To All and Sundry Members of the Laity:
It has been a goodly passing of many moons since I enraptured you all with one of my fetid epistles. I’m sure that those who haven’t run screaming from the buildings upon seeing my e-mail address on your screen are waiting, patiently yet eagerly, for whatever pathetic screed I feel it necessary to inflict this time.
I’ve found as of late that my will to write has, like Elvis, pretty much left the building. I don’t know what my problem is; it might be the passing of my 30th birthday lo this bygone April 13th, 2001 coupled with physiological changes in my metabolism that are causing me to be completely lackluster in my desire for communication with ANYONE whether it be by phone, e-mail, smoke-signals, semaphore or pony-express. I just haven’t been FEELING IT lately.
Is this old age? Is this what causes some balding men to buy Harley’s and leather, or to buy the affections of much younger women that they can’t afford? There’s the terrible angst of, “Where do we go from here? What else is there to experience?” I don’t think drugs are the answer, but I’m sure I’ll find out for sure at a later date. Physical exercise? Maybe the desire to capture the lost fitness of youth figures into it, but it won’t ever happen; at 20 I never got injured or if I did it healed by the next day. Lately at 30 if I get injured (which appears more and more likely) it will be WEEKS before it feels less like intentional torture. Sex? Fat chance; scientists don’t get much play. It’s not like I leave work and have to punch my way through a crowd of young, hard-bodied wahines eager for my unctuous regard. I’m fondling myself in the shower so much I get an erection every time I hear running water…just a joke, don’t attempt the visual…
Well, there we go as usual, babbling my face off. This digression into pain and weltschmerts was strictly unintentional, but it happened anyhow so I can’t (or won’t) take it back; it’s part of us and we must move on…
The real reason that I wrote you all was to tell you of a wonderful event that I went to a few weeks ago. For the past few months, I’d been either working or out of town almost constantly on various jaunts to see a large array of acquaintances, and it had taken its toll, so I planned to stay in town and devote myself to myself for the entire weekend. I heard of a one-day event in Austin called Eeyor’s Birthday, and I decided to go see what it was all about.
I awoke on Saturday morning feeling strangely fabulous, stepping outside aghast and agog at the weather and the honey’d essence that seemed to be borne on the hill country breeze like nasal photo-negative of the Ganges. It was, in layman’s terms, a fucking beautiful day. I decided that the convertible needed a workout, so I took it for a personal 2-hour hand-scrub, vacuum and detail at the local do-it-yourself car-wash.
A Side Note About The Car and Convertibles in General:
Yes, The Car. It seems like it was built specifically for spring in the Central Texas hill country. It’s a Satan’s-brimstone-ass red 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with black pleather interior and top. It’s all in tip-top condition, and has an air-conditioner that will keep the condensation from forming on your beer on those long, hot drives through-and-to nowhere. My dad was forced to get rid of it by my mother, who was griping that the front yard was looking like a refurbished Classic-car sales lot (not that I think there’s anything wrong with that, but women’s priorities differ from ours, and not just biologically.)
Since it's a classic, in excellent shape, and they quit making Oldsmobiles, the car is going to be worth a lot (actually, it already is), so he decided that I should keep a-hold of it until such time as he decided to sell it; out of sight, out of mind as far as my mother was concerned, so I reaped the benefits all around.
It’s truly a thing of beauty, destined to receive yells of delight from the men, quantifying eyes from the women, and smiles from everyone. I’ve already had several offers to buy it, and I’ve almost been car-jacked, so I know it’s worth looking at. The great thing about this car is THE FEELING that the car gives you while your pelting down the road with the gas-slurping engine growling in 4th at 90mph on a stretch of hilly road on a sunny day. It’s total contentment and satisfaction with your place in life, utter happiness on four white-walls, disinterest in the average hard-top world. It brings out the beauty of a squashed ‘possum and causes one to have no need for scenery that can’t be appreciated at under 70mph. It’s a big-ol’ hunk’a Detroit steel made back when the secret was cubic inches and not technology; the gas-tank would hold an entire Pinto, cost more to fill than most third-world countries’ GNP, and belched out more reeking combustion by-products than a whole slew or burning Kuwaiti oil-fields It’s a truly AMERICAN piece of machinery and I love it.
And now, back to our story:
After the scrub-trek with the Red Narwhal, I polluted my way out to the site of Eeyor’s Birthday, a small section of Peace Park (goddamn dirty hippy name; should have been called, “Where-Ignorant-Peacenik-Layabouts-Go-To-Get-Their-Hea ds-Kicked-In-By-The-Local-Constabulary Park”). I managed to find a spot right next to the park, which was a FUCKING MIRACLE in itself and should be proof enough for me of the existence of God (but it isn’t). I had to muscle out a bus-load of retards to get in, but the spot was worth the hassle of having all those bastards in football helmets waving their little mittens and spitting up on themselves, making “aargh-aargh” noises in desperation.
