A Princess

Crazy sick. Once a decade sick. Hallucinations, lesser-evils choice sick. The first time in memory going-home-early sick. A day, maybe two, passing without memory sick.

Abandoning concentration, surfing the net. Political bantering (my old and very dear friend is hopeless) while Rhapsody streams music. Half listening...Ukraine is invaded by guys in green - no magazines in their guns? The Great Lakes are frozen solid. Maybe another cracker, some more Coke. Okay, that hurts.

Like a...what?

Sammy Johns was born in North Carolina, and lived most of his life there. He wrote a song - a fantasy, of sorts - about a Chevy van, a female hitchhiker and a one-night stand. Released in 1975, it sold 3.5 million copies. The sexual revolution was in full swing, love was free and every guy could envision the moment when a beautiful woman might.... That's why it sold 3.5 million copies.

"Like a princess she was laying there,
moonlight dancing off her hair.
She reached up and took me by the hand,
we made love in my Chevy Van,
and that's alright with me."

I was barely out of high school when the song was popular.

Huh. The years have not been kind. Sammy died at 66, having blown all the money on drugs and failed marriages. I don't envision the princess anymore - I've worked "The 'Fax" on bike patrol for too long. She has STDs, is drug-dependent and alone, barefoot because she'd fled her latest "job" with only her life to show for it.

The virus will run it's course. Right?