i feel like i missed out on something.
i never decided to have a hero when i was younger. i looked up to people because they were taller. but my neck eventually got sore and when my legs got long enough i stopped bothering.
as an adult i tried to rectify this by buying a t-shirt that told people i was my own hero.
it has a little image of a man on it. with a little red cape. and little, round glasses.
i used to consider the shirt the perfect facsimile of me. the shirt lies, though. the cape is fake. the glasses convex. my own hero tried flying this weekend.
my own hero, and his cracked tooth. his little red tattered cape and little, round, busted glass glasses. they tell their own story.
the crutches and stitches should tell you this about me: i never had a hero when i was younger. the bruises and missing chunk of hair should tell you this about me: i never met bobby kennedy or bukowski. i should tell you this about me: i feel like i missed out on something. but i don't feel bad about it.
i didn't fly this time.
but i have a t-shirt on that tells me i've got to keep trying.
there are those painful moments when this internal speedometer slows down. most times, masturbation picks up the slack.
it is continuously unfortunate, however, that the greatest speed-bump this internal speedometer faces is jon & kate plus 8. so cute. so many! so fractionalizing. so boring. so traumatizing.
things like that make my sperm stop jumping.
this tepid neurotic ambivalence is mesmorizing. i can feel gravity's anxious grasp on each end of my cornea. not side to side like one would think, but front and back. stretching visual awareness out flat like pita bread. the supersonic jellyfish at the peripheals of my vision seem augmented, gigantic amoebic eye fuzzies with beer bottle fangs, grown from a hydroponic concoction of jim beam and amp energy. it's the sort of relationship that makes your tongue curl and your brain recoil. and makes raw broccoli sound oddly appetizing.
ants are everywhere. running little bastards coursing like 3am traffic through my capillaries. red and yellow lights dashed out over hundreds of miles, caught in the time loop of shutter speed and finger pressing. running loops around the neurological pistons firing blank cartridges. get out the gasoline and matches.
sleep is never over-rated.
maybe it is. maybe i never noticed, too swollen in the numbing emptiness of digestion. too engorged on the vagrant facets of consumption, huffing like a brain-chemical addict. keep me away from heavy machinery.
it's not fair. sometimes i think jesus has something against me personally.
megan is sleeping comfortably next to me. curled up under blankets, cute pink button nose poking out at me. i hear laughter in her delicate snoring.
'jesus thinks you should get a hair cut,' her left nostril tells me. 'jesus wants you to finish college and ... something,' her right nostril tells me.
and something, i ask it.
'yes,' her nostril flares, 'you'll know it when jesus decides he wants it.'
i could get a hair cut tomorrow instead of going to work, i tell her ear lobe as i kiss the side of her neck when she rolls over and asks me what time it is. my eyes are not nearly baggy enough, i tell her. it's too early.
nobody is ready.
the moon is too low. the blinds are closed. i haven't rationalized a reason to sleep through any of this arbitrary bondaged existence yet.
my owner, the new 42 inch plasma tv screen, sometimes yells at me and asks me why i'm not at work today.
i'm working from home, i tell it, hiding the minesweeper game on my laptop screen.
my owner asks me if i like its theater-like display and 1080p thingy and what i'm doing with life. how school is. are there babies on the way. how's our darling little megan. are you a doctor yet. do you run the company yet. where are they sending you next. how long. how far. are you willing to jump through hoops of liquid nitrogen while wearing the body paint of the original tin man. when's the wedding.
las vegas, i tell her ear lobe. make it easy.
i'm practically begging.
my other owner hollers at me from the garage, exhausted rumbling: you haven't gone far enough. take me further. ride me. undulate along the ribbons of black night. dit dit across the yellow lines, beckoning the oncoming lights closer, the roar of air through your hair chilling the glint of moon on my hood running the fingers of your hand across
i cut it off now before it gets too far. megan's left nostril does. 3am rides are so far out of the question. there is always work in the morning. laundry in the hamper. soap scum in the shower.
it doesn't matter how hard you try, there's always something.
this is why i can't complain, even if i want to. there's always something.
something lovely.
even if that something lovely is a booger in her left nostril whistling at me as she breathes sleep in bed next to me. there's always something.
'i love you,' i told the back of her head once, a long time ago, right before i fell asleep.
'i love you more,' she responded. i would have jumped if her legs hadn't been tangled on all six sides of mine. instead, my breath ran away with the neighbors daughter and my heart punched my left kidney. i could have sworn she had been sleeping for the past four hours. as it was, i told her, 'no you don't.'
