You know it was a good afternoon nap when I broke a sweat and had the outline of a crease in my pillowcase marked on my face. I had to have more cups of coffee than I’d care to share to bail out of it, and then I got into the good Ev zone, where I can be surrounded by people and make phone calls to my friends (which I did). Now, at 8:03, I’m in the energy zone, so I figured I’d come back up to my room and bang on this keyboard, see what comes out.
It kind of feels like high school around this program I’m in, without the drugs. People love me here, and the beauty thing is I never wasn’t myself the whole time, just a weirdo nerd. I stood up on a table at tonight’s house meeting and invited everyone to the 27,000 retro games I had running in the lounge, and a bunch of folks got their faces wrecked by me in 2 on 2 Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Kabal and Robot Smoke, for the win).
My mother called me the mayor of our hometown because every time we went out, there were all these people saying “Ev, man, what’s up!?” with those warm handshakes that turn into one-arm hugs. That’s who I am here, the mayor of rehab… the longest-tenured resident. And then there’s Megan.
I got here on 9–30–22, and Megan got here on 10–07–22. No one else from that time period is here, and both of us have seen so many people come and go, and in many cases, return. Megan and I have a special friendship, understanding, and cavalcade of inside jokes that only make sense to us. We have shared this experience, sometimes from a distance, but always with something ridiculous in the Facebook Messenger and the two Instagram accounts that we talk on. Last night, or the night before, we had a few ginger ales and talked trash about some of our experiences here and some of the personalities who inhabited this island of misfit toys with us; the little chat was rather jovial and bouncy.
I don’t intend to write about her story; she could do that if she wants. We both found our way to where we are, how we found it, through our own dumb moves and actions of personal growth. There are a lot of people here that I like well enough and are pleasant to be around, but only Megan and the staff are the people I want to really kick it with, as they know the backstory and lore. It feels like everyone else is just a rotating cast of guest stars, not to take away from their personal stories… I’m just the main character in mine.
I had a crush on Megan at first, and I’ve been really mean to her, and we’ve had times of distance. I’ve got 7 years on the kid, and there were times I watched her learn the lessons I had to learn when I was 30, and I wanted to just shake her and spare her some of the hurt that I took on when I was her age. People have to have their own experiences, and you can’t deprive them of those, even if you want to spare them a few bruises.
I hope I stay in touch with her after this whole thing.
“This whole thing” might be winding down to its logical conclusion as this lethargic holiday week becomes real business days tomorrow. I know I shouldn’t expect anything, but it’s a reasonable expectation that I’ll be stepping onto the next chapter before Christmas. Of course, you, the internet blog reader, will be among the first to know.
Heavenly God, something hijacked all of my attention.
I was digging around in my Grateful Dead archive app, looking at today in history, when I browsed over to the list of shows I marked as favorites. There are a lot of them. I figure I do my little “what happened today in GD history,” and if it’s a hot one, I put a heart on it and forget about it. There are the tapes I could remember and rattle off the top of my head, but there are the tapes I favorite and forget. Boy, oh boy, I shouldn’t have let 1973–12–06 slip through the cracks. This is the kind of tape that I send to everyone I know that’s ever mentioned even a passing interest in the band, along with the screenshot of the 2nd set, because it’s a five-song second set with a 15-minute “Here Comes Sunshine” (it’s become my favorite song, I think), and a 43-minute long version of “Dark Star”.
The thing about jam band second sets is, the fewer number of actual songs there are, the more improvisation there is in between them. That’s why we love the Phish Gorge 98 4-song set 2.
My sweet lord, man, I’m concerned that flames are going to come out of my headphones and burn this whole place down. I have to link this tape, for anyone that reads this and didn’t get my text/Instagram/Facebook messages imploring them to give it a spin.
That’s the beauty of a band that has a couple of thousand concert recordings, there’s always another wonderful surprise.
Okay, tonight’s post is prime ADHD caffeine, train-of-thought rambling, but I’m going to go back to where I am.
There’s a reason I look out for the new people in this program with coffee, cigarettes, and old phones: because I was them. I came here with nothing but the clothes on my back and the lucky colorful Adidas that I found while I was living on the street in Bed-Stuy. Look at me now, I’ve got the Dead on a pretty capable little Samsung Galaxy (in my big Bluetooth headphones), as I ramble on into a laptop about the Mortal Kombat action. Honestly, you should see my wardrobe too, man, I’ve cultivated a little look here. All of it, every single thing, is a hand-me-down gift from somewhere, especially the nurses who’ve got me in cool Adidas track jackets and leopard-print Chuck Taylors. I’m wearing honey mustard-colored silk dress slacks, man, there’s something to be said for that. This week’s $3 shades are rather glamorous, too, might I just top off the paragraph by mentioning that.
You couldn’t have calculated a year like I’ve had, going from attempting to check out on what they call heroin, but is really something more powerful and sinister, to being in a film about recovering from that state by singing my favorite songs, and writing things like this nearly nonsensical little blog post that you’re reading now (God bless your heart, man).
Here’s the old “spare a cup of coffee?” link that our loyal readers will reckognize. i haven’t got money, but i’m not really sweating it for a change, that doesn’t mean i wouldn’t appreciate your contribution to the cause, however. : https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
and i just want to keep typing to type so, here’s a link to my plethora of multimedia things, like a film, some songs and some sounds. i just think you should click it for literal hours of entertainment (and insanity):
