This Is My First Day And I'm Indian And I Work At A Gas Station

(album: Universal Themes - 2015)

Fell asleep last night listening to a train whistle blowing across the Carquinez Strait
And to the wind blowing through the eucalyptus trees
Watching Paolo Sorrentino's "The Great Beauty"
Fell asleep last night listening to a train
I want to visit my friend because she's in a lot of pain
It was the shingles, then C. diff, now they're saying lupus
She's a single mom with two kids and she don't deserve any of it
I'd like to go out there when I can
But I'm just back from Finland and soon I'm off to Switzerland
For a part in a film, but when I get home
Going to go see my friend and keep her company for a week or so
I feel bad for not going there now
But I got a life out here, I need to hold the fort down
Got hard wood floors buckling up and an old leaky pipe
Thirty yards of fallen fence that I need to put back upright
And I broke a tooth on a bone in some beef stew
I was eating in Belgium and it cracked right down to the root
My gums are bleeding and they're turning blue
And I've got a dentist appointment on Tuesday
Went to a 7/11 and the clerk, his hands were shaking
I said, "are you all right?" and he said, "it's my first day and I'm Indian and I work at a gas station"
I said, "you'll be fine," got my change and as I turned, he said nervously, "yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir"

It's a nice spring day, April 19th
And the flowers are in bloom and I did yard work until my arms turned pink
And my girl broke my laptop while making the bed
She went right to Best Buy and bought another because she felt so bad
Then we went and bought and an old Vic drawer I liked
And went to an open house, it was built 1902, been kept up real nice
Had a nice back porch and the walls were original brick
It was a great old house but I didn't like the way the cars blew past it

Fell asleep last night here in Flims, Switzerland
Reading the John Connolly book "The Wanderer In Unknown Realms"
Book dealer goes missing, the detective sets out to find him
And he ends up on a murder spree, or was it a hallucination?

Fell asleep last night here again in Flims, Switzerland
Said goodnight on a hotel phone to my girlfriend, Caroline
This movie set's doing weird things to my head
I'm not Italian, I'm not Swiss, and I can't act, and I don't exactly fit in

Went to sleep last night, yeah again, here in Flims, Switzerland
And woke up to the sound of Michael Caine's voice, echoing
Down the hall and just like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now"
I was doing pushups and situps and I was going fucking crazy and crawling the walls
Walked down the street and I pet a little kitty cat
She was sweet for a second then she turned into a little fucking brat
Came back and Jane Fonda was in the lobby
And we talked about her father, and she was lost and couldn't find anybody
And we talked about the movie with her and Jon Voight, "Coming Home"
She said she produced it, and that was a fact that I didn't know
And I asked her to dinner and she said, "I'll take a rain check"
If only I had class like Ted Turner or Gregory Peck
And I'm falling asleep again in goddamn Flims, Switzerland
A closed down ski town with one coffee shop and a field of dandelions
And I look at the snow covered Alps and I'm here until June 9th
Got some scenes this week, which is great, because at this point I'm losing my fucking mind

Never mind all the other verses I've written about Switzerland
There's new things going on in my life, like my girlfriend got a new kitten
And a friend of mine gave out my number to some crazy motherfucker
And I got all pissed off and she said, "who do you think you are, Mick fucking Jagger?"
I fell asleep last night in New Orleans
Just back from Switzerland, where like I said, I was going insane
And I went and got oysters on the half shell and some blackened alligator
Then I called my friend in Ohio and I flew up there and I stayed with her
Went back to Europe for a tour and I was watching TV
There were missiles flying back and forth from Gaza to Tel-Aviv
And it concerned me cause I got friends over there
When I talk to them on the phone I can hear it in their voices that they're scared
Some shit went down on tour and I had to let go one of my band guys
And it hurt me so much that for a solid forty-five minutes I cried
Came to my room and he said, "Mark, I really need this job"
I said, "it's tough love my friend, take some time off and we'll make music again one day I promise"
Just back from Europe and it's Labor Day and I went walking
I laid in the sun all day and I called my friend Jude and we got to talking
Jude's the widow of my old friend, Tim
I said, "whatever you do, please, don't ask me about Switzerland"

Then my dad called about someone we love
I put a check in the mail, gotta do what I gotta do when push comes to shove
I hear her voice sometimes and it's an octave higher
Cause she gets weak from the drugs that dehydrate her
It's hard to handle but I just keep keeping busy
Traveling and playing and writing until I'm fucking dizzy
Some people love what I do and some get fucking pissy
But I don't give a fuck, one day they're all gonna miss me

A year ago, I was in a car with a handicapped kid
I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life?" and he sat there blank
And I said, "okay you think about it a minute"
And a few minutes passed and I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life, it's been a minute?"
And he said, "I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna live it"
I'm going to sleep tonight and I can't fall asleep listening to the high pitched foghorns of the Carquinez Strait
They sound like a cacophony of piccolos and flutes, they echo all night
And I just turned forty-eight and I spent seventeen grand on the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight
Going to sleep tonight with a goddamn ear infection
I broke another tooth on a piece of hard bread, and my gums are fucking hurting
And my friend Ben went on a 50k race and he broke his wrist
And he called me up the other day and he asked me to join him as his guitarist
To play with him in San Francisco, February 23rd
And I said, "yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir"

So I played last night with Ben at the Swedish-American hall
And man, I was so nervous that I was gonna hit the wrong guitar chords
But Ben sang beautifully, and everything fell together pretty well
What a nice combination that was: Ben singing, me on guitar, and a great pianist named Zach Rae
Caroline was there, and so was Ben's girlfriend Rachel, they both loved the show
I talked to Bob Mould afterwards
And I told him about how me listening to Candy Apple Grey on a sunny day at an old girlfriend's house made it into some lyrics
And I hoped that someday they'd make it into a song

It was a pretty funny night
Earlier at dinner, I got picked on a little for still having a flip phone
But after the show, some guy walked into the backstage area and was introduced to me as "The Smartest Guy In The World"
They said he was a physicist or something like that
And I pulled out my phone to check the time
He pulled his phone out and pointed out that he had the exact same phone that I did
Everyone was laughing, there were some girls looking at us like our phones were really gross or something
We were all getting pretty tired, Ben and his friends took off
Caroline came back to my apartment, we watched part three of the HBO series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
It's February 24th and I still feel a little high from how good everything felt last night