Tuesday, February 19, 2008

My beagle has brittle fur and it breaks when I pet her and she cries but love cries

This is a true story and it happened to me yesterday or Sunday.  The days bleed, I'm afraid, and there's nothing anyone can do to staunch the wound.

One thing is that I saw Todd Snider which you should probably try to see.  He's similar to me but hookless and not as handsome.

Anyway I was in the store as is my fashion and at the checkout was Cointreau and I said to the man checking me out I said, "Cointreau?  What is this?"

"Some liquer, I guess.  I hear it's strong but I've never tasted it."

He did say liquer, in fact, not liquor.  That is the idiom of Nebraska.

"As long as it's strong," I said and I gave the laugh that  you give to people you don't know the boisterous Har Har Do You Get My Meaning Har Har.

Lo he laughed and he said a queer thing, he said, "I'll get you the number to my sponsor."

And I looked upon this man and he was near my age but well rested and clean.  Clean shaven, clothes neatly pressed, bright smile, bright eye, calm and refreshed.  He had the look of a man who has checked a rapid course and is now on the right course.  The right job, the right wife, no doubt, the right way of having sex, face down in the dark, eyes firmly shut and stemming the dreams of the neighbor's daughter in 3 years.

All the right things he seemed to me to be and for just his sponsor's number so I cut his throat and his blood ran over my fingers and onto my crumpled cargo pants and I got the hell out of there grabbing the bottle of Cointreau (which is not to my taste).

I got home and resisted the temptation to regret and ran to the liquor cabinet and washed that young man's blood off my fingers with 1/5 a bottle of Absolut and I'll tell you if you listen that I have a dead man's sponsor in my mind and a dead man's blood on my mostly clean hands.

And Cointreau.