The Shrillness. The Creepiness.

The unfuckability. None of it will matter when I get on stage. Although my hands are shaking. I should do some callisthenics. Can't even swipe right. I know how to play nine songs tho. I'll do what I can.

Guy dressed up as Dr. Rockso. "I do cocaine!" they supportively shout. Would like to join in the hilarity, because I really do appreciate it so much, you don't even know how much I appreciate, can't see it through my grate of cringe and scowl. Don't think these notes are gonna be good for much.

What to do, what to do ... Waiting. In bad company. Jer on sound, and I'm accused of being shrill - by some independent observer, not the guy who said it at that show six years ago. I guess it's a standard thing people say now, something I should have dealt with earlier. It burns me. Exhausts me. Makes performing feel futile. Maybe if we're doing more shows, I should... you know. Invest... and all that. In some kind of equalizing output pedal or rack or overpriced guacamole. Like that'll work. Maybe I'll record the show after all so I can reference what will be the inevitable issues soundcheck amply showcased but failed to solve. At a certain point I get tired of asking for adjustments that prove impossible. But I take pleasure in being able to document how I can't hear shit. Can't see shit. This is like one of my fever deliriums.

Waiting for the show with no booze to blunt so many edges. And no, people, I don't get laid cause I'm in a band. Oh, plenty of people do, they "clean up", but not me. In fact, I get told that I'm "creeping people out" cause I'm sitting alone in a corner drinking my coffee. Well, in all fairness, I'm in the corner of the room where people are trying to dance to the DJ music, and I'm creeping out "the girls" specifically. Should specify how it stings all the more for that specificity. Some drunk bitch told me that. Like it's my problem that she's creeped out. Yes, put it all on me. I'll drink my coffee somewhere else.

So fuck the empty promises and clichés and faulty pheromones and how I'm not good looking and can't talk without being fucked up and other shit I didn't need to hear and extrapolate from accordingly, and how I underestimated the amount of nicotine I was going to need for this ordeal, and so I have to bum smokes from people who are almost out, and then share them with the drummer who complains that I slobbered on them, and then apologize to the sound guy for my keyboard's shrill tone. Well what do I expect, trying to play in a metal band? He made me smile, at least, when he passive-aggressively snarked that we should all just turn up 'til we bury each other. I've tried to educate myself on technical matters, but in the trenches, the only way I know to wrest my head from the mud is cut through with double digit kilohertz.

I got nothing to do but rant to my phone, so...Well. This is slightly better than standing around on the peripheral of conversations wishing I could take a drink or contribute anything. I can grind out another hour and a half, locked inside the car for solitude. Maybe I should take a nap 'til the show starts and conserve energy required for navigating through this antithesis of controlled conditions where it just doesn't work right and I'm not myself. Not at my best. Could have better wisecracks under better circumstances.

At least we won't be stuck out here in Balfour, cause I got a car and an exit strategy. Kind of want to get out and do something again, but how quickly will that get stale, with the open maw of awkwardness waiting? Maybe I could charge the phone tho? Yeah. And smoke another cig. Cause even with this sealed vehicular buffer, I'm too close to people in the grateful dead parking lot, people who trust their vibes too much, thinking they know what I think. Let's just do the set already.

Yay, I powered through the show and stayed sober.

Leaves me with a bad feeling. Angry. Frustrated. Disillusioned. Foolish. Solitary. Alone. Unfriendly. Unfuckable. Why am I doing this now, of all times, when I'm staying sober? Someone spare me a dart, even? I'm not asking for one, fuck that, I'll suck scavenged smoke from wet stubs. No one to ask. Just people repulsed by my bad energy and physique. Could use some kindness but this ain't the place for it. I'll throw this shit up on blogger anyway, I don't care how it sounds, just for the rawness, and to fill in voids, since I don't write much these days except when feeling shitty enough.

Is it really worth it? Or should I narrow my energy output down to more worthy collaborators, myself alone if need be? On the peripheral. In music, conversation, shows. Oh yay, a fucking ambulance joined the fire truck in blocking off the one car. My borrowed car. When we're all packed up and I just want to ducking ducking fuck fuck fuck fuck ing duckfuck this phone. Fuck inh. Fuck inh fuck ing leave.

I thought I had an exit strategy. Be stoic I guess. About bleeding money from "low cost" dental clinic toothmarks - and everything else. Like this. And oh, I almost forgot. What a goddamn fool I feel like. Playing my heart out in that clusterfuck context. Playing the fool. It gets worse and worse. Stranded here. Waiting for someone to show me some kindness. Ducking shrill visit.

It's hard being sober. OK, I passed a test, I guess. Doesn't really feel like it though. I satisfied my smarter second order desires and saved myself the disaster of a debauch by enduring this. So fine then. Oh. This is tiring. And cold. I need to get warm. Yes. Indeed. And wrap myself up in my phone. I'll re-watch Game of Thrones when I get home. Pathetic, the lengths I go to for escape in sobriety, binge-watching fantasy epics. And fuck music, I'm so off music and the interlocking scenes. Fuck these ducking shallow dumb unkind people... Not my band, they're OK. But fuck them anyway, cause they're not doing me any good.

Wish I could be happy and join the party. If I felt better about the show I could probably be sociable and have some clean fun. But I don't feel good about the show at all. Or about how the one song where I had solo parts I had to play deaf and guess at what I was doing cause the sound guy faded me down to oblivion. To accommodate the real instruments that aren't shrill.

Still blocked off by emergency vehicles here to accommodate multiple mushroom freakouts and firestarters. Noah says this puts a damper on things. He says the right things sometimes, like the VCR that's still blinking 12:00. And all I hear are the names of drugs in peripheral conversations. So disgusted, and it doesn't make me want the shit any less. Dr. Rockso, where are you when I need you? I still love your crazy comic coketastic style. Maybe I'll see you at that great rave in the sky. Maybe when I get dead I can get fucked up again like I used to love, the very idea of it, and the execution, and even the aftermath was afterglowy, when my brain had the capacity to bounce back from outrageous neurochemical abuse. Surely there'll be some silly reward for this toil at the poetic end of it, like how I might have imagined that heaven was an infinite pile of Chips Ahoy cookies when I was five.

There's something new under the sun, let's say, some thing in whose context I'll be so great a fool, such a full blown Quixote that it'll be blissful awareness of folly, a cosmic laugh I can join in with, like a fucking tantric orgasm.