one

The first time I met your mother it was overcast. She was sitting alone on a swing set. I was walking around the park, the one across the street from the middle school, thinking about picking up smoking again. It was never really a habit up to that point, but I was giving a series of other things in my life a serious push and cigarettes were about to join them. I had on that red flannel, the one you used to wear to bed in the winter, and some hand-me-down jeans. When I stopped to light that first smoke I noticed her. She had her feet crossed in front of her and was using the heels of her boots to make circles in the sand. Her hair was covering her face and when she tried to pull it back some of it stuck to the corner of her mouth. She smiled and pulled a small bottle of schnapps from her inside vest pocket.

There was a day when I was half your age that I was at the same park. My great-grandmother and I were there. Some middle school kids sat at the top of this rocket ship that stood in the middle of the park. You would climb ladders to the different levels, the second highest had a metal slide that burnt your skin in the summer. Those kids were on the top level, drinking schnapps and smoking cigarettes. My great-grandmother kept muttering under her breath about them as we walked around the park. At one point she bent down to my ear, and pointing at the rocket said "Don't you ever be like those kids".

continued...

Lost and Found

The train smells a certain way. This one smells different then the others. Everything references drugs lately. Today, this second between the inhale and exhale is full of minutes from the summer. I stop trying to find it. I just let it wash over me and think about how it could be so much easier. Instead I'll drink malt liquor, tell stories about people I don't miss and ride this train alone.

This is your regret, backwards

Exhale.

Turn the key.

Turn some song up about someone else louder than you can bear.

Scratch at your skin.

Get in your car.

Walk outside.

Pound your drink.

Eye fuck gently those blue eyes over there.

Sip.

Practice makes perfect.

Eye fuck the shit out of the painting on the wall.

Sip.

Inhale.

(fuck. you accidentally exhaled. you weren't ready. the room wasn't ready. this isn't how it was supposed to be. it is ok. no one noticed. sneak this one in.)

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh.

Sip.

Fix your bangs.

Scratch your nose.

Sip.

Count ex-lovers on your phone.

Count ex-lovers in the pool.

Sip.

Pick at the shit in your teeth.

Pick apart the man leaning next to the fireplace.

Pick apart the woman in that short dress.

Sip.

Dart your eyes around the room.

Inhale.

Three things

1: A freshly minted woman is crying in a hallway. She is pouring her self out to a man in a studded jacket. She is covered in scars and bruises that she doesn't remember or care enough to know their history. I try to recall those days long enough ago that they are all happy. Maybe the drugs have caught up to her. Maybe the lighted scarf and glow stick wand didn't make up for the lack of cards. Maybe I'm too over caring to care.

2: People keep walking into the kitchen and turning on the stove. They are making ramen. It is various times between 5:30 and 6 in the morning. There has been too much this evening. And that is fine. Sometimes these things have their place. Myself, here, not so much.

3: This month is the end to a lot of things. The first year in a new decade and the final year for things. It is shit how most of this ended. But for some reason, in this house, where someone I loved lives, my head against a wall by a fireplace, hearing beds hopped on built up and destroyed, things make sense. I keep hearing loud voices from a hall. I keep hearing tears punctuate sentences that start with he. I keep being not be able to find answers. But excitingly, I keep closing doors, turning pages and finding things to burn. I had plans and goals tonight. I did not accomplish them. But that's good. Because the couple on the couch seem to be accomplishing enough of these things for me. And I don't need that anymore.

For someone, maybe

There is rain. And a large tree is missing. It has been weeks, but it isn't so much worth paying attention. Did it fall on you, your car, your wife, or your future ability to make a living? No. Move on. I only practice my speech for quitting my job while waiting to make this left. I also come up with plans for rapid evacuation and/or decent into hell. It is fine.

These are the perfect shoes for you. Enough lift to separate you from boys and enough angle to attract men. Those three months in that room with grayish walls and a nearly consistent empty bed taught you only how to keep from going back there. But nothing else. I can tell by the way you bite the lip of those unsuspecting girls you kiss.

