Journal mcgrew's Journal: Nothing But Trouble 6
September the thirteenth is always nothing but trouble for me, especially if it's a weekend, as I get emotional on that day. Friday September thirteenth was the day Evil-X left me for another man. But this year was going to be different. This year I had somebody; I wouldn't have to go to a bar to keep from being alone. Friday morning I spied a kotex in the bathroom trash can. Well, I'd have company, anyway.
Saturday Felber's was having a "Customer Appreciation Day" with free food and live music. Lucy Furr (Tami) was going to bring some deviled eggs.
Friday night we went up to Felbers and had a few beers and a good time, without a single bitch session from her. She struck up a conversation with a woman named Tammie, who mentioned her boyfriend at home. Tami and I went home, to bed early.
Saturday morning she was gone. It was a bit destressing; she didn't even leave a note. Worse, when I went out on the front porch there were bags and boxes with shoes and clothers and books and the like piled on it. On second look it wasn't her stuff.
I had no clue where she was, or where the stuff came from. I sat on the porch, puzzled and lonely, drinking my coffee when the phone rang. It was Tami.
"Hi, I thought you would be worried so I thought I'd call. Now don't get mad, I'm at Jessie's. He almost cut his fingers off smashing a window at his house last night and called me and I came over to bandage him up." Jessie is the ex-boyfriend.
"There was blood all over the place," she said. "I had a hard time getting the bleeding stopped. I was pretty drunk and just crashed on his couch."
Uh, oh. Nothing but trouble. "You could have left a note," I said.
"I'm sorry, I didn't have time, it was an emergency. Anyway I just got up to use the bathroom and I'm going to nap a while, I'll come home when I wake up and make those deviled eggs and meet you at Felber's."
"What's all that stuff on the porch?" I asked.
"What stuff?"
"Bags and boxes of clothes and stuff," I said.
"It wasn't there when I left, that was about three. I'd probably tripped over it and broken my neck."
The car was sitting in the driveway, out of gas and with a flat tire. I drank a few more cups of coffee, got the gas can out of the garage and started walking to the gas station. Halfway there there was an ugly skinny woman cursing an old man. On second look he probably wasn't old at all, but had been putting up with the crazy bitch that was screaming at him. Poor fellow, there are worse things than lonliness.
My phone rang. When I answered it I figured out at once where the stuff on the porch came from.
"Hi, It's Amy. Whatcha doin'?"
"Walking to the gas station, I coasted into the driveway the other day. Hey, there's a bunch of stuff on my porch, do you know anything about it?"
"What kind of stuff?"
I told her. "That's mine, "she said. "That motherfucker must have come by and put my stuff on your porch thinking I was with you. God damn him, he can't do that, my name's on the lease! Can he?"
She asked me to put it inside or at least in the garage, and I said OK. I hadn't seen Amy in two weeks.
Trouble. Nothing but trouble. Jesus, but that woman can drink. "Where's Tami?" she asked.
"I don't know," I lied in embarrassment. "The library maybe, she didn't say. She'll be back later, we're going to Felber's for that customer appreciation party."
"Maybe I'll meet you there," she said.
"I wish you wouldn't. You start drinking and you start trouble."
"So I'm nothing but trouble?" she demanded. "Look," I said, "you know how you are."
On the way home I passed George, coming the other direction on a bicycle. Apparently he was out of gas, too. And money; he wasn't carrying a can. The whores had probably cleaned him out again. I got home, changed the tire, put all but one of Amy's boxes in the garage and the rest in the house and drank some more coffee. I was starting to get the jitters. About one or so I walked up to Felber's.
Mike, the owner, who also owns a small construction company, and his crew were building a small stage and a fence around the beer garden. I went inside the bar and got a beer. "Where's your woman?" Someone asked. "Sleeping", I answered. I didn't mention where.
A while later Mike came in. "Does anybody have a potato slicer and a peeler?"
"I do," I said. "I'm going home to take a shower in a while, I'll bring them back up with me."
"Ok, thanks." He put two boxes of pollack on one of the tables. "Having walleye, eh?" I asked. Real walleye is, I've heard, endangered and illegal, so people sell pollack and just call it walleye. About every bar and restaraunt in town has all you can eat "walleye" every Friday.
I'd left a note for Tami to call when she got home, and had left my phone there. The bar phone rang and Mike answered it, and pointed to me and set the reciever down. I picked it up -- Tami was home and boiling.
Eggs, that is. I told her I was coming back for a shower and would see her shortly. As I walked outside, there was canned music from a laptop playing through a speaker stack.
"Look," I said when I got home, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention where you spent the night last night."
She went off, angry at me for telling anyone that we were a couple -- when in fact I hadn't. She eventually calmed down after I took my shower and we walked back up to Felber's, spud tools and deviled eggs in hand. The place was more crowded than I'd ever seen it. I got a couple of beers for us and went back outside.
A band set up and did a sound check, and finally started playing.
They weren't very good. The guitar seemed a bit out of tune and the player seemed to know nothing but chords, and the singer wasn't any good at all. As they were playing Hotel California the crowd helped the poor singer out and sang along.
