Thursday, September 16, 2010

Country Music Part IV: The Triumph


Two weeks ago I went home.  My house had been in a disarray, I had recently snapped very abruptly out of a relationship that I still hadn't gotten over (although I thought I was doing really well), my job was new, my life – essentially, and to spare the boring details – had been changed for a shocking new/different appeal("better", I suppose is another adjective I could use, but I don't like to see things as better or worse than before).  I went home not really sure what to expect. 

I should back up quickly and say that the main reason I went home was my friend (pictured above on the left, his name is Matt) came home after his third year in the Marines.  When I arrived that Friday night, no one was home yet.  In fact, I didn't feel like it either.  A really wise person once told me that "Home is where your family is".  Unfortunately for me "family" was three individuals who in several days would begin separating.  And although this was a few days away, I had been aware of the situation for several years, and recently predicted the pinnacle (i.e. divorce) would slowly begin to take place

… just perhaps not days away. 

However the divorce in this story was not really my point, despite the occasional metaphoric sting that hits me square between the eyes (which I'll go back to later).  My point was the triumph.

When Matt came home that weekend he threw a huge party.  I, publicly declaring for the first time in several months, would get really really really fucking drunk and celebrate.  A huge barbeque was thrown in Matt's parents' backyard. A lot of people I hadn't seen since high school appeared out of thin air.  I learned how to sip whiskey.  I continuously would bear hug my old friends and attempt to maintain a non-slurred speech with adults in their 40s about how college is going.  I was shoveled into the back of a truck to sleep it off at another location.

For the rest of that week I drank like it was my freshman year, which at 21, had been accomplished enough times to realize that drinking in excess began to look less like the early stages of 80s hair metal and more like A Decade Under the Influence (look it up god dammit, it's probably the best analogy I make in this entire essay series).  But I continued on this path for many days, occasionally sobering up for a day and hitting it again for a couple more nights in a row.

..and the things that we did mirrored almost exactly what would have happened four years ago.  On the Forth of July we drank semi-cold Keystone Light and lit roman candles off with the embers of cheap cigars and chased each other around the yard with them while trying to balance our beers and cigars.

Matt and I stayed up very late that night (4:00 AM) talking about all the things we've felt and thought about our lives.  We both came to a great conclusion that we would make fantastic single fathers (my experience based off of my recent lack of faith in monogamy and the father/son dynamic shared by the Michael and George Michael in "Arrested Development", and his being a rugged individualism only experienced by a man who finished a tour in Iraq and was possibly leaving very quickly for Afghanistan).  We both saw ourselves having daughters. 

We were also the only two there that night.   Most of our friends had taken off by 1:00 and we were left there.  I told him about the blog I began writing a couple years ago and how I was trying to find a point to my discussion of country music, and how fucking chaotic the last year has been trying to keep a relationship solvent while not knowing how to deal with myself, how I let smoking, drinking, and overall debauchery go from a humorous narrative on life to my only resource.  He told me equally personal shit, but it would inappropriate to let it be known here.

The status of all of my friends as of July 10, 2010, when I left:

Matt:  Recently left for North Carolina where he will be stationed until he is deployed for Afghanistan in later part of this year.  Matt is so simple he appears to be complex beyond my cognitions.  His favorite adverb is "frickin'".  We've related quite well because his outlook on the Marines features a lot the same characteristics I feel about the incredibly liberal college I attend.

Quinn:  Perhaps my closest friend growing up, Quinn was unable to return home for this occasion as he recently started an internship in East Lansing, Michigan.  He was very upset that he couldn't make it home, and we neglected to Skype him the entire time we were all home.  He appears to be puzzled with his life.  Even though it's been six month seen I've heard from him (negating two phone calls), it's very clearly his main feature right now.

Kevin:  The oldest of the group, Kevin finally got his shit together last summer and transferred from a community college in Vancouver, Washington to Eastern Washington University where intends on becoming a cop.  He is perhaps the most stoic of the group.  He has morphed into an incredibly humble and mature person, oftentimes throwing me off with his personality.

Vance:  Quinn's brother and perhaps the most volatile member of the group.  He use to be a sex hound but in the last year has been dating a girl who both holds him down and drives us crazy.  It's tough to call her a bitch because she attempts to be so aggressively nice to us that we momentarily forget that she has turned him into something completely domesticated.  Not the "we miss him fucking everything that moves", but more so his free spirit, which has become a caged animal.

The week progressed like the aforementioned.  However we could tell something was off, or at least I did (sidenote: when I use the term "off" I usually just mean "different"). 

In my time shared with three of the four original gang (and one phone call to Quinn), they all displayed the original mechanisms of functionality that they, to me, were world famous for in the summer of 2007.

Coincidentally during the time I was home, my father and mother decided to separate (the politics of which, were relentless and incredibly aggravating).  A day later my grandfather was seriously hospitalized.  It was the first time I saw my dad officially uncertain about the direction of his life and the thousandth time I saw my mom aggravated (the difference this time was A. she didn't know where to go post-separation, and B. Her father was (unknown to us at the time) a month away from passing away).  I, like I was planning on anyways, decided to drive to my boys and start drinking heavily.