A stomach turns and you can't tell if it is because you skipped a meal to keep the evening going or you are sick of the thoughts in your own head.

Decide to stop yawning because you aren't tired, you are just bored.

I was thinking about crying. Everyone turned off their phones. Everyone fell asleep, or is fucking. And I'm not doing either of those. At least tears mean something. Something shallow. Something forced. Something.

But fuck all that noise, right?

You can't even give away the parts of your life that matter. You can't fill the holes with an open casting call. You can't expect phone calls, thoughts, lust, desire, boredom, shots, baggies or the occasional peeping tom.

You can't keep fingers crossed for anything.

Everyone is mad.

Everyone is leaving.

Everyone will be gone on Christmas day.

So you'll sit on a couch and count ghost steps to beds and doors that get no use. You'll listen for the water to boil that will heat the noodles of your twenty cent Christmas dinner. You'll say something to no one at all. And the sun will set and you will got to bed.

(I can only imagine you occupying sixty-four seconds of space in my life. They are non-consecutive. No foreplay. No conversation. Just this list of how one would make it through an evening: 8 smiles. One on accident, more than a year ago, when no one knew anyone's name. 2 occasions in a spa and/or jacuzzi both times with no reasonable ambition or ability to control your actions. 1 car ride. 3 sloppy fucks. 1 and a half intense sessions of lovemaking (the half time interrupted by a shitty DJ and the constant looking over one's shoulder). 14 text messages, most from when you were too drunk to spell "miss", "honestly" and "soon" but 3 from a valley while I was stuck on a mountain. 2 sunrises, one with vomit, one without. And the rest of the time is just me putting your hair behind your ear so I can kiss you. I spent some time with a woman a while ago, and I put her hair behind her ear, and it just made me want to cut my fingers off so I never thought about doing it again.)

This is nowhere where I wanted it to be.

Sorry.

Live from some spot in the world

There's a tendon that is sick and tired of being in my foot. It is trying to leave my body. I totally understand it's argument. I've been wandering around this airport deciding if I'm hungry, thirsty or just adjusting to my new surroundings. I am about an hour into my layover. I have more than an hour to go. It is worth it. I'm in Oregon for the first time in three years. For the first time since I was on my way to Chicago, the great quarter life change that lasted almost a quarter of a year. I have less bags, but more baggage this time. I've never been in this airport, but it feels right.

They all feel right.

All these airports over the years. Either alone or with a love or a friend or a lay or still alone. They all seem like a vacation home I'll never own, a timeshare I'll never pay for, a friends floor I'll never sleep on; except for the times I have.

It is almost time for the beer and the shot combo. I've had one at every airport I've been to, except for that stop in Cleveland. It is me leaving my mark. A quick indention in a soft wood stool that will forget me sooner then I will forget what I wanted to say in this.

I guess I want to say this: things are good. And totally fucking different. I'm sitting in an airport and I'm not missing someones body, or looking into someones eye, or sharing a drink with a best friend. And I'm not full of should haves. And there are no what ifs. And I don't really care what everyone is thinking anymore.

But there are a few people I want to be here with me.

So I am going to do the things necessary that we can do things like this together. For a long time to come.

Coffee mugs for the damned

A couple of old men were knocking at the door. I was looking through the lower peephole that had been recently installed in the front door. I thought it was there because I was short. Actually it was there so I could be left home alone and people would feel better about it. I opened the door. It was Saturday and I had no shirt on. They were from a church I had attended a few weeks earlier on a whim. I filled out a visitor card and put in in the offering basket. No money though. I didn't have any cash on me and they hadn't earned it yet. The old men asked if I had been back since the first time. Then they asked why I hadn't. Then they asked if I liked coffee. And if I would take their gift. And if I would come back, or at least think about it. I said No, I was busy, No, I would, I might, I will. I closed the door while they walked back to their station wagon. The coffee mug they gave had old man candy in it. The wrappers made to look like fruit so you would feel better about sticking hard candy in your mouth that tasted like shit. I unwrapped one, put it my mouth, and promptly spit it into the trash can. I did this to every peace of candy. My mouth felt sugary and rotten. Maybe that is what Eve tasted so long ago; maybe that is what they wanted me to think. I put the mug on the proper shelf in the corner cabinet and got something to wash the overwhelming taste of sin out of my mouth. A little later I made some coffee to drink from the church mug.

