Beatriceish

Well, there was the trip there, from downtown Lincoln. Following Myles down a four-lane street, than an expressway, than a narrow state highway, than a county road, than a gravel road. Random, A solitary tiki torch sat by the houses. This was private land, somebody owned an entire lake. A big fire, and a string band, like a real one.

And, let's see, the bar in Dewitt, the Red Zone, the crowd melts in ecstasy at Bon Jovi's Always." Laughed at them, ignored by bartenders for longest possible time. Miller-High-Life, off-sale. Bar vaguely Husker and pro-military themed. Red walls, random bar shit on the walls. Screen door to get in. Could be a bar in the middle of nowhere anywhere, Minnesota, Arizona, Georgia, Mexico. Expected more mosquitos and stale-beer-urine-smell.

Beatrice for gas, only place where's there's anything open. Bitches Ain't Shit.

Found way back to right road, Waldo Farms.

Meet and talk to locals mid-nineties metal band T-shirts. One woman was in hair college. 26-year-old man in Nine-Inch Mails-shirt with nine-year-old-son. Or was that two seperate people?

One woman is taking classes at Southeast. I think I might have clicked with a couple of local girls. But, they sang amn Eagles song. "Take It Easy" the most Eagles of Eagles songs. A guy in a farmer's tight, fitted baseball cap played take-it-easy and
all the locals started singing; sincerely, lovingly. Than he busted out "Margaritaville."

Fuck the guy with the guitar. I have a friend who's thirty years-old with a wife and kid. The band he's fronted since he was eighteen is still officially together and occasionly puts out a new album. His lyrics are really trite and no one in the band plays well. But he still maintains the fiction of being a professional musician so that he has an excuse to bring his guitar to parties. Fuck the guy with the guitar.

I was in a panic. The Lincoln people, they were, somewhere else, and here I was. Men in cowboy hats and long white beards stare into the fire grimly. They're singing Eagles songs. The moon is full and everything is startingly clear, too clear to intrepret accuratly. I have a real melted plastic, cheap-magnifying glass view of things. I break up weed poorly in the dark and smoke a spliff by the fire. I need to get out of here. I need to get back to Lincoln.

I'm not quite in a panic. I'm walking towards another sort of light and I won't walk beyond there. Stay calm. The light is another campfire, and the Lincoln people are there. I tell Dan that we should really go soon. They played The Eagles and any romantic notions about wilderness and drinking... this is how they have fun out here. This is how I was brought up. Jesus, I'm not sleepin here, I'm not seeing the sun rise here.

I woke up in my apartment at ten thirty. I figure I got five hours of sleep. I'm fine, quite fine. Quiet pensive, but quite fine.