Thor’s Blessing

        The Norse god Thor has blessed my arrival to John’s Island with the thunderous pound of his hammer and lightning like electric spider webs cast upon a dark, breathless sky.  Almighty Thor has a hard-on for sacred trees, so I must visit the Angel Oak in the midst of the storm.  Maybe I should sacrifice a goat from one of the many farms on the island as a gift to Thunderboy and hang its bloody corpse from one of the oak’s scrawling branches?

        Tomorrow is the big day.  Jesus, am I nervous.  My anxiety would be at an all-time high, but I’ve self-medicated with Jose Cuervo and beer.  I don’t like uncertainty or anything vague when I make plans.  I’m all down for spontaneity and random adventures, but when I go somewhere I like to know my arrival is down in the books and there’s no room for error.  I’m stressed out about opening the gate to my bourgeois community.  You have to search for “ACRS” at the box, then input the unit you are in, this will dial Madison at ACRS who can remotely open the gate for you.  What if she doesn’t answer and I’m just stuck there with a pile of honking cars behind me waiting to get home?  I’ve had this happen before at a hotel when my key card malfunctioned so it’s prominent in my mind.  What will happen if I can’t get into my apartment complex?  Just live in my car outside some shady bar and go to work unshaven, reeking of alcohol, and still slightly drunk?  How can you invite a girl home when your home is your mini car that’s chock full of clothes, fishing gear, an assortment of firearms, and gradually warming beers?

    The second trial is actually moving into the apartment.  No one expects me.  The keys are tucked under the doormat.  Will they still be there?  So I’m just busting in to random strangers who don’t know I’m coming.  They will not anticipate a roommate but a break-in, some deranged lunatic storming through the door, holding them hostage at gunpoint and raping them with the spatulas in the kitchen.  Will anyone even be there?  If I drop off my stuff, will they rummage through it to ascertain my identity?  If they are there will they be freaked out of their minds when I ramble on about “Crazy?  I was crazy once.  They locked me in a room.  A rubber room.  A rubber room full of rats.  And rats make me crazy.  Crazy?  I was crazy once…”  Then snort an Australian Death shot to prove my dominance?

    Tonight I pack, having procrastinated for weeks.  I’m washing my clothes, cleaning off my boots, deciding which firearms properly personify me as an individual.  I’ve got to get my fishing gear out of the outbuilding, figure out a cooler, charge all my devices.  I bought two vapes.  My knives are tucked away in a knife-roll.  I have no beer, no liquor.  No food.  I guess I’ll just wing it when I get there.

    The plan is to get all squared away then meet Eva for lunch and drinks at The Tattooed Moose.  I really want that duck confit sandwich.  Then go touristy and see the Angel Oak.  I also need to go grocery shopping and probably introduce myself half-drunk to my future Market Manager who I work for at 11AM Tuesday.  He will think I have a drinking problem.  But I’ve got it pretty figured out at this point.  Maybe sleep with some hired-help, but my alcoholism will never affect work.

    Fishing from the company pond doesn’t count when you’re temp help.  My Golden Rule, which I’ve broken once after I made it over ten years ago, is to never get with a girl I work with (the company pond).  In my defense she was really beautiful and had a great personality and I liked everything about her.  We were close friends before it all happened.  And I learned my lesson.  Never make friends of people you are attracted to.  Because the worst thing after you go separate ways is not losing a girlfriend, it’s losing your best friend.  And you’re just there all alone and the person you normally talk to when you’re going through a rough patch isn’t there and doesn’t want to talk to you.  So you just fuck off into the sunset wondering what all those years of friendship even meant.  When you were always there for them.

    No connections, no friendship, no getting close, no opening up, no vulnerability.  I don’t think I have the capacity for all that.  That part of me died a long time ago.  I regret that it resurfaced.  Cheap, cordial, fleeting.  That’s all I want.  I don’t want to see you in the morning.  We’re never going to fall in love and live happily ever after.  You are entertainment for a night, an exchange of messages, a call, company to the bar or a restaurant.  You mean nothing to me, and never will.  I don’t have it in me.  It’s not you, it’s me.  I will leave you at the end of the spring, you don’t have the option to leave me like all the others.  And you will forget me and move on.  As I will.  And from nothing we became and to nothing we will return.

    When I’m not whoring, I plan to do a good amount of writing, fishing, and sitting in a yoga club practicing zazen.  Working out at the community weight room and taking laps in the pool.  I’m going to get in the best shape of my life, besides my liver.  GOOD food, finally.  Not this Laurinburg half-wit garbage.  GOOD FOOD!  Thai, Mexican, Low-Country, sushi, brunch, etc.  I’ma slide around Charleston on my stomach like a fat-ass slug.  

    I have a lot of expectations.  But most likely I’ll just be working all the time.  I’ll have enough money to burn and enough to save for a good trip during hunting season.  Maybe actually see a beach once a week.  I’m excited.  I’m nervous.  I’ll be there tomorrow.