By Friday 22nd I was shaken with migratory nerves. I do not travel well, have never had wanderlust, never thought to leave the evil place that hatched this twisted mind, until it drove me out in June 2018, the very day that The Brickmouse and Guilo Girl invited me to stay with them on any return to Baltimore. But there I was in the cozy Brickmouse House where I have been so welcome. I was already homesick for it and was having bad brain fog trying to pack bags. I was losing things, washing clothes and forgetting where they were.

Monday Night the 24th into the early midnight hours of Tuesday, I trained The Operator, sparring in a street light lit basement alley. He paid me with a bag of big mac burgers and fries. Back at the Brickmouse House, with an introductory letter in hand to one of his colleagues, I cut up the fries, tossed out the buns, put meat around the fries, covered all with left over cheese, and nuked it for 2 minutes—a feast.

The blackout curtains admitted just enough light to warn me awake. My last week in a longtime location, I am unable to sleep past dawn. I answered emails, checked the back end of the site, and packed, unable to write.

At 11:00 AM, The Man in the Hat picked me up to meet his son, Brett, at the Valley View Inn, an old roadhouse bar and eatery in Baltimore County. When I was his age I walked past this six mornings a week headed home from the night shift at the supermarket that has changed hands a few times since. The young fellow looks great, showed us the pic of his gorgeous girl in Southern Maryland and paid for our meal and beer. He then said, “James, you look so much better then when I took you to Doc last year. Can you spar?”

“Sure, the Brickmouse has extra gear you can use.”

“Oh, I have my sticks and gear in the truck.”

“What kind of psycho drives around for four years with gear in his truck?”

The Man in the Hat answered, as the stud grinned, “The one that just fattened you up for the kill! James, here, you better have one more beer to kill the pain.”

As he went to get me a fourth beer, Brett smiled, “Dad’s an animal. He still plays hockey. I remember when his teeth got knocked out and he skated over to us and handed them to me and went back to play.”

Brett took me to buy the Christmas booze for my son’s Thanksgiving dinner, the well rum, well tequila and cheap whiskey. Home to the Brickmouse abode we went. As we gloved up in the yard he said, “James, the Brickmouse will be home soon—he can spar too, I’ll take it easy.”

“Bro, he won’t go anywhere near you with a stick.”

An hour of moderate stick sparring in the yard, was bisected by the Brickmouse walking by in route to some after work errand, chuckling as I was stiff armed into the turf like some secondary punk trying to slow James Brown. We moved to the patio and gloved up for boxing for a ten minute round. I noted Big Ron was now sitting on the picnic table drinking a Budweiser. At a certain point I ate ten straight punches and decided it was time to stop assaulting Brett’s glove with my face. I do think my mouth piece and saber mask should file a class action lawsuit against me for willful neglect.

Big Ron grinned, “You were doing pretty good while your foot was on the outside of his—but he figured it out.”

Brett then gave me a $20, “Here James, for the training.”

“Bro, you bought lunch and drove me around.”

“James, you trained me for free for ten years when I was a kid with no money.”

$20 bucks for the honor of making him work me over, two bruised hands, two bruised forearms, a bruised sternum, a bruised bicep and other warmly retained sensations five days later that tell me I am still alive.

That’s a deal.

We repaired inside for drinks and were joined by Charles, his bride, Guilo Girl and the returning Brickmouse. Brett does not drink. He did eat canned corned beef with me, as the others drank espresso. I am so lucky to be blessed with such fine young friends.

At 9:30 it was time for Brett, the last pirate on board the goodbye ship, to head home. I had dispensed all of the area training contact phone numbers in my phone in hopes that these fellows will train together in my absence. That would make this feel worthwhile in the cracked rear view mirror.

Jason’s place is on the way. The manager of the Esoteric Cafe has lost a lady and is stuck between books, overthinking his next two writing projects. Brett dropped me off three miles north out in Baltimore County, wished me well, and pulled off.

I had only drunk 10 Miller Lite beers over 9.5 hours. With me was 2 shots of over proofed rum, 3 beers, and 6 shots of Bird Dog salted whiskey. Jason does not drink such garbage. As befits a man with four languages under his hat band, he drinks wine. He had just finished fabricating and welding door pins for an antique sports car he is working on out back. He drove us in his beater to the liquor store and bought two bottles of dark wine. On the way home there was what appeared to be a fatal three-car collision at Joppa and Perring.

Finally back in his eccentric mansion, an old dentist office house, with the entire first floor strewn with books, stalked by his attention-hungry, hypoallergenic, teacup creature demanding a seat at the table, Jason heated up slices of spinach pie. We sat, spoke, drank, discussed writing, drank, spoke of the wrong turns in or life, then came upon the subject of writing once again. Jason read passages from his most recent book, and I had to honestly inform him that his prose is better than mine. He does understand how languages are built. The beer, rum and whiskey were gone, the rum grinning up at me with a wry twist of grin. Jason was halfway through the second bottle of wine He looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was 3 AM.

“James, thank you so much for this inspirational conversation, for this book [Can]. I think I have drunk too much and am fading, night creature that I am. How can you still be up and lucid?”

“I worked night crew for 38 years. It’s almost quitting time.”

“Please, finish the wine and take a couch.”

I downed the half bottle of wine—against Rick’s rules—and said, “The Brickmouse will be up and about in one hour. I’d like to see him off to work. The rum bottle can be used to discipline my errant chattel.”

The stagger down Harford Road, for a few miles, took me up and down three good hills. I had miles, over an hour, utterly alone except for blinking lights, buzzing light poles, a rat scampering crookedly across the street. I did not feel too drunk—indeed was able to get the key in the door on the FIRST try. When I entered, my young friend was making breakfast. We sat and he regaled me about some world military news—a high speed missile I think.

At last, dawn was tinting the sky as he locked himself out.

I nodded pleasantly in the decommissioned gamer chair they save for my back.

“James, James,” spoke rose-fingered Dawn, some fresh goddess voice prodding me awake.

I looked right and saw Guilo Girl, “James, time to go to bed.”

Embarrassed that I only lasted 23 hours, I slunk off to bed for my last turn there, to wake three hours later, realizing that I stumbled home along the same road that stretches endlessly in my rebooted nightmares of being late for work from missing the bus, afraid I’d get soaked in the rain.