I moved that coffee mug from house to house to house to apartment to house to apartment to apartment to house for a few years. I used to wrap it in this old t-shirt and toss it into the suitcase full of things I almost forgot. I never saw those men or the inside of their church again. I kept drinking coffee from their mug though. One morning in a kitchen that wasn't mine for very long the handle broke off. It was full of fresh coffee and a sugar cube. I was staring out the window at a yard like one of those robed fathers on Christmas morning in a coffee commercial when the business end of it crashed to the floor. It wasn't Christmas. I wasn't a father. I was naked.

Flexing

There is a fancy, nice, dress sort of style sweater from last Christmas. There is a beanie of orange and blue from a house a few houses ago, a couple of girlfriends before. There is a shirt left over from an art project, and pajama pants from a mother that wasn't yours but wanted to be. Other then that it is all the same. Another holiday. Another work week. Another Sunday distraction of beer and football. Or maybe champagne. Or pills. Or biscuits and gravy. Everything sounds good lately. Everything then some. I'd count the days to and after on my crooked fingers, using each separation to mark the rise and fall of the sun. But that is easy. The countdown is this: is it Christmas? No? Then put your head down and wait. Or plow though it. Or peek between your folded arms while your thumb is up and sneak a peak at the shoes of the girl who touches your thumb. But don't pick her. Pick the girl you think should have a life ending crush on you. You know what to do. Drink some orange juice. Take some vitamins. Spray some shit into your throat. Medicine. Then more medicine. You know how to heal yourself. Too bad you don't stop whatever happens between your sheets, in your bathroom, on the road or inside your own head that keeps getting you sick. Or at least let you stay healthy for the last eleven months. You'll be fine in the morning.

I know.

Because you are always fine.

Sidenote: go back to March. Stand up for yourself, your desires and your lust. Are you still sleeping in an empty bed? Does it hurt more? Does it hurt less?

Tomorrow, there is this idea that came into my head, about my hands, my tiny hands, that I want to expand on. You always think you can choke the life out of someone. But what if you can't even grip tight enough to make someone cum?

I waited till the Internet stopped working to write this.

I took a month off. I needed a break. There was a birthday. There were shows. There was anything, any sort of excuse to not look at this. Anything to not think about my head being empty. Nothing felt right. No love. No interest. No desire. Just surface feelings, entertainment that barely scratched the skin. I threw it all at the wall, trying to get anything to stick, anything to make my heart beat faster, harder, more intense, more sincere, anything to make me feel. I wanted tears, pain, love, orgasm, hate, desire, lust or just some fucking interest in something. I wanted to not sleep at night. I wanted to toss and turn. I wanted to loose the desire for a partner, a warm body in bed next to me. I wanted a hand around my throat, I wanted to be shaken awake, I wanted to have my hair pulled, my direction changed, some sort of not very Devine intervention that made me take a left where I had been taking rights.

But that hasn't happened.

The parade has been beautiful. It has been nothing but party, one exciting day after the other. Did I say exciting? I meant empty. Faceless names. Nameless faces. Cold bodies. Warm bodies. Swallow. Sip. Chug. Snort. Smoke. Sneak in corners. Drag others along for the ride. Fake an orgasm. Forget a name. Develop a nervous reaction to any possible confrontation, or anytime someone remembers your name. Embellish. Divide. Conquer. Lie. Steal. Cheat. Be underhanded. Be divisive. Be manipulative. Forget. Don't care. Don't bother. Don't worry. Open the front door to let someone in while another is slipping out the back. Play wounded. Be hurt. Whatever. Make jokes. Be a joke. But make sure, no matter what, no matter anything else you might fucking do, don't feel. Don't let anyone in. Don't get hurt again. Hurt them. Fuck em, hurt them again. Then hurt them one more time. They didn't do anything, but they earned it. Go too far. Get bigger knives, twist them harder in backs. Because you are fine. No, I am fine.

