Thu, 19 May 2005

Dates
[may 12, 1992] she said she felt it going. she said things were so fucked up, so bad, it was soaking and bleeding into her other memories, into her dreams, so that everything was a reminder of what had gone wrong, and she asked me if i would store all of the memories i had with her, the time we had spent together, the stories she had whispered to me beneath sheets afraid of a thing she could not name. i would hold them in all the empty spaces in my heart and the weight i felt would keep her with me until i saw her again, and night upon night i could retell her all of the rememberings, though i must admit there was a part of me that wanted to reform those dreams, a removal of edges and toxins. this was an academic point, as i took her to the bus station three days later and never saw her again. i was not lying, or being facetious. i do have a second life within me, a life that is not mine.

[april 5, 1992] there was a girl named lynn who once wrote me an incredibly flattering letter. she lived in my dorm, and shared my intro to philosophy class, which led her to knock on my door one day and ask to borrow notes. i am lax with notes, so we chatted a bit and she left. she then sent me the letter. i did not reply. the semester was nearly over, and i was going through a situation with someone else, and i did mean to reply but there are times when i am a flake.. none of which is any excuse. lynn, i am sorry. i know now how that must have felt.

[november 12 1997] you may remember i said “it never goes away”. i was right.

[september 02 1986] “My assignment for Monday is to write an opinion paper at least two pages long, with an opinion and reasons why I believe in that opinion. Since my other opinion ideas were shot down, and since it is already ten at night on Sunday and I don’t have anything yet, I’m going to just go ahead and talk about something I’ve been thinking about some and maybe that’ll not be what you were looking for but that’s as close as I’m going to get so it will have to do. I think boys are different than girls. I’m not sure of this but I keep thinking about it all the time but I don’t know what it is. Well, I think I know a few of the things now. I maybe shouldn’t say anything, because the big truth of it is the only reason I even know is because I’ve been brought into the cabal where some of these things were told to me and I’m not even sure why but I’m glad to know, because boy was I ever feeling like a moron there for a while! But I know that some people don’t know all the secrets and so even My assignment for Monday is to write an opinion paper at least two pages long, with an opinion and reasons why I believe in that opinion. Since my other opinion ideas were shot down, and since it is already ten at night on Sunday and I don’t have anything yet, I’m going to just go ahead and talk about something I’ve been thinking about some and maybe that’ll not be what you were looking for but that’s as close as I’m going to get so it will have to do. I think boys are different than girls. I’m not sure of this but I keep thinking about it all the time but I don’t know what it is. Well, I think I know a few of the things now. I maybe shouldn’t say anything, because the big truth of it is the only reason I even know is because I’ve been brought into the cabal where some of these things were told to me and I’m not even sure why but I’m glad to know, because boy was I ever feeling like a moron there for a while! But I know that some people don’t know all the secrets and so even though it might be against the what the inner sanctumary of boyhood told me about I will tell. The first and most important thing is boys generally don’t know what’s going on. But they learn that if you can make people think you *do* know what’s going on, it’s almost as good as actually knowing what’s goign on. The best way to do this is to make other people (particularly girls) confused, so they’ll more likely follow your goofball fake understanding. There’s a lot of different ways to do this, and I’m sure if you thought about it some you could think of a few. This is also part of why boys act weird sometimes, it’s because they *really* don’t know what’s going on, so they have to try a lot harder to confuse people. It’s all very complicated. Sometimes I think the only reason boys and girls get together is so they have a reason to be all weird and yell and act dumb, because people will let you get away with stupid things like that when you’re dating somebody. When you’re not, you’re just being a dork. People feel all weird inside and they work up all this energy from feeling all weird and they need to do something with it, so they find somebody else who feels all weird and they swing their hands around and act like babies who have been out in the sun too long. Because if you can’t control anything that happens