I'm shifting over, I realize that. It all started in 1952 when I got in a fight at school. I started to shift all over, once falling out a second floor window, when a shift became too much and caused me to go berserk. I can't go into detail about that now or about the fight because the details are dark in my mind.
I woke up and found myself in a sleazy bar. I had shifted over, I knew I had shifted over. There were cans of Budweiser all around me.
"Bartender can I get another?"
"Mister, I don't know, you been passed out for almost four hours." He tossed me one and I popped the top. "Randell, that's my name."
I was living in Missouri at the time, I know what you're thinking, why on Earth would anybody want to live there?
I mean really what goes on in Missouri anyways? We don't have nightlife, they don't have a carnival, and we sure as hell don't have any decent Bridges to jump off of it.
That's what I was, the bridge jumper. I know it's wrong thinking, but I'm not, I'm not suicidal.
I eat two burgers at lunchtime and two burgers in the evening, with cheese I should have add. I really don't know what I'm talking about anymore, except, this place, this bar that I'm at right now called the Sweet Lavender, it's uptown, but it's not a place that you would want to go to.
He takes out and looks at a picture of himself before he left Milwaukee.
That's me. That's a twenty seven-year-old boy in a man's body. Randall Jgieves is my name, oh yeah, did I mention that I got in the fight last night? Oh, I did, with this big drunk trucker guy.
It was over a woman, it's funny how these things are always over a woman there was a kitchen in the bar and his woman I guess was burning something, turns out she was burning her buns that she was cooking in the oven. No, literally, she put hamburger buns in the oven. Then she went out to smoke and she forgot the buns were in there. Man they were so burnt to a crisp, charred. The whole place was smoking and it set the fire alarms off. I later found out that her name was Rosie Dayys and I said it was her fault, that's what initiated the fight in the first place Rosie Dayys screwed everything up.
Boyfriend had gotten mad and pushed me so that's when I got heated up and hauled off and decked him one. after all it was my order that she had messed up.
I will never forget the look on Gilbert's face, that day in this small-town trucker Missouri, 1981. "Son, you got a bloody nose," he said, "we got a bathroom in the back, go on and clean yourself up."
That bastard gave me a bloody nose, I thought, whatever his name was, I think he said he called himself ruthless Mike.
It was really bad by this time, at 11:15 in the morning; when I went to wash up, I went to the bathroom, but the bathroom door was locked. The only option was to use the ladies room. Once inside I could see that the sink was this ugly green olive color, and it smelled so gross. I mean the whole place just smelled rank. I heard some moaning coming from one of the toilets so I opened the matching olive colored door to check and see what it was and to my surprise there was a lady in there urinating.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Oh, sorry, nevermind me, I thought." Before I could finish she looked at me with wonder and said, "you thought what...?"
I got out of there fast, blood dripping. I don't know what was worse the blood dripping all over the bathroom floor or the smell of the urine. That ammonia smell, the only kind of smell that smells like that when you have a urinary tract infection.
I found out later that her real name was Faye Dryer. After things finally got cleaned up I told her about what happened to my nose and what happened to me the night before. She turned in laughed at me.
It was interesting how we had met, but it turns out that she was a bridge jumper too, like me.
You might be wondering what is a bridge jumper.? That's how we gifted people shift over, when everything goes right, that is. It's kinda hard to explain these things to you now when the bartender is having such a fit over all the blood.
Don't worry, ruthless Mike left some time ago, thank God. I helped Faye and the tender clean all the mess up.
A short time later Faye went over to the Jukebox. "You might know what this one is," she said to me standing there in her purple leggings with a tight lavender blouse on. I know, what a coincidence, that was the name of that bar. Maybe it was meant to be. Don't ask me how, but I did know the name of the song. "That's Mirror in the Bathroom by the Beat," I said to her.
"Very good, ugh?"
"Randell."
"Very good Randell?"
We had to leave before the song and ended. The bartender had thought it would be a good idea if we just left, so that's when we did.
We didn't know where we were going, but we headed out the door together.
