I hadn't intended to purchase a gun. Not a wise item to have in the house when you're a drunk and your girlfriend has a fragile mind.



But since I was going to be moving out of the house and into the trailer for a 30 day detox, rehab, renovation, reinvigoration & reboot, I figured the gun wouldn't technically be in the house or around Bingo and, of course, since I will be sober.....



Also, the trailer I'm staying in is off the main property and a lot of creepy shit roams around outside the fence at night. Packs of coyotes and javelina - wild tusked pigs - not to mention random joggers and neighbors returning from work, etc. Everything is terrifying when you're sober. Maybe best to be safe.



I put the gun in the drawer right by my head where I'd be sleeping, along with a couple of books, 6 notepads, reading glasses and my eye-mask. And then I forgot about it.



Forgetting everything on a minute to minute basis - complete inability to focus - is the most prominent side-effect of quitting smoking and being sober. That's why I feel the need to isolate myself in places where I can be an ambling fool pacing back and forth trying to figure out what the fuck I was about to do without people staring at me.



This is not the first time I've done this. In fact, it seems like its becoming an annual event that is quite necessary after Super Bowl, when the year of touring has drifted into holidays then without pause into playoffs and then into you unable to differentiate one year from the other.



But each year I get better at the rehab. Main rule, don't be anywhere cigarettes are. If you don't have cigarettes, you can't smoke. Simple. Next rule is almost as important, stay away from people who you need to drink to be around, which, for me, is absolutely everyone. Because once I get drunk enough to be social, I no longer care about not smoking.



So tell everyone you are going to rehab, crawl into a trailer parked on a weeded slab and see what its gonna take to keep your shit from warping. So far I've played tennis, hiked, flossed, made lists, consolidated lists and made spin-off lists from those, bought shit online, bought shit in town, walked the dogs, sat in the sun, sat in a sauna, read the USAToday (which is hard to find in town and feels like a stupid man's treat,) and gone through years of backed up emails.



I am writing this on Day 4 and I have not smashed any inanimate object to splinters and I have not smoked. I have also barely slept. Less each night than the night before. I write this on a broken three hours, broken by the need to reach for my gun.



There's not a lot to do at night in the trailer except read or write. I'd jumped from The Economist to a second-hand copy of some Dalai Lama tripe with none of it catching so I just went back to sorting emails. By 4:15 am I tried to force myself to sleep. I was in and out of hideous and fantastic dreams but aware enough of my surroundings enough to bolt up when I heard what was unmistakably someone fiddling with the door handle. Not aggressively but like they knew someone was sleeping in there and didn't want to wake them. It is otherwise silent in a 6x12 foot metal tuna can trailer. My head did a quick lap trying to find a reason this was something other than fucked up and it failed.



I reached for the drawer with the gun and the drawer - like every drawer in the shitbox - jammed. So I started banging the drawer around loudly to either scare whoever is outside off or, should it be someone I know, get them to say something.



It did the opposite.



Everything went silent.



No more door handle but no sounds of anyone walking away.



It was a horror movie moment. I got the drawer open and, laying on my side in bed, leveled the gun at the door. I felt as stupid as I did scared. No matter how fearsome a 9mm looks, looks don't help in the dark. Realizing this, I slid the cocking slide back and forward just to broadcast that "Clack-clack!" which had sounded threatening when I first took it out of the package but now that I'd loaded the handle, it just sounded like a maraca.



And then I heard her voice before the door - which must not have been closed completely - opened. It was the same muted, reticent mew she's had since she was a kitten.



I'm sprawled laying half out of the bed like a retarded action hero with my $14.96 Walmart Powerline 340 BB Repeater 9mm look-alike bearing down on the bouncy countenance of my favorite pet Trousers. Evidently she figured out where I was staying since I haven't been at home. Seems she followed one of my many pungent scents, pulled at the door with her paw just to get out of the cold and I almost plinked her in the bean with a slow moving BB that couldn't break a Necco wafer. That's what she gets for her loyalty.