Nurse the Hate: The Necklace

A couple months ago we played a show in Athens OH.  Home of Ohio University, Athens is a small town that relies upon their chief industries of veggie burritos and weed for the transitory residents to forget that they are stuck in the middle of nowhere.  I’m sure I would feel differently had I gone to school there, but I do not have nostalgic memories of drunken escapades and coming-of-age stories while adorned in my Bobcat gear.  Those that went there love it though.  Love it.  The comfortable little bubble of Athens provides an alternate reality to The Real World.  It’s a very safe place to put on different personas and figure things out.  There is a danger.  This bubble leads to a small percentage of people that attend school there to never leave, having found their preferred niche as Very Important Bartenders in the ultimate Big Fish, Small Pond.  Of course, there are also others that survive on the very outer fringe as “eccentric street people” that add color to the Authentic College Experience.  College towns like mentally ill drifters.  Everyone feels very liberal and open minded to let these guys wander around panhandling.  In a larger city, these people would be “homeless pests”. In Athens, they are part of the social fabric.  They are also guys that go see the Whiskey Daredevils play at a 1960s style food co-op-restaurant-bar-collective-thing.

I found it very odd that as we banged out way through our set to the relatively warm response that this scruffy street person would walk up to me mid-song and hand me a necklace.  He must have been quite moved by our performance.  This was a very cosmic looking guy coming out of nowhere to give me a weird necklace while we played.  This was not just any necklace mind you, but a costume jewelry magic medallion of some kind.  I know it was magic because I was able to instantly work the clasp and put it on while singing, a feat I probably would not be capable of if given another hundred chances.  It was then that I was (and still am) thankful for my prodigious chest hair.  There is no way for a magic medallion to look better than while nestled comfortably in a thick nest of chest hair.  The fact that I was able to open another couple of buttons on my shirt to perfectly expose the necklace to all only made it that much more of a fashion statement.  I was born to wear that necklace.

I wore the necklace that night and into the next day.  I would describe most people’s reaction after taking a good hard look at it as being “pretty creeped out” (as Sugar said).  It really is a statement.  And by statement, I mean “Hey, I am under the illusion that this 1970s looking medallion makes me look sexy and I am totally unaware of how hopelessly skeevy it actually makes me look”.  It is a piece Tom Selleck would not have worn when he was majestically riding in the helicopter with T.C. during his salad days as a private investigator for the closeted elderly homosexual Higgins in Hawaii.  That Magnum PI TV show was a documentary, wasn’t it? 

I took the necklace off when the work week rolled around.  It is hard to properly wear the necklace unless I am able to open at least 2-3 buttons of any shirt, and that seemed a bit aggressive for the office.  I was justifiably concerned potential clients would think I was selling cocaine, not television airtime.  I thought at that time I made the right call in placing the necklace on my nightstand.  Within a couple of days, I had forgotten all about the necklace.  This proved to be a mistake.  It was right about the time my July Health Crisis started…

I have always been healthy.  Any health concern I have had has always been of the nagging variety, like a sore throat or sinus infection.  It’s all gone wrong for me in July.  After getting over this abdominal infection, I was hit with a bad drug reaction, and now am fighting off a cold.  I can't seem to get back to normal.  I find it hard to believe that I have gone from “robust healthy adult male” to “infirmed sickly old man” literally overnight.  I suppose it is possible that my body is like a domestic car and at 100,000 miles systematically falls apart.  Still, having now owned three Chevrolet Express vans, the warning signs of the bitter end are very hard to miss.  I should have noticed something.  Let’s just say that I haven’t been overheating into a massive fever or burning blood when I go for a walk of substance like I would of if I were an Express Van with 100,000+ miles.  The warning lights have not gone off. If they had, I’m positive the doctors would have spoken to me like car dealers.  “Well Greg, you’re really at that point where you should consider getting yourself into a new colon and small intestine.  We’ve got a couple of factory incentives that are really worth taking at look at…  Let me ask you… What would it take to put you into a new colon today?”

I have now come to the unavoidable conclusion that this necklace carries a pretty heavy mojo.  I can’t play around with this thing.  It is like that tiki necklace that Greg Brady found in the cave while he was vacationing with the family on the Big Island.  I don’t recall the specifics of why exactly Greg Brady was walking around in a cave in the jungle as opposed to padding around the grounds of the Honolulu Hilton or wherever Mike and Carol had booked the family, but he soon knew that the tiki necklace was not to be trifled with.  The first clue was probably that “doo dah doo dah doo” keyboard sound and locals telling him “It’s taboo!” whenever folks noticed it around his neck.  Now, I haven’t heard any music or had anyone tell me this necklace I now own is “taboo”, but the necklace is so 1970s that most people are probably wondering if I am a pornographic movie star from the golden age of disco.  It probably slows them up in telling me that this necklace is “taboo” as they are concerned I might later show up at their house as a pizza delivery man and then have aggressive intercourse with them with my engorged baby’s arm sized phallus.  “Did someone order a pizza?”  Cue drum roll and funky guitar riff…  Wacka wacka wacka…

There really is no other conclusion to draw than that I have angered The Necklace.  The Necklace is sending me a stern message.  The Necklace is very powerful.  The Necklace will not be ignored.  I do not claim to understand everything.  Life is mysterious.  There is evidence of a Higher Power if you keep your eyes open.  Me?  My eyes are wide open.  I am not going to disrespect The Necklace any longer.  It is time for me to get serious about good health and my overall well-being.  That is why I will continue to wear The Necklace until The Necklace sends me a sign to give it to the next person.  I have it on right now.  One does not own The Necklace.  One is a caretaker for The Necklace.

Respect The Necklace.