The Sleazy, Lipstick-Stained Now

Dear Tom,

I live in a city that rains all the time. It really bums me out. I grew up in the southwest desert and miss the open space and recklessness. Things like dessert dust and old Spanish are replaced by wet socks and depression. How should I cope?

Thank you for your time,
M!

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Dear M!,

A kindred spirit, that is what you are. You see what I see when I look at the desert: dessert. They are one in the same, the great addendum, an afterwards in the sleazy, lipstick-stained now. A sandy sundae—you know the jive. During one particular weeklong fever dream I drove across the dessert in a 1955 Chevrolet Nomad—built like a brick shithouse, handled like a cadaver. The ghosts of former Presidents were my passengers. Coolidge kept falling asleep to the thrum of the wheels on the baked earth. Taft fiddled with the radio knobs, but there was no signal that far out. Just luxurious static. Garfield smoked coolly out the window and talked to himself. We were all having visions, like cherry red schoolboys on a longshoreman’s hashish.

But I feel your yearning, and so I assembled the old crew: Coolidge, Taft, Garfield. They brought Grover Cleveland along, giggling like a madman. I told them your dilemma and their answer, as always, was exasperatingly simple: don’t cope. Throw out your umbrella and rubber boots. Don’t underestimate wet socks and depression. Taft, clucking and preening, reminds us that Swordfishtrombones was about wet socks and depression, after all, and that he played piano there near the end. And of course they’re all right. Don’t get reckless. Don’t get bummed out. Get recklessly bummed out. And learn to play a horn.

T.Waits