WyzWmn's World©

The Sound: Vangelis – Heaven and Hell, Pink Floyd – Wish you Were Here, Bob Seger – Beautiful Loser, Eagles – Hotel California, Tom Waits – Small Change, Fleetwood Mac – Rumors, Lynard Skynard – Freebird , Led Zepplin – Stairway to Heaven, Alan Parsons – Eye in the Sky, Lou Reed – Heroin

You see, Mike and I met when he came to live in my hotel. Actually I already knew him but we had never really gotten along. I was a major waste of oxygen in those days but I had it together enough to see that Mike was having a tough time and decided to help a bro out.

His birth mother was dying of breast cancer and he’d been in a bike accident. Some idiot in a cage had run a red light and T-Boned him on his shovelhead. Totaled the bike and as a result he had both legs in casts from the knee down. They weren’t walking casts so he was living in my hotel cos he couldn’t make it up the three flights of stairs to his apartment. Besides, room service sounded like a good plan for a man on crutches.

For the first couple of weeks he was as resistant to help from me as any human being could be. I knew he didn’t think much of me cos he’d always made no bones about what a waste of time and money drugs were. And how smart people didn’t go that route.

In the past I’d always flipped the bird at him when he got up on that soap box…but I was getting tired and was beginning to come round to his way of thinking. The thing about being a junkie is that you spend your whole drug laden career trying to get back to that very first euphoria.

And it never is that good again. All it does is eat ya. And your money and your family and your friendships.

I was a very old twenty and I was holding on to my hotel by the skin of my teeth. I was pretty much convinced that I was gonna have to go to a loan shark or I was gonna loose it for taxes. My grandfather had left me this hotel when I was eighteen and two scant years later I was about to lose it.

Then one night I was in the bar and someone said something about Mike runnin outta money. That got me to thinking so I went into the kitchen. I made him a big old ham and cheese sandwich, grabbed a coupla beers and then went round and banged on the door.

At first I heard nothing. Then I heard a splash and a big thump, but still no answer, so I used my master key.

I walked into his room and no Mike, but I heard some serious hard core cussing coming from behind the closed bathroom door.

So I called out to him, “Hey Mike…you ok?”

“Fuck…whosssssat?” says a voice from behind the door.

“S’me Baby…you ok?”

“Ahhhh…hmmmmmm ummm nope, ummmmmm don’t come in!…I ahhhh don’t think so…uhhhmmmmm…don’t suppose ahhhh you could get Big D or Al or Boomer er one of them boys to come up here fer a minute do ya?” he says hopefully.

“Wassa matter? Maybe I can help,” says I, as I shoved open the bathroom door.

“No no no no no…shit woman don’t you never listen?”

And there’s Mike, buck nekid, layin in the bathtub, half full of water (the other half having splashed out all over the bathroom floor). One casted leg in and wet, and the other out, and kinda stuck between the shitter and the tub. And the six pack, whew. Lord Tunderin Jesus, that man was built like a brick shit house.

I continued to look up till our eyes met and it was then that I discovered that true red heads blush everywhere…not just in the face!I guess he’d been trying to get into the tub for a wash using those great big arms of his to lever himself in and slipped. And there he was. I couldn’t help myself. I started to giggle which led to a laugh. I mean come on…have ya got a visual?

Eventually he started to laugh as well.

the music: Janis Joplin – Pearl, Simon and Garfunkle – Bridge over Troubled Waters, Allman Brothers – Live at Fillmore East, Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers, Chicago III, Carole King – Tapesty, Black Sabbath – Master of Reality, Grand Funk Railroad – E Pluribus Funk, Frank Zappa – Grand Wazzo, Deep Purple – Machine Head, Mike Oldfiled – Tubular Bells

I heard almost every person sitting in that bar take one deep collective breath as I said to the officer, “look no further”. I stepped out from behind the bar and threw Big D my towel and said “take over here D, I’ll be right back” as if nothing had happened at all. I almost didn’t see the tears rollin down Big D’s face.

The room started to buzz as I walked across the mezzanine to the cops and invited them into my office. All around me I heard snippets of conversation “Mike…Muscle Beach, Baby and the baby, the Beach…”

Once inside they proceeded to tell me that Mike had been wearing a Walkman and headset so he didn’t hear his partner hollering as the load of cement slabs started to shift off that trailer.

“When they hit him he was cut in half and the coroner says he was dead before he even hit the ground” the young one said, as if that would explain it all.

And it did.

I’d given him that Walkman this very morning and told him to listen to the music as a way to keep himself from straying to the snack shack while at work. A last ditch attempt at the battle of the bulge. Seemed like my Muscle Beach was wearing a spare tire. He was putting on as much weight as I was; only I was eating for two.

Things get kind of muddled from there.

A whirlwind of people trying to take care of me. I know that I insisted on working the bar. And I know that people did their best to help me. Some things others can just not do for you. Crying was something I let everyone else do. I just didn’t have it in me.

Then came the day that Mike’s stepmother announced that I would not be allowed to attend the funeral. That none of us degenerates would. She didn’t agree with a common law marriage and was sure that all I wanted was to take from her husband, Mike Sr.

I tried to remind her of all that Mike and I had meant to each other and I know that Big D and Al went to see her and told her the whole story of how Mike and I met and what a mess we both were at that time and how far we had come together.