Definition.

When someone dies we say that we have “Lost” them.

Which insinuates,wrongly, that they may be found again.

Dead is dead.

Personally? I like to think that when I get called back to the happy hunting ground everyone that I have planted or have scattered to the four winds (why only four?) will be lining the driveway up to the sacred double doors at Graceland waving  as I regally cruise by in my headache inducing candy-orange-metal-flecked cherry, and I am talking as in virgin here people, 1970 convertible Dodge Challenger and it is there we shall rally like Viking Gods in the ankle grazing shag-piled Jungle Room,joyously pixilated off our asses on only the finest medical grade pharmaceuticals ( No stepped on street trash for the likes of us! Yo-ho-ho! ) care of shady Dr Nickalopolous ,feasting upon Delta Mae’s artery agonizing southern faire and shooting out television sets with silver plated .44’s.

But for now ,stuck like gum beneath the high-top of this mortal coil,I am angry at incorrect word usage. It smacks of nothing but avoidance and denial and it gets me mad as Ted Bundy in the stand.Howling pissed comprende? They are “Gone”.Full stop people,not coming back.Carbon and ashes.Fertilizer.I know that I will find my tail,my hot pink Chanel handbag and my Roller skates at some point just like I found my missing for months Fleetwood Mac tee shirt but I know for damn sure I am not going to be going through one of my infinite  boxes of  crap or delving into the murky rag choked depths of my Narnia-like wardrobe and just happen upon one of my many dead.

Not ” lost”

Dead.

Irretrievable.

And it never stops sucking and at that horrific soul numbing moment,the point of impact,of confirmation of death, I vow never to get close to another animal again.All bravura and bullshit  granted but my intentions are laser sharp and smart enough for Mensa, so eat it.

To not let anyone new in.Because its all to hard.I don’t give a fuck if loving is all part of the human experience.Go to Byron Bay,wedge a  sharp chunk of rose quartz up your vegan butt and talk to the dolphins you hippy scum-sucking trustafarian tie-dyed tools,noodle away at your past life regressions and rot.Assholes. I have no vacancies you see. I am full up.I am brokering no applications,no,not even with references.I avoid the few that I claim to love as it is and to this day I have no idea why the hell they put up with me or my behavior.

Could be because I am such a great deal in  small  rapido doses.

I have a sinking feeling that my front and armor are just too good. I can’t cruise around with my sceptically sociopathic  colors on show for all the world to see now can I? It’s just not cricket old chum.It is a constant source of amazement to me that no one really takes the fact that I am so fatally flawed seriously.I warn them,I tell them and then they act shocked when I coldly follow through.Personally? In all honesty?  I am shocked that they are shocked.Shocked that I am not fucking around here, because I just don’t have the time nor the inclination.The one thing I have managed to do is  made an uneasy treaty with the beast and I am better off being true to myself than bowing to the  nonsensical needs of others and compromising myself. In my book silt “Settles”  not people.I mean,what kind of epic life’s ambition is that ? To settle? Really? Dang. The things that they want from me to temper their own disarray and enable some kind of to- little-too-late self forgiveness.Over time you must make peace with yourself.I have not,nor do I think that I will ever mange this fine and noble feat but my war is honorable.Weapons are downed once a year , trenches and foxholes scrambled out of  for a friendly game of football on the battlefield,goals scored on the shattered bones and decomposing soft tissue of the…..lost…..

The dead.

And that is the frailty of us all.The ego that drives us on.We love and lose and we think that we are immortal.

I sat across from what I think was an old man on the train tonight.Could have just been a ball-sack in a bad suit for all I know.You know when people get so old they become genderless and look like some half baked character that Jim Henson rejected? He could have been a hundred years old in the shade but that didn’t stop him from checking out my legs.I dropped a hot wink at him and he smiled,demonstrating the fine work of his dentist manifested into blinding dentures..And in that smile,that brief moment,I could see him,the young and vital him in his milky blue eyes.It pinned me to my seat like a a nail shot from a gun.Crucified cold on it,the fate that awaits us all.He winked back,snapped the moment and we both laughed.

And  you can bet your ass that he never thought that time would catch him,no sir.That he looks in the mirror and wonders what the hell happened to the shell that he carries his younger self around in.

Christ ! If that is the case what hope is there for me? I still wake up in the early evening,stretch and fire a lupine grin at my Iggy poster,yawn and think “Well alright! 1992! ” and then have a mid-sized meltdown because I am still not getting it right and its twenty fucking years later.How in the hell did that happen?? “Nevermind” is now classic rock ?! ( hangs head weeping ) Oh rage! Oh despair!. I have no idea even where to begin when it comes to being a grown up.All my friends have small  people and mortgages.Gross.

