volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

Guns N’ Roses! And when he’s really, really drunk he’ll sit all
glassy-eyed, after puking onto somebody’s shoes, and cry while
he listens to Tom Waits croak, or that whining sell-out pussy, Van
Morrison.
Yes, Roy loves his music. It’s one of the few things—besides
cooking—he feels he knows something about, and would be
competent discussing with others, were such an occasion ever to
arise.
But that would require social skills.
Until such a time arrives, and he has a social circle outside of
Rick and Mel, Roy is happy to cultivate his musical tastes alone.
Roy doesn’t know much about anything really, and he would
be the first to admit it. But one of the books he read a long time
ago, its cover ripped off and returned to the publisher, so he
found it in the recycle bin behind Beauty and the Beast Books
in the U District, was about something called Zen, and it talked
about flowing like water and the path of least resistance, and he
realized as he read it that he was a charter member of that club.
Because, for Roy, this world of rushing and grabbing, this
world of nose jobs and coffee jitters, this world of producing
things—this world that seems to be all about making money—
this isn’t the real world, the world he inhabits. This isn’t the
world he awakens to every morning, isn’t the world he falls asleep
from every night. This world, the book explained, is the world
of illusion. Oh, it’s real in its own way—it hurts when you smash
your thumb with a hammer—it just isn’t really real. What’s really
real are little things, like the buzz a ladybug makes when she flies
away home, or the number of times you can use a razor blade.
Or ants crawling over the tip of your shoe.
Or music.
Roy loves his music. It is the sustainer of his soul.
Not that he would ever put it that way.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY