Evening Out
by Gabriel Orgrease
The running joke had become that I was being passed off as Billy Gibbons from Zee Zee Top. I wandered the streets of the French Quarter with family and friends of family. Whenever anyone of the group shouted, “Billy Gibbons, everyone, Billy Gibbons!” I was to go “Har har har.”
It was pleasant warm weather. I had to make up some sounds. I’m not one for realistic impersonations and it does not help that I had no clue what my alter-ego Billy Gibbons should sound like going, “Har har har.” I had to make do on a limited amount of information. Based on the reaction that I got from members of our group I must have sounded like a wheezing donkey getting a suppository. I smiled a lot.
Often what is going on inside of my head, when anything is going on, I try to figure out from signals that emanate from the outside of my head what the anticipation is of my next reaction. Sometimes we must go with the flow. Sometimes it is best to not flow, just go.
In this case it is night and we are in a dank bar with a famous name that I forget, and everyone is drinking, some more or less than another. My new friend, I’ll call him Walter for convenience, well, Walter is sloshed big time, big pink bunny talks to the dark-air of the 7th dimension kind of wasted. We must keep figuring out where is Walter as kinda like an extraterrestrial lizard he does not stay put so well.
I see lights flash across the ceiling and there is a smell of burnt umber. Music is jiggy in the background behind a tumult of mixed voices. Ice melts toward the center of my glass of raw bourbon. I can’t hear so well. Sirens evoke a sense of pending curiosity. I can’t separate the noise from the noise. Keep on an even keel. I shut down and watch people. Faces, arms, movement, eyes that twitch, laughter, tongues stuck out, boob, the guy Mike sat next to me asks me if I like boobs, rather conspiratorial, out the window is the street. Ambient glow of the night. Some readers may think that I make this scene all up. I could if I would.
Next thing I know Walter grabs me by the arm. Pulls me off my chair. He wants me to meet his new friends who stand at the other end of the bar. I am pulled along. He brings me up to two younger dudes and their classy dame and introduces me as Billy Gibbons. I stagger forward, my best imitation of a drunken super-star stagger. I give them each a hug. They don’t seem convinced. I step back and yell at Walter, “What did he say? What did he say?”
Then I fall on the floor to pretend that I am passed out and that my real name is Walt Whitman. I figure this will confuse everyone as they have never seen a video of Walt Whitman braying at Har har har. Easier to mock and imitate poets long dead before television reality shows. But on the way down I hit my head on a bar stool and I really do pass out before coming completely aware in the ER and dream that I am Santa Claus doing a cameo on Duck Dynasty. They clean the sawdust out of my eye sockets. I spit out peanut shells. My shirt smells like it got used. The morning sparrows peck at my beard in search of moldy seeds. I rustle with a wet newspaper. I’m not sure how I got on this park bench. It never hurts to have friends. Oh, my, if only.