Sympathy for the Devil
01 September 2008 at 9:31 pm

I was on the phone with Michelle, who bade me well when she requested that I may get a story out of this evening. The world may be nigh, but the evening is young, and here is what has happened so far:

I rolled out of bed, a bed encased in mosquito netting, a bed I had not slept in before, overhead fan on, windows braced open against the intrepid humidity that has encased Santa Barbara, copies of Dante's Inferno and Meditations on an Emergency keeping the breeze echoing throughout the apartment. The only way to get out of this bed is to roll underneath the netting. So I roll.

I spent the rest of the morning, all three minutes of it, gearing up for the day. I had previously decided the night prior, tipsy off vodka and blackberry juice concoctions, drunk off a $12 bottle of chianti, high off an entire evening dancing on hardwood floors with Ray Charles and Iggy Pop (what a party those two can throw!) to treat this time of my life, these next 26 days, as a vacation in the town I've lived in the past three years. I am in the process of moving out of one place into another, and Pav has generously offered his currently vacant two bedroom one bath downtown apartment located atop a cheese shop, for God's sake, as a place of sanctuary while he is off traipsing through Germany for the next month.

Life is best when you happen across it.

So I am here for the time being, save for precious few hours I while away at work on the second floor of one machine shop or another, save for the eras I am pulling glasses of Delirium Tremens or pouring glasses of Santa Ynez Valley wines, and here I am anonymous, or I pretend to be (it is a small town, Santa Barbara, and though I work in the neighboring town, I cannot go to the grocery store without being recognized at least once). I am here, and I went and spent $50 on groceries for the week, to store in a refrigerator that is not mine; I packed a week's worth of underwear; I unloaded a year's worth of unread literature, optimistically, and I have yet to turn on the television, and I have already broken into my benefactor's liquor stash, and I have spent many hours listening to music, just hearing Jackie Wilson's story, just bearing aural witness to the Boy with the Arab Strap, as though that's worthy of my time, as though I don't have anything better to do.

Because, I don't have anything better to do than sit in this gorgeous apartment listening to gorgeous music, finishing books and writing my own, doing my makeup just to walk around the block to sober up before bed.

It's all I ever wanted out of life.

There's a story for tonight, the stuff that actually happened after I ordered a Stella at the local pub and cracked the spine on my book, readying myself for a night of eavesdropping, but that's it, really. That's my story. That's my life.

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About me
Hi. Morgan, 27, of Santa Barbara, CA. I am a hypocritical admirer of rhetoric (when it is my own) and an observer of literary trends. A secret: I don't take anything very seriously, and that includes myself.