Confessor/Confession

It's August, and here, now, the air is sticky.  We are lucky that it rains almost every day or we would turn into Phoenix, but the moisture becomes overwhelming for the next few months.  Hurricanes will begin to form soon, and the state will be on constant weather watch.  And of course this year we are especially worried.  Unless you are young and own little.  Then nothing really scares you much at all.  

Maybe it's the weather or maybe something else, but I often wake in the mornings now without a good idea, and I think "I won't write today."  And more often, recently, I think I will kill the blog.  But then I get up and there is a history here and so I sit down to peck away and see what happens once again.  Little vignettes to nowhere.  I guess they are my matins, my silly little prayers.  

And so, alone in the vacuum, I continue on day by day by day.  

It's not just my head. This weather is doing my bones no good, either.  I ache from head to toe.  Maybe I should move to Phoenix.  Broken bones don't love the damp.  

"I made a playlist from your blog songs

I want to see your smile and hear your voice come onnnn let’s do something."

Once in awhile I find out someone is reading and listening.  She said she was "catching up" on the blog and that it made her laugh.  It makes me smile, but truthfully, I can't imagine why she wouldn't come here every day.  

Of course I can.  

Tennessee called me last evening.  Drive time call, of course, an hour each way from where he is staying to where he is building the luxury cabins overlooking the mountains.  So he had plenty of time to regale me with tales of Tennessee "folk."  He's got the biggest Tennessee accent you will hear, especially when he has been up there for awhile.  But he claims, "I ain't like these people.  My hair's longer than yours now (he's been growing it out since we met), and I tie it up on top of my head and come into the bar with my short shorts and people look at me like 'what the fuck is this?'"

"Sure.  They think you're gay."

I'm reminded of a bit of dialog I have failed to write here.  

"You are such a girl."

"You think I'm gay because I like Zero 7?"

"Your just a queer."

"I don't think you can say that word anymore without putting some alphabet before it."

"You're not in the alphabet.  You're just an old fashioned queer like we had when I was a kid."

"I don't care. . . I still like the music."

I'm just setting you up for what comes later.  But I realize why I get along with Tennessee so well.  He likes to talk to people.  More so, though, he can listen.  

"My wife says I can just walk into a room and people will start telling me shit.  She just shakes her head.  I used one of your lines last night.  The bar at the marina was packed and you could hardly get a drink, so when the barmaid walked by, I said, 'look at you' and waved a twenty at her.  'Where's your tip mug?' I said, and she said she didn't have one, so I said, 'Hand me that mug' and I put the twenty in there, then I passed it down the bar saying this girl is working hard, people, show her some love.  And I got my beer right away and didn't have to pay for the rest of them."

Yea, see. . . I've done that.  But it is the other thing that makes us similar.  "People tell me things."  Most people are just waiting to talk.

"People like to be heard," I say.  "They want to talk about themselves.  They never get to.  People like to talk more than they listen, but if you listen closely and are interested, they will treat you like a confessor.  People need confessors."

And that's why the Catholic Church stays in business.  That is why there are therapists.  But me and Tennessee, we both like stories.  And when the two of us talk, it is not abut ourselves but about the things other people tell us.  

And so I realize why I keep writing here.  Confession.  Here, in obscure and fictional ways, I can confess.  

"Forgive me readers, for I have sinned." 

Something like that, anyway.  And I'm sure that a few of you will pardon me, while many others will revel in my misery.  If you are reading this, surely you fall into one of those two camps.  

But maybe it is because I can make you laugh.

"Some funny lines. You writ. I did laugh. “So Q can throw them out.” But that wasn’t even the funniest but I forget it right now. "

I could always cheer up the kids at the factory.  They'd come to my office in the afternoons just for that.  It relieved the tensions of the job and of the politics of the factory.  If we could laugh together. . . . 

Ili and I used to belly laugh our way through life. . . until we didn't. . . and I'd really like someone to laugh with again.  Laughter is good medicine.  People laugh to show their appreciation as a reflex, but unless you are laughing so hard you are afraid you'll pee your pants, it's not really therapy.  You have to trust you can be silly, but then it is almost as intimate as sex.  

Yea. . . it is a prerequisite in a relationship for sure.  

I've never cared if people thought I was gay.  My college roommate and I got our ears pierced before "normal" people did it oh so long ago.  He was left handed, so his earring was in his right ear.  Mine was in my left.  

"Yea, we got married in California but it isn't recognized here."  

What the fuck, I'd say, "It's just sex."  

We had long hair and earrings.  You can blame us for the whole tranny thing.  You're welcome.  

It's just a matter of confidence, but I am running out of that.  Time, they say, wounds all heels.  

"Do you really like this shit?"

"Yea, man.  I dig it."

And to that pesky inner critic I must shout, "Fuck you, man. . . that is a HELL of a picture!"