Get Thee Behind Me, Tom Scholz!

Get Thee Behind Me, Tom Scholz!

God, she looked wonderful.

I went through Indianapolis on the way home. Stopped at a specific lunch destination.

Its been, what, a month?

Another girl sat me down. She almost had me at the table second to the back, but I like that back corner seat.

"I didn't think men liked to be put into a corner."

"It's the way I live my life, honey."

The familiar voice from behind the waitress counter. "You want a chili five-way, hon?"

"You know it, baby!"

She stepped out and drifted on a cloud of artery-clogging food towards me. My kind of angel. A little ragged around the edges, not a poster girl. Just a real live breathing woman. I tend to put them on Goddess Pedastals they don't deserve or ask to be on, or I view them almost strictly as fuckbags. I feel shitty about that, but I still do it to nearly every woman I encounter.

Not Amanda. She's the real thing. Anything that would ever happen between us would likely turn to shit within six months, I somehow know that, but there's that part of me that still wants it. Just to know the touch of somebody very real, very human. I've known it before, but it's been too long.

She still has the power. It hits less hard, it mostly comes with a sense of wistful nostalgia for what never really was. But those eyes still melt me. She's taken to a bit more makeup these days, which is totally wrong for her, I think. But not too much, thank fuck. It's still Amanda, and she still has that smile.

We caught up on each other, I gazed off into the wonderful world of that face and got the same laugh that I always get when she catches me lost in her eyes like that, and she was very warm, very interested in how I've been. I asked her how she was. "Same shit. Some good, some bad." I know her enough to know what she means by that.

It's a closed book for anything more than what it is now. But I was glad to be there. I left with a feeling that I seem addicted to these days - that grey zone between...magic and loss? That's the phrase that just came into my head. Fuck, I don't know. The feeling of looking for the next best thing, but not able to forget what lay behind.

I need that good/bad stew to feed on. I tend to add in some Tabasco. Tipping the scale towards one at the expense of the other renders me immobile. I fight it every day, it seems to be the shit my life is made of. The shit that I can't write about without getting this fucking pretentious.

Fuck.

I love her. Dammit. I still do.

I've had to face a basic fundamental question in my life today - why is it that I get more philosophical enlightenment and spiritual encouragement from a handful of Warren Zevon albums than I ever got from Christianity?

Jesus tried to set an example for how we should live. Warren reflects back onto me how I DO live. Jesus got nailed to a tree. Warren had too many burgers and cigarettes.

Jesus and Warren are both dead. But Warren's words haven't been changed by the scribes, and they're funnier. They're alive and well in my speakers. And anyway, Jesus didn't have Waddy Wachtel in his band of merry men. These are the things that matter to me as I sit here and try not to drink. Too much.

I've got a bitter pot of je ne sais quoi
Guess what--I'm stirring it with a monkey's paw
Since I saw you coming out of my barber's shop
In that skimpy little halter top

Did you light the candles? Did you put on "Kind of Blue?"
Did you use that Ivy League voodoo on him, too?
He thinks he'll be alright but he doesn't know for sure
Like every other unindicted coconspirator

Mata Hari had a house in France
Where she worked on all her secret plans
Men were falling for her sight unseen
She was a genius

There's a a face in every window of the Songwriters' Neighborhood
Everybody's your best friend when you're doing well--I mean good
The poet who lived next door when you were young and poor
Grew up to be a backstabbing entrepreneur

Albert Einstein was a ladies' man
While he was working on his universal plan
He was making out like Charlie Sheen
He was a genius

When you dropped me and you staked your claim
On a V.I.P. who could make your name
You latched on to him and I became
A minor inconvenience
Your protégé don't care about art
I'm the one who always told you you were smart
You broke my heart into smithereens
And that took genius

You and the barber make a handsome pair
Guess what--I never liked the way he cut your hair
I didn't like the way he turned your head
But there's nothing I can do or say I haven't done or said

Everybody needs a place to stand
And a method for their schemes and scams
If I could only get my record clean
I'd be a genius

It took Sinbad seven voyages. How the fuck many will it take for my ass to figure it out?

Love,
Dougie

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