2.17.01
Windigo Speaks Fluent Stereo
The radios are talking to me again. Just like in those Tom Deitz novels Griffin insists I read. I just don’t want to hear what they have to say. It’s a game of Musical Tarot or even Memory. What point are they trying so desperately to get across?
It started yesterday, in the afternoon when I was driving back from an appointment. I pushed a button to send the dial buzzing and it stopped at the words “ One, one, one ‘cause you left me………….they’ll hurt me bad, they do it all the time.” Listen, sing obnoxiously while banging on the steering wheel. Lather, rinse, repeat. A little “ I reached back like a pimp and I slapped the ho”, but that’s usual and ordinary to hear on the stations these days. So I didn’t think too much about it.
Griffin came over to annoy me, as is his usual, while I was getting ready to go out with his roomie. I’m standing in the garage, throwing some fresh paint, and apparently he wanted to get an early start on buggin’ the fuck out of me. But no, wait. What does he have in his hand? “I have something to cheer you up…I know it’s been a rough day….remember talking about this?” And I’m dragged back to possibly the first conversation I ever had with him in September, where he was sitting under the disco ball as I came flying out the front door of Mother’s Milk singing at the top of my lungs “ I tell you I was the king of Spain, now I eat humble pie”. He had popped in this acapella group that he had talked about eons ago, and there I am shaking my ass in the garage, with my little bandana skirt flapping and my heart a lot lighter. Badum, da dadum, bada bada dadadadum! And I thought, maybe he is actually good for something. ….nah!
Well, I had to meet my bro before we all got together to go out. His college buddy, RonBo, tall-red-headed-leo-dude, was driving and insisted that while in his truck, we listened to his music. Hit the CD player and horns fill the cab. “ Ah no! All right!…..Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell”. I got to the point of cringing in the back seat while the boys in the front yucked it up and belted out their favorite lines. That will be quite enough. I get it.
Needless to say, I proceeded to get shitfaced. I used to be bad at that, now I should enter into some Olympic training trials because there’s no decent competition to be had in these parts. At our third bar, I could barely make out some punk sounding tune over the alcohol filling my ears, brain and mouth, but I stopped in mid-sentence when I realized what the lyrics were. “ And the flames got higher and higher…….A ring of fire”. No, I had to be mistaken. No, it was a cover, but still very much THAT song. Chip leans over and says, “Cool song. Didncha say you liked Johnny Cash?….this is one of his songs, y’know.”. No shit. But this time it was Social Distortion and on my way home I wanted so badly to hear, “Take away this ball and chain…”
Grimace. Call it a night. But I was drunk while sleeping which means I have to wake up at like six-‘o-clock in the morning. So wake up drunk, go turn coffee on ….somehow???, put can of food out for loud kitty, turn on radio on my way to de baffroom. Look at bloodshot eyes in mirror, turn on water, hear “ I won’t go, I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe….”…..yeah, preach it to me, sister. Yadda, yadda, then don’t go, no one asked you to. Take sleeping pills……fine, suffocate, see if I …Hold On One Second!……that’s another one, isn’t it?…..I shake my head, flip off the radio, and crawl back onto my couch trying not to think. At all.
Last and finally, it’s a quarter to nine. I spin my dial one last time on my drive to work, and there, on some very shaky station that I know has no business reaching this far over from the other coast, I hear the words “There is….. a house……in New Orleans…..(wail) They call the Rising Sun” . Four lines in and the song fuzzes out. I am almost to the point of laughing, I am hysterical as I scream at my dashboard, “What now? You gonna play some fuckin’ Beasties or are you just threatenin’? Huh?!?!? I dare ya!” Elderly lady on my left looks over, alarmed.”What?!?”
I couldn’t have come up with a better playlist in a piece of fiction. I know what it’s trying to tell me, but I’m not listening anymore. I turned off the radio at work, the car was damn near silent on the way home. No music was played tonight. Because I’m afraid of what it was trying to remind me of. No. I don’t care. I don’t and I can’t….so leave me the fuck alone! All of you! I’m not listening….Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah! Shut Up!
And now, there’s a little peace in my head, what little I can scrape together. Don’t touch that dial! I mean it, I don’t want to have to cut ya!
The radios are talking to me, the radios are talking to me….
And they say….?