You are, of course, beloved by your
wife and
your house
and your
cats and your
parents
And your
sisterandbrotherand
friends and
yet you will drink to excess on a Friday because it is a Friday and you like it and you have the money and you sit on your couch on a Sunday with your rooibos tea and you say it's an idiot tax it's a Darwin Award it's their own fucking fault it wouldn't happen to me it's a shame it's a shame he was so talented it's all those films we'll never get it's a shame they were old enough to know better their mams and dads and all their friends and i remember him from when he was in Scent of a Woman he had money and talent and kids and he didn't need to do that and it can only be great being them and didntioncegivemyfifteenyearoldbrotherabottleofabsolutvodkathathedrankinonegofromapintglassoncetoimpresshismatewhowasstayingoveronlyforhisvomittowakehimwhilehewaschokingonitsoitsfineitdoesnthappentomeorhim
3 comment(s):
I emerged whole and (relatively) sane from the 60s and 70s because a bad fairy cursed me at birth with common sense. Whenever some of the gang thought it would be great gas to go to Katmandu, or check out the drug scene at the 'Dilly, I would picture what my life might be, a few months or years down the road, if I went along, and then I would quietly go back to my humdrum existence, with a job and a regular wage. I'm alive, I don't smoke or do drugs any more, and I drink to moderation (most of the time), while a goodly proportion of the old gang are dead, or wrecked. Still, I often wonder what I missed by being chicken-hearted.
I, strangely, never wonder what I've missed by being chicken hearted in terms of booze (never on a work night now, except I work weekends again, so never on a Monday) or drugs (which I never chanced) but something similar to the themes of this post still gnaws at me. What a ramble.
One thing I've learnt from the excesses of others is that you can act in the most appalling, obnoxious, selfish ways and somehow get away with it because being fucked out of your head is considered a valid excuse, and, if no-one tells you exactly what you were like, you'll probably never realise - thereby bypassing the whole nasty guilt thing.
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