fiction: Friendship Pills

Bastard told me it was X, so I handed the portly young neck-beard my twenty dollars, and I couldn't stand waiting, so I popped the pill at the bus stop. The salesperson stands up the block from this lovely antebellum funeral parlor, where all the gang folk go after a shooting. The older I get, the less this differs from playing bridge at the nursing home just another block down the pike. I'm planning to retire there. Then croak. But for now I have few lean battles left inside the rotting, worm eaten Trojan Horse of flesh.

Took a while for the crap to kick in, and it sure as hell wasn't X. I was watching my shows, like I always do. Sometimes it's a biography of Del Shannon. Or it's a true crime show in which the Unibomber brings one home again. Same bombs against the same alma maters. I mostly watch half hour biographies, as if people from What's My Line are just as important as George Washington or Chairman Mao, who also does a nice half hour biography. I was into my third half hour show when the crap kicked in. I'd seen the show before, and this time it came clear just how beneficial illegal drugs are.

This time I know Paul Lind, personally. I already knew the story. Great character actor for sit coms. Fantastic panelist on Hollywood Squares. ETOH abuse. Some mental problems. Repressed animosity about being a B-lister. This time I was in his apartment. We were sort of like friends. More so than when you just watch the computer screen. He paid particular attention to everything I said. Makes sense. Sometimes it's best to listen to an outsider. Your closest friends might be blowing smoke up your ass. The word 'friend' seems to have changed from red to green and then to blue and yellow over the last sixty years. Paul and I are in the yellow zone for now. There is some type of relationship. Hope the neck-beard is at his post next time I head out by the funeral parlor. Hope he has more fake X.