Why?
Why the hell not?
If I were a giant robot, I'd stomp cars and buildings, bridges and parks.
Indiscriminately.
I'd have flame throwing arm attachments and I would set fire to the world.
But I would be made of metal.
Great, fireproof, metal and I would not burn.
I would stand in the cinders.
Stare down at the ashes.
And laugh.
Laugh at the chaos.
Laugh at the panic.
Laugh at the re-birth of whatever survives.
All debts erased.
All polo shirts, all skiing trips
All homes, all jobs, all comfort.
Gone.
"What do you have now?" I would bellow through the land.
"Survival! Life!" I would answer.
And when the world started surviving,
I would lay my gigantic body beside mountains, and sleep.
Let the world reclaim me. Cover me in dust and trees.
I'd destroy the world beautiful.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Free Laundry.
Years ago, I spent a winter living in a twenty-four hour laundromat. Well, "living" may be an abuse of the word. I slept lightly across three dryers for a few hours a night, and tried to avoid being seen.
I wasn't technically homeless, but home life had become so unbearable that I avoided it at all costs. During the preceding fall, I had slept on friends couches and floors, or in their cars when the moment called for it. I had no job, no cash, no prospects. I was merely trying to get through my days. I was a burden to everyone, leeching and stealing, and by Thanksgiving, I had no one left. I can't blame them.
I tried going back home,but it didn't work. It just wasn't meant to be. So, I fled into the night, wandering with nothing.
I tried a few friends doors, but was turned away. The night wore on, and soon, I passed my laundromat.
I remember that there was a little snow on the ground, but not too much. The air was brisk, and the town was fairly empty. The yellow light from the inside seemed so inviting, and the place was empty. I walked in, and sat on the bench by the dryers.
The heat was on, and it was fantastic. A dryer was going, and before I knew it, the humming put me to sleep, propped up against the wall, slouching on the bench.
The door opening a few hours later woke me up. It was an older guy. Probably a night shift worker somewhere on his lunch break. He gave me a weird look and I left.
I figured he had noticed that there were no other machines going and I was probably just a hobo or derelict in general (which I may or may not have actually been at that point). I wandered around until dawn, and went to school. Free breakfast and lunch there.
After that, when I couldn't find someone to pal around with for a little while, I just went to the laundromat. I had a small bag with me where I kept a pen and notebook, a few library books, and whatever money I was able to scrounge up in my traveling. I would stop at the gas station down the road, pick up a Slim Jim and a cappuccino, and sit on the dryers and write. Songs, stories, whatever. I lost a lot of weight.
After a little while, I began to become conscious of my disgusting clothes. I had been wearing the same outfit for almost two weeks. So, I took parts of it off (overshirt, underwear, socks first, then undershirt and jeans) and would throw them in with other peoples loads. I would keep an eye out the window, and if I saw someone coming, or even look like they were coming, I would race to the machine to grab my shit and dart into the bathroom. I was never caught, but I came very close.
Every few weeks, I would try to go home. Christmas especially. I stayed three days at home then. Holiday spirit, I guess. Then, I was formally kicked out.
I still had the laundromat. I stayed there. Sleeping lightly, pirate washing my outfits. Scrounging change for food. Reading and writing like a madman.
A month and a half went by, and I was feeling terrible. In fact, save for maybe one or two others, it may have been my lowest point (living in a laundromat, go figure). I decided I needed to get out of the situation. I searched (unsuccessfully) for work and began to try to mend my friendships. I began to make Home a regular stop, and before long, I was allowed back in.
We ended up working things out, and I moved back in, but only long enough for me to find a job, and get out, the right way. Living in a laundromat is simply not fun.
I wasn't technically homeless, but home life had become so unbearable that I avoided it at all costs. During the preceding fall, I had slept on friends couches and floors, or in their cars when the moment called for it. I had no job, no cash, no prospects. I was merely trying to get through my days. I was a burden to everyone, leeching and stealing, and by Thanksgiving, I had no one left. I can't blame them.
I tried going back home,but it didn't work. It just wasn't meant to be. So, I fled into the night, wandering with nothing.
I tried a few friends doors, but was turned away. The night wore on, and soon, I passed my laundromat.
I remember that there was a little snow on the ground, but not too much. The air was brisk, and the town was fairly empty. The yellow light from the inside seemed so inviting, and the place was empty. I walked in, and sat on the bench by the dryers.
The heat was on, and it was fantastic. A dryer was going, and before I knew it, the humming put me to sleep, propped up against the wall, slouching on the bench.
The door opening a few hours later woke me up. It was an older guy. Probably a night shift worker somewhere on his lunch break. He gave me a weird look and I left.
I figured he had noticed that there were no other machines going and I was probably just a hobo or derelict in general (which I may or may not have actually been at that point). I wandered around until dawn, and went to school. Free breakfast and lunch there.
After that, when I couldn't find someone to pal around with for a little while, I just went to the laundromat. I had a small bag with me where I kept a pen and notebook, a few library books, and whatever money I was able to scrounge up in my traveling. I would stop at the gas station down the road, pick up a Slim Jim and a cappuccino, and sit on the dryers and write. Songs, stories, whatever. I lost a lot of weight.
After a little while, I began to become conscious of my disgusting clothes. I had been wearing the same outfit for almost two weeks. So, I took parts of it off (overshirt, underwear, socks first, then undershirt and jeans) and would throw them in with other peoples loads. I would keep an eye out the window, and if I saw someone coming, or even look like they were coming, I would race to the machine to grab my shit and dart into the bathroom. I was never caught, but I came very close.
Every few weeks, I would try to go home. Christmas especially. I stayed three days at home then. Holiday spirit, I guess. Then, I was formally kicked out.
I still had the laundromat. I stayed there. Sleeping lightly, pirate washing my outfits. Scrounging change for food. Reading and writing like a madman.
A month and a half went by, and I was feeling terrible. In fact, save for maybe one or two others, it may have been my lowest point (living in a laundromat, go figure). I decided I needed to get out of the situation. I searched (unsuccessfully) for work and began to try to mend my friendships. I began to make Home a regular stop, and before long, I was allowed back in.
We ended up working things out, and I moved back in, but only long enough for me to find a job, and get out, the right way. Living in a laundromat is simply not fun.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Self Destruction is Sexy
I’m told, on a fairly regular basis, that I think about sex too much. Of course, without thinking, I use the socially natural response of “I’m a guy.” I try to relate it to being something primal. Hunting, killing, spreading my seed. I want to own the world. And fuck it, I guess… That’s what men do, right? It’s just how we’re built.
Maybe.
Probably.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume, that there is some sort of glaring flaw in this theory (not that I can see one just yet). Let’s look at the facts. First, I enjoy fucking. I enjoy making love, and sex, and fucking. Both the emotional high, and the physical. Second, sex is generally good for you. It has all sorts of health benefits (AIDS and other less glamorous S.T.D.s excluded). Third, can you think of something better to do? I doubt it.
But I don’t think we are quite focusing on the original issue here, which is that I think about it too much. Fuck, I’m thinking about it right now. Yes I am…
Yes I am…
Okay, I’m back, but probably not for long. So, I sat down this morning after going to church to figure this out. Yes, I think about fucking at church. I know. Here is where this becomes even more messy than it already is. I’ll try to start small.
Sex sells, as they say. Sure. We see lingerie models selling us everything from allergy medicine to McDonalds. Every woman on TV or in the movies seems to be built specifically for fucking us all through slumber-land. The woman have it no easier than us either, brothers. No. How many fat rock stars can you think of? I can think of two at the moment. Two. How about firemen. What’s the first image that comes to your head? I bet it’s not Ol’ 300lb Leroy who used to volunteer on the weekends. Nope. It’s probably the chiseled fuckwad who doesn’t wear his fire coat thing and would probably get seriously injured if he indeed had to rescue a cat or an old lady from a blazing slum. You’ve seen the type. Why do we see that (or, if you’d like to stop pussy footing around your sexual comfort, why did you as a guy think that, and why does it bother you?)? Every male in the public eye is the same guy on different days. Mr. Rough around the edges, heart of gold, naturally fit, romantic, huge dick, loads of cash, and muscular. And really fit. Did I mention that? Just like each woman is slim, cute, funny, brave, and sports the hairstyle of the month (personally, I have been a long time advocate of dark haired girls with curvy frames, but it appears to be the new trend, and I am having trouble seeing the ones that mean it). So we get that, right? Sex sells.
I apologize for the crash course on that topic, but it’s not really where my interests lie at the moment. My interests lie specifically with my thoughts on fucking and why.
Besides sticking my dick in people who will surely look back on it with shame later, there is one other thing that really revs me up. Music. I like playing it, writing it, listening to it. I like to rock. I like to fuck, and I like to rock. But, doesn’t everybody? I mean, if there are two things that damn near every soul on the planet like to do, it’s fucking and rocking. I think we are getting closer to something here. But, I fear we are swerving dangerously close to the easy “primal” explanation. I’ll try to course correct.
I think I should add here, the other element to my train of thought. People fucking love disasters. We love to watch things spiral out of control. We love to watch maimings and chaos. We love murder, lies, crime, and it’s equally violent counterpart, punishment. We love destruction.
So, if my obsession with fucking is NOT primal, then where does it stem from? Advertising? Probably not. Who cares if it is?
Would you say rock stars are sexy? Sure. How about porn stars? Of course. What trait do the two occupations share? Self destruction. Everyone knows the good rockers are the ones living the closest to death as possible. The best are dead. Who are the best porn stars? The ones who will do anything. The ones who can take DVDA with a smile and suck the cum off of four dudes dicks, two of which are now shit-coated, and SMILE. Everyone knows both professions share drug problems. A lot of people point to that as being THE problem. I disagree. It is keeping these people alive. Keeping them keeping us attentive. We buy your records, your videos. We jerk off interchangeably. You see, with Rock Stars and Porn Stars, part of the allure is believing that these people are going to die young. They are of the moment. They won’t be here forever, but hey, we saw them at the Garden in ‘84. We jerked off to her like a hundred times before she got the implants, man. We are rocking out to their deaths. We are masturbating over their corpses.
We go home from a long day at work, we flip on the news, watch the nightly horror show, get ready for bed, and fuck our spouses. We never see the connection. In that situation of course, it is more of a global self-destruction, but hey, let Rome burn, I say.
Am I implying that we all have a hidden fetish for snuff? No, don’t be retarded. What I am saying is that watching people destroy themselves, bit by bit, is somehow satisfactory to us.
They go down the tubes, we aren’t. We celebrate with hard dicks and wet cunts. We survive! Let’s fuck!
Back to me. MY thoughts. Why do I think about it so much? Well, we have established that self-destruction is sexy.
I have been hospitalized twice for the way I look at the world (so to speak). I over analyze everything. Every word, every gesture. I spend too much time worrying. I panic. My heart races. I go through periods of extreme sadness in ways only others like me could understand. It could easily be said, that I am self-destructive. By nature, even. Try as I might to change anything, Somehow, subconsciously, I fuck it up for myself. I am always tripping over my own traps. I am out to get me.
I have always rooted for the underdog. I have always been with girls who are just as fucked up as me, if not more than. I like damage. I like low chances. I like emptiness. I like suicidals. The humanitarian in me wants to fix them, sure, but the rest of me recognizes myself in them, finds them comfortable. One of my own. Dogs don’t like to fuck cats. No, they like to fuck other dogs. Dogs turn dogs on. Suicidals turn me on.
