About drinking, Harry Crews wrote: “Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, ‘Hey, man, the ball game’s up.”
About biking, the old man felt much the same. Lord, he hurt. He had managed to land on his particularly arthritic joints, the right shoulder, the left thumb. That couldn’t have helped the pain. Stomach felt like somebody had hit him with a Louisville Slugger. Reggie Jackson model. A day later, he practically gasped when he realized it could have been worse. Hadn’t hurt his oh so stiff neck.
If life is good, like it says on the young redhead’s teddy bear, and pain means you are alive, only stands to reason pain is good. See what I did there?
Harry Crews was always an outsider, a man who battled serial demons. You could say much the same about the old man.
Such men stay outside because they are already fully occupied battling serial demons within. Thing they don’t tell us about battling serial demons, in addition to being bad and coming at you one after another, you end up losing lot of times. Just the way it goes.
You get knocked down, you get back up again. You come back. Like an inflatable Joe Palooka doll the old man had tormented in a previous century. Bounce back up, bounce back up. We’ll be singing when we’re winning. You know we will.
He could remember his father look at him, a sad expression, and say quietly, I never promised you a rose garden, son. He hadn’t been able to think of anything to say back. So, his father shouted, Mother, did you promise this boy a rose garden? His mother – when she was a little girl – had missed Christmas with her family so she could earn fifty cents helping some rich kid’s family have a happy holiday.
No rose garden.
He remembered thinking he was sick and tired hearing about fuckin’ rose gardens.
It hurt to vacuum. The old man fancied himself quite a superb vacuumisto and would occasionally carve a love note to the young redhead in the living room carpet. Hurt to vacuum and he thought that was so sad. Had been working on a design for a riding vacuum. A bar stool atop two iRobot Roombas, the basic concept all he had so far.
Hang up might be balance and coordination. Exactly the issues which had gotten him in this dire plight.
To be honest, genetics and decades of masturbation and sports and drinking probably played a role in that right elbow. Wasn’t just housework. Wax on, wax off.
Serial demons come in many forms.