It's a beautiful Spring evening, you're driving home with the windows open after just finding out you received a promotion and a large raise. What song are you blasting in the car?
Doesn't seem to me like a true celebratory arc without a proper "#### ally'all" song. For that kind of thing, i've always counted on my Mary.
Most of you know that my wife was a 6ft+ wildchild who rose above molestation & teen prostitution to become the best psychiatric nurse i've ever seen (we met working together) but could not put her troubles to bed for herself as well as she did for others before dying of cancer many years ago @ age 40. My savage sweetie approached life, love, work & fun with equal violence. But i was never bored...
The height of fun to her, oddly enough, was Sunday drives in my cherry 1975 Eldorado convertible. Since we both were pretty hard on Saturday nights, this always seemed odd to me, but improbable was her long suit. Sometimes it was daylong drives up the Sierra or out to Pyramid Lake, sometimes she just wanted to freak the tourists. On those days, she'd put on her teenie-weenie berkeenie (pretty much 3 2-inch triangles) and wrap her hips with a sarong; tie her hair back to reveal the razor cuts & Cellophane streaks in her platinum hair that she wouldnt show to the workaday, pack a hella pic-a-nic basket for someone who couldnt cook and load it and her 4-ft 50lb boombox into the back seat of the Eldo and we'd get out on Moana Lane (her showbiz name during her mud-wresting days, btw) to look for squares, we'd spend the rest of the afternoon tailgating citizens, to places we werent even going, blaring Sonic Youth, Bauhaus, Husker Du etc on 11 volume at them as Scary Mary leered, cackled and inveighed thruout.
After her freakin' was did, we'd find a sweet spot to nibble on the way home and then she would reward my steed by whipping off her sarong in the driveway and giving my hot wheels a thorough sudsing, to more neighborly accompaniment on the box now on the step. The wives of our hood would call in the children and the husbands would bring out beer & lounge chairs for the show, as she cleaned all care away, going from side to side of my Eldo by whipping her prodigious legs across the hood of the car in a butt roll.
I never miss her more than when i think of those Sundays. big ups, baby...
4.20 In A Free Land, Hüsker Dü