'yes, i do,' she said. 'i counted.' and she held up three thin fingers. 'i know you can't count past two, so it wasn't much of a competition.'
look in the mirror.
say hello to the pornography of human evolution.
try not to laugh. it isn't that funny.
well, the man-boobs might be a little funny.
little pieces of myself, strung out over half a mile, hanging up and down the black-streaked sides of the concrete barriers of the freeway.
i think, more than anything, i'd like to start playing world of warcraft. that or grow my hair out and tell people to call me, jesus the conqueror. and to only greet me with the scalps of my enemies. my enemies being, of course, pudding.
or cold soups. they're hideous. it's like drinking from a pool of stagnant water. so cold and lumpy.
and the fucking neon lights are everywhere. miniskirts and cowboy hats and stringy sweat-matted stripper hair. everything keeps spinning. perpetually pinata. perpetually spinning spinning. i want it all to slow down. tear down the trees. it's not time to decorate for christmas yet.
notes to self:
fix formatting. rent car for next tuesday - friday. allocate $5000 in gift cards provided to KYOT. pick up strawberries and miralax. call aunt peg. call aunt chris. call grandpa. arrange for grandpa's flight from grand rapids to florida. figure out arrangements for grandma. pay amex. move funds from gains to money market. distribute ff&e checks prior to leaving for gr on tuesday. call greg. look into this protocell hullabaloo. remember the gay penguins. remember the titans. stop at home depot and pick up something other than jamaican sea blue -- it looks like freaking bubble gum ice cream. shop for anniversary present. pay $15,000 late payment tax penalty for july. upload pictures from san diego, long branch, euskirchen, and capella pedregal. learn 'thriller'. do wop. icecapades and christy turlington. remember that writing is ethereal. it is not an embodiment or recourse of a state of being (re: i don't write when i'm happy.) bullshit. i've been to the garden state. i saw no gardens. dead dogs by railroad tracks and the entire fucking world is covered in graffiti. that goes out to you, siena, triere, koblenze, piensa, and monteriggiono. call greg and see what kind of couch he has and if there is any room on it. pack: sweater, jacket, suit, tie, ipod, laptop. remember to get black aldo's back from brian. call jason. send out save the date cards to out of town attendees. talk to pointe hilton and marriot desert ridge about room blocks. remember what game it was i used to play with grandma when i was little. she'd be disappointed. not just in that. in a lot of it.
the legend of we:
prologue (or, "how the legend of me began to eclipse itself with its own grandeur and something really needed to be done about it") - the semi-sentient state in which i have resided for several years has seemingly been working tirelessly to be cleansed of the zombie breath haze that had engulfed it. yes, i am well aware there are rumors of what i have been doing with my time. talks of what i have been doing with myself. there have been idle comments about my being and behavior, when the sun is rising in the southeast and the early morning dew covers the land in eerie droplets. there have been press junkets and tmz specials centered on my personal private intimacies and all i ask is -- is it truly that hard to believe that it's just much more comfortable to go out in public wearing no undies' is it incapacitatingly hard to imagine that negotiating the finer points of life became something other than everyday doldrums' and that i embarked on these doldrums exceeding activities sans smear-saving undergarments? i would like to think when these images and videos surfaced that there were those among you, those fun-loving foolish jack daniels' swigging sorts, that would see my crotch and hair smothered rectal region in rather unfortunate hi-res on their personal computer monitors who would rejoice as the legend of me was brought out and dropped on society willy-nilly like the remarkably inaccurate ramblings of that fat-ass in fur, punxsutawney phil. i would figure that there would be at least a few of you idiots who would not despair in such a way solely because the legend of me was introduced at last into the everyday vernacular. i would have hoped that some of you would have leapt at the chance to bask in the glow of something like this. instead, i fear the legend of me has waned (in part due to the aforementioned unfortunate incident involving in-grown areas) and for the past fifteen months i have been resolutely sitting by as the legend of we has evolved into something much greater and certainly more photogenic than the previously indescribably awesome legend of me.
and for those that have questioned my where-abouts and activities, i, along with my auto-biographer, have prepared our own little press junket to unveil unto you, you fortunate little bastards, the story of the legend of we (often mistaken for the legend of whee or the legend of the wee wee. both understandable and hurriedly forgiven here at headquarters. both are fantastic stories unto themselves but fantastic stories unto themselves that are best left for another time and another medium where censorship is quite a bit less rigid and the monkeys are a smidge less violent).
