Phil Primeau


Guitar Junky

I walk into his room. It’s 10AM. He’s fiddling with a two-track from the late Eighties. There’s no hey or what’s up. “Man, I’m wasted.” Typical.

I crash across his bed. It’s covered with cat hair and stains. What sort of stains I don’t image. He turns around smacked with the stupidest grin possible. (What has he been doing all day?) There’re square teeth behind his lips.

Pregnant paces around the room. There hasn’t been a party for weeks. Time dissolves so slowly this summer.

“I’m so messed up, guy.”

His eyes settle then wobble a bit, violently like tops spinning on a counter’s
edge. Heavy blue metal tops. He plays something I recognize on the guitar while I watch the community pool below.

Cut to me taking a piss. When I get back he is not wearing a shirt. It’s too hot out for that. He has junk skin, papery and pale as dandelion milk.

I ask him to switch on the tape so I can listen over the new stuff.

Later we go for Chinese downtown. The waitress is giving us tea when he nods out into a bowl of rice.

“Sorry,” I apologize, “he’s a junky.”

And like Jesus Christ he sits up, the great pasty miraculous himself.

He smiles. “Yea, a guitar junky.”

 
 
 
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