Scar
I don’t scar very easily. That’s what I thought. That’s also what I said to Michelle. We were out on the landing at 1929 Page. The back landing was the one that’s in the middle between houses. You know, door out of the kitchen, small landing, stairs that lead down to the garage or to the back yard. That was the smoking section.So we were out there smoking. It was something like three in the morning. Besides my usual beakdipping of chardonnay we had ingested earlier in the evening some mushrooms, not shitake or portobello, rather psilocybin, savvy? Then as the lot of us were coming down somebody, either Jefe or Ez opened a bottle of Jack. Strong cocktails were made and passed around. Now these people were and are my friends, however they broke one of the cardinal rules of being friends with me. Rule number one of being friends with Matthew Rampage~
1.Don’t give me ANY whiskey
2.Same rule applies for scotch and bourbon although I rarely ask for those but I have been known to ask for whiskey.
Whiskey makes me hot and mad. I hope that changes as I get older and as a matter of fact I have indulged just recently but for all intents and purposes its just safer to always refer to rule number one. But it was deep in the Babylonian night and no one present had there heads about them so it is entirely understandable that a strong Jack and Coke was mixed and put in my ‘not very sober already’ hand. I drank that whiskey and coke and just kept on laughing and ruminating and generally enjoying the deep night. After my cocktail was drunk down I wanted a smoke so I was out on the landing with Michelle.
My house had burned down one week previous. It was the closest thing to a near death experience that I had ever encountered. It was pretty close. You know how they always talk about house fires killing people. I always thought “Oh no, a house fire couldn’t kill me. I would smell the smoke even if I was asleep and I could act, I could jump out a window. Oh no, a house fire couldn’t kill me.” When the smoke from the room that was smoldering finally filtered into the downstairs enough to wake my roommate it was six in the am. I had gone to bed with a shot of vodka and a valium. When the smoke was apparent enough to discern what was going on we all had about ten minutes to get out. If Melissa hadn’t woken me up I would have been toast. A house fire can kill you and it nearly did kill me. I wasn’t quite right in the head after that for a few months or weeks. I was really still mulling it over in my mind one week later.
“I don’t scar very easily,” I said to Michelle. I was thinking of the injuries so far that I had that should have been horrific scars but most had melted away with time. The only scar I had was on my knee from falling off a tractor when I was about 8. I was feeling a little invincible especially after the whiskey and the magic mushroom and the chards. So I says to Michelle “I’m gonna put this cigarette out on my arm.”
She was all “Don’t do that that’s stupid.”
I explained to her this theory I had about not scarring very easily. I also explained that at the moment I thought it would be all good and super symbolic to extinguish a cigarette on my arm. I thought that it would be a good marker of my luck with fire and when in a couple of years it had faded into my thick skin with it would fade the memory of my house fire and with that my brush with death. I have always enjoyed ceremony and symbolism. When one lives in a society that has been stripped wholesale of its ceremony sometimes one has to devise and execute one’s own ceremonial duties.
So Michelle gets clever and in an attempt at reverse psychology and she’s all “OK do it if you want to.”
And so I looked at the cherry on my smoke and I looked down at my arm and I put that mutha fucka all the way out just above my wrist on my left hand. So much was going on in my body and mind at that moment that there was no sensation of pain but rather a great pinpointed feeling of release. Michelle Belle was horrified. I was a little shocked myself. The pain didn’t set in till hours later.
So still under the impression that I had performed some new age ceremony I went back into the parlor there at 1929 Page and showed my waiting crew the damage I had just inflicted on my temple. Everyone was appalled but Mat and Harper were especially put out. What I had just done I think reminded Mat of how he used to act in his post adolescent pre adulthood phase and he didn’t want any part of it. Mat and Harper left soon after that. When I came to my “senses” in the following days not only did I have one hell of a circular scar in a prominent position on my arm I also had to contend with the fact that I had really upset my friends. Jefe and Ez were kinda cool about it, they were maybe more put out than they let onto but the Honans were extremely disappointed and took steps to stay away from me for a while. I felt terrible about all that and my arm hurt like a bitch. Live and learn eh?
That scar is still there. It has been two and a half years. I designed some tattoos that would cover up the scar but I have never gotten any ink done. Some people are hard headed and some people think they don’t scar that easily. Live and learn.
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