Self destruction is fucking sexy.
When am I most in the mood to fuck? When everything is in ruins. I used to think that it was because I didn’t want to feel so bad. That I needed something to keep my mind off of things. Now, I wonder, am I simply turned on by the chaos, danger, and loneliness? Does that make me fucked up? Who gives a shit?
There is more to this, I know, but I decided to quit smoking today, so this is all you fucking get.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
I don't know, man. Depression is fucked up.
It seems like sometimes, even the depressed can't relate to people with depression. I just made the argument that the main reason for my state of mind (read: unbeatable sadness) is genetics. My family history of suicide and overall depression. I was arguing, nay, debating, with a close friend of mine who seems to feel the same, although was raised in, what seems to me, better circumstances. In fact, I would go as far to say that he is insulting me in the way he feels. But that would be a dick move.
Why?
Because I realize that a lot of the time that I hear my brain say "Kill yourself you giant piece of shit", I have no reason at all to think like that. I am an educated, healthy, attractive guy in one of the most celebrated countries in the world. I have a beautiful wife, two incredible children, and a mother and sister who would do anything at all to keep me happy. I have friends, talent, and drive. I have no fucking reason to be sad. Yet, barely a day goes by that I don't just... consider it. The big it. The "could I?" The "if I had a gun, should I?" It breaks my heart to know that I can even so casually bring myself to think that way.
Am I so spoiled that the tiniest of things can lead me such places?
What right do I have to consider such terrible shit? There are billions in the world suffering much more horrible existences than I, but catching the wrong glimpse in the mirror, seeing the wrong words in print, thinking the wrong thought at the wrong time... Is it justified?
And what if I ever acted on it?
If one day, my paycheck was simply too low. If I had a bad day, had a beer, and looked in the mirror. If I said "okay." If f I never woke up again. Could it ever be understood? Would anyone ever realize the life long struggle? The battle I have been fighting? The sacrifices, losses, and wins? Could it ever be justified?
I hope not. Such selfishness deserves no justification.
I want to die. I want to disappear. I want to never have existed. It has taken me a long time to be able to calmly admit it, but it's true. The issue is, who the fuck am I to decide to destroy my family? To abandon those who count on me? To break the hearts of my wife, children, family, and friends? Who the fuck am I?
My life is good. I have great things in it. I am more blessed than any man could ever hope to be, but I can't fight the urge inside me to snuff it all out. Be it genetics, or taught, something is wrong. But I am not weak. I will suffer alongside it. Day in and day out. I will fight and fight, as I have been fighting for twenty-seven years. I will hunt out optimism like a hound to a fox. I will force a bright side. I will win, you motherfucker.
Do you hear me?
I will fucking win.
I will survive this.
I will walk away from your bullshit. I will smile at the end. My family will never suffer the loss. I am greater than this disease. I am stronger. You motherfucker, I am stronger.
Why?
Because I realize that a lot of the time that I hear my brain say "Kill yourself you giant piece of shit", I have no reason at all to think like that. I am an educated, healthy, attractive guy in one of the most celebrated countries in the world. I have a beautiful wife, two incredible children, and a mother and sister who would do anything at all to keep me happy. I have friends, talent, and drive. I have no fucking reason to be sad. Yet, barely a day goes by that I don't just... consider it. The big it. The "could I?" The "if I had a gun, should I?" It breaks my heart to know that I can even so casually bring myself to think that way.
Am I so spoiled that the tiniest of things can lead me such places?
What right do I have to consider such terrible shit? There are billions in the world suffering much more horrible existences than I, but catching the wrong glimpse in the mirror, seeing the wrong words in print, thinking the wrong thought at the wrong time... Is it justified?
And what if I ever acted on it?
If one day, my paycheck was simply too low. If I had a bad day, had a beer, and looked in the mirror. If I said "okay." If f I never woke up again. Could it ever be understood? Would anyone ever realize the life long struggle? The battle I have been fighting? The sacrifices, losses, and wins? Could it ever be justified?
I hope not. Such selfishness deserves no justification.
I want to die. I want to disappear. I want to never have existed. It has taken me a long time to be able to calmly admit it, but it's true. The issue is, who the fuck am I to decide to destroy my family? To abandon those who count on me? To break the hearts of my wife, children, family, and friends? Who the fuck am I?
My life is good. I have great things in it. I am more blessed than any man could ever hope to be, but I can't fight the urge inside me to snuff it all out. Be it genetics, or taught, something is wrong. But I am not weak. I will suffer alongside it. Day in and day out. I will fight and fight, as I have been fighting for twenty-seven years. I will hunt out optimism like a hound to a fox. I will force a bright side. I will win, you motherfucker.
Do you hear me?
I will fucking win.
I will survive this.
I will walk away from your bullshit. I will smile at the end. My family will never suffer the loss. I am greater than this disease. I am stronger. You motherfucker, I am stronger.
Monday, April 18, 2011
It's all baloney, and we're going to be fine.
Life is going to fuck you, and a lot of women won't.
You will be lied to, lied for, and lied about.
Every moment of your life will be judged, and
most of them will be recorded and remembered.
You will be drenched in doubt.
You will be swimming in shame and regret.
You will smile through unimaginable pain, eventually.
You will probably never achieve even a fraction of your dreams.
God will damn you, and everyone will remind you.
Nothing you do will ever be good enough for somebody.
Most of your time will be spent sleeping, shitting, and working.
And the pay will never be worth the lost years.
Almost every moment of inspiration will be overshadowed by arbitrary responsibilities.
Even if you find the perfect mate, have the perfect kids, and live the perfect life,
you still die alone. Always.
BUT.
You'll still wake up tomorrow.
You'll still find a reason to smile.
Even if you don't a reason will always find you.
A summer sun-shower.
A kind stranger.
A beautiful woman's smile across a crowded room.
You will eventually do something you can be proud of.
And should be proud of.
You will learn that no matter what anyone thinks,
all that matters is that you are happy, and knowing that you are doing your best to make
the people around you happy.
Someday, you will take that chance.
You will leap.
You will quit that job and rent a loft and paint and drink and smile.
You will leave the bullshit behind and live your life for you.
You will find peace.
You will be happy.
and so will I.
Because it's all baloney,
and we are going to be fine.
You will be lied to, lied for, and lied about.
Every moment of your life will be judged, and
most of them will be recorded and remembered.
You will be drenched in doubt.
You will be swimming in shame and regret.
You will smile through unimaginable pain, eventually.
You will probably never achieve even a fraction of your dreams.
God will damn you, and everyone will remind you.
Nothing you do will ever be good enough for somebody.
Most of your time will be spent sleeping, shitting, and working.
And the pay will never be worth the lost years.
Almost every moment of inspiration will be overshadowed by arbitrary responsibilities.
Even if you find the perfect mate, have the perfect kids, and live the perfect life,
you still die alone. Always.
BUT.
You'll still wake up tomorrow.
You'll still find a reason to smile.
Even if you don't a reason will always find you.
A summer sun-shower.
A kind stranger.
A beautiful woman's smile across a crowded room.
You will eventually do something you can be proud of.
And should be proud of.
You will learn that no matter what anyone thinks,
all that matters is that you are happy, and knowing that you are doing your best to make
the people around you happy.
Someday, you will take that chance.
You will leap.
You will quit that job and rent a loft and paint and drink and smile.
You will leave the bullshit behind and live your life for you.
You will find peace.
You will be happy.
and so will I.
Because it's all baloney,
and we are going to be fine.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Lessons from Donation Bins
I come from poverty. Not outright cardboard-in-the-alley poverty, but according to a conversation I recently had with my mother, I have eaten squirrel. Out of necessity. Fairly regularly. I always knew I was a "poor kid", but for some reason, living in a busted out trailer in the woods eating fucking squirrel meat strikes me as a low unheard of. Interesting side note; apparently you have to cook it very slowly.
I remember the first time I realized my family wasn't as financially secure as I thought.
I was five. We had just moved to Maine, where my father thought he would be able to find work (and did, at a job that paid $20/hr, with a mortality rate of 2+ deaths a week, and was 5 hours away). We took the only place we could find. An "expanded" trailer, in the middle of Maine, the middle of nowhere. My school bus identified the area as "Unorganized Territory". It was. If you came across a deer in the woods, it would just stare at you. It had never seen a human before. I have always said, if I was going to kill somebody, that's where I would hide the body. Maybe I shouldn't write that part.
We had one vehicle which my father drove to his job. My mother would bum rides off of the neighbors (not that there were too many of them) to get us around. Besides school and the grocery store, the only other place we went with regularity was church. My mother is a lifelong Christian of varying degrees of faith, and took it upon herself to raise my sister and I that way. She always got us to Mass, always had us enrolled in Sunday School, always made it a part of our lives, and with the way our world was at the time, it may have been the only thing keeping her together.
It wasn't until one morning after Sunday School that I realized it. My class was taking donations to help the poor. Canned food, money, anything. I said to my mother;
"We should donate to the poor and help them."
Very plainly, my mother said "Asa, we are the poor. Where do you think we get our food?"
A punch in the face.
I remember it being like my entire world had revealed itself to me. The trailer. The cans of food with the plain white labels. The "new" clothes already a little worn out. I wasn't the same after that. I was POOR. This image of everyone having money except me seemed super-imposed over everything I saw. I was an outsider, filth. I started to grow resentment for my family. Why couldn't my father cut his fucking hair and wear nice clothes like other dads? Why couldn't we have two cars like my friends? Why us? Why ME?
It stuck with me for years, and to this day, I recognize the poor as my people. To this day I quietly resent those with more than me. Not for what they have, make, or are, but because it is ingrained in my soul that they couldn't possibly know what it's like to receive someone else's old and unwanted toys for Christmas. They couldn't understand what it's like to be told time and time again that "we can't afford that", or, "we just don't have the money" when all I asked for was a pair of shoes from the store, and not the church.
Don't get me wrong, we made life work. At least I was fed. I had a roof. I had clothes. As an adult, I understand these things. I understand how fucking difficult living can be, and how hard it must have been then. And while I have learned harsh lessons in humility, charity, and necessity, I have also been marked. An ash colored smudge of shame, donated to me, in the smug pity of those better off. For that reason, I am incapable of accepting charity for myself or my family today. I refuse government assistance. I will sell off all of my belongings and starve before my children notice anything has gone awry in my household.
They may be poor, but they will never know it.
I remember the first time I realized my family wasn't as financially secure as I thought.
I was five. We had just moved to Maine, where my father thought he would be able to find work (and did, at a job that paid $20/hr, with a mortality rate of 2+ deaths a week, and was 5 hours away). We took the only place we could find. An "expanded" trailer, in the middle of Maine, the middle of nowhere. My school bus identified the area as "Unorganized Territory". It was. If you came across a deer in the woods, it would just stare at you. It had never seen a human before. I have always said, if I was going to kill somebody, that's where I would hide the body. Maybe I shouldn't write that part.
We had one vehicle which my father drove to his job. My mother would bum rides off of the neighbors (not that there were too many of them) to get us around. Besides school and the grocery store, the only other place we went with regularity was church. My mother is a lifelong Christian of varying degrees of faith, and took it upon herself to raise my sister and I that way. She always got us to Mass, always had us enrolled in Sunday School, always made it a part of our lives, and with the way our world was at the time, it may have been the only thing keeping her together.