the beginning (or, 'the beginning') - the legend of we began as innocently as a ninja: with an invite out to the movies. they say that when we walked under the moon, between the neon-glittery shops of desert ridge, i walked with a certain awkward swagger, my arms held forward. they say that my hair stuck out crazily from lying in bed all day. according to the books on record, it has yet to be discovered why i walked this way. some say it was to avoid falling. others say it was to avoid walking face-first through spider webs. i say it was to disguise my erection. they say i lost at skee ball that night to be gentlemanly. i say they are lying. i lost because she, the other half of the legend of we, cheated. i lost because she, the finer side of the legend of we, loaded me up on caffeine and whiskey. they say that eventually the carousing led to the movies where naked kazakhstani men wrestled publicly. they say the he, the me of the legend of we, held the popcorn and she, the she of we, lightly brushed her elbow against the elbow of the he of the legend of we.
there are doubts however that this is how it started. they say, regardless of fact or argument, that the first date caught on record was some sort of baroque style psycho-gibberish where a sweltering hot silver slide of a car was driven into the mountains up beyond highway 93. the legend says shops were stopped at and wine bars were drunk at and saloons sweltering under the weight of their sunday rock and rolls -- saloons full of hulking stringy haired middle-aged lawyers on motorcycles, motorcycles exaggerated with shining slivers of steel that hide the disparaging fact that those beardless faces riding them were faceless lego-dummies in sweat-filled oxfords and crackling leather vests, lego-dummies whose sole remarkable attributes were rhetoric spewing cigar smeared lips -- these saloons and their slack-jawed participants stared in wonder at the swagger still so persistent in the stumbling doubled up bipedal trot of the legend of we. stared in awe as the legend of we sipped wine and stopped in a head shop where she and not me wandered into the anal dildo display and exclaimed as the entire phallic-anus temple came crashing (inasmuch as rubber dildos can be said to 'crash' and not more-likely, 'bounce') down, 'aw geez.' legend has it that we scampered around rebuilding the anal dildo tower like crack addicts swarming around a rain cloud of heroin. legend is wrong, as is so often the case. the legend of we hightailed it out of there and didn't look back. not even once.
they utter at night that we went abroad on the land after that unfortunate mess, and many of the frightened townspeople reported seeing a wolf and a damsel in distress. this is the part of the legend of we that bothers me the most, because i think they're talking about my hairy ass. they reported ghastly, bloodthirsty howls coming from the area, as we sat on our blood-red blanket drinking champagne and reading bukowski. at this, when i hear it told again and again, i cannot help but shrug. what else am i to do? we're quite boring. there, the legend states, was nothing else to do at 11 in the morning. of this i agree most whole-heartedly.
in the tribal communities of australia it is sung around the fire-pit that we often engage in sexually explicit activities and to this point the elders often draw with sticks in the dirt the image of us entwined -- wrapped up in an embrace that looks something like this:
they say our earwigs are magnificent and smell like roses and taste like peanut butter and jelly and cookies and ice cream sandwiches. this also is not true. well, the earwig part is true. but the description here is what bothers me about this particular chapter of the legend of we. they say i can suck out brains and i enjoy doing it, that brains to me are like scrambled eggs to a hungry college student who likes scrambled eggs a lot because cooking sucks. they say this and i cringe, because i can suck out brains but when they say that is what i am doing here, in the image they draw in the dirt, it hurts. i have to be honest. i was spelunking for gold. the earwigs i save for dessert.
legend has it that for awhile our legend of we was contained to the lands of america but that eventually our legend out-grew those vast confines and went international, alighting at some point, momentarily, in paris and then finally bedding down for a time in florence. it is said that during the trip we lounged in our seats sneaking sips of jack daniels while the passengers around us slept. it is said that we drove in a miniature contraption they call a 'car' in these foreign places, that we sped around in ultra-highspeed and our hair flew behind us like capes and our superhero outfits had extra-large nipples implanted into the chest regions to drum up viewership amongst the middle-aged, single woman crowd. it is said we attended a wedding in a castle and walked down through underground wine cellars, touching bottles bottled by the long gone and dead.
many people believe in the legend of we, many do not. many people believe in magic. many people don't believe in michael jackson. many people believe that when we stopped for a moment when we first arrived in florence that the morning sun shone upon me like jesus. still, regardless of whether you believe in we or jesus or michael jackson or the sun, i'm hungry. can i have your sandwich?
it is whispered to the children of this fair region, before they fall asleep, that the legend of we is coming, just have faith. they say we build castles out of hay and ride bicycles in the rain. both of which, while true, sound kind of silly.
