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.
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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. 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? 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. 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.
My sister says I need to join alcoholics anonymous. I tell her everyone knows I’m a goddamned alcoholic, so it’s not very anonymous. My sister is a bitch. And I don’t say this because she wants me to join a program. I say this because she acts like bitch. She has made fun of me every thanksgiving since she could talk. I only come home on thanksgiving because there’s enough food to keep me sober and my mother is a saint of a woman who doesn’t mind that I’m a degenerate drunk who’s only kept alive because you make money off my depressed ramblings. At least I think you make money off these, otherwise this would be a little creepy. Though I’ve never seen these published in a magazine. Though I haven’t read a magazine except for “highlight” and “pregnant today” at the free clinic. Soooo. I hate being too drunk to be poor. Wait. Too poor to be drunk. Though I suppose it goes both ways. Like the fat man who eats because he’s depressed and fat because he eats. Though I’m not fat and it doesn’t depress me that I drink. If I didn’t drink I think I’d go insane. They say alcohol drives people crazy but that’s obviously a lie. People drink to keep from going insane, the people that drink know they’re going insane anyway and they might as well forget about it for a few hours. I gleaned this information from a meeting outside an AA meeting my sister dropped me off at in exchange for forty bucks. She doesn’t care if I drink; she just likes to scare her kids with what might happen to them if they ever drink a single drop of alcohol. Of course they’ll go insane in college the first drink they have will somehow become 8 and they’ll wind up blowing a fellow drunk freshman behind the dorms. At least Billy will, that kid is gayer than a Liberace Elton John swirl. And his moronic mother is in denial, luckily for him I gave him the “be whoever the fuck you want to be speech” and I think that maybe next year when he gets into middle school it’ll sink in. Gay is the new black. People playing at something they’re not for social status and personal freedom knowing they can pretend for a few minutes without having to deal with the rest of their lives. And if I were sober enough to see the numbers on the word count I’d have proof this is enough for a case of ramen and three handles of plastic bottle gin. Hell, if you throw in a bonus I might even get a jug of pop to drink it with.
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. |
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