Yeah, isn’t that what the kids always say? That’s what I used to say.

(warning: rambling shit ahead)

First off, how are you? I’m fine, thanks for asking.

(I changed my sidebars from pink to red, btw.)

I’m sitting here sipping some wine and listening to the Who. These were my V-day gifts from my lovely bride. Wine because, well, she knows I like it almost as much as coffee. And the Who?

Lemme tell you about the who. Way back when we were younger (about the time some of you were starting grade school, apparently) my wife and I weren’t married yet, but we like to, um, fuck like rabbits.

(and if you’re as old as I am, you can remember back before ClearChannel and the FCC got all anal and the Who would sing “who the fuck are you?” instead of whatever they’ve changed it to now, but that’s a different rant)

Anyway, I had a roomy and spacious Datsun 210 with a tape deck, and we had a tape of the Who and would put it on auto repeat (quit laughing, nobody had heard of a CD back then) and get busy. To this day I cannot hear a song by the Who without thinking about those summer nights.

and Daddy never sleeps at night…

But that’s not why I’m writing right now.

No, this is about the song “Behind Blue Eyes.” And I’ll give you a small snippet of my adolescence.

It must have been 1982, or so. There was an indoor tennis exhibition or championship at Reunion Arena in Dallas. I went on a field trip with my fellow inmates from the psych ward, and at some point during one of the games we started singing this song.

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

Of course, I don’t have blue eyes, and I have no fucking clue why this song touches me, but it does. This night we were all singing along, smoking a cigarette, thinking we had been wronged by The Man and all that shit.

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

WTF? Nobody hated me. Nobody hated us. But hey, it was the next part of the song.

Well, we had been talking about it, and another girl and I just hopped out of our seats and ran. I won’t give her name here, just in case some Google gets zealous. She was, I think, 15 at the time, I was 17, and we ran like our lives depended on it. We escaped.

In the parking garage, they caught up with us, and I was sure she was caught. I looked back as I heard her screaming, then I hopped over a concrete wall and found some railroad tracks, following them into the night.

I found out much later that she escaped (by yelling that the staff member was trying to rape her, I think, buying herself a few precious moments of indecision on his part) and went on to other things, but at the time I just figured I was alone. I had less than $10 in my pocket. Cell phones hadn’t been invented. I didn’t know where I was. I walked.

I walked past buildings and homes. Next to what would later be Woodall Rogers freeway. Down a skanky street full of strip joints and bars, and not having enough money or being old enough to try and go into one. I just walked.

Some hours later, I wound up at Parkland hospital, sitting on a bench next to some gunshot victim who was waiting his turn in the ER. I called a friend to come get me. I knew they would call my parents, of course, and by morning I was back at our unit. There was never any doubt. For such a careful planner as myself, this was surely a half-assed attempt to escape.

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

Ya know, I think I prefer the “fuck like bunnies” memories of the Who better. Out of my brain on the 5:15…