they say that we pray on young lovers, being young lovers ourselves. they say that the art of this seduction will be tedious. young lovers, they say, visit internet chat rooms pretending to be capuchin monkeys. they say that we will openingly and brazenly visit the cafes of poggi bonsi and flaunt our screen-names, names like 'organ-grinding_hairycreature_many-lovings' or 'watch_me_masturbate_and_throw_my_semen_at_you63'. they say names like these promote promiscuity. they say if we walk by your bedroom window and see two lovers entwined we will stop and stare. it's not all true, though. usually we're just staring because these people are fornicating with the blinds open. i mean, seriously. they're called razors, people. use them.
it is said there were bridges. it is said we crossed them. this is true, we crossed many. otherwise we would have been swimming and i haven't worked out i a while. bathing suits just weren't an option.
eventually, legend has it, we returned to the land of the many americans and canadians and lilliputians. it is said we glowed. i'm not sure if it was due to exposure to radiation when we flew into lax or my experience with jesus. either way, they say our glow was legendary and the margaritas from the little hut in california adventures were excellent and the bathrooms should have been more accessible so i wouldn't have had to urinate in the bushes and i'm really sorry to the lady that plays snow white -- i didn't realize you were sitting there having lunch at that moment? i thought by your screams that perhaps you were enjoying it. and to the two toughies that roughed me up when they 'escorted' me from the premises, vengeance will be mine. i will have my shoe back, you bastards.
it is muttered by furry old men in dirty baseball caps in sordid bars across the universe that when we mate the stars shake. this is only slightly true. the stars shake in fear, but not from our splendid copulations but from my nipples. when i get excited they shoot out like laser beams and everyone knows nipples are scary. these men also mutter that when we stay at resorts with jacuzzis in the room that we do not need the jets to make our bubbles. my butthole is more than satisfactory. this is true, my butthole makes fantastic bubbles. especially when i chew 'bazooka'.
some stories claim that when we went camping north-east of prescott that the pine-cone hurled over the edge of the rim was swept up by a mighty breeze and thrown back at my friends sitting in the car behind us as if swatted by some mythical beast. they say this was an act of god and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. this is not true. i threw it at them on purpose. they had eaten the last hot-dog earlier that morning and goddamn it i was hungry.
many sites on the internet claim to have intimate access to the details of our legend. they lie. they say i can turn into a wolf and my hungry growls mean i am hungry. this is only somewhat true. i just really don't like shaving or hair-cuts. and the ball licking, well, it's comforting. try it. oh, and one time in july, we went bowling. it was legendary. these, i caution, are not the best balls to be licking seeking any sort of comforting. unless you find large dirty balls comforting. then by all means, lick away.
the books of legend state that we will climb a mountain and at the top of this mountain there will be frisbee golf. i know, silly right?
a few say we exist and a few others say don't forget your ovaltine. either way, we are fantastically poor gamblers but exquisite drinkers. a few others besides those other few and the other few besides them say the giant wheel of fortune games are fun to spend (waste) your money in. they lie. here are the pictures to prove it.
legend says we will go to del mar, california for a friend's wedding and we will drink too much and i will break out into a style of dance that hasn't been invented yet. hey, listen people (both my friends that were married and the fantastic if slightly stiff staff of l'auberge del mar) that were at this wedding, i'm sorry your puny brains cannot handle a style of dance as impressive and mind-blowingly complex as that which i whipped out at the reception. it's been five month now. i think you can drop the restraining order. my doctor says i've made impressive gains and soon i might be healthy enough to stop cutting letters out of magazines and mailing you my favorite recipes.
many say she will look lovely that evening. this legend is a legend for a reason.
legend has it that at some point, for some reason, the legend of we will span two continents and thank goodness for skype. seriously, i love those guys. legend has it that one side of the legend of we will journey across the pond again while the she of we remains behind. legend has it that i will travel this distance with my older brother, a recent graduate of law school and we will rock the european continent because there is little else i, a financier, and my brother, an unemployed lawyer, should do with their time than slum around northern europe. legend has it we will see castles along the mosel, bridges in cologne, and towering palaces in brussels. they say we will see statues in koblenz and have naked women dancing in windows beckon us as we walk along the peaceful canals of amsterdam. they say we will be tempted by many, but this is a lie. the whores of amsterdam are pretty damn nasty. no offense, ladies. but you ugly.
