eric clapton's prediction
When I was about 20 years old, I had a pretty powerful delusion that I was the next Jim Morrison, and I set about finding a band to back up my hypnotic, sex-symbol genius.
I remember I paired up with this one long-haired, brooklyn-accented drummer downtown, and we would practice in his apartment and audition guitarists from time to time. When it was just me and the drummer playing, we would both sort of "go off" on these cacauphonous rampages. Since a set of drums and a bass guitar can't really be out of key with each other, it was hard to tell whether what we were doing was really great or really terrible. After we finished a jam session we would just kind of look at each other, shrug our shoulders and pop open a couple of beers.
Then, one day, we auditioned this older, guitarist dude that sort of looked like Eric Clapton. The guy sort of played like Eric Clapton too, and I'm not sure if he knew what to do with our free-form, cacauphonous drum and bass rampages.
But after we'd jammed for a set, me and the drummer dude felt like having a couple of cold beers, they way real rock n' rollers do. We offered the Eric Clapton dude a beer too, but he said, "no thanks."
"I haven't drank in years," he said solemnly. Then he asked us each how old we were. As I said before, I was about 20, and I think the drummer dude was about the same age.
"Keep drinkin'," the Eric Clapton dude said. "Come about 26 or 27, you'll be calling your girlfriend from jail begging her to bail you out."
Well, we didn't sign the Eric Clapton dude up for the band, partly because he was such a staight-edge, bring-down. But he was only off by a couple of years with the jail prediction.
Right around 30 I was slamming beers down at the Emerald, and I had this extra wild feeling inside of me. I asked my girlfriend at the time if any of her friends had "anything interesting." A few minutes later she came back with a little plastic baggie of ketamine for me to take into the bathroom. I took a couple of bumps from it with my car key.
I'm not exactly sure what effect the ketamine had on me, but about 20 minutes later, my pick-up truck was stuck in the mud, in the middle of a park in downtown St. Petersburg. The cops pulled up after I'd given up on a tow truck, and I was behind the wheel stinking drunk, putting the truck in forward and reverse, and digging it deeper and deeper into the mud.
I remember when they put me in the back of the cop car, I tried to spook the officer by telling him that I was good friends with our mayor, Rick Baker. But the cop didn't seem very scared or concerned about my alleged friendship with the mayor and he slammed the door on my bullshit.
At around three am, I finally got a chance to call out from inside the 49th street holding cell. I remember it was a little bit of a dilemma, because I knew my girlfriend was the only person I could call to try to get me out at such an ungodly hour. But the thing was, I had finally made up my mind to break up with her that night (because she was really packing on the pounds). But if she rescued me from jail, I wouldn't be able to break up with her for a while. I mean, that would be a real slap in the face.
As I dialed her cell number, I wondered how long I would have to delay the break-up if she got me out of the slammer.
About three weeks, I finally decided.
3:55:17 PM 
|
I finally got my first "the legend of..." sign set out in the public arena.