in school or just in your life or anywhere, and you have somebody you can control or argue with or whatever, you’ll do it. Me, I set fire to my Star Wars guys and I have to see a psychologist, but if I had a girlfriend to yell at, well, I guess that would be okay with everybody. I am reading on this paper you gave us that an opinion paper should only have one opinion and stick with it, but I have some other ones which I think also go with this one. I just am full of opinions today. I am an opinion pinata! (I’m sorry about that part but it is very late and it’s Sunday and I have to get this done. I mean, Dr. Demento just ended so it has to be one in the morning and KFMW is going off the air for the night, which always makes me feel weird, listening to that empty sound, like walking around late at night and thinking that maybe none of the people who live in those houses will ever get up again. And I’m definitely tired now, okay, so I’ll just get back to the opinions…) My mom once told me, I don’t remember when or why, but she told me that it’s better to know than not to know. I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s better not to know, because then you can think that maybe things will still be like you wanted them to be, and sometimes that’s all it takes to make things okay. This is why when a girl tells a boy that she doesn’t like-like him, that she thinks of him like a brother, that even if he didn’t want to have anything like that with her and wouldn’t do that anyway that really it breaks his heart. I think feeling like a normal person is a lot about having somebody who maybe possibly in the remotest way at least might like you. Even if really in your brain you know they don’t, you always make there be this maybe, and sometimes that’s all it takes to make things okay. A big part of being a boy is letting hope trick you into doing stupid things. I think boys and girls would be fine if they would just settle down for a while. If maybe they got more naps and drank some juice and would just say “I don’t know what I’m doing and I think I’m screwing up, but I’m trying, and I don’t know what I want but I know that I like you, so let’s have some ice cream and watch old reruns of Sebastian Hex Supernatural Detective, because life is long and it’s okay if you make mistakes as long as you remember to be good to people”. I think it’s really werd that it’s all so complicated, but that’s the way it is, and I don’t think people want to change, because maybe they’re lazy or whatever. I think it’s because you have this way you think adults do things and that’s the way to do them. I think kids my age are learning how to be adults but it’s like asking a klansman to pretend to be black. It doesn’t come out right and it’s kinda mean and it will never really fit but that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I don’t think it’s an acident that learning all your boy-stuff when you’re all confused and angry and stupid and looking for anything which tells you that there’s a way to not be confused and angry and stupid anymore doesn’t work, and you’re still confused and angry and stupid, only by that point you’re already going one way and there’s no going back to change things. I also think anybody who tells you how things are is trying to sell you something, trying to trick you into thinking that you’re dumb when you’re not and they have an answer that isn’t even an answer at all. This is even more true when they tell you that things used to be good and then something happened and now it’s no good and if only we’d go back to the way it was everything would be okay. I have some friends who always talk about how much they just want to go back to before school and everything and I think it’s dumb. Because you can’t do that. Everybody tells you they have an answer. I don’t have an answer. I don’t even know what I’m talking about, now. I don’t think anybody knows what the truth is. And I think everybody wants something to tell them they do know what the truth is, no matter what. And I also think that everything is fucked, that it is all totally fucking fucked, and I don’t care what you say because you know I’m right.”

[october 18 1995] in the letter, the letter i had carried beneath my shirt, held against my skin, she had told me she loved me, only me, she wanted to share love with others but between us there was a bond and that bond could never be broken and we would be together throughout time. later, when i was to finally see her again, she asked if i would bring her some things. among those things was a collection of things i had written, and that made me happy, and while flipping through it i found another letter she had written, the same ink and paper, the same immediate rush of the words, words even more possessing, so much so that i did not notice, at first, that the letter was not addressed to me.

