ANTIGUAN BLUES

Our greivances matter more than our vulnerabilities.
–Steve Almond

Hello Staff,
This past Friday we all worked an event for Grifted Ponce Catering. The client at the end of the night couldn’t find his pair of black pants and shirt. The pants did have a wallet inside.  If anyone by accident took it, if you could please let me know so we can return it to the client.
Thanks,
Pair O’Hands Staffing

You take whatever takes you back…
–Cory Branan

ANTIGUA, GT

I’m over 1,500 miles from home.  I’m between continents, in another country but I can still hear Christmas music from here.  My legs are asleep from having them up and trying to write from the daybed.  I had to come in from the terrace because it started to rain.  I’ve had allergies since before I got here and of course my digestive system is jacked and has been since November 2016.  On the john earlier today I was reaching for the baby wipes when I felt another sneezing fit come on.  A sneeze lingered and left me hanging between reaching to wipe and blowing my nose—I couldn’t do either so I just stood there, over the toilet waiting with my pants around my ankles like a jerkoff.  And hark the herald angels sing, I hear the carolers getting closer, it feels like vicegrips on the bridge of my nose, I can hardly breathe and I’m writing from a place neither supine nor upright which ain’t the half because between the weak WiFi and Apple’s planned obsolescence of my iPad, and using WordPress through Safari on a mini keyboard straight up blows.  I’m not looking for a break because I’ve had plenty and recently.  My physical woes will cede, at least I hope they will, and I should be in better shape for Saturday’s much anticipated reading at Dyslexia Libros.

My host couldn’t be more gracious and he is in fact the reason and impetus for this trip happening at all.  Brother Julian will be moving to the Velvet Rut come Febuary so the window of time for me visiting was shrinking.  Bartending and catering tapered off, just after I was hired on and made some great money working for a new company.  Which reminds me, all my slagging and shit talking about caterers last week was in no way directed toward my new place of employ.  It was aimed straight at a particular company and temp agency that staffs me with him and anyway the backlog of 3 months being a body in the food service business—shit on and talked down to but still broke.

As you may have surmised, there isn’t any main thrust or theme for this week’s post.  I continue to deliberately obliterate the mores of essay writing, as I have done, ever since a Tuesday morning ENG COMP II class in the hometown over twenty years ago.  I write to clear the chamber, to keep my chops and otherwise blow off steam.  This missive is in no way, shape or form a slag of my host and Friend—just that I’m taking a turn and everything is wrong at the moment but it will pass.  The carolers have passed, maybe they could see the black cloud over 34 A and sensed a 6’2” menace on the other side of the door banging out these words and contorted like a corpse.  Truth is, as ridden and fucked as it’s been it is heaps better than being kept and at another’s bidding which is exactly where I was around this time last year.  I’m a victim of circumstance and, like I said, I’m taking a turn—but I ain’t nobody’s darling nor at anyone’s beck and call.

You bet my days being kept on the caregiving circuit are through.  No more either the tired devotionals I’ve made to narcissistic bitches and colossal timesucks.  There is no silver lining, good Reader.  If there was I’d only suspect it anyway.  It’s my life now, even when it’s hairy and uncomfortable and freezing in the airport and the furniture in my living quarters was made for men and women at least a foot smaller and Christmas carols waft and bound off the volcano like contagion and I can’t stop sneezing or shitting—my worst day out in the territory is a pleasure compared to the trappings of the small minds and paltry passions in whose idiotic thrall I was for most of my adult life.  These annoyances and peccadilloes?  Potholes on the savage road to living my dreams.  I am getting free, good Reader, reaching for the petals and pulling myself up by the thorns.

See you in America motherfucker.