what I have so far on my book:
...fucking alarm... fucking life... an undying cycle of endless routine. And if it hands itself off to another day of the same complaints, the same repetitive system of finding ways to piss me off, I am simply going to dismember myself. What I wouldn't give to abandon all responsibility... turn into a fucking child, hand over all these thoughts, worries, stresses... this horrible need to validate myself through another person. Doesn't it sound romanticly childlish? I would be blessed with people who would tell me how to live without insinuating and emphasizing my iniquities. No expectations to adhere to. I could be washed of every regret, to be rinsed of this distaste for myself, the person that I have become, a filthy and clouded version of what I am percieved to be, left with the same wishes, aspirations, ambitions that I clutched as a child, and now despise but can not release my grip on as an adult. And now I am just foggy, jaded, and fragmented, shades of gray of the vibrant colors I radiated as that child... and yet all my memories... play like scarred film on a faded old projector... and I question... is it less or more beautiful? Would every recollection truly shine when played out in omnicolor? Or does the black and white framework of my youth simply shape and outline the man I am today? A cutout? Paper doll. Photographic or photocopy? And here I am, kneeling shamefully, hidden in the proper position for prayer, in the sanctuary, the catacombs of my thoughts... making love to the idea of what could be if only fantasies made love to me, but fantasies are delicate, fantasies are renound for their frailty, but damn near impossible to kill. These are burdens most of us are willing to bare... I on the other hand am far too lazy.
The ceiling is lightly stained and it is hardly noticeable,completely blurred by the drunkenness that sleep inspires. I roll onto my stomach, exhaling heavily, and pull a cigarette from it's pack, draw it to my lips, and now my lighter, rolling back onto my back...light it, inhale... the cloud of smoke conquering the air... it seems to clarify, like so many aspects of my life, strands of this smoke, crowding together, and fleeing from other strands... running untamed, but at the mercy of the air, and the breeze, making it's anti-climactic exit from my slightly opened window. And the smoke disperses, goes home, cooks itself dinner, and crawls into bed again... alone. Or on the weekends, the local pub, or a rowdy club, or concert, and a girl draped in dim lighting in the smokey pub, or rowdy club, or random concert... and into bed with her, and in the morning, coffee and cigarettes, and she's off to her life, and I am left in mine... cooking myself dinner, and crawling into bed again... alone. My eyes slide shut and I am overcome with an intense sensation... the drive to just rot here. God how enticing that sounds, to do nothing, offer no part of myself to anything, and just keep all of me for me. Oh well, time to get up... cursing mindlessly at the consequences of taking on the challenge of time... and growing into one's adulthood. And older gents clutch hollow chests at the end of these days, and preach of their regrets, and their loves, and the great and terrible times in their life... but what of times like this? Sad because they're boring, desperate because they're routine, but no story to tell, no grace, no heroes, nothing to overcome, except time. But young men live it, thick and thin, the only villian is the main character, the only protagonist? the heart, the will, the inability to drain one's life from the body, and the antagonist? He exists inside the same flesh, that which is the wandering mind, grasping desperately and distraughtly for anything like the anxious outstretched fingers of an infant. Pulling my comforter from chest, and drawing every ounce of aquirable energy to remove myself from the womb of my bed...wet with cold sweats and tossled from rolling in my sleep. Stumbling to the kitchen I prepare the coffee, which would definately need to be "irished" up this morning, and begin to draw a bath. Slumping onto the tiles of the kitchen floor and resting my sunken eyes into hands still weak from sleep, my back resting gently against the chipped cabinets, I ponder nothing, just curse the forthcoming day, grab my coffee, toss in a little bourbon (all that's left in the pantry) and crawl out to my porch for a cigarette. The stale taste in my mouth mirroring the even staler feeling lingering in my mind... Return to the warmth of indoors and remove my clothes... scratching my chest, but curing no itch, I return the the bath that awaits me and gently slump into the warm and welcoming water...floating... sinking... just existing between the two, in limbo, a lifeless stalemate... it is a few minutes before beginning the normal bathing rituals... fuck it, who cares if I am late to work...
No, this is not chapter 2, life rarely comes in chapters so why try to explain something like this in chapters rather than realistically. Life just floods over us, in a systerm of time, so inconsistent and yet so structured, no means for repair, no allowance for mending or repentance, just consequences while continuing on.
A pretty, small-framed, fair-haired girl, with kind eyes, and a lightly carved smirk passed by my home today and glanced in from the street, I saw her, but I don't know if she saw me, due to the glare of the sun on my windows... figures. And I was left questioning who was more real, her, or I... both silent and inconsequential characters on the center stage of each other's lives... both serving little purpose... and I concluded only this, she was not thinking of me... the man behind the glare, sloppily dressed and dancing to silence with cigarette smoke, and yet, here I was, I was thinking of her. But what the fuck do I know?
Catching the morning train to the used book store I work in near Russel Square, I thought of little more than what I might have for lunch, or if my cigarettes would last the day. Walking from the train stop to my store, I though of nothing more than whether that lunch would last the day, and how many cigarettes I would have for lunch. Only when unlocking the door did my thoughts then return to the young fair-haired passerby from earlier this morning, reshaping the memory in my mind, I could see her darting eyes, and then them fixing on my window, and her pace slowing every so slighty, I believe she did notice me, I believe I could have caught her eye. And with that, my day began. Blindly sending my fingertips to explore the rough surface of the wall in search of the lightswitch, and once discovering my destination, a quick flip and the landscape for my unfulfilling daily routine takes shape from under the blanket of shadows. Here in my element I felt my soul beginning to stretch out, beginning to awaken and stir within me, preparing for another day of elitist conversations and assuring myself that I am above yer average, uncultured arse.
Born in California, and raised there, and even spent a few years living on my own there, I found the only place I could really live was somewhere that my past could not follow in any packaging but that of my own mind. And after months of barely deliberating... I kind of just wound up in London. Coming out of a country of senseless idealism and trying to play the picturesque fragments of the all-american dream... while stirring beneath the shell of composure. Americans have this undying sense of restlessness, imprisoned firmly by expectation and lack of real ambition. Defeated before ever declaring war on our own insecurities, and yet never at ease with such things. And it's not that Brits are void of such faults... they just hide it much more stylishly... or exploit these faults wildly. A collected people, not as frantic, and still not as painted up, comprised of shades of gray, rather than such brilliant overacted colors. Less searching, more sitting, and that is what makes me feel more comfortable here. That... and everyone is completely void of and yet overflowing with class, and I love the contradiction. Not to mention the endless sense that everyone emits that they are better than you, and yet they do not contest when you burn brilliantly of the same aura.
I've had this fucking song stuck in my head all day, a song from high school. Even then I was quite the elitist, listening only to music that had not graced mainstream ears, the song "does it show" by mock orange... and I dig through the stack of compilations I have scattered in drawers in the back of the store... trying to quench the thirst of my ears. Finding what I think could be it, I slip it into the CD player... press the skip button some random amount of times... carelessly, little thought involved... wrong song... but still nostalgic, a songwriter from seattle... "The Professor" by Damien Rice. So, I skip back a few tracks... and as if giving in, my song clicked into place, and I could begin my day how I felt I must.