[september 19 2000] i was living with a group of people that i did not know. my room was in the basement; i shared a large feather bed with two women who were lovers, which got to be very annoying, but i was instructed by god to bring in certain specifically marked people to stay temporarily in the house until certain things could be removed from their bodies; often i had them sleep in my bed while i slept in the crawlspace. one of these people was gary coleman, and while we were driving back to the big house we drove down a tight spiraling road whose weirdly involutional motion continued after the car had stopped, we talked to a prostitute who had gene-alterant work done to grow beds of small cilia and longer thin tentacles in her mouth in order to facilitate fellatio. “i have memorized over three hundred sacred geometrical patterns achievable with the components of my mouth.” i told her that sounded like getting sucked off by a macrame plantholder, and gary told her she would have been better off investing that money in some therapy. she then cursed us, telling us this road would not end, and folded in on herself until she was gone. after that, something else happened. if it is true, as i was told as a child, that heaven is the place where nothing happens, and hell is the place where nothing changes, it is my suspicion (as it has been since my days of ccd) that these are the same places, and those who have been broken and buried face-down at their life’s end are finally admitted a rest from the endless burden of the body, while all of us who have sought and suckled distraction and addiction will be corroded by appetites we can no longer satisfy, gaki, preta, our throats like pinholes. nightmares about dead people trying to contact me through the radio, and how i got a radio show at fra through that, and attained a minor popularity through the agnoies of others. my father building a mock satan in a hole he dug beneath the garage out of old car parts and rebar, oil and smoke sputtering the dirt walls, my faith directly questioned. we need a new inquisition. people talk to each other on the bus, but i don’t listen anymore, as i’m no longer taking story-notes. pamela had a definite line to cross, and once you crossed it you were out of her heart forever. i had seen this happen to others, watching their phones, wondering what had gone wrong. pamela was married at the time, which meant my conection to her was, once again, the third member of a couple, the friend through which all greivances are strained of their vitriol, once again fucked by my questionable addiction to female companionship, my heart unwilling to let out anything trapped within it. the upside to this arrangement was i thought there was little chance i could cross that particular line, not being in a position to do anything particularly terrible, but pamela has always been fickle. i imagine she still is, but obviously, i don’t know.

[march 6 1992] you and i had a child. you were face-down on the bed, and you wouldn’t look at the child. you felt in two places. then you were on top of me, wrapped around me, taking me into you. the child looked at me from the corner of the room and said “don’t be ashamed. don’t be ashamed.” the child was not my child at all. the child may not have been your child. you stood, lifting yourself off me, and the child sopped whisky and sugar into your mouth, easing your bruised inner thighs with ropes of wet hair. the lower half of my body could not be moved by me. all i could do was roll with my shoulder, back and forth, across the small stained bed. when i was not inside you i was confused and afraid. the child returned to the corner of the room and you turned to face me and pivoted forward.

[december 14 1998] ten am. call sean up, ask for the keys to the gun cabinets, says he’s going back to sleep. i need new friends. get in argument with the mailman over some alleged slurs written on mail sent to me. i said “listen, if she wants to call me a ‘little homo’, that’s fine, i don’t care”, but he says it’s a slur to gays. i’m a slur to gays? what if i was gay? but no, it *means* something because i’m so obviously the straight american. i should move. make note to send exploding urine bomb from neighbor Tony’s box tomorrow. wonder if termites can be trained, if they’d make a suitable army. tell neighbor Judy that i’m going to cut the bones from her children’s feet if they get in my shed and do their little evil deeds in there anymore; fight ensues, which was fairly entertaining for us both, i bet. one of those lives. sold one hundred fifty dollars worth of cds and records to help fund the psychotic moving plan, have moronic discussion with scott the clot — every fucking time i go in there he wants me to do something for him: give him some order number for some axiom comp., sell him some suicide bootleg, whatever. taking his money makes me feel like a toothless whore but it’s getting me that much closer to escape velocity. fortunately i didn’t have to deal with either rollins-boy or his halfwit buddy with the (really, no shit) x’es on his hands, every fucking time i see him. sorry, that bus left fourteen years ago. you don’t know genetic anamolies until you’ve spent five minutes talking to cedar valley hardcore/sharp scenesters. buy tea and mangoes at hy-vee, interview for a job at a hotel, had serious thoughts about crawling in the incenerator about halfway through the interview. i now walk out of interviews when i hear the words “go-getter”, “aggressive” or any form of racist “we gotta stick together” kinda talk, which i used to stick around to argue/insult. my time’s too important for any of that, a concept i solidified by pretending to be a big rock and roll star while driving around cedar falls (which is one of my more irritating habits). i interviewed myself and pointed and waved at unreal admiring fans. went home and took a big long nap in tribute of all the tired children of the world. woke up and ate a mango, which is a good food to eat just after getting up because they don’t fuck with the stomick. took out the trash and looked at stars for too long; my neighbors all think i’m mildly retarded. went back out into the world to find a second santa to confirm that SA santas can’t have conversations with patrons on the job, which abby told me true, and it is! what kinda commie fucking racket is this? the SA gets people looking to score a little extra gift-cash for the holidays, then says “hey, just take the money, say thanks, and that’s it, no talking”? ho ho ho, up your ass, slavation army. try to price santa suits for a freelance thing but the costume shop is all out. went to the mall, felt like a creepy old man with candy back in the econoline, discovered there is no such thing as Opium Julius and fled. went home, still three gifts short of being set for christmas. get yelled at for doing a music-thing after nine pm, which made me feel like a little kid, at which point i realized that if i felt like a creepy-ass old pervo AND a snotty little kid in the same day there’s a balance struck. mildly pleased with that, i got on irc and promptly lost six hours of my life while “writing” (hehehe) in the other window, then went to sleep. another day.

