Hey Y'all:

Hold my beer and watch this....

Will probably be written on my tombstone. Here is a little bit about me, a fast read and a long read...

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Short Version:

David Simpson is starving writer living in Atlanta who got tired of starving so he drives a truck.

He married up, has a passel of great kids, most of them are in or have served in the Army.

Over the years he’s done a lot of things to put food on the table, always writing and thinking he had a book in him, always hustling some crazy notion or get rich scheme but here’s a list of paid jobs as he remembers.

(There are loads more of unpaid jobs or entrepreneurial start-ups that he lost his ass on.)

Golf Course grass cutting boy

Carpenter

Burger King employee

Steel Mill worker

Army

Licensed broker (stocks, bonds, insurance, etc)

Repo man

Bounty Hunter

Kept Man

Leather Shop co-owner

Farmer

Factory worker

Cross Country Truck driver

Lime Hauler for the Mines

Fuel Hauler

Construction Company owner

House flipper

Restaurant delivery driver

Chopper builder

Muscle Car flipper

Cracker hauler

Regional truck driver

 

 

 

Convoluted and mysterious version that is all true but worded in a way to make the mundane sound exciting.

 

I’m a fairly simple man. I’ve done a lot of the same things as everyone else and haven’t done a lot of things everyone else has.  

I’ve never been to college or taken a lie detector test or made a suicide pact.

I’ve never popped a wheelie in a car.

I did see a quiet woman screaming and I’ve held death in my cradled arms, my sadness splashing down on her still and silent face.

I’ve watched the moon rise over Paris and danced in the London rain.

I’ve wandered the twisted alleys and seedy underbelly of Krakow, navigated the ancient cobblestone streets of Germany riding thunder.

I knew a man whose only possession had been an ordinary rock and he had to fight a man to get it and he would kill anyone to keep it.

I saw Kitty crying and felt true impotence because there was nothing I could do.

Belgium is a memory of companionship and being treated like a king with shaved head biker gang prospects doing my bidding with a snap of my fingers.

Amsterdam is a gnarled tangle of bicycles and junkies and tiny, steep staircases.

I’ve wandered the absolute isolation of the Mojave, waded through sands as white as snow, skied the black runs of the Alps, swam the great lakes, surfed the nighttime ocean, frolicked with dolphins and waterskied over a vast smack of jellyfish.

I’ve seen the sun rise on the Atlantic strolling the sands of Florida and set on the Atlantic waiting  for a ferry in France.

I fought the undertow of the Gulf and swam back to a shoreline over the horizon when I wasn’t even sure in which direction to go.

I learned from a smuggler that the price of life in India is two cigarettes.

I’ve seen the total eclipse of the sun and the moon, Halley’s Comet, the Aurora Borealis and uncounted shooting stars from far out in the wastelands where no one lives.

I’ve waded through knee high flash flood water in the desert of California, snow over my head in the steppes of Austria, saw a DeLorean float down a flooded El Paso street, sat in a 30 million dollar car.

I saw her jacket drop gently to the dewy ground and Stonehenge loomed huge in the night.

I saved a man from a life in prison and I can’t remember his name. Sometimes I wonder if he remembers mine.

I’ve faced down a machine gun wielded by an Arab, been pistol whipped and had a gun pointed in my face so close I could count the bullets in the cylinders.

I’ve fought for my life against a group of men with baseball bats as she screamed and screamed and screamed with her hands clawing at her face. 

I’ve been beat by a gang of white frat boys in DC and a gang of black thugs in El Paso.

I had a Spanish girl step between me and a Mexican with a razor as she calmly flipped open her butterfly knife. 

I’ve been beat unconscious and left for dead in the middle of a road, been shot twice and started a riot on Dyer street. 

I’ve had a Muslim tell me he would kill me and my family in the middle of the night by slitting our throats.

I’ve slept in graveyards in Berlin and made sand castles on the Northern French coastlines.

I waited with a heavy heart, listening for the whispers on the wind, waiting for the seven years to end so he would wake once again.

A man died in my arms and a man died from my hands.

I’ve seen black and white rainbows at midnight cast from a full silver moon.

I went for an entire year without looking into a mirror and still remembered who I was when I finally did.

I’ve loved and lost, been married and divorced, been widowed and abandoned.

I’ve sainted and sinned, kissed a girl in the French Quarter, pummeled a man bloody in a bar by the river and gave flowers to strangers.

I saved a woman from brutal hands and watched her run away in the night as I contended with his wrath.

I had Thalia hold me captive for a time.

I’ve cut open the locks on an impound yard in Mexico and took what was ours while the local police stood down, outnumbered and out gunned.

