july 18th - springfield

i woke up in eric's bed alone. he was on the floor. i guess i kept rolling on him mostly unclothed and was making him hot so he got in the floor, or something like that. oscar, eric's son, got home right after i woke up, so i put some clothes on and we played with light sabers and video games for a while.

it was a pretty long drive to springfield from wichita. there are no decent highways connecting them, so we kept going through lots of small towns. when we finally got to springfield, we went out to piatt's mom's house to pick him up. he was hanging out with krunchy k.

we had a bit to drink and smoke, eric and james worked out what guitar parts eric might play that night since he'd never played guitar with us before. we'd written down a few notes for each of the songs just to give him an idea of what we were playing. eventually we made our way down to the outland.

we know the bar people there so we started getting free drinks as soon as we got there. we loaded our stuff into the front of the venue near the window where we always do and a girl from some touring band started telling me we needed to move it because they were using that space for their massive merch station. i suggested a booth near the same spot, she was cool with that, we kept loading, then i moved the car around the corner.

while the first band played, i showed the guys who'd never been to springfield before around the square and told them how there used to be lots of venues there and now they were all lofts. we went to the tatoo place where piatt used to hang out a lot to see ron little. turns out some of the guys we knew there were being watched by the FBI on suspicion of selling heroin, so ron had to let them go. he told us a story about one guy shooting up in the basement right before he loaded up his stuff to leave. but it all worked out okay, ron's place is still up and running and the FBI left him alone after he fired the guys they were watching. craziness.

we were supposed to play last, but one of the touring bands (the same one complaining about us loading gear where they wanted their merch) were insisting on playing last. we really didn't give a shit, so we went back to the bar and set up. the bar people gave us ever more free shots because of the mix up.

i handed the camera to krunchy k and showed him how to use it right before we went on. after the show i found out that he left after the second song so we didn't get hardly any video. that kind of sucked because it was one of our best shows ever. by the end of our set, it was super crowded in front of the stage, we played everything perfect. with piatt on drums and eric playing noise guitar, it was really beautiful.

lots of our friends were there, my brother even came up from fayetteville, it was a fun night.

we spent the night at jared's (bartender at the outland) apartment, it was in the same apartment complex that i'd lived in for a few months when i was 18, cherry plaza estates, on the corner of cherry and national.

around five in the morning, piatt jetted, saying something like, "i just gotta get outta here." so he takes off on foot, but somehow ends up back at his mom's house outside of town. he said he went to a waffle house and met a girl that took him out there. eric fell asleep in jared's closet sometime around then. zack and his friend took off for fayeteville around then too. the rest of us were up until the sun was.

after sleeping curled up in a chair for a few hours, i woke up and felt horrible. i threw up a few times, then went outside. it was blazing hot, i was wearing jeans. i threw up some more. i threw up behind the same art supply store i used to throw up behind in college. i was filled with nostalgia.