they say on this european escapade that the beer shall flow freely and the wine will be downed by the gallon. they say that when the levels of alcohol reaches a sufficient level that pictures will be taken and drunken notes will be scrawled and mailed to our little brother serving his time in afghanistan. they say this will be fun and adrenaline will cure all hangovers, but perhaps it is best to be honest here. the only cure for a true european hangover is more liquor. hair of the dog, the hand that feeds. whichever. it's all glorious.
legend has it that we will ride trains across these great lands and then the conductors will go on strike for the weekend as they do once a month and then we will walk and i will say to the conductors, you all suck you assholes. but prior to that, before i tell them all they are assholes, legend says we will ride the trains and it also will be glorious. bumpy and slightly hectic, but glorious.
priests write that when i return the legend of we will have grown even greater. in between prayers the priests will sneak glimpses of our legend that they have pasted to the inside covers of their bibles. they will write many things and i'm assuming they're writing great and nice things, but i can't really tell you what they're actually writing because i don't speak latin. if you don't believe me, talk to mary armstrong, my thrice-repeated human anatomy and medical terminology instructor. anyway, we went to disneyland again. megan is addicted, so the legend goes anyway. secretly i think she has something going on with minnie. i can't complain. secretly i'm totally into it. except for the stink. apparently minnie gets really sweaty.
the end (or, 'the end', or, 'there is more but i haven't loaded pictures off the camera in a few months because i am horribly and cognizantly lazy') - this isn't the end of the legend of we, legend has it. it is instead a small dot, as there is more but i haven't loaded pictures off the camera for a few months because i am horribly and cognizantly lazy. i am also cognizant of the fact that cognizantly isn't in fact a word. but who is this legend about anyway -- we or noah webster and his annoying platoon of grammar policing lackeys?
my job now is to drive her to the places she doesn't want to be; to sit and wait complacently while she endures things unseen; to swallow the lump in my throat and to console and to stop, on the way home, to pick her up some damned good ice cream.
my neck cracks, but only when i turn my head to the left. and sometimes i'm left wondering if i missed that critical invitation to breakfast -- orange juice, sausages, and pancakes and conversations about john mccain's undying patriotism. americans? we love violence. we love imperialism and fanaticism and super bowlisms. this, i tell you, is fact; enrichment and beautism is wasted on me. i am interested in one thing and one thing only: that which is before me. i'm taking a class on art history and i can tell you this: the most important works of art in the history of man/woman/human are those of which my professor has digital images of from his/her vacation. this is yet again an un-ending reminder of why finer education is wasted on me. i cannot help but laugh at the kids who played clarinet in high school who are now nineteen years later playing guitar hero as if pushing buttons in front of seventy eight video prisoners will some how grant them everfuckinglasting musical goodness. but time is money. i'm in the middle of a refi. i am old and invested and i watch too much hgtv for my own good. i find myself drawn to the shows i used to think were for someone else. that guy, who thought happiness was found in the fascimile of life, the memory of what he was shown. and i realize now, a few years later, i couldn't feel older and whiter than when i am asked, on christmas eve, by my six year-old nephew, to pronounce the word, tienda. the truth is, i would rather tell you about the places to go in europe. the places to see in brussels, cologne, arezzo, siena, the netherlands, and firenze. i would rather show you pictures but the places i have seen are not private and the thoughts i spread here are not always valid. i write in this empty space with the empty thoughts of different things of different (me)s of distant memories spread across the inevitably vacant spaces of the internet -- hoping for some reason that by placing them here they might mean something. i'm tired of the internet and of messages from my long gone family that this one girl from way back then is using my full name and saying things about me and that goddamn it hurts them. i can control nobody and nothing, i tell them. the attachments to this or that responsible for such a thing have long been severed and now hang like the dead tendrils of love -- rotting and stinking. hanging there like broken arms, nerveless motionless and yet i wish they were all somehow irreverently happy living. but i tell those others, the family, go back to google. go back to your search engines and go back to whatever it is that 55 year-old men do on the internet, i tell them. i'm sorry, i say; i'm horrible, they think; that's okay, i say -- because some sense of irrationality is all there is to keep us going. to keep us all away from the deep dark havens of insanity. but oh, oh! what a crock even that has become! thank you winona ryder, brad pitt, russell crowe and angelina jolie. i cannot help the past, i tell them. i loved and lost, i tell them. so sue me. i am in the process now and hope somehow that everyone everywhere can somewhere somehow find the time the way the somehow the someway to do the same. so weak it seems, so very plain, so very boring to be this way but it isn't, it isn't the same the plain the very basic way we all strive to be. isn't is? but that's for another time another place -- a place for thoughts like these and images of all of all of this i forever want to be seen. but doctors. ho! whoa! doctors are not afraid to take happiness away. they show no fear in the face of happiness and our foolish little decrees. science and faith mix within them and they spew out realities with a wrathful grin. grimace, they breathe, has nothing on me. examinations x-rays and i'm refusing to vote because i think it'll somehow help my kids. my eyes are splitchy and when i breathe there is no oxygen only horrible sensations of tearing. like glass shards swallowed with gasoline. when she cries and sobs and falls into my chest and says, what do i do? i'm so afraid. i'm so scared. can they fix it? i don't want to grow through all of this again. can they take away whatever it is that might be gnawing inside me? i say, i don't know, baby. i really don't. and i take her hand and sweat on it. just like i always do.
