So much more seems acceptable when you're drunk. Or maybe it is more acceptable. Sure, it looks bad if you pee in the middle of the street at 2pm, but draining out on a wall after closing hour is a regular part of life. And I have some decent perspective on this, as I've done them both sober and drunk. The drunk out numbers the sober in a way that makes me remember how bad I am with ratios. Also: a whole fucking lot. Once I peed on some guy in a business suit on his way home from work. I'm not sure if it makes it any better he paid me to do it. Not that I was advertising that I'm willing to wee on strangers for cash, he just saw something about me and asked. Which, I suppose, is the worst case scenario.

I really like nature. I feel somehow more complete, more alive, more connected to the universe of everything beautiful and growing and teeming with such a tenuous but persistent life when I’m surrounded by flora. Which leaves me slightly unrequited, as my apartment has a single plant clinging to dear life. I say plant, because I’m not sure what it is. It’s never flowered, never grown, and gives little indication as to its genus. It seems to exist in a perpetual state of flora purgatory, with ever present brown chipping away at its edges, but never dying. I’m not sure if it shows the true tenacity of life, or the depressing fight for survival that is existence. Or maybe it’s just a fucking plant. I give it a bit of alcohol every week or so, just to make sure my plant is on a similar plane of existence as me. It would bum me out if I had a beautiful flowering behemoth which somehow grew more magnificent while I drank myself to a state I’m willing to eat clearly expired food. Relativity is a bitch. I remember one of those. I meant the plant, not the bitch. Carl was probably the bitchiest person alive. He baby sat my sister and I and would eat our Oreos because he wasn’t allowed to have them at home. My sister transcends the word, obliterating it. Like trying to describe a mass genocide as “unfortunate”. Wait. Plants. I went on a camping trip with some boy scouts. When I was a kid. We wandered through the forest a few feet from the road and pretended we were at once one with and conquering nature. Though the s’mores were good. And I remember lying on my back in a small grove of redwoods, wondering if there was more to existence than consciousness. Feeling at once alien to and bonded with the trees. And now I have a plant. My apartment hallways have fake plants strewn about, which is a damned more depressing than nothing at all. Like a mausoleum for the idea of escaping this shit hole. My plant’s name is sometimes Len. And sometimes Grace. Because why the fuck not?

My life seems very long, right up until I read something I had written. I read over some musings or ideas or complaints or triumphs of the human spirits imagined or real, and it could have been a week ago, a month at the most I scribed it. Until I look at the date and see years have passed. Passed along with relationships jobs apartments feuds bets and cares. Yet somehow my writing remains at most a month away. I look back and see how little I’ve written, how little of myself I’ve penned for later me or god forbid anyone but you to see. My memory can barely hold my bitch sister’s name and her slew of kids. Wait, one kid, Michael. He’s just so sweepingly flamboyant it seems like there’re eight of him when I’m drunk. And I’m usually drunk. Not that that’s a bad thing (the flamboyancy) he just has a certain ardent fluidity that looks like a time delay shot on a camera when he moves. His mom has finally admitted that he’s gay, but she calls it “cute” or “a little phase”. Same way she described by alcohol “problem” when I had my first full week blacked out. So we can pretty much discount that theory. No, he’ll be fine. Gay indeed! Maybe next time I’ll start drinking AFTER I start writing one of these. It’s just too damn depressing, babbling ink through a rusty typewriter for a fucking check. But, it’ll be a good goal. Almost forgot what it was like to have one of those. Because drinking isn’t a goal, it a tactic.  Drunk just helps me achieve my goal of not thinking about my shitty life for a bit. God damn it I’m a depressing fuck. Maybe I’ll do some community service. Though I seem to remember me being someone’s community service, so maybe I’ll just try to stop being such a whiney shit. The cockroaches look happy, why shouldn’t I be as happy as them? Because they live rent free! Why is my typewriter rusty?