As today's heartbeart slowly fades, the carousel of my thoughts makes me a little sick once again. Work was mediocre, and everything felt routine as usual, all day I missed my guitar, and my cigarettes... and most of all... the feeling of a routine woman, rather than fucking these ghosts that haunt me for a night and crawl back into the shadows, only to return through awkward glances upon busses and trains, or overpopulated sidewalks, pretending not to meet eyes, but wanting so bad to be recognized. And before I knew it, I was lost in a crowd... a sea of faces, not a one turning an eye towards me. Gently, but indifferently pushing people from my path... a few rude responses I could barely make out as they faded into the background, I just needed a pint. and then... nearly plowing into someone, I lift my eyes and discover, inches from my face... the fair haired girl. And then, as she lifted her eyes, my eyes sank down her shirt... Now, I know that is far too macho and immature and I should have a little more self control... but fuck... it happens. As my eyes drift, I notice the curves that her skirt and blouse gently accent... and I feel my zipper press gently against my crotch. She smirks a bit, noticing me noticing her... and I shamefully, and quickly draw my eyes away... and continue walking. I can see her grinning face following me through the corner of my eye, and it only arouses me more... sensing it my be quite detectable now to anyone around me, i shift my bag to the front and lower my eyes once again... hoping that muscle memory would guide me to my train stop. Rushing through the flood, bumping shoulders with what seems to be everyone on earth, I can feel the blood rush to my cheeks as I blush, quite embaressed, and still I feel my bag rubbing gently against the prominent bulge, and it does nothing but make it more of a problem...God if only I could get to... and suddenly I was there... looking up for only a split second to stop myself from walking out in front of the train I intended to get on. The doors his open and people crowd in, I plop down with my bag upon my lap and stare aimlessly at the floor, and try not to look like a horny man, on a train with a raging boner. I sat silently for the next few minutes, darting my eyes across the train hoping no one had any inkling of what was surfacing from my hips. After what seemed it should have been enough time for my erection to subside, but clearly wasn't, I reached my stop and climbed off the train as quickly as possible, rushing towards my flat... seeing her body in my mind the entire way. God, what a terrible person I am. But Jesus... humanity... nature... all of this... overwhelming me at the thought of a simple pair of breasts, and everything that came with it. And as I finally reach my flat and tear the door open, and slam it shut tight behind me... I drop my bag to the floor and stare without purpose up the stairs... and then I knew it... I had to settle this problem now... I had to get this done with... wage war on my erection... intervene and let it know who was in charge in this situation, I had to stand before my penis and show it that I was the man, and it was the prick, and dammit, I have the final say... and so quickly and in big powerful strides I ran up the stares and into the bathroom. The next few minutes do not need to be explained. I think it is quite clear what was done in there... but the thoughts of taking that woman... on the street in front of hundreds of people... was enough to get me through the rest of the evening in quite a better mood than normal, and by 8 o'clock, I had decided that heading down to the pub would be nice... and so I put on my large overcoat and scarf, and headed to that pub with a stride of confidence... though I had conquered nothing... but that night I just felt sexier.
The pub was a bit crowded, which I had hoped for, plenty of young women, to at least introduce myself to and hope for the best, if not a girl meant for long term, maybe a fuck on the fly. So I proceeded to the bar, and picked up a pint... a few more and maybe I would be swimming through enough "liquid courage" to take someone home for the night. Another fuzzy memory, another temporary validation, and onward, the adventure of routine, a losing battle, who can outlast who... me entrenched in battle with 9-5, so pencil in the random drunken sex with a strange girl, make a little room in my pouty existence. And here enters the echo of my conscience, barely noticed, a voice screaming through the static and dischordant hum of the abrasive mixture of alcohol and male hormones. And though the gentle whispers of that conscience, made it's presence known, I made it clear to myself, that tonight... like so many other nights, that voice was to be checked at the door, and only to find it's way home again, in the rush of reality, after sex, bringing many bedfellows such as guilt, fear, and self-loathing... but for now the adrenaline would carry me through any misguided and uncalculated decisions. Oh the roles we play in youth, and are so hesitant to give up when converting to the horrible cult of adulthood, so coy and naive... so painted up and seemingly careless, while breathlessly desperate for something so primal, and often degrading... a fucking good fuck. As I think this, as I realize this, in a crowded pub, I smirk, my eyes slimming, and I turn tail and walk straight out of the door, lighting a cigarette as I do, reaching the bitter London air, and plop down upon the curb, sliding my fingers into my hair, gripping it, and giving it a reasonable tug, only enhancing the sense of inner frustration, thinly veiled, and surfacing quickly, tearing a hole through me, an exit wound, and it is so refreshing. Returning the stale tasting cigarette to my lips, and taking a drag so long it burns my insides and causes my eyes to irrigate themselves, I exhale through clenched teeth... and let every thought flee from the cage of my mind... darting in all directions, across the asphalt, into storm drains and behind trash cans, under cars, and into alley ways, through cracked windows, and even into the heads of people I have never spoken with... and I stand again... and return to the club...reinvented. A redheaded girl, scantily clad, glances over at me from a group of friends... and smiles... and one of her friends turns to see what she is smiling at... notices me and smiles as well... and then... the second girl's smile turns to a lifeless gaze as she vomits all over a third friend's blouse. She runs to the restroom, and friend #3 friends darts after her, cursing endlessly... only one girl left... the catalyst, girl #1... and as soon as she rose from her stool at the bar... i knew... I was getting laid.
Morning came long after I did. And her, who knows if she did, I didn't ask. I had a cigarette, she smiled as I crawled into bed, and we slept. And when morning made it's presence known through poorly drawn curtains, she was merely another shadow cast by streetlights and the dim glow of the moon through the same curtains... she disappeared at dawn like all of us affection hungry vampires usually do. People like myself are a constant disappearing act, all melting candles... we fade into darkness... drift with a cloud of smoke, and then we're gone, entirely unnoticeable... a real Rosencrantz and Guildenstern existence... minor characters in other people's major stories, and we all pity ourselves for it when the spot light even glints off of us. It is truly the recluse that shifts so easily from a loathing of his own condition, to an elitist for his endless sense of self-awareness and independence. We are a crumbling people... we are weak, but hard to kill... because in the end... everyone is too indifferent towards us anyway.
So anyway... another cigarette, some stale cereal in some milk that tasted awfully watery, and a bleak and blurry shower. Bored, I waltzed to the bookshelf lined with my collection of vinyls and CD's, even a few tapes (haven't reached the vintage cool yet, and too old to be respected), and my books... my eyes, strangely locked on hamlet... a book I had not read since high school, but had always been intrigued by and kind of just purchased in a pile of books from another used book store... and now... I remembered the character of hamlet... the beginning apathy... and in such a sudden and dramatic way... a completely different man, a desperate and determined idiot... and yet, something I respected and longed for. Seated between the shelves of this bookcase was a mirror, and when locking eyes with myself, taking in my reflection... I felt the hangover a little harder, and saw it even more... I looked like a cadaver, braced to stand like a doll... and I hated myself... and everything about my life... so I went to my bedroom, masturbated again, and went back to sleep.
"These baby secrets have grown into children, through dirty adolescence, and now into manhood. I locked the basement door and broke off the skeleton key but it made no difference, still they travel with me even though I killed them they haunt me and they help me, remember the lies in the shadows, the practiced charades. the arrow is thrown into your back, nothing has ever been so distant and weak. Dreaded words whispered under her breath, 'your just like your father, and your ocean is a drop of water.'"- Rocky Votolato- Secrets of a Salesman
My understanding of the rest of humanity is limited, but there are things that I am quite certain of. These being as such:
1. We are a cocky stupid people, who dance around the conceptions of our insecurities and try to romance our charms and benefits and exploit them, figuring that someone is always looking our way, checking us out, and when we get someone to admit that they like what they see, we immediately attempt two steps:
a. fuck them
b. turn them into a hamper for all of our emotional dirty laundry
2. Almost everyone (especially women) would rather forgo love for some sense of personal safety... again justifying the statement that we are a stupid people... and time is only fortifying these ideas. Or... perhaps believing this is some kind of safety measure for myself...
3. It's always best to give an impression of wealth, no matter how much debt and filth is stirring beneath the surface, we have to keep our faces stylishly smirking and our fingernails clean.
4. Everyone's out to sell themselves, out to make a commission of self-confidence, and if yer not buying, then leave the sidewalk stage of their traveling salesman routine... because this is the slickest marketing they can offer... so buy...... or simply fuck off.
Think I am cynical? Fuck off for that too.
I was awoken by nothing by around noon, checking the answering machine I discovered only a message from one of my employees... a younger man... 18, I think. His name was Marcus, his message only to let me know that a gentleman had came in and sold back a copy of "Glamorama", a Bret Easton Ellis novel, a book I had mistakenly showed mild interest in, and now he was following up with the ass kissing routine. Maybe I would stop by the shop later and pick it up.
A few hours pass as I thoughtlessly peruse a few of the books that have conquered my coffee table, except for the small piece of land that my ash tray maintains, a stillness as I am sprawled across my favorite chair in all of the flat. I am feeling beautifully rooted... nurtured by the silence. And suddenly, without welcome, I am uprooted from the gorgeous still life moment by the sharp and piercing ring of the telephone. What a foul invention, intended to do nothing but butt in, always putting things on hold for something that may be quite frivolous in the end. So I say once again, what a fucking FOUL machine. Dying to end such a horrid noise, I quickly draw the reciever to my ear, accidentally applying an overabundance of force and smarting my ear pretty healthily. Realizing after slight hesitation, that that ear would no longer be useful, I quickly switch ears and mutter a grumpy, "hello".