It wasn't until one morning after Sunday School that I realized it. My class was taking donations to help the poor. Canned food, money, anything. I said to my mother;
"We should donate to the poor and help them."
Very plainly, my mother said "Asa, we are the poor. Where do you think we get our food?"
A punch in the face.
I remember it being like my entire world had revealed itself to me. The trailer. The cans of food with the plain white labels. The "new" clothes already a little worn out. I wasn't the same after that. I was POOR. This image of everyone having money except me seemed super-imposed over everything I saw. I was an outsider, filth. I started to grow resentment for my family. Why couldn't my father cut his fucking hair and wear nice clothes like other dads? Why couldn't we have two cars like my friends? Why us? Why ME?
It stuck with me for years, and to this day, I recognize the poor as my people. To this day I quietly resent those with more than me. Not for what they have, make, or are, but because it is ingrained in my soul that they couldn't possibly know what it's like to receive someone else's old and unwanted toys for Christmas. They couldn't understand what it's like to be told time and time again that "we can't afford that", or, "we just don't have the money" when all I asked for was a pair of shoes from the store, and not the church.
Don't get me wrong, we made life work. At least I was fed. I had a roof. I had clothes. As an adult, I understand these things. I understand how fucking difficult living can be, and how hard it must have been then. And while I have learned harsh lessons in humility, charity, and necessity, I have also been marked. An ash colored smudge of shame, donated to me, in the smug pity of those better off. For that reason, I am incapable of accepting charity for myself or my family today. I refuse government assistance. I will sell off all of my belongings and starve before my children notice anything has gone awry in my household.
They may be poor, but they will never know it.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
John is a Shitty Drinking Buddy, But He Tries. (An Excerpt from "Mirrors Down")
1.
2011 started out like every year in the new millennium had for me. Drunk, holding someone’s hair back, and singing. I would like to pretend to be the cool guy here, and say something like “I don’t really care about New Years”, or “I was at a very exclusive party”, but I wasn’t. I was in my bathroom, singing loudly while my friend John threw up about forty dollars worth of my rum.
“Ugh,” was all he could manage to really say, unless I directly asked him a question. So I would, just to keep him from passing out in the toilet.
“You want a candy cane?”
“No.” He threw up more.
Some of his hair fell down in front of the puke-fall. I pulled it back. He’d have to shower after he was done.
“I want to hold your hair-eh-air-eh-air! I want to hold your hair!” I sort of sang along with the Beatles, who were blasting out of my computer in the living room, where John’s girlfriend and my wife (two different people, if that isn’t clear), played with a stray cat which had wandered into the apartment.
John threw up again.
“You want some water?”
“Ugh, yessss.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
I stood up and left the bathroom, stumbling into the door frame on the way out.
“Is he okay?” Kris, John’s girlfriend, asked from the living room.
I grabbed the fridge to steady myself. “Yeah, he’s fine. I’ve got it under control.” I looked out at them. “Is that a fucking cat?”
My wife smiled up at me. “Yep! His name is Rupert Fluffy!”
“What the fuck,” I said, and took a cup out of the cupboard. I turned on the sink and let the water run over my hand until it was cold, then I filled the cup.
“Can we keep him?” Marie, my wife, asked.
“No.”
“Awe. I hate you.”
“I know,” I said.
I shambled back into the bathroom.
“You okay?” I asked John.
His head was in the toilet. He looked like he may have passed out. I poured a small stream of water down the back of his neck. “I’m pissing on you.”
“…asshole”
“I’m not pissing on you. Lift your head, I have water.”
John lifted his head, and looked at me. Sort of. He held out his hand and I gave him the cup. He drank almost all of it. I think he may have tried to swish it at first and gave up. To be fair, swishing isn’t easy. When he had finished the cup, he shoved it back in my direction. I took it.
“You want more?”
“No.”
“Are you done throwing up?”
He didn’t say anything. The question was too complicated to answer. Maybe he was done, maybe he wasn’t, but his brain was just incapable of calculating the probabilities. So, he remained silent.
He stared back down into the bile filled toilet.
“John?”
“Ugh, what?”
“Are you okay?”
“I think. Yes.”
“Are you ready to sleep?”
He didn’t answer at first.
“John?”
“What?”
“Are you ready to sleep?”
“Is he okay?” Kris asked again.
I ignored her. “Stand up John.”
“I can’t.”
I put his arm over my shoulder, and lifted him. He was 175 lbs that felt like 300.
“Stand with me, John. We’re going to get you some sleep. You’ll feel better.”
“Okay.” He stood with me.
Like Saving Private John, we left the bathroom, and headed towards my guest room.
“Is he okay?” Kris asked a third time.
“Yes, Kris, he’s fine. He just needs to sleep it off.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Marie asked.
“Yeah, get me something he can puke in. Something big. And a water bottle with ice water.”
“Okay.”
“And a slice of bread.”
“Okay.”
I walked John through the house. Well, ‘walked’ may be an abuse of the word. John sort of dragged as I fell into furniture and walls every three or four steps. Eventually, we made it to the guest room in the back of the house. I dropped him on the bed, and he fell asleep almost immediately. Marie and Kris came in behind me with supplies. Marie had brought in a large steel popcorn bowl. It was perfect. I could basically set it anywhere within a three foot radius of John’s head and still be in the proposed target area.
Kris handed me a cold water bottle and a slice of bread. “I hope he’ll be okay.”
“He’s fine. He just needs sleep. Go back in the living room and I’ll be out in a second.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Thank you for getting the stuff guys.”
“You’re welcome,” Marie said.
The women left.
“John,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” His eyes were still closed.
“You need to wake up for a second and look at me.”
“No.”
“Yes. Sit up.”
John sat up and wearily looked at me.
“Eat this,” I said, and handed him the bread. “It’ll soak up some of the alcohol.”
He mashed it into his mouth and chewed it more than bread is used to. He swallowed, and began to lay down.
“Nope, stay up, just one more second.”
“UGH!”
“I know, but look at me.”
He looked at me again. Wide-eyed, but I doubt he saw much.
“Drink this.” I handed him the water bottle.
He drank it, and laid back down, dropping the bottle on the floor.
“Can you still hear me, John?”
“Fucking, yes. God.”
“I know, but listen,” I said, “If you need to puke, there is a large metal bowl on the…”
John’s arm shot out from under him and grabbed the bowl. He lurched out of bed and stuck his head in the bowl. He let out a large dry heave and only drips came out of his mouth. It was probably the ice water. Should have used warm water. I could never remember which it was.
He puked and then laid back down on the pillow.
“John?”
No answer.
He was breathing, his mouth was wide open. I pushed him onto his side.
“Sleep tight.”
I left the room.
He tried, but John was a shitty drinking buddy.
2.
In the living room, Marie and Kris were making Rupert Fluffy happier than I bet he’s been in a long time.
He was a long haired gray cat. It looked like he might be blind in one eye. His purring was so loud I could hear before I got to the living room, and wondered if that was healthy.
“Rupert’s a girl!” Kris said.
“What? No way!” Marie.
“Yep, look!” Kris spread Rupert’s legs. Indeed, little was to be seen.
“Huh. Well, Miss Rupert Fluffy, you’re a girl,” Marie said.
I walked into the kitchen. John’s episode had sobered me up a little, and I needed to rectify that. I was out of rum, and would now move on to a bottle of red wine. I filled a large beer glass with it, and drank half of it there at the sink. I filled it up again, and walked into the living room. The Beatles played on.
“How is he?” Marie asked.
“He’s sleeping. He threw up again, but he’s fine,” I said. “I’ll check on him in a little bit.”
I went and sat at the dining room table while the women continued to fuck with the cat.
“You want to pet her?” Marie asked.
“No,” I said.
“Fine then poopy. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Drink, I guess. How’s your drink?”
She held up a cosmopolitan glass that was nearly empty and smiled goofily at me. “De-lic-ious.”
I raised my glass to that, and drank down half of my wine. I put the glass down, and let the warmth slide over my body. Paul McCartney told me I would begin to make it better, my beautiful wife was happy in front of me, my friends were around me, and I was smiling and felt great. At this rate, 2011 was shaping up to be a banner year. Naaaaaa, na, na, nanana naaaa, na na na naaa , hey Jude.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Wine and Modest Mouse (Fuck the Darkness)
Up until this point, all of the entries in this blog have been copy/paste jobs from my rapidly growing archive. Tonight, dear lucky reader, you get something fresh, and possibly insane. You see, despite my strong attraction to all things alcohol, I rarely write with it. I have better things to be doing drunk than sitting alone in front of a keyboard. Like sitting alone in front of the television. Or with a guitar, playing the same two notes over and over and over and over.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, I am ending a long, busy, and fairly decent day. I have a bottle of Red Cat in the refrigerator (one for the housewives), and have apparently decided that old Modest Mouse would be the best music to go along with it. "Dramamine", "Trailer Trash" and two glasses in, and here I am.
"I'll write in my blog," I say.
But, what do I have to say at the moment? What what what, do I have to say?
And then it fucking dawns on me. I am fairly certain I have nothing to say. Not just tonight, but, ever. Looking back through my posts (and as the wine and evening roll on, eventually my archive), I don't see much. I am angry at the world (as any self respecting person should be). I am angry at my father (as a massive amount of my generation is), and I am happy to see beauty around me (as all people should, because beautiful reader, it is every where). But how does this differentiate me from anyone else?
Why are you bothering to read this at all?
Why am I bothering to write this?
I suppose that I am either A.) expecting some sort of beautiful universal truth to eventually drip out, or B.) so narcissistic that I think that whatever drivel I write is actually worth reading. I think it's safe to say that both you and I know that neither of those two options are very likely, if not impossible altogether. Am I alone in this?
What do you love? Why do you do it? My musician friends. My writer friends. My artist friends. Why do you continue to create, when your shows are empty, your paintings won't sell, your words go unheard? What is it that you are trying to say with your invisible work? To what ends are you searching?
God damn it, I love you. You tireless, diligent, unending creators. I know why you do it. You create because you have to create. There is no other option but to make. To paint, play, and write. To leave something behind, to get something out, to not let the chaos strangling this ball of shit in space drive you mad. You wonderful people. I see you. With your tired eyes and your dashed dreams. Yet you continue, and I am with you.
I am with you.
I have no other option but to fill hard drive after hard drive with songs. To cover canvases with shitty paintings. To fill notebooks with bullshit. I do it to survive. I do it to make breathing effortless. I do it to make waking up meaningful. I create to fight the darkness.
Oh you creators.
Fuck the darkness.
-A.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, I am ending a long, busy, and fairly decent day. I have a bottle of Red Cat in the refrigerator (one for the housewives), and have apparently decided that old Modest Mouse would be the best music to go along with it. "Dramamine", "Trailer Trash" and two glasses in, and here I am.
"I'll write in my blog," I say.
But, what do I have to say at the moment? What what what, do I have to say?
And then it fucking dawns on me. I am fairly certain I have nothing to say. Not just tonight, but, ever. Looking back through my posts (and as the wine and evening roll on, eventually my archive), I don't see much. I am angry at the world (as any self respecting person should be). I am angry at my father (as a massive amount of my generation is), and I am happy to see beauty around me (as all people should, because beautiful reader, it is every where). But how does this differentiate me from anyone else?
