Friday afternoon and I’m spent from an extra-long jam session. Just me, sitting and strumming in this very chair in front of this very desk, but a jam session just the same. I’ll be making an unscheduled appearance at work this evening, taking over for Larry for a few hours while he watches his daughter perform in a dance recital. I couldn’t refuse such a request, although I did leave no stone unturned attempting to find some other sucker to do it. Whenever I have a thought like, “Shit I have to go back into work already” I get a sick feeling in my guts and I want to scream like all holy hell. The clock and the calendar are nothing but handcuffs and shackles to me. It’s a pickle I’ve never been able to wiggle out of. Reminds me of playing “run the bases” in the side lot as kid. I used to put myself in a “pickle” intentionally, just to make the game more interesting. I was usually the oldest one of the bunch and athletic to boot, and no matter how severely I handicapped myself I never could fully contain my drive to come out on top. I would always win at everything. Even in competition with others my own age, I was a natural winner. The fastest, the smartest, the best. The major exception being, of course, the one thing that mattered most to me–the realm of romance. I never held a hand, stole a kiss, much less got a handful until I was nineteen and in college. Even then I was an awkward, anxious sac of self-consciousness void of confidence. Only now, ten days shy of my thirty-fifth birthday, am I beginning to feel truly confident and comfortable with the opposite sex. Looking back at the course of my development, it strikes me as highly significant that I was continually frustrated in my efforts to attain that which I most yearned for. Moreover, I felt paralyzed really, to do anything about it. The more a prayed for the zits to go away, the more numerous and hideous they’d become. When my time finally came and Ann-Marie whispered in my ear “do you want to feel inside me?”–well, I was so overwhelmed with joy I’d do anything to stay inside. These days I’m discovering what seekers of all stripes stumble upon if they’re fortunate enough–that getting what you want does not extinguish the flames of discontent for long. I yearn as achingly as ever, only now I’m not sure exactly what for or how to go about getting it. Enlightenment? Peace of mind? I’m not even sure what these things mean.
[Addendum: I was involved in a car accident on my way to work on this night. Traffic stopped suddenly on Richmond Road. I was barely able to stop short of the car in front of me. I was slammed from the rear, which whip-lashed me pretty hard. Mary Alice’s car was totaled.]