Randomness (or the world in which i live)

Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World (or Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog as I knew it as a child) plays raucously from the borrowed stereo and I am suddenly walking around the block in the rain with my sister. I am barefoot. And she is barefoot. My long hair is plastered to my forehead and to the back of my neck. I am eight or ten or 38 and I am a while from jumping the train at the end of the Big Hill and running away to places I cannot picture. I am an overly sensitive Boy, eager to please, and embarrassed by it. Thunder rumbles beyond the pines and we can’t tell if the storm is picking up or dying out. All we care about is the rain in our faces and the slap of our feet in puddles—Georgia steam rising from the asphalt like so many spirits. The rain is cold yet still we are in a steam bath. The immeasurable heat being one of the few good things about Augusta. We walk the length of Scenic Drive into Westfield and make a full circle back to Evergreen Drive. We go inside where it is dry. Pause. Wonder why we ever left the rain.


Uncle G. was in D.C. over the weekend. He called me from the Four Seasons to let me know he just met Dave Chappelle. He doesn’t call me on these occasions to brag. Not to really brag. He just knows that I absolutely marvel at his life. See, Uncle G. is a hybrid of Seinfeld’s Kramer and a C List movie star. His daily life is a full-fledged fantasy camp where shit just happens. Whether it be the band Lonestar buying him shots in a downtown Nashville bar; trying out for a walk-on role in Matrix 2 in San Francisco; or riding around Manhattan in a limousine with an unnamed Soap Opera star, shit just happens to Uncle G. The boy makes me smile on a regular. I will give him that. Whether he is calling me from backstage at Bonnaroo or getting kicked out of Coyote Ugly for acknowledging loudly and proudly that “THIS PLACE SUCKS!” he makes me smile. I’ll gladly take one of those now and again.


It is recent Augusta. And quiet. Everyone but Bo and a more merciful God than I deserve is sleeping. After walking six blocks at 3 a.m., I reach my sister and brother-in-law’s house on Heath Street. I go to the front door, nearest Bo’s office. I step to the side as I knock because I know he will have his .45 with him. Three knocks and an It’s me, Bo! He opens the door, his eyes rimmed with alert concern, the .45 at the half-ready. “Hey, Bo” he says. “You o.k.?” We’ve called each other Bo for over 20 years.

I stay the night.


And on a random night in random Nashville, I think of a watershed moment of youth, a fantastical friend, and a night steeped in good fortune…

Fade to black…