There’s another way across the parking lots of broken glass like berries in a field. There’s another way of describing what happened. There’s another way to capture the essence. There’s another way out of these cavernous nightclubs in the afternoon with their fallen girders of 2 o’clock sun and their rinky-dink radios playing janitor music way in the back somewhere. There’s another way down the icy hill outside the bank. There’s another way to find your fortune underneath a worm rock. There’s another way to get fit again after all of this fucking time. There’s another way to sabotage a friend’s screenplay. There’s another way to make money off the Internet. There’s another way to talk to autistic people. There’s another way to mourn your losses. There’s another way to air fry your fat cunty shrimp from Wegman’s. There’s another way to stretch your back after a night in the tent. There’s another way to talk to the moon shining down on your car. There’s another way to the World Series. There’s another way past the bar with the people in the window. There’s another way for us to figure out what outer space actually tastes like. There’s another way into this. There’s another way out.
Nothing sets the tone for deep muscle relaxation quite like money. Money helps settle the spins. Money, believe it or not, is better than medicine or luck. If you are having trouble winding down at the end of one of your long ridiculous days at the office or whatever, just go get your money and dump it all out on the dining room table or on the coffee table. Do it with your goofy Spotify playlist yammering away in the other room. For ambience.
Sometimes on a Friday night after we drop her kids off at their dad’s over the mountain: me and Arle come back home and feed the dogs and leave the pizza in its box on the kitchen island: and we put all of our money all over the living room floor so we can drip in it. So we can roll in it and tell all the people that don’t have it (because its ours!) to fuck off.
Fuck off, you lazy losers!, I bellow.
Go fuck yourself, you poor little broke-ass crybaby bitch!, Arle shrieks.
Then we toss the money up in the air and we laugh and laugh and laugh.
Then we toss the money up in the air again and we laugh and drink and fuck.
And laugh.
Tonight is a presidential debate between the two candidates for president of the United States of America. I’ll be honest/ I can’t figure out why anyone in their right mind would want that job. Now before you start riffing on all the reasons like the methy English teacher that you really are deep down, let me just disclose that I understand fully what attracts so many to seek the high office. It’s the wet T-shirt of unspeakable power. It’s the flashy leg of unstoppable dreams. It’s the vibrator of American buzz ringing straight and true up your little ’70s shorts and over your thigh like some golden beetle bound to die in all that wet hot glory of a battleship boiler room known as the White House, amigo.
But even with all of that attached to the deal, I can’t see it working for me. I wouldn’t do so great with all of those people needing me and trying to talk to me. My first day in the Oval Office damn sure wouldn’t be spent ordering the executions of all the journalists who had trash-talked me on my way up. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be spent putting the finishing touches on my all-inclusive 879-page political opus A Plan for America either, do you know why? It’s because I wouldn’t have jack shit ready to go. Not a damn thing. I’m so bogged down in my own shit all the time that I’m guessing my first day in the Presidential role wouldn’t be spent helping anyone gain anything whatsoever. It would be an utter disgrace in that regard. No new bills headed to congress/ no fresh ideas floated out to the mainstream media. Instead, I think they would find me holed up down in the kitchen in the basement, drinking a little wine with the onion peelers.
Mr President! comes my assistant. You are urgently needed at this hour to make a statement to the nation and the world regarding the accusations by former President Trump accusing you of rigging the election machines with vintage grape Hubba Bubba and a coathanger, allowing illegal Haitian immigrants to cast upwards of 1,000 mail-in votes each while dining on the pet dogs of Ohio, and, perhaps worst of all if I may say so myself, sir — the baseless claim that you and you alone are responsible for the rape of our once-loved Christmas in favor of this new whore, Halloween.
Me. I raise an eyebrow, take the lit cigarette from between the fingers of a short Hispanic lady who peels potatoes for the most important eater in the world (me again!), inhale a good puff and immediately sense the bit of old school county fairground hash mixed in there with the tobacco, before I calmly respond in my best Rocky Balboa voice:
Yo, Adrian. you know, well, uhhh, you know Adrian I been thinkin’ that, uhhhh, maybe you and me, maybe we can, you know, how do I say this without making you feel like you gotta say yes but, uhhhh, well, I want you to say yes but, you know, Adrian, I mean, there’s a lot to this kinda thing, yaknowwhatImsayin, haha, I mean, Adrian, do you think you might… like… want to… you know… you think maybe me and you ought to make this all official like, ha hah?
And just then as I finish the basically flawless impression we all hear the sound of breaking glass and AR-15s cutting loose and the shouts of the Trumpers as they storm through the windows, flowing like wine from a barrel, waving their flags and holding their phones up in the air as they shout my name out loud because they are about to hang me on the lawn on live TV.
No thanks, Tom Hanks.
Fully stylized homes offer a number of unique features that Americans just love and need! What are they though? I’m asking for real because I’m thinking we don’t have a lot of the creature comforts that come with a life lived right. All that planning, all those years spent climbing up this ladder and that one, kissing this guy’s lily white ass and then that one’s, it all culminates in an 11th-hour mass epiphany right around the time you hit your early 50s. Just like moi.
What you begin to realize is this.
I have spent enormous amounts of my life’s time making a shit-ton of money for cunning slick bastards who have no soul. I have missed many opportunities to commune with both my family and nature in favor of eeking out a possible bonus at the end of the year. I have shown enormous respect (some call it ass-kissing) to people who are much richer than me and more powerful than me and who don’t ever, ever, ever think about me when I am not stood right in front of them.
And I have beat myself up because I knew deep down that I was doing it all wrong.
I did it all wrong.
Life all wrong.
Wrong all life.
All life long.
Long Duck Dong.
Short Life Gone.
Deep dives down into the so-called trenches of existential meaning stick to me like woodlot burrs. They hang off my Woolrich like country tumors and I try to act like I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about when you ask me if I know they’re there.
Of course I know they’re there, hoss. I ordered them from Etsy. They are cottage core burrs, 12 for $10. They say something about the person with them on their coat. They say: Please kill this motherfucker before he kills himself with stupidity. Yet, I keep on keeping on and as it goes with that kind of thing we constantly find me (and others of the same ilk) bobbing around in the shadows where losers strike matches to see if the first sparks spell out any lottery numbers or whatever. I’m always out there in the daylight trying to nudge a little bit closer to a bitty thing called the truth.
What does that even mean? I have no idea. I really don’t. It just sounds good when I say it out loud. The truth. It sounds like when I say, “steakhouse baked potato.” I say that like Sam Elliott.
“Steakhouse baked potato.”
Solid. Real. Dependable.
Now we’re gettin’ somewhere, partner.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
