Don't ask me why, is what I would suggest, since most likely I don't know a good fiddler's damn, but sometimes, from out of no place whatsoever, a fella finds himself thinking back and so on, finds himself musing on some sordid shit from out the past.

Sometimes the slightest thing sends a fella reeling round the flashbacks and the like. If it were a feature picture, then what would probably occur is a five-dollar bill or something would land at somebody's shoes, and they'd pick it up and then spend two and a quarter hours talking about Lil' Jimmy, and they time they were down the ol' fishin' hole and came upon just such a note, and the hilarious and poignant episodes that followed.

If these escapades occurred between 1959-1973, you can be sure Creedence Clearwater Revival will be hollering along the way. Look the fuck out, is what The Duke would advise, here comes Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane.

Ain't no Beatles gonna be showing up though, most likely.

Anyhow, I don't know what inspired this here bout of reminiscing. Certainly it wasn't a five-dollar bill, since I believe I'd be too busy spending it for to think much about anything. But whatever it was, it occurred earlier this very eve, and what it has to do with is the Dueling Jesuses.

I came to know The Dueling Jesuses a couple years back, when, through every fault of my own, I wound up smoking the day away in no more exotic an environment than a psychiatric ward.

Now let's clear this shit up, first off;

I wasn't demented, far as I know, that came much later. I wasn't climbing the walls and hollering about Nazis. I didn't even have a beard, for God's sakes.

What occurs more often than you probably would think, is that folks wind up doing shit they shouldn't be doing. Maybe it's listening to Paula Abdul, maybe it's snorting the brown from the wings of a hooker's pigeon. Whatever it is, if folks keep doing that shit for long enough, what's gonna happen is they're gonna have to quit doing it, otherwise you find yourself humming Straight Up at the bus-stop, or clambering across dance-floors in pursuit of friends who don't exist.

What occurred was that The Duke had drank himself insane, and at quite a young age, too. Believe it or not, man, not all alcoholics are sitting outside pubs with their trousers at their knees begging for the price of a cigarette. Not all of them are poking through their puke for traces of carrot or potato or anything more nutritional than gravel.

Some folks are still at school at the time. How could they lose their wife, they think, I've never even had a wank?

Whatever, I was just coming 20 at the time, far as I recall, and what happened was The Duke's skull was swimming in its own piss, and so doctors and the like needed to poke around in there, see if they can't drain it a tad.