[february 03 2000] Had a box on the floor marked “my first skin: old life” that I was shoveling letters and cds and clothes into for a goodwill run, immediately piling up everything I hadn’t unpacked since moving in three months ago into the giveaway pile. I gave up my old jane’s addiction bootlegs, my inability to not spell the as teh, my copy of finnegan’s wake I knew I’d never really read, one single long red hair, three twelve-gauge shells, my dreams of higher education, a chipped homemade bong, coffee filters, a stack of typewritten poems, and a ring I used to wear on a chain, tossing them all in the box, telling myself for the third time that week that really, truly, I was making a big dramatic show of putting away childish things, which meant I had to be a grown-up now. For real. Seriously.

[january 3 1993]: my associate [david], whose antidepressant medication i had been taking for three weeks, called me up to see if i wanted to go drinking. i did, as the medication made it hard to sleep, which alcohol helped combat. we met at a parking lot across the street from the hospital and sat in his car listening to alice in chains and drinking everclear. he asked me at one point if i would be interested in killing him, as he was thinking about killing himself but was afraid he’d chicken out, and with me being a writer it would be a good experience and all. i wasn’t sure. this quickly degenerated into an argument, “i just thought it’d be cool for you but if you don’t want to do it then fuck you then”, and all pissed off i walked three miles home in the rain.

[june 11 1994] I used to play pinball for money out at elk run truck plaza for a couple years, back when i was working janitorial. i didn’t play much, mostly because i wasn’t very good, but i was good enough to keep myself in drug money running truck drivers and delivery boys. even after i moved to iowa city i’d drive out there, on friday nights, after i was done at the rest stop, though at some point in there i stopped playing well and never went back. the two machines they had there that i could play well were cyclone and black knight 2000, two early platform machines, simple layout, clean angles. one night i was playing black knight with this bosnian kid, younger than me, and he’s just fucking miserable, i had him up by like fifty bucks, and so he says well, let’s play some tetris, pinball’s not his bag. i’m alright at tetris but nothing particularly solid. danilo, on the other hand, he ran my stupid ass into the ground, but that’s not what i remember. what i remember is him teling me that this is what he did. he made a living playing people tetris. mostly he made money playing layover businessmen at the cedar rapids airport, and those guys play so much fucking tetris that you need imprinted skills to hustle them out of anything, but danilo made himself twelve thousand dollars the weekend of the ‘94 blizzard, just by standing at that one machine and taking on all comers. he wouldn’t even play me tetris for cash; we played losers pay, like kids on a playground, and he told me about how he was saving up to go to u of i next fall. i kept looking for him the year i was there, but i ever saw him. sometimes that’s the exact same feeling i get when i post and read scrytch, only i’m playing with so many players that if i was to stop and think about it i’d freeze.