Why are you bothering to read this at all?
Why am I bothering to write this?
I suppose that I am either A.) expecting some sort of beautiful universal truth to eventually drip out, or B.) so narcissistic that I think that whatever drivel I write is actually worth reading. I think it's safe to say that both you and I know that neither of those two options are very likely, if not impossible altogether. Am I alone in this?
What do you love? Why do you do it? My musician friends. My writer friends. My artist friends. Why do you continue to create, when your shows are empty, your paintings won't sell, your words go unheard? What is it that you are trying to say with your invisible work? To what ends are you searching?
God damn it, I love you. You tireless, diligent, unending creators. I know why you do it. You create because you have to create. There is no other option but to make. To paint, play, and write. To leave something behind, to get something out, to not let the chaos strangling this ball of shit in space drive you mad. You wonderful people. I see you. With your tired eyes and your dashed dreams. Yet you continue, and I am with you.
I am with you.
I have no other option but to fill hard drive after hard drive with songs. To cover canvases with shitty paintings. To fill notebooks with bullshit. I do it to survive. I do it to make breathing effortless. I do it to make waking up meaningful. I create to fight the darkness.
Oh you creators.
Fuck the darkness.
-A.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Skeleton was Dead
A skeleton walked down the sidewalk, watching his steps. Wind whistled through his ribs, and his teeth chattered along with it. He was cold. November had settled in, and he probably shouldn’t have been walking bare, but he had to see if Laura was home.
Cars drove by, and they honked their horns at him. They were always rude to skeletons these days. Some people shouted things at him. Juvenile things like “Boner”, and “Hollow body”. He kept his head down.
He had the foresight to wear his boots, and a wool knit hat. It kept sliding over his sockets. Maybe Laura would have a jacket he could borrow.
The sky was grey, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if it started raining, or snowing. That was the skeletons luck.
Laura worked at the Red Cross blood bank across town. She didn’t make much there, but she liked to think she was helping the world. She filed billing sheets.
He loved Laura.
The skeleton came to the largest intersection in town. Five roads that intersected in what was supposed to be a traffic circle, but was really more of a traffic pentagon. It made for an amusing sight during rush hour. This however, was not rush hour. It was six-thirty, on Sunday evening. The pentagon was almost barren, save for one car that just now approached, slowed, and took each turn carefully until pulling off directly in front of the skeleton.
He used the crosswalk, reached the other side, and used another crosswalk. He got to Huxley Street, and began the long stretch. More cars drove by. From the corner of his socket, he noticed a small girl staring at him from the backseat of a silver car. He waved a little at her, and he could see she started to scream. He kept his head down, and kept walking.
Behind him, the car with the little screaming girl pulled over and parked. The skeleton didn’t notice the sound of the drivers door opening, or the sound of the driver, her father, slamming it shut, and walking quickly at him.
“Hey! Skinless! Bone Job! Turn around!”
The marrow in his bones chilled, and the skeleton considered fleeing, but he had had enough. The looks from ignorant farm boys, the names, the blind intolerance. Laura always told him he needed to stand up for himself, and he wanted to, but it just seemed so tough.
He decided, today was the day.
“Skeletor! I said turn around!”
The skeleton stopped, and turned slowly to face the man. Behind the man, he could see the daughter, looking out the back window of the car.
For a second, he hated that little girl for this.
The man approached quickly.
“Sir, I don’t want any trouble,” the skeleton said.
“Well, you got it buddy!” the man said, and shoved the skeleton.
The skeleton tripped, and fell backwards. He heard his pelvis chip and scrape against the sidewalk. He felt his wrist crack. He held back a scream.
“Sir, please,” the skeleton said.
“I’m sick of your kind!” screamed the man. “Terrifying our kids! With no skin! No muscle! No SOUL!” The man kicked the skeleton, and the skeleton watched as three of his ribs cracked, and bent inward.
This time, the skeleton could not hold it back. He screamed out.
The man grabbed the skeleton by his upper arm and yanked him up.
“Please sir, this doesn’t have to happen!”
“Sick of your kind!” the man said again, and shoved the skeleton off of the curb, into the street.
The skeletons vision became blurry as his skull hit the pavement, and cracked and chipped. His arm broke off, and his knee bent in the wrong direction. The pain was unbearable.
“Laura!” the skeleton called, but Laura was still a few miles away, sitting at work, filing.
The cold November wind only intensified the pain as it whipped across his bones. A loneliness so large it could rival most European countries swept over the skeleton, and if he could have, he would have cried.
The man stepped off the curb, and kicked the skeleton under the chin. The skull broke loose and rolled under a passing car, crushing it into a powder.
The skeleton was dead. The remains of his body laid broken and cold in the street. Laura filed billing, and forever wondered what happened to her skeleton. The man went back to his car. The daughter turned around, and together they drove home.
-A.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Yiro's Hairspray Flamethrower
I used to start fires. It started small. Burning paper in the woodstove at home. Then, with the discovery that hairspray is flammable, homemade mini-flamethrowers. I would leave my house with a lighter in my pocket, and a can of Aqua-Net in a backpack. I had a friend, Yiro, who would do whatever I did, and so, he started fires. He usually supplied the materials, and when required, the safe house. His mother didn't care.
Like I said, it started small.
Let me step back for a moment, to when it actually began. I have always been a fan of destruction, as far back as I can remember. Equally so with creation, I suppose, which gives me what? A god complex? Sure. Anyway, I always liked to destroy things. Sandcastles, school projects (mine, or other kids), toys, tree houses, whatever. I wasn’t a bad kid. Don’t get that impression. I just occasionally enjoyed dabbling in annihilation. So, it is safe to say, I carry a streak (that would present itself in a wide variety of ways throughout the remainder of my life). My father triggered the fires though.
I had always enjoyed watching flames. Their dance. Their life. The crackle. It excited me, turned me on, on some primal level. Whenever we were camping, or at a bonfire, or heating the house with a woodstove, or cooking on a gas stove, I watched. I saw.
My father left the family for good (after years of false starts), when I was twelve years old. Until this current reflection, I never made the connection. I began to spend a lot more time in our living room, the one with the wood stove. My mother always liked to keep the door closed, so the fire burned slower, but I liked to watch. Whenever she wasn’t around, I would open the door and stare. It was calming, much like noise music and a beautiful woman’s body are to me today. It centered me. I would build the fire. Add to it. Blow on it and watch the flames rise and swell. Watch them eat the wood and the paper, things that were, were no more, once the fire. Soon though, wood and paper began to bore me. I began feeding the stove my old toys. Pretending they would scream as their plastic faces bubbled, melted, and stank. And when it was over, when the excitement faded, I felt like less. I had had my moment of fire and control, but after, I was just short a few old toys.
I was hanging out with Yiro a lot back then. My mother thought he was a bad influence, but I think that we were equally bad for each other, which made for some great times. We would vandalize everything. Signs, walls, summer camps, it didn't matter. We smoked cigarettes and pot. We drank, we became teenagers together. The shitty kids in band t-shirts with dirty hair and bleak futures. That was us. He is a well known, well established body piercer now. I am an unknown, unpublished writer. Fucker.
Anyway, it was Yiro who showed me the hairspray trick. He came over to my house one morning during a school vacation in the winter, all excited.
“You have to check this out.” he said.
He opened my wood stove, and from his hoodie took out an aerosol can of hairspray.
“You have a lighter?” he asked.
I did, and handed it over.
He lit a flame, pointed the hairspray at it, and pressed the button. A flame shot into my fireplace. He held his finger down and the flame kept right on living. It was an angry flame, and had a force to it that stationary pit fires had not. This was a new type of fire for me. This, in my blossoming adolescence, was just one more doorway for me to walk through, much in the same vein as punk rock, my sexual identity, and parental independence.
That morning, amid the snow and ice, we walked down to our neighborhood beach, and with our miniature flame thrower, torched everything from the ice, to some frozen driftwood, to a dead fish we uncovered with a stick. It smelled awful.
Eventually, we got cold, and went back to his house. We listened to CD's, watched MTV (when it was still worth watching), ate, and basically just wasted the day. The vacation ended, and we went back to school. Winter ended, and grass began to show again. By then, we were becoming fairly psychotic with fire. We had begun to “practice” Stop, Drop, and Roll. We would pour hairspray (and rubbing alcohol, which we had discovered burned immensely better) on our clothes, light it, and try to put it out before we would burn. Sometimes, it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
A year went by. We discovered other things. We did other things. Our lives weren’t completely about fire, but it popped up occasionally. Eventually, in the spring of 1998, we met another group of kids, who for whatever reason, were interested in being like us, as fucking stupid as that sounds. So, being the “super cool” kids we were, we took the others out into the woods, and began to show them how to play with fire. Some of the kids pussied out, went home and told their parents. We weren’t allowed to hang out with them after that. One of them though, was all about it.
His name was Cornell.
Yiro and I had a falling out. A stupid disagreement (one we would repeat a few more times before permanently parting ways a few years later) over a girl. I began to hang out more with Cornell. In a way, hanging out with him was better, because I already saw myself as the boss. He wanted to learn from me, and I wanted a bitch.
Summer was approaching, and you could tell all of the kids in school were getting restless. Virginities were lost, fights were rampant. Cornell and I, we set fires.
At first, we just started bon fires at the edge of a small pond near his house. Huge fuckers that would burn for hours while we smoked pot and watched the trees sway. It satisfied both of us for a few weeks. In retrospect, it may be one of the most relaxed periods in my entire life.
We were walking home from one, one Friday. If I remember correctly, we were going to go to the town Bowling Alley to loiter that evening and sing drunken karaoke, but in the woods on the way back from the pond, we saw a couch. Not the sort of couch you would expect to find a half mile in the woods, but a new couch. Some of the pillows and cushions were still wrapped in plastic.
I set it on fire.
I have no idea why it was there, or what it was made of, but that fucking couch went up like it was fucking gasoline coated bible paper. Cornell was damn near squealing with glee, hitting it with a stick over and over, running around it like a fucking madman. I could only step back a little and watch. I was entranced by it. The sound of that fucking idiot, the flames. I made this mad scene. I created it.
One of the plastic wrapped pillows began to expand. I watched it, wondering when the plastic would melt around it. Cornell saw it too, and jammed his stick into it. It still didn’t pop, and he tried to pull his stick back out, but the pillow came with it. He shook it back and forth, and it shot off the end of the stick and flew at my fucking head. I ducked and stuck my arm up to block it, and that is the moment the plastic bubble chose to pop. I was showered with hot melting plastic.
I screamed, and dropped to the ground. Cornell stopped yelping and started panicking. Equally fucking useless. All of the Stop, Drop, and Roll practice came in handy. I rolled around, and most of the plastic came off relatively quickly. There were no flames on me, so far as I know, but I was burnt. My arms, legs and neck mostly.
I was hurt. I stood up, and Cornell was shook.
“What do we do?” he asked.
“We need to go back to the pond.”
We walked back to the pond, and I dove in. I sat in the water for a while, then got dressed and went home, to get ready to go to the bowling alley.
That was almost the last time I set something on fire.
About a week later, Cornell and I were near the pond again. Bored, and out of pot, we decided to explore more of the woods, starting with a long perimeter walk around the pond. His girlfriend had broken up with him recently, but he had been fucking her on an old mattress behind the bowling alley for a little while, and found it hysterical. I heard the story repeatedly.
