How I became a dump attendant...

...wasn't easy. You have to lie and cheat and steal and live a life of total immersion in drugs and alcohol if you're going to claw your way to the bottom - and I became past master at these scurrilous and nefarious forms of subhuman existence. Becoming a dump attendant has been the trial of my life so far...this life which has brought me to a screeching standstill. Where is there to go but up?

O and don't get me wrong - I love my job. It is in fact the longest job I've ever held except for four honorable years (63-67) in the Navy. All in all it is a simple task and one for which I'm grateful. It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it and none come more qualfied to wallow in swill than I, believe it... Ahhh, life and its endless variations, huh? As a callow youth my game plan did not include the present - I prepared for the future and it never got here. I wasn't prepared for my present life as a dump attendant.

My fantasies had groomed me for superstardom. Somehow I figured to be enjying caviar and champagne (or whatever you drink with caviar...vodka!) in ancient Athens - sloe-eyed, dusky Mediterranean ladies hanging on my every, ah - word, but no as luck would have it things got confused along the way and there you go... It seems so ironic that I spend my life squashing Pampers. Ironic and JUST I might add because you reap what you sow. It's fate. I always figured I was born to an uncommon destiny and it's true: there aren't THAT many dump attedants. We are unique.

Not exactly the apogee of ambition granted and what sort of magnum opus may come from all this trash I do not know...but tend we must. Everybody's gotta do something! If you're nursing a huge chilled pina colada from a coconut in a hammock on Maui, well you'll just have to live with it, it's what you're supposed to be doing in The Cosmos. Unfortunately that's also true if you happen to be plummeting earthward in an out-of-control DC-10. On the other hand I could be wrong; maybe we are able to alter destiny by ever so slight an insinuation of free will...

O the hell with all this metaphysical crap! now I can barely function. Does your life get like that? I mean I don't want to do ANYthing. You have to though. You have to keep up appearances. Why I don't know but you just can't walk around moaning and groaning and bemoaning your fate...other people got their trials too and only so much spare time from them can be devoted to your troubles. Basically, you're on your own. Don't let me wax preachy on you. Just tell me to layoffand I will.

"YOUNG MEN LIVING IN OLD MENS' BODIES..."

...is more or less how my friend Jimmy Kane sums up aging in males and I can certainly relate. It's funny ain't it? It is and it ain't...it's pretty right-on though, you must admit that if you're male and greying or wrinkling, balding/aging...heftier, slower. Where once you might have stayed out and up for two days running now you're in bed around nine (to sleep!) and the only time you see three a.m. is when you get up to evacuate your sad, tired kidneys....it's the beginning of the end for you, Pal - dig it! You haffta laff know what I mean? Not to worry.

I used to say "Let the music keep your spirits high..." but in fact it doesn't always work that way, young or old. Certain music plunges me into despair and puts me in a mood so bleak I can barely stand, hardly lift my head, lost in some dismal abyss - this Mozart piece for instance, an organ and strings - it is lovely but it is so...heartbreaking.

What you have to do in this case, as all those wasted years come zeroing in on your weighted,"sainted" head, is to plod woodenly with leaden feet to the Harmon-Kardon or whatever you're listening to, switch from FM to auxiliary and let Ken Lyons or Stevie Ray Vaughn or Ma Rainey for cryin' out loud - well let any or all of them growl at you for awhile in those salooned-out voices of theirs and then - you MARTYR you! - you'll feel a little better. Crank it up if you ask me...what's to lose?

It's not just me is it? I'm not naturally atrabilious I would say (atrabilious being melancholy) but if you look beneath the surface how can you be anything else? It's tough on everybody I gotta believe it - from the starving Nigerian children to Trump Plaza - everybody BUT everybody is singing the blues for one thing or another. Donald Trump might be singing the blues because he's got so much money he can't find anything else to buy that he doesn't already have. Keep looking Donald, it's out there but all the money in the world can't buy it.

Only all of a sudden the music's over, you're home alone ears ringing like Niagra Falls, talkin' to the dogs & the cats - even the friggin' fish! - the Last Call Saloon and Bob Colson are 180 miles away and it's the middle of the day...mundane reality zeros in on you (me) - the dishes need to be washed.

Youth! Youth! YOUTH! Where did you go?!

A fleeting fantasy gone as quickly as a cloud.

What happened...

...where am I?

It was only yesterday...there I was...we were picking blackberries...it was just the other day I remember it well - we strode hand in hand happily up The Acropolis...horyatiki salada at Baba Stavros, ah nay,nay - theemommay, thee mommay polee...(yes, yes I remember, I remember well) - it was only yesterday...

But wait, why the sudden return to melancholia Terry my boy? ...aaHAH! The music stopped, there was nothing to occupy my mind but the real thing and now I'm off to flip this tape over and come out swinging with a little, let's see here, ah OK here we have it blues fans, none other than Bessie Smith...

"Aaoooow, the blues has got me on the go...
...aaoooow, the blues has got me on the go -
They runs around my house & in and outta my front do'..."

4:04 PM...CAN'T WAIT ANOTHER MINUTE...

...I fairly run to the refrigerator, quick flip the top from a Heinie and toss half of it off in a flash. The invidious and sinister demon alcohol begins it's all-pervasive trip through my axons and dendrites, what's left of them anyway. Not exactly what you would call a class act.

Reminds me of my friend Albee, a BRILLIANT lawyer but completely gone
from years of projectile drinking...one time I was bartending at a fancy wedding in a castle over in Vermont when Albee stepped up to the bar and wanted to know if he could sample a bottle of Napoleon Brandy that the bride and groom had been given as a wedding gift. He was quite offended when I told him I thought not. He reached for it as I turned to serve someone else. When I turned backa moment later there was Albee, all three-piece suited up and totally burned out, hoisting this fancy bottle of vintage brandy and draining it like it was a friggin' root beer...three good slugs and he slapped the bottle down about half empty, eyes glistening, grinning and red-faced; the only sign of brilliance was his gleaming bulbous nose and amber brandy shimmering in the light at the corners of his upturned mouth...

It's funny - as in peculiar - how intelligence disappears proportionately to alcohol intake. I remember seeing this graffitti on a wall in Athens, in English - "Would that my liver were my brain and alcohol knowledge." I have to say Amen to that...

CAN'T CLEAR MY MIND...

...it won't go away and doesn't change except to get more and more impossible to bear and yet all around me life goes on; in fact life goes on for me also only with a massive hole in it. I'm sure you've got holes in your life too and ain't they a DRAG!?!

It takes serious Brobdingnagian effort to get out of bed even, to say nothing of actually confronting another human being and have to participate in any kind of exchange. Why I can barely open my mouth and Lord knows I got nothing to say that means anything. Can't even listen. O sure I listened to what you said and maybe even answered correctly at the proper time but I didn't hear you. I haven't heard or said a word in 67 days...haven't tasted any food. Spent six bucks on salmon and it might have well as been a sucker outta the deep hole. Haven't seena thing in two months. A hundred fifty movies I sat thru... didn't see a one. Spent a fortune and got nothin' to show for it...but I say but, you all...

But, ...ain't dead yet, Folks, still alive and semi-well...well as one can be. Thanks for caring. I'm fairly healthy,got a roof over my head, water, lights, all the basics that make life tolerable if not great so I got no legitimate complaints and ask your indulgence for getting carried away a bit with my own personal tribulations.

You're a lot nicer than shrinks and not so much per hour.

Entiende? Bueno! Muchos Gracias, Amigos!