diary from the desert [september 2011]

 

i really should be more careful who i spend time with…

so i’m sitting in this dusty bollocked gay bar round four p.m, and a man in cowboy gear starts talking..

he tells me he drives tour buses for big country n western bands..so y’know,that’s cool enough…

next thing he asks if i would like to go out into the parking lot and smoke some pot in his car…

he fires up the pipe in his soft top,and then says,you wanna go for a ride up the mountains to watch the sunset?

yes please!

so were heading towards the gene autry trail and he’s got the music playing awfully loud…flicking furiously from station to station…

he then pulls into another bar where he says we’ll have a quick one before heading up the mountain…

it’s a straight bar,and he slaps twenty five dollars on the bar for two beers and thinks this means he can tell the barmaid to change the music and all this bollox…

this guy is clearly a dickhead…

now i don’t smoke weed at the constant rate i used to anymore,so when i do,it really hits me,and this was some FINE pot.

i’d only took a couple of hits at this point.

i could have just slipped away from this guy at this place,but a part of me was feeling intrepid or curious or horny or something…

we get back in the car,and the radio’s playing classic rock,but he won’t leave the dials alone…

in a rare uninterrupted moment, i heard steve miller band ‘fly like and eagle’…steely dan ‘do it again’ back to back…pure heaven….

but he kept turning it up so horribly loud…

now i LOVE loud music,but this meathead had no clue..the speakers were distorting n’all…

and everytime i told him to turn it down,he’d turn it down a little..then back up….really really controlling…

and just as you were grooving to some cool record,he’d flick the station to some fuck awful fake plastic country thing..

then he’s driving faster and faster…and the radio is too loud…it was a soft top….

the roads are curvy all the way..its a rugged mountain…like a helter skelter

the whole deal was a remarkable balance of utter heaven and hell…

the light at this time of day is so beautiful…the golden fucking hour baby….

we’re heading up near the top,so it’s feeling nicely cooler in the high eighties..

i’m telling him to slow down,and he’s telling me to TRUST HIM!@£$%^&*

i better let you know at this point in my anecdote that nothing awful did happen….

but fuck me….what a wanker?!

and NOT ONCE did he show any curiousity as to who i might me.. from another country n’all..

he just kept trying to impress and control…odd as fuck…

we get to the top of the mountain…and this is sort of funny…

*stairway to heaven* comes on the radio while we park…

i prayed he’d just leave the dials alone…and by some miracle he did…

he fires up this second hit of pot..and we look down over this huge stretch of desert…

the light is smouldering red..misty….WARM….fifteen minutes and it’ll be dark

and honestly,it was like i’d never heard *stairway to heaven* in my whole life before.

what a jewel of a piece of music it is?!…not the parody of overblown rock that folk believe it to be…

i was so stoned,cause like i say,i hardly ever smoke anymore,so my system was sensitive..

and i’m right inside this piece of music..the opening sections with jimmy’s layers and rainbows of twelve string guitars and electrics…

and then john bonham’s drums kick in three miles into the song…robert’s mystical lyric and peerless singing….

also this car stereo is very very good when the knucklefuck is kept off the volume control…

by the grace of angels, he then simply drove me back down and left in the parking lot of the bar where we started off….

i got out,thanked him..walked back to my apartment ,had my ben and jerrys chunky monkey..and phoned home…

next day i walk into the bar, and the locals cheered ,then asked about what went on,cause they saw me leave with the cowboy…

they know him…they’d heard it all before, and laughed their balls off.

i think everyone’s seen that thing where someone tries to control you by means of the car stereo…

volume…overlording the choices…and then driving too fast,to instill a little fear or power…arseholes.