"Hey dillweed!"
Silence... I can see the toll plaza off in the distance by the dead steel factory. There are fields and fields of warehouses now vacant, storing memories of busy sweaty days long gone extinct. The moonlight bounces off like an occasional dejected spark in hollow eyes that used to feed children, but now they just stare vacantly out over the dull bay.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP... "Don??? DON!!!"
The factory smiled at me. I swear it, and it blinked. It was getting late, or it was getting early, well, it was getting to be some time, that much was certain. We were headed to the Gold Club in the city. I shot a commercial there, some photo and video spread with a couple of strippers. I wonder what Buddha would have thought about that. Less is more honey, so you need less clothing so that I can see more of you. They liked my hair. I can honestly say I was sexually assaulted by those two girls on the floor of that bar, and I have no clue what anyone could complain about. They were blonde, they were cute, they made out, and they bought me shots. I wish it was as much of a turn on as it should have been but it was weird and it felt dirty. I'm a talking pig with marshmallow lies for brains. It made me believe God could actually be some squatting golden fat guy. I didn't care if they were faking it or not. So we were going to see them like some stray dog you feed that keeps coming back with an ever growing pack looking for more, more, more.
"DON!!! Dude, you have an open beer in your HAND. I'm gonna' KILL YOU when we get out of jail!"
Actually my beer was empty and it was really getting wet on top of the car which was killing my hair, and I was not finding Nirvana or sum of Dharma or any of that junk in the cold wet rain. I was just getting cold, cranky, and wet.
"Don, I am getting tired of talking you off of rooftops and ledges. Get in the car with the open beer."
I crawled back in the car pretty easily. It was wet but it wasn't oily wet. The air smelled like dead fish and salt. Jason punched me in the arm and I hid the beer can beneath the seat. He chucked three quarters in the basket and didn't wait to watch them swirl and get swallowed down like the last gulp in a toilet bowl. I opened another beer and drank lustily. Ah, bliss.
The factory was still dead and somewhere some guy was slowly killing himself shot by shot while he mourned the loss of his late job and his present lack of income. While he tried to forget about the fact that he needed to figure out how he was going to feed his kid, I was going to go play with a bunch of strippers and drink stupid amounts of alcohol, but in the end we were in the same boat, wasting away trying to find some sort of balance to get though one more day in this garbage pit.
In retrospect, that guy needed my strippers more than me that day, but I certainly didn't need any kids.
But you know what, you snooze you lose! I think that's Nietszche, and sometimes he makes a whole lot more sense than Buddha or mindfulness meditation.