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July 12, 2002 – Deep Woods, Loud Mouth
Been out here in the woods fully one week as of today, & it's official:
I'm cracked. I'm bent as a bear on a birch branch, doubled-over and mouthing
silent bloody murder at the codeine moon. Problem is there is no moon
& the codeine just makes me dumb. Stupefied, and the pain remains.
Oh! And a new twist that undoubtedly has nothing to do with my tooth,
but my fingers are going numb. Right this instant – can't hardly
feel the pen in my right hand. Don't know what that's all about but it's
been a recurrent problem lately. This morning it feels like the numbness
reaches clear up to my elbow. Awoke twenty minutes ago to the sound of
someone rubbing dimes together here in Dan's pocket. Mice condo camper
– at least dimes is what it sounded like in my dream-drugged half
asleep brain. But no, it was mice. Sweet dreams last night about some
girl i met in the ER at Maine General Hospital yesterday, both of us in
there seeking pain killers for abscessed tooth's. She was young and she
was sweet and i fucked it up with my shyness & so much time alone
with my thoughts. My brain is as numb as my fingers, i fear, but my heart
is as open as the nerve in my broken tooth and my mouth moves silent words
of bloody murder as the mind concocts ways to knock this bad bolt from
the cage of my skull. Wilson! Hand me the ice skate –
Morning. A very sober morning, if not by reason of the coffee, then most
certainly the exposed nerve in that rotten little fucking tooth in the
bottom right of my mouth. Anyway, enough about that.. If you wanna "be"
where i'm at this fine July day in the Maine woods plug into Barry White's
All Time Greatest Hits, track one. That's what I'm listening to on my
$40 Audiophase digital CD player & headphones while the citronella
torch burns oh-so-enthusiastically, burning "to best the band"
as they say, in this case to best the hazy orange light of the rising
sun and keep the f-ing airborne insects at bay whilst i write. Barry White.
Gotta love him. Wish i knew the name of that classic 70's instrumental
of his that begins this "Funk Essentials" CD. You'd know it.
Well, unless you weren't ever born yet by the late 70's, which as it happens
is the case with more and more people i meet these days. What the hell
happened? How did all the hipsters get so young? And where the heck did
the last decade go? Here we are sitting around the table of a crappy camper
drinking beers last night, my cousin Justin (whom i lovingly call my "attorney"),
his female companion and I, when suddenly in my toothache-codeine-haze
high, I ask how old she is. Nothing (except for typical gonzo irony) prepared
me for her answer. "What?!! You gotta be shittin' me!" I howled.
I immediately & impulsively grabbed this notebook and thwacked my
"attorney" over the head.
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