Thrice is Nice
On Tuesday, July 27 in 2021, I experienced a bizarre occurrence involving the number three. In the town that I live in, I went to three places and was disappointed. I went to a café so that I could see my favourite waitress but she wasn’t in. On a faraway street, I recognized a female bartender from another dining establishment who I met for the first time on the Monday of the previous week. This woman, Lucy, had recognized me and smiled.
As I was walking alongside one of the side streets near Marks & Spencer, I saw a bespectacled metalhead inside a Vegan café. What looked like a state of construction was actually deconstruction. She was moving out. Her Slipknot T-shirt was serendipitous since I was carrying a W.H. Smith bag containing a Slipknot magazine which I had purchased in the previous week. When I was reading it at the previous café, I learned that Slipknot got signed three years after forming in 1995. Corey Taylor’s other band, Stone Sour, formed in 1992 but Jim Root (also a guitarist for Slipknot) joined three years later. Slipknot’s Mick Thomson was born on November 3 in 1972.
Throughout my life, three has been a significant number. My star sign is Taurus. In ancient mythology, Taurus the bull was slaughtered by Orion the hunter. The significance is that Orion’s Belt is the name of an asterism in the constellation known as Orion. The three stars are either known as The Three Kings or The Three Sisters depending on who you speak to. Coincidentally, Orion is the title of an instrumental track on Metallica’s third album - Master of Puppets. You should Google what Slipknot’s Sid Wilson said about the constellation; it’s too convoluted to type here.
After visiting the second café, I went to a music shop to see if they sold guitars as well as records because I wanted to give away my best guitar - a black Fender in mint condition. I went home, got my guitar and came in. The middle-aged owner didn’t want it despite being open-minded about wanting to see it. He didn’t look cool, anyway. When I went out for the third time, I stopped at Lucy’s bar. When she served me a cup of Expresso martini, she put three coffee beans in it. I wasn’t expecting that inclusion because I never had one before. The bar has four cocktail taps but they only have three flavours - Expresso, passion fruit and two pink taps. I saw an episode of E! News: Daily Pop where two of the three hosts were dressed in pink i.e. a black man and a white woman. Lucy was more talkative than my favourite waitress, who only spoke to me when I spoke to her. Like me, Lucy previously lived in Lancashire. She finished her shift at 3 p.m.
I gave my three guitars to a guitarist who I had known from a music classifieds site in 2017. He was surprised but I told him that the guitars had no place in my life anymore. Being a writer is more relevant, especially with the virus making it difficult to make a living from music. Also, the internet and reading in general take up my time. The next day, I learned that Slipknot’s Joey Jordison died. In August 2021, I wrote an article about Tom Cruise since the key to his success is sought after. He had divorced three actresses when they were 33. In September, Slipknot went on tour with a band called Fever 333.
A month later, on the 17th, three things happened involving the number 3. First, I saw a short film by Andrea Flader called Reading Commercial. The main character’s alarm clock displayed the following time - 3:33 p.m. Secondly, I saw a TV listing for an episode of The Simpsons called Three Gays of the Condo. I only got the pun because of recently being made aware of a Robert Redford film i.e. a 1975 Sydney Pollack production called Three Days of the Condor, which was based on a 1974 James Grady novel called Six Days of the Condor. As an aside, this film was an influence on the premise of the first Mission: Impossible film. Also, there is a fight scene which had an influence on the finale of a 1979 film called The Gold Connection. The final three-related thing to occur on Sunday was myself coming across a news article from the day before. It was about how a female Spanish writer was revealed to be three men hiding behind a pseudonym.
It reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer had no choice but to admit that he was behind the Mr. X website. The circumstances behind both situations are similar. Mr. X wins the Pulitzer Prize and prize money for his hard-hitting journalism. In the other situation, the three men won the Planeta prize which enabled them to earn a million euros. They pretended to be one woman because they were writing ultra-violent novels that would have seen them be subjected to sexist criticism. This is why part of their cover story was that “Carmen Mola” was a mother of three children. They claimed that they wanted anonymity to protect their personal lives. If this was true, they could’ve hired a female decoy to accept the award on their behalf. It sounds like they wanted to be known as pranksters. This made me feel unnerved because I have been self-conscious about being a guy who writes female-driven fiction, especially of a lesbian nature.
Returning to the theme of three, December 12 in 2021 was a strange day for me because I woke up with the TV still being on. What was being aired was a 1999 episode of The Simpsons called Simpsons Bible Stories. It was near the end of the episode where the family finds out that they’ve missed out on the rapture. Later that day, I saw the remaining part of a TV movie that I recorded. It was called The Remaining, and it was to do with the rapture. Finally, I saw the final episode of The 100 which also has a rapture theme. Coincidentally, these last two productions share the same Canadian actor: John Pyper-Ferguson.
