OBSERVERED FROM THE BAR (mis-used ghetto booty; don’t eat in public; Irish women; attention whores;baseball caps). THE RIDE HOME.

--Girls now use the term “ghetto booty” not to call attention to a well shaped bulge of an ass but to excuse and even suggest virtue to any misshapen mass of flesh there.
--There is, as they say, no aphrodisiac like flattery.
--There is nothing that turns me off like watching a girl eat a barbecue chicken wing.
--Irish women like M can have absurdly pretty eyes and absurdly pale skin.
--Attention whores are unbearable.
--Boys in baseball caps are often interested in proving themselves tough. The lower the bills, the more they have to prove.
--I’m still a dumb ass male.


--Sometimes, driving, like tonight, I am aware of all the damage done me. By the lips of women and the fists of men, in play and in battle and in love.

I realize that it in the end, it is not what you inflict on others that counts, but the blows you take, even in the battles you win.

And I feel it all, literally, in my body. A kind of weariness, a soreness, and worse: dead spots. I realize I am more ash than bone, more dust than flesh, more bruise than muscle.

I am 33.

And it all serves to remind me of the value of the Charles Bukowski lines: "There are no beuatiful women/there are no strong men"