Looking to Settle Down

Looking to Settle Down - 26 (Seoul)
Date: 2010-06-07, 2:10AM KST

I guess there comes a time that a man must walk away from the crowds and the cheers and fade into a life of normalcy. I guess that if you cheat death enough times, eventually he’ll come and claim what’s his if you keep giving him the opportunity.

These last thirty years I’ve been in the stunt business. You name it, I can jump it. School buses, forklifts, cement trucks – I’ve spent three decades putting asses in the seats of fairgrounds and convention centers all over this great nation. And now, it’s time to quit. Time to make my last jump - this time without risk of a shattered coccyx – the jump into retirement and a good woman to see me through it.

I’d describe myself more but, to be honest, I don’t remember much of the last decade, what with all the concussions. I was also using speed pretty heavily, so between picking up lot lizards at the Loaf N’ Jug and waking up in the county lock-up, I’ve got a few holes in the official record. Sometimes I’d wake up in a Motel Six next to a girl in cowboy boots and I had no idea how she got there, I just knew from the rash on my belly we’d been up banging all night. A few times I even looked under the covers and saw that she was packing something downstairs, and wondered just who had been banging who. Point is, I was a little wild in my formative years… and my adulthood… and most of middle age.

But, those days are behind me. First of all, I’m not much in performing shape anymore. I’ve got a rod in my spine, another where my tibia used to be, two plates in my head, and a set of false choppers to replace all them teeth I’ve had knocked out. The doctor says that if I take even one more blow to the head I’ll probably lapse into a coma, though I’ve been in two already and let me tell you they’re a walk in the park – just make sure you have the venue buy you a temporary insurance policy so you’re waking up to a new houseboat in Boca Raton and not eight back alimony payments for your bitch of an ex-wife. Also, I feel I just don’t got stunt-work in me anymore. I’m tired of the constant skin-grafts and micro-fracture surgery – though on the bright side I’m pretty much guaranteed a constant supply of primo pharmaceuticals while I’m learning to walk again.

I want to settle down. Normal house, normal job, normal life. Work on the weekdays, dinner at Stuckey’s on Saturday, mowing the lawn on Sunday – that kind of thing. Maybe I could get one of those new riding mowers they got. What are those thing, 60cc? Hell, I bet with a little tuning, maybe a diesel engine, we could get one of those things up to 180cc, easy. Maybe feed a little nitrous oxide into the fuel line and I could mow every damn lawn in the neighborhood in under an hour, and loud enough to wake up everybody in a five mile radius. I’d stake my life that if you put a ramp up you could easily clear a horse trailer with one of them suckers. Yeah. Yeah. That would be the life.


* Location: Seoul
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