and he managed to gain admittance without even bothering to learn to read. You see, he convinced the registrar at Tulane that she was being discriminatory by not letting him in. To prove it, he asked her to look up the percentage of enrollee’s identifying as trans-canine (he is snipped, you understand), and the bleeding heart blue hair not only admitted him after finding that the actual number was zero, but she offered him a belly rub as well! (He is his father’s dog.)

But he had to finish his studies online, as I would not let him take the truck down. That and he suffers anxiety when separated from Pooky-Bear. The online courses proved easy enough for him, as he is a very smart dog. Most of the exams were multiple choice, and General Sherman quickly picked up that the longest answer on multiple choice questions is always the right one. It’s college y’all, not rocket science. Everything else he needed to know about the Bar he learned by watching Orson Welles in the 1959 classic, “Compulsion,” (which is also where The General gained his penchants for mustaches, cigars and smoking jackets).

But anyways, like most graduates today The General now owns his doctorate, the prerequisite $600k in debt that comes with it, and his unemployment benefits, which should take care of his loans by the time he is 70 (in people years. For those slower at math, that is 490-ish in dog years), so of course Sherman is praying for a Sleepy Joe second term college debt bailout, which places him on the wrong side of my conservative political leanings, but those damned colleges are indoctrinating them all these days.

Sheesh, if it wasn’t for all of that stupid college debt he figures he could have had his own bass boat by now… and a Target swimsuit for his Olympic qualifier! (If you missed that post, General Sherman has decided to swim as a female, as it not only improves his chances of a gold medal, but the women’s suits fit his tail better.)

But anyways, I digress. The fact of the matter is, since transitioning the General no longer has much use for other dogs, and would just as soon they stayed the hell out of his yard and off of his television, as every time they appear it drives him up the freakin’ wall.

And truthfully, it does me too. Stupid dogs.

The six of us convinced ourselves that the steaming hot shower vapors would sweat away the alcohol which threatened our early morning exams, so we donned towels, rolled a joint, and sprawled ourselves across the bathroom floor’s mosaics.

The party was crashing until Carol (petite and pretty), with one plain white towel wrapping her torso and another her hair, slid her tiny feet down into my cattle boots and, without the merest trace of a smile began a graceful, if jocose “Chopiniana” while the rest of us accompanied her with Squeeze’s, “Black Coffee in Bed.”

The stain on my notebook

Remains all that’s left

Of the memory of late nights

And coffee in bed.

Oh, now she’s gone…

Three boys, three girls. If any of us somehow did not love Carol before that night, we certainly did ever-after.

Who needs lion tamers, or trapeze flights of fancy?

Call them all back, and send in the clowns!

I learned the horrors of prescience at the very moment I discovered I was gifted with it.

She was a childhood friend, a year younger. There happened to be a pause in our rambunctious play, a pause just long enough, and our play just close enough, that we accidentally found ourselves looking into one another’s eyes. Being children, the staring itself became the game; exploring each other’s souls inside them, daring ourselves to venture deeper while at the same time being revealed. We passed that point where one laughs to hide their discomfort, or looks away, and we continued even longer, her winded breath so close that I could feel it on my chin, and on my moistened lips. It was then that I saw who she really and truly was, and she me. And it was then that I knew.

“You are going to die.” I whispered.

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

She answered the only way a child could answer when the question is so fearsome as death. “Hide.”

When I left her that day I never saw my childhood friend again.

“Robert?” My mother called from the foyer. “Alicia’s parents can’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

“No Momma,” I lied.

But it did find her, even where we had so carefully hidden her; inside that big old trunk down in her basement, covered between the musty old clothes and things, the heavy cedar top closed and latched.

There’d been death in my friend’s eyes that day. There is no hiding from that.

Are there really “plenty of fish in the sea?”

Philosophically speaking The General and I have found our tuna, but there was a time when the sea was so deep and dark that it was hard for our curiosities to know for sure, causing us an unhealthy angst to reel them in and tally them up just as fast as we ever-loving could!

It’s barely daybreak when an olive drab aluminum boat with a Pro XS 175 Mercury trolls past us out by Wickety Point.

”Hey Dude! Your dog shouldn’t be fishing, you know?”

A bored General Sherman reels in some line. “Neither should your ass.” He says.

”Holy shit, Dude! Your dog can talk!”

”Holy shit,” The General replies while holding up his license. “So can your ass, but what it says stinks.”

Boat with angry fisherman trolls away to find a wildlife agent.

Me, quietly ashamed- ”Bad dog, Sherman… is that how your mother is raising you? Why don’t you shut up and cast one over there by that downed tree? And hey, quit hogging the beer cooler, neuter-nuts!”

“Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”

- William Faulkner

This quote pretty much gave me the courage at 50+ years of age to start writing here on Prose. It made me realize that it is not necessary that I “know how to write.” Style is unimportant. Faulkner also said (paraphrased), “those writers worried about ‘style’ generally have nothing to say and know it.”

One need only have the cajones to write honestly, and then to put that writing out there to be read.

God knows there have been plenty of errors for me to learn from ;).

You want to talk about toxic? I’ll tell you about toxic. Toxic happiddity!

I climb happily out of bed at 2:00 in the morning… sigh. Every damned day.

Imagine that?

Like all of these miserable people surrounding me I have to go to work. I’m supposed to be miserable about too, but I’m not. In fact, I’m kind of pumped about it. I love that I can go determine my worth in an open market. I love that I can help other people determine their worths. If I didn’t think I was making enough money, yet I spent my days wishing I made more and bitching about those who do make more while doing nothing else about it… yea, I might be miserable then. If I thought others at work needed help, but weren’t getting it, yeah, that might make me feel crummy, so I don’t do those things. Instead, I think of work as a place to shine, and I strive to shine like the sun there.

After work I pull my truck into the driveway of a beautiful home paid for by that hard work. I am greeted by a faithful and loving dog on the way in, and by a beautiful wife of twenty-five years at the front door. My daughter is happily married, and has two well adjusted, hard working daughters of her own. Trust me, being “blessed” with those things takes hard work as well, but luckily God gave us opposable thumbs so we could hold the tools we need to build absolutely everything we require to find joy in this life.

Am I concerned about my privilege? Hell no! There are people who look just exactly like me all around who have nothing and are miserable (just go read the posts in the “Are You Happy?” challenge. Yuck!). There are also people all around me who look and act very differently from me, but who still realize that happiness is not a given, it is achieved, so they go and get it. Achievers dream big. Miserable people dream up excuses.

And though happiness is subjective (mine might look very different than yours), no matter how it looks it rarely comes free. If you do the barest minimums throughout your life your chances of happiness are about the same as they are for hitting the Mega-millions lottery. But if you work hard to achieve happiness those chances become exponentially greater, no matter your color, creed, or binary “assignment.” (And by the way, sweeping changes in life rarely lead to happiness either, just to a different kind of miserable).

There are no shortcuts to happiness in life. To be happy is to be fulfilled. To be fulfilled is to have developed one’s character or abilities. Like as not, that means work, friend.

So there it is. I’m a toxic squirrel. Up and at’em just to bust a damned nut!