I can see it coming

At this point I can see it coming on. We're waiting for dinner. The hand is shaking a bit. He's kind of quiet. It's a day off and we're in the middle of nowhere at a farm house 60k from Boligna waiting for our hosts to cook some pasta. Someone breaks out a bag of marijuana and rolls a joint which gets passed around. It's the calm before the storm. When one of our hosts cracks open a bottle of wine it begins. It gets evenly distributed and people start talking. The Mike Watt stories gently begin to materialize. It's when the home made wines get cracked that I can see where things are going. One bottle simply has a plain white piece of paper attached to it with scotch taped which reads in italian, "this may not taste like much but it's definitely alcoholic." It's a horribly sweet carbonated sparkling wine presumably made of something like apples. When tastes are offered he says, "why not. I am an alcoholic," and fills his glass. Other mysterious home made bottles appear and other joints get passed around and I notice his glass emptying faster and faster. It's when the rest of us are encouraged to consume more that I start to worry. In this race one never wants to leave ones competition far behind. It's too lonely traveling far ahead of the pack. The name dropping is really starting to take off and the kids are eating it up. "you know Mike Watt? He's my favorite," elicits a string of stories I've heard before. The Iggy Pop stories come out in an effort to really impress and a host of other incidental names and places meant to be recognized. He's talking faster and louder now though it takes a certain kind of effort to squeeze the words out like he's getting down to the bottom of a tube of paste and he squeezes and squeezes until suddenly something bursts out. The hand gestures are more wild and the sentiments and conspiracies become more heated and dark. Ever the entertainer he brings his crowd along with him but it's a second hand fascination. He's the square geek who figured out a way to hang with and be accepted by the cool kids. Finally when to smoke and stories become too much for me I wade through the haze of smoke and words and head upstairs to crash.
I wake up early in the morning with nothing to do. I take a jog along the endless rows of olive trees. It's been raining a bit every day so by the time I'm done mud cakes my cons. When I walk in to the kitchen he's already started with some rum he found on the top of the refrigerator. It's gonna be a long day. Way to much time alone with his thoughts and nothing else to do. The sound check for the show is early and the show starts very late so there's plenty of time to keep the buzz from crashing. During Mika's set I can hear him talking loudly to Kamil and I know it's gonna be a sloppy show. I don't really care but I am up there as well. Guilt by association I suppose. He forgets to play at times. At other times he starts up in the wrong key and can't hear the difference so he keeps chugging along. He yells really loudly between the songs playing the part of front man. People buy in though and those that don't are not noticed. It helps that he's foreign and has a history so that the crazy antics become quaint and even possibly exciting. I try to laugh it all off and play my songs afterwards, doing my best to joyfully exorcise all my darkest thoughts. At some point the next day, back out in the country house, Kamil sees him finishing off the bottle of rum and Kamil brings up the wild and loose play from the night before. Perhaps in an attempt to get him to focus better. There's a little double speak back and forth between the two of them in which neither is willing to really come out and say what they think. He knows that he can get lost in the haze but he doesn't wanna take it sitting down from Kamil so he tries to get Kamil to get specific. Kamil just wants to bring the situation to his attention without it coming to a head so he is unwilling to point out any specifics of where things went wrong. I get briefly dragged in to it when Steve tries to pull me in to it and tell him where he fucked up. I want no part of this confrontation. I know what was wrong but I don't care. The music isn't mine and doesn't really speak to me and I just wanna put my head down and get through it and remember to only selfishly play for myself in the future. He tells Kamil not to worry about the bottle of rum he found fridge and polished off. You'll know it's serious when he buys his own bottle of vodka and carries it around with him, he tells Kamil. Until then it is what it is...nothing to worry about.