I retrieved my green shoulder-bag from the back seat. I’d bought the bag in Montreal one year for $7 US (I love the Canadian exchange rate) and that day it was holding everything I’d need: sunglasses, phone, water, some granola bars, a book, anti-histamines, various writing implements and a brand-spanking new notebook to scrawl my in-depth observations, as I felt it was important to get down my thoughts on this day as they happened for that true edge that I like to write from (and it’s oh-so-rarely that I achieve it these days.)
My first impression as I crossed the street and made my way down into a semi-dry riverbed was of some kind of throbbing coming from the area of the party, a rhythmic sussuration that seemed to move through the ground; it felt like I was walking on earthworms. I emerged through some trees on the far side of the stream-bed and saw a huge and colorful crowd of people many meters in front of me. There were people coming and going, coalescing and dispersing around a circle like oil globules on a local lake. I could see it was a drum circle, but like no drum circle I’d ever see before. There were simply dozens of people with every kind of primitive instrument you could imagine. I was surprised not to see any cave-man fur-wear and mammoth tusks. I decided to forego the drum circle for now and just walk around, getting my bearings and laughing aloud at everyone around me like some acid-soaked bedlamite.
I happened to run into a guy who eyed my notebook with obvious distrust and asked if I was a reporter. I told him no, that I was just going to write some friends in Boston (a little bullshit here, but this IS going to people in Boston, so not SUCH a lie) and asked if I could pick his brain about the event. He said sure, so pick away I did.
Eeyor’s birthday is the longest running 1-day event of its kind in the U.S.; it’s been going on almost longer than the Grateful Dead and Phish combined. It was started in 1963 by a UT English professor (couldn’t find out his name) who used to have a small spring party in his backyard on Friday afternoon sometime in the fourth week of April. The event itself moved to Peace Park (vid. my above attempt at renaming above) in 1974 and has been here ever since. In 1986 it moved to Saturday (something to do with the drinking age being moved to 21, but I couldn’t get the connection from him.) I can only assume that the name came from when Eeyor lost his tail and Winnie the Pooh and friends decided to throw a party to make him happy again (I overheard this from someone who appeared rather inebriated, so I don’t know how true it is, but she was cute so I put it in the story.)
The event itself is actually a fund-raiser for various local charities (I had utterly no idea.) The organizers promote the event and make their money from concessions, not cover-charges. I talked to a man who told me that he’d done work with a needle-exchange program that on-the-sly received some of it’s funding from the event; on-the-sly because needle exchange programs are apparently illegal in Texas. He was self-employed and said he didn’t have anything to lose by helping out, but he had the hard-used look of a man who had come to grips with the spike many moons ago and beaten the odds on it. He mentioned that there were 5 or 6 lawyers in the U.S. who would defend people pro bono who had been arrested for exchanging needles, and there was even one who had published a newspaper advertisement saying he would publicly embarrass any DA who attempted to prosecute anyone for this “crime.” After that, he got busy and I began my sojourn.
It was interesting to note the variation amongst the acres and reams of exposed flesh around me, tan and otherwise. The scars and fat-dimples were out in force for everyone to see/appreciate/shy from/pretend didn’t exist. The day was an excuse for the fantasy vs. reality cliques to make a showing…it made for a drug-friendly kind of eye-candy atmosphere, though it seemed rather chock-full of “damned dirty hippy” throwbacks reeking of patchouli in a pathetic attempt to cover weeks-old B.O. (Hint: the U.S. has running water.) Not that I mind hippies particularly. As a species they’re relatively harmless, stick to themselves, and they’re easy to run over on their bicycles (though it takes FOREVER to get the stink off your bumper.) Every freak in Austin had made its appearance.
The crowd was a curious mix of the tie-dye and cell-phone crowds. There was a really lame cover-band playing a protest song from 30 years ago, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio”, with none of the righteous indignation and anger that the song was about. Strangely and ironically, the police looked on while directing traffic and tapping their feet. The band mouthed the words worse than ol’ George W. trying to sing “Guantanamera”. The band fucked-off and the music changed to not-quite-trance, the drug-music of a new generation. It’s like the people who dance to it…cold, impersonal, and uninvolved unless the police flash their badges and tell you to go home, ruining your high.
There weren’t a lot of fitness buffs in the crowd, no tanned and slick muscle garnered from hours in the gym and weeks spent sweating over a pile of chicken-breasts and broccoli, but the people still managed to look beautiful and relaxed. The only evidence of exercise I saw the entire time was dancing, hacky-sacks, chasing wayward dogs and metabolism acceleration through chemical alteration.
Passing by me was a contingent of Vikings (there’s the cave-man fur I was hoping for…shouldn’t you be in the drum circle banging a log?) and the fantasy wonks didn’t seem to realize that Amptguard wasn’t until next weekend and Scarborough/Texas Renaissance Festival weren’t for a LONG TIME. It appeared that many of the women had sprouted fairy wings (how original.) There were a few out-of-place (even here) Goth-types scurrying around from shadowy patch to shadowy-patch, looking as if they’d dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer if direct sunlight even batted an eye in their direction.
I sat down for a moment to rest my weary bones, slurp some agua, scribble notes and ogle the hussies. I noticed one shapely young thing with a small dog seated not too far away. Should I start up a conversation? I could already hear the replies:
“I have mace.”
“Fuck off, dweeb.”
