Article: 288588 of talk.bizarre
From: scroungr@satanic.org (Scavenger)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Reflections
Date: 1 Dec 1996 13:30:06 GMT
Organization: Satanic SysAdmins, Inc.
Lines: 62
Message-ID: <57s18u$17r@nuhou.aloha.net>


The CD player quietly spins up again.  Arnold Layne does it again, like
he's done so many times before.

	"It is not how it used to be" rings like a mantra through the mind
of the figure sprawled on the messy waterbed.  "It is not how it used to
be..."

	It used to be my roomie's 6-pack changer, loaded with five discs,
and I was loaded on pot, beer, and mescaline.  Don the headphones, set for
'shuffle' play, and get out the blank butcher paper.

	When the oil pastels blurred into a great smear across the paper
and much of the surrounding carpet, when the CD player finally shut up, and
sunshine smuggled itself past the balcony I knew I was done.  And had
better wash my ass before the 8am crit.

	It used to be cheap beer and cheaper rent and roaches to make my
conquests into group sex, unstable lofts and downright wacko friends.  It
was VW buses, gingko trees, videotape and masturbation.  It was
rollerblades and 2x4's and staggering into Physics armed with a copy of
Dostoyevsky.  What exam?

	It is not how it used to be.

	Arnold Layne spins down, and the carousel picks another one -
Beethoven.

	"It is not how it used to be" dreams the man lying across four
pillows, blanket forgotten upon the floor.  The waterbed is warm, the
computer gently purring to itself on a cluttered desk.

	It was two AT's, lovely old bricks of 286 based machines, obsolete
even for this antique time.  It was careful telephone conversations with
Targa installers who really didn't do 'Will Call', but could be delicately
conned into it.  

	It was being so swamped in computers that my room was picked as a
scene for a sci-fi thriller student movie, where the protagonist
unexpectedly gets an errant cc: from the President with a launch order
therein.  After moments of flurrying around a college campus lightly edited
to appear as a bunker, he died, as did the rest of us.

	It was a Western, where the hero bursts into the saloon to discover
it's a facade, and the only things in it are the musicians providing the
silly twangy music and an inexplicable horse, all sitting or standing amid
sagebrush.  It was the Home Shopping Network, where the grips were amused
and the object a person for sale...

	Beethoven spins down, and the carousel rotates thoughtfully.

	It was Wendy, it was Desiree, it was Jennifer, Eve, and Christy.
It was Beth and Ginny and Jen and Melody, Susan and Susan and Christine and
Chanelle.  It was Megan, Nicki, Nicole, Dilgie, Dana, Pam, and Cricket...

	Nonsense.  It was me.

	The carousel comes up empty, and the sun's snuck onto the patio.

Am I done?