The brilliance of flashing lights and ear splitting screech of sirens fades to paler shades and decibels above silence in my mind... painting the accident as a mural on the walls of my freshly emptied head as I stood in my shapeless black suit... that felt as if it weighed hundreds of pounds. I could see that cars crumpled and molded together, like to sadistic lovers with the intent to maim while making love. The scene flooded in the freshly spilled light of streetlamps and moonlight and the spinning shades of red and blue from so many goverment vehicles. And father lie in his car, barely making a sound... bleeding to death, broken bones, tattered clothing masking tattered skin... and he died there, alone, on the way home from Christmas shopping. And now he was here, well his body was, some shell of my father crammed into a box and placed before us to stare at and cry over. Father's face was pale as I looked into what would later be a closed coffin. His face stitched above the eyebrow... but for what reason? He didn't look peaceful like aunt mary anne had said, trying to console my mother, brother, and I. He looked plastic... stuffed, like a trophy of the hunt. Mother's fingers caressed his dead cheek, and I was disgusted. not much with her. More with myself... with the world... what the fuck was I not disgusted with? I left London because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. I left for this... to stare into my mother's also nearly dead face, and glance out of the corners of my eyes and the tear-stained faces of family members and friends, and I just was not interested in it. I could see my black peacoat folded over the back of a chair among several other chairs... gathered around a table with no real sense of order... just askew... Here we were, standing in line to look longingly into the face of two realities... we would never speak to this man again... and death was creeping further down the list towards us... God, how I wanted to leave. I locked eyes shortly with father's pale countenance as I stood before the coffin alone for a second... expecting him to begin snoring or to simply roll over in the casket. I walked over to my peacoat and communicated silently to my zombie-like mother that I was stepping outside for a cigarette. Pushing through the tinted glass door of the funeral home, I find a lamp post to lean against and draw a clove cigarette from it's slightly crumpled box... and a lighter... blue... clear... cheap. I prop my foot and my back against the lamppost... my knee protruding from the stiff form I had taken next to this nearly silent funeral home in central California. The city stirred with indecent human beings... wearing transparent skin... so revealing of their common lives... and I found myself once again repulsed at the place I knew as home for nearly all of my life. My eyes fell to the pavement and I wanted to just collapse, to just crumble to lifeless mound of dust and fade into a once was... instead of a what now is. But I know better, I am not that confident of a person, I still have something to prove, something to uphold. It's everything I have to stare longingly into a mirror and wish that what I saw was who I am, a man that shows such an aura of composure... while inside I desperately need renovation.
As my eyes took flight and began to drift back over the streets of this digusting one horse town... They stopped as dead as my father corpse at the sight of a single girl... THE girl who potentially ruined my life. A shorter girl with unusually large breasts for her smaller build, narrow hips and glittering eyes, milk chocolate skin and shorter chunky hair that was a dark shade of brown with the perfect auburn highlights, quite fashionable, yet not edgy enough to turn heads at merely her sense of style, what she was born with would certainly fill out the rest of the necessary requirements for that motion and immediately I was trembling... yet erect. Thoughts of this girl had always had a strange effect on me. I feared her... I knew what she was capable of... and that fear transposed itself into a sense of sexual aggression so undeniable that is served for some desperate and rough sex (not to mention masturbation) sessions. Her name was Kristin Kellie Teague, her father was white, her mother was hispanic, and her style tended to relate more frequently to those of her father's ethnic disposition. When I had turned 18 this girl had moved to Arizona... and then Los Angeles... and then back to Arizona... why would she ever return here? She was in search of childish dreams as I was at that time... and I gave them up... but coming back here? NEVER. And then... terrible as this day already was, she noticed me and her mouth gaped in gleeful shock, and she sprinted towards me... however unelegant that may sound... she made the fucking lamest things appear graceful. And she greeted me with an overenthusiastic hug, and a charming smile (her nose crinkled when she smiled and her eyes turned to gorgeous little glimmering joyful slits) and then she asked why I was here, that she had heard I had fled the country and once again overenthusically laughed... I silently, with a slight smirk, tugged at my suit... and pointed at the sign on the door that barely muttered to the world that this was a place you dragged your dead to.. and her hand drew to her mouth in shock, and asked who... I told her that my father had passed in a pretty rough car accident... and her eyes began to water... and I wanted then to be able to punch her so hard that she would die instantly yet painfully. Shortly following this she drew up the four words that would make me want to rip her lips from her face... "I'm so sorry, Ben." And she began to talk quite a bit more... and though i hated her right then... a few words spurted from my mouth that I had had no intention of uttering...and after letting out... would be able to do little but exist. "Kristin, would you fuck me? Not like I want to... just... would you?" And then I stood there... in mild shock... at what had skipped right past the the forefront of my mind... from the subconscious to my lips... sneaky mother fucker. And just as quickly as I had said it, nearly cutting off the last words, she spat back, "Yes." and grabbed my hand and began dragging me somewhere, where, well I was not meant to know... nor care.
Twenty minutes later the back of her car was drenched in the fog and scent of quick and uninvolved sex, her windows were slightly cracked as we both puffed heavily on clove cigarettes... she didn't smoke before, let's hope it was some way of holding onto me. My dress shirt unbuttoned and tossled, but still on, as well as the jacket, the peacoat was crumpled in the foot space of the backseat, my pants on, but twisted on my waist.her blouse was misbuttoned and her pants just draped over her lap like a tv tray... her jacket covering her feet. We were no longer touching, we were not in need of embrace, just fucking, and she was singing along to some TERRIBLE american radio band, and I found myself disgusted, and yet still wanting her. I am ignorantly shocked EVERY TIME I notice how contradictory I am. You think after so many years of getting to know me, I could predict things like this... and I can... but it's never something I really confront until I have completed the self-destructive behavior. But I was too bored with myself to really care, fuck it, whose looking anyway? So I fucked my ex-girlfriend in the back seat of her car... smoked a cigarette without touching or talking to her... got out and she told me to call her again while I was in the states... and then implied if I wanted to fuck her again... I might even call...
The blood coursed my veins... the alcohol swimming, slipping through me... like the passionate hands of a lover... but caressing me from the inside, lulling me, swooning me... changing me... poisoning me. In some club in Fresno... with some old friends... some decent band playing... I am at the bar alone, my friends in front of the stage, staring intensely at the band and smiling. The pounding bass causing my chest to tremble and bounce to a rhythm I would have rather ignored. I sat for a hours, drinking and sitting silently, having brief acquaintences with the bottoms of some very respectable bottles. And suddenly without choice, I am lifted from the stool and float out the door and I draw a cigarette to my lips and stand in the cold, hands jammed deep into my jacket pockets, eyes locked onto the beautiful and indifferent eyes of some girl, waiting for her friend who was chatting her fucking head off on a cell phone. Smoke circling me, dancing with me, causing to grow even dizzier, the light catching the smoke around me, and I felt as if I was glowing. And I stood wondering... contemplating if I could sell myself, strategies taking shape in my drunken and spinning head. What cheap fucking marketing scheme would get me across this time? What unique approach to spark conversation would shock and create an enticing mystique that would lure this girl into whatever trap may already be set in my sub-conscious? A shadowy figure slithering from his perch... pursuing his prey... hunting nearly carelessly, gently coiling around her... playfully drawing her in, and she smirked all the way in, maybe she was even aware that she was being cornered, and then as the conversation took flight... constricting... she was mine to devour...but... could she pretend she wasn't needy? Could she pretend that she really saw me as a potential for long term? Would she be willing to fall for anything? We're sure to spill our drunken guts, and stumble over our own words and ignore each others, or listen intently, as if what we're being told will offer us an epiphany. And then... we would slip out... into my car... and drive to her place... have a few more drinks... and turn each other into medicine. Twice in one day... and I begin to feel a little self awareness... and as she is taking off my pants... I saw my own hands... not touching her... and I looked at her bed... a bed I had never slept in. I took her hands from my belt... grabbed my clothes... my pack of cigarettes from her coffee table... and just said... "we have GOT to grow up," and I just left... Through the door I heard her half yell after me a careless "fuck you". What was I doing? This was not me, and in that second, I felt some strange yet undeniable sense of pride. You see, we are a sheep-like people (like so many people have said before me) nothing but rams and lambs... without each other we make no sense, with each other we make the same amount of sense... just a different kind.
Sin is beautiful but lately I am beginning to realize that I am using myself. I fucked Kristin again before I left... idiot.
When I got back to London, I told no one I was home and spent 3 days in bed. And every morning the sun would clumsily come crashing through my window and slip into my bed with me, sprawling over me, tearing my lids open... and the alarm comprised of streetnoise, screeching until I awoke. But I am existing in a beautiful state of numb and frigidness, fading into the background... the churning and overpopulated seas of my thoughts. A sea that remains home to every monstrous thought, and every valiant inkling that has danced it's way across my subconscience and on occasion crawled onto the shores of the forefront of my mind as a means of evolution, to grow legs and leave the swirling and murky waters of my half-assed mind. Formed from the cliche Pyrhonnic aesthete of American youth, and lived out by the somewhat hopeful.
