This Is My First Day And I'm Indian And I Work At A Gas Station

Fell asleep last night listening to a train whistle blowing across the Carquinez Strait
 And to the wind blowing through the eucalyptus trees
 Watching Paolo Sorrentino's "The Great Beauty"
 Fell asleep last night listening to a train
 I want to visit my friend because she's in a lot of pain
 It was the shingles, then C. diff, now they're saying lupus
 She's a single mom with two kids and she don't deserve any of it
 I'd like to go out there when I can
 But I'm just back from Finland and soon I'm off to Switzerland
 For a part in a film, but when I get home
 Going to go see my friend and keep her company for a week or so
 I feel bad for not going there now
 But I got a life out here, I need to hold the fort down
 Got hard wood floors buckling up and an old leaky pipe
 Thirty yards of fallen fence that I need to put back upright
 And I broke a tooth on a bone in some beef stew
 I was eating in Belgium and it cracked right down to the root
 My gums are bleeding and they're turning blue
 And I've got a dentist appointment on Tuesday
 Went to a 7/11 and the clerk, his hands were shaking
 I said, "are you all right?" and he said, "it's my first day and I'm Indian and I work at a gas station"
 I said, "you'll be fine," got my change and as I turned, he said nervously, "yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir"
 It's a nice spring day, April 19th
 And the flowers are in bloom and I did yard work until my arms turned pink
 And my girl broke my laptop while making the bed
 She went right to Best Buy and bought another because she felt so bad
 Then we went and bought and an old Vic drawer I liked
 And went to an open house, it was built 1902, been kept up real nice
 Had a nice back porch and the walls were original brick
 It was a great old house but I didn't like the way the cars blew past it
 Fell asleep last night here in Flims, Switzerland
 Reading the John Connolly book "The Wanderer In Unknown Realms"
 Book dealer goes missing, the detective sets out to find him
 And he ends up on a murder spree, or was it a hallucination?
 Fell asleep last night here again in Flims, Switzerland
 Said goodnight on a hotel phone to my girlfriend, Caroline
 This movie set's doing weird things to my head
 I'm not Italian, I'm not Swiss, and I can't act, and I don't exactly fit in
 Went to sleep last night, yeah again, here in Flims, Switzerland
 And woke up to the sound of Michael Caine's voice, echoing
 Down the hall and just like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now"
 I was doing pushups and situps and I was going fucking crazy and crawling the walls
 Walked down the street and I pet a little kitty cat
 She was sweet for a second then she turned into a little fucking brat
 Came back and Jane Fonda was in the lobby
 And we talked about her father, and she was lost and couldn't find anybody
 And we talked about the movie with her and Jon Voight, "Coming Home"
 She said she produced it, and that was a fact that I didn't know
 And I asked her to dinner and she said, "I'll take a rain check"
 If only I had class like Ted Turner or Gregory Peck
 And I'm falling asleep again in goddamn Flims, Switzerland
 A closed down ski town with one coffee shop and a field of dandelions
 And I look at the snow covered Alps and I'm here until June 9th
 Got some scenes this week, which is great, because at this point I'm losing my fucking mind
 Never mind all the other verses I've written about Switzerland
 There's new things going on in my life, like my girlfriend got a new kitten
 And a friend of mine gave out my number to some crazy motherfucker
 And I got all pissed off and she said, "who do you think you are, Mick fucking Jagger?"
 I fell asleep last night in New Orleans
 Just back from Switzerland, where like I said, I was going insane
 And I went and got oysters on the half shell and some blackened alligator
 Then I called my friend in Ohio and I flew up there and I stayed with her
 Went back to Europe for a tour and I was watching TV
 There were missiles flying back and forth from Gaza to Tel-Aviv
 And it concerned me cause I got friends over there
 When I talk to them on the phone I can hear it in their voices that they're scared
 Some shit went down on tour and I had to let go one of my band guys
 And it hurt me so much that for a solid forty-five minutes I cried
 Came to my room and he said, "Mark, I really need this job"
 I said, "it's tough love my friend, take some time off and we'll make music again one day I promise"
 Just back from Europe and it's Labor Day and I went walking
 I laid in the sun all day and I called my friend Jude and we got to talking
 Jude's the widow of my old friend, Tim
 I said, "whatever you do, please, don't ask me about Switzerland"
 Then my dad called about someone we love
 I put a check in the mail, gotta do what I gotta do when push comes to shove
 I hear her voice sometimes and it's an octave higher
 Cause she gets weak from the drugs that dehydrate her
 It's hard to handle but I just keep keeping busy
 Traveling and playing and writing until I'm fucking dizzy
 Some people love what I do and some get fucking pissy
 But I don't give a fuck, one day they're all gonna miss me
 A year ago, I was in a car with a handicapped kid
 I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life?" and he sat there blank
 And I said, "okay you think about it a minute"
 And a few minutes passed and I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life, it's been a minute?"
 And he said, "I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna live it"
 I'm going to sleep tonight and I can't fall asleep listening to the high pitched foghorns of the Carquinez Strait
 They sound like a cacophony of piccolos and flutes, they echo all night
 And I just turned forty-eight and I spent seventeen grand on the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight
 Going to sleep tonight with a goddamn ear infection
 I broke another tooth on a piece of hard bread, and my gums are fucking hurting
 And my friend Ben went on a 50k race and he broke his wrist
 And he called me up the other day and he asked me to join him as his guitarist
 To play with him in San Francisco, February 23rd
 And I said, "yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir"
 So I played last night with Ben at the Swedish-American hall
 And man, I was so nervous that I was gonna hit the wrong guitar chords
 But Ben sang beautifully, and everything fell together pretty well
 What a nice combination that was: Ben singing, me on guitar, and a great pianist named Zach Rae
 Caroline was there, and so was Ben's girlfriend Rachel, they both loved the show
 I talked to Bob Mould afterwards
 And I hoped that someday they'd make it into a song
 It was a pretty funny night
 Earlier at dinner, I got picked on a little for still having a flip phone
 But after the show, some guy walked into the backstage area and was introduced to me as "The Smartest Guy In The World"
 They said he was a physicist or something like that
 And I pulled out my phone to check the time
 He pulled his phone out and pointed out that he had the exact same phone that I did
 Everyone was laughing, there were some girls looking at us like our phones were really gross or something
 We were all getting pretty tired, Ben and his friends took off
 Caroline came back to my apartment, we watched part three of the HBO series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
 It's February 24th and I still feel a little high from how good everything felt last night