Salad Days

My memories of the good old days were way back when I cared about school and believed in God and loved my parents and everyone thought I was going to be a success one day and I wore big glasses and a stupid sweater and everyone in class didn’t hate me for it and I cried all the time for whatever reason any reason and eventually everyone stopped liking me so I stopped liking class but at the time it was all good and especially teachers liked me, too. I was about six then.

Then another time I liked was when I went to France using student loans and I woke up in a cold ass room by an annoying ass kid who would steal all my euro-change before yelling at me to wake up and then I took a cold ass shower and dried off with stiff ass cold towels and go downstairs and take a shit and go out to the kitchen and drink thick coffee that my cold ass host mother would make for me with cream and eat fresh bread and cold butter and then I’d leave and eat a clementine on the walk to school in the cold cold ass wind and at night I would hold my future wife’s hand and not drink anything because I still believed in God.

Another time was when I was shit wasted every night at the restaurant in DC listening to The National until 2 AM and buying yellow American Spirits with my boss’s money and staring at the wall and finishing bottles of Catoctin Creek whiskey and forgetting what day it was and walking home with one shoe and stopping for early breakfast in Adams Morgan and back to work at the coffee shop at six in the morning with my good friend and listening to George Thorogood and every day monotonous madness and no one could stop it because I didn’t believe in God any more.