Brain Poops

8:30 Friday - At home, Los Dangeles

Groggy. The sleeping pills from the night before haven’t finished their job just yet, but feel hell-bent on completing the mission anyway. Jesus… I haven’t seen 8:30AM in a long time. It’s as I remember it: overrated and bleak.

My bags are already packed from the night before. They are a few feet away from the base of the bed and looking up at me with their sad, polyester duffel-bag faces. I flop over them and make my way to the kitchen.

Fridge doors are complicated when you’re waking up from six hours of sleep and expecting to be awake another sixteen. I fumble the door open and slam down three cokes to combat my foggy brain functions.

I grab my bags, give NickyNik a quick phone call and belch off on my motorcycle towards the airport. I’m absent the fear of long-term parking costs, since on my last trip there I realized they don’t charge for motorcycle parking for any length of time. The wind wraps me up like a long lost lover, then it smacks me around like a long lost lover finding out about the other lovers in your past.

10:00 - Los Dangeles International Airport.

Nick leaves me a voice message saying he has to piss and that he’ll meet me at the terminal. Well not exactly those words, but you get the drift.

I walk into the ticketing area, mouth agape at the horde of travelers shuffling through the queue. It was a bedraggled, coiling square dance with a lame band, only the band was equipped with weapons and authority instead of instruments and talent. After 30 minutes in three lines, two donation solicitors and one hung over TSA, I headed to the terminal to meet Nick.

The terminal is only slightly air conditioned, which makes me ponder just what the hell they do with all the profits from grossly overpriced chihuahua ashtrays and fast food. It’s gotta be 90 degrees in this fucker! My glasses get foggy in a Dilbert-in-a-strip-club kind of way and I stop to clean them off.

I put them back on and see Nick waiting for me in front of a window. The scene looks as if Norman Rockwell had been working in the 90s covering transit: Nick reading the LA Times with his head down to see over his spectacles, the terminal umbilicus attaching to the airplane behind him. I compulsively check that I indeed washed behind my ears and say hello.

(continue reading…)