Sitting here I wonder... was Kristin that missed last train? People like me constantly dream of sharing our heart, but settle for sharing a bed.
I take a drag and hold my breath, hoping my heart stops. My apartment littered with the memories not worth filing away, so they lie, strewn about like the toys of a spoiled child. Moments left unnoticed, unkept, and this is how it would remain.
Something interesting but unimportant about me... I, a non-believer, am rather intrigued with the unending debate on the existance and morality of God, a random thought, I must admit, but shall come into play within a few moments.
On the evening of the third day I rose again... and decided to visit the store and collect the books that Marcus had place aside for me. As I brushed through the door Marcus' blank stare disappeared and his gaze fell upon me, carving a light smirk on his young and indifferent face. I could hear him listening to one of my favorite bands in the background... The Cancer Conspiracy, a long broken up instrumental prog rock band. My feet carrying me to the counter and he turned to gather the books that were waiting for me. The great and awkward insensity of the music pouring over the empty store. Sorting out what books would accompany me home today and what would have yet to be parolled from the limbo of the employee holds cabinet.
Keepers:
"Glamorama"- Bret Easton Ellis
"Mind Hunter"- John Douglas
"Shadow Puppets" - Orson Scott Card (tucked slyly under my jacket, a guilty pleasure)
and "The Question of God"- by Armand M. Nicholi Jr (a book in which the author compares the beliefs of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud on issues like the existence of God, or more earthly issues like love, sex, and the meaning of life.)
Now, the books will be put on hold while I address, that it had become very apparent that Marcus was using heroine again, and it only made me jealous. He was better looking, younger, ...and getting high, while I was trying to be so... aged. In youth, life was so beautiful, until we gave in and grew up. And then as the bell on the door rang annoyingly behind me, I turned to get a glimpse at whatever wandering idiot or 60 year old regular had just stumbled through our door, until I saw a beautiful strapless black dress with the most amazing shape... and gorgeous hair, the color of breadcrusts, with gorgeous sun lit highlights, falling in a messy but amazingly sexy way across her face and shoulders, her bangs shadowing her face in all the right ways. And then into her glimmering sienna eyes and beautifully gentle jawline... her smirk spilling from her supple and enticing lips and over her stunning shoulder blades, across the fabric of her dress, an elegant amount of cleavage showing.and down her satin-like, thin breathtaking thighs, across her knees and her perfect calves and flows over her low heels. Then races over the floor... over my body and into my wide eyed stare. It was the fair-haired girl... and she looked fucking captivating. And suddenly I was resorting to grade school tactics once again.... place a book in front of it, though the book is over half a foot from your hips, just force it down and she will never notice. But, under the current conditions, my mind was not at full focus and I made my move both too quickly, and too forcefully, mashing my penis into it's companions and knocking the wind out of myself. The unlivable pain making it's presence known in my abdomen, I showed no sign of flaw other than a quick (and surely unattractive) grimace from the initial contact. Yeah... a book with two cock jokes already... but we're all immature... get over it. She began to thumb through the isles of non-fiction with a face that showed no kin to interest. I was baffled... she was beautiful... laced with soft sunlight and something in the core of my being was assured that she would be warm and soft to the touch. My fingers would slip with ease through her hair and her lips would paralyze me with the slightest graze, my breath would harden in my chest. my mouth quivering, longing, hungering for her embrace. Her fingers dancing through dusty books, while my mind paints me in place of weathered pages, her eyes so fixed on what my body has to say. And then, as if time slowed down so that I could comprehend, she re-shelved the book and began floating towards me. I was searching for air... trying to calm my palpitating heart... trying to still my shaking hands, my head throbbing (as well as other parts) with anticipation. My mind stirring with fantasy. I am an easily romanced coward. I made no movement, my lips held strong... probably better off anyhow. She illuminates the room and so much more, sheds light on insecurities I had long missed since high school. I feel my soul rip a doorway through my flesh and sprint towards her's... wanting to snatch it and run like a petty purse thief. And as reality began to peel away the thick veil of illusion or expectation, I notice her standing in front of me, tapping her foot annoyedly... out of the corner of my eye Marcus stood staring at me, eyes glazed over, and I turned to her, and apoloogized for not hearing her and simply said, " Is there anything I can help you with ms.... um...."
"Shelly O' Farrell, now stop staring at me tits and help me find a fohkkin' book there." She was Irish... and she was a bitch. And this bitch could now have the greatest tits in all the lands and she would recieve few kind words from me now. Funny how something so stupid could ruin a perfectly good hard-on. "Well were ya plannin on tryin' to shag me right here, 'cause if that's the case yer out of luck. Now, do you have __________ or not, 'cause if not I will be on my way, but if ya do, you can stare at me bit longer, then." and right then, any hope of turning the moment back around had gone, she had to go and make and ass of herself, and kill it all.
"I believe we do have it, though I am not working today, and Marcus over here has immediate tasks to see to, but it would be in that section." Nearly gesturing at a random place in the store. And then Marcus grabbed me by my arm. and whispered to me, "I had meant to ask you, Ben. Would you mind closin' the shop tonight? I've got me a bit of a hot date tonight, and I don't want to spoil't, ya know?"
I emmited a disgusted sigh, and then a hesitant, "Fine." though i was not exactly sure why the tiff. I was planning on stopping by again tonight anyhow to do a few bank deposits, and I really had nothing better to do. "I will be back in a few hours then Marcus. 'Til then, I expect the store to be cleaned up a bit," and then I leaned in close and gestured behind me towards the spouty Irish bitch behind me. "And take out the trash would you?" And with that, a final glance at the gorgeous shrew... and then shove through the door.
A cigarette on a stirring street, where people looked up only for safety, the whole world detatched and uninvolved... exactly how it should be, for everyone but me. Suddenly reminded of a Counting Crows lyric: "Step out the front door, like a ghost into the fog, where no one notices the contrast of white on white." And I was part of this anti-still life movement, this mural that few cared to stop and take in, just pass by the pieces of humanity, the paints of life that has evolved for centuries... and that's what made it beautiful, that it was merely on display in the way a shadow is, we're all extras in the film debuts that is each other's lives, and we would all love to be blockbusters. I would love to be validated, inflicted with a purpose, play out some remarkable role in my own life, while others stood staring like I do at people with such opportunities, wishing to somehow acquire the same. But I complain, I don't act I am meant to revere, rather than be revered.
In a few minutes I knew Marcus would be pretending that he had to take his lunch and was going to close the store for a bit to dispose of that wretched and stunning woman in the store. He might even shoot up in the store while it was closed, I cared little. I was never one for pep-talks, he would sort it out for himself, or death, or the authorities would take the initiative, so let it be.
We're all walking the bowing line between faith and fear, with so little to offer, and so much to ask. And suddenly I noticed... I am singing to myself... and rubbing my hands very forcefully together... and I knew every word but could not remember the song at all... was trying so hard to place it... "She takes a drink and then she waits, the alcohol it permeates, and soon the cells give way, and cancels out the day, I cant keep it all together, I know I know I know... I cant keep it all together, And the sirens song that is your madness, Holds a truth I cant erase." JESUS... fuck what was it? "And theres a memory of a window, Looking through I see you, Searching for something I could never give you, And theres someone who understands you more than I do, a sadness I cant erase." ...it was... GOD OF WINE!!! by third eye blind... sad song.
Now, the books...
And with a loud thud my world was being broadcasted to my brain through a weak signal, the street playing through snowy static... the faint white figures fading from view, the blood flowing into my eyes, the scene was painted crimson, and I was horrified, in the instant before unconscious.
__________________________________________________________
moments to use:
We're all walking the bowing line between faith and fear.
A package came from my drunken whore of an aunt today... I indifferently tore it open and exposed something repulsive and yet inspiring enough to bring about a critical inspection of myself... narcissism while nauseous. Pictures of myself in a suit and fancy shoes... a disgusting elegance to honor death. Never is there a less solemn moment than when posing for a family photograph at a funeral. She had sent me family pictures from my father's burial. All of us trying to look like we were trying to hold back tears, and smile for the camera, when in reality... we were just smiling for the fucking camera. I mean picture your aunt Debbie gathering you in together and yelling over the sniffles "say cheese!"
