The Slow Burn

I sat there watching the band play. Another three piece playing about women and politics. They’re pretty good, I like them. As i watched them in another shitty Michigan basement with a single flood light as a mood setting back light, I knew I would die that night.

It didn’t frighten or surprise me. I didn’t know exactly how though. I started walking through the many ways it could happen.

Scenario 1:

I looked around at the backdrop of drunk fools, fueled by hormones as well as liquor, thrash around even when music wasn’t playing. I saw one of them hitting me or a friend of mine and getting very angry at them. Confroting them. Losing. My body lay limp as everyone continues with business as usual. My body would be found when a drunk slut came to find her underwear that was discarded on my bloody posthumous self.

I stared back toward the band, looking into the flood light. Watching the shadows of the bassists head stock eclipsing part of the light. Truly a phallic symbol that Freud would be proud of. As he went to sing i watch the cloud of spit exhale from his throat as he screamed his words. The passion of it all made me uncomfortable that people can give so much for their music while playing for a crowd of weak minded alcoholic walking travestys to man.

Scenario 2:

I saw my ride home. I grabbed my bike and started riding home. I watched the drunks painted in green and filth scream obscenities and slurs at me. I saw myself enraged once more but avoiding conflict. I rode home faster and faster trying to escape the trash of the world and escape into some music and possibly a book when I arrive home. I saw a truck, driven by a drunk trying so hard to watch out for cops he doesn’t notice me. I don’t notice him. I become painfully aware of his presence when my leg gets stuck in his grill when he hits me.

Some drunk asshole just tried to scream something into the mic, failing he retreats to his original spot a hero to all drunk assholes. I stand there trying to forget that they stand only 2 feet away from me in this basement and that on this playing field we are equal. I try and forget that while they’re wasting their life in this basement, real people suffer trying their hardest to succeed. These people have been given so many chances to create something with their lives, instead they just sit on porches screaming anarchy and protesting. They protest against workers instead of leaders, they protest for progression without helping to create the progress themselves. I take solace in the fact that they will probably end up in the gutter of a 7-11 after taking too much bad heroin in their body.

Scenario 3:

I get home just fine. I sit down and turn on some music and lean back in my chair and try to finish some work on a project. I stop half way and set down my pencil. I grab a pack of cigarettes and i walk out my front door. Standing on the porch I see a group of drunk assholes walking infront of my house. They scream at me. I ignore. They are the ones that get angry this time. They beat the shit out of me and rob my apartment. I attempt to cry for help, my throat collapses.

I get home just fine. I sit down, put on some music and sit quietly. I think about the people i see on a day to day basis and wonder when they will believe in something again. I hope they don’t. I fear that they are so lost that anything they will create will destroy equally. I believe that as fact and am disappointed i didn’t die that night.