All Things Must Pass (B-sides)

Drunk off but three gulps I sit here in my five-hundred dollar room and listen to George Harrison beg forgiveness from God. A bartender with pigtails and a well-carried paunch helped bring me here. She flirted with me amiably and fished for my birthday. I flirted back, in spite of her preoccupation with astrology and with no other motive than some human back and forth. "I'm a Leo, as if you didn't know already," she purred. I smiled, but I kept writing. My Bloody Valentine was playing on the jukebox, a song called "Only Shallow". Reminded of the moment I bought that record, I was in turn overcome by a myriad of other St. Mark's Place memories: a group of arabs peddling silly hats and bongs to european teenagers, mingling smells of yakitori and magnolias, the buzz of what I thought was love, an iced tea with pieces of lychee in it. Instead of writing any of this down, I signaled my bartender, "I'm ready for that blind PBR taste test".
Two Narragansett tall boys and a free shot later I ran into a friend of mine - a Willem Dafoe look alike. Toothy and bug-eyed he told me how he had just cleaned up in a grab game. "I can win something in four bucks," he explained animatedly, "it's all a matter of shift, grab, drop, shift, grab, drop." His prize was a DVD, which he wore in his breast pocket in place of a kerchief. The DVD was called 'All Natural Babes' and on the cover was a picture of a naked woman with beautiful flowing curls squatting, legs open, about to suck a large, uncircumcised cock. "I've never been one for finding a sense self-worth in drugs or alcohol - I've found other things, yes - but winning porn in a drop game: I don't know why, but that makes you feel a better man." I laughed, but he was only half-joking. "I've been on a natural high for the past, like, three hours"
We wanted to play darts, but there were no open boards, so we opted for pool instead. I spent the whole game remembering that billiards place on twenty-sixth and fifth in Manhattan, of a time where there was no need to qualify such statements as "twenty-sixth and fifth". There were no burgeoning lines on my face then, no erythema in my colon. A girl there one night pitched past me carrying two pool cues and something about her gait reminded me of the past. "I know her from somewhere," I told my disparate group of friends. We were all thinking the same thing. We spent a good part of the night laboring to identify her, until one of us realized that underneath the piercings and the tattoos and skinny, skinny arms, she was Becky from "Roseanne". The first one. This realization carried with it a deep, abstract sadness.
"Judah! Tell your friends it's time to fucking leave." The order came from the same prog-rocker looking bouncer who took a full minute to inspect my I.D. Shaking hands with the Lioness bartender, I left to come back here with nothing to do but write run-on sentences and eat an almond butter and jelly sandwich and listen to All Things Must Pass B-Sides, wondering if anything I write will have any emotional resonance with ANYone but myself; whether it's even a good idea to be updating my blog after drinking. All the while George is still singing, pleading, "Oh, wont you hear me lord!"

A post about The Spin Doctors

I was at a truck stop Arby's at eleven a.m., buzzing from a mix of muted passion and that excitement so intertwined with being on the road on a crisp fall morning. The man behind me on line* wore a bushy blond mustache and oversized glasses which made him look like Bud Court in 'The Life Aquatic'. His straw hat and pink sandals clued me to eccentricity, so I kept him in my peripheral vision and noticed a distinct rhythmic bounce. With nothing to do but wait, I looked down at the shoes of the guy in front of me. Brown Kenneth Cole wingtips were tapping with a beat too regular to be from impatience or nerves. The well-groomed Korean businessman attached to these shoes was bobbing his head inconspicuously, as were the two Hasids in front of him. More noticeable was the freckled college student who was almost dancing, shaking in her hand the receipt that I assumed was for curly fries. I watched her hips for a few moments and listened. That hook was unmistakable. Playing on the tinny Arby's radio was "Two Princes", and the obese** black lady behind the register was singing along silently. "Said, if you want to call me baby, just go ahead now," she mouthed in the general direction of my Chinese bus driver, who shook his keys on each backbeat. Nearly everyone in this surprisingly crowded, surprisingly diverse late-morning truck stop Arby's was rocking out to The Spin Doctors. I watched them all in their separate spheres, not noticing one another. I was probably tapping my feet a little too.
Having a sudden urge to tell someone about this, I took out my phone to text a girl who I had been thinking about a lot lately. I hesitated though, suddenly filled with doubts. The doubts won over and I put my phone away. Another part of me wanted to text an old friend. Chris Barron's name would bring her back to a specific, lovely moment we spent together. But I knew it had been too long. Instead I told nobody and ordered my roast beef gyro***. Eventually the song changed, but not to one I wanted like "Mr. Jones" or "Virtual Insanity", but rather to something new and unrecognized, and we all got back on the same speechless bus, headed to a better destination.



* lay off, non-New Yorkers
** hey, I would be too if I worked at Arby's
*** that gyro was delicious by the way

Other People's Blogs

"I want to update this, I really do", he thinks, mouthing the words. His name is Simon or Hyrum or something and is a wiry Jew with a brick layer's spine and scrivener's eyes. Scratching the psoriasis under his peyas, he ponders, "is anythink in this life is really verth recording for posterity?" (Even his ponderances are in a thick Yiddish accent.)

I like to think I don't share his sentiments, but everything I write, every comma-laden, meandering prose-poem cannot escape autobiography, so in turn, I cannot be sure.

Hyrum sits in his humorless apartment, not writing, eating a McDonald's Fish Fillet and a can of green beans, reading other people's blogs.