As I sit here in my bedroom, the legendary Lemmy Kilmister is a brisk three mile walk away from me, somewhere in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C..
Perhaps he's in his tour bus. Or perhaps he's backstage at the 9:30 Club. Then again, maybe he's at the side of the stage watching Rev. Horton Heat warm up the crowd.
Maybe he's doing crank. Maybe he's doing a stripper. Maybe he's drinking vodka. Maybe he's telling people about the history of 1960s Manchester garage bands.
I'll never know, because I'm up here in Cleveland Park tonight, and I won't be making it down to the 9:30 Club.
It's a shame. There aren't many bands I'm dying to see anymore. But Motorhead gets a little more special to me with each and every gray hair that sprouts from my scalp.
With their near absence of chart presence, their career of financial insolvency and their refusal to give up, Motorhead just might be the most noble band in my world. As I grow older and weaker and more apt to live in a state of compromise, Motorhead reminds me that there is nothing more poetic in life than determining what it is that you love and excel at, and doing that until you can't do it any more.
...And, yet, I will not be joining Lemmy in Shaw this evening.
Because I have to be at work early tomorrow.
Lemmy would not approve. Lemmy would tell me to shake it off, be a man, and do something for myself tonight.....forget about tomorrow for a second and indulge in what makes me happy tonight.
I would have no answer for him, except that I somehow cast myself in the role of office villian over the course of the last several weeks, and tomorrow is a very high pressure occassion when that matter needs to be rectified, if only for the day. And arriving late, exhausted, and with a large blue stamp on my hand will not help that effort in the least.
If Lemmy were here, Lemmy would ask me if I cared what these coworkers of mine think, and I would tell them that I do not. He would aks me why I pain myself to conform to their system when I'm clearly not cut out for it. He would pressure me about my misplaced values, and the early grave that I'm driving myself into in this environment of politics and peer pressure.
He would tell me that tonight *he* will help make a few hundred people happy for two hours, and tomorrow, *I* will simply make myself a little bit more miserable.
And I would have no answer for him at all.
At the end of the day, it's my stupid decision to forego seeing Motorhead as some sort of perverted penance for being an asshole in the office lately. And it was a series of stupid decisions that got me to this point at work. But here I am and there they are, and that's just how it's going to have to be.
The fact is that there's something necessary and even healthy about being called out for being a fucking prick. Because if you emerge from the humiliation intact, you may yet learn humility. And its been made clear to me that I need a dose of that right now.
This does not matter to Lemmy. In all likelihood, Lemmy knows that I'm a fucking prick, and he accepts me as such. Which makes this whole gesture seem that much more pointless.
I ain't no nice guy afterall.
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