Remember Kids: Schedule Your Yearly Rectal Exam TODAY!
11.11.05 (6:07 am) [edit]Melinda left a message on my cell last night. She might be working late tonight, but I can still come by at 7 and we'll still plan on getting together. She sounded tired. Or bored. Not a lot of energy. Come to think of it, she wasn't exaclty bouncing around when I saw her last. I hope she doesn't fall asleep on me. Though I wouldn't be surprised...
Had a nice practice with Dennis last night. I think our "acoustic duo" is going to actually have me playing electric guitar at least half, if not two-thirds of the time. It seems to suit us better. It's a different sound, it fits his voice well, and I just feel better about it. He's very set on only having so much of a "folky" vibe. He wants it to be more rock, and I'm fine with that. I can get my folk side out on my own if I ever get around to doing my own solo thing. I'm more interested in this right now, because...well, because it's easier not to have to work so much on singing. I'd rather let someone else do that for now, and anyway, I will be doing a fair amount of harmony for him.
He played me something I hadn't heard in ages. A version of us doing I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, just the two of us. It's just a bit too raw a recording for my liking, but he sings it beautifully. I love hearing him on the lower end of his range. I'm looking forward to this getting out on the road, though it will likely be the beginning of the year.
The only gig I knew about in Cincy is cancelled now, which is irritating. I don't know how I'm going to survive December. I'm already fighting to keep up on bills, and I start paying child support in a few weeks. It was made clear today (like I didn't know already) that neither I or anyone else will be hired on regularly at the warehouse anytime soon. Ain't gonna happen for at least six months, probably longer. So I can forget about the extra buck or two an hour that would pretty much not actually save my ass but at least not land me in fucking debtor's prison in a year. The temp agency won't find me anything else unless I quit this job first, which I'm loathe to do given how pathetic they were at working me more than a couple days a week before finally getting me here. I doubt they'll find me anything better anyway. I kinda like this job. Not really, but at least the people are cool, all the way up to the plant manager. I spent ten minutes with him yesterday, watching him fuck with the new handheld PCs we'll be using soon. I can joke around with the guy who leads me and a hundred other employees, and that's a very nice thing. I have security here. I'll have to fuck up hugely to lose this job. (You know, like fall to my knees and beg Jenny to allow me to be her love slave. That's ONE way to fuck up, you know.) I'm one of two people responsible for over a quarter million dollars of merchandise out the door each week, I've been there long enough that if I fuck something up it can be fixed quickly, and they don't want to train a new guy. The guy I work with likes me, and he's really the one who could kill my chances there if he didn't. So I know I have a job. I just don't get PAID worth a shit.
Jenny has looked even more utterly amazing than normal recently, so it's good that I've learned to avoid her. I can't be near her more than 20 seconds without wanting to explode. She walked by a few days ago, her hair down, wearing those black pants that make her ass look so perfectly round, and I looked at my co-worker and said, "She is truly the Incredible Edible Jen." I'd bring napkins and a bottle of Bacardi Limon to that luncheon. I'd lick every spare millimeter of that lucious little vixen.
The last time I saw Amanda, she mentioned her six-year old daughter. The love in her voice struck me hard, and I pulled out my wallet to show her a picture of Katie. She went NUTS. "Oh my GOD! She's BEAUTIFUL! Wow! She is such a beautiful little girl!"
That's the test. If a woman doesn't react strongly to a picture of my baby, she can go fuck off. I'm gonna hold on to that little test, dammit.
I had Katie all weekend. We met my parents and went to the Children's Museum here in town, which was a lot of fun. We had a nice dinner and they went back to Marion. Katie and I went to bed very early Saturday night and slept for a long time. (Well, she did. I woke up three or four times.) We spent Sunday watching MST3K and playing around.
She wasn't as heavy on it as last time, but she did say a few times how much she missed me during the week. The previous time she brought it up a lot. This time, the second most painful thing I had to hear was "I wish our family could be a family again."
Damn, Katie. That hurt.
I told her we are a family. But we have a different way of being one now. She said, "That's the way it has to be." Which REALLY hurt. I've said that to her, and so has Sheryl. And it's the truth. But the way she repeated it back was like a parrot. Like a soldier reciting marching orders. It was stiff, rehearsed. Fuck. Hearing my little girl reciting something she is expected to believe but doesn't actually feel herself...I hated myself for a while after that. It IS the way it has to be, because I'm not now and honestly never really have any intention of being a good husband. It's not my priority anymore. I tried to make it a priority and failed miserably, and I just don't give a shit anymore. I have other things to do. But unfortunately, she's caught in the middle of that, and I HAVE to be a good father, or at least the best I can be under these stupid circumstances I've inflicted on both of us. I'm close enough to be an important part of her life, but too far away to have any real control over anything other than the limited time we have together. It IS the way it has to be, but it feels like I'm setting her up for some real disappointment. Having to stay home last weekend being sick really tore me up, because I don't want to have to fuck with her expectations like that any more than I absolutely have to. And it terrifies me to think what will happen in upcoming weeks when I'll suddenly be paying the state of Ohio the same amount of money to send her in support that it costs me to have that one day a week with her. I can barely pull it off right now. Why the FUCK did I move here???
Well, I know why. But it doesn't make it any better. I did it because I saw some small opportunity here that I didn't have in Cincy. The chance to fall back into music with minimal time and effort. Playing again with people I know, people I like, doing stuff that comes very, very naturally to me, and getting paid for it. I HAD to come here. Hell, the little money I've made has been what's got me through these months, and it might have taken longer to do it otherwise. It might not last, but it has to be this way right now. (Oops, said THAT line again.) Starting something from scratch would have sucked on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the simple fact that even doing what I'm doing now, I'm only hitting maybe 20% of my musical personality, and I better have something to hang onto if I'm going to be skimming the surface like that. I have guys who I like to be around, who are easy to work with. Working with Dennis is a treat because I know exactly what I'm in for. He knows exactly what he wants to hear and I give it to him. There's not a lot of gray area. Which is why we'll be able to be road-worthy in about six practices. That beats the shit out of doing something with people I don't know, with no defined boundaries, which is always what happens. I don't operate well that way. I'm scattered enough, I don't need three or four other people who don't know shit either. The band in Fairmount works for me becuase there's a lot of mateiral ready to go. Working on new material with them usually sucks. I've HATED most of the practice time with them, because nobdoy has a real handle on making shit work. But it hasn't mattered, becuase we require practice only when learning new shit, and there's been little of that. We're quite capable of playing two very different shows back to back with the amount of material we have, so there ya go. I can come in and do my thingt, and I'm good enough to bullshit my way through even the stuff I barely know as long as everyone else knows it. I get paid, I drink a couple brews, I watch drunken redneck women dance. It's a good thing. It ain't the psychotic psychedelic-prog-polka-fu sion-death-reggae unit of my dreams, but it'll do for now.
Well, off to work. And I've got a log the size of a redwood waiting to exit my orifice.
Love,
Dougie