[july 19 1995] he called me from the grocery store. he couldn’t figure out where the exit was, and he couldn’t ask anybody, as if he did they would *know*, and the minions of the mountain king would take him away to toil forever in the furnace beneath the earth for the hideous crime of taking an illegal substance and going to the grocery store to buy juice. midway through this story he burst into tears and began apologising for calling me, telling me how he’ll make it all right if he can just get it together enough to get home and sleep, certain he can trick his body into shutting down against the will of the chemical if only he could get between his sheets. when i used the phrase ‘the will of the chemical’ he became convinced i was one of them, that i always hated him and was trying to get him to kill himself so i could take what was his, whatever that was. he then began screaming, calling me a fucker and a judas until he dropped the phone and ran off, after which i hung up the phone, rolled over, and went back to bed.

[may 12 1992] she said she felt it going. she said things were so fucked up, so bad, it was soaking and bleeding into her other memories, into her dreams, so that everything was a reminder of what had gone wrong, and she asked me if i would store all of the memories i had with her, the time we had spent together, the stories she had whispered to me beneath sheets afraid of a thing she could not name. i would hold them in all the empty spaces in my heart and the weight i felt would keep her with me until i saw her again, and night upon night i could retell her all of the rememberings, though i must admit there was a part of me that wanted to reform those dreams, a removal of edges and toxins. this was an academic point, as i took her to the bus station three days later and never saw her again. i was not lying, or being facetious. i do have a second life within me, a life that is not mine.

[august 26 1998] When I lived in Iowa City, and for the short time in Waterloo when I stayed with my aunt, I used to wander around the nearby hospital on nights when I could not sleep, which were often. One night, which must have been in 1992, I walked from Quadrangle, my dorm, over to the hospital, through the lobby, up and down the halls, looking at paintings and trying to place the layout, when I walked into a family with a shocked look on their faces, people who had obviously been through an agony whose first half had just come to an end. Because I am the creator, I can tell any story for them I want. I could find them what they had lost, breathe a new life into the husk beneath the sheet, but none of them will ring true, and the best thing I could have done would be to leave them alone entirely. Instead, I switched corpses with them. I told them they could mourn for the person I had lost, and I would mourn for the person they had lost, and in that way we would develop distance from our suffering while spreading the half-life of the remembered a bit farther. They looked at me for a long time before they began beating me.

[may 15 2000] i have this image of myself in my head as a punk rock old testament prophet, outside the herd-morality (and thus laws) of the city-state, overturning the tables of moneylenders, cops, and bearers of false witness. i have knives taped beneath the dashboard and prostitutes who will keep me in clean laundry and heroin. sources of important information seek me out in hidden vip bars tucked away in bombproof bunkers where i seek visions in refracted sunlight trapped in palm-mirrors. armies of creditors and husbands search the streets for me, but i am without fear even in such desolate palces, as my co-conspiritors are with me, driving at high speed and kicking in doors and performing incredible acts of derring-do while maintaining perfect composure. this is obviously not true. i am none of these things. if you’ve met me, you know i’m a goofball, a bit overweight, polite to a fault. everything offends me and i nurse wounds for days. while all of this can be endearing, it certainly isn’t very thrilling or bizzare or what have you. there are times when i feel i’ve let myself down in this regard, that i have used writing as a hiding place, too content to be the recording device, and the feeling of limitless potential is very far away. there are times when i am with you, however, when i know any of that is possible, that we could not be stopped, that adventure and depravity is as simple as a step forward.

[november 11 1993] What I do remember is that walking around the neighborhood with a shotgun seemed like a good idea. Or not even a good idea but a thing I could do. This was a critical step in my reasoning: “If I wanted to,” I kept thinking, “I could do it.” By itself this wasn’t that strange; there were fields across from our neighborhood, and this was October, so it wasn’t too odd to see pheasant hunters walking back to their homes with guns, but this was different, as it was two in the morning, and I was obviously not a hunter, but I was convinced by some weird moral logic that I no longer have access to that I was well within my rights as a citizen to walk around the neighborhood with a shotgun, and that’s a good enough reason to do anything.
(12:06.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #