river rat: Blood Mobile Sammy. I forgot how meeting guys like Sammy makes going to smoky dive bars worth while. He sat down next to us and introduced himself after knocking back his second or third double of Padron espresso blend, that syrupy and wonderful bastardization of such a beautiful distillation. Tim appropriately gave Sammy the fish eye as if our new gregarious friend were wearing a shit stained straight jacket.
Inside two minutes we learned the following about Sammy:
a) he and I are the same age
b) he was part of the punk movement responsible for NC's unusual mix of indy/rock/punk bands thriving today
c) he sings and plays lead guitar for Blood Mobile
d) he claims to have devoted his life to AIDS research at Glaxo
e) he's married and divorced twice with one child
f) he believes that there were no worthwhile bands to see in the '80's, '90's, and '00's
g) Van Halen was the best concert he saw in the 70's and, taking f) above into account, by default was the best concert he ever saw
h) he is not afraid to say exactly what substances he would like to put into his body at the moment nor is he afraid to ask if you've got any on your person
i) he drinks at Alibi in Raleigh because of the bartender's tits and ass, not because she's a very good bartender
j) he knows everyone at Slim's, the bar where he demanded Tim and I follow him and his friend and bandmate, Abe, who I believe to be an asshole
We started out earlier eating Argentinian slabs of meat and empanadas talking about painted toenails and a seventy-two year old woman in my writing class whose freshman english instructor was some guy named William Faulkner. Jason should have been there, in some ways he was, mostly for the number of times Tim said we should go to his house and have a little blanket party with him, maybe sew him into his bed.
Like Faulkner in his last years we ended up with hairy eyeballs and problems with balance and coordination, flogging the sidewalk back to Alibi, ditching a colossal Winona Judd look-a-like who might have been swinging sausage-maybe/maybe not. Wait, did Faulkner do that? Perhaps not, but he surely would've asked the excellent bartender at Alibi to please take the rubber band out of her hair and unleash her mane to flow over her shoulders so Tim could admire her bony fingers and strong wrists tousling her locks around her neck and down her back.
The point? There's none, unless anyone wanted to confirm what I already knew: I am old and dirty.
