Chance Hardly publicly gives it up.
I didn’t think 30 would break it. I thought 35 was even possible. I wandered in at 20. They detected a lack of self confidence, so they boosted me with lots of hot rod dirt track time. It looked like my opponent was on crack. I recited my lessons (my mantra, really). I concentrated and I survived.
We dialed back again to 20 and made peace with everyone. We didn’t need the 35 or the 30 and it’s a lot more mellow here except for these diehards that insisted on bringing their hot rods to art gallery openings.
“ I can’t do without my 32” was what we heard over and over again, as if a “club of 32” had organized and sent out a flyer. It seemed like Florida. The traffic had subsided. A Buick Riveria became my primary mode of transportation. (4 speed automatic: Well that’s 2 more speeds than we use-ta have.) The 37 man gave me a starter pack of Marlboros, said he trained with Richard Petty but he was just a delivery man who liked to drive fast and I decided to leave him his pride. I took a picture of him in his Rocket -88. He had added DynaFlow. It was chopped, channeled, shaved, with flared purple bubble skirts, that, like the ladies I remember from then, kept too much covered.
31 was the key but as soon as I signed on my metabolism went to the equivalent of a 10. I wouldn’t exercise but I would do something. Should I stand on a scale? Look, I’m not one to wait around, so I weighed myself. I knew they wouldn’t believe me no matter what I told them, so I got a printout to take with me. It’s a new model and it can do that. I turned it in and I got a few social points. Were they good for something? (Does anyone ever buy you a beer?) Can you at least seem interesting? Yes, that I can do and anytime I’ll do it for you.
I was in disgust with that corny rhythm, so I asked him if we were having a good time. He looked at me in a sad way, burst out laughing and said
How long did this terror go on with the guys -or were they monsters trapping you in a cave? After 3.7 days I stopped. “I can’t give you 30, I can’t even give you 24. The mosquito net provided all of the protection I’m going to have tonight”
“I snuck a gun out from the city, but I’m a peaceful guy.”
The direction of this was becoming tedious at best so I wandered away. Was I asked to confront this situation? No, I just wasn’t there, I hadn’t seen it firsthand, and that would prevent me from jumping to a conclusion prematurely. I laughed as a quick web search confirmed it as cliché #27 in that holy book for salesman, “OHM”.
OHM wandered in and I could tell he was special. He was cool - it was his ease in entering a room with strangers that I’ve known for 20 years. I hadn’t had as many words with her as he has since a-few-minutes-ago with Flora, I could tell her aura and she was all I could think about. She started out as Tinka bell, then got a little rough with Doris Day. We brought him up to the present time, and he got beat that way. I could take a day off and fix this.
Closed up in her room, waiting for her release, she got into Ella, It was that or Englebert Humperdink, so she actually made the wise choice. They hooked up and had a drink. The bar was toward the back of the ship, the rugs were a little sticky but otherwise the place wasn’t too bad. Breezy on deck, we liquored up in the wind anyway. Bad beer with no alternatives. A few days of mixed drinks got me right back to beer a grade or two down but it still was beer and it still tasted good. Jay came by and interviewed us as we just happened to be walking by the studio. Synchronicity led us into in alley, but it wasn’t bad. There were new flowers, a dark entrance , dampened, cluttered by the excess of rainfall and everything growing like crazy. It was a cafe so I ordered and opened a book. I vowed I was going to look normal because it was a fast food chain, the lights were the lighting equivalent of a blues – oriented band with guys just trying to have fun, but with neon lights, the doorman was a priest who let even under-aged kids in, giving them equal treatment with arms tightly crossed, uptight, democratically dispensing dirty looks to all. (He prided himself on treating everyone equally). The band pretended they had no goals so they could secretly keep alive their secret of “making it” hidden just under the surface. It fed their future and kept them alive through their day jobs and increasing demands on mind space made by their wives. I wouldn’t be so bad with just the wife, a guitarist remarked after an especially beer-ey practice, but the girl kid is copying her bitchiness, and now Its like I have two wives. This helped secure his place in the band as a permanent member. This whole situation has been discussed many times before, and I know you know the answer. Bored, I looked up Joseph Stalin. I was on a web site used for generating book reports by providing a summary that’s 10% as long. Would it work for me, would I learn from it? It provided the facts at least as well as a text book. The big neglect was they didn’t discuss his ill mind. The statistics weren’t enough. What would it take? Nobody knows, so you can submit your own personal estimate at home via web guessing how many people he killed due to his paranoia. It’s a poll on their web site, and history will be written according to the majority answer. I hear it’s lonely if you are undocumented so I voted.