The drive there I decided that, maybe, it was time to lose my shit.  It's like when you wake up from drinking just too much enough that you might need to puke it, because you can keep moving to start your day, you just might need to empty the sickness.  That sickness that's just subtle enough to cloud things up or clear it out (at least until you finally getting around to fixing it).  I put Wilco on and started driving.  After the first initial thumps and progressions the beats were working like a bottle of ipecac.  I could feel the emotional vomit starting to swell in my eyes.  I brake and turn to the right into a church parking lot, where this will be the place I unload my feelings into a McDonald's napkin from the glove compartment.  I, at the time, was just glad I didn't have to demonstrate this ritual in front of anyone. I had the cloak of an abandoned parking lot and loud LOUD music.  As I was tapping my head on my steering wheel and bawling, I had a moment where I couldn't be quite sure what I was crying about.  At the time I knew that everyone deals with this type of shit all of the time.  To be put in this is much like everyone else these days.  Why did I need to cry? It was out of necessity.  Of course this shit happens, and yes I was kind of broken up about it, but I needed to puke it up, and this was the place to do it.

I landed sideways into the backyard I was too familiar with, and Kevin became a voice of reason.  I pulled him aside after stealing a cigarette from Matt and a beer to shove in my back jean pocket and divulged everything of the last two days (which, I came later to realize was my abandonment of this town). He told me, essentially, everything I needed to hear.

I spent the night driving to a bar in Hazel Dell, and when I got home, I elected to stay at my friend's house at 3:00 AM.  I woke up and slinked out of their house to arrive to something that was essentially pure chaos. 

The last days hold no real relevance, but this probably requires more explanation than anything else:

In this time between departing from all my friends I bought my first pack of cigarettes (after quitting) on a Saturday night in town.  For some reason I had always chosen my secret cigarette smoking hideout to be the parking lot of the Albertsons.  Fast moving road, a lot of darkness, safe.  It's where I've gone before.  During this time I had women texting me for a quick local booty call before I left the town once again (and hopefully for good).  I was so tired of my routine.  Every time I had come home (aside from the debauchery) I had a goal to visit with my family, play with my dog, say hello to my friend's parents, and get physical with someone from high school who still thought I was interesting.  My phone vibrates and I already know what's happening.  "Come out with us" it reads.  I decide to think on it, because I know where it's going, and I don’t really know if I'm really interested at all.  I drag on my cigarette and feel the warm small town air brush past my arms and face.  It's small town air.  Nothing can descibe its innocence.  You drive through it at night and you feel baptized.  It leaves you comfortable.  When I feel that breeze blow past me I distantly hear The Shins as I am driving over to Quinn's house after track practice in 2005. I smell cans of mint flavored Skoal as Matt insists that a pouch of chew is better than chewing straight tobacco in 2006.

I get back into my car and drive home. I go to bed.

The next morning was how to expect it.  My house is full of people who don't understand each other, and to a certain extent, weren't really interested in trying.  Everyone knew what they had done, and I really didn't feel like trying either.  I gave everyone a hug, and nodded my head to indicate that this would be the last fucking time I acknowledged cohesion.  The family obliged.

Before I officially headed toward the freeway home, I promised Matt and Kevin I would say goodbye before I left.  Because Matt lived closest I visited him first.  Like the original 2007 edition copy of Matt, he had spent the night drinking beer and rummaging through rural Washington (probably) trying to get laid.  I pulled into his driveway in my wayferer sunglasses, topsiders, and v-neck t-shirt as he comes to shake my had and greet me in his cartharts , TAPOUT t-shirt, and calf-high boots.  We stand in his driveway in the midday sun about what our plans are.  I told him I was going back to work and he told me he was getting stationed on the East Coast, how he was going to drive his truck across the country to get there. 

But I brought up the country music again, and to give me an idea about what's "good" now.  He was surprisingly right about it.  It made me realize that country music (real real) country music works in the same way the most independent labels here work, but in Nashville, and how the interesting and evocative lyrics do come out all of the time, but contemporary country to real country is like Good Charlotte to Sufjan Stevens.

But it really didn’t fucking matter.  I had already gotten my point to this whole fucking thing… and so to explain what the fuck even matters and how country music pulls this together is, well it doesn't matter.  The nostalgia was there but I didn't hear any Randy Travis while I was hanging out with my mom.  I didn't hear Garth Brooks blaring in the living room.  I found my country music in the firepits of my friends' backyards.  I heard hicks playing beer pong in the garages.  I heard my friends try and fuck with me to admit say that I like Keith Urban.

This was the triumph.

My youthful nostalgia of family and love and all of that came from nowhere.  But my friends, despite my thought that things would not come together, did.  They were different, but like a CD you find 5 years later in your closet, it provides you what you remember, and more importantly, what you need, even if you don't recognize the handwriting on the disk or the new beards/haircuts or the crazy girlfriends. 

I went to visit Kevin.  He was good to see, because after my point had come across, he only validated things further.  We had equally as good and supportive conversations, insisting that we visit each other over the summer (if we can pull ourselves away) like all promises we broke that one too, but we knew it, and it didn't make us less like friends.  I got in my car. I went home.

I sometimes do like Keith Urban.

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