The Bottom Dollars music goes something like this:
It's showing up for church on Sunday mornings.
Somehow this seems right. There's something in them that makes the men in this Brooklyn-based band seem God-fearing/formerly God-fearing/Future fearing.
It's showing up for church on Sunday mornings with the taste of Saturday night still on their tongues.
It's showing up for church on Sunday mornings, with the sunlight feeling too damned bright. It's showing up with mud caking the back tires and the lower half of the truck body.
It's having a flask tucked, at all times, in the inside pocket of any coat that would ever be worn. It's keeping that flask healthily full with something that coats.
It's keeping every photograph of grandma, grandpa, mom and dad that are still around.
It's looking at them and being reminded of how much you look like all of them and wonder if they were feeling the same ways that they are currently feeling, at the same stages in their lives.
It's feeling time get washed completely the fuck away.
It's feeling helpless and not drunk enough. It's feeling too drunk, but having it still feel like not being drunk enough.
It's love and it's a sore throat after a great night with old friends. It's a sore throat after a night of arguing, of losing. It's sadness and it's happiness, in equal measures.
*Essay originally published June, 2012