Nobody wants to hear a man
complain about not being rich and famous.
Or about having to work at a job that grinds his guts
to glass. Nobody in publishing wants to hear a man gloat
about escaping the trap, about not becoming a consumerist.
They're all consumerists. They're all trapped. Who does he think
he is? The Lone Ranger? A comedic influence on Dave Chapelle
was Bugs Bunny. I was influenced by Saturday afternoon serials
and The Hardy Boys. Later by paperback originals. Antiheroes.
Later still by the nouveau roman, or antinovel.
Postmodernism must be desconstructed.
Gastronomy has sunk into a desuetude.
I am too literary for the hoi polloi
and too vulgar for the English teachers.
Just right for Iceland.

Joe Bell died at 66.
He was bothered by the alcoholism.
Perhaps emphysema, too. He smoked and drank.
I once wrote a screenplay about my own wake,
a cross between The Anniversary Party and Last Orders.
It featured a bunch of women my age who called themselves
the Hogtown Hellcats and their mates and spouses, children,
grandchildren, they all drank and smoked too, the actors,
the people the movies were based upon. You can say I was
an ex-smoker, a reformed drunk, but which reformed is
and which closet backslider, sneak, weekend dissolute,
secret coffee drinker, first it's the Super Bowl and then
the Olympics. I am made to feel inadequate because
I don't drive a Hummer or have season tickets.
I hope not to leave my wife in debt.
I just took out a term life insurance policy
with AARP for enough to pay the house off,
but the premiums are difficult to make
on my limited income. Steve Vaughn says
he'd like for his enormous cache of paintings
not to be a burden on his children and to get
his old truck running. Lots of luck, GI:
pretty soon payday.
Old age is not for sissies.
We'll take care of your wife and family.
About like we took care of you.
When I die, they'll bury me,
because if they don't, I'll stink.
Save the tiger. Fuck the tiger, fuck the panda,
the polar bear, the melting icecaps, I can't even
save myself, how can I save anybody else?
By writing pamphlets, screeds, philippics, jeremiads,
and pasquinades? Whistle sheets? Pass the toilet paper.
Ha ha, there ain't any.

Hunter S. Thompson was 67
when he shot himself. I'm 66.
I didn't have as interesting a life
as he did but I got more work done.
A. J. Liebling said Stephen Crane
wasn't suicidal and he didn't have
a death wish. He died of what kills most
white middle-class men his age.
Anxiety over money.
Chronic debt, and no way
to earn a gainful livelihood,
without dishonest customs.
The constant attrition of the wood,
that is, the nutmeg, wore him away,
like Chinese water torture.
A clapped-out nutmeg-grater.

I remember when Wild Horse died.
I looked at him in his coffin and remembered
stories of his craziness. I remember Uncle Potter.
Duke wrote a song about him, "Potter's Moon."
Potter broke up a band, Old Truck, so he wouldn't
have to fire Wild Horse. He couldn't do it.

I drove to Andalusia
through DeFuniak Springs,
so it was just like when
I was commuting. Is that
a repetition or a rotation?
This time I had a portable CD player
and some jazz CDs. A headset.
I looked like a nigger airplane pilot.
I wants to be in missiles.
Can you count from ten to one
backwards? No, but I can work it out
on a slide rule. The Booker T. Washington School
of International Diplomacy and Public Administration.
I wants to be a senior fellow at a prestigious right-wing
think tank. The Hoover Institute, say. The Nobel Peace Prize
for Literature. I wants to fuck white women. Is Florala in Florida,
or Alabama. It's both. Although in Florida, it's called Paxton.
The Republican Party is a big tent. What has the Democratic Party
ever done for me? How about the Civil Rights Act? Equal Employment
Opportunity? Quit your whining, man. Have you no dignity.

In went in to DeFuniak the back way,
through Euchee Valley on County Road 280.
It reminded me of Christmas, when Brenda and I drove
to Balder and Jennifer's with Captain Breezy. It was
Captain Breezy all the time, a Captain Breezy marathon,
or weekend. Then the same thing at New Years.

I remember a sergeant who had
a Plymouth or a Dodge with a 45 rpm
record player in it, under the dash,
and to keep the tonearm from skipping,
it was mounted upside down, with a counterweight
that ate the grooves in no time flat. I'd say that anti-skip
technology in my portable CD player has made advances.
That thing was like a catapult or siege engine, compared to
a computerized artillery piece.