“Hey, Gunter! This guy’s bothering me!”
I decided to observe a decidedly Hong Kong policy of laissez-faire.
I watched a big man with a large dog stop next to the little girl with the tiny dog to make small talk…the tiny dog snarled and bared its teeth, talking big shit, so the big man with the large dog moved on. I laughed out loud at the scenario.
It was a good thing to see so many healthy, happy dogs; the hippies don’t appear to shower often or well, but they keep their pets spotless, a sort of Dorian Grey of personal hygiene. There are no little, yappy dogs here; even the small dog from my previous paragraph was around knee-height. The small ones were probably eaten at the entrances, or used as hacky-sacks when they started to yip. It would be an interesting spectacle to air-drop a few cats in at the height of the party (strictly for scientific purposes, to study chaos theory, of course.)
I decided to schlep my ass around the area a little more and I came upon a statue of liberty curiously done up with Eeyor’s face, except it was all in the metallic bronze-gray that the oxidized statue in New York Harbor looks like. It was quite weird-looking, but it seemed to have its own crowd of onlookers, who appeared to be waiting for it to do something. From the amount of people with dilated pupils lurching around in place, I would guess that ol’ Eeyor was already clanking around doing a rondolet in their heads.
At this point I was near the drum circle, and it seemed to have expanded. I decided to have another palaver with the soft ground. The drums were shifting and changing slowly, and it’s something I only noticed after I’d been sitting there, entranced, for a short-seeming 45 minutes. They drag you in by your auditory canals. I wished I’d had a DAT to record some of it, because this was a decidedly UN-lame drum circle. There were tons of people around, and there were some damned dirty hippies playing something I began to call “Beirut Double-Dutch” that involved someone swinging around a flaming piece of heavy-grade rope while other silly someones jumped over it, occasionally getting hit and igniting their hemp-wear; I wished some of the women would do it…maybe it’d remove some of that leg-hair…
Anyhow, the drums would change slowly, building up to a frenzy of pounding and screaming (like discount night at the whore-house) and then drop back to a mellower, drifty sort of vibe. There was everything from snares to doonbecks to Ozarka jugs tapped with sticks…need I point out the modern primitives reference? When it slowed it seemed like what banana pudding would sound like if it could be played on hi-fi without getting your needles sticky. Many would just continue to pound away at the same rhythm if it were up to them, but occasionally someone would shift into a discordant note and the others would shift to match to avoid the horrible clash, and that’s how it changed…kind of like people, eh?
The vibe was friendly and the sun was sunny, but I wondered how long it would take to change. What time would the alcohol crowd make its showing? The drug users I wasn’t worried about, they just wanted the vibe and the action and the frenzy and the weirdness, but sure as politicians lie there would be some set of drunk fucks that would screw it up for everyone, and then the Austin police would come crashing in like helmeted tornados to atrocity everybody.
I decided I didn’t want to stick around for this, so I moseyed down this path that other people seemed to be taking. Along the way there was a performance art group with a zither, a mandolin and some guitars playing frantically while some fruit-loop lady interpreted. I didn’t bother to suppress my laughter, but they didn’t seem to notice.
Down the path there was an actual SOUND-SYSTEM going, and actual DJ’s playing. I’d forgotten how good a decent system sounded outside when there were no walls for it to reverberate off, and the music was actually pretty good. I saw people out there whom I used to party with back 7-8 years ago, and everyone was dancing and having a good time; daylight rave, but nobody looked cracked out. This was an older, mellower crowd who’d just come out to enjoy the sunshine and the music and the company of others amongst some greenery.
I took a seat next to a large tree and read, listening to the music and tapping my feet, occasionally rising to complement the groove with movement, but mostly just sitting and reading. A guy I didn’t know pointed behind me with a grin on his face and said, “Hey, don’t you know that guy?” I turned to look and almost got a faceful of naked man-sack. Yes, the first and only naked person of the night had made his arrival.
Well, he was very naked, which was obvious. What was also obvious was that he was NOT sober, but he was NOT drunk, if you get my drift. There was no animosity, not here, and maybe even some admiration for somebody with the balls (we could see them) to get into the buff out here in bug-land. He proceeded to dance a little (gawd) and amuse the crowd with various flopping parts of his anatomy. (Note to self: NEVER dance naked unless you’re alone or being paid enough money to move somewhere far away with no communications network in place.)
He finally tired or was just too bent to stand, so he went and laid down behind the DJ booth (and it was a high point of amusement when the DJ turned around and there was a naked guy lying wrapped around his record case; he played it off beautifully and just got another record.) Girls were walking by, laughing and placing daisies on his crotch. Someone finally got him up and got a poncho on him just as two cops were walking by…everyone kind of formed up ranks between him and the police so they couldn’t see him…it was a nice show of solidarity for someone who wasn’t really bothering anyone and was a source of humor.
After a while, I decided that it had been fun but it was time to go, so I packed up my stuff and headed home, sun-burnt and happy, with a good memory of Eeyor’s birthday. I saw the naked guy in cuffs and pants being carried away by the police as I was leaving. I had a feeling he’d be well-received in jail…