Plenty of room the Hotel California
Such a nice surprise
With your alibis...
The microphone and bass went dead, and the tone of the guitar changed - it was only coming from the tube amp. The stack had blown a fuse. The crowd kept singing.
Mirrors on the cieling
Pink champaigne on ice
We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device
The band stopped and Connie's son Oakie, a drummer who was running the sound board, started looking for whatever fuse was blown. I went in for more beer and use the restroom. I must have stood outside the door for a good twenty minutes wondering what the hell whoever was in there was doing. I gave up and used the port-a-potty outside.
By then, the band was packing up, and another band was packing down. The drummer was a woman who was at Felber's quite often; a heavy, muscled woman who seemed more masculine than me. The singer was wearing a T-shirt that read "HOMELAND SECURITY" with a picture of various indigenous Americans that the rednecks call "Injuns", over a logo that read "Fighting terrorists since 1492". He took the mike and thanked everyone for being there, and said "We're N.B.T. -- Nothing But Trouble!"
They were a damned good blues band, playing Stevie Ray Vaughn better than Vaughn himself did. The guitar player was a virtual virtuoso who would make Eric Clapton jealous. I was having a real good time, and about seven or so Tami said she was tired and wanted to go home and crash. I said OK and she left. I ate two platefuls of food. There was plenty, despite the fact that there were probably more people inside the bar than the law allows, and outside the beer garden was packed, too. Almost everybody was there.
An attractive woman in a red t-shirt hit on me when I was in the bar getting a beer. There was something about her that told me she was nothing but... married? I don't know, but I sensed trouble and turned her down and went back outside.
I saw Tammie, the woman who Tami had met the night before. "Where's your old man?" I asked. "He's home starting a fire in the back yard. Whare's Tami?" I told her Tami had been tired and had gone home. "Well," she said, "you guys are invited if you want to come."
"Ok, thanks, I'll ask her when I get home".
The stage lights went out, forcing the band to take a break while Oakie hunted for the cause of the trouble. Donnie and Brenda were arguing, and Donnie almost got into a fight with a drunken fellow I'd never seen before, but the guy fell down before Donnie had a chance to hit him.
They ran out of my brand of draft and I switched to bottles. Finally the band quit, I finished my beer and staggered on home.
There was a note: She needed some time to herself and would be back in a day or two. I started crying like a little girl, opened a beer and sat on the porch.
The phone rang -- it was Tammie, inviting us over again. I told her about the note and all, and she said I was still invited even without Tami. I said thanks but I was just going to bed, I'd bring everyone down. Actually, I didn't know the boyfrined and I thought that to have some guy she'd met in a bar show up alone would be, well, nothing but trouble.
The next morning was the thirteenth, and I was alone. I was miserable. At least there would be Mike King's blues show at noon.
Nope, neither Mike or Dan were there, and no blues. Except the blues inside me. I drove to Felber's, and it was pretty dead, only three or four people there. I went outside, turned on the car radio and drink my beer by myself. Finally I called Charlie and asked her what she was doing. "Nothing, why?" I explained the signifigance of the day and how Tami was gone and told her if she came up I'd buy her a beer. She rode up on a bicycle shortly and we put it in the trunk and drank a beer or two.
Her phone rang. Someone wanted a ride, and I said "sure". While we were out her phone died, and she wanted to go back home and charge it up. I dropped her and her bicycle off, took the car home and walked back up to Felber's.
When I got home I sat on the porch, lonely and blue. A woman walked up with a leaflet about some neighborhood association thing. "You look troubled", she said. "Yeah," I replied, "Nothing but trouble. If you're a Christian, would you pray for me?"
"I'm Catholic, is that good enough?"
"Catholics are Christians", I said. She smiled. "Yes, we are".
This morning I woke up before the alarm went off, having gone to bed early, and was surprised that my blues were gone. I was at peace. September the thirteenth was over, and Trouble was gone.
One of your best (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Generally Busch. Killian's is my favorite, but it's expensive and not many places carry it here.
Dude! (Score:2)
I feel for you.
I remember one time where I asked a friend to come to a party where my band was going to play (she had been my girlfriend at some point).
The date of that party was, coincidentally, our old "anniversary", and I was planning on trying to hook up with her again...
Imagine my surprise when, halfway through our song set, I look down and see the girl of my dreams, who should have been looking up to me with stars in her eyes (had this been a perfect world), making out with some scruffy-looking jerkas
Every time you post one of these... (Score:2)
...I think about finding the first entries and reading my way up to the now and here, but something always seems to happen before I get to it.
Tell me, where do you recommend on starting so that I can stop confusing all those crazy 46,XX?
What a pity you're on another continent. Otherwise I'd come over to drink with you next September, 13th.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell me, where do you recommend on starting so that I can stop confusing all those crazy 46,XX?
Start here [kuro5hin.org], then follow the links in this journal [slashdot.org], then this one [slashdot.org]. That brings you from about 2002 or 2003 all the way to last January. But, you'll probaly keep getting those crazy 42,XXs confused, because some have the same names (I know at least five women with the same pronunciation but not the same spoelling as Tami, for instance, and sometimes I've changed some names to protect the guilty).