D R I V I N G T O K A N S A S

June 1 

Strange things can happen on the road -- misunderstandings, slights, imagined slights, rumors out of proportion. I got a call from my manager yesterday. It seems the internet is carrying a story that Love/Hate is off the DIO tour because I am a drug addict and I can't leave California because I failed my urine test. 

Think of it; failed urine. My piss cannot pass muster with the powers that be. I think if I were to take a urine test today, the results would be:  

80% beer 
10% whopper 
10% beer 

I'm writing from the road in Kansas so it would seem this rumor is false.  

My whole career has been plagued with rumors of my supposed drug addiction.  Heroin, coke, you name it. Goof balls. I wish I were on goof balls; it would make the drive easier. Come to think of it, I am on drugs. All drugs: coffee, donuts, taco bell, alcohol, second-hand smoke, cheap perfume, all these things affect my state of mind. 

Things seem much more intense on the road. Emotions, tempers, sex. My tai chi  session yesterday was like a fucking religious experience. It's so much fun to live in the day, now knowing where I am or even what time it is. There are no big plans in the wind. Only the next show, the next free meal, the next beer. How trivial it all seems when you think most people are really working. Car payments, baby payments, toilet paper payments. I don't require these necessities. All my butt-hyphen wipe is provided for. And what I don't use, I throw away. 

Three days ago there was a rumor that I was trying to make a move, so to speak, on  DIO's bass player's wife. We were staying at their hotel and they were leaving on the bus and it only seemed logical that I would try to fuck her. After all, I am a drug addict. This little rumor almost did get us kicked off the tour. The bass player had his roadie wake me up and search my room, Gestapo style, but to no avail. She was secretly hiding in one of the air ducts. Her and Jimmy Hoffa and Salman Rushdie. And the cast of Who's The Boss. And the supreme chrome-plated dildo that use to fuck the world.  

Well, the bass player and I patched it up. Just another stupid rumor in the wind. Just another slice of the guillotine on my balls. Now rubbed pathetically raw. Here I am in Kansas, home of the cows and endless miles of grassland. The land is flat and so are some of the people. Truck-stop, clerks with years of depression etched on their faces, circles and bags within bags. How they must feel, day after day, serving the same stale hot dogs and jerky, their prison sentence occasionally broken up by a visit from the pierced mohawk-boy. Pot-bellied humpty dumpty truck drivers stare at me; I don't blame them. I stare at them shovel buckets of plankton down their gullets. Midwestern mothers clutch their children to their  breast as I walk by. I want to say, "Don't fear me. I'm neither a pedophile or a serial killer. I'm just as asshole in search of a Chipwich and a piss. And maybe a good blow job." 

I really don't get laid on the road like I used to. The reason is that I don't really try like I used to. I'm like the fisherman with his line in the water who doesn't give a shit if he ever catches a fish. I want the sex, but the thrill of the chase bores me. The idea of waking up with a complete stranger freaks me out. Even if she was a stone goddess, what do I say? Thanks for the fuck? How cheesy. "Quest for fire" seems more human than this faceless coupling of tab A to slot B. Of course, if I was drunk, I'd have a different perspective. But right now, I'm driving to Kansas and this is how I feel.