Friday Nights

Yes, that's right, I am the doctor. Plop yourself on my couch and let me hear it. I do have a PHD (Partial Hearing Defect) and that makes me a doctor of philosophy. So, if your philosophy is sick, bring it to me and I will restore it to balance and beauty. I am not, however, licensed to prescribe or deal drugs, but I know where we can find good scotch, cheap. And wine. You bring the cigars.

I want to write something about Friday nights here, but I'm not sure what. It's something about being the son of a working man and growing up in that culture. It's not as bad as Jerry Lee Lewis singing "payday nights and painted women they do strange things to me" but there is an importance I still attach to Friday nights. The end of the week requires a reward, it seems to me, and a celebration. It most definetly needs music. I found myself on our balcony last night with a glass of wine, a cheap stogie and a head full of Friday night reminisces. (spell check doesn't work so go with it...reminisces) I had some music in the background, including Jerry Lee, who my wife hates but who inspires in me memories of honky tonks, my favorite kind of bars, and the it's Friday night every night attitude that prevails there. This will come as a surprise to any of my old drinking buddies who may be listening in, but I never went to a Honky Tonk in anyone's company but my own. I knew a half dozen of these country/western dives in Denver and I would go to one, sit at the bar and just watch that world so different from my own. This wasn't a thing I did often, mind you, only a few times a year, but I loved being anonymous and making up a completely different me in whatever conversations cropped up. I was my own country western song. In my hippie years, (No this in not a memoir. When I write one of those there will be a lot more lying.) Friday nights were often spent at a friend's house doing one kind of psychedelic or another. They were great night's too. Lots of laughter and wonderful insights. And then there were my suit wearing years which were sort of mixed in on and off throughout my working life - I don't think the suit thing ever really took - I went to better quality places. I drank the same booze though, it just cost more. And conversations were the same too; money women and sports, mostly women. They were delivered with better grammer and larger vocabularies, but they were the same conversations. I didn't have to make up a new character for myself on those Friday nights. I was wearing a suit. I was already pretending.

So I want to write something about Friday nights and I just don't know what it is. Something about sadness and celebration all at the same time. When it comes to me you'll be the first to know.