We got almost halfway around the pond when we found what looked like someone’s old tree house. It was pretty run down, and I would have been surprised if anyone had even looked at it in the past fifteen years or so. It seemed as though sheer luck was holding it together.
We climbed inside.
There was an indistinguishable animal carcass on the floor, and moss, mold and god knows what else all over the walls. There was no roof, but there looked like there was once. We hung out inside for a while. From the tree house, we could see the pond, only thirty or so feet away. Eventually, I climbed down.
I sat on the ground beneath it, and lit a cigarette. Cornell came down and asked me for one. He sat down, I gave him mine, and lit a new one.
Quietly, peacefully, we sat there, smoking, watching the water, and unknowingly feeling the last moments of relatively innocent childhood.
I was still reeling from my father leaving a year and a half earlier. I missed and was angry at Yiro. I thought my heart was broken over some girl. I was failing school, and my apathy toward it worried me. I lit the leaves in front of me on fire, and laid back, onto the ground.
“Do you want me to tell you if it gets close to you?” Cornell asked.
“No.” I said.
“Okay.”
The wind was blowing down my body, toward the pond. The sound of it, and the crackle of the fire, I remember almost falling asleep. Until Cornell said “Um, shit.”
“What?” I asked.
“What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sit up.”
I sat up and looked down. The short hill below me was on fire. The wind had spread the fire, and it had reached the pond, and spread wide, nipping at trees, and burning a large black circle in the ground.
“Shit!” I said.
I jumped up and began to try to stomp it out, but somehow, I was only making it worse. Cornell was up, and doing the same, and then he ran down to the pond, yanked off his shirt and dunked it in the water. He tried using it like a bowl and dumping water on the fire, but it just wasn’t working. We worked for a good twenty minutes, but the fire kept spreading.
Somehow, I burned the palms of my hands during the mess, but I don’t remember how. Cornell lost a perfectly good shirt. Eventually, we just left. The fire had won, and I had lost control of it.
The news that evening told tale of a forest fire near our pond. I couldn’t even take the credit for it.
-A.
Like I said, it started small.
Let me step back for a moment, to when it actually began. I have always been a fan of destruction, as far back as I can remember. Equally so with creation, I suppose, which gives me what? A god complex? Sure. Anyway, I always liked to destroy things. Sandcastles, school projects (mine, or other kids), toys, tree houses, whatever. I wasn’t a bad kid. Don’t get that impression. I just occasionally enjoyed dabbling in annihilation. So, it is safe to say, I carry a streak (that would present itself in a wide variety of ways throughout the remainder of my life). My father triggered the fires though.
I had always enjoyed watching flames. Their dance. Their life. The crackle. It excited me, turned me on, on some primal level. Whenever we were camping, or at a bonfire, or heating the house with a woodstove, or cooking on a gas stove, I watched. I saw.
My father left the family for good (after years of false starts), when I was twelve years old. Until this current reflection, I never made the connection. I began to spend a lot more time in our living room, the one with the wood stove. My mother always liked to keep the door closed, so the fire burned slower, but I liked to watch. Whenever she wasn’t around, I would open the door and stare. It was calming, much like noise music and a beautiful woman’s body are to me today. It centered me. I would build the fire. Add to it. Blow on it and watch the flames rise and swell. Watch them eat the wood and the paper, things that were, were no more, once the fire. Soon though, wood and paper began to bore me. I began feeding the stove my old toys. Pretending they would scream as their plastic faces bubbled, melted, and stank. And when it was over, when the excitement faded, I felt like less. I had had my moment of fire and control, but after, I was just short a few old toys.
I was hanging out with Yiro a lot back then. My mother thought he was a bad influence, but I think that we were equally bad for each other, which made for some great times. We would vandalize everything. Signs, walls, summer camps, it didn't matter. We smoked cigarettes and pot. We drank, we became teenagers together. The shitty kids in band t-shirts with dirty hair and bleak futures. That was us. He is a well known, well established body piercer now. I am an unknown, unpublished writer. Fucker.
Anyway, it was Yiro who showed me the hairspray trick. He came over to my house one morning during a school vacation in the winter, all excited.
“You have to check this out.” he said.
He opened my wood stove, and from his hoodie took out an aerosol can of hairspray.
“You have a lighter?” he asked.
I did, and handed it over.
He lit a flame, pointed the hairspray at it, and pressed the button. A flame shot into my fireplace. He held his finger down and the flame kept right on living. It was an angry flame, and had a force to it that stationary pit fires had not. This was a new type of fire for me. This, in my blossoming adolescence, was just one more doorway for me to walk through, much in the same vein as punk rock, my sexual identity, and parental independence.
That morning, amid the snow and ice, we walked down to our neighborhood beach, and with our miniature flame thrower, torched everything from the ice, to some frozen driftwood, to a dead fish we uncovered with a stick. It smelled awful.
Eventually, we got cold, and went back to his house. We listened to CD's, watched MTV (when it was still worth watching), ate, and basically just wasted the day. The vacation ended, and we went back to school. Winter ended, and grass began to show again. By then, we were becoming fairly psychotic with fire. We had begun to “practice” Stop, Drop, and Roll. We would pour hairspray (and rubbing alcohol, which we had discovered burned immensely better) on our clothes, light it, and try to put it out before we would burn. Sometimes, it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
A year went by. We discovered other things. We did other things. Our lives weren’t completely about fire, but it popped up occasionally. Eventually, in the spring of 1998, we met another group of kids, who for whatever reason, were interested in being like us, as fucking stupid as that sounds. So, being the “super cool” kids we were, we took the others out into the woods, and began to show them how to play with fire. Some of the kids pussied out, went home and told their parents. We weren’t allowed to hang out with them after that. One of them though, was all about it.
His name was Cornell.
Yiro and I had a falling out. A stupid disagreement (one we would repeat a few more times before permanently parting ways a few years later) over a girl. I began to hang out more with Cornell. In a way, hanging out with him was better, because I already saw myself as the boss. He wanted to learn from me, and I wanted a bitch.
Summer was approaching, and you could tell all of the kids in school were getting restless. Virginities were lost, fights were rampant. Cornell and I, we set fires.
At first, we just started bon fires at the edge of a small pond near his house. Huge fuckers that would burn for hours while we smoked pot and watched the trees sway. It satisfied both of us for a few weeks. In retrospect, it may be one of the most relaxed periods in my entire life.
We were walking home from one, one Friday. If I remember correctly, we were going to go to the town Bowling Alley to loiter that evening and sing drunken karaoke, but in the woods on the way back from the pond, we saw a couch. Not the sort of couch you would expect to find a half mile in the woods, but a new couch. Some of the pillows and cushions were still wrapped in plastic.
I set it on fire.
I have no idea why it was there, or what it was made of, but that fucking couch went up like it was fucking gasoline coated bible paper. Cornell was damn near squealing with glee, hitting it with a stick over and over, running around it like a fucking madman. I could only step back a little and watch. I was entranced by it. The sound of that fucking idiot, the flames. I made this mad scene. I created it.
One of the plastic wrapped pillows began to expand. I watched it, wondering when the plastic would melt around it. Cornell saw it too, and jammed his stick into it. It still didn’t pop, and he tried to pull his stick back out, but the pillow came with it. He shook it back and forth, and it shot off the end of the stick and flew at my fucking head. I ducked and stuck my arm up to block it, and that is the moment the plastic bubble chose to pop. I was showered with hot melting plastic.
I screamed, and dropped to the ground. Cornell stopped yelping and started panicking. Equally fucking useless. All of the Stop, Drop, and Roll practice came in handy. I rolled around, and most of the plastic came off relatively quickly. There were no flames on me, so far as I know, but I was burnt. My arms, legs and neck mostly.
I was hurt. I stood up, and Cornell was shook.
“What do we do?” he asked.
“We need to go back to the pond.”
We walked back to the pond, and I dove in. I sat in the water for a while, then got dressed and went home, to get ready to go to the bowling alley.
That was almost the last time I set something on fire.
About a week later, Cornell and I were near the pond again. Bored, and out of pot, we decided to explore more of the woods, starting with a long perimeter walk around the pond. His girlfriend had broken up with him recently, but he had been fucking her on an old mattress behind the bowling alley for a little while, and found it hysterical. I heard the story repeatedly.
We got almost halfway around the pond when we found what looked like someone’s old tree house. It was pretty run down, and I would have been surprised if anyone had even looked at it in the past fifteen years or so. It seemed as though sheer luck was holding it together.
We climbed inside.
There was an indistinguishable animal carcass on the floor, and moss, mold and god knows what else all over the walls. There was no roof, but there looked like there was once. We hung out inside for a while. From the tree house, we could see the pond, only thirty or so feet away. Eventually, I climbed down.
I sat on the ground beneath it, and lit a cigarette. Cornell came down and asked me for one. He sat down, I gave him mine, and lit a new one.
Quietly, peacefully, we sat there, smoking, watching the water, and unknowingly feeling the last moments of relatively innocent childhood.
I was still reeling from my father leaving a year and a half earlier. I missed and was angry at Yiro. I thought my heart was broken over some girl. I was failing school, and my apathy toward it worried me. I lit the leaves in front of me on fire, and laid back, onto the ground.
“Do you want me to tell you if it gets close to you?” Cornell asked.
“No.” I said.
“Okay.”
The wind was blowing down my body, toward the pond. The sound of it, and the crackle of the fire, I remember almost falling asleep. Until Cornell said “Um, shit.”
“What?” I asked.
“What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sit up.”
I sat up and looked down. The short hill below me was on fire. The wind had spread the fire, and it had reached the pond, and spread wide, nipping at trees, and burning a large black circle in the ground.
“Shit!” I said.
I jumped up and began to try to stomp it out, but somehow, I was only making it worse. Cornell was up, and doing the same, and then he ran down to the pond, yanked off his shirt and dunked it in the water. He tried using it like a bowl and dumping water on the fire, but it just wasn’t working. We worked for a good twenty minutes, but the fire kept spreading.
Somehow, I burned the palms of my hands during the mess, but I don’t remember how. Cornell lost a perfectly good shirt. Eventually, we just left. The fire had won, and I had lost control of it.
The news that evening told tale of a forest fire near our pond. I couldn’t even take the credit for it.
-A.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Feed Me, Universe
At the time that I am writing this, I am twenty-seven years old. I always feel like whatever my current age is, anytime before then I was a complete idiot, and now I am a mature, enlightened person. I feel like twenty-seven is a perfectly viable age for any person to know the truths of the universe. When I am twenty-eight, however, I am sure to say “You fool! You knew nothing of the universe then, yet now, surely, you couldn’t be more informed and absolutely correct about it all!” Until I am twenty-nine, that is. And so it continues.
My point is, I know nothing, forever.
I like that notion. That there is always more to learn, feel, and experience. No matter how long I live, how much I try, there will always be an infinitely larger amount left untouched out there.
And it’s not only me. It’s you too. Your neighbors, your ancestors, everyone they have ever met, or seen. All of the combined knowledge of Humankind, is nothing in comparison to the amount of knowledge out there, waiting to be learned.
