The Chinese Restaurant and Minot Charlie

Don’t go back to the Chinese restaurant.  You’ve been there three times and every time it’s a close call.  Three times you’ve sat there and watched people run up with guns, shooting and killing people.  And yet you’ve gone back.  You’ve crouched down in a booth, shitting yourself while death surrounds you.  Misses you.  You’ve almost died three times.  And yet, you’ve gone back.  So stupid.

This was a dream I had.  It seemed to me to be a metaphor for my drinking problem.  Over and over again, doing something that almost fucks everything up for me.  Yet I go back.  Almost ruining/losing my life repeatedly.  Close call after close call.  DON’T GO BACK TO THE CHINESE RESTAURANT!

Minot Charlie is stuck in Minot, North Dakota.  He’s essentially becoming a part of the railroad ties piled up in the railyard.  He wants to hop on a train and go somewhere.  He’s willing to.  He just gets too drunk every time there’s a train to hop, either passed out or too wasted to run along and hop aboard.  So he sits in Minot, conversing with all the other train hoppers who pass through town, making plans to hop a train with them and eventually just watching them all ride away from him while he’s drunk.

This is a real person.  Saw him in a documentary.  The message is more explicit, nothing really to ‘interpret’: drinking is locking Charlie in one place, weighing him down, against his actual desires.  Can’t do what he wants or be who he wants.