Category: Alcoholic - A Place of Stuff

Wrighter XV

9/6/2014

What is it about the lens of fantasy that makes reality so much more palatable? Talking to someone about racism is bound to lead to reinforced misconceptions about the boundaries of perception and reaction to what we feel is different, or a black eye. But throw in a wizard and some orcs and suddenly people can read and talk about ideas without a lynch mob forming. There’s something in the ability of fiction to remove us from ourselves. The further away a concept is from our own reality the easier we can deal with it. And though knee jerk reactions are great for reality TV and cable “news”, they make for horrible thoughtful conversation.

I spent a few years only reading comics. I’m not sure if it was because they were easy to find in newspaper strewn streets or if they had some special draw. I suppose I mean because there were newspapers in the street and I was too drunk and angry to read the articles. Even the poorest drawn and weakest wit of comics holds some allure. So far from our own reality perhaps they hold the key to true human insight. … …

Nope, just easy to read and I don’t have to remember more than a couple panels at a time. Squiggles with some loose ties to conversation. Comics are their own form of poorly managed language, changing with the years and soaked in rainwater. It’s raining.

Wrighter XIV

9/6/2014

There is a symphony slowly building in my head, dark and foreboding, increasingly dissonant until it is pure hellfire cacophony. French horns squeel ungodly tinny reveries and the cello becomes my irregular heartbeats. The sheer joy of waking to another day is not so subtly shattered by my brain trying to process the river of gin which lulled me to sleep. Like a violin made of gold carefully rosined then used to bash the back of my skull.
Maybe hangovers are truly why we drink. The reminder that something about our life choices made us think that much alcohol was anything but an unaware cry for help.
... Nope, it's getting drunk.

Wrighter XIII

9/6/2014

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.

Writer X

5/10/2014

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?

Wrighter IIX

1/12/2013

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.

Wrighter VII

1/2/2013

I'm not sure why I continue driveling on about my useless, alcoholically castrated life. Maybe I used to have a reason for writing, some higher purpose above school essays and magazine deadlines. Some ubiquitous wonder that ran through me that forced my hands over a worn keyboard to release the pressure behind my eyes.

I think that's just the alcohol talking. Gin has a nice vocabulary, but its metaphor is a little heavy handed.

When I was in the second grade words fascinated me. Not books or stories but words. Somewhere in the formation of my consciousness the synapses in my oddly large head fired me towards a dictionary. I read it for hours, to the confusion of my mother and belittlement of my classmates. Well, my mother was often in a state of bloody mary induced confusion and classmates always found some reason just beyond my grasp to pick on me. Tangents lying on a circle I was left out of. I felt that words stood alone, their marvel unhindered by lack of plot characters rhyme or reason. But Webster's tome just listed all of the words, hiding gems like pontificate and salacious among spore and duct. I found that novels and articles were an excuse to be selective of words, a place where someone could mingle some select combinations. Though authors spout morals and axioms and diatribes their real purpose is to place sacred words together.

Well shit, I guess I answered my question. And luckily I did so before the tenth swig from my plastic home away from home; when the words from my thoughts and typewriter mingle and dance in some complicated ritual finished by me eventually blacking out.

Wrighter VI

12/22/2012

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.

Wrighter V

12/13/2012

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?

Wrighter IV

9/18/2012

I sometimes get lost in my keyboard. Not literally lost, obviously that comes later when I realize the moldy rye and malt liquor are giving me crazy daytime dreams. About being a little tiny man stuck in the typewriter keys, praying its owner gives up letters and forms entirely and watches the tv and yells at his wife or cactus or kids like a normal fucking person. No. I just stare at them for hours. Sometimes unmoving, sometimes letting my fingers wander over them and depress, pressing ever so slightly so I can feel the give without touching ink to the page with a shark crack that means… I’ll probably need to press another one. And another one. And so on and so forth for another billion fucking keystrokes or so until my fingers are bloody and I need a whole bottle of white because in the every of middle page I started typing the letter g because I thought it was a beautiful woman. Curved and salacious, the temptress sitting in the centre of my needlessly qwerty board. It haunts me. Ghastly, greedy, grandiose, grating eye that stares at me when I’m too drunk to see but not stop typing. Like Braille it hastens to my every touch, appearing more often than possible. Great ginger greedily grasping at me gladly going where no man hasn’t gone, gone to galaxies trapped in the tiny dots who trace my every movement from the inside of my eyes when they’re open or closed.

I really need to stop taking the dog Prozac I stole from some rich bitch in conjunction with the expired sleeping pills and thought lost to an open waste bin. Because wow. Like. Fuck. You know? Of course you don’t. Anyone with enough money to pay me weekly for this crap and sick enough to enjoy it must be on something better. Horse Vicodin? Share? Of course not, I know, words go one way money goes the other. And I’m drained of my thoughts but the hamsters in your head keep making you rich. The friction from their little wheels absorbed by the yeti living in your chest.

Wrighter III

8/15/2012

Painkillers are a funny thing. In that, I spent 8 hours uncontrollably laughing after mixing nitrous oxide and Oxycontin. It’s an odd feeling to be laughing like a fucking madman while you pull muscles in your gut. Bust a gut. I get that now. Laughing while vomiting: the tried and true combinations of degenerates and drug addicts everywhere. Seriously, what the hell are you doing with these? This is the strangest way I’ve ever been paid; just write mail and blow the cash on a jar of peanut butter and 3 handles of plastic flavored vodka. There is a place I’ve found somewhere in the mix of eating to survive drinking to numb and living to see if something different happens tomorrow. There’s no point in living a shit life if every day after gets shittier. Of course, suicide seems a little extreme so if I just happen to fall off consciousness forever greased by the burning of gin there’s not much loss. And writing. This idea of scribbles somehow capturing what we say, or even sillier what we think. Shit. Thinking hurts. In my left temple and my right ankle. Pretty sure it’s from the thinking. Thinking is the leading cause of society, society is the leading cause of stupidity, stupidity is the leading cause of making more stupid people. Maybe I should have kids! Not like, mine, but ya know, an extra one. Just pop on down to the neighborhood orphanarium and grab someone to pass on my massive legacy of failure and drinking. See, thinking, society, kids, it’s all screwed up. Someone should fix it. Like a… plumber for society. With his ass crack of justice flashing every time he bends over to fix a dictator or crime or whatever analogy you’d like for a leak. My uncle was a plumber. for years he made plumb and true the pipes of our houses and other houses dumb enough to hire him around ours. Or maybe my uncle killed that plumber for... for... Whichever, the moral of the story is you can trust a family member with a pipe wrench if you're not paying them.