A Thousand Down

We pulled into the Crown Plaza Louisville at 8, or what I thought was 8.  We had just spent the last 10 hours in the van burning through Arkansas (thank Christ), Mississippi, Tennessee and a 1/4 of Kentucky.  The trees gave way to the hills, the hills to rock and then finally back to the hot and flat sprawl of downtown Louisville.  Last night at the Quality Inn we had to walk through 2 police officers and an African American gentleman in his PJs.  There were 8 shots fired outside my window just after 11, but I slept soundly and we were back on the road by 10:15 the next day.  The contrast between these two hotels is stark, but I’ll take the squalor of the Quality Inn in the ghettos of Benton, AK over the many floored splendor of the Crown Plaza any day.  Know why?  Cause I’m from Philly and I find most ghettos laughable or at least very doable for a 6’2 Italian-American with an anger problem.  But also because, despite the police, we were able to slide in to our rooms at the Quality nice and sleazy.  No problem.  In the lobby of the Crown Plaza there was a line to the front desk.  Me and the Boss waited the length of an Aerosmith song.  And then we waited some more.  When we finally got to the desk the clerk asked us where we were from, then regaled us with the story of his roadtrip, when he was younger, and was bestowed an ’88 Bronco on the condition that he drive it all the way from Big Sur to Louisville, but of course he broke down…he broke down in Vegas and
“You ever been to Vegas?”
We got our room keys.  Flagged a bellhop.  Loaded the cart.  With Ben’s bags, my bags and git, and the assorted necessaries of a quadripilegic’s bedroom.  Unloaded Blair.  Unloaded Ben.  But when we set up the baby monitors for a test, all Ben could hear at his end, around the corner and down the hall, was static.  This wouldn’t do.  We went back down to find the line had quadrupled.  Flights out of Louisville had been cancelled due to weather and the line was full of anger and pouting children.  Our man Chris (the bellhop) was able to butt in line, but not for long.  He got us a new room for Blair and we headed up.  Loaded Blair onto the cart again.  Loaded Ben.  Went to our new rooms.  Repeat.  When we finally got to my room I had lost the key.    Me and Chris went down AGAIN, got a new key and unloaded me and a $20 into the palm of his hand.  I looked at my phone.
“9:30?!”
We’d lost an hour.  Eastern Standard.  We’d already lost a half hour looking for the place and God knows how long doing the Hotel Shuffle.  Now it was 9:30, I’d been up since 8 and drove five hundred miles through 3 states.

Now I’m in my room.  It’s quiet here.  A far cry from the Quality Inn.  Loading in here was a CF of the highest order.  I would’ve thought a room over twice the price would’ve been easier to get into but that’s the road for you.  Today was the day the universe wanted me to drink.  It REALLY did.  But I said no.  Had a shortrib.  7 seltzers with lime.  Dessert.  Some smokes.  I should really get to bed.  We’re doing this whole thing again tomorrow.  I really can’t complain.  I’ve been on tours where something terrible happened EVERY SINGLE DAY.  No exaggeration. These things can happen when the band you’re driving has blown their tour support on coke, and the manager is a jilted X-member on psychotropic drugs that he should under no circumstance drink on. Which of course he does and wakes you at 2 in the morning, kicking your bed for yelling at the girls you hung out with earlier about the war in Iraq.  This fuckaround?  This little snag?  Ha.

800 to go.
Trainer
Louisville, KY

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A THOUSAND DOWN. NEW BLOG UP AT GOING FOR THE THROAT, LINK ON PROFILE. YOUR READERSHIP IS KEEPING ME ALIVE. #gratitude #goingfortheroad #roadtrip #tour #alcoholics #sober #america #sobriety #goingforthethroat

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Jul 17, 2015 at 6:30am PDT

Mountain High, A Writer At Large

And I will pray for her
I will call her name out loud
I would bleed for her
If I could only see her now

The landline on Lily Bay is in a dank garage, at a small desk by a grimy window. As I turn on the dim lamp in the corner I can suddenly see that I am the only source of light this high for miles. The rain comes down in an insistent sheet. Other than that it is dead quiet on the hill. Nothing in the woods that wasn’t huddled in some dry corner, like I was waiting for the phone to ring, the beer to run out or the rain to stop.
The first time I called someone picked up and said
Herro? in a mock-racist Asian accent. Eventually they hung up. After a few more tries I turned off the lamp and sat drinking in the dark with the rain pouring down. That was last night.

I was up by 5:30 this morning and I had 1,200 words down by 10:50. Now I write this post.  There’s nothing doing in town except of the Monster Truck/Kid Rock variety. There’s no television, no internet and only bad poetry to keep me inspired up here.
Most nights I read or get drunk…I found a copy of Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs and had a good night boozing with the old boy. He is absolutely one of America’s greatest writers; an outsider of the literary coterie but a giant as far as I’m concerned, and an inspiration for generations of Western Men like Charles Bukowski and me. Yeah, me.

It took me two days up here to lose the nightmares and I might not clear off the shakes for two more caffeine-riddled afternoons on the screenporch writing, white-knuckling it and hacking it out.
The evil in our hearts lurks waiting for the chance to spring upon us, when we are most vulnerable and w/o our usual devices of distraction. No cell phones or internet, no television and no women. Perhaps there is a poet somewhere loudly declaring that true love will never die. But not this one. Evil will live in our hearts forever. It is this dark mass that comes upon us in torrents while solitary and alone on top of a mountain, in a dark garage that smells of motor oil and compost. Somewhere too in our hearts is love, it’s true, but it is shrouded in the dark wings of love lost. This is Karma. All that we have done and had done to us is still with us. We can kill off that part of ourselves, join the walking wounded and march on like so many brave ones do. Or we can hang on to our pain, keep it alive and let it unfurl around us like smoke and bad prayers rising from the mountains of our isolation.

Bucolic grey clouds are moving in over Lily Bay, as persistent as iron, as I write this. The rains will bring with them the breeze. A glorious breeze that will bend the ginkgoes and rage through the screenporch. The thunderheads will take over the mountain and the lake will get flat as glass.  I’ll wait out the rains and ride out my blues.  It’s certainly better than spending a soaked night in a dark garage on top of a deserted mountain, waiting for the phone to ring.

The evil that men do lives on and on.
-Iron Maiden

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