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goodbye again
Lately, when asked, "What's up? What's been going on?' I answer, "Not much. Just working all the time. You know.' It's not a stock answer for social avoidance. It's the sad (though temporary) truth. My few free hours a week, between jobs and planning my move to California, are not fertile ground for third-person-relatable drama (aside from frequent tales of near-firings). But next week, if you ask me what I've been up to, I'll tell you that MY SISTER and I went to New York, Halloween weekend, to play a show with HOME and some film makers and DJs and many other Tampa bands, in a three story building in Williamsburg with the same crowd of folks we socialize with in Tampa; like we've taken a mass vacation with all of our drinking buddies. A New World Brewery fieldtrip. My sister and I have no idea who we will stay with, but we haven't begun to worry because there will be a safety net of friends to take care of us. We scrambled all week making CDs, artwork, and COMMONPLACE books to give away (email me and I'll send you one: funkruze1@hotmail.com). I've edited our beats and we smoked dirt and drank beer and practiced every night. Now we are ready. On my first, solo trip to New York, I did not visit MY EX GIRLFRIEND. Though I saw her in every piece of clothing, every record store, every art exhibit, every bar, every woman crossing her legs on the subway: I never saw her. I thought about this the other night as I watched the boy she cheated on me with two years ago. He was watching the band by the stage and several times I envisioned myself punching him in the back of his bobbing head. The crowd in front of him was slam dancing and it would have been very easy for me to walk up behind and clock him unexpected and it would have felt great. I may never be whole if I don't do that to him before I leave this town. But instead, I just drank Jack and Coke and noticed his new tattoos and pondered MY EX until I was drunk enough to see past the horrible visions of the two of them fucking and remember that I miss her. Upon driving home and stumbling through the FRIENDSHIP GARDEN and up the steps to my house, I called her in New York. We haven't seen each other in almost two years and we hadn't talked in months. And though I'm a different person now; I'm not away from her yet. Not to the extent I expect of myself. So at 1:30 a.m., I sat, drunk on the vinyl tile floor of my dark dining room, next to my dead cat's litterbox which I still haven't thrown away, telling her everything about my life, as if I still knew her. Earlier in the month, MY EX GIRLFRIEND's SISTER, who still dwells in Tampa, told me that MY EX wouldn't attend our New York show, which will be right around the corner from her apartment. So I called to invited her. Urged her to go. We talked about the prospect of seeing one another again and it felt good. It felt like I hadn't had a conversation in years. At least not one with momentum that keeps it going long after, "I gotta go this is getting expensive.' Even after the second and third, 'I gotta gos,' we laughed and caught up and rode the turbulent bow of the happy conversation, trying to keep equilibrium, but after an hour we were dashed to the rocks. She wanted answers for questions of years ago and I hadn't any. I could only say: ""I'm not smart enough to figure it out, so I don't think about it and I try not to judge us on it.'' "That's a cop out." She seethed, her hour's worth of benevolence vanished. "I'm being serious. I don't think about it any more because I know I can't figure it out." I said, honestly. I can't figure out which one of us is to blame, and even if I did discover that the whole mildly-violent mess was all her fault, I still would not be able to write her off, or let go. So I don't even worry about it. At this explanation, she grew mean and began swinging at the shadow of my voice. I had no desire to fight and I had no answers. ""Well, until you figure it out,'' She said. "I don't want to go see your stupid band. Do you hear me?'' I tenderly protested, but before I could change her mind, she hung up on me, for at least the thousandth time, as I was in the middle of some cliche about "scars healing'. I assume I will see her. I want to. I have also lately been busy arranging a reading at New World Brewery in Ybor City on Saturday, November 11. Authors Neal Pollack and Jonathan Ames are coming to town, and though both are very funny and well known, even outside literary circles, I'm afraid the event will be poorly attended in Florida. So, I've enlisted Phillip Harris to provide extravagant visuals, Mark McManus to supply his funny and brilliant performance art, and The Boats to play the house band all night long. I have been daydreaming about it a lot: meeting and hanging with two of my favorite authors at
this impressionable first stage of my writing...uh...career?...hobby?. Whatever, I look forward to drinking
with them. I look forward to the social awkwardness of meeting people
I know a lot about, but who couldn't give a damn
about what I'm up to. I'm sure it will be memorable. And there have been too few
memorable moments lately.
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