...fucking alarm... fucking life... an undying cycle of endless routine. And if it hands itself off to another day of the same complaints, the same repetitive system of finding ways to piss me off, I am simply going to dismember myself. What I wouldn't give to abandon all responsibility... turn into a fucking child, hand over all these thoughts, worries, stresses... this horrible need to validate myself through another person. Doesn't it sound romanticly childlish? I would be blessed with people who would tell me how to live without insinuating and emphasizing my iniquities. No expectations to adhere to. I could be washed of every regret, to be rinsed of this distaste for myself, the person that I have become, a filthy and clouded version of what I am percieved to be, left with the same wishes, aspirations, ambitions that I clutched as a child, and now despise but can not release my grip on as an adult. And now I am just foggy, jaded, and fragmented, shades of gray of the vibrant colors I radiated as that child... and yet all my memories... play like scarred film on a faded old projector... and I question... is it less or more beautiful? Would every recollection truly shine when played out in omnicolor? Or does the black and white framework of my youth simply shape and outline the man I am today? A cutout? Paper doll. Photographic or photocopy? And here I am, kneeling shamefully, hidden in the proper position for prayer, in the sanctuary, the catacombs of my thoughts... making love to the idea of what could be if only fantasies made love to me, but fantasies are delicate, fantasies are renound for their frailty, but damn near impossible to kill. These are burdens most of us are willing to bare... I on the other hand am far too lazy.
The ceiling is lightly stained and it is hardly noticeable,completely blurred by the drunkenness that sleep inspires. I roll onto my stomach, exhaling heavily, and pull a cigarette from it's pack, draw it to my lips, and now my lighter, rolling back onto my back...light it, inhale... the cloud of smoke conquering the air... it seems to clarify, like so many aspects of my life, strands of this smoke, crowding together, and fleeing from other strands... running untamed, but at the mercy of the air, and the breeze, making it's anti-climactic exit from my slightly opened window. And the smoke disperses, goes home, cooks itself dinner, and crawls into bed again... alone. Or on the weekends, the local pub, or a rowdy club, or concert, and a girl draped in dim lighting in the smokey pub, or rowdy club, or random concert... and into bed with her, and in the morning, coffee and cigarettes, and she's off to her life, and I am left in mine... cooking myself dinner, and crawling into bed again... alone. My eyes slide shut and I am overcome with an intense sensation... the drive to just rot here. God how enticing that sounds, to do nothing, offer no part of myself to anything, and just keep all of me for me. Oh well, time to get up... cursing mindlessly at the consequences of taking on the challenge of time... and growing into one's adulthood. And older gents clutch hollow chests at the end of these days, and preach of their regrets, and their loves, and the great and terrible times in their life... but what of times like this? Sad because they're boring, desperate because they're routine, but no story to tell, no grace, no heroes, nothing to overcome, except time. But young men live it, thick and thin, the only villian is the main character, the only protagonist? the heart, the will, the inability to drain one's life from the body, and the antagonist? He exists inside the same flesh, that which is the wandering mind, grasping desperately and distraughtly for anything like the anxious outstretched fingers of an infant. Pulling my comforter from chest, and drawing every ounce of aquirable energy to remove myself from the womb of my bed...wet with cold sweats and tossled from rolling in my sleep. Stumbling to the kitchen I prepare the coffee, which would definately need to be "irished" up this morning, and begin to draw a bath. Slumping onto the tiles of the kitchen floor and resting my sunken eyes into hands still weak from sleep, my back resting gently against the chipped cabinets, I ponder nothing, just curse the forthcoming day, grab my coffee, toss in a little bourbon (all that's left in the pantry) and crawl out to my porch for a cigarette. The stale taste in my mouth mirroring the even staler feeling lingering in my mind... Return to the warmth of indoors and remove my clothes... scratching my chest, but curing no itch, I return the the bath that awaits me and gently slump into the warm and welcoming water...floating... sinking... just existing between the two, in limbo, a lifeless stalemate... it is a few minutes before beginning the normal bathing rituals... fuck it, who cares if I am late to work...
No, this is not chapter 2, life rarely comes in chapters so why try to explain something like this in chapters rather than realistically. Life just floods over us, in a systerm of time, so inconsistent and yet so structured, no means for repair, no allowance for mending or repentance, just consequences while continuing on.
A pretty, small-framed, fair-haired girl, with kind eyes, and a lightly carved smirk passed by my home today and glanced in from the street, I saw her, but I don't know if she saw me, due to the glare of the sun on my windows... figures. And I was left questioning who was more real, her, or I... both silent and inconsequential characters on the center stage of each other's lives... both serving little purpose... and I concluded only this, she was not thinking of me... the man behind the glare, sloppily dressed and dancing to silence with cigarette smoke, and yet, here I was, I was thinking of her. But what the fuck do I know?
Catching the morning train to the used book store I work in near Russel Square, I thought of little more than what I might have for lunch, or if my cigarettes would last the day. Walking from the train stop to my store, I though of nothing more than whether that lunch would last the day, and how many cigarettes I would have for lunch. Only when unlocking the door did my thoughts then return to the young fair-haired passerby from earlier this morning, reshaping the memory in my mind, I could see her darting eyes, and then them fixing on my window, and her pace slowing every so slighty, I believe she did notice me, I believe I could have caught her eye. And with that, my day began. Blindly sending my fingertips to explore the rough surface of the wall in search of the lightswitch, and once discovering my destination, a quick flip and the landscape for my unfulfilling daily routine takes shape from under the blanket of shadows. Here in my element I felt my soul beginning to stretch out, beginning to awaken and stir within me, preparing for another day of elitist conversations and assuring myself that I am above yer average, uncultured arse.
Born in California, and raised there, and even spent a few years living on my own there, I found the only place I could really live was somewhere that my past could not follow in any packaging but that of my own mind. And after months of barely deliberating... I kind of just wound up in London. Coming out of a country of senseless idealism and trying to play the picturesque fragments of the all-american dream... while stirring beneath the shell of composure. Americans have this undying sense of restlessness, imprisoned firmly by expectation and lack of real ambition. Defeated before ever declaring war on our own insecurities, and yet never at ease with such things. And it's not that Brits are void of such faults... they just hide it much more stylishly... or exploit these faults wildly. A collected people, not as frantic, and still not as painted up, comprised of shades of gray, rather than such brilliant overacted colors. Less searching, more sitting, and that is what makes me feel more comfortable here. That... and everyone is completely void of and yet overflowing with class, and I love the contradiction. Not to mention the endless sense that everyone emits that they are better than you, and yet they do not contest when you burn brilliantly of the same aura.
I've had this fucking song stuck in my head all day, a song from high school. Even then I was quite the elitist, listening only to music that had not graced mainstream ears, the song "does it show" by mock orange... and I dig through the stack of compilations I have scattered in drawers in the back of the store... trying to quench the thirst of my ears. Finding what I think could be it, I slip it into the CD player... press the skip button some random amount of times... carelessly, little thought involved... wrong song... but still nostalgic, a songwriter from seattle... "The Professor" by Damien Rice. So, I skip back a few tracks... and as if giving in, my song clicked into place, and I could begin my day how I felt I must.