I find that laughter is a particularly effective tool for hale health and disposition. Unfortunately I'm running out of nitrous oxide. When I do use it my mind feels numb for days. Really a win win. I'm not one to huff glue or sniff markers; having so few values makes one hold even harder to the ones you do possess. I recycle my plastic gin bottles, never read tabloids, and always eat my animal grade tuna with a fork. When I was 8 I remember sniffing cherry scented markers and laughing while my sister ate pasta with her hands. And in the middle of my manic, berry odored laughing she shoved the marker up my nose. Hmmm... perhaps my non marker sniffing sensibility is just trained behavior. Well now my sister takes Vicodin til her kids get blurry and I drink whiskey until my nightmares and daydreams smooth out into a manageable mix of wonder and terror. At least I don't eat with my hands. Slob.

I question myself on a point of my health

All my reasons are shaking and trembling

The words they make sense in my head but crumble as they’re spoken

My reasons my thoughts all seem

To get caught up in tangles

They come out disjointed

There’s a tune in my ear whispering

Yet I hear another story whimpering

My eloquence fades as it travels in rays

Only spoke it to give you sunshine

Words and phrases lets loose in blurts

Just the surface of what I’ve been saying

If you hold my hand then you’ll understand

The heat of our skin puts them together

Snap back into place held by wires, I place

My soul in a dead lost language, I shrug

And you give me new strength from afar

Got a feeling, the meaning’s been conveyed

I trust in my hands, trust in my feet

Word’s footing and purchase has stumbled and fallen

Against the rough stone of the wall I tumble

And move with a crawl to the meaning that I’ve been intending

I've always wondered what waits for me when I die. I assume I'll wake up dead some crap morning and realize there's a boulder or some lava or snakes in my rent controlled fire hazard. Then some searing pain and uncontrollable fear surging through my veins, only topped by the realization that there is none of the horrid visions and I'm just stuck in the same fucking life.



I am exquisitely tired. A filigree of days steeped in alcoholic terrors and nights slipping in and out of consciousness without will or knowledge. I drink during the day until I drink to fall asleep. Then I try and sleep until I pass out and dream about some decent liquor and my bitch of a sister dancing on my mother's grave. Which would be a weird dream if I hadn't seen it happen. I guess it's still a weird dream, but fuck off. What I wouldn't kill for a wet dream. Really anything other than the same dreams I have every goddamned night. Do you really read this? My sober enough to write drunk enough to not care what I write ramblings stained with grease and condensation from a plastic water bottle on whatever paper I shove into my typewriter. I think I sent the last rambling on the back of a letter I never sent. I need it back. I forgot to put postage on it. 8 times. Eventually the post office decided to send it. Or keep it. I'm tired.

Gin offers a horrible absolution. It wipes my slate clear and sets me up the next morning with minimal hangover or memory. Usually it's just the night before but if I'm lucky a week will be knocked loose from my skull along with the bad choices I probably made. See, probably made means I can't feel regret for them because there's a chance they didn't happen, just tenuous possibilities as probable as what will likely follow. Namely alcohol and stagnation. It's odd that liquid courage so rarely leads to great lives. The absolution is terrible because it implies the mistakes I make, along with the rare moment of brilliance or sobriety, have no consequences.

The worst thing anyone has ever told me came from my mother. She died years ago, probably out of boredom, and is the source of the happiest memories I can muster. "You can be anything." She would whisper these words into my sleepy nodding head before I fell asleep. It haunts me now, on the fated night I fall asleep before I can pass out. Because they were true. Because I had a reality to create and somehow I fucked it up. Twisted and failed until almost against possibility I find myself here: writing meaningless tirades and tales to no response but cash in an envelope. Occasionally I get paid to ghost write for cheap lazy people or make a few dollars cleaning shops.

Hahaha, if anyone saw the state of my one room tenement apartment they'd think twice before hiring me to clean or fix. Of course the answer would be no. It seems the answer is always no. Or maybe. Sometimes yes. ... well I guess it depends on the fucking question, now doesn't it?

