On Excess (And Whatever)

Steven Tyler once said:

"If anything's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess."

Well played, sir.

Now—separating myself from Tyler's drug-fueled rants (and his post-detox suckage)—yet still acknowledging my own tendencies towards self-destructive impulses; uncontrolled; or at least barely leashed, despite years of therapy and similarly-quote-unquote-helpful drugs—I'd claim that excess, even when paired with delightful natural or unnatural or prescribed or unprescribed chemicals, can be interpreted in many forms.

For instance, this instance.

I'm sitting in a bar near Symphony Hall, Boston. Either a theater crowd—booted from other establishments due to awful, grave-rank perfume, monocle-shifting drunkenness, or the biggest killer: tourist's confusion—come here ... or else this is a secret dive, tucked in the heart of a shithole section of Boston Proper that's pretending to be okay. At least its bodyguards—Northeastern and the aforementioned music thingy that stuff happens in—claim that, attempt that.

Otherwise, this neighborhood sucks.

So here is Symphony 8. Some dumpy yet expansive joint, replete with black lacquered furnishings (but not a single black person) and, for some reason, Bob Marley (I thought the Irish hated blacks? ... guess it makes sense now).

It belongs, in that it's representative of the area's feeling, but not of its pretension. So why is this place even here?

Don't ask the blonde beer-tosser. She hasn't a clue. Her hunger for tips is evident in her eyes, her professionalism—icy and beautiful—unmatched by the others; her stride, as she zips, attached to rails, from the waitresses' drop-off point, to us bar people—miserable white MacBook satchels that we are—without a semblance of the niceness and, even—and even better—the falsity we expect from an establishment oh so close to the South End (a gutter).

A professional. Human—needy, achy, discontent, hungry, submissive, angry, fucking righteous—to excess.

But fuck it. As much as this shithole sucks gunsmoke from a loser's pistol, they've got Goose Island on tap, and I was under the impression that that shit was only available in Chicago.

Welcome to Chicago! We've found a replacement for those actually city-like streets (novelty!) that are unfortunately plagued with midwesterners, saggy with fanny-packs.

I'd be more comfortable here—more apt to enjoy my Goose Island, perhaps crack open the latest Lehane, or, if I dared, Lethem (good shit is complicated)—but the music has now turned ugly: early 90s rock; our generation's feeble attempt at prog, splashed with the twangy idiocy of the short-lived thoughtdream of ska, and overproduced to the point that those musical bents, even if performed well, couldn't even chip out a hole in the ice to breathe. It's hard to think, read—do anything other than drink—when the very establishment's owners are bribing you, and your mind, into silence.

But I digress.

The point: I'd be comfortable here if not for the dining room!

I didn't notice it at first (too caught up in admiration for one's words, perhaps?) but when I pissed (in the very clean and nice-smelling bathroom) there it was: a ballroom of tables—a Bronte panty-moistener—mostly populated, reams of chatter—but no windows.

I could never eat sans windows. I don't want people to watch me—and I definitely don't want to watch others (voyeurism, for me, died with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom)—but food shouldn't be private, locked away, hidden from view—the new homosexual!—because that'll just feed (haha) into the disease of overeating. You're eating too much, too fast, so go away.

I suppose—coincidentally, and gleefully—I've made it full circle: excess. I don't advocate it. Really. Who would want to shit blood? Who would want to turn yellow? Who wants to choke on their own vomit?

But the impulse can be separated from its consequences. You sit down. Color. Color outside the lines. See it in the sunshine.

Perhaps the initial blood-quaking urge to arrive at Symphony 8 was, in fact, to push body limitations to the point of screaming gears, the meltdown of the plant, the worker's revolt, but the end result—like everything we do, every goddamned step and breath and sigh and tear and sly manipulative grin—was an education.

Hey.

I went someplace new.

The guy next to me is reading a pulp paperback, maybe Stephen Hunter (of the Hunter series, obviously), maybe some grocery store hack I've never seen before...

Doesn't matter, 'cause here we are, all of us—and yes, they're separate from me because I look psychotic typing this much on a fucking iPhone—and this is our time—each of us!—to see how the other half plays on the playground.

Me, I piss in the sandbox.