i feel for people like my friend steve, in relationships where everything revolves around sex. the secret is, sex isn't a bandage. it doesn't hide anything or cure anything it doesn't help fix fight stop. i used to think it did. my penis used to think (still does) it did/does. sex is glorious. sex is wonderful. sex is orgasmic, even. but sex can't dance. no sex cannot. sex never left and sex doesn't need to come back. sex fixes nothing but it makes you think for 93 seconds, for an hour and a half (i wish!) that everything everywhere is alright. everything is fixed. it's not. i figured that out finally some time in the not so distant past. sex is awesome. but a relationship is ten thousand steps up. and sex fixes nothing except perhaps that it momentarily alleves that ever present fear of time stopping for a sec to think about what's really going on. sex, i realized, is just for fun. like pudding. except pudding, as it is a well-established fact -- well pudding cures everything. even the clap.
Scott Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 10:06am edit
Mr. K., your problem is immediately recognizable. You are decompensating! Can you hook your legs behind your neck? That maneuver is often helpful, and, if nothing else, it will excite Megan.
On a more positive note: Quentin Crisp said that if you can tolerate not cleaning your home for three months you?ve got it made, because it will NEVER look any dirtier. Perhaps the same holds true for one?s body. NICHOLAS! Try not bathing for 90 days.
You know what? Something very bad is going to happen soon, but whether to you or to me is not clear.
mr. nerses, have you been consulting the 1-900 numbers again? i told you, porno only. miss cleo is bad for your sinuses.
i hope your prognostication was in error and everything for everybody is okay. my life has pretty much been good things only: i get to spend all my time with a wonderful woman. i get to see my dog periodically. i work pretty much when i want to and get paid too much to do so. i went to disneyland (again. for seven days in the past few months. this happens when you date a girl whose entire family are disney afficionados -- i say afficionados, but really i mean crazy like mickey mouse stalkers. crazy like britney spears or paul reubens -- who, incidentally, is the voice of the robot on 'star tours' i just discovered. somehow it makes that ride even better than i remembered). my ipod is awesome and everyone is jealous of it, and me. i talked to my little brother last night. he's in afghanistan, near the pakistan border. he's been playing a lot of texas hold 'em. i guess war is pretty boring.
other good things in my life: ben & jerry's. they make me have those special man-to-man-to-man feelings. ummm. i'm dog-sitting for barb and dave (previously referred to as 'my parents', but they haven't been that for about 18 months -- which creates a weird sort or interaction between us that subsists almost entirely of emails and post-it notes left on the kitchen counter). i am dog-sitting because i miss my dog, mainly. they offered me money but i don't really need money. i like money, but i don't need money and i do not feel particularly well accepting barb and dave's money. it would much too easily bring back that indebted feeling that i have worked very hard to escape from being under. my parents are well-off, sure. but does that mean i can't do the work to take care of myself? i have done much for myself (at least in my own eyes) to escape the spoiled little rich kid syndrome. not to say that for most of my teens and early twenties i wasn't a spoiled, drug-addicted little rich kid, just that for now, i am enjoying the sense that i can (and must) perform the necessary rituals to provide myself with a level of comfort that is acceptable. and let me tell you, i like being pretty damned comfortable. i'm thinking sloths in trees and puppies in pajamas and cookies in ice cream and naked keg-stands kinds of comfortable. besides, it?s nice to have this rather large house in a great location to just megan and myself for three and a half weeks.
it really is a weird feeling to have this relationship like we do. every other relationship i have been in has been clanky. they all smoked up and sputtered and stopped and then revved their engines and sped off for a few miles and then brokedown like a piece-of-shit chevy. shuddering and smoking in a ditch out in the middle of the desert with vultures swirling overhead; their stark wing-tipped shadows stepping in front of the sun periodically; their raucous screechings seeming to tear at the smoldering sand surrounding that single empty lone stretch of pavement where you are (i am) huddling. cowering. terrifying. those are what i'm used to. exasperation forced emotion. threats and desperate renumerations. terror binged excitement. chemically assisted insanity based infatuations.
