I have some nieces. One is in California, post graduation, looking for herself in a job here. Where I also live. In Los Angeles. Okay.
We hang out sometimes, an eternal mission of burgers and beers.
Last burger-beer, we were idly talking about waking up and having a beer for breakfast, or doing a shot. She said she'd done so, with gin. I wish I liked gin, my father is a gin man, but twice I've tried to take to it and twice I've had a sorrowful hangover for it. No, gin is not for me.
She takes after her paternal and very Irish great-grandfather. He would shower, shave, come downstairs for breakfast, and do a shot of Dickel while the toast and eggs were warming up. Then he'd attend his day.
Alcoholic though I may seem, I've always coveted this but have never the nerve to appear THAT distilled. Nonetheless, inspired by this conversation, courageous, I woke up around eight the next morning and decided a shot of vodka would happen exactly THEN. I went back to bed, (christ, who gets up at eight a.m., anyway?,) smiled about half an hour, and woke up again around 11. Calm and satisfied.
A leisurely breakfast - (it was my day off...) - and then I started working on re-sizing two paintings. I've been doing this, going through my work and re-assessing, re-appropriating, re-imagining, re-sizing, re-painting. No longer working on my future, it's all about my legacy now, what I leave behind, to be disposed of, I'm certain, but nonetheless. It usually takes me two days to un-stretch a canvas, take the stretchers apart, cut them to a new size, re-assemble them, and re-stretch the canvas. But today I needed to do two in one day.
I decided this because Jack, who lives in the building and also runs the watch-repair store here...Jack is an artist and has epilepsy and still I see him working all hours, running the gamut of the building while I am shy about hours and noise at night and other quiet things, like sipping vodka and watching Criminal Minds on Ion. Once I was in the deli upstairs getting steamed milk and Jack had wandered into there from his watch repair store around the corner, in the midst of a seizure. All the ladies were hysterical trying to figure out how to help him, and I just held onto him, held him in the chair he plopped down in. He kept wanting to get up and bolt, just bolt, where was he going to go? but I held on, my arm around his head, my body pressed against him, waiting for it to pass. It did. Then he seemed embarrassed. He walked away, finally, and we never acknowledged it.
Sometimes when fire and paramedics pull up to the building, I wonder if Jack is having a seizure and no one knows what it is so they call 911. I wonder how many 911 bills he has.
After burger and a brew with the niece, I came home and Jack was flitting around the building working on some project, making me look like a fat asshole. So I woke up the next morning, did a shot, and resolved to be Jack. Then I slept three more hours.
When I did get up, I was calm and satisfied and got to it. By canvas number two, it was getting late and I was getting anxious about the noise I was sending to the floor below with all the sawing and stapling on the bare wood floor. Also, my old and tired body was suffering it. I didn't want to be Jack anymore, I wanted to take a nap. Instead I made some tea and lied on the floor a bit and drank the tea, really good tea. Eventually I powered through the second canvas, fuck the downstairs neighbors!, and finished it.
By now my apartment was a wreck. It was my day off and I still had to tend to domestic things, laundry, like that. A beer was suddenly necessary, and I got one. I figured: have a beer, take some advil, old fuck, clean up this mess! and go to sleep. What I did was get a beer, have a beer, take some advil, clean up that mess, take a shower, have dinner, and get bored. So I came down here to play on the computer.
I went back upstairs and around one a.m. started painting one of the canvases I'd earlier re-purposed.
Around 3 a.m. I went to bed. Calm and satisfied.
Fucking best Tuesday ever.
chapter 3.