Pulled into Popeye’s thinking this was New Orleans and somebody figured out to fast food it, the New Orleans experience I mean, but it was just a good KFC with some spices. I didn’t feel I missed anything by not trying it over and over. We DID try it over and over because a few of us had no money and this was the best we could do (Obviously lazy ass shits). When you’re in New Orleans and nearly broke plan on farting a lot more. Our budget dictated we switch over to Buster Holmes. Professor Longhair ate there (He sang “got those red beans cookin”) We perpetrated or even started the myth that he got those red beans cookin’ at Buster’s) ) Buster’s red beans and rice was a meal for nothing and it tasted great, but the farts from it – especially with beer. Blue flames. I was plugged into a tradition at last.
I carefully observed the regulars (my mentors, really) every time I went. One couple, every time he treated her wrong, her girdle was a little tighter. I developed many theories as to where the fat went. Some of it was obvious overflow.
My emotions overflowed my shirt that day too, and I understood men with hairy chests for the first time. I was sweating and for me, with little body hair, my shirt soaked right through. I figured the guys with more hairs would have the advantage of the hairs catching the moisture for them. Which one would turn on the girls?
I shaved. I didn’t know what else to do after that, so I shaved some more. I passed on the compulsion to shave myself all over, playing Freecell ever more.
As you can see, this has just about wind down. And if there’s anything that I’ve gotten really good it’s exiting the ship just before it goes down. Sitting in the bird sanctuary, I heard them. I asked for the magic there, they mistook my request and it put me in a mind-groove with Frigidair. Together we established that I owned none of their products but I needed some one to talk to and would you still be there?
He stared wheezing over the phone filling in this fairy tale that he was embellished more with each line and so it took him twice as long to deliver. He didn’t recognize what he was doing. We knew he wouldn’t care if he did. I thanked him over the phone. I could tell by the tone of the wheezing I was getting to him. He’s got one of the fast new fishing boats that made him intoxicated with an attachment to it bordering on psychotic. We categorized it as normal behavior because every one else thought it was normal. I filed it away in my brain to be processed at another time, for now I was absorbed in the Dylan line “I picked up the telephone, a foot came through the line”. It was infectious and even I jumped in. I was always a consumer too, but all I cared about was cars. Despite the obsession, I could have only the mildest influence on my dad as to what kind of car he’d buy. He figured out that it was not the base price of a car but the options are where the consumer loses. So he bought the cheapest model with no options. That was the starting point. We successfully argued for a radio and a heater. 1958. The windshield wipers were vacuum driven. You had to accept not seeing for long periods of time when you accelerated. That was the “bad time“ for vacuum wipers. If you floored it they’d totally stop. If u let off the gas the wipers would go on. I mantra’d “Everything in balance”, even back then, maybe better back then. So you accelerate mostly but when you needed to see, you’d back off the gas a bit and let the wipers run. This and a “Blue Flame” 145 Horsepower six. It was the cheapest motor, of course. When farts are lit with a lighter they make a “Blue Flame”, too, as I learned after eating at Buster’s many years later.
We had dessert. Chocolate éclairs were always trouble. So easily squashable. “Now vee take da weenie and it doesn’t work.” Anybody could squash éclair weenies. So fuck all those bullies.
145, like the basics of the blues, 1-4-5, would have to do. I didn’t settle for 20, I was happy there. I Hope this answers your questions and gets you through another week.
Good night, and good luck,
Your pal
Chance Hardly (AKA MC “Liquid Ice”)
