Had Catching Up to Do

My houseguest has made her departure. I have so far been able to stay out of my predictable sulk by catching up on the work that has piled up during my week of paying more attention to April than anything else.

I haven't written about how I work all that much, I don't see it as anything glamorous or exciting and if I wasn't a single parent to three teenagers (alright, alright, before you climb all up my ass Medschool Girl, you're 20, which means that I'm a single parent to 2 teenagers and a young adult with Medschool size bills for me to happily pay) I would not take half of the work I take.

Mostly, I'm a jingle whore. I don't mean whore in any kind of derogatory fashion it's just the most apropos word to convey my attitude. I do this for money. Very good money. I will do it for pretty much anyone who has a wad of that very good money. When I was first breaking in to this end of the business I was sometimes ashamed of the way I would not even bother to find out what they were selling when I laid my music tracks down. I figured that it was irrelevant to my task at hand. Then I heard myself playing on the TV at home underlaying a narration about one of those Payday advance rip off joints that specialize in cheating the families of deployed service men. (the one in question here was situated within spitting distance of a big ass Marine base) I called and suggested to my agent that maybe such gigs were things I might want to take a pass on. He chewed me out. Told me that I did not want to build a reputation for not taking gigs. This is a business that thrives on "yes." If there's any doubt in a producer's mind about my taking a gig, he'll call some one he's certain of and not bother with the chance of my declining. It's that simple.

So anyway, I'm stuck in traffic on the 91 coming back from a studio in Orange County (91 traffic is a living breathing monsterous thing) after spending the morning and early afternoon making money not music. I'm descending into a funk over the state of my life. My recovery was still pretty early at this point. My finances were on the road to recovery, but still tight. I also was realizing that by choosing to stay home and concentrate on the jingles and stuff I was putting the potential earnings cap way lower than I had been used to. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going to be living in a shack eating government cheese, just now, I would have to think about my spending, pay attention to stuff I hadn't paid much attention to.

So there I am in traffic, getting myself all in a funk and this little voice in the back of my head says "Whore." I turned up the music in the car and tried to sing along with it, but everytime I would pause for a breath or a phrase the voice would come back, "Whore." This is going on from Irvine to Diamond Bar and I'm on the verge of losing it. I call my agent and tell him what's going on and he tells me to stop off at Frederick's and pick up a nice black leather miniskirt and fucking deal with it.

I call my sponsor Jessie Joe. I since have realized that things like this are common in recovery, especially early recovery. There's a tendency among us alcoholics to be the agents of our own destruction. We know that things are only going to hell anyway so by bringing it all down ourselves at least we aren't surprised. There's also the thing about not having exercised much conscience muscle so learning how to properly apply is kind of like learning to walk again after knee surgery. Jessie Joe listens and then says "Talk back to your little voice. Tell it how you look at things, then tell it Thank you for sharing, now shut the fuck up."

This is what I told my little voice: "Yeah, you're right I am a whore. I'm a whore who takes good care of his children. I'm also an expensive whore. My customers keep coming back too. My pimp loves me. I will whore myself out to anyone with time on their studio clock and a handfull of cash. The only thing I really want in life is enough time to brush my teeth between blowjobs."

I've been a proud whore ever since.