FROM THE DIARY OF THE FMR. GUITARIST OF BLACK DIAMOND:
I am sitting in a bar somewhere in Chicago in what they call the Loop in what is probably a touristy kind of place, which should be okay because I am kind of a tourist, and they are playing Blue Train real loud over the speakers, which I do not really mind even though I am a rock and roll type person, and I am trying really hard not to order a drink or think about ordering a drink or how good a drink would taste except I am in a bar and that is the whole purpose of a bar in the first Goddamned place.
I read this story once about how this one rich actor from Great Britain, who had become abstinent from alcohol, on account of he was a drunk, was playing a rich drunk in a movie. To help him get into character he had a whole person whose sole job was just to follow him around with an empty bottle of water, except it had a couple fingers of Jack Daniels in the bottom of it. Before a scene where the actor was supposed to act drunk, the assistant was supposed to uncap the bottle and hold it up under his nose, so he could get a whiff of the whiskey. That was supposed to make the drunk from Great Britain act better, or at least let him act like a drunk better.
I think that would of just pissed me off real bad. I reckon it’s about the same thing as those rednecks that put a dog on a line and then put a porkchop just outside its reach, and then sit back and laugh when the dog knocks itself silly yanking on that chain. Except no dog I ever met would pay somebody to treat it that way.
I gather up the postcards that I am writing and settle up my tab for three Diet Cokes and leave the bar, not on account of John Coltrane, who I have a lot of respect for, except they are playing Sonny Rollins now, I think, but because me sitting here in this bar is like a dog snapping a chain shut around its own neck, or that stupid-ass actor paying somebody to fucking tease him with whiskey.