As today's heartbeart slowly fades, the carousel of my thoughts makes me a little sick once again. Work was mediocre, and everything felt routine as usual, all day I missed my guitar, and my cigarettes... and most of all... the feeling of a routine woman, rather than fucking these ghosts that haunt me for a night and crawl back into the shadows, only to return through awkward glances upon busses and trains, or overpopulated sidewalks, pretending not to meet eyes, but wanting so bad to be recognized. And before I knew it, I was lost in a crowd... a sea of faces, not a one turning an eye towards me. Gently, but indifferently pushing people from my path... a few rude responses I could barely make out as they faded into the background, I just needed a pint. and then... nearly plowing into someone, I lift my eyes and discover, inches from my face... the fair haired girl. And then, as she lifted her eyes, my eyes sank down her shirt... Now, I know that is far too macho and immature and I should have a little more self control... but fuck... it happens. As my eyes drift, I notice the curves that her skirt and blouse gently accent... and I feel my zipper press gently against my crotch. She smirks a bit, noticing me noticing her... and I shamefully, and quickly draw my eyes away... and continue walking. I can see her grinning face following me through the corner of my eye, and it only arouses me more... sensing it my be quite detectable now to anyone around me, i shift my bag to the front and lower my eyes once again... hoping that muscle memory would guide me to my train stop. Rushing through the flood, bumping shoulders with what seems to be everyone on earth, I can feel the blood rush to my cheeks as I blush, quite embaressed, and still I feel my bag rubbing gently against the prominent bulge, and it does nothing but make it more of a problem...God if only I could get to... and suddenly I was there... looking up for only a split second to stop myself from walking out in front of the train I intended to get on. The doors his open and people crowd in, I plop down with my bag upon my lap and stare aimlessly at the floor, and try not to look like a horny man, on a train with a raging boner. I sat silently for the next few minutes, darting my eyes across the train hoping no one had any inkling of what was surfacing from my hips. After what seemed it should have been enough time for my erection to subside, but clearly wasn't, I reached my stop and climbed off the train as quickly as possible, rushing towards my flat... seeing her body in my mind the entire way. God, what a terrible person I am. But Jesus... humanity... nature... all of this... overwhelming me at the thought of a simple pair of breasts, and everything that came with it. And as I finally reach my flat and tear the door open, and slam it shut tight behind me... I drop my bag to the floor and stare without purpose up the stairs... and then I knew it... I had to settle this problem now... I had to get this done with... wage war on my erection... intervene and let it know who was in charge in this situation, I had to stand before my penis and show it that I was the man, and it was the prick, and dammit, I have the final say... and so quickly and in big powerful strides I ran up the stares and into the bathroom. The next few minutes do not need to be explained. I think it is quite clear what was done in there... but the thoughts of taking that woman... on the street in front of hundreds of people... was enough to get me through the rest of the evening in quite a better mood than normal, and by 8 o'clock, I had decided that heading down to the pub would be nice... and so I put on my large overcoat and scarf, and headed to that pub with a stride of confidence... though I had conquered nothing... but that night I just felt sexier.
The pub was a bit crowded, which I had hoped for, plenty of young women, to at least introduce myself to and hope for the best, if not a girl meant for long term, maybe a fuck on the fly. So I proceeded to the bar, and picked up a pint... a few more and maybe I would be swimming through enough "liquid courage" to take someone home for the night. Another fuzzy memory, another temporary validation, and onward, the adventure of routine, a losing battle, who can outlast who... me entrenched in battle with 9-5, so pencil in the random drunken sex with a strange girl, make a little room in my pouty existence. And here enters the echo of my conscience, barely noticed, a voice screaming through the static and dischordant hum of the abrasive mixture of alcohol and male hormones. And though the gentle whispers of that conscience, made it's presence known, I made it clear to myself, that tonight... like so many other nights, that voice was to be checked at the door, and only to find it's way home again, in the rush of reality, after sex, bringing many bedfellows such as guilt, fear, and self-loathing... but for now the adrenaline would carry me through any misguided and uncalculated decisions. Oh the roles we play in youth, and are so hesitant to give up when converting to the horrible cult of adulthood, so coy and naive... so painted up and seemingly careless, while breathlessly desperate for something so primal, and often degrading... a fucking good fuck. As I think this, as I realize this, in a crowded pub, I smirk, my eyes slimming, and I turn tail and walk straight out of the door, lighting a cigarette as I do, reaching the bitter London air, and plop down upon the curb, sliding my fingers into my hair, gripping it, and giving it a reasonable tug, only enhancing the sense of inner frustration, thinly veiled, and surfacing quickly, tearing a hole through me, an exit wound, and it is so refreshing. Returning the stale tasting cigarette to my lips, and taking a drag so long it burns my insides and causes my eyes to irrigate themselves, I exhale through clenched teeth... and let every thought flee from the cage of my mind... darting in all directions, across the asphalt, into storm drains and behind trash cans, under cars, and into alley ways, through cracked windows, and even into the heads of people I have never spoken with... and I stand again... and return to the club...reinvented. A redheaded girl, scantily clad, glances over at me from a group of friends... and smiles... and one of her friends turns to see what she is smiling at... notices me and smiles as well... and then... the second girl's smile turns to a lifeless gaze as she vomits all over a third friend's blouse. She runs to the restroom, and friend #3 friends darts after her, cursing endlessly... only one girl left... the catalyst, girl #1... and as soon as she rose from her stool at the bar... i knew... I was getting laid.
Morning came long after I did. And her, who knows if she did, I didn't ask. I had a cigarette, she smiled as I crawled into bed, and we slept. And when morning made it's presence known through poorly drawn curtains, she was merely another shadow cast by streetlights and the dim glow of the moon through the same curtains... she disappeared at dawn like all of us affection hungry vampires usually do. People like myself are a constant disappearing act, all melting candles... we fade into darkness... drift with a cloud of smoke, and then we're gone, entirely unnoticeable... a real Rosencrantz and Guildenstern existence... minor characters in other people's major stories, and we all pity ourselves for it when the spot light even glints off of us. It is truly the recluse that shifts so easily from a loathing of his own condition, to an elitist for his endless sense of self-awareness and independence. We are a crumbling people... we are weak, but hard to kill... because in the end... everyone is too indifferent towards us anyway.
So anyway... another cigarette, some stale cereal in some milk that tasted awfully watery, and a bleak and blurry shower. Bored, I waltzed to the bookshelf lined with my collection of vinyls and CD's, even a few tapes (haven't reached the vintage cool yet, and too old to be respected), and my books... my eyes, strangely locked on hamlet... a book I had not read since high school, but had always been intrigued by and kind of just purchased in a pile of books from another used book store... and now... I remembered the character of hamlet... the beginning apathy... and in such a sudden and dramatic way... a completely different man, a desperate and determined idiot... and yet, something I respected and longed for. Seated between the shelves of this bookcase was a mirror, and when locking eyes with myself, taking in my reflection... I felt the hangover a little harder, and saw it even more... I looked like a cadaver, braced to stand like a doll... and I hated myself... and everything about my life... so I went to my bedroom, masturbated again, and went back to sleep.
"These baby secrets have grown into children, through dirty adolescence, and now into manhood. I locked the basement door and broke off the skeleton key but it made no difference, still they travel with me even though I killed them they haunt me and they help me, remember the lies in the shadows, the practiced charades. the arrow is thrown into your back, nothing has ever been so distant and weak. Dreaded words whispered under her breath, 'your just like your father, and your ocean is a drop of water.'"- Rocky Votolato- Secrets of a Salesman
My understanding of the rest of humanity is limited, but there are things that I am quite certain of. These being as such:
1. We are a cocky stupid people, who dance around the conceptions of our insecurities and try to romance our charms and benefits and exploit them, figuring that someone is always looking our way, checking us out, and when we get someone to admit that they like what they see, we immediately attempt two steps:
a. fuck them
b. turn them into a hamper for all of our emotional dirty laundry
2. Almost everyone (especially women) would rather forgo love for some sense of personal safety... again justifying the statement that we are a stupid people... and time is only fortifying these ideas. Or... perhaps believing this is some kind of safety measure for myself...
3. It's always best to give an impression of wealth, no matter how much debt and filth is stirring beneath the surface, we have to keep our faces stylishly smirking and our fingernails clean.
4. Everyone's out to sell themselves, out to make a commission of self-confidence, and if yer not buying, then leave the sidewalk stage of their traveling salesman routine... because this is the slickest marketing they can offer... so buy...... or simply fuck off.
Think I am cynical? Fuck off for that too.
I was awoken by nothing by around noon, checking the answering machine I discovered only a message from one of my employees... a younger man... 18, I think. His name was Marcus, his message only to let me know that a gentleman had came in and sold back a copy of "Glamorama", a Bret Easton Ellis novel, a book I had mistakenly showed mild interest in, and now he was following up with the ass kissing routine. Maybe I would stop by the shop later and pick it up.
A few hours pass as I thoughtlessly peruse a few of the books that have conquered my coffee table, except for the small piece of land that my ash tray maintains, a stillness as I am sprawled across my favorite chair in all of the flat. I am feeling beautifully rooted... nurtured by the silence. And suddenly, without welcome, I am uprooted from the gorgeous still life moment by the sharp and piercing ring of the telephone. What a foul invention, intended to do nothing but butt in, always putting things on hold for something that may be quite frivolous in the end. So I say once again, what a fucking FOUL machine. Dying to end such a horrid noise, I quickly draw the reciever to my ear, accidentally applying an overabundance of force and smarting my ear pretty healthily. Realizing after slight hesitation, that that ear would no longer be useful, I quickly switch ears and mutter a grumpy, "hello".
