1) The music of course. _ 2) The booze of course. — 3) Ah... Everything has soul.

She killed it.

5:04 am

Amazon-like bartender Laurie:

1) Money. :

2) Makes me feel and look gross and disgusting.

-3) What?

5:05 am

Slowcoaster. We are almost redeemed. Almost. I fucking love CB. But I have never been. Shame on me.

5:09 am fe. Sherri sleeping? Is Charlottetown sleeping on

Slowcoaster? Is there any more pizza? What is this fucking bullshit, where some person walks by, sees me writing and extends his hand and says, “You with the media?” and when'I shake my head ‘no’ he pulls his hand away. Are we just dogs sniffing our perspective bitch- es? Do we not care about tact? Are we animals now at this hour? In this place so lacking in soul?

5:41 am

He was wearing a yellow FUBU hat (of course) and I am currently trying to find him... “Goddammit man. ‘With the media? With the media? Goddammit you half-wit, I am the media. Lazy and stupid and full of shit with “a jockey full of bourbon”, so full of whiskey and dreams I can barely stand. And who are you, goddammit, and who are they, and where is your soul’?

323 aa ;

Officer Dean Fine, one of five of Charlottetown’s finest standing

hoes

near the stage, right near the bar I am leaning on. His answers:

1) People’s demeanours. They are nice and happy.

2) Line-ups outside

3) Not a whole lot.

About 2 hours ago, I found a black Star-TAC cellular phone. I have it turned off in my pocket. I am think- ing of how I can use it. | just fin- ished interviewing a police officer. I had to lean against the building outside for balance. There was a noted drug dealer. hanging around but = the officer. seemed too engrossed in what I was saying to pay it any mind. Several times dur- ing the interview, I looked straight up in the air and exhaled, to stop the spinning. The officer seemed to understand and politely paused until I said, “All right, that’s bet- ter,” and he continued. The dealer used to be a friend of mine and I was more than a little worried that he had the wrong impression of what was going on—that I was get- ting busted or something—and that some major ugliness would ensue. The kind of beating that lasts a life- time. The kind that hyenas dish out to wounded gazelles. Just for kicks. Drug dealers are not unlike hyenas: opportunists and _ dull-sensed morons with little but their own contempt for their customers, or their prey, to solider on for. I am in the grips of the Fear.

5:35 am

I have just watched two Myron’s bouncers spitting and throwing beer at each other, and getting the crowd and this notepad wet in the fray. They are laughing and not car- ing about the people. Their job is to make the people feel more secure—but this is a Myron’s staff thing after all, and if Baba’s is a lit- tle down in the soul department this weekend, it is Ray motherfucking Charles’ basement compared to

Myron’s. These two_ baboons, primping and grooming each other now, are they in possession of their souls? Are they in possession of sodomatic tendencies? Christ, what? Is that even a word? _

5:40 am

I am presently looking for Jim- Beau, feeling the Fear with grips and craziness heretofore unseen. I am continually jostled and smirked at and’I want, desperately, to fling one of these cheap fixers to the edge of the balcony here, dangle him over, just for kicks, like... no, for Johnny Cash.

5:45 am :

There are probably 2,000 people in here and I am ravaged with panic. How will I make this out? Am I just whoring through this scene too, as a passer, as a fool, as male, as metaphor myself for the music business, where is my soul?

The door goons are increasing and would seem to be watching me closely, and it is clear any soul or style has been Myronized out of this place, but the 76-Hour Jam is, at least, a great place for hobos. Let them have it. I am hitting the bricks. Look for some pizza, maybe smoke some more cigarettes, and beat this fucking town. I am fixing to yell “See you in hell!” back into the crowd, but before I do, I catch a glimpse of myself in the long mir- rored artificial foyer. Eyes red and bleeding, face distorted and nose red. Sweat and smoke and every- thing else pouring out of me like a carnival ride. Am I vacant?

5:46 am

I have left that ugly scene with an announcement that I need to call Papua New Guinea.

5:50 am

I have failed in my attempt to use the cell phone that I found to call Papua New Guinea to get first class digs for Mike Lecky. The operator could not understand me, and I insisted she tell me about her soul before I asked for the number, and the battery was almost dead and the life ran from it and fell on the street and I ran home. Totally petrified.

It is 5:52 pm.

I am thinking of taking a couple of showers. Maybe lying down. About three hours ago, I ate a McCain’s pepperoni and cheese pizza. In lieu of other additions to the toppings I grated three cloves of organic PEI garlic and spread them on and ate the fucker. Two hours ago, I gained the ability to see through the walls. I have just watched a PEI girls’ team win the junior women’s curling title. It was a good game that went down to the very last shot. I watched it from the bathroom. At the same time I have been listening to The Butterfly Effect and some bands from Cape Breton, and trying to ride it out.

Garlic and alcohol do not mix. Like dobermans and cats. No ques- tion one is the aggressor, and there- fore has an opportunity to relax. But unlike a doberman, garlic never relaxes. The feeling of ingesting a great amount of garlic is not different from the trucker’s speed you’ll find coursing through the brains of your finer fighting dogs. The men who run the dog fighting rings in upper British Columbia will tell you that a rot- tweiler on speed will chew off its own leg, just to hurt something; in much the same way the garlic coursing through you motivates a wicked kind of enthusiasm that allows for little or no thoughts of peacefulness. Everything seems

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