Sunday Morning Coming Down

This is me on an Abrams tank about a week ago. This is the article I wrote about the tank and the driver. http://www.forestlaketimes.com/2006/July/5CHoulestory756.html


Well I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head, that didn't hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day
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♫ I've been drinking pretty heavy since I got back from Iraq. I have a beer before I roll out of bed, usually, then another one for dessert. I went out last night to LE ATMOSPHERE, a stylish French restaurant and bar. They had on the world cup. A lot of people were there. I ran into some Uzbek friends. I had already drank almost a 5th of WKD shit blue vodka when I left. The world cup started at 10:30 p.m. here.
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I'd smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and the songs I'd been pickin'
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Playin' with a can that he was kicking
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone's fryin' chicken
And it took me back to somethin'
That I'd lost somewhere, somehow along the way

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♫ I am hurting this morning. I had plans, but I am just laying around, guts on fire. I don't think I drank more than one glass of water the last week. The rest was beer and vodka. I puked all over the fancy French restaurant. My Uzbek friends and I smoked a fatty and they gave me some salty nut thing and I just lost it and puked. People didn't seem to care, except those I puked toward. Why is it that people run away from me when I start projectile puking in their direction?
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On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I'm wishing Lord that I was stoned
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there's nothin' short of dyin'
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of a sleepin' city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin' comin' down
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♫ The only fun thing I have been doing besides downloading porn is looking for fights on tribe. Burning Man is the best, but once I start laying into people the thread usually stops. I think I ended three or four threads. I deleted on I started on Burning Burning Burka. But that one was just me ranting about some one I don't like in the Burning Organization.

We couldn't take our AK-47s and pistols into the French restaurant. When I woke up this morning I had some Afghan house worker messing around. I slept with my pistol at near my pillow, loaded. The Afghan saw it and left. Then he came back, unplugged me computer and plugged in a long extension cord that went to a weed whacker outside my window.

I sometimes sleep naked. It's hot and no AC here. I don't mind. It is 20 or 30 degrees cooler than Baghdad.

My first night here I was really ripped—vodka, beer and Absinthe. I slept naked and my friend John walked in without knocking. I was supposed to visit a local warlord with him. He said I was naked with a big hard on when he walked in. So he walked out, closed the door and left me here. That was Tuesday. Why can't people knock? Otherwise, you get an eyeful of my Longfellow. Ha ha ha. At least I wasn't jerking it.
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In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughin' little girl who he was swingin'
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singin'
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'
And it echoed thru the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday
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♫ I realize I am the one that poisoned my body. This sickness in me. The burning stomach. Beer shits. My hands are not shaking too much. I am sure I would feel better if I just slammed a beer. I did that yesterday morning—and puked all over. I kept half of it down. After the third time I puked, I felt better.

I think the war is getting at me—hum, I just heard an explosion outside. Well, maybe some one just fell while they were banging a Chinese whore. This war is depressing. Really. Can you believe that? A depressing war. I had hope for Afghanistan, but all signs indicated they really fucked up here and we are leaving and it will be just like it was with the Taliban in the next three years. Let's hope not. But they are doing a lot fighting and killing. For stupid shit, like cutting a teachers head off because he allows females to attend school. What can you do with people like that? I guess send them to Mississippi, where they ain't for sure bout them words, and learning.

I am doing on more tour of Iraq. Each time I go I say this is the most dangerous thing I will ever do in the war. This next month of so is no exception. Tallil and Mosul are relatively safe, but South Baghdad—the triangle of death, is a shit hole, and Babylon is right between the ass cheeks of this global bunghole as well.

I don't like being some where that fucks with my head so much I can't drink it away when I have booze. But this is what I wanted to do, what I wanted to experience. And I did it. I still am broke. Whatever money I made I owe a gazillon people. So I have a new plan to raise cash. I am coming back to the states after this last mission and for a month or two, I want to sent up lecture/slide shows about the war and whores of the war, like me, holding opium poppies in my tattooed hands. That will be much easier to beg for money than standing on the street corner with a cup. Can you spare this drunk artist a dime? People don't get it that I tell them I am an artist working as a war correspondent. I am starting to not to get it, either. I want to paint, make crazy art, write books about women I have loved and my adventures, which at this point are actually pretty fucking grand, especially if I embellish a little.

Fuck.

I am still doing another year here, but I need a break from the war. Even Ernie Pyle took R & R. Before he got shot in the head, writing about the war in the pacific. Now it is IEDs. People wonder what the Islamic terrorists would do if they capture me and see my tattoo. Would they follow the directions and CUT HERE? Would they be so over run with cognitive dissonance that they would let me go? Or, would they fuck me is the ass a few days (these Arabs and Afghans are really into Pulp Fiction Zed and the Gimp back room discipline. . .)

Well, I doubt they will ever take me alive. I just have to make it through another month in Iraq.
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The picture is me burning some shit a week after the Burning Man event, 2001.





On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I'm wishing Lord that I was stoned
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there's nothin' short of dyin'
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of a sleepin' city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin' comin' down

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I have been on the move since 2004 when I broke up with Squirrel. I still write to her. She probably thinks I am crazy. Well, she dated me for nine months. She knows I am crazy. After her, I moved around for six months, then returned to Michigan to visit my family, where I helped my father two knee surgeries. I hooked up with Andrea. I had dated her older sister years before. That was a little strange. It probably was on reason she ended our relationship. That and she was married. Her husband didn't like the smell of our sex. She divorced him, I went to France, then Bisbee. She was a little pissed at me because in the middle of our relationship I got my job in Iraq. We had plans, you know, and then I was like, “Andrea, I am going to Iraq Monday.” She didn't think I would come back alive. But I did. I was only there a few weeks but made a lot of money and didn't have to do the entire year because they fucked up the contract. The base at Tallil, my first stop next week, is where I was 2 years ago.
I had a sat phone. Calling Andrea and my family seemed so distant and unreal on that phone. I didn't call anyone while I was in Iraq this time, with the exception of the newspapers I sold stories too.

I wonder if or when I am going to fall for someone again, preferably some one that likes me. I can only hope. Well, I have another year in the war. Where my head is going to be when I land from that will be anyone's guess. When I leave here I am driving a motorcycle East through India and down to Vietnam. Then up to Siberia. They get to Alaska and drive down. I'll need some time to think.

I started putting stuff on YOUTUBE.COM This is a music video with Andrea.