Finding My Inner-Buddha in a Water Closet

Finding My Inner-Buddha in a Water Closet
(The Buzzard's Revenge)
Copyright 2009

The Official Book of Rocking Bylaws and Tour Bus Etiquette clearly states in chapter one; verse one: "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE, be it physical illness from regional virus or groupie epidemic, homesickness or overactive homo tendencies, nervous colon due to unexpected boarding, search, seizure and interrogation by law enforcement official or suspicious girlfriend, unidentified STD or sudden discolorization and/or growth upon genitalia, alcohol/drug induced internal bleeding, reception of repetitive assaults to the abdomen by drug-crazed, associate roadcrew member of lower intelligence, or reckless ingestion of questionable bus lunchmeats and other assorted goodies including, but not limited to, rancid female reproductive organs, day-old breast milk mixed with Vodka, or unsolicited snowballing ambush by groupie instigated by remorseless colleague, will no member of a touring group ever, and I repeat for clarity, EVER, shit or vomit in a tour bus lavatory! Violation of such statute will result in immediate and severe bodily harm and expulsion from the tour."
This ancient law of bus decorum has been honored and passed carefully down through ages by every mercenary, rock crusader that ever dared sift through a sea of fiendish pharmaceuticals and cacodemonic lust peddlers in order to fistfuck virgin ears with ever-intensifying decibelic insult and then escape, unabated into the night, vanishing behind the moon into radio silence, only to regroup by afternoon and terrorize the next unsuspecting burg down the sleepy pike. It is here, during these tenuous, in-between hours of journey, the endless miles of insignificance separating pillaged town from burning hamlet, that the brave crusader earns his medals. For it is during this period that all the sins of the road are counted and creep forth, relentlessly inching to the surface, lulled by an unstoppable, hypnotic rock of the caravan and coaxed from the bowels to exact a penitence for the unrestrained behavior of hazy fortnights and fifthnights past, stacked one against another. It is here, that the bus commode, transformed enchantress, curvaceous and cool, beckons "do as thy wilt young rocker priest, seat thyself upon my exulted cathedra and I will deliver thee solace in this heathen world thou dost hastily traverse."

Many have fallen.