and now here i am with this thing -- and i call it a thing because i don't know what else to call it -- this thing that works so smoothly. it's surreally effortless to love this woman. it's surreally appealling to adore this woman. it's surreally surreal to surrender everything to this woman and function day to day tied down like a rambunctious chicken, surreally surreal to bask in the rubbing of those ties against my doughy, callous laden skin. she has problems. we have problems. sure. everybody has problems. my right leg is almost a half-inch longer than my left. her left leg is almost a quarter-inch shorter than her right. she can?t poop in new locations. i have to take medicine to stop my anus from bleeding (not really but that's what i tell megan to try and make her feel better. who wouldn't feel better about their own condition when compared to someone whose anus is bleeding? seriously.)
sometimes i feel like building a birdhouse out of snowmen?s arms and little kids? sleds and waiting until the cutest bird of the cutest birds, baby hummingbirds, land in it. then i feel like eating. rampaging. i feel like grabbing little baby hummingbirds and whapping them on homeless peoples' dingy rotting headdresses. i?m not sure why i?m like this, how i turned out like this, which way i went to end up here, like this. this. i wouldn?t mind to wake up and find myself in my own bed. i wouldn?t mind to wake up and throw the sheets off ? awake sweaty and refreshed and relieved to find myself here, again. there, again. i wouldn?t mind to find the answers that shut my head off, again. something besides this, again. life is too good, sometimes. life is too rich, sometimes. life here is here, sometimes. sometimes i feel like i don?t know. anything. i feel like anything. like destructing. like razing, raving running mad like an unravelling homeless man -- whapping myself in the head. i wonder how it is to sleep in the rain under a bridge. to pull your sopping wet coat even closer, warding off the dampdeadstiffening air. life is so beautiful sometimes, without that fucking f life becomes a lie. sometimes i feel like lying all the time and testing the regulators. turning knobs at random. this is my life on channel seven. weather. this is my life on channel nine. comedy in semi-fashionable retro tight fitting clothing. this is my life on channel 35, pornography. channel 58, dolphin training. channel 67, joan crawford. megan and i are very happy. i am very happy. it doesn?t seem fair, sometimes. i feel like bragging. am i bragging? i must be because here i am typing about it. i am floating through all of this time wondering if i?m insane to be so fearful and so neglectful of myself to ignore everything else i?ve dragged myself through. i?m in bed next to this incredible, beautiful, smart and lovely girl and as she?s sleeping with the warmth of her back against my knee i?m staring at the ceiling wondering when that homeless bird bashing creature will wake up, when i?ll smash through that glass and empty myself all over her and ruin everything all over again. i?m fearful of waking up, fearful that if i put my head on this pillow and close these eyes i?ll wake up somewhere else, someone else, something else. this is all rambling. all liquor. all powerful. nothing insightful. what do you see? what do you make of this? not you, you. me, reading this again. obsessed with these letters all over again never going to ever read this again or peruse these thoughts again, never going to wonder what i spent all this time on again. i want to declare war on hollywood and survive another night without feeling like crawling out of my skin. no more ants. no more whiskey. no more caffeine. excuse me while i use the restroom and my molecules extract themselves from themselves again, tearing at the seams. this is silly. i only remember being this belligerently lonely when i was a kid. and i hate this feeling because i have everything lying right here next to me.
megan has been in pittsburgh since saturday. i?ve been casually updating march with tidbits out of my ?travel journal? (napkins). feel free to scroll backwards in my timeline 1979 ?????????????----- now * you are somewhere near nowhere near here. and read them at your leisure. i?ve also been extremely lazy and sweaty this weekend. it?s amazing how once the element of girl is taken away, everything becomes so... lumberjacky. and i never really bothered to notice how unlazy and unsweaty (at times) i have become until megan was not immediately present (physically) ? and now i feel handicapped by this knowledge. woman make man cleaner? woman make man unlazier? woman make man smartier? now that the intimate immediate essence of her has been lifted (momentarily. i fly out to join her there on friday), it is like all of those miraculous little touches she created to mold me into something other than a grunting, humping, slobbering pile of sweaty flesh are quietly placed on stand-by. can i not function as a normal human being without the constant need to impress and please a woman driving me? i am dog. may i lick your feet and nuzzle your crotch? i must be. this is slightly exciting and moderately depressing.
