Run Sheet
01/11/03
One of those nights
One of those nights where you have to find a bar. Not just any bar, but a small bar in a small town. A bar that reeks of tobbacco and stale beer, a place with a bouncer that lurks at the door with his meaty arms crossed, who does what he can to menace the people passing by. A bar that doesn't worry about repeat customers because they know that anyone coming through their door has nowhere else to go. A bar with a front door that hinges both ways, swinging in when you get there, and out when your face hits it after that bouncer throws you through it. A bar with a gravel parking lot that you can grind the other guy's face into when you're lucky. Or that you feel chewing into your cheek when you're coughing blood and puke.His boots in your ribs when the luck runs out.
A night where you need to feel the bourbon slam into your throat and pull the breath out of your lungs like a punch in the guts. Fire racing through your chest. Feeling your face numb and your head heavy. Where you slam your glass on the table in time to the music and snarl to yourself. Where you watch the wet rings form a pattern. Art on formica. Smiling at the reflection of the stage lights, snorting instead of laughing and looking up to see across the smoke and hopelessness.
One of those rainy, muggy nights, hot, in the summer, where you drive downtown with the window of your '67 Pontiac open and the water running cool along your arm. Where your headlights catch the end of town, when the lights glow in your rear-view mirror and you imagine yourself just leaving everything, every single goddamned worthless thing in your life and driving, just driving until you find whatever it is that will fill that echoing hole in your chest, that will stop the rats from chewing it.
Because you know it's out there somewhere in that darkness, you've looked for it this long. You sure as hell can't endure the thought it isn't. Maybe it's over that hill, and maybe it's eighteen hours down the highway. But goddamn, it always feels like it's right there, just out of sight and just about to be found. Sometimes that's all that keeps the barrel out of your mouth, that and you hate the oily taste.
You don't know what it is, the only thing you're certain of is that you'll know it when you find it.
Instead you drop the throttle to the floor and watch the speedo track across that wide, 1960's style speedometer until it pegs at the other end. You feel the big car float along the imperfections in the road. Your right wrist hangs lazily over the top of the wheel and your left elbow is on the windowsill. Music plays rom the tinny AM radio and the wipers moan across the glass.The rain is pressed to marching beads by the hurricane you're making. It's the only power you have. Your leg cramps from pushing the accelerator against the unyielding floorboards trying to outrun the hole, that's still there, that echoes even over the Beach Boy's tune coming from the dashboard speaker.
You wonder lazily if the next few minutes will bring exerything spinning in a hail of dirt and grass and headlights, noise, pain and blackness. And wondering if you give a shit one way or the other.
But at least the adrenaline has woken you up a bit.
Nights where you laugh with other men who have the same holes in themselves. Men who would rather kill you or themselves before letting anyone else on the planet know there's a dark, poisonous hole right there hidden under their shirt. Some of them will, given time.
You laugh at things that really aren't funny, and you yell into each other's ears because the music is so goddamned loud.
The knife in your boot rubs your leg and you feel a little less naked, but only a litle.
Nights where you flirt savagely with women who are dolled up to find a guy like you, to fill the same hole you're carrying. You'll dance, you'll laugh, you'll lie. Perhaps you'll take her somewhere for a fuck as cheap as the bar you found each other in, and afterward you'll wonder why the hole still echoes in your chest.
Stupid bitch
Nights where you yell "COWBOY FAGGOT!" at no one in particular, just to start a fight.
Nights where you keep driving.
Nights where you finally return to where you live and wonder where home is.
Nights where nothing good will
ever happen, but there's nowhere else to look.