They say ignorance is bliss. I think that originally that was meant to say that children are so happy because they don’t understand adult problems (something that may be true, even to this day), but to me, it means something entirely different. I am blissful in the idea that no matter how much I find, I can always find more. I am insatiable in that sense. I am at the very first pot of food in an endless buffet with an astronomically large appetite.
Feed me, Universe. I am hungry.
My point is, I know nothing, forever.
I like that notion. That there is always more to learn, feel, and experience. No matter how long I live, how much I try, there will always be an infinitely larger amount left untouched out there.
And it’s not only me. It’s you too. Your neighbors, your ancestors, everyone they have ever met, or seen. All of the combined knowledge of Humankind, is nothing in comparison to the amount of knowledge out there, waiting to be learned.
They say ignorance is bliss. I think that originally that was meant to say that children are so happy because they don’t understand adult problems (something that may be true, even to this day), but to me, it means something entirely different. I am blissful in the idea that no matter how much I find, I can always find more. I am insatiable in that sense. I am at the very first pot of food in an endless buffet with an astronomically large appetite.
Feed me, Universe. I am hungry.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
A Quick Bitch
I never know the next step. Fuck, I can barely remember the step I took to get here. I see all these busy little bees, milling around, becoming successful throughout the course of their lives and I say; "Hey! How did you do that? How did you know what to do next?"
The obvious answers pop up: Go to school, get a degree, be successful. It just seems to me like a few steps are missing in that plan...
I went to college. Afterward, I had a job in my chosen career path, and I hated it. I'm twenty-seven years old, and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. Well, that isn't particularly true. I have a list of things I think may be entertaining for a while. I'd like to run a small store. Comic books, or records or something. I'd like to be game show host (which, I am technically qualified to do). I'd like to be a writer. I'd like to run a charity organization. I'd like to do a lot of shit, but I can't really see myself doing anything and getting paid for it for my entire life. Somehow, it seems, the paychecks would taint the glory of the things I love. And so, I ask; what could I do for my entire life?
I see people doing jobs for decades. The same job, day in, day out. They work it for any number of reasons. They don't care, they need the cash, whatever. However, it almost never seems like anything they actually want to be doing. They burn through their lives forty to eighty hours at a time, toiling away miserably, or numb. I simply cannot fathom living like that. Going through life, living for the weekend, where you can look around at all of the shit you've accumulated in the amount of time you've been working for the paper mill, that you never actually have time to enjoy.
There is another part. Creating. Two or three times a week, my friend S. and I find ourselves coming back from a basement in a town about thirty miles from either of us, where we set up amplifiers and instruments, and scream our little hearts out until all hours of the morning. The next day, I am always tired, cloud-headed, and sore, so why do I do it? It makes me happy. It fills that gap that a working adulthood has created in my life. I have only so many years on the planet, and I have the capability to create, so I do. I fill boxes with cassettes and cd's. I fill hard drive after hard drive with music. I paint anything I can find, and I write like a motherfucker. Ten years may pass, but at the end of it, I will be able to look back, and not think of the exhausting nights, or the irritable mornings. I won't think of the gas money or the job I was working. Ten years will pass, and I will look back, and I will say "look at all this shit I made with my own hands. From my own brain."
"Why don't you make music for a living?"
Just kidding. That's so ridiculous, no one would ever say that.
I have been in the same job for two years now, and it's the longest I have ever had one job. I get so bored and frustrated, I always end up quitting, taking a month off, and finding something new. It all just gets so monotonous. Advancement is rarely something to get excited about, and to be honest, it seems like the responsibility/raise ratio of a promotion is rarely worth the effort. But I want to succeed. I want to be happy, and well off.
How do I get there?
Work hard. Save. Buy a house...
No no no. We've missed the point.
Welcome to my confused and confusing fucking head.
-A.
The obvious answers pop up: Go to school, get a degree, be successful. It just seems to me like a few steps are missing in that plan...
I went to college. Afterward, I had a job in my chosen career path, and I hated it. I'm twenty-seven years old, and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. Well, that isn't particularly true. I have a list of things I think may be entertaining for a while. I'd like to run a small store. Comic books, or records or something. I'd like to be game show host (which, I am technically qualified to do). I'd like to be a writer. I'd like to run a charity organization. I'd like to do a lot of shit, but I can't really see myself doing anything and getting paid for it for my entire life. Somehow, it seems, the paychecks would taint the glory of the things I love. And so, I ask; what could I do for my entire life?
I see people doing jobs for decades. The same job, day in, day out. They work it for any number of reasons. They don't care, they need the cash, whatever. However, it almost never seems like anything they actually want to be doing. They burn through their lives forty to eighty hours at a time, toiling away miserably, or numb. I simply cannot fathom living like that. Going through life, living for the weekend, where you can look around at all of the shit you've accumulated in the amount of time you've been working for the paper mill, that you never actually have time to enjoy.
There is another part. Creating. Two or three times a week, my friend S. and I find ourselves coming back from a basement in a town about thirty miles from either of us, where we set up amplifiers and instruments, and scream our little hearts out until all hours of the morning. The next day, I am always tired, cloud-headed, and sore, so why do I do it? It makes me happy. It fills that gap that a working adulthood has created in my life. I have only so many years on the planet, and I have the capability to create, so I do. I fill boxes with cassettes and cd's. I fill hard drive after hard drive with music. I paint anything I can find, and I write like a motherfucker. Ten years may pass, but at the end of it, I will be able to look back, and not think of the exhausting nights, or the irritable mornings. I won't think of the gas money or the job I was working. Ten years will pass, and I will look back, and I will say "look at all this shit I made with my own hands. From my own brain."
"Why don't you make music for a living?"
Just kidding. That's so ridiculous, no one would ever say that.
I have been in the same job for two years now, and it's the longest I have ever had one job. I get so bored and frustrated, I always end up quitting, taking a month off, and finding something new. It all just gets so monotonous. Advancement is rarely something to get excited about, and to be honest, it seems like the responsibility/raise ratio of a promotion is rarely worth the effort. But I want to succeed. I want to be happy, and well off.
How do I get there?
Work hard. Save. Buy a house...
No no no. We've missed the point.
Welcome to my confused and confusing fucking head.
-A.
A Long Night with Spider-Man
A few minutes ago I began to write another rant. It was about expatriation and the hurdles it takes. How it's very much like leaving an abusive lover. In classic victimized wife mode, I deleted it before He sees it and I have another doorknob incident. Instead, I am going to tell you about the first time I took acid.
I was seventeen and sitting in a diner, playing with sugar packets. My girlfriend was a few tables down, talking to some of her hippie friends we had run into earlier that night. I didn't like them, so I waited for her to finish. I had almost completed a small ranch-style house across the table, and she came back and sat down across from me.
"What's that?" She asked.
"Ranch house."
"Oh. Want to take acid?"
"Sure."
It was that simple. I put the last few roof tiles on my house and asked; "Where'd you get it?"
"Where do you think I got it?"
"Hippies?"
"Yeah."
"All right. Do we take it now, or... I've never done it." I said.
"Well, let's go outside, so no one sees."
We got up, left some money on the table and walked out. She waved to a flock of grinning scumbags on the way out.
It was summer, and the night was clear and warm. We walked behind the diner, and she took out a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack. In it, were two small pieces of paper. She carefully tapped them out onto her hand, and dropped the cellophane on the ground. "Take it like this, just under your tongue," she said, demonstrating.
I took my tab from her palm, and put it under my tongue. "I just leave it there?"
"Yep."
"For how long?"
"I don't know, a while."
"Then what?" I asked.
"Swallow it, I guess."
"What do you mean, you guess? Haven't you done this before?"
"No."
I felt it under my tongue, and waited. "How long does it take?"
"A few hours I think. Let's go take a walk."
"Okay."
We walked out through the parking lot, and headed into town. The cars with their windows down, their stereos pounding. On nights like that, everyone is celebrating. Headlights rolled past us, bending and twisting shadows. Yellow street lamps gave gas station parking lots dreamlike glows. The world was beautiful.
An hour later, after deciding to walk to one of our friends houses, I scratched my arm. Then I scratched it again.
"Are you all right?" She asked.
"Yeah, itchy. Feels like spiderwebs on me."
She laughed. "That's funny."
"Why?"
"Because they told me it was called Spider-Man."
"It sucks."
Lights in town seemed brighter. More fluid. After another hour, we reached our friends house. She knocked on the door.
Standing on his garbage filled porch, a realization swept over me. The world was clear. I chewed on that for a while, what seemed like months, and then our friend (who we will call Roger) opened the door.
"Hey guys," he said. "Come in."
His house reminded me of a hobbit dwelling, if they had hobbit hoarders who lived in government hobbit housing. It was disgusting. We walked into the living room, and Roger sat down next to a chubby girl with black hair. "This is Sam."
"Hey Sam," my girlfriend said.
"Hi," Sam said.
Roger began telling us the story of how they met. I'll keep it brief for you. They met online in a Yahoo chat room. She was from North Carolina, but Roger had saved up for a few months to buy her a bus ticket to New York. There was something about fighting with her parents, but, I had left the conversation at that poiint, and was wandering around the kitchen trying to guess what laid behind each cabinet door before I opened it. I seem to remember having a perfect success rate, but that might have been Spider-Man adjusting my memory.
After a while, I turned around and my girlfriend was sitting in a chair in the doorway, watching me. "What are you doing?" She asked.
"I know what are behind the doors."
"I'd hope so. I just watched you go through the kitchen three times."
I stopped. "Oh."
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Okay. You?"
"I'm good. I think it kicked in."
"I think you're right," I said.
"Roger and I are going out for a smoke. Want to come?"
"Sure."
She held out her hand and walked me to the front of the house. It seemed much larger then.
Walking through the front door was the difference between dreams and real life. Immediate and disorienting. The comforting light of the kitchen was gone. The world was drenched in darkness. I began to feel anxious.
I didn't smoke at the time. She and Roger lit up their cigarettes, and I watched the cherries buck and bounce against the black backdrop. They created pictures and words. They seemed living, grew, and diminished, grew and diminished. Roger butted his.
"Oh what the fuck!" I said.
My girlfriend was staring at me. Roger went inside. "What did you say?"
"I don't know."
I began wandering around in the front yard. It was mostly dried mud with patches of grass every ten feet or so. The garbage smell from the porch filled the entire yard. I walked onto the sidewalk in front of the house, and it was gone. The air was clean and invigorating. Huge white lights swam by me in pairs, chased by smaller reds. My head felt open. Alive, and for the first time, comprehending of the world around me.
Behind me, I heard three small clicks.
Click. Click. Click.
I turned away from the beauty of the world beyond me, and back into the trash.
Click click click.
The night seemed to be substance. I could move through it, touch it. It waved in front of me like curtains. I pushed them away. My girlfriend stood a few feet away from me. Her face was different. She was holding something.
Click click click.
I couldn't see it, but it was making the noise.
"It's going to get you," she said.
It was.
She began to walk toward me with it.
Click. Click. Click.
Click, click, click.
Then, she began to run at me. I ran.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK!" It yelled.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!"
Behind me, I heard a loud thud, and the clicking stopped. I turned, and she was on the ground, rolling on the mud, giggling.
Cautiously, I walked up to her. "What are you doing?"
"Laughing." She laughed more.
I looked around for what was clicking. In her hand she held a small lawn ornament. A squirrel. Suddenly to me, she became something else. She was no longer the person I could trust. She was no longer my team mate. She was out to hurt me. To make a fool of me. I picked up the squirrel.
