Big Old Jet Airliner by the Steve Miller Band had been stuck in my head for days by this point. I could not recall when or where I heard it and why it had nested so deeply into my brain as to become the minute-by-minute soundtrack to my life as I explored to busy streets of New Orleans. One would consider that with so much music pouring from the doors and windows of every bar, eventually, this tune plaguing my mind would have been pushed out or at least overshadowed by the stimulus in the reality around me.
I am here to indulge in the excesses offered regarding the drink. Because I am supposed to quit, and as Steve Miller says in the ever present looping disaster in my brain, “something keeps calling me backwards”.
I have found my new home, and a perfect stool within it to watch the world fade slowly.
The bartender knows me by name. We’ve become close in the way that one can to the enabling voice of unreason who pours your death forward upon never-ending request with blatant disregard for your health and wellbeing. I care not for those trivial matters, why should she.
At points we conceded to be married, for purposes of mutually beneficial citizenships , as we are both aliens to the terrible little city full of bones, death and voodoo, and at others mild acknowledgment of the other’s existence save for the constant exchange of money for double neat whiskey.
Days go by, Steve Miller Band plays internally, she pours my whiskeys with polite enough dismissive temperament externally, and I settle in to what I hope to be my last and final days piloting this broken down and desecrated vessel around a world that cared less for me than I cared for it.
Hugs,
Big Jay
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