I’ve owned a company, built log cabins by hand, been the Captain of a Shrimp boat, the hero of a comic book, the drummer in a band.

I’ve been given an Indian name by the Navajo, climbed through the Hopi cliff top homes, searched for the Seven Sisters, owned a mansion on the ocean.

I’ve driven across Texas, been mugged in New York and found a parking spot in L.A.

I’ve been a millionaire once, homeless twice and fled back to America with nothing but the clothes on my back and a Rolex on my wrist.

I’ve seen the devils works and have literally felt his hands on my back.

I’ve spoken to God and got an answer.

I’ve been to all 48 states, been the wealthy white man living in Mexico and was abducted by rum swilling pirates in a leaky boat somewhere in the Caribbean.

I played a high stakes game for a week and pretended to be a doctor in a town named for a murdered brother where 6 and 66 cross paths.

My life has been at times a void, sometimes a vortex. I’ve done violence beyond most and I’ve shown compassion more than most. The shadow of death has come very close to me a few times and once I laughed in her face, once coolly accepted her watery embrace.

I’ve blasted down Class V rapids in a kayak on a flood stage river in January, jumped from planes in flight and went deep into caves and underground rivers without any air, surviving only on assumption and thirty-year-old maps.

I’ve wandered through ancient castles in Romania, drove a Mercedes down the railroad tracks in Prague, rafted the white waters of Slovakia.

I rode a black Harley through a blizzard in the Appalachians, chased a rain cloud for 9 days across America and up to Canada, never completely drying out the whole time.

I’ve had squid fried over an open fire in a ghost town in the Rockies when I was trapped by a storm, shared by mountain men who lived rough

I held a gun tensely in my hands when the Iron Curtain came down, waiting for the 1st ones to come through the woods to see if we were to open fire or welcome them to freedom.

I’ve commanded a tank, rappelled down sheer mountain faces, reached up and touched bullets coming out of the barrel of a machine gun.

I spoke with gypsies in their native tongue as we were gathered around a campfire on a river in Europe. We parlayed until the sun rose and when the mescaline wore off, I could no longer speak their language.

I’ve packed my saddlebags and rode off with nowhere to go and no one to meet me there.

I’ve climbed down hundreds of yards of blue velvet to reach the 1st floor and run my fingers through the vomit in her auburn hair.

I hold two world records for Cannonballing across America and at one time had over 6,000 felonies hanging over my head.

I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been a lot and it’s but by the grace of God, I’m not sitting in a prison cell.

But I’ve never been on the cover of a magazine or on a Wheaties box, I’ve never walked barefoot on hot coals or climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I’ve never been in a running gun fight but I’ve been to Hell, Hell’s Half Acre and Hell’s Kitchen.

I’ve never driven harvester over thousands of acres of waving grain, chasing the crops north through the Plains States.

I’m no rocket scientist, no John Kennedy, no sole survivor.

I’m the king of no hill, cream of no crop, top of no heap, leader of no pack.

I’ve never seen a glacier or the black sands of Iceland. I’ve never been in the mob or the Hell’s Angels and my life has never been in danger by low men with scarred faces and ill-fitting suits.

I’ve never deactivated a bomb, saved a child from a burning building, rescued a cat from a tree.

I’m not a man’s man nor a lady’s man.

It would be a bad idea for me to wear a speedo in public.

I’ve never survived a shark attack or gone down on a sinking ship.

No one has ever screamed my name at a concert, news shows don’t invite me to be a guest for my learned opinion, no one has ever referred to me as “Your Grace.”

I’ve been in an illegal cross-country road race but I’ve never been 200 miles per hour in a car.

I’ve sat on stakeouts and been in high-speed chases but I’ve never stopped a robbery, brought someone back from the dead with mouth to mouth or held my hands over spurting wounds to save a life.

I don’t know how to fly an airplane,

I’ve never been a seeker of anything in Tibet.

I’ve never been drafted by any major sports organization.

Headhunters aren’t hunting my head, the CIA isn’t trying to get rid of me because I know too much, I’ve never been a member of the Manson Family.

Made for TV movies haven’t been made about me.

No one is observing me closely, no one has ever blown my cover.

People in the know don’t know who I am.

I’ve never ran through a road block, crashed a toll booth without paying, received a huge advance for my memoirs or challenged anyone to a duel.

I’ve never tamed a lion or wrestled an alligator, infiltrated a Ku Klux Klan rally or marched on Washington.

I don’t understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Shakespeare’s archaic language.

I’ve never been in outer space.

I’ve never been bound and whipped until I bled by a leather clad dominatrix but for a time I was her Othello.

I’ve never died for something I believe in.

No one calls me Ace and I’ve never taken a bullet for someone I love.

I just write stories and hope people will like them.