The Captain Is Out to Lunch Read Online Free PDF Page B

Not bad, thinking about that. I've had a weird and wooly existence, much of it awful, total drudgery. But I think it was the way I rammed myself through the shit that made the difference. Looking back now, I think I exhibited a certain amount of cool and class no matter what was happening. I remember how the FBI guys got pissed driving me along in that car. “HEY, THIS GUY'S PRETTY COOL!” one of them yelled angrily. I hadn't asked what I had been picked up for or where we were going. It just didn't matter to me. Just another slice out of the senselessness of life. “NOW WAIT,” I told them. “I'm scared.” That seemed to make them feel better. To me, they were like creatures from outer space. We couldn't relate to each other. But it was strange. I felt nothing. Well, it wasn't exactly strange to me, I mean it was strange in the ordinary sense. I just saw hands and feet and heads. They had their minds made up about something, it was up to them. I wasn't looking for justice and logic. I never have. Maybe that's why I never wrote any social protest stuff. To me, the whole structure would never make sense no matter what they did with it. you really can't make something good out of something that isn't there. Those guys wanted me to show fear, they were used to that. I was just disgusted.
    Now here I am going to a computer class. But it's all for the better, to play with words, my only toy. Just musing there tonight. The classical music on the radio is not too good. I think I'll shut down and go sit with the wife and cats for a while. Never push, never force the word. Hell, there's no contest and certainly very little competition. Very little.

10/14/91 12:47 PM

    Of course, there are some strange types at the racetrack. There's one fellow who's out there almost every day. He never seems to win a race. After each race he screams in dismay about the horse that won. “IT'S A PIECE OF SHIT!” he will scream. And then go on shouting about how the horse never should have won. A good 5 minutes worth. Often the horse will read 5 to 2 and 3 to 1, 7 to 2. Now a horse like that must show something or the odds would be much higher. But to this gentleman it just doesn't make sense. And don't let him lose a photo finish. He really comes on with it then. “FUCK THE GOD IN THE FACE! HE CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!” I have no idea why he isn't barred from the track.
    I asked another fellow once, “Listen, how does this guy make it?” I'd seen him talking to him at times.
    “He borrows money,” he told me.
    “But doesn't he run out of lenders?”
    “He finds new ones. You know his favorite expression?”
    “No.”
    “When does the bank open in the morning?”
    I guess he just wants to be at the racetrack, somehow, just to be there. It means something to him even if he continues to lose. It's a place to be. A mad dream. But it's boring there. A groggy place. Everybody thinking that they alone know the angle. Dumb lost egos. I'm one of those. Only it's a hobby for me. I think. I hope. But there is something there, if only in a short time frame, very short, a flash, like when my horse is in the run and then it does it. I see it happening. There is a high, a lift. Life becomes almost sensible when the horses do your bidding. But the spaces in between are very flat. People standing about. Most of them losers. They begin to look dry as dust. They are sucked dry. Yet, you know, when I force myself to stay home I begin to feel very listless, sick, useless. It's strange. The nights are always all right, I type at night. But the days have to gotten rid of. I'm sick too in a way. I am not facing reality. But who the hell wants to?
    It reminds me of when I stayed in this Philadelhia bar from 5 a.m. until 2 a.m. It seemed the only place I could be. Often I didn't even remember going to my room and coming back. I seemed always on that bar stool. I was evading the realities, I didn't like