Have you ever watched a junkie try and train a puppy?

Sit sit sit sit. Sit. Sit sit sit sit sit sit. Sit. Sit sit sit sit sit sit sit. Sit.

I have. I have hidden the methadone. I have looked for the methadone after it has been rehidden.

The first week I lived in Lawrence, Kansas, the first house, this album played and played. The first night, the cops came, because of a noise issue. The first night I ever met Stacy.  Daniel was already there. He stayed, lingered for a bit. I remember him grabbing an blue enamel pot of boiling water, the handle was metal, and he screamed, “HOT!” I still scream that, when I get burned, it doesn’t help.

Josh bought that album at Lovegarden, probably. It became a staple of the day everyday. It became a soundtrack. It recorded in my brain. Over and over.

A couple came and stayed in our driveway. For the short term. They had a van, some guy had picked them up hitchhiking and then he got arrested. The guy who had picked them up left the van with them, along with a cell phone and his gun. He must not have been very bright, that van got lots of dents that week.

I wore heavy boots so that I could make the weight limit to donate plasma. Twenty dollars richer with a lowered alcohol tolerance, sitting in the Replay Lounge,  I would eat one of those waffle-iron cheeseburgers and drink whiskey sours. Kathy and I would sit on those stools and talk about how our thighs didn’t touch when we sat down.

That record spun that week, Allen danced the electric shuffle across the wooden floors. We shared a bedroom and it was like summer-camp for drunk punk rockers. We slept head-to-feet until I was tired of seeing his big toe. “Boom! Look at that big-ass motherfucking toe”, he screamed, as he waved that thing in my face. We debated whether or not to build a lean-to in the backyard.

Walking around Johnson County Community College, with tribal markings drawn all over our faces with Sharpie Marker. We were mostly drunk from the night before, and we scowled at all the rich kids as we smoked cigarettes and renamed them, based on what we thought they looked like. 9 am drives, reliving the night before, singing along to a Blu tape or some road comp, made the winter prior. (Vodka days)

After less than two weeks we got evicted. I guess I could think of depressing and sad things, and associate them with this, but I refuse. Here it is. This is where I am. That house was happy, with the groceries and the bubble-baths, and Alice Copper singing along.

“All of my life was a laugh and a joke, a drink and a smoke, and then I passed out on the floor, again and again and again.”

I am anxious to hear this album, 13 years from now. I wonder what I will remember about it spinning and spinning in the winter of 2008? It will probably never be as happy and careless as those days. It will never be as dirty, it will never be as confusing. It means different things now, it waxes and it wanes.

So, if you could only listen to one album the rest of your life, what would you play? Again and again and again and again?