There's a hole where there should be my brain.

Most people have a brain where their brain should be. Not me. I don’t. I have a hole where my brain should be. An empty space. Air. Just air. Real big nasal cavity, perhaps, but no brain. Definitely no brain. It’s kinda amazing I’ve managed to get this far in life, and by ‘this far,’ I mean not very. But still. For a man who apparently lacks a brain …

I’ve been thinking bout it all day, cause after all that drinking last night, I can’t do much else, to be honest, except sit here thinking, and I’m pretty sure the only logical explanation for what I did is there’s something either wrong with my brain or I don’t have one in the first place. (No wonder I keep impressing people with how big an idiot I am. This lack of a brain explains so much …)

Or maybe I have a brain only it’s real small. Or could be it’s normal sized but damaged. Or maybe just my brain just … goes to sleep, sometimes. Who knows. I sure as shit don’t. But there must be some reason I keep doing stupid things like stopping on the way home for a quick drink at that place I like to stop at, only a quick drink turned into like a dozen.

I don’t mean a dozen of the same, either. It was an assortment of drinks I drank. Gin, beer, vodka, a fucking flute of fucking champagne for some fucking reason unbeknownst to anyone, a whiskey. This was a panoply I drank last night, I tell you, a panoply. What brain would allow its body to do that?

And wow, what brain would come to the conclusion that the bartender (she’s a nice gal) wanted to hear some lame-ass half-baked idea for a novel? No brain, that’s what brain. And when that very same bartender walked to the far end of the bar to get away from that lame-ass half-baked novel idea, any brain worth its salt would have dropped it and not try to impress some sullen drunk sitting one bar stool over with the very same lame-ass half-baked novel idea that drove the bartender away.

(Here’s the idea: this man and woman are either in love or just drunken screw-buddies, and there’s this gas station attendant who either gets held up or shot and killed, and either the man or the woman goes to the gas station right after either the robbery or murder and is either arrested or compelled to find the crook to either clear his or her name or see to it justice is served. This story is told in either the third-person or first, and if it’s the first, then the narrator is either the man, the woman, the detective, the crook or the gas station attendant who is either alive or dead but still the narrator anyway.)

Ah, but when you have no brain, every idea, no matter embryonic, extemporaneous and stupid, contains multitudes.

Shit, well before I even ‘decided’ it was a ‘smooth move’ to ‘stop off at what a lovely watering hole’ and have ‘all the booze they got behind the bar there’ as I ‘wowed their socks off’ with a novel idea that ‘practically fucking writes its fucking self,’ while I was still closing up, I cracked open a Heineken. A Heineken! I don’t drink Heineken cause it tastes like half-hops, half-donkey-pee. But there I was drinking it as I shouted to whoever was left (the Mexicans, who frankly couldn’t possibly have cared less, as they were too busy watching a tape of Mañana Es Para Siempre), ‘WHY AM I DRINKING THIS HEINEKEN!? I DON’T LIKE HEINEKEN!! WHAT THE HELL!!’

Yet I finished it, and I might’ve even had another one as I waited for the Mexicans to get out so I could lock up. Seems to me, my brain, if I had one, woulda picked a beer I liked. (Lately, it’s been this chocolate stout. That shoulda coulda woulda been the way to go, but … alas.) Though now that I realize it’s cause I have no brain that I keep fucking things up, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I have been worried. My decision making’s been … off. Way outta kilter. Now I know. There’s a hole where there should be my brain.

I hope it’s not hereditary, this lack of a brain. I hope it’s not passed on to Pokey, who’s done nothing (yet) to deserve not having a brain, like his old man clearly does not. But if he winds up not having one, it’ll be my fault, and not wife-asaurus’. She’s got a brain. Sometimes, she’s got one toomuch. Like last night, technically this morning. Sure as shit didn’t expect her to still be up when I saw fit to stumble home.

Yeah, if there’s one thing my skull doesn’t have, that thing would be a brain. Cause she told me she was waiting up. She told me. So why exactly was I surprised to see her awake, in the doorway, that look of admonishment on her face, but who can blame her? I told her I was coming right home. Two and a half hours later, I was home, and believe you me, I do not live two and a half hours from the restaurant. I live like two and a half minutes.

Swear to god, no way in hell I have a brain. No way in hell. Here. Knock my head. Right here. Give it a good knuckle-rap. A nice firm level of hardness. Pretend you’re knocking on a door when you think no one’s home and you’re kinda angry at that person for some reason, perhaps for not being home. Go on, don’t be shy, you have my permission.

See? Did you catch that? Do you know what I’m talking bout now? Pretty hollow-sounding, isn’t it. Sounds as if there’s a big huge cavernous space in there, know what I mean? Thumping a melon in the produce aisle’s what it sounds like, doncha think? Now, to compare and contrast, knock yourself in the head. Same spot, same knuckle-rap, same nice firm level ofhardness.

See? Did you notice the difference? Do you see where I’m coming from now? Yours isn’t hollow-sounding at all, is it. There’s a thing of substanceresiding in your skull, unlike my skull which has nary a thing in it where there should be a brain or am I wrong? No, no, I know I’m right, I know I’m right. I hafta be, cause the only answer to the question of what the fuck was going on in my brain when it decided that drinking that much was a smart thing to do is that it didn’t decide that. No brain in its right mind would decide that. Ergo, I have no brain.

Seriously, if I have a brain, which I seriously doubt right now cause it’s like past lunch and I still can’t move cause I drank so fucking much last night, but if I do have a brain, boy is it ever on the fritz. Maybe it’s cause of that time it got halfway ran over by that car when I was a kid. Or all those times me and Louie rolled downhill in those metal barrels. Or maybe when I got hit in the head with that brick. Or when I was running from that guy in Hyde Park who was shooting at us and I ran head-first into that tree. Any or all of those have led to me having a fritzed-out brain. I think it was a cumulative thing. It added up over time.