Riding Shotgun

Ethan Hunt.

I’d always believed the CIA was in my destiny when I was younger.  Rip your esophagus out from a hand shake as you just let go of my hand with your body still catching up to your ultimate fate.  I was fast when I was younger, so it had to be a trait that the government found useful, right?

I could disappear into the night.  Completely naked of identities and bleed into nothingness.  That had to be a good quality for the CIA.

I could figure out a city grid within five minutes.  Every alley, every street. Every spot.  My body felt like a compass.  That would serve well in tactical procedures and evading potential threats.

I ate goulash.  Took Russian in college.

And it all was supposed to begin in Budapest.  The island of Magyars trapped landlocked.  I’d swim up from the Danube like a crocodile, just seep into the alleyways and naturally morph into the guy you couldn’t recognize.  That gypsy child that came from the blood of the Mongols through the Ottomans.  My eyes would be slanted, but under bushy eyebrows. Gypsy. Dark eyeliner. Wearing a Bauhaus shirt. Walking through the Bauhaus streets.  I feel for Hungary right now.

They are going through some bullshit politically again — but maybe that’s what fuels such a wonderful underground.  I hear that the food scene is starting to really evolve even further now, and the underground has always been a bastion of gnarly fun that I only dream to experience one day.

I don’t drink that much anymore.  My ass is too old to be waking up with black eyes and bloody knuckles on a couch where the alarm clock is a dude pissing in the dishwasher, discombobulated.  Been there, done that. Ha.

But I drink for flavor now.  Not so much to forget and disappear.  But if you are drinking to forget and disappear still, I got nothing but love for ya. I live vicariously through you.  I’ve been loving the Tokaji wines for a minute.  I like my wines sweet and that Royal Tokaji is the fucking shit.

I’m starting to ramble…

I never made it to Budapest.  Never became a spy.  I still figure out cities in five minutes, but that became useful to slang tacos and not boomerangs.

I did get into the CIA, though.

Only it was the wrong one.