My oldest friends are all dead

My youngest friends are stupid.

***

I come from Penetanguishene, Ontario.

There is one big road and there is a dock where you can eat ice cream. There is a dock and there are houses, hundreds, where there are friends who smoke weed. Who smoke cigarettes, and weed, and their father's share patches of morphine with their wives, their 300-pound wives.

***

Today in Palermo, the rich nest of quiet streets of Buenos Aires, walking home mid-afternoon with three sweating 1-litre bottles of cold, argentine beer.

I had a spanish class in ten minutes with a 29-year-old woman in my apartment and I figure we might need beer. And cigarettes.

So I buy a .75 cent pack of Malboros from the kiosko down the street. I am walking down Charcas, whistling down Charcas, happily down the cobble stone. And a man he comes up.

A man he comes up from behind and he has got a knife. He's a boy with dirty clothes and indian skin and he wants my money. And so much rage, it flows through me. I knew this moment would happen, 'been expecting such. I knew, that when it happen, the rage, it come. It would come.

So I grab the grocery bag full of beer, twisting the white plastic 'round my fist, and swing, smash the two bottles on the indian's head. Green glass and blood explode in a disgusting slow motion cataract. His blood and beer tangles, trickle slowly, down the warm, autumn streets.

***

One week ago, just about, I met the New York Dolls. I was worried the whole time. I had spent days researching, this time, I was hoping to be prepared.

Things never really started feeling good until we (my crew and I) had made it to the venue, and Sylvain and a few of the sound check guys started playing "Here She Comes Again" or whatever it is called, by the Velevet Underground.

"This is a band, a historic band, this here," my sweltering insides they mumble me. "I am excited."

I chew on my pen and I scribble notes with that pen, as the 20 waitresses prepare the venue for the night's show.

Finally I meet the Dolls and it is half awful at first. David Johansen is acting like a straight up rock star with his visible and pronounced disinterest. I turn him around later on , somehow, maybe, with a question or two from the left side of field. He brings up cosmology, so I beg him to explain to me the universe.

We finish things and he shakes my hand, says: you are a clever young man.

Sylvain Sylvain is leaving, with a giant frosty glass of stella or something in hand, to get dinner with the rest of the boys. I am drinking from a bottle of Quilmes and smoking a Malboro, and I take a second to thank him. To give cheers: "cheers, thanks again"

and we cheers, I cheers too hard, and his glass shatters and beer, and beer it goes, the air.

"I didn't need more beer anyway," Syl, says, walking out. Smiling. "Thanks again, Tobin," he whistles on the way out.

***


These are damn good stories. They deserve to be written with more detail.

It is 1:06 am and dinner is over. Jeff and Peter leave Wednesday, and I am once again, solo.

Thinking much: do I stay or return? Law school or stay.

I have this new apartment with a 50 year old woman, Flor, who is amazing, beautiful and friendly, and I am excited for the new rhythm things are about to adopt. Things adopt.

"Things adopt."

I am drunk, it's no secret. We drank 2 bottles of wine at dinner. And we are about to go out.

I have a hundred better stories. A hundred of them.

***

I rode this subway car the other day. The A train is about 100 hundred years old, and made of wood, and the benches they all face each other like a train, and there are wooden, white painted rings that descend from the ceilings instead of steel bars, to hold to.

The windows are open and I meet C -

I invite her over.

***

I have at least 57 stories that I am saving. This is just a blog and it rushes me. It is 1:26 a.m. and I dedicate this last part to Suzanna C.

"life aint easy, life aint easy, life aint easy."

This is just a blog. I am tired and I miss you.

***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f9NHLP7YWQ