The brilliance of flashing lights and ear splitting screech of sirens fades to paler shades and decibels above silence in my mind... painting the accident as a mural on the walls of my freshly emptied head as I stood in my shapeless black suit... that felt as if it weighed hundreds of pounds. I could see that cars crumpled and molded together, like to sadistic lovers with the intent to maim while making love. The scene flooded in the freshly spilled light of streetlamps and moonlight and the spinning shades of red and blue from so many goverment vehicles. And father lie in his car, barely making a sound... bleeding to death, broken bones, tattered clothing masking tattered skin... and he died there, alone, on the way home from Christmas shopping. And now he was here, well his body was, some shell of my father crammed into a box and placed before us to stare at and cry over. Father's face was pale as I looked into what would later be a closed coffin. His face stitched above the eyebrow... but for what reason? He didn't look peaceful like aunt mary anne had said, trying to console my mother, brother, and I. He looked plastic... stuffed, like a trophy of the hunt. Mother's fingers caressed his dead cheek, and I was disgusted. not much with her. More with myself... with the world... what the fuck was I not disgusted with? I left London because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. I left for this... to stare into my mother's also nearly dead face, and glance out of the corners of my eyes and the tear-stained faces of family members and friends, and I just was not interested in it. I could see my black peacoat folded over the back of a chair among several other chairs... gathered around a table with no real sense of order... just askew... Here we were, standing in line to look longingly into the face of two realities... we would never speak to this man again... and death was creeping further down the list towards us... God, how I wanted to leave. I locked eyes shortly with father's pale countenance as I stood before the coffin alone for a second... expecting him to begin snoring or to simply roll over in the casket. I walked over to my peacoat and communicated silently to my zombie-like mother that I was stepping outside for a cigarette. Pushing through the tinted glass door of the funeral home, I find a lamp post to lean against and draw a clove cigarette from it's slightly crumpled box... and a lighter... blue... clear... cheap. I prop my foot and my back against the lamppost... my knee protruding from the stiff form I had taken next to this nearly silent funeral home in central California. The city stirred with indecent human beings... wearing transparent skin... so revealing of their common lives... and I found myself once again repulsed at the place I knew as home for nearly all of my life. My eyes fell to the pavement and I wanted to just collapse, to just crumble to lifeless mound of dust and fade into a once was... instead of a what now is. But I know better, I am not that confident of a person, I still have something to prove, something to uphold. It's everything I have to stare longingly into a mirror and wish that what I saw was who I am, a man that shows such an aura of composure... while inside I desperately need renovation.
As my eyes took flight and began to drift back over the streets of this digusting one horse town... They stopped as dead as my father corpse at the sight of a single girl... THE girl who potentially ruined my life. A shorter girl with unusually large breasts for her smaller build, narrow hips and glittering eyes, milk chocolate skin and shorter chunky hair that was a dark shade of brown with the perfect auburn highlights, quite fashionable, yet not edgy enough to turn heads at merely her sense of style, what she was born with would certainly fill out the rest of the necessary requirements for that motion and immediately I was trembling... yet erect. Thoughts of this girl had always had a strange effect on me. I feared her... I knew what she was capable of... and that fear transposed itself into a sense of sexual aggression so undeniable that is served for some desperate and rough sex (not to mention masturbation) sessions. Her name was Kristin Kellie Teague, her father was white, her mother was hispanic, and her style tended to relate more frequently to those of her father's ethnic disposition. When I had turned 18 this girl had moved to Arizona... and then Los Angeles... and then back to Arizona... why would she ever return here? She was in search of childish dreams as I was at that time... and I gave them up... but coming back here? NEVER. And then... terrible as this day already was, she noticed me and her mouth gaped in gleeful shock, and she sprinted towards me... however unelegant that may sound... she made the fucking lamest things appear graceful. And she greeted me with an overenthusiastic hug, and a charming smile (her nose crinkled when she smiled and her eyes turned to gorgeous little glimmering joyful slits) and then she asked why I was here, that she had heard I had fled the country and once again overenthusically laughed... I silently, with a slight smirk, tugged at my suit... and pointed at the sign on the door that barely muttered to the world that this was a place you dragged your dead to.. and her hand drew to her mouth in shock, and asked who... I told her that my father had passed in a pretty rough car accident... and her eyes began to water... and I wanted then to be able to punch her so hard that she would die instantly yet painfully. Shortly following this she drew up the four words that would make me want to rip her lips from her face... "I'm so sorry, Ben." And she began to talk quite a bit more... and though i hated her right then... a few words spurted from my mouth that I had had no intention of uttering...and after letting out... would be able to do little but exist. "Kristin, would you fuck me? Not like I want to... just... would you?" And then I stood there... in mild shock... at what had skipped right past the the forefront of my mind... from the subconscious to my lips... sneaky mother fucker. And just as quickly as I had said it, nearly cutting off the last words, she spat back, "Yes." and grabbed my hand and began dragging me somewhere, where, well I was not meant to know... nor care.
Twenty minutes later the back of her car was drenched in the fog and scent of quick and uninvolved sex, her windows were slightly cracked as we both puffed heavily on clove cigarettes... she didn't smoke before, let's hope it was some way of holding onto me. My dress shirt unbuttoned and tossled, but still on, as well as the jacket, the peacoat was crumpled in the foot space of the backseat, my pants on, but twisted on my waist.her blouse was misbuttoned and her pants just draped over her lap like a tv tray... her jacket covering her feet. We were no longer touching, we were not in need of embrace, just fucking, and she was singing along to some TERRIBLE american radio band, and I found myself disgusted, and yet still wanting her. I am ignorantly shocked EVERY TIME I notice how contradictory I am. You think after so many years of getting to know me, I could predict things like this... and I can... but it's never something I really confront until I have completed the self-destructive behavior. But I was too bored with myself to really care, fuck it, whose looking anyway? So I fucked my ex-girlfriend in the back seat of her car... smoked a cigarette without touching or talking to her... got out and she told me to call her again while I was in the states... and then implied if I wanted to fuck her again... I might even call...
The blood coursed my veins... the alcohol swimming, slipping through me... like the passionate hands of a lover... but caressing me from the inside, lulling me, swooning me... changing me... poisoning me. In some club in Fresno... with some old friends... some decent band playing... I am at the bar alone, my friends in front of the stage, staring intensely at the band and smiling. The pounding bass causing my chest to tremble and bounce to a rhythm I would have rather ignored. I sat for a hours, drinking and sitting silently, having brief acquaintences with the bottoms of some very respectable bottles. And suddenly without choice, I am lifted from the stool and float out the door and I draw a cigarette to my lips and stand in the cold, hands jammed deep into my jacket pockets, eyes locked onto the beautiful and indifferent eyes of some girl, waiting for her friend who was chatting her fucking head off on a cell phone. Smoke circling me, dancing with me, causing to grow even dizzier, the light catching the smoke around me, and I felt as if I was glowing. And I stood wondering... contemplating if I could sell myself, strategies taking shape in my drunken and spinning head. What cheap fucking marketing scheme would get me across this time? What unique approach to spark conversation would shock and create an enticing mystique that would lure this girl into whatever trap may already be set in my sub-conscious? A shadowy figure slithering from his perch... pursuing his prey... hunting nearly carelessly, gently coiling around her... playfully drawing her in, and she smirked all the way in, maybe she was even aware that she was being cornered, and then as the conversation took flight... constricting... she was mine to devour...but... could she pretend she wasn't needy? Could she pretend that she really saw me as a potential for long term? Would she be willing to fall for anything? We're sure to spill our drunken guts, and stumble over our own words and ignore each others, or listen intently, as if what we're being told will offer us an epiphany. And then... we would slip out... into my car... and drive to her place... have a few more drinks... and turn each other into medicine. Twice in one day... and I begin to feel a little self awareness... and as she is taking off my pants... I saw my own hands... not touching her... and I looked at her bed... a bed I had never slept in. I took her hands from my belt... grabbed my clothes... my pack of cigarettes from her coffee table... and just said... "we have GOT to grow up," and I just left... Through the door I heard her half yell after me a careless "fuck you". What was I doing? This was not me, and in that second, I felt some strange yet undeniable sense of pride. You see, we are a sheep-like people (like so many people have said before me) nothing but rams and lambs... without each other we make no sense, with each other we make the same amount of sense... just a different kind.
Sin is beautiful but lately I am beginning to realize that I am using myself. I fucked Kristin again before I left... idiot.
When I got back to London, I told no one I was home and spent 3 days in bed. And every morning the sun would clumsily come crashing through my window and slip into my bed with me, sprawling over me, tearing my lids open... and the alarm comprised of streetnoise, screeching until I awoke. But I am existing in a beautiful state of numb and frigidness, fading into the background... the churning and overpopulated seas of my thoughts. A sea that remains home to every monstrous thought, and every valiant inkling that has danced it's way across my subconscience and on occasion crawled onto the shores of the forefront of my mind as a means of evolution, to grow legs and leave the swirling and murky waters of my half-assed mind. Formed from the cliche Pyrhonnic aesthete of American youth, and lived out by the somewhat hopeful.
