Walking Barefoot Through The Burning Embers Of Your Love

For any of you who think I’m about to fire off some Honky-Tonkin’, Beer Drinkin’, Shotgun-Rack-In-The-Back-Of-The-Pick’-Em-Up Country song lyrics based on the TITLE of this screed; relax. Your woman has left you, wrecked your truck, and got your dog neutered. Nothing I can do about it. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, put on some Led Zeppelin and tell everyone your ex has Industrial Strength South African Super Herpes, like a MAN!

No. This is NOT a country tune; it’s a symphony played on a trashcan accompanied by a dancing monkey wearing a little vest who whines musically about the outrageous cost to the nation of Jerry Nadler’s waistline. 

Far ago, in a land long, long away, I was celebrating the end of my first tour as a bandleader at a party hosted by my good friend Ed at his family’s cottage on a lovely lake in Central Michigan. Everyone was there; old high school friends, a few band members, our entire road crew (both of them), and my cousin Scott, who drove up to the party from his home in Ohio. If I were to go into any detail about the condition of the party-goers, I would say that we were drunker than Nuns in Church on Sunday, but not so drunk that we all looked like we were victims of a gas leak. 

It would be better to give you some details about Ed and Scott. 

Ed was a high school friend who had an amazing capacity for substances both legal and not, a wild sense of the absurd, and a black Chevy van. The back of the van was covered in lush carpet, with a futon mattress and bean bag chairs in back. It was not safe, but it was a rolling party Xanadu. Perfect, that is, until he would go ‘Four-Wheel-Driving” and suddenly remember that he didn’t own a van with four-wheel drive. 

Then it was “Get-Out-And-Push” time. 

Scott…was my cousin. We were close when we were younger; he had lost his mother (my aunt) when he was very young…he lived a short bike ride away. We were like brothers, but had started growing apart as I moved away from the small town we grew up in. Looking back now, I know that I loved him unconditionally like a brother, and like a brother, I really didn’t know the person he grew into very well.

Still, he was down to party... 

We were all out in the yard, stumbling, laughing, fighting, puking, and (some of us) temporarily unconscious around a HUGE bonfire. I’m talking way bigger than your average bonfire. I THINK that one of the toolsheds caught fire…

Me? I was young, flushed with a little regional success with my first band, partying on a warm summer’s day with a crowd of friends, a lot of whom were very pretty girls. I was single, stoned, and magnificent and, just per chance, as I was roaming around the bonfire like a maniac with Tourette’s who was four days into a three-day bender, I happened to see Ed and Scott talking directly across the area of the bonfire from where I was standing. I had thought of something I wanted to say to them…I HAD to say to them…something funny: so funny that I had to verbally shove it into their ear-holes ASAP!

So, I walked straight over to them. 

Through the bonfire.

Barefoot.

I didn’t even notice I had walked barefoot through the bonfire; I only took note of the shocked faces of all the attendees, including Scott and Ed, who had managed to cobble together enough consciousness to witness the event. 

I do remember brushing off the whole thing in my desire to tell my cousin and my friend this hysterically entertaining quip, which I have sense forgotten. They didn’t find it funny, anyway. Interestingly, an amusing witticism loses a little punch when the teller’s jeans are on fire. 

I woke up the next morning, face down on the floor of the cottage. 

Have you ever smacked your head on a ceiling beam so hard that there is no pain for just long enough for you to become aware of how painful the pain is going to be when it finally registers in your brain?

It was like that, only a hangover. A hangover that was going to kill me unless I IMMEDIATELY jumped up, ran down to the boat dock, and jump fully clothed into the lake, which I did.

Through this application of Executive Thinking, I have learned one thing I now know to be true: Always drink to excess near a large body of water. 

Which is just true. I don't care what anyone says...