I'm not the one taking a specific path to work to see a freeway overpass where I had the most passionate kiss of my life. I'm not the one repeating inside jokes to anyone within earshot just so they won't laugh and I can think "well, no one will laugh like you". I'm not the one finding excuses to take a shower because it is the only time I can feel free, comfortable, and close to happy. I'm not the one trying anything in their power to spin tales of fucking, drugs, drinks, women and cities not that far away to look interesting. I didn't mortgage my brain, my thoughts, or my passion. I didn't leave my heart on a beach, or was it that train, or was it that snowed in bus station in Denver that I have never recovered from.

I might be coming down. I might hate the holidays. I might miss everyone that has walked out of my life. But at least I'm writing, right?

If you could call this writing.

June in November

The sun is pouring in my open windows. It reflects off the scattered beer bottles and religious candles. Today I was going to start my morning with a walk. Get blood flowing, heart beating, sweat a little and try to knock the recent haze out of my mind. Instead I am laying naked in bed. The blanket has been kicked to the floor and the flat sheet covers my right foot. I feel the folds developing in my skin and remember the sudden urge for exercise. It isn't enough to get me out of bed. I'll lay here for another fifteen minutes. A mix from this summer is playing. Suddenly I am walking through a strange neighborhood commenting on trashy yards and trashier things that happen in bed. I'm lost in this memory. Then its another memory, after a long night of vandalism, champagne and drugs. The sun is coming up, shining through my open windows, much like right now. But then I was holding someone else, tracing shapes on her skin of dreams long lost and places I used to live. Whispering things you hear in movies or sitting on park benches. I'm not getting out of bed. Let the gardeners do their work. Let them try to rouse me from this life raft too big for just one. Today I will show them. I'll pull the blanket up over my face. I'll read a short story about a woman who gets left in a motel and man who likes to get stabbed. I'll ignore text messages from coworkers who need my help, women who want my attention, and friends who want to know what happened to me. I'll masturbate thinking about all the times I wasn't alone in this bed; how one liked a hand here, another wouldn't look away, another made me think twice about ropes and sometimes it took all I had not to cry, cum, or leave. I'll change the mix and make sure the saddest songs ever play so when I fall back asleep I'll dream about sharing a new apartment in a new city with people I have never met. And I'll fall in love with some girl with short hair and a tiny nose. I'll blow all my money on things I think she'll love, so she'll love me. But all she wants is me to cook her dinner. But I sold my pots and pans for gold she will lose at a party while kissing my best friend. So I'll settle on a drug habit and the ability to fly. I'll grow a huge beard, sleep in a tree and shoot dope in the most beautiful parts of Yosemite. And everyone will say I remember when he used to get up, go for walks, buy spray paint and fall in love every other day. Those were the days.

construction

Everything is changing today. The neighbor is getting a new roof. Someone down the street has a bunch of men climbing in and out of trucks with tools. They are tearing down, replacing, building up, patching, painting and making something look different while functioning the same. A lot of people are doing this too. They get their stickers, their badges, and the ability to stick their nose up at me just a little higher. That is fine. The things that matter to me are still here. The green hasn't left the trees yet and the cloudless sky shows me there is still a blue that makes me smile. It thrusts me back to a day of laying in the yard one day after work. I was laying in the grass, writing lyrics to song, thinking about how much in love I was, and wishing I was on the plane flying overhead to anywhere. That's the feeling that is here now. I am getting anxious. I'm sizing up things, mentally building boxes for the things in my room; for the moving truck or the landfill. It feels like a neighborhood of exhausted avenues. Everything feels like things that should be thrown away. Everything is changing today, just like it did yesterday. I need trash bags for the differences.

The side of the house.