Meanwhile,back in the jungle ( New York Dolls rule!) I am considering buying a handbag that costs as much a small car,thank you very much bloody Ralph bloody Lauren.I wear thigh high tube sox with terry toweling hot pants.I am bereft of a drivers license.I rehearse my Grammy acceptance speech into a broken wooden spoon while sliding back and forth on the kitchen tiles in my tiger slippers, my black silk magnolia splattered kimono flaring and fluttering, a homage to any number of Stevie Nicks film-clips from the 80’s while I am waiting for my two minute noodles to boil. And as time marches on, jackbooted and precise,I have still not worked out how to be a real live card carrying adult.

Not that I would know what to do with myself if I was mind you.It doesn’t look like much of a red hot good time from where I am perched.

Don’t go thinking that I am outside the house of grown up forlornly fogging up the windows like Tiny Tim at Christmas.Far from it.

I just stay trapped in the amoebic amber of adolescence.

And wonder how to keep leaving people behind.

Because,naively, I thought that we were all in the mix for life.Duh. Go to the back of the line Madden.I know right? What can I tell ya? I am a dreamer…There are a few rare birds that have gone the distance with my redneck raconteur self, bless them .But all the ones that kicked up the biggest stink while fervently pledging their freaky forever? Gone.Gone.Gone.They cashed it in,sold the hot-rod,got the girl with child,hung up the guitar.And they have the gall,the tenacity to look at me like I owe them money? To dare to look down at me from their compromised position feigning smugness and security? What-the-fuck-ever. The amoral bottom feeding dirty stop-outs! Fucking traitors one and all if you ask me. Ok,so I am in the minority and these clowns  obviously can’t keep up the good fight when pressure  is applied by parents and peer…hold on,hold up one fucking second! You know what? Good fuckin’ riddance to them! Ha! natural selection comes to the party, dances on the coffee table drunk  and pukes in the aquarium once again.

Thank you brother! Phew.A close call…

I was risking the infection of mediocrity just being around those schmendricks.Oy vey….

Because they have surpassed me on the highway.I am still hitchhiking while they zoom past smugly encased in the air conditioned  Cadillacs of brittle competency and I splutter on the off ramp and eat their dust.But at least I can still look myself in the eye.This ,none of this is a complaint just an observance,dig?.You can’t not be what you are without utterly horrific repercussions.Attempting such self treachery,from what I have ascertained and sadly observed in the field,  leads to ass cancer,self loathing,unwise haircuts,belly fat ,infidelity,domestic affray and  booco bitterness. Think I will pass ,thanks.

And my hectic vanity and perceptual youth, much like Amy Winehouse sings the sweet refrain of “No,no,no!” The light has left all but a few of them,they look harried ,string lipped and very,very un-cute and that is not what I want.

Freud’s renegade devil-may-care buddy Jung threw it down most succinctly “What is not brought to conciseness comes to us as fate.” Which I like to think influenced Sarah Conner in the most excellent “Terminator two” into carving  lawn furniture up with the epithet  “No fate but what we make.” Maybe? Who can say? But then to throw it back to everyone’s favorite bearded Viennese phallic obsessives dying words “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.

This is giving me a headache.

Call it like it is.Is it really so hard? Really? Oh dude….And here was my dumb ass thinking that you were cleverly constructed of sterner stuff.Now,that is a misery inducing mistake I shall not be making again…Some days,admittedly, it is going to take more courage than you think you have but take a real long hard look at the alternative. Are you going to moonlight as a contender your whole life? Spout time rotted rhetoric to the other civilian soaks at the bar every Friday night? A weekday warrior but a weekend coward? I am to busy to preach but if that is how you are going to roll? Then we are done.D-o-n-e.

“No hard feelings” to quote The Undertones former lead singer Mr Fergal Sharkey ,”There’s no feelings at all” .

In summation Your Honor?

I want people to call the shot,quit with the passive aggression already,stop complaining because they are afraid to change their lives and last but not least to stay the fuck out of my way.Just tell it like it is,just like Sir Arron Neville of my beloved New Orleans or just fuck off out of it and lie to yourself  somewhere out of the line of my ever neon hued ,brilliant, dream dappled vision.

That’s all.I don’t think that I am asking too much.

Anything else on this fine tiger-print sporting evening I hear you ask ?

Sure.

I want to buy the world a coke.