Tuesday, March 04, 2008
My Kinda Guy
C.W. Sughrue, one of James Crumley's scruffy protagonists, speaks for me and lot of my very best boomer friends in the novel Bordersnakes:
"On the afternoon I got shot, a Saturday, I spent the heat of the day cruising the Upper Valley of the Rio Grande in Norman's classy VW van... on the comfortable curves of the back roads, the tape deck cranked all the way to the sky as Zevon, Seger, Ely, and Waits wailed rock and roll into the blind maw of the ancient sun.
"Perhaps noticing that I was staring a half-century dead in the eye, I wondered if I should regret my taste in music, wondered if it was infantile, as woman once told me, but I simply could not resist all that wonderful madness, the reckless joy and pain. Truth to tell, I wondered about a lot of things these vacation afternoons. My hair had gotten skimpy, gray streaks among the blond, but god help me I still loved the blessed mota smoke, still loved the fuzzy stoned light in the middle of the afternoon. I had been living as straight as I'd ever managed, given my life... But I simply couldn't live too straight all the time. I had to bend, crooked, occasionally.
"My other choices seemed limited: twelve-stepping like a ghost into a boring future; or becoming one of those old mutt-faced hippies, brained by smoke and cheap whiskey, marijuana and politics. Frankly, I still loved to giggle and dance, still hated the fools in charge. Even the ones who said they were on our side. They drove me to drink, too. I didn't even hate the [Vietnam] war anymore, or even all the wasted death exactly... Hell, maybe I would become one of those ancient, almost wise old men who live for slow afternoon beers balanced against a single shot of good Scotch as the baseball plays on a bad television in a cheap bar. That sounded better than a reptilian isolation in retirement."
"On the afternoon I got shot, a Saturday, I spent the heat of the day cruising the Upper Valley of the Rio Grande in Norman's classy VW van... on the comfortable curves of the back roads, the tape deck cranked all the way to the sky as Zevon, Seger, Ely, and Waits wailed rock and roll into the blind maw of the ancient sun.
"Perhaps noticing that I was staring a half-century dead in the eye, I wondered if I should regret my taste in music, wondered if it was infantile, as woman once told me, but I simply could not resist all that wonderful madness, the reckless joy and pain. Truth to tell, I wondered about a lot of things these vacation afternoons. My hair had gotten skimpy, gray streaks among the blond, but god help me I still loved the blessed mota smoke, still loved the fuzzy stoned light in the middle of the afternoon. I had been living as straight as I'd ever managed, given my life... But I simply couldn't live too straight all the time. I had to bend, crooked, occasionally.
"My other choices seemed limited: twelve-stepping like a ghost into a boring future; or becoming one of those old mutt-faced hippies, brained by smoke and cheap whiskey, marijuana and politics. Frankly, I still loved to giggle and dance, still hated the fools in charge. Even the ones who said they were on our side. They drove me to drink, too. I didn't even hate the [Vietnam] war anymore, or even all the wasted death exactly... Hell, maybe I would become one of those ancient, almost wise old men who live for slow afternoon beers balanced against a single shot of good Scotch as the baseball plays on a bad television in a cheap bar. That sounded better than a reptilian isolation in retirement."
# posted by goots @ 2:25 PM 