Bite your lip. Breathe deep. Hold your breath. Shift your weight from right to left. Roll your eyes at the jokes and advances. Mimic the hands; hips for hips and necks for necks. Press your body hard into another. Retreat as soon as you can. Count the quiet moments in four feet of space. Leave your drink in the care of a stranger. Be strong, for a second. Then crumble. Repeat out loud the things you repeat to yourself when no one is watching. Fall back to the language of your mother; secrets like these won't break now. Moan. Pull away. Throw flattering statements at the brick wall supporting you in hope they stick. Tease. Only tease yourself. Review the steps to deflecting criticisms and questions concerning all of this. Plan the escape route. Get lost. Get left behind. Leave all on your own.

(none)

I keep a foam cover around my beer. I don't want to feel it so cold against my hand. Or notice it gets warmer while I spend my time sending suggestive text messages to women who don't want to hear from me or who want me to propose. I'll rub my hands on my face, gouging my own eyes, not completely out though, coughing into my palms for something, a sort of relief. Six or seven gulps of beer that has been warmer but never less want to collapse into my chest. Everything is falling into bed around me. Branches are crashing to the ground. Roommates are fucking their girlfriends until they are both breathless and sweaty and trying to explain away a slip of a tongue, finger or thought. My phone beeps, chirps, cries; whatever. I walk over to where it sits and check it. I don't respond, I don't care. I'll spend my night listening to songs from men about the end of their lives, the worthlessness of their education, the hatred they have for where they are from and how they cry too many nights. I'll avoid their eyes and stare out the window through the cracks in the blinds at the light that shines on the yard full of the loudest dogs of my life. No. The loudest dogs on my street. This is life. Nothing before today matters. They just bark. I just stare. Someone will call, ask me to say something nice. I tell them I love them. Why not? When I love them the fuck other men, loan me money out of spite, drive me to counties I am not allowed to be in and want me to slow dance. I don't slow dance anymore. I don't cry. I don't miss the women who mattered most to me. I don't miss the women who meant shit. Everyone is part of a list, an entry into a phone book, a number, a regret, a promise or a chance. Some people collect plates, or cards, or pushpins in maps to show where they were. I collect heartbreak, lovers, hopes, dreams, words and pushpins in my skin. They show where I am. I am not calloused. I am not hardened. My heart still pounds for you, still bleeds for a different you, still pains for another you. I still smell you in grocery stores. I still feel your hand in mine on crowded streets in a haze of whatever the newest drug we felt would help keep us together. I still write about your curves. I still pray for you. But it all depends on the night. Sometimes I pray you die. Other times I pray you come home.

What it takes.

It has taken almost five years. Days of writing. Weeks of silence. For what?

I don't know.

This is shit.

The new me or the new new me

I took a solo cab ride home tonight. During this ride I talked with the cab driver about what I am doing, my age, my desires, and the meaning of words.

All I did was lie.

I told him I was twenty two. He said my glasses made me look thirty. I told him I was a journalism major about to transfer to UCLA. He was confused by this. I told him to make a right on to the street Tribune. He kept asking what that word meant. He was talking about Times, Chronicle, and Daily. He stopped at an ATM so I could take out money. I left the door open just to fuck with him. He dropped me off and I tipped him $3.95. I had to pay into that karmic jar; I work tomorrow.

This is just a symptom.

Why lie to a cab driver? Why not??

I lie to people I care about and to people I could care less about. I rehearse stories and scenes to seem interesting and appealing. The stories are true; and my retelling is flawless. But I feel empty. How many times can I tell someone about the time I dumped a girl because she interrupted my first viewing of Swingers? Apparently one more time.

I'm nothing without my words. I'm shit with out my stories. I'm worthless without my past.

And I guess that puts me at this spot I've been seeping in the last two weeks. Why I'm not writing her, why I don't care about this.

I keep cutting open my chest for someone to see. But I don't know if anyone notices. I bleed enough in my own head.

My emo heart has taken a beating, and I am running out of ways to talk about it.

I'd rather be

I got a letter from a good friend in rehab. I am supposed to be writing him back. I should have been writing him back for a week now, at least. I don't do it though. I don't know what to say.

That isn't it.

I don't want to write him.

I think I am good friend. I use being a good friend as an excuses to get out of doing things and for doing other things.

But I'm not really a good friend.

I'm selfish, greedy, calculated, needy, emotional and a drunk.

I don't even want to write this.