You know what I hate? Writing. And you. I hate you a lot, but you pay me to write. And if you remember, I also hate writing. This puts me in quite a conundrum, as I really need money. I’m two months behind on rent, I ran out of gas in my car, and I’m eating animal grade tuna. I don’t know why you pay me for this, but I stopped caring. So I’ll give you a paragraph and get enough cash for a pack of cigarettes and people food.

I became a writer so I could be my own boss. Unfortunately, I’m a pretty crappy boss. The fact that I rarely work is probably the least of my innumerable and debilitating leadership dis-qualities. My laptop works for about 12 minutes, while plugged in, then runs out of batteries. It is slower than an opium addled sloth and functions slightly better than FDR’s legs. My mild alcoholism doesn’t react well with my bitter an eeyore –esqe personality, but it keeps me grounded. At home. On the floor. But if I’m on the couch hung over at least I’m not writing which is, as my Elmer glue filled joints will attest, the death of me which takes more years off my life than any bender I can afford. When I write the money hits me like hot leather seat on my thighs, comforting at first but never worth the pain. Usually it gets deposited in the Super Cheeps liquor store down the block. They started double knotting the bag they put it in so I wouldn’t keep drinking in the parking lot. 40 ouncers and me and public don’t mix well. Me and public don’t mix well, but the malt liquor adds an edge, an edge that usually involves my fighting with skateboarders, yelling at cops, or falling asleep on top of other people cars. So I come home with half my salary in a few plastic bags, stare at the dark tv that hasn’t had cable in years, and start drinking my way into a place that I’m finally relaxed. Unfortunately I’m blacked out, so I don’t remember much about the place. But that’s still better than the dump I live in. I used to have a dog, but he ran off in the park one day. Or maybe that was my wife. They run off together? No, one of them was hit by a van. It was a long time ago. I’m not callous, just happened a long time ago. And I’m drunk. Drunk. At least a quarter of the first bag drunk. I don’t drink absinthe. My liver starts talking with me when I drink absinthe. And it only ever wants to talk politics. I don’t mind talking politics, but my liver is a real jerk and just yells at me about socializing the dance clubs and the speaker’s job in the senate. I used to watch C-Span. Bunch of ugly people running the country. We need more hot senators. Then more people would watch c-span. Politics should be more like telemundo. I don’t get telemundo, but my Cuban neighbors do, now I can count to five in Spanish and know the word for goal is the same as in English. At least it’s pronounced the same. Soccer is a funny game, funny in that if you watch it drunk enough it doesn’t make you depressed. Basketball and football and hockey are depressing. Bunch of rich buff people who endorse toxic coffee and bubble gum. But soccer players are just trying to win so their home town doesn’t riot. I hate the taste of my mouth after waking up from being blacked out. I once drank ajax thinking it was powdered coffee. I don’t remember why drinking powdered coffee seemed like a good idea, but at least I didn’t pour boiling water in my mouth. But I think the ajax made my teeth into wax. They keep moving. I didn’t want to become a writer, but I can write with my eyes closed. So I didn’t have to look at the other kids looking back at me, mother staring and seeing I wasn’t going to make it. Didn’t have to see my dad throwing the television into the pool when he got fired. Which, by the way, when you throw a tv in the pool it doesn’t work afterwards. Didn’t see the fire started by my old neighbor’s kid. Ex neighbors. Ex kid. But I heard it all. And I can’t write what I heard, though those sounds are clear as vision now. Still my memories in sound don’t include the dirty carpet I sleep on, can’t translate the pounding of base guitar into words. Pounding. Base guitars don’t pound. I pound. The dog pound. The dog found Jack and Jill rolling down a hill. I met them once. Nice people. Got married and own a ranch in Montana. Read about their ranch. No animals, only corn. Corn can’t bite you. Hope it can’t bite you. Haven’t ever seen live corn. On the stalk, maybe it bites. What the hell do I know.