My particular experience with this unfortunate circumstance begins, innocently enough, with the time-honored tradition commonly known as the "after-show meal." Scratched deep within the hieroglyphic fine print of every rock and roll contract rider worth its cocaine, is the stipulation that the venue will provide a meal of some discernable type directly following the night's festivities. On this memorable occasion, the venue in question decided to provide us with meal tickets to the Jamaican eatery across the street and like a band of drunken rats following, lock-step behind a penny whistle; we threw off the shackles of common sense and marched directly into the open hands of one amiable Jamaican restaurateur, eagerly waving his spoon and spatula. "Watch me work the spoon, watch it go, see me workin' the spoon," he repeated proudly like some sinister incantation as he heaped pile upon pile of gook and grack in the Styrofoam containers to our naïve delight and amusement. One by one, we each tore greedily out of the bistro, clutching our day's catch, laughing like teenaged hoodlums who have just unearthed a trove of Hustlers in a basement hideaway. We reached the bus and dismembered the fresh kill, laughing and spitting obscenities, reveling in our fortune and thumbing our noses at the poor societal peasants that toil for meager slave's rations while we dine like savage conquerors! We raised glasses of Pinot, Port and Blanc, toasted Marie Antoinette and admired the devastation as another town lay bare and spread eagle before us; bent to our psychotic, perverse will! And then came the real alcohol.
My tour manager burst through the door like Bender in a Santa Clause suit, lobbing bottles of every make and model around for his hungry baby birds. Canadian Royal, Smirnoff, Petron, Daniel's, Beam, Walker; all the heavy hitters. And then, my old nemesis, Jägermeister.
At first I resisted. The wicked combination of Jamaican rice, ox tail and God-knows-what and cheese, mixed unchecked in a swill of Merlot and Jager was volatile enough that I knew it should give one a moment of pause. I knew I was tinkering with a formula that had the potential to explode like an Apache job inside the Death Star trash compactor that was now my stomach. I knew better… way better.
Road manager was insistent though! He slurred something about “women and effeminate men” through a flurry of amphetamines and Tequila-drenched sarcasm. I don't know exactly what he said, I don't speak caveman. What I do know, is when I tried to ignore his retarded reverse psychology, turning to my bunk and quietly attempting to remove myself from the looming disaster, apologizing half-heartedly with "Sorry, I can't. I'll be hot-bagging that shit by morning if I start now," he grabbed me by the Adam's apple, punched me in the groin and bellowed "Drink, drink now you little schoolgirl pussy!" He then proceeded to unceremoniously sodomize my nasal cavity with the bottle until I relented. "Fine!" I said while clutching my balls and knowing full well resistance was an exercise in futility. I'd be set on fire in my own bunk while I slept if I continued the protest. I gave in and took the first step of a long journey toward a rendezvous with the unrepentant maiden, the lady in white. I was now in the quicksand.
By morning the sum of all my fears were realized. Civil war had broken out inside my intestines and I had spent the last two hours in my bunk, contorted into a quasi-fetal position, promising myself I would never ingest anything other than bread and water ever again. Judging by the rock quarry we seemed to have been driving through the last hour, I assumed the bus driver must've been part of this whole conspiracy as well.
By the time we reached our destination, I was a sweating, gurgling mess of regret and I leapt from my bunk like a Saki Monkey in order to make for the door. Once reaching the outside, I was appalled to learn we were indeed late for the radio interview and performance the band was scheduled to do and as a consequence, we would begin unloading the equipment as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately for me, once inside the studio, we were effectively locked in and only one small restroom was available. Not that this should have been a big problem except that I had absolutely zero time to wander away from my duties because the band was already in danger of missing the 8:00am rush hour slot, and also because, as I later observed, everyone seemed to have been poisoned by our Jamaican friend with the magical spoon!
One by one, members of our entourage slipped away to the confines of the studio latrine only to leave their poor drum technician (Johnster Monster), behind in the trenches. "It's a test of mind over matter" I thought to myself, "I can handle this as long as I don't think too hard about it" I reasoned. I kept my mind on my work, which was loading the drums and percussion into the studio and silently setting them up and preparing them for the on-air performance. We had to be as quiet as possible because the morning show crew was in the same room just a few feet away and on the air as we loaded and set up. I began feeling much better because I was so focused on not dropping anything (equipment), or tripping over a cord and causing a giant ruckus.
At this point, I must jump topic slightly to provide a bit of my own psychological perspective. As a musician, I loathe radio. I despise radio! Most of all, I despise morning radio shows! They are all the same. They all have a ridiculous animal mascot (a buzzard, a gorilla, etc.), they all have a stupid catch phrase (gadzooks, or holy friholy), they all throw around the word "legendary" in regards to their station way too much, and they all have the same cast of characters. The cast usually includes: the sarcastic host who keeps them on topic and schedule, who routinely berates his underlings. This is balanced by the whacky sidekick who provides the majority of the one-liners and often is beefed up ala Danny Bonaduce. Don't forget the requisite piece of ass that does weather and attempts to chime in occasionally but is basically ignored. The piece of ass is interesting because in the old days, the piece of ass would be a piece of ass in voice only, but nowadays for some reason, the pieces of ass are generally real pieces of ass! Go figure. Anyway, the cast is then rounded out by a pair of no-name frat boys that are only there to take punishment, wear their baseball caps backwards and laugh uproariously at whatever pathetic jokes the host and Bonaduce produce. This particular crew was no exception. I rank radio DJs and morning show personalities just ahead of fortune tellers on my list of people I intend to cleanse from this earth once I'm elected President! I find them to be a waste of polluted air and valuable spectrum. All those forced years listening to Jeff Kinzbach and Flash Ferenc on Cleveland radio I suppose.
I bring this up because on this morning it seemed that the radio people had teamed up with my tour manager, the Jamaican and the bus driver in an assault on me physically and mentally. For two and a half solid hours, all these morons could talk about were shit jokes. We first had to endure twenty minutes of George Brett telling how he shits his pants at least twice a year. From there, we moved on to aneurisms caused by hard shitting. We even explored horse shitting, baby diarrhea, and Elvis's impacted colon! I couldn't escape! These fuckers would never shut up about excrement! Even when the topic moved away from anal discharge, they would inevitably find a way to return to the shit jokes, because, I can only speculate, it was the funniest thing they'd ever stumbled across during their illustrious radio careers!
At this point, all I wanted to do was crash into the restroom and leave these jack-offs an upper-decker the size of which would cause an office-wide evacuation. Every place I looked was a potential drop zone! Plants! Trashcans! Desk drawers! Purses! The levee was failing, intestinal fortitude be damned, we had reached DEFCON 1 – shitsplosion was imminent!
I surveyed the room, and to my surprise, all were accounted for. Band members in place at their instruments, tour manager smiling and making shady deals in the corner, guitar tech running around with cables and gaff tape, and front house engineer swearing and sneering at the in-house radio guy. It was time for my escape. I slid out the door unnoticed and began searching feverishly for the Promised Can, banging off walls and undoing my pants all the way down the hallway and beyond. I collided, head-first with the shitter door, forgetting about whom I might intrude upon on the other end, ricocheting a metal-on-metal cataclysmic boom through the corridors of the whole of the building – thank God the stall was empty! I spiraled down onto the head and declared "Motherfucker!!!" as I rode the black Jager rapids and ox tail avalanche thundering like Poseidon underneath and catapulting my ass at least six inches off the seat! “Praise to God in Heaven! Praise thee!” I shouted as I braced myself against the side wall and kicked the handle off the door like a molested mule with my spasming leg.

And then suddenly peace restored.

I sat for a long moment, regaining composure and wiping the sweat from my throbbing forehead; the stall door, dented and swaying on its last remaining hinge. Finally, as I surveyed the scene through the smoke and haze, a funny, familiar sound swirled from a shitter speaker box somewhere above my head. There they were, the band and their catchy little tune, circling around my swimming brain like a cloud of white doves and singing butterflies. I sat in peace, quietly catching my breath and tapping the flush lever. My first ever radio experience and I would spend the entire performance riding the mud box. Sitting there in quiet contemplation, floating like a Buddha inches from the bowl, it all seemed to suddenly make sense, it was all somehow very appropriate... all very Zen.
© Copyright 2009