I should have plotted my family’s summer vacation well before these early hours of May. What the hell was I thinking? Now all the vacation spots are taken. Every resort booked; every campground full; every friend’s couch occupied (yes I checked). It’s like the latest crisis is that there’s nowhere to go. Maybe it’s a CDC plot to keep me from leaving New England. I’m under house arrest in these six states!

OK, slight exaggeration. But the CDC is well aware that spending 16 months straight in New England is harmful to one’s psychological health, if for the weather alone. Even Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC herself, has been granted leave from the region; surely I can leave town for a week or 10 days too.

But where to go? My many years in Catholic school taught me that angels have a penchant for coming to people in dreams and visions to provide useful information, such as announcing the birth of a savior. So there’s a chance that an angel with some time on his hands might pop into one of my frequent dreams to suggest vacation places for my family, with star ratings and user reviews. I like to know what kitchen implements are provided when I rent someone’s space. I’ve stayed in one or two places that had no wire whisk on the premises, confounding plans and diminishing the vacation’s karma. So it’s important that the angels be transparent, providing all the necessary pros and cons of each vacation opportunity. Of course, they are angelic, so one should be prepared for them to be somewhat cryptic in their messaging.

Also, I’m hoping they take into consideration cost. We don’t have wings so we’ll have to book seats on commercial airlines to get from here to there, which isn’t necessarily cheap.

I don’t lie very often, but I’m thinking I should start. Lying is getting to be a more and more accepted communication device, and I feel like I’m missing out on the enjoyment of it all.

I’m not saying I’ve never lied. As a bona-fide Catholic boy I went to confession as required, and I always confessed that I lied, so I must have. On the other hand, that was an easy way to get in and out of the confessional box in short order. And what else was I going to say? “Bless me father, for I have sinned. And I coveted my neighbor’s wife”? I didn’t covet any of my neighbors’ wives, and had I said that it would have been a bald-faced lie, requiring yet another confession.  

However, I did tell little white lies here and there, like the time my Dad asked me if I had brushed my teeth before going to bed, and I said “yes,” at which point he pulled out my toothbrush from his luggage, where it had been since we left that morning from our beach vacation.

Kids in grade school told much bigger lies than anything I could muster, and I wonder if they are now succeeding in life better than I am, thanks to lying. One classmate claimed that he looked in the mirror in the boy’s room and his face was covered in scars and huge stitches, the result of some tricks played by Satan (or else he had recently seen Poltergeist). Another time this same boy claimed that he’d ingested mercury. How we young kids came into possession of a bottle of this liquid lead (did someone bring it in? Was it the school’s supply?) is unclear, but I remember its unbelievable heft compared to a similar volume of water. We spilled it onto the floor and watched it bead up, and someone told the nuns that a boy had licked the mercury. Our mothers were constantly warning us against licking mercury (“You’ll lose your penis if you lick mercury!”).

OK, that was a lie. My parents never told me I’d lose my penis.  

Anyway, the nuns were ready to haul his lying ass off to the hospital so he could have the mercury eliminated, so he suddenly had to shift gears and admit to his unlikely yarn.

Nevertheless, lying to my fans and supporters is always an option.

Of the thousands of things that this godforsaken coronavirus headache has made me appreciate about those days, not so long ago, when I could walk down the street, breathe the air in deeply, and exhale it upon just about whomever I pleased, none seem quite so unlikely to return any time soon as the live rock show.

Dammit, I had tickets to Pussy Riot! And Antibalas, if you must know. And, on just about every-other Friday night at the Lizard Lounge, Club D’elf.

Cut to this current moment in time: it is late May of 2020 and my best rock show opportunities are happening via YouTube. And that’s not going change any time soon. You can’t even go to church right now, let alone a rock concert. As God has lobbyists aplenty, I’m pretty sure churches will get the green light to change water to wine in front of a live audience well before a bunch of aged punks like X will be allowed to play the song White Girl while people scream and applaud wildly.

The fake news media is bound to claim that wild applause is not only a symptom of Covid-19, but is also a means of spreading the virus, alleging that when people smack their palms together, as they do when they see a good rock show, the dried-on virus particulates that are hidden in the creases of their palms are dispersed like sound waves into the atmosphere, where the virus particulates then deploy wings and make a bee line for random strangers’ nostrils and open mouths.

Don’t believe the hype. The germs known to be dispersed by enthusiastic applause are thought to prefer clogging up pores rather than sinus cavities, which is considered not a very effective means of infecting the host. Ergo, fear not wild applause.

Once my message gets out I suspect a goodly number of people will applaud my efforts to get rock going again. But please don’t applaud too loudly. I don’t want my pores getting any more clogged up than the already are.

When I was a young kid way back in the mid-1800s, the term “impeach” surfaced many thoughts in my young mind, not the least of which was of peaches. I somehow then connected those peaches to bald heads, because peaches have fuzz, and if you were impeached the authorities were going to shave your head as a punishment.

And maybe tar and feather you.

This reminds me that my old friend Bond told me a story of when he was taking a boat from Spain to Morocco in (let’s call it) 1984, and some hippie-sort on the boat started smoking a joint and mouthing off, which caused a boat-official to haul his ass underdeck. When the hippie emerged, his head had been shaved. Which is sort of what I had thought happened when you got impeached. Also, this now shaved-hippie was still smoking weed. And the joint was stubbed out into someone’s eye.

Who knows how many stories I’m conflating into one? Maybe God does. My guess is between 3 and 5; the stories of my young and sordid past, with joints, hippies, and a shaved head here and there tend to ooze into one another at this point in my (extremely high-functioning and mainstream 50-something) life.

Still, those were the days! Smoking a joint was rewarded with free haircare back then. Try that now. Now, you’re lucky if anyone cares if you smoke a joint. The police hold the door open for you when you emerge from the weed store and advise you to mind the steps. (Or so I’m told.)

Just don’t sip a snifter of whiskey in view of a 17 year old because you’ll get a full body cavity inspection.

Anyway, everyone wants to know which side I’m hoping will win, and I know it’s cliché but I have to say I’m just hoping for a fun impeachment.