As I write this, it’s 10 p.m. in Oklahoma City and there’s not a coffee shop open in town. Oh, I suppose I could go to IHOP or the T/A truck stop on I-40 and get coffee, but I can fix my own, better, fresh ground coffee at home than I’ll get those places.

We’ve got a couple of pretty big colleges in the big town, Oklahoma City Univ. comes to mind, and no coffee shops open late? I seriously want to know why there isn’t a used book store/coffeehouse near NW 23d and Pennsylvania nipped up under the OCU campus. For that matter, why no wi-fi coffee houses along 2d street in Edmond across from UCO?

Don’t college kids read obscure novels and write bad poetry any more?

I suppose not. Nowadays, it’s the boys writing bad poetry and calling it rap and the girls are all reading re-tread Bram Stoker Twilight crap. If they read at all, that is.

Video hasn’t killed the radio star exactly, but reading and writing are as dead as the baby oil heiress (dead and alone at age 30, will baby oil ever feel the same?).

Yeah, I’m back in town and spoiling for a fight. A big fight. I don’t care if I lose the fight, I just want to take a few swings and land a couple punches. I’d be happy for the dust-up no matter what, just to have a little action, just to know I’m not dead, just to smell some sweat and hear the loud voices of men and the squeals of the women and feel the blood pounding in my ears.

I wish I still drank whiskey. I wish I could get loud drunk and obnoxious and get into a fight. I wish I could talk some boozey friends into a road trip to hell. Folks in the back seat waking up to wide skies and Black Mesa on the way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon and Vegas beyond that all for the toss of the dice and a round of extreme juvenile embarrassment at The Chicken Ranch. Better yet, a good split lip outside some local dive here in town and then a ride to El Paso and Mexican Boys Town. Get a tattoo and a florid shirt and fluid excrement stopping the car every few miles.

I know way too many smart people. People too smart to do dumb things. Even though sometimes, the smartest thing you can do is something stupid just because it can be done. Because it’s there and someone has to do it. Like picking a fight. Or going to Mexico on a whim. All the smart people I know, I love ‘em, I really do. I’ve been just like that so much of my life, not doing the dumb shit because I want to be smart and don’t want people to see me doing dumb things. Problem is, you get so invested in being so damn smart, you do the dumbest thing of all: nothing.

We let the perfect become the enemy of the good. We want love but we spurn it because we’re waiting for our “soulmate.” What crap. We can’t enjoy our money and just haul off and spend it because we want to be so smart and have money as if that’s an end to itself. And it is an end to itself to all my smart friends my age because they’re all thinking about retirement and savings and the comfort of their old age. Fuck that. I’ve seen what that means. It means you die with money and no memory of your vapid memories, your vacant life.

I’d honestly and sincerely rather run out of money, have a full life and take myself out without the bother of decline into senility.

But if you never do anything stupid and never have any memories and live a stolid, decent, respectable life, and then just die, well, what good is that, what real good to anyone anywhere is that?

I don’t need to be remembered forever or even for very long. I’m not afraid of God or Hell (maybe I’m afraid of Heaven if the Talking Heads are right and it’s a place where nothing ever happens). I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid to die without having lived my life. I’m afraid to die without ever having rolled the dice, without jumping out of the plane, or off the bridge into the Illinois River. I’d rather love and lose than live the cold, wan life of never having loved at all. I don’t mind falling in love. I fall in love forever. I like loving as much as I can as brightly as I can as long as I can. And, if it means heartbreak, well, then, let it be — no boy grows into a man without having his heart good and damn broken, and that has nothing to do with the number of years the boy has lived because I know some boys who are 60 years old.

I’d rather be loud, hated and reviled than to be afraid to speak my truth. Fuck all of you if you don’t like it and go ahead and tell my Mom you little squealer.

And, just to make sure you get the point, I’d feel the same way if I knew that my truth was ultimately discovered to be despicable and false.

Western Rationalism and Mindfulness quite aside, there’s a virtue in Passion. There is virtue in all too human strong feelings even if you don’t believe in Virtue, and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to pervert Virtue, in contempt of it, so much that I’m familiar with it … intimately, leeringly, and, of course, obediently.

Go to bed early, children. Get a good night’s sleep. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Exercise will be good for you. Don’t eat sweets. Brush and floss daily. Don’t have sex until marriage and don’t get yourself enmeshed with credit card debt. Save your money. Own a home. Maintain your car and check the oil and tire pressure. Go to college and get an education. Work hard and deserve praise, be the faithful servant who makes five talents with his master’s trust. Raise your children to say yes sir and no ma’am, please and thank you.

What a bunch of claptrap! Yeah, you guys go ahead and do that. Then die so the Neitzschian Superman can evolve from your dormant and boring DNA. And, you go to lots of church suppers and then straight to heaven, you just go ahead and do that, too.

I ain’t gunna do that.

I’m gonna get inna fight.

Where’s Tom Joad when you need him? Hell, I’d settle for Henry Fonda.