This hippie dude was holding my sweaty head in his hands and staring so hard into my eyes it felt like he was reading a grocery list off my retinas. Plus, I had literally JUST finished playing a show-well, in this instance a livestream performance with a limited in-person audience; which counts as a show here in Our Pandemic Year and I don’t know about you, but I’m usually pretty mentally fuzzy for a minutes after playing a loud, sweaty rock and roll show, so this serious guy’s serious comment seemed like a scream from beneath ice.
I tried to center my brain.
“Wait...what???” I stammered, hopefully politely.
He let go and stared at me with the kind of ferocious earnestness that only a genuine hippie can muster and repeated himself.
“YOU’RE GOING TO DIE SOON.”
I felt weird and violated a bit and thought that that was a weird fucken thing to say to someone, but people say weird shit to me all the time so I just tried to brush him off and turned to put away my guitar. I looked at our bass player Roberto who is, generally speaking, one of the more stoic dudes I’ve ever known and the single raised eyebrow was also a bit alarming as he took this all in.
“Jeez, dude, alright...thanks...” I said and tried to turn my back to him but he parried my flanking move.
“No, man, it’s cool-I’ve just never met one like you.” He said, unreassuringly, studying me as I tried to maneuver the stage area to put away my gear like I was the last condor on Earth or something. Apparently sensing my trepidation, he tried to make me feel better by saying, “You ARE gonna die soon, but don’t worry. We all are.”
Rob’s eyes widened a bit.
This obviously didn’t make either one of us feel better. Plus, this guy wasn’t some half-stepping mall hippie who lives in his mom’s basement-this guy was a for-real hippie who’s whole house (even the kitchen!) smelled like patchouli and he owned several of those metal bowl things that you rub with those metal pins to make ringing bell music and he definitely looked like the kind of dude who would know how to play them. Having someone of his apparent metaphysical credentials tell you that your time on this mortal coil is drawing neigh carries a certain amount of weight, ya know???
Shit, I thought to myself, this hippie guy is a major bummer, I need to split before he starts reading my auras or trying to do phrenology on me.
As I drove home, the weight of what this guy had said started really sinking in. Every passing car was only a lazy, mirrorless lane change from running me off the road, each semi truck I drove near could barely be more than a loose lug nut away from squashing me like a bug. I’m admittedly, a little hypochondriackey anyway, so telling someone like me something like that is like giving a pyromaniac an unlimited gas card. Obviously, I got home that night without fulfilling the hippie prophecy but it’s not like the story ends there...
PART TWO...???
Some time passes but I’m able for the most part, to shove my lingering unease with the hippiepunk guru’s prognosis for me to the rear of my mind. Which is no easy task, believe me. Not only do us hypochondriacs have to live through this pandemic and pretend it’s all fine and that we’re not completely mortified about every single thing every single day, NOW this dude is giving me a timeline??? Lame.
But, like I said, some time passes and one afternoon I find myself in Chinatown. I am in a mask, and it’s chilly so I gave a hat and jacket on, plus I’m wearing sunglasses. I’m not intentionally in disguise, but this would do nicely. I’m standing in front of a Chinese grocery store, amidst many Chinese people, when I SWEAR I hear someone call my name. My wife is in the store and it was a male voice and i don’t know anyone in this neighborhood, it was probably just the wind or something but I scan down the street in the general direction anyway. In the crowd walking towards me on the sidewalk is a well-dressed, elderly Chinese man and his eyes are locked on me, as if he’d been looking for me as he walked down the street. I saw him from about half a block away and we stared at each other as he walked right up to me and stopped.
“You speak excellent English, correct?” The man said to me, in excellent English.
Why was he asking me this? How did he know I wasn’t Chinese? I’m completely covered, I could be anybody. I didn’t want to say too much until I had a feel on where this was going.
“Ok, I guess.” I stammered.
He grunted approvingly.
“I’ll see you soon, then.” He said with a clipping finality and turned on his heel and marched away with purpose.
I stood there and watched him until he was out of sight, just to be sure.
EPILOGUE...???????
I wasn’t sure if I was going to write these, how or why I would tell these two perhaps unconnected stories that have weighed heavily on my mind lately.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still nervous about this (and a few other more minor incidents that seemed to portend ill towards my mortality) but what can ya do?
I asked Sack, my buddy who’s also friends with the hippie guy if he could find out what that was all about and so he did and said that the hippie guy just wanted to “warn” me and THAT certainly didn’t make me feel any better. I was hoping he would say that he hippie dude was sorry and that he had gotten me confused with someone else and that my aura looked great and not to worry about anything.
But he didn’t, so c’est la vie, I guess.
Either way, I did quit smoking and that should make me feel better but it doesn’t. I mean, why quit smoking if I’m about to drop dead anyway, right? But I did it anyway. 52 days today and I don’t feel any better. Fantastic.
Ugh.
Listen.
If I do drop dead suddenly somewhere please know this: know that I had an incredible run, that I lived a FAR better life than a schmuck like me deserved, I was incredibly blessed with a wife I adore and a great family whom I love and got to watch expand, that I had amazing friends whom I was lucky enough to have countless mad adventures with, and that I wouldn’t trade a second of any of it for anything.
And that that south side hippie guy with the bell bowls might know more than he’s letting on.
