No one I happen to know or care much about the opinion of, is what I’ve come to realize.
Even so, I can admit I feel sort of wrecked. Not just physically, from all the insane excesses. Those are easy enough to bounce back from. I’m 24 and brimming with virile energy and blazing lust. It burns hot and borderline feral, all the time, so if I don’t use it I feel like I might spontaneously fucking combust.
It’s the existential exhaustion that hits harder. Sometimes it dawns on me that it would actually be nice to care about what other people think of me.
But all those impulses died on one particular stormy night, years ago now. Its effect still has the ability to exhaust me from time to time. Lately the memories have felt like more of a black cloud than usual. Having my mother revisit me in a surprisingly realistic hallucination out of the blue makes me realize how jaded I am. Maybe I’m closer to the edge than I thought.
The cool water feels nothing less than miraculous, like I’m somehow in the process of being reborn.
After a while, I walk up the sandy beach and grab my clothes but I don’t bother putting them on. I’ll dry off in the sun. There’s no one around. I happen to be a person who’s intensely comfortable in my own skin, with good reason. I don’t know if I’m arrogant or just secure enough to know from experience that I happen to look like a guy who can show a girl the time of her life on around ten different levels. And then deliver on each and every one of those promises in spades. At least for one night.
That’s just the way it is.
I notice, up a slope, there’s a cottage situated in a small grove of trees. Travis mentioned that there were two or three of them, along with the main house and the barn. Part of the property he bought only days ago. He wants me to move into one of the cabins for a while.
I know my family worries about me. I take things further than either of my brothers or my sister. Travis and Kade mostly stick to whiskey and Roxie doesn’t drink at all.
But, hell, we all have our demons and we all handle them with different medicinal remedies. I tell them there’s nothing to worry about.
I walk up the slope to check out the cabin.
It’s got a small front porch with two wooden chairs and a nice view over the pond and the hills. I’m mostly dry so I pull on my jeans but leave them half-zipped. I toss my shirt onto one of the chairs and check the door. It’s unlocked.
Whoever Travis bought the property from left everything behind, like they were planning to come back to it but never did. The house is furnished and so is this cabin. It’s rustic and dusty but fully equipped as a guest house with all the modern conveniences. There’s a small kitchen, a table next to the window, leather couches and a fireplace. There’s one bedroom with a king-sized bed and a small but luxe bathroom.
Perfect.
There are even paintings on the walls. One is a geometric design, in black and white. It doesn’t really go with the rustic furnishings or the wood of the interior, but I like it. It shakes things up.
After our next tour, which is only twelve shows, I might settle down right here and Jack Kerouac my way through a couple of weeks to see if I can create some music that digs so deep it goes down in infamy for the rest of time.
Or something.
All three of us write music and we all have different styles. Travis’s is more country, Kade’s leans toward blue-grass-meets-edgy-folk and mine is more rock ‘n roll.
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Write. Let the angst and the regret and the feverish love of life pour out of me without distractions.
I find it interesting that the urge to write feels remarkably like lust. It’s a spiritual lust but it spills over into a physical lust that’s fiery and more voracious than any other kind.
Right now, I’m feeling it. I want to write something down and then fuck my way leisurely through a steamy afternoon with some willing nymph. Of which there are always plenty. Except that I’m out in the middle of the countryside and around fifty miles from civilization.