Subversive Sounds

I was making my way through the morning with a surprisingly crisp efficiency. Surprising because I had a mild hangover. Poker night last night. Ms. Spiral Stairs had taken a pound of flesh and a spleen from me at the last poker night, a few weeks ago. Last night, I only suffered a flesh wound. Despite an audacious bluff that eventually blew up in my face. I was saved at the end of the night by several good hands of Guts. Randomness, if nothing else, was on my side.

Frankly, I don't recall drinking that much or feeling that buzzed. Maybe my brain was just mad at me for wasting it. Whatever. I got up lightly around 8:30 and went to go get the car inspected. A breeze. Book store next; they had what I was looking for. Next stop: the grocery store.

I was standing in line behind a man who had unloaded seventeen items on the checkout belt. It was a fifteen item line. My anger at this act of insolence was more intense than usual; I wanted to tie him up, cover him in the lime pepper marinade I had and leave him on a fire ant hill. But what if the ants didn't like lime. What else did I have? Fuck it, where is that plastic grocery divider thing. I'll smash him with that.

Then, it hit me before I hit him. Air Supply. Had the store been playing that and similar starchy crap the whole time I'd been there. Yes, they had. As had the inspection station; it was their fault that Bob Seger had somehow burrow his way into my grey matter. Supertramp's "The Long Way Home?" At a Borders? Isn't that a fireable offense for whoever put that tripe on?

Easy listening shit. It was being employed as a numbing agent, emploring us dullards to stay, get comfortable, consider some of the stuff we may be seeing for the first time. It had been subversively shaving bits off my soul.

"Don't push me, woman!" the guy behind me yelled at the person behind him. The music was getting to him too. I throw him a knowing smile or at least what I thought a "knowing" smile might look like. "What the fuck are you smiling at?"

The music was unbearable once I became aware that it was playing. And I had to endure fifteen more seconds of it than necessary because of the fucker-in-front-of-me's sociopathic rule-breaking ways.

"Nice day, huh?" the guy in front of me said. Is he for real? Where is that damn plastic stick they use to separate people's groceries, I'd show him.

"Yeah, should be a nice weekend." Did I just say that? What was this music doing to me?

The minute I got in my car, I popped the trunk, opened the CD changer and fished around looking for something to cleanse my head of the songs in my head. It may have been the first and last time I ever wished I owned a Pantera record. I needed something hard, uncomfortable to listen to.

What did I have? Jazz? What's with all this jazz shit? Did I fancy myself some sort of sophisticate? Funk? Too accessible. Ray Charles?!? Dammit.

I put the "hardest" CD I had in the car in the changer and turned it up. It was a collection of late 1960s French psychadelic rock. David Alexandre Winter blared through my speakers singing nonsense, "Qu'est-ce Que J'ai Danse!" It was good enough. At least I wouldn't have to hurt something.