Dolly Dagger Was A Nasty Girl

Ma had never recovered from Dolly Daggers’ death and Pops was too busy being a ‘rolling stone’ to ever hang around long enough to care about anyone but himself. I was the only one levelheaded enough to keep the lights on and a roof over our heads playing gigs around town.

Even though I was a clown in school, I never had to study and still got good grades. So it wasn’t that much of a stretch for me to do two gigs a night, wake up for school as soon as I laid my head on the pillow to sleep and ace my Physics and Calculus exams, first and third period, with no study time. It’s funny how my critics judge me by my slang, instead of my mind, but that doesn’t bother me much no more. You live, you learn.

The more thoughts you give to negativity, it’s like adding cars to a train, the harder it is to stop it. I ain’t got time for the bullshakes. Never did, never will. But seeing Dolly like that, whoa, that brought back feelings I ain’t have in a long time. I had blamed God for taking Dolly away. I guess everybody blames God for everything bad that happens to them.

No one takes time out to seek the truth. If crack don't kill the kidneys, vanity will. Who is really responsible for educating the people of the laws that God created for our journey through the walk of life? The ministers? Our parents? The teachers? Who? I had become filled with so much angst and hatred that I had begun to lose my soul.

Seemed the more I wrote about hate in my songs, the more popular I became. Go figure. People love hate. It's something they know more than they know themselves. I guess I hit a nerve that everyone could associate with, whether they cared to admit it or not, hate is what propelled their success.

It seemed like love only prepared you for more anguish and loss. And unfortunately with a lack of knowledge of God’s true will, ignorance becomes the driving force behind all of our actions and reactions, for that matter. It wasn’t until I met Dolly that spirituality started making sense to me again. Funny, as spiritually minded as she was, she may have been the closest incarnate to the devil himself.

Well, I guess that was true about Setan or Set or Satan, Lucifer or whatever you might want to call him these days. The Golden Star? The most beautiful angel God ever made, thrown into the everlasting fire of shame and betrayal. Shoot, vanity brought me closer to God by being so far from ever truly understanding Him.

What a paradox. To truly appreciate pleasure, one must endure pain. “To hold a rose carelessly is to feel its thorns”, Nana use to say. Seems though, I haven’t yet redeemed the repercussions of appreciation yet, when Dolly took most of my loot when I sold her my publishing to help her buy a new kidney. But it didn't help. She found God. Death found her. And I found another fifth of gin in my momma's secret stash. It's gone be a long night.