"This Could Be The Last Time..."

Trumpets And Violins

A chord! Thank you...

I wasn't so much bored as I was uncomfortable from the heat in the apartment. Thankfully, when the plumber type workers left at around 9 pm., they cut the water back on that feeds our air conditioning units.

So, I wasn't too uninterested in a variety of things; it's just that it wasn't an appealing thought to sit and sweat and read, or sweat more while playing the guitar, or even probably sweat more than just sitting there if I played chess against the computer or dug into my Python programming studies...

So, I was just sitting passively watching Hodgetwins videos, which burns only the calories required to laugh every now and then.

I actually said: "This could be the last time," to Jr after he had shown up after the water had been on for maybe a half hour and it was already down into the high 70's in the apartment.

He wanted to jam, but I could tell he was already pretty buzzed, and it is a fact that Jr is only about 58% as interesting/fun to hang around with after his blood alcohol level reaches a certain point.

There is a Hendrix song that has a verse containing the words: "trumpets and violins" and there seems to be a stage of inebriation at which Jr. starts to sing that very song, loud and out of tune. To me, it has become informative to be able to hear him do so. "Trumpets and violins!" is a sound that Jr. makes which indicates that he is functioning at a very basic level, which yields very predictable behavior out of him. In the trumpets and violins stage, he will say and do the exact same things that he said and did the last last time he had reached the t&v level of drunkenness.

So, as I felt my ambition for doing anything returning with the cooling of my room, Jr. showed up.

I was ready to just tell him that I didn't want to jam with him; but he said he had some bud and I considered that after smoking some I might actually get into the mood to play one of his guitars and, against the odds, enjoy it...

I had Mick Jagger singing "Maybe the last time, I don't know.." in my head as I went with him to his place while he voiced encouragement by pointing out how much fun we were going to have...

He had already sang the Hendrix line, and that should have been the only sign I needed to make some excuse for not wanting to jam. The perfectly legitimate one that actually exists is that I have plans to go to the plasma place and get the 40 bucks, so that I can use some of it to put new strings on my guitar, so I can use it to get hopefully enough to buy another bike. I'm trying to accomplish that without depriving myself of creature comforts like at least a tablespoon of kratom as my morning cup of tea each day. Why I would awaken sleeping dogs by drinking a miserly portion of the guy's vodka, or smoking some of his bud -just to join him on whatever plateau of intoxication he was at became a mystery to me that I was already mulling over as we climbed the stairs to his place. He had showed up at my place as I was watching the last Hodgetwin's video and, true to form, had started to babble loudly over the audio of it, as if trying to get me to pay attention to him instead of the video.

After telling him that "this might be the last time" I was going to go and "make noise" with him I should have gone over, in order, all the things that he has done, each past time, that have become annoyances to me, from having seen them repeated. But instead I suppose I must have acted insanely when I quietly hoped that maybe he had somehow "changed" and it wouldn't be like that, this time. That was an example of doing the same thing -going to his place to jam when he is already singing about trumpets and violins- and expecting a different result. Insanity.

So, yeah, we got there and he immediately plugged in his electric guitar and handed it to me. This always made me feel like I was being required to play; with the vodka and weed that he, in effect, lured me into his company with, being the implicit reward for having played decently for at least 5 minutes (I am starting to suspect that the purpose of this, especially given that he will turn the amplifier up almost all the way, just as I am getting going, has something to do with him wanting his neighbors to hear it; for whatever reason).

Then he emerged from his room and showed me the joint that he had just rolled in there, but didn't light it. Of course he didn't light it, because it was to be like a carrot in front of my nose, and I would have to give him X amount of company in exchange for smoking. 

You shouldn't have to become falling down drunk just to appreciate another's company; and see eye to eye with him...  

Once I recognized the pattern, I couldn't deal with it. I got one toke off the joint and then it somehow went out of sight into some ashtray or something.

Then, after having asked him if "the joint" had gone out, or something? and gotten basically ignored; and after I tuned his acoustic up as well as I could and then we traded guitars, so I could tune the other one to the first, only to hear him wildly tuning the one that I was supposed to be tuning to, to who knows what; I left.

That was the shortest stint of "jamming" with him to date at about 12 minutes; but it was also the quickest that he had ever run through the checklist of things that I wish he wouldn't always do, but he always does. I had left before the one particularly bothersome thing had happened; which is when he starts drunkenly singing one particular song by Robin Trower, or somebody, over the top of whatever I'm playing, regardless of how much it's NOT that particular song. And, then when he gets to a certain point in singing that song over the chords to a totally different song will start barking: "A chord; A chord!!" telling me, ostensibly, that the next chord in the song that I wasn't even playing should have been an A major chord. If I do humor him by going to an A chord, he will always say "Thank, you!" in a snide tone of voice that implies that I should have known what the next chord in a song I wasn't even playing should have been. But, I left before having had to endure that. As soon as he had de-tuned the guitar that I had just spent 5 minutes tuning then handed to him. "...Maybe the last time, I don't know..."

It really should be the last time anyone will ever read anything like "I hung out with Jr." on this blog. You shouldn't have to become falling down drunk just to appreciate another's company; and see eye to eye with him...