Overkill

by Men at Work

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat, shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night
From overkill

+++++++++++++

This song had so many good lyrics, I couldn't stop afterthe second stanza.

This is another of those songs I discovered on MTV when I was a teenager. I thought MTV was the next coming of Jesus: music 24 hours a day, interrupted only by people talking about music or selling music-related items on commercials. Ah, the good ol' days.

Often, after a current girlfriend made the transformation into ex-girlfriend, I found myself killing time in any way available. Usually, I took hour-long showers, hoping it would literally wash the time down the drain, go for a bike ride or weight lifting. Sometimes, I rode around the streets of Columbus in my black 1980 Mustang with Mike Smith.

Mike went to grade school at Reynoldsburg until 6th grade, when he moved to Groveport, 10 miles or so from my house. That was 1981. In 1985, he moved back to Reynoldsburg. Almost seamlessly, our friendship picked up where it left off. We were only in one class together, and I spent more time with another of my friends, Scott Davis, working on news stories for our High School TV newsprogram.

By default, Mike hung out with my high school friends. When we hung out, though, we broke off into our own group of two. Eventually, we just split from the main group more often than not.

I remember one night in Groveport, near an old Catholic church playground. Mike pointed me down the gravel road to the abandoned playground. We parked the car and walked along a railroad. The night sky was midnight blue with a full moon hanging overhead. Its faded blue light cast the fields and trees in th same dream-like hues of blue, gray, silver, and black.

Since Mike freshly turned 18 years old, we explored the few things we could do now that we were "adults"- one was a trip to the Lion's Den - an adult bookstore. As soon as we entered, the place gave even me, a person of dubious morality, a case of the heebie jeebies. The place was just downright filthy. I'm guessing it hadn't really been cleaned in as many as five years. Of course, it didn't help that everything was covered in plastic. It was like walking into an old dead grandma's living room the day after her funeral - with bookshelves of naked women doing 101 unimaginable things.

We went down the narrow hallway to the coin-operated movie booths. They were like small stalls with a coin box and a small, stained bench. Each stall was also surrounded in cheap plywood. We went from booth-to-booth, laughing hysterically at the descriptions of the bad movies each booth had to sell.

Mike urged me to watch the movie he was watching. We squeezed into the stall (about the size of a phone booth) and watched about 2 minutes of this horrible porn movie. What was better was our fear of touching ANYTHING in the stall. We balanced ourselves in two separate spots, allowing the overhead projector to show the film while not touching any of the walls or the back of the door, which also acted as the movie screen.

The door was stained, too. I'm sure the place would .glow in neon blue if a black light was brought into that place.

Luckily, we escaped without much more trauma than that. Mike's an attorney in Seattle now and I miss his friendship quite a bit. In fact, I think any of the friendships we encounter from the age of 16-22 are irreplaceable - not only for the friends themselves, but for the wild adventures we take together when we're set loose upon the world.