Sitting here I wonder... was Kristin that missed last train? People like me constantly dream of sharing our heart, but settle for sharing a bed.
I take a drag and hold my breath, hoping my heart stops. My apartment littered with the memories not worth filing away, so they lie, strewn about like the toys of a spoiled child. Moments left unnoticed, unkept, and this is how it would remain.
Something interesting but unimportant about me... I, a non-believer, am rather intrigued with the unending debate on the existance and morality of God, a random thought, I must admit, but shall come into play within a few moments.
On the evening of the third day I rose again... and decided to visit the store and collect the books that Marcus had place aside for me. As I brushed through the door Marcus' blank stare disappeared and his gaze fell upon me, carving a light smirk on his young and indifferent face. I could hear him listening to one of my favorite bands in the background... The Cancer Conspiracy, a long broken up instrumental prog rock band. My feet carrying me to the counter and he turned to gather the books that were waiting for me. The great and awkward insensity of the music pouring over the empty store. Sorting out what books would accompany me home today and what would have yet to be parolled from the limbo of the employee holds cabinet.
Keepers:
"Glamorama"- Bret Easton Ellis
"Mind Hunter"- John Douglas
"Shadow Puppets" - Orson Scott Card (tucked slyly under my jacket, a guilty pleasure)
and "The Question of God"- by Armand M. Nicholi Jr (a book in which the author compares the beliefs of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud on issues like the existence of God, or more earthly issues like love, sex, and the meaning of life.)
Now, the books will be put on hold while I address, that it had become very apparent that Marcus was using heroine again, and it only made me jealous. He was better looking, younger, ...and getting high, while I was trying to be so... aged. In youth, life was so beautiful, until we gave in and grew up. And then as the bell on the door rang annoyingly behind me, I turned to get a glimpse at whatever wandering idiot or 60 year old regular had just stumbled through our door, until I saw a beautiful strapless black dress with the most amazing shape... and gorgeous hair, the color of breadcrusts, with gorgeous sun lit highlights, falling in a messy but amazingly sexy way across her face and shoulders, her bangs shadowing her face in all the right ways. And then into her glimmering sienna eyes and beautifully gentle jawline... her smirk spilling from her supple and enticing lips and over her stunning shoulder blades, across the fabric of her dress, an elegant amount of cleavage showing.and down her satin-like, thin breathtaking thighs, across her knees and her perfect calves and flows over her low heels. Then races over the floor... over my body and into my wide eyed stare. It was the fair-haired girl... and she looked fucking captivating. And suddenly I was resorting to grade school tactics once again.... place a book in front of it, though the book is over half a foot from your hips, just force it down and she will never notice. But, under the current conditions, my mind was not at full focus and I made my move both too quickly, and too forcefully, mashing my penis into it's companions and knocking the wind out of myself. The unlivable pain making it's presence known in my abdomen, I showed no sign of flaw other than a quick (and surely unattractive) grimace from the initial contact. Yeah... a book with two cock jokes already... but we're all immature... get over it. She began to thumb through the isles of non-fiction with a face that showed no kin to interest. I was baffled... she was beautiful... laced with soft sunlight and something in the core of my being was assured that she would be warm and soft to the touch. My fingers would slip with ease through her hair and her lips would paralyze me with the slightest graze, my breath would harden in my chest. my mouth quivering, longing, hungering for her embrace. Her fingers dancing through dusty books, while my mind paints me in place of weathered pages, her eyes so fixed on what my body has to say. And then, as if time slowed down so that I could comprehend, she re-shelved the book and began floating towards me. I was searching for air... trying to calm my palpitating heart... trying to still my shaking hands, my head throbbing (as well as other parts) with anticipation. My mind stirring with fantasy. I am an easily romanced coward. I made no movement, my lips held strong... probably better off anyhow. She illuminates the room and so much more, sheds light on insecurities I had long missed since high school. I feel my soul rip a doorway through my flesh and sprint towards her's... wanting to snatch it and run like a petty purse thief. And as reality began to peel away the thick veil of illusion or expectation, I notice her standing in front of me, tapping her foot annoyedly... out of the corner of my eye Marcus stood staring at me, eyes glazed over, and I turned to her, and apoloogized for not hearing her and simply said, " Is there anything I can help you with ms.... um...."
"Shelly O' Farrell, now stop staring at me tits and help me find a fohkkin' book there." She was Irish... and she was a bitch. And this bitch could now have the greatest tits in all the lands and she would recieve few kind words from me now. Funny how something so stupid could ruin a perfectly good hard-on. "Well were ya plannin on tryin' to shag me right here, 'cause if that's the case yer out of luck. Now, do you have __________ or not, 'cause if not I will be on my way, but if ya do, you can stare at me bit longer, then." and right then, any hope of turning the moment back around had gone, she had to go and make and ass of herself, and kill it all.
"I believe we do have it, though I am not working today, and Marcus over here has immediate tasks to see to, but it would be in that section." Nearly gesturing at a random place in the store. And then Marcus grabbed me by my arm. and whispered to me, "I had meant to ask you, Ben. Would you mind closin' the shop tonight? I've got me a bit of a hot date tonight, and I don't want to spoil't, ya know?"
I emmited a disgusted sigh, and then a hesitant, "Fine." though i was not exactly sure why the tiff. I was planning on stopping by again tonight anyhow to do a few bank deposits, and I really had nothing better to do. "I will be back in a few hours then Marcus. 'Til then, I expect the store to be cleaned up a bit," and then I leaned in close and gestured behind me towards the spouty Irish bitch behind me. "And take out the trash would you?" And with that, a final glance at the gorgeous shrew... and then shove through the door.
A cigarette on a stirring street, where people looked up only for safety, the whole world detatched and uninvolved... exactly how it should be, for everyone but me. Suddenly reminded of a Counting Crows lyric: "Step out the front door, like a ghost into the fog, where no one notices the contrast of white on white." And I was part of this anti-still life movement, this mural that few cared to stop and take in, just pass by the pieces of humanity, the paints of life that has evolved for centuries... and that's what made it beautiful, that it was merely on display in the way a shadow is, we're all extras in the film debuts that is each other's lives, and we would all love to be blockbusters. I would love to be validated, inflicted with a purpose, play out some remarkable role in my own life, while others stood staring like I do at people with such opportunities, wishing to somehow acquire the same. But I complain, I don't act I am meant to revere, rather than be revered.
In a few minutes I knew Marcus would be pretending that he had to take his lunch and was going to close the store for a bit to dispose of that wretched and stunning woman in the store. He might even shoot up in the store while it was closed, I cared little. I was never one for pep-talks, he would sort it out for himself, or death, or the authorities would take the initiative, so let it be.
We're all walking the bowing line between faith and fear, with so little to offer, and so much to ask. And suddenly I noticed... I am singing to myself... and rubbing my hands very forcefully together... and I knew every word but could not remember the song at all... was trying so hard to place it... "She takes a drink and then she waits, the alcohol it permeates, and soon the cells give way, and cancels out the day, I cant keep it all together, I know I know I know... I cant keep it all together, And the sirens song that is your madness, Holds a truth I cant erase." JESUS... fuck what was it? "And theres a memory of a window, Looking through I see you, Searching for something I could never give you, And theres someone who understands you more than I do, a sadness I cant erase." ...it was... GOD OF WINE!!! by third eye blind... sad song.
Now, the books...
And with a loud thud my world was being broadcasted to my brain through a weak signal, the street playing through snowy static... the faint white figures fading from view, the blood flowing into my eyes, the scene was painted crimson, and I was horrified, in the instant before unconscious.
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moments to use:
We're all walking the bowing line between faith and fear.
A package came from my drunken whore of an aunt today... I indifferently tore it open and exposed something repulsive and yet inspiring enough to bring about a critical inspection of myself... narcissism while nauseous. Pictures of myself in a suit and fancy shoes... a disgusting elegance to honor death. Never is there a less solemn moment than when posing for a family photograph at a funeral. She had sent me family pictures from my father's burial. All of us trying to look like we were trying to hold back tears, and smile for the camera, when in reality... we were just smiling for the fucking camera. I mean picture your aunt Debbie gathering you in together and yelling over the sniffles "say cheese!"
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
chrischick:
i am drunk sign on AIM and talk to me
dusty:
awww thank you! D-TV really values its viewers... 