I’m walking around in the backyard of my parents’ house in my bathrobe, oblivious to the relatives that are here for some as yet undisclosed family function.  I look down over the fence, down the embankment to the yard of the house below.  It’s the neighborhood gangster’s abode.  A tiny, narrow swimming pool lies directly behind the dining room’s sliding glass doors.  His pool is covered with a shiny blue leatherette tarpaulin tied off and suspended in six different places by golden guy wires.  Exotic Italian and Arabian tiles are inlaid around the coping and walkway.  The drapes in the house are drawn tight, and there’s no sign of life anywhere.

I look back at our pool, the rough uneven concrete bordering it and the ragged, uncut St. Augustine grass beyond.  For some reason this all just adds more fuel to my frustration.

The demo tape I’m doing is taking forever to come together; my movie script that actually had a name director committed to it, has been shelved for God-knows-how-long while he works on a project with an even bigger name director.

I think, “Oh, fuck!  I might as well throw in the towel!”  My purpose and resolve is thwarted, subverted at every turn.  One step forward, two steps backward.  I can’t get started.  And there’s this goddamn apathy with its hold on me.  I can’t seem to shake it, whether it’s with drugs, alcohol, prayer, sex, health foods, vitamin remedies, writing – WHATEVER!  I have to bludgeon myself into motivation, keep from thinking about a nine-to-five job which any day now could become a necessity, for psychological as well as economic imperatives – contradictions which would throw a monkey wrench into my already lazy man’s schedule for playing music and writing.

It makes me have a particularly virulent contempt for myself.

And here I am in my goddamn parents’ backyard on a beautiful sunny, summer’s day, unshaven, with my goddamn bathrobe still on for Chrissakes!

copyright,  © 1989, 2007 Chris Desjardins pka Chris D.

composed circa 1985-86; originally published in DOUBLE SNAKE BOURBON  

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