Slipped and cut my hand
Remembering my song lyrics and where they came from
I felt my finger jam as I slipped and cut my hand.
I was lying on the little bottom bunk bed in my dorm room with my girlfriend. It had to be very late morning.
The sun lit up the room, blazing in from the residence courtyard outside. I could hear the university sounds bouncing around the cement walls.
I looked up at the wire mesh of the top bunk bed, holding the mattress where a passed out pal lied, snoozing off the previous night’s festivities.
To see if he was alive, I pushed up on the bed frame with the palm of my hand.
I jammed my index finger and sliced the skin on a piece of wire.
The blood started running down my wrist.
**********
As we shut the room down and Security doesn’t mind. And the Masons sit there, they just want a Sniff and Cry.
The Masons weren’t actual workers of stone in a secret guild.
They were just our pals who liked to drink out of mason jars.
One of their favourite drinks was a ‘Sniff and Cry’, invented by our pal Tom. I don’t remember the kind of booze, but I do remember he always lit it on fire. The idea was to blow out the flaming shot glass and take a huge sniff before downing the mystery drink.
Wincing, cursing and tears usually followed.
Tom and I were bartenders at the Faculty Club on Loyola Campus at Concordia University. It was a large rustic room with giant windows looking down from the 3rd floor of the main building, out onto Sherbrooke St.
Ironically, it was once the head priest’s bedroom when Loyola was a religious school for boys. I often thought I’d love to meet the comedian who decided to turn a priest’s bedroom into a bar for school teachers.
In those days there were usually just one or two security guards for the entire campus. They sometimes popped up unannounced to check on us and even called up to the bar if we were running late after last call. When we locked the Faculty Club for the night around 10pm, we would take the cash box and keys down to their booth on the 2nd floor.
The bored guards treated the cash box handoff like it was their only responsibility.
In the evenings, if the bar was free of responsible adults (aka Faculty), we’d sometimes phone our student friends and invite them to sneak in for a few drinks before we shut the bar down.
On the house, of course.
These get togethers often pushed our 10pm curfew. And the word of free drinks started to get out there.
Knowing Security would be looking for the cash box, I had the idea to invite the guards to join the mini-parties and have drinks with us. Which they did.
On the house, of course.
**********
And I wish I knew where oh where oh where it’s going. And where it went.
One of my fave lines in the song. A moment of reflection that seems to hang there every time I sing it.
None of us really know where its all going.
Or where it went.
Do we?
***************
“Cut My Hand” is a song I wrote that first appeared on The Stand GT’s legendary cassette, “Blur Your Cool”.
You can find it here on Bandcamp or here on Spotify.
I’d love it if you followed me on both platforms.