Flash Friday 8-8-14 nothing is free, a monolouge in Flash Friday

There aren’t hard and fast rules to how to pick a ride; if you need them maybe you should take a bus. A beat to shit Chevy pick-up with a gun-rack and a bumpersticker that reads “Ass, Grass or Cash, no one rides for free” doesn’t mean a bad ride, just poor taste. If you’re looking for taste charter a Jet.

I’m not telling you there aren’t rules, they’re flexible and more like texas hold them than black jack. The dealer has to hit at fifteen; the dealer isn’t even in the game in hold ‘em. In Black Jack you play the cards; walk away from the four of GunRacks and the six of Ass-Grass-Cash-No-Rides-For-Free, in Texas Hold em it’s a playable hand. You need to know how to read the players. You also need to know there’s only fifty cards and you’re looking at seven of them.

That’s how you pick a ride. Sure there’s some guys who look like they could fuck anyone in the ass and leave them in the ditch. You’re looking for the guy that’ll fuck YOU in the ass and leaveYOU in the ditch.

Sure you’ll be kicked back up the ramp by a state Bull in California or Colorado along with seven other poor sons-a-bitchs, and some guy with a bandana and a dog will say “Nothing is for free” and his girlfriend will nod to say something like “Ain’t that the truth”. It’s protocol, it’s polite, and most of all it shuts him up from preaching. Sorry, I know I’m preaching, but, shit, you asked. See? “Ain’t that the truth” is a fine thing to remember. Anyone who preachs after that was going to preach anyhow.

Truth is everything is free, value and negotiation is like currency, once it represented good faith but now it’s just habit. Everything is free with one caveat; you can’t give a shit. Your emotions, your life, your psyche, your soul become negotiable once you place a value on them, so does everything else. Kris Kristofferson was wrong about Freedom, it’s not a word for nothing left to lose, it’s a word for not giving a shit and the suffix dom is superfluous, just a way of making something ephemeral into a noun on some other part of speech, the freedom of speech.

I don’t know. You get a gut feeling, you got ten seconds to get in the car or not. I don’t have a hard and fast rule for that. I do know once you’ve made the choice the less the shit you give about the consequences the more cushion between you and eternity. I’m standing here talking ain’t I? I must have done something right. Sure, I have some scars. So do you, and yet, you’re standing there listening.

So You don’t have the money to charter a jet and you can’t stand the smell of disinfectant and piss on the greyhound, you lose your nerve hitching … there’s always hopping a train. You don’t have to vet the conductor and the worst a railroad dick’ll do is beat on ya, you just have to be fast and sure footed. Unless you know the schedule it’s an even purer form of travel; you’re not going somewhere you’re going someplace you’ll know it when you get there.