"Hey!" She said.
I threw the squirrel across the road and watched it shatter in a parking lot.
She crouched up on her knees and glared at me.
I went inside.
The house was bright. Warming. The paranoia of the outside seemed to slide right off of me. I glanced into the bedroom and saw a girl laying across the bed, covered in blood and not moving. I walked into the living room and sat down next to Roger.
"Have you seen Sam?" He asked me.
"No."
We watched television for a little while, and Roger got up.
It was a movie on T.V., something about a bear.
A loud, grating scream ripped through the house. I thought my heart was going to explode. I jumped off of the couch and fell over the coffee table, staring out at the front door.
"Oh my god! Sam!" Roger was yelling.
I got up, and trudged through the living room, out toward the bedroom. My girlfriend came in as I passed the front door, and we walked toward Roger. He came bursting out of the bedroom, but now he too was covered in blood, babbling incoherently, and crying.
My girlfriend screeamed and ran out of the house. I was frozen. The whole world was crashing down. Everything that meant anything. All happiness was dead. This was the end. This was judgement. This was the gnashing of teeth. So much blood everywhere. I fell against the wall and slid down it.
Before long, lights flooded the house. Red, Blue, White. Patriotic. America to the rescue. Banging on the front door. Bloody Roger running around the house screaming. Uniforms came in, trying to say something. I didn't know.
They took Sam.
Roger was yelling at me. I couldn't understand him.
He continued to yell, and soon, I heard him.
"Get the fuck up! We have to go now!"
He pulled my arm, and got me to my feet. He dragged me outside, and then we were driving through town.
"I'm sorry man," he said, "but I need you right now."
Guitars poured through the speakers, grinding and beautiful.
More lights.
The car shut off.
"Let's go!" Roger said.
My door opened, and I was being pulled through another parking lot. We came to a bright room full of chairs.
After what seemed like an hour, and a few thousand trips into the bathroom, I came down, and realized we were in the emergency room. Waiting to see if Sam was okay.
She was. She cut herself pretty bad, after having some sort of breakdown on the phone with her mother, but she would see another day (although at this point, I can't be sure that there were too many more she ended up seeing). Roger ended up driving me home, and putting me in the shower. My girlfriend came home later that day after apparently falling asleep in the back of someones pick-up truck.
That was the first time I took acid.
-A.
I was seventeen and sitting in a diner, playing with sugar packets. My girlfriend was a few tables down, talking to some of her hippie friends we had run into earlier that night. I didn't like them, so I waited for her to finish. I had almost completed a small ranch-style house across the table, and she came back and sat down across from me.
"What's that?" She asked.
"Ranch house."
"Oh. Want to take acid?"
"Sure."
It was that simple. I put the last few roof tiles on my house and asked; "Where'd you get it?"
"Where do you think I got it?"
"Hippies?"
"Yeah."
"All right. Do we take it now, or... I've never done it." I said.
"Well, let's go outside, so no one sees."
We got up, left some money on the table and walked out. She waved to a flock of grinning scumbags on the way out.
It was summer, and the night was clear and warm. We walked behind the diner, and she took out a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack. In it, were two small pieces of paper. She carefully tapped them out onto her hand, and dropped the cellophane on the ground. "Take it like this, just under your tongue," she said, demonstrating.
I took my tab from her palm, and put it under my tongue. "I just leave it there?"
"Yep."
"For how long?"
"I don't know, a while."
"Then what?" I asked.
"Swallow it, I guess."
"What do you mean, you guess? Haven't you done this before?"
"No."
I felt it under my tongue, and waited. "How long does it take?"
"A few hours I think. Let's go take a walk."
"Okay."
We walked out through the parking lot, and headed into town. The cars with their windows down, their stereos pounding. On nights like that, everyone is celebrating. Headlights rolled past us, bending and twisting shadows. Yellow street lamps gave gas station parking lots dreamlike glows. The world was beautiful.
An hour later, after deciding to walk to one of our friends houses, I scratched my arm. Then I scratched it again.
"Are you all right?" She asked.
"Yeah, itchy. Feels like spiderwebs on me."
She laughed. "That's funny."
"Why?"
"Because they told me it was called Spider-Man."
"It sucks."
Lights in town seemed brighter. More fluid. After another hour, we reached our friends house. She knocked on the door.
Standing on his garbage filled porch, a realization swept over me. The world was clear. I chewed on that for a while, what seemed like months, and then our friend (who we will call Roger) opened the door.
"Hey guys," he said. "Come in."
His house reminded me of a hobbit dwelling, if they had hobbit hoarders who lived in government hobbit housing. It was disgusting. We walked into the living room, and Roger sat down next to a chubby girl with black hair. "This is Sam."
"Hey Sam," my girlfriend said.
"Hi," Sam said.
Roger began telling us the story of how they met. I'll keep it brief for you. They met online in a Yahoo chat room. She was from North Carolina, but Roger had saved up for a few months to buy her a bus ticket to New York. There was something about fighting with her parents, but, I had left the conversation at that poiint, and was wandering around the kitchen trying to guess what laid behind each cabinet door before I opened it. I seem to remember having a perfect success rate, but that might have been Spider-Man adjusting my memory.
After a while, I turned around and my girlfriend was sitting in a chair in the doorway, watching me. "What are you doing?" She asked.
"I know what are behind the doors."
"I'd hope so. I just watched you go through the kitchen three times."
I stopped. "Oh."
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Okay. You?"
"I'm good. I think it kicked in."
"I think you're right," I said.
"Roger and I are going out for a smoke. Want to come?"
"Sure."
She held out her hand and walked me to the front of the house. It seemed much larger then.
Walking through the front door was the difference between dreams and real life. Immediate and disorienting. The comforting light of the kitchen was gone. The world was drenched in darkness. I began to feel anxious.
I didn't smoke at the time. She and Roger lit up their cigarettes, and I watched the cherries buck and bounce against the black backdrop. They created pictures and words. They seemed living, grew, and diminished, grew and diminished. Roger butted his.
"Oh what the fuck!" I said.
My girlfriend was staring at me. Roger went inside. "What did you say?"
"I don't know."
I began wandering around in the front yard. It was mostly dried mud with patches of grass every ten feet or so. The garbage smell from the porch filled the entire yard. I walked onto the sidewalk in front of the house, and it was gone. The air was clean and invigorating. Huge white lights swam by me in pairs, chased by smaller reds. My head felt open. Alive, and for the first time, comprehending of the world around me.
Behind me, I heard three small clicks.
Click. Click. Click.
I turned away from the beauty of the world beyond me, and back into the trash.
Click click click.
The night seemed to be substance. I could move through it, touch it. It waved in front of me like curtains. I pushed them away. My girlfriend stood a few feet away from me. Her face was different. She was holding something.
Click click click.
I couldn't see it, but it was making the noise.
"It's going to get you," she said.
It was.
She began to walk toward me with it.
Click. Click. Click.
Click, click, click.
Then, she began to run at me. I ran.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK!" It yelled.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!"
Behind me, I heard a loud thud, and the clicking stopped. I turned, and she was on the ground, rolling on the mud, giggling.
Cautiously, I walked up to her. "What are you doing?"
"Laughing." She laughed more.
I looked around for what was clicking. In her hand she held a small lawn ornament. A squirrel. Suddenly to me, she became something else. She was no longer the person I could trust. She was no longer my team mate. She was out to hurt me. To make a fool of me. I picked up the squirrel.
"Hey!" She said.
I threw the squirrel across the road and watched it shatter in a parking lot.
She crouched up on her knees and glared at me.
I went inside.
The house was bright. Warming. The paranoia of the outside seemed to slide right off of me. I glanced into the bedroom and saw a girl laying across the bed, covered in blood and not moving. I walked into the living room and sat down next to Roger.
"Have you seen Sam?" He asked me.
"No."
We watched television for a little while, and Roger got up.
It was a movie on T.V., something about a bear.
A loud, grating scream ripped through the house. I thought my heart was going to explode. I jumped off of the couch and fell over the coffee table, staring out at the front door.
"Oh my god! Sam!" Roger was yelling.
I got up, and trudged through the living room, out toward the bedroom. My girlfriend came in as I passed the front door, and we walked toward Roger. He came bursting out of the bedroom, but now he too was covered in blood, babbling incoherently, and crying.
My girlfriend screeamed and ran out of the house. I was frozen. The whole world was crashing down. Everything that meant anything. All happiness was dead. This was the end. This was judgement. This was the gnashing of teeth. So much blood everywhere. I fell against the wall and slid down it.
Before long, lights flooded the house. Red, Blue, White. Patriotic. America to the rescue. Banging on the front door. Bloody Roger running around the house screaming. Uniforms came in, trying to say something. I didn't know.
They took Sam.
Roger was yelling at me. I couldn't understand him.
He continued to yell, and soon, I heard him.
"Get the fuck up! We have to go now!"
He pulled my arm, and got me to my feet. He dragged me outside, and then we were driving through town.
"I'm sorry man," he said, "but I need you right now."
Guitars poured through the speakers, grinding and beautiful.
More lights.
The car shut off.
"Let's go!" Roger said.
My door opened, and I was being pulled through another parking lot. We came to a bright room full of chairs.
After what seemed like an hour, and a few thousand trips into the bathroom, I came down, and realized we were in the emergency room. Waiting to see if Sam was okay.
She was. She cut herself pretty bad, after having some sort of breakdown on the phone with her mother, but she would see another day (although at this point, I can't be sure that there were too many more she ended up seeing). Roger ended up driving me home, and putting me in the shower. My girlfriend came home later that day after apparently falling asleep in the back of someones pick-up truck.
That was the first time I took acid.
-A.
In the Wake of Eternal Summer Evenings
My father is going to die. Not anytime soon as far as I know, but eventually. We haven't spoken since shortly after I was married almost four years ago, and before that, maybe another four years. We have a complicated relationship, to say the least, he and I.
I have two young sons, one of which is creeping slowly into adolescence as I type this. I am constantly worried about how they view me, and what their adulthood impression of me as a father will eventually be. Will I be remembered as a disciplinarian? An easy going guy? A dreamer? Or a shit? The more I try to label it and steer myself toward it, the more confused I get. I realize that that there is no single trait that carries on with your name, at least to those who grew up with you around. It is a collection of traits. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my father wasn't solely a "shit". He was a man lost inside himself, desperately aching for freedom. Freedom from the confines of the nine to five. Freedom from the rule of his own father. Freedom from age. My father, as cruel and revolting as he may have been, was just a lonely child in a dark forest.
I know little of his childhood. He was born in Morocco, on an Army base. He was the third of ten children, the first male. He was smart as fuck, but was more interested in girls and quick cash than studies and the future. He and his father fought fiercely, and often, leading up to him being kicked out of the house at age fourteen. He lived in abandoned vehicles, at his grandmothers, worked odd jobs, and rented rooms. He worked construction, and spent his money on new clothes, girls, pot, and whatever else was around to keep a smile on his face, and worries anywhere else. He was the same young man you pass in the summer outside of a bar, or pounding bass in their new car. A young man, loving life.
Around 18, he met my mother, and at 19, they got married. They had their fun together for a few years, and when he was 26, I was born. This is where my father becomes abnormal. Well, abnormal in the face of what someone should be.
