Today is Thursday 17 October 2024 around 8 a.m.

I’m driving to the mill valley gym, on my way to a hot shower, and while I’m driving, I’m thinking, I’m thinking, WTF!!! I gotta work the San Anselmo Safeway store today, slinging free booze. That’s all I gotta do today. I got nothing else going on in my suck-ass life. Nothing. Nothing but this suck ass job. It’s depressing. I’m thinking, maybe…maybe…maybe I oughta quit this suck ass job…move to Ensenada…spend my last days guzzling tequila at the Long Bar…yeah, that’s the ticket. But wait a minute, wait a minute, I don’t even like tequila. I could guzzle Brandy and Gin…but I don’t like Brandy and Gin, either…

I like Vodka…yeah…shit yeah…I could guzzle Vodka…sit at the Long Bar…

Hold on a minute. Just hold on. I don’t need to guzzle Vodka way down in Ensenada, at the Long Bar…ordering drinks from a dude named Lopez.

I don’t need Lopez.

Shit no!

I could just as well guzzle Vodka right here on my boat…on good old Scruffy!

Scruffy’s kind of like Ensenada!

Metaphorically speaking.

Anyway, I’m Weaving

Not physically, mentally. I’m calculating…doing my mental weave as Trump likes to call it…while I’m thinking, and calculating…driving along towards the Mill Valley Gym…remembering the Long Bar at Hussong’s Cantina. Was I ever at Hussong’s Cantina? I’m not even sure of that. While I’m engaged in this Trumpian Dementia, my Radio announcer cuts in with a reminder.

Today is a special day.

An anniversary.

The 35th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Workers check the damage to Interstate 880 in Oakland on Oct. 19, 1989, two days after it collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Did I live through the Earthquake?

I’m cogitating this Issue. Weaving in and around this fact of history.

Hours later, I’m standing behind my collapsible free booze table. Smiling at nobody. Just Tony the deli dude. A happy guy. And Nichole the manager. A sour-ass woman. Tony’s quitting on account of Nichole is such a sour-ass bitch of a manager. Me, I don’t give a shit. She don’t bother me. I don’t work for her. I don’t work at the Safeway. I work for nobody. Just this internet portal called Herbalist. A cloud-dwelling apparition that direct deposits real money into my bank account once a week. I’ve never met anybody from this amorphous platform. That’s fine by me. I like working for nobody!

I’m the free booze sample dude.

I come and go like some aged grinning ghost. Nobody see’s me. Sometimes A Safeway employee will recognize me. “Oh, hey! You’re the Free Booze Sample Dude! How you doing?”

“I’m fine. Oh, wow. You must be Tony, the deli guy. I didn’t recognize you without your apron.”

He slings on his Apron.

“Oh, hey, Tony! How you doing?”

I’m just one of 5 or 6 rotating Free Booze Sample dudes that show up at the San Anselmo Safeway. I could leave early and nobody’d care. Cuz nobody’d know better. This is a gig job. One of those internet deals. I don’t need to be at work. All I need is the pictures of me being at work. I already took the pictures. I could split now and nobody’d know better. Certainly not Tony. Or Nichol, either. She’s mean to her own employees. Not me. As far as she’s concerned, I’m a non-entity. It’s beautiful. In a year or two they’ll have an A.I. BEING doing this work.

That’s when I head down to Ensenada…

Hang out at the Long Bar. That’s me at the very end there…not Lopez.

I don’t remember the eighties. But I remember what I was doing on the last day. The day the Eighties ended.

Some kind of cognitive snapperoo grips me. There was a period called the Eighties. The Eighties came to an end THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO. Half my life ago. I’m coming to. Coming into view. I’m this ghost. This old dude. Dwelling in my neither world. A free booze sample dude. Seventy one years old. Slinging free whisky to nobody I know. People I don’t recognize…

a mustached dude

A hippie cow girl sort of sexy old gal

Some of them buy a bottle. Some even buy two bottles.

None of them are young. They’re all real old or getting real old, like me. Every one of them had a life in the Eighties. Do they remember the eighties? I’m trying to remember the Eighties. What the hell did I do in the Eighties? I can’t remember. Still…I’m coming into view. I’m materializing! I remember the day the Eighties ended. Vividly. It was 17 October 1989.

On that day I drove across the Bay Bridge.

Got past this section in the nick of time.

Got over the bridge, parked, walked into my corner store and got pelted with cans flying off the shelves.

It was a real me getting pelted. Not a free booze sample dude. A real dude, relatively young, Thirty Six years old.

Half my life ago.

And on that day the Eighties ended.

Ended with a Bang!

Remember these guys?

They were big in the Eighties.