It's 3:32 a.m. and instead of sleeping, which I would love to have been doing, I'm watching Piers Morgan on CNN interviewing Charlie Sheen's ex-wife, who I'm looking at but can't remember her name. I'm in so much pain right now, that I'll have to come back and try and make some sense out the words I'm typing later. I woke up about 2 a.m. and took some morphine, along with a 10mg. Percocet. Mr. Pain is standing there laughing at me. Funny guy, that Mr.Pain.

When I first came to OS, I wrote a stupid little story that I called, "Mr. Pain, My Buddy, My Pal". I told of how we came to meet, how he and I were deadly enemies for years but had finally come to a kind of Mexican stand-off, if that's not too un-PC to say. For years I've taken enough drugs to keep this bastard under control, but he's trying to pull a fast one on me and is getting immune from some very big-time drugs. "Who the hell does he think he is"?

At the end of the story, which  I may re-post one day, I kidded around with Mr. Pain. I told him that I knew one sure way to get rid of him, and he didn't understand, at first. He isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Anyway, at the end of the story, it sinks into Mr. Pain's head and he finally realizes how I can get rid of him. Well, he better get his shit together because I am getting so tried of this. So tired!

Yesterday, and please, please don't think I'm whining, I couldn't get out of bed. I tell you this not for sympathy, because this is is not the first or last time it will happen. I tell you this to show how far my disability has gone and is going. I literally could not get out of bed. I grabbed a few pain pills and had to lay there 45 minutes before my joints would bend. The worse, ever! If you've read me for any amount of time, you know I try and find humor in everything, nothing is out of bounds. I can't for the life of me find anything funny today.

I have left Mr. Pain alone for awhile. I've tried to keep him locked away, at least from you, my friends and readers, and tried working on things that bore Mr. Pain, in the hopes he would leave this body and take the next plane smokin' away from me and my family. But not him, he has latched himself upon me like the fucking bloodsucker he is and even when you burn him off, the bastard comes back twice as strong and twice the smart-ass. Like I say, I am very tired.

So, my friends, I'm taking a little break. It was about a year ago that a good friend of mine and a lot of of others on Open Salon passed away. The Placebostudman! For the ones who knew him, this is not only a sad time but a glad time, because he was a character and characters are getting fewer and farther between these days. To those who did not have the pleasure, you missed out on meeting a guy who was as smart as anyone I've very met, as funny as anyone I've ever met and just as loyal as anyone I've ever met. I wrote a eulogy for him that some liked, and for that I'm proud. 

If you didn't know him, he was born with a disease that kept him in pain and in a wheelchair his entire life. Yet he finished college, traveled the world and even rode the wild river rapids, along with many, many other things. In the short time we were together, we became close, close friends and when I heard he died, when we OSer's heard he died, it was the biggest shock to hit this site since I've been here. 

I have to explain something I wrote in the eulogy. The Placebostudman, or the Studman to everyone he knew, Ryan Hall if I have to type it, was writing a book. It started off with a dog running out of a building and into an ally, with a set of false teeth in his mouth. I laughed my ass off at the picture of a dog running with false teeth, and asked him why they where there. He said I would find out more when I read of the book. He died before I could find out, unfortunately, and I refer to it in the eulogy. After the eulogy, I'm taking some time off. Maybe a few days, a week, a month, I just don't know, but I do know I love you all and thank you all for everything you have done for me. I will be back~                                             

                                          Stud's Last Dance

 He sat in the last seat of the last train, straining his neck around as if he were looking for someone. He has been traveling in these steel wheels forever, and he was tired. He was tired of the pain that he endured every minute, of everyday, of every week, of every month, of every year he had ever known.

It was time to leave it all behind and travel to where we all go when our last train is leaving town. He had no regrets. He had accomplished more with his pain-riddled broken down body than most people with all their smarts and parts had ever done, and he had done it with legs that would not listen when told to move. With a body that did not listen when he was tired and needing sleep, but instead lay in agonizing pain.

He had traveled the world. Graduated from college. He had even ridden the rapids of a raging river. All with a body that said no, but with a mind that would not take no for an answer. While others cried and blamed Gods, he laughed and blamed no one. Life is a crap shoot and just because you are born, it does not mean that you are perfect. You take your disabilities and make them into a liability. 

He said what was on his mind. Just because you are only four ft. tall does not mean you have to live in fear and weakness and hide behind your disability. He knew his mind was as big as the next person and in reality, bigger than most. In a society that looks down on the disabled, not just in body but idea, he stood as tall as anyone.

If you were a racist, you would do better to go somewhere else and peddle your hypocrisy. A warmonger? No, you had no friend here, he was a man of peace that believed you could find a consensus far easier than an undertaker. If you were religious, that was fine but keep it to yourself would you, he had serious things to write about. Like a pool-shooting private-eye in a wheelchair who just happened to be gay.

Gay you say? Why that's an insult to the very fabric of this society. If my tax dollars are going to be spent, spend them on bombs and bullets to protect this Nation Under God. Not on a broken-down cripple who has the gall to call himself queer. Buy more drones that kill without discrimination instead of investing money to cure a disease that would help a man with the morals of a fagot. How dare you?

He looked around one more time, as the train sounded its last warning of departure, as if looking for someone or something that he had forgotten. He must be getting forgetful, for he could not think of anything that would or should stop him from leaving this final destination. As the train slowly left the station, he started dozing off. He would dream of funny names and funny pictures that made him smile, and as the Salon that had been Open was preparing to mourn, he slipped into the oblivion of the unknown.

He suddenly came to! He remembered, yes, he knew what he had forgotten, but dammit, it was too late. He had promised a certain friend that before he left, he would tell him why a mangy dog was running down a dirty alley with a pair of men's false teeth in his mouth, smiling from ear to ear!  He smiled, closed his eyes and thought, the hell with it, let him wonder!

    Rest in Peace my friend and may happiness find you all                    

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