The way I see it, at this point, married with a kid, my father realized he was no longer free. The man who refused to fade with age. He who would be young, virile, and tough as fuck for ever, was moving slowly toward death. He was never a calm man, and to ever say he was "happy" would be an exaggeration, often wildly so. He got cold feet, and to make an extremely long story much too short, he fucked up. A lot. Eventually, as I turned twelve, he took off for good.
And it was a blessing.
Over the next decade, I saw him every few years, and even stayed with him for a few months when I was twenty to try to mend the relationship. It was a disaster. We didn't speak for a few more years, and I even went so far as to tell him, and mean it, that my life was better when he wasn't in it.
When I was twenty-three, I felt guilty, and got lunch with him one day. I introduced him to my wife. We shot the shit. His hair was grey. His face was a mess of lines and bags. He was getting older. He talked about friends dying. He talked about aching bones. Wasted years. I was still upset with him, for everything (mostly that I haven't divulged here). We left, and I haven't spoken to him since. I wouldn't even know how to get a hold of him if I wanted to.
I can't imagine being him in this scenario. To be so estranged from my own sons that they feel toward me as I do him? I understand his position. Wanting to be free. Escape. Eternal summer evenings. Booze, women, smiles, I get it. But to go through with it? Or, more accurately, to think you could actually succeed in it, and to try? The sacrifice that takes? The wake of dead relationships you leave behind?
And now, here I am. Twenty-seven years old. Two sons. And wondering when my father is going to die. Am I so angry at him that I can forsake him completely? Have I tried enough? Do I keep trying? Do I keep subjecting myself to his shit? How much longer before I don't have the opportunity to make the choice?
My father is 55 this summer, and he has been less than careful with his health. It won't be long. My father is going to die. What do I do? What would I want my own sons to do? Is that even a relevant comparison? I should probably figure this shit out soon, because eventually, my father is going to die.
-A.
I have two young sons, one of which is creeping slowly into adolescence as I type this. I am constantly worried about how they view me, and what their adulthood impression of me as a father will eventually be. Will I be remembered as a disciplinarian? An easy going guy? A dreamer? Or a shit? The more I try to label it and steer myself toward it, the more confused I get. I realize that that there is no single trait that carries on with your name, at least to those who grew up with you around. It is a collection of traits. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my father wasn't solely a "shit". He was a man lost inside himself, desperately aching for freedom. Freedom from the confines of the nine to five. Freedom from the rule of his own father. Freedom from age. My father, as cruel and revolting as he may have been, was just a lonely child in a dark forest.
I know little of his childhood. He was born in Morocco, on an Army base. He was the third of ten children, the first male. He was smart as fuck, but was more interested in girls and quick cash than studies and the future. He and his father fought fiercely, and often, leading up to him being kicked out of the house at age fourteen. He lived in abandoned vehicles, at his grandmothers, worked odd jobs, and rented rooms. He worked construction, and spent his money on new clothes, girls, pot, and whatever else was around to keep a smile on his face, and worries anywhere else. He was the same young man you pass in the summer outside of a bar, or pounding bass in their new car. A young man, loving life.
Around 18, he met my mother, and at 19, they got married. They had their fun together for a few years, and when he was 26, I was born. This is where my father becomes abnormal. Well, abnormal in the face of what someone should be.
The way I see it, at this point, married with a kid, my father realized he was no longer free. The man who refused to fade with age. He who would be young, virile, and tough as fuck for ever, was moving slowly toward death. He was never a calm man, and to ever say he was "happy" would be an exaggeration, often wildly so. He got cold feet, and to make an extremely long story much too short, he fucked up. A lot. Eventually, as I turned twelve, he took off for good.
And it was a blessing.
Over the next decade, I saw him every few years, and even stayed with him for a few months when I was twenty to try to mend the relationship. It was a disaster. We didn't speak for a few more years, and I even went so far as to tell him, and mean it, that my life was better when he wasn't in it.
When I was twenty-three, I felt guilty, and got lunch with him one day. I introduced him to my wife. We shot the shit. His hair was grey. His face was a mess of lines and bags. He was getting older. He talked about friends dying. He talked about aching bones. Wasted years. I was still upset with him, for everything (mostly that I haven't divulged here). We left, and I haven't spoken to him since. I wouldn't even know how to get a hold of him if I wanted to.
I can't imagine being him in this scenario. To be so estranged from my own sons that they feel toward me as I do him? I understand his position. Wanting to be free. Escape. Eternal summer evenings. Booze, women, smiles, I get it. But to go through with it? Or, more accurately, to think you could actually succeed in it, and to try? The sacrifice that takes? The wake of dead relationships you leave behind?
And now, here I am. Twenty-seven years old. Two sons. And wondering when my father is going to die. Am I so angry at him that I can forsake him completely? Have I tried enough? Do I keep trying? Do I keep subjecting myself to his shit? How much longer before I don't have the opportunity to make the choice?
My father is 55 this summer, and he has been less than careful with his health. It won't be long. My father is going to die. What do I do? What would I want my own sons to do? Is that even a relevant comparison? I should probably figure this shit out soon, because eventually, my father is going to die.
-A.
Modern Fatherhood
Let me tell you about some shit.
Like far too many in my generation, I grew up a product of a “broken home”, or a “dysfunctional family”, or as I (and not my various guidance counselors) like to say, fucked. Dad was a junkie who kicked the shit out of my mom a lot. Mom was an artist (and a good one) who gave up her dreams to raise her kids, and take his shit. I remember going on more than one drug run. In fact, when we had a car, it was usually Sunday. All Sunday. My sister and I would have to play with the dumbest fucking kids of whatever dealer my dad hadn’t fucked over yet. The part that disturbs me the most? The kids seldom wore shoes. Regardless of which dealer they belonged to. That part is just weird and a little gross to me. Anyway, Dad would leave us for weeks and months at a time every year for some trollup, or to binge somewhere in the backwoods with the same shit kicking wastes he had known since his two years in high school. Dad was a real piece of shit. One time, I remember, abandoning the three not-him members of our family in the middle of frozen nowhere, Maine, with no money, no car, nothing. I remember crying and missing him terribly all the time back then. I also remember my mother stepping up to the plate, and taking care of shit. My mother kicked ass. She was just terrified of him. I can’t blame her. I was too, when I wasn’t vying for his attention, or approval.
I see the clichés. I know this is the story of every do-nothing waste you know. That’s my point. What the fuck was going on in the 80’s and 90’s that did that to men? Was it their reaction to over-bearing fathers of the earlier generations? Were they just 70’s free spirits that refused to grow old (and who now, if not dead, are finding they do grow old, and painfully)?
Today, of the people I know, I can say that I know quite a few single parents, a surprising amount of them fathers, and there would be more if not for “moms” that think since He broke up with Her then He doesn’t deserve to raise his child, so She can collect support, social services, and be able to bitch to her friends about Him, the deadbeat. Wow, I struck a nerve of my own, there. Point being, a lot of guys I know are trying their hardest to be Dads.
Yes, we were all treated like shit throughout our childhoods. Yes, we are all scarred from what we have been forced to see and experience. Yes, we are permanently fucked in a lot of ways, but there is a silver lining. That generation of shitty fathers have spawned a generation of Dads. Dads that hold their children above all else. We are not the over bearing fathers of old. We are not the neglectful, the abusive, or selfish. We are the loving, respectful, and supportive dads. Not all of them, no, but a HUGE number of us.
I had kids young, and it was not easy. In fact, I had my first only two and a half years after my father disappeared. I was fifteen. I was a fucked up young punk, filled with anger, and looking for destruction. But as soon as the baby bump showed, my life was changed. It took me a while to beat adolescence and become the father I wanted to be, but I eventually did. Not exactly what my sons mothers wanted. I fought them both tooth and nail for fucking years for things that the court automatically gives to the mother, and takes from the father. Let me just say that the State of New York does not make it easy to be a single dad. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be. Fun fact; they don’t. New York state family courts actually make about 60 cents for every dollar they charge in child support, last I checked. Balanced, my ass.
Now, quickly, I have covered a little bit of ground here. Shitty 80’s fathers, 00’s dads stepping up, Baby Mommas, and family court. I have one last thing to say before I go;
Dads,
Hang in there. You don’t have to marry her. But love your kids. They deserve it.
Like far too many in my generation, I grew up a product of a “broken home”, or a “dysfunctional family”, or as I (and not my various guidance counselors) like to say, fucked. Dad was a junkie who kicked the shit out of my mom a lot. Mom was an artist (and a good one) who gave up her dreams to raise her kids, and take his shit. I remember going on more than one drug run. In fact, when we had a car, it was usually Sunday. All Sunday. My sister and I would have to play with the dumbest fucking kids of whatever dealer my dad hadn’t fucked over yet. The part that disturbs me the most? The kids seldom wore shoes. Regardless of which dealer they belonged to. That part is just weird and a little gross to me. Anyway, Dad would leave us for weeks and months at a time every year for some trollup, or to binge somewhere in the backwoods with the same shit kicking wastes he had known since his two years in high school. Dad was a real piece of shit. One time, I remember, abandoning the three not-him members of our family in the middle of frozen nowhere, Maine, with no money, no car, nothing. I remember crying and missing him terribly all the time back then. I also remember my mother stepping up to the plate, and taking care of shit. My mother kicked ass. She was just terrified of him. I can’t blame her. I was too, when I wasn’t vying for his attention, or approval.
I see the clichés. I know this is the story of every do-nothing waste you know. That’s my point. What the fuck was going on in the 80’s and 90’s that did that to men? Was it their reaction to over-bearing fathers of the earlier generations? Were they just 70’s free spirits that refused to grow old (and who now, if not dead, are finding they do grow old, and painfully)?
Today, of the people I know, I can say that I know quite a few single parents, a surprising amount of them fathers, and there would be more if not for “moms” that think since He broke up with Her then He doesn’t deserve to raise his child, so She can collect support, social services, and be able to bitch to her friends about Him, the deadbeat. Wow, I struck a nerve of my own, there. Point being, a lot of guys I know are trying their hardest to be Dads.
Yes, we were all treated like shit throughout our childhoods. Yes, we are all scarred from what we have been forced to see and experience. Yes, we are permanently fucked in a lot of ways, but there is a silver lining. That generation of shitty fathers have spawned a generation of Dads. Dads that hold their children above all else. We are not the over bearing fathers of old. We are not the neglectful, the abusive, or selfish. We are the loving, respectful, and supportive dads. Not all of them, no, but a HUGE number of us.
I had kids young, and it was not easy. In fact, I had my first only two and a half years after my father disappeared. I was fifteen. I was a fucked up young punk, filled with anger, and looking for destruction. But as soon as the baby bump showed, my life was changed. It took me a while to beat adolescence and become the father I wanted to be, but I eventually did. Not exactly what my sons mothers wanted. I fought them both tooth and nail for fucking years for things that the court automatically gives to the mother, and takes from the father. Let me just say that the State of New York does not make it easy to be a single dad. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be. Fun fact; they don’t. New York state family courts actually make about 60 cents for every dollar they charge in child support, last I checked. Balanced, my ass.
Now, quickly, I have covered a little bit of ground here. Shitty 80’s fathers, 00’s dads stepping up, Baby Mommas, and family court. I have one last thing to say before I go;
Dads,
Hang in there. You don’t have to marry her. But love your kids. They deserve it.
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