Listen, I hate to say it but... I don't remember you.

"C'mon dude! We were here last time you were here and we took you downtown and we got thrown out of that tittie bar.." I don't remember. "We bought you like 9 shots, dude! You don't remember??? No kidding. I don't remember quite a bit. I've forgotten names of close friends at the crucial moment of introducing them to someone else I've forgotten and had to fake shitting my pants to get out of the situation.

It's very scary and somewhat emabarrassing. I've seen "Memento" twice without knowing how it ends. Scary.

15 years of different faces every night. Drinks and jokes and some drugs on the side careening into morning radio. Have I done this show before? Have I done it a lot? I'd ask the club manager but I don't remember if he was here last time I was here.

Beauty Destroyed

Add into this the internet and there's way too many fucking people and now they don't even have names. "You know me. I'm 'Caligulas_knothole313' from the message board." Ok, then. And now I'm on MySpace endlessly looking at people. Why the fuck am I looking at people I don't know? I don't remember the ones I already know and like. Granted not many of them are goth chicks with latex skirts and their hands over their nipples but I'm 160 years old in MySpace years and the angry, bi-trendy S&M chicks aren't looking to watch Monday Night Football with me in Bisbee, AZ. "Keep an eye on my beer, Malice, I gotta take a shit and call my bookie."

I just called a guy to apologize for not getting back to him about a newspaper interview.

"We did the interview. It's already out."

These lapses in memory become extremely difficult in domestic conflicts, as chicks will always spin what you've said to fit their stupid argument. And if you don't remember what you said, you can't tell how they are misrepresenting it.

That's why it's important to write more, talk less and take a lot of pictures. Especially when drinking. The day-after creeper memories come in waves. You wake up and you remember you were at that one bar next door where you could smoke. A little bit later after coffee in the Super 8 lobby you remember who drove you home and make mental note in invisible ink to thank them. Early afternoon the vague recollection of some phone calls drifts through your head and you check your cell phone for the last ten calls.

You apologize when appropriate.

And you think its all come back to you when you walk into the club and you see that one face - a waiter, a local comic, whoever - that brings the rest of it crashing back like a nose-punch. You were squatting on the bar, egg-bagging some girls vodka drink while she was in the toilet because she didn't laugh when you made fun of her miscarriage. Somehow this memory has escaped you all day long and the instant recall makes you jump like a nightmare in an afternoon nap.

So please keep in mind that I might not remember you and it's no reflection on how much I like you or how much fun we had. Its only that I have overloaded my pickled brain with too many faces and ridiculous stories that only so many can live at one time.

If I see you and don't immediately high-five you, if I avert eye contact and hustle to the green room its not because I'm "all Hollywood and shit". It may be because you do in fact look familiar and I can't immediately tell if you were with the girl who's drink I tainted with my hangy scrote-sock.