I don't want to write anything.

Two Weeks...

I've been busy. The time goes to impressing bank workers with my knowledge of salad dressings, classmates with my ability to destroy my own life, and friends with fragments of a meaningful life. Most days don't count anymore. No fire in my head, no fire in my heart, no fire in bed. I'm relying on things I did weeks and months ago. No one can keep track of what I contribute. I'm as stagnate as the beer in glasses scattered around the room. But they grow mold. I grow nothing. It is all empty bottles, residue and religious candles. I make calls I shouldn't and neglect the ones I need. I pray for familiar faces and voices, if praying is a pattern you repeat on most Tuesdays and the occasion Monday and Friday. I don't bathe. I don't clean. I don't wash clothes. I don't care.

Someone told me a bill needed to be my top priority. Above eating? Above drinking? Above fucking? Above writing? Above the band? Above my heart? Above all the bullshit I put here trying to look smarter/more attractive/more interesting/more together/more anything?

There are less then two months before I hit twenty eight.

The damn cannot hold.

Tables, desks, floors, and beds.

I'm using every flat surface I can find to spread my life out on. I'm stacking up photos on top of books I haven't opened yet but pretend to know what they are about. There are cans of spray paint holding up sketch pads that I only use as a surface for my knife blade and an extension of the screams stuck in my throat. Things to burn: candles, receipts, lottery tickets. Things to recycle: cans, bar poetry, canvas. They alternate on these flat surfaces, sometimes merging into piles that are so cluttered I don't know what to do with what. There are pens, a screwdriver, first aid spray and bobby pins. Change and wrappers to things that save my life and keep my mouth moving. A plastic apple shoved full of blades that won't rot or rust. If I could pour my heart into that lifeless fruit of temptation I would. But tonight I'll keep it. I'll mix it with the sweat on my skin, the fluids on my sheets, the beer on my nightstand, the broken dreams my friend left on the old brown couch last night. I'll learn to play that song on guitar that I should be singing to myself that I pretend is for everyone who is gone. I'll draw road maps, leave detailed directions, carved and burned into my skin. A treasure map for the hunt of all the bullshit that gets listed here. From where my car sits tonight: first right, second right, third left, first left, fourth right. You'll pass the spot I last saw family; it'll be on the left. And you'll see where I spent my first year, trying to be all the things that I thought would make us happy that just tore us apart; it'll also be on the left. And if you go a little further, then go right, then second right, then follow that street till it ends You'll find some other haunted spot. There's a bunch of them, and this is one of the few I thought of, because I know that ghost is around. I can hear familiar voices and feel some of those familiar knots. I'm not nearly drunk enough for this tonight. But I am tired. Let's leave this unfinished.

French Exit

Ummm, wow. I don't think I've mentioned this on here yet. New band. You'll love it.

French Exit - frenchexit.bandcamp.com

Check it out. More writing tomorrow.

The withdrawl of troops

The mornings come faster then a week ago. There is more noise: the rumbling of stomachs, the creaking of knees, and the ever-present soundtrack of men from Scotland trying to find the same place in their lives that I am flipping a coin to choose to run away or hide from. The cough is back, it is strong. It fell from trees, broke both arms, but quickly dusted itself off and ran straight down the street. There is no blood though. No open wounds. No trickle from my nose. My heart is finding ways to pound, but it does it's best work in dreams of old houses and drunk texts to women who don't even exist anymore. Or rather women who don't exist the same way in my heart or my head. There is more smoke. There is a hell of a lot more fire. There are fortresses, encampments, armadas, fronts, prison camps and place to smuggle all the worthwhile things out of the country that is my life. The fucking skin is fleeing my finger tips. It has been a while but it is still too familiar. If I had saved my photographs from the friends and places of years before this would be the time to set them on fire. I recruit new hands, new captains of ships that I will run into ground. No self destruction this time; Just trying to sow together a quilt to remember everything that isn't around anymore. Things I miss and the things I will forget. I am cramming my life full of living, someones idea of dreaming, and losing everything I can't keep in my pockets. Grab a bucket, there are holes everywhere.