William Lobb

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And Nothing Happened

Oh

Kill a brother in his car, nothing happens.

Lead an insurrection against the government of the United States, nothing happens.

Threaten the life of the Speaker of the House, nothing happens.

Commit tax fraud, nothing happens.

Use the office of the President of the US as a cash cow, nothing happens.

Give a guided tour of the Capitol to terrorists two days before the insurrection, nothing happens.

Let half a million people die by doing nothing to prevent it, nothing happens.

Use Venmo to pay underage girls for sex, nothing happens.

Give the NYS AG boxes of documents proving illegal financial transactions with Russia, nothing happens.

Let the planet slowly fry to a crisp, and push, ‘clean coal,’ nothing happens.

Push a fascist agenda, undermine the constitution, devalue education, nothing happens.

The lesson of the last five years is, to me, I’m just on the wrong team… thing is, I’m not sure what the teams are anymore.

I’m sick of creeps and coward.

Does It, Really?

The problem with politicians is we are conditioned, from a very young age, to believe they act in the best interests of the voters who elected them. That is not what they are about at all. Never has been.

Like killing 50,000 American kids and god knows how many Vietnamese to “keep us safe from communism…”

Power, money, and ego, yes! Your best interests will only be met if and when it benefits them too.

It’s been that way since there have been politicians. If people would realize this, they’d be less disappointed when the people they elect screw them over.

I wonder often, is voting a vital part of the democratic process or a mechanism to fuel the machine with more self-serving jerks, and is that, in fact, the essence of the democratic process?

Biden may be better than Trump, but so is black mold.

I realized this with Nixon. I’ve not been disappointed since Nixon. The opposite actually. I’m never disappointed because I expect them to screw me.

Drowning in the Desert

“Right after my boy drowned, I let it all go to the wind. I ran off to the southwest. I had some friends there, and they offered me a place to stay and try to heal and recover. All I did was get fucked up, day in and day out. Mainly out there in the Saguaro Desert, in that dry heat. That shit will drain the life from you, and leave a man weak and confused.”

“I recall being naked in somebody’s backyard pool, in Mesa, Arizona, 1984, the wrong pool, the wrong house. Tripping my ass off on gobs of peyote mescaline and good Mexican tequila and Negra Modelo beer.”

“From the next house over—the place where I belonged, and the pool I was supposed to be in—the stereo was deafening. Cyndi Lauper’s ‘She Bop’ was telling me, as I struggled to hold my head above the water and not drown; a fear rose in me of being found dead and naked in the neighbor’s pool, the fear that everything I’d ever known or been told about right and wrong, the rule of law and the rules of being a man was wrong.”

“It somehow felt right that I drown, like the boy did, sucking all that warm water into my lungs. By rights, I should have drowned, but I didn’t. All I did was float there in that water, face down, listening to that goddamn song, thinking about my dead boy. Not a day goes by, Shug, I don’t wish I’d died in that pool.”

—Charlie

The Truth is in the Water

Breaking News!

After a week of watching the news again I’ve learned this about Covid:

The vaccine will keep you from getting very sick, unless it doesn’t. Then it won’t, but it won’t kill you, unless it does. So generally it’s good, except when it isn’t, but even then it’s not bad, because after you get the shot, you don’t have to wear a mask, except when you do need to wear a mask. But even if you do need to wear a mask, you don’t need to wear one outside, except sometimes when you do. But even if you do need to wear a mask outdoors you can be indoors with other fully vaccinated people without a mask, probably. Regardless, your protection from the vaccine will last a year, or six months, or three. Then you’ll need a booster, unless you don’t.

I’m happy and grateful I’m fully vaccinated. I’ll continue to wear a mask, because it’s the right thing to do.

The same news that reports a loss in confidence in the vaccine actually reports the nonsense listed above—daily.

I wish the ‘news’ would stop breathlessly reporting speculation and actually report facts—what to do and not do. That would help, a lot, to encourage people to get vaccinated and build confidence. This idiocy serves no one.

The Dance

Watching the young boys dance, the spray of sweat and spit. Every duck and weave, and every punch that connects reminds me now that we are no longer the same. I’m no longer one of them, I’m a visitor, an outsider. I’m from another place, another time, a different world.

I realize I don’t move like they move anymore. Even when I am warm, and in the zone, I’m slow and heavy and plodding, compared to these light young boys.

They are kinder to me than I am to myself.

You don’t play at boxing, like baseball or tennis or golf, you don’t play, you fight. You win or you lose. You break bones. You bleed. You get old.

It’s really that simple.

Sitting, in my own silence, I hear the grunts, the deep thud of thick gloves on heavy bags, and guts, and ribs. I smell sweat and canvas and mold and blood.

Young hands move as fast as light.

My hands are slow and arthritic. Even wrapped and gloved, they hurt on contact, pain shoots up to my shoulders. Too many broken bones connected to too many broken bones.

I used to be fast as light.

I used to be impervious and unmovable, a stone wall.

Walls crumble.

But these boys, now, these young men who picked it up where the old men laid it down, Jesus, they are fast.

I shake my head and close my eyes and I feel the sounds as I feel these very old bones.