her mom likes to make cookies and i like to eat her mom?s cookies? i do admit i have a lot of updates and writings to post out of my travel journal, but i?ve been extraordinarily lazy since i got back. and i keep waking up at freaking 3:30 in the morning. wth, jesus? i?m not in freaking europe anymore. in sports today, i asked megan to officially move in with me. she raised her eyebrow and said, ?haven?t i pretty much already?? i raised an eyebrow right back and said, ?well, it certainly seems like all of your stuff has.? then i said ?ow,? and rubbed my recenlty bruised shoulder. this girl has fists like lightning. seriously though, we?re sort of sickenly co-dependent. wait. fuck that. we?re co-awesome. still in a way that sickens you though. so awesome you can?t handle it so it makes you queasy and sickly. sissy. she told her mom she was moving out and they both started crying. she told her dad and he threatened my life. (jokingly?) i gave them both a nice bottle of wine. it cost me five dollars. and i?m wearing a pair of underwear i bought in italy. honestly, those italians really know how to treat their gonads.
things thought on the airplane to italy: a random collective. version 1: we?re all gonna die. jesus, los angeles is fucking polluted. version 2: jesus, who thought up these seats? that crazy indian dancing kid? i wonder if your entire body cramps up at once if the release of it is slightly orgasmic. if i have to sit like this for the next twelve hours it better be or i?m going to oscar meyer weiner somebody. the lady in the seat next to us is popping pills. nerves, she says. hook me up, i say. megan stares at me. taking off is always so exciting. that momentary allotment your brain gives itself to burn into the back of your eyeballs the jerky image of the plane burning in a pile of rubble at the end of the runway. this is why i abhor not flying first class ? no pre-take off beverages. the roar, the idle pressure as you are pressed back into your seat, your cheeks pulled slightly and eroticly away from your teeth. smile, we?re flying. why are we going this way, megan asks me. because driving would require drowning. you?re dumb, she says. i am superman. version 3: i wonder what state this is? we?ve been flying for three hours. the monitor on the back of the seat in front of me informs me we?re flying 585 mph. megan is snoring next to me, her lovely little face resting on my shoulder. sometimes this makes me wish i was fatter. bony joints make not a comfortable pillow. anyway, my arm is tingly. pins and needles. sharks and otters. strawberries and bananas, this shit is... there are too many questions? i really hope megan wakes up soon. i?m afraid my arm is dying. plus, i want to make out at 600 mph. bobby burgess style. version 4: dear future self possibly recreating these hand-written inkturds to be ogled by the wunderkind of the intrawebs: this is an exchange i had in my head with megan while she was snoring and drooling on my armpit. i.e., this is a conversation i made up while megan was sleeping. myself, being awesome: so, megan, this is a conversation i made up in my head while you were sleeping. megan: oh. i see. myself: cat fights should always end up in swimming pools. megan: probably. it would keep things in perspective. and no, you cannot film me and my cousin wrestling in a swimming pool to test your theory. myself: drat. myself: remember that time around christmas when we were up at the budnick?s and you went to tickle me, and i kneed you in the face? megan: no. myself: figures. i think you were unconcious. anyway, the way we?re crammed in these chairs and you?re laying on my arm and you look so content sleeping that i?m afraid to move for fear of waking you ? i can?t feel my penis. megan: figures. karma is my sweet sweet bitch. myself: i envy you. you and your snoring prowess and sleeping abilities. me? i suck at sleep. it?s my greatest failing. and i?m trying. i?m really trying. i?m yawning. i?m closing my eyes and relaxing and i just suck at it. it isn?t fair. i count sheep and i tell myself to sleep. i loop it in my head. sheep. sleep. sheep sheep. sleep sleep. sheep sleep. i repeat it over and over in my head in a soothing lilting tone. also, minor side-note: i can feel your breast pressing against my arm. rar. anyway, i try! i?m trying! this conversation with you could almost be said to be sleeping. maybe i?ll loop it. a soothing lilting sheep counting conversation between me, awake, and you, asleep. but then the ideas come. they hit like a grocery cart running into your genitals. fast and furious. ideas and plans. world domination. what to wear. what not to wear. things to do. things i?d like to do. things i?m doing right now. it is almost as if my brain sees the rest of me shutting down and decides, sweet! me time. it?s not fair, sucking at something like this. it?s like being bad at breathing. or pooping. or molecular biology. but you, miss megan, you dominate. it?s almost mythical. megan: like a beast. myself: any particular beast? megan: a sleeping one. myself: oooh. impressive.