Truesday: Round And Round She Goes
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
Dear Austin,
It’s been too long since we last spoke to one another, in earnest. Too much has been going down for so much distance to have rifted betwixt our talking parts. The parts that used to have coffee at Bouldin every Saturday morning. Avocado margaritas at Curra’s every Sunday. The Austin I used to get in slap fights with in the alley back behind The Ritz.
We used to shout Young Turks into the wind, you and I. We used to revel in the glory of progress while still pissing on random buildings that seemed too shiny to be left that way. Now we’re shutting down sound. Fear-closing parking. We’re shooting at sidewalks and legs. We’re allowing any old asshole with knuckle tats and a dickhead hat working at Beauty Bar to think they have enough street cred to be above a swift neck-punch.
Wait. Is this a pattern I’m seeing here?
Are we upset at each other?
Is this one of those “relationship phases” that Oprah show drones drone on about? Like where we frightfully realize that our mutual attraction is simply the result of the fact that we embody each other’s worst fears about ourselves? Where I start to wonder whether you’re my evil other? And I’m just trying to be you by being with you? Or perhaps a more sinister representation of my pent-up, dark-shadowed oh-dear-lord-nos? Like a hook-handed midget with an electric egg-beater for a dick who is attached to me by a bloody umbilical cord or whatever?
Are you even listening to me? Is this shit on?
Well, to try and cut to the chase: we’ve been silent as of late, we two. Sitting across from one another at the Waffle House off 71 and Riverside like we’re two hick bookies who won’t budge on odds for a territorial crossroads of alter-culture. Lovely Waffle House. Where the Trailer Folk gather to spend their busy-bee days. But while they’re wheeling, dealing, and all around buzz-living- we’re stuck here across from each other, listlessly stiring a cubeless glass of iced tea in thick quiet. Ceiling tile quiet. Thought quiet. Wonder quiet. The kind of quiet that posts on you with brutal, limp force. Like two tons of ocean-wet barge rope.
And I want to break that. This. Our mutual silence. All this fucking nasty rope.
And this should be important to not just me, but to us both. We both need to discuss what’s happening here. The last year was a blur. Black Presidents, the internet’s rise from pure gamble-pr0ndom to pure marketing-pr0ndom, global hotting, trailer-highrise swaps, MJ dropped like an early-teen's testicals, and I discovered Deadliest Catch, like, three months ago and that shit is INSANE.
Plus, word around the campfire is that Pangina is threatening to close its doors and that means we won’t know where all those people will be profiling every Friday and Saturday night. This, in terms of what actually affects my life, eclipses the death of that kung fu hobo dude who played the flute in one of the Kill Bill movies.
Seriously. It’s big. Check it:
Not being able to predict the exact location of this specific societal niche, scares me. It’s like a return to the dark times of 2005 where they were mixed in with everyone like uncooked rice viciously sprinkled into a freshly steamed bowl. You take a big heaping chopsticks-full in your gaping maw and then KAKOW! Your tooth is all broked and hurty. And in the neon lights of a properly executed whiskey-tab, your average joe simply cannot tell apart the chemically brain-fried from the chemically skin-tanned. It's science.
This scares and excites me! Simultaneously! Like being waterboarded by strippers!
Hobbies/tragedies aside, some hippy-type dude said it best when he once recorded the following lyrics for the sake of skimming strangers’ money: there are winds of change blowing our collective shit around and the Tambourine Man will eat your face if you don't eat your peas.
Or something with that variety of ring.
Not sure what it’s all going to mean, but it’s pretty plain from my side of this Waffle House table that things simply aren’t what they were a year ago. It's up in the air. That's right, it's waffling. Not necessarily up for grabs, per se, but the gates are open and the results aren't assured for the weak of stomach. But my bets are in. I've a dog in this fight. As long as the House Credit lending window is available, I'm ready to double down.
And after that, I’m totally going to let it ride.
