F

Last night I never went to sleep at all. Woke up 9:00 AM the previous day (Thursday) after going to bed at 8:00 AM. So aside from that brief hour or so of sleep Thursday morning, I haven’t slept at all. It’s boring and nothing happens, who wants to sleep? Truly though, I did eventually go to sleep this morning, and slept for a bit. Before that however I decided to pour some Robitussin in a shotglass and take two shots of that, two shots of rum and smoked half a joint and wrote this:


In the hills of whereversville California
Far above gross strips of orange and grey
Hollywood on one side and an area I should never call home on the other
Trying to locate the first second
The best way to my heart
Looks of frustration
Contentment
And just that look

“every single one down there is a liar”
“stay away from me I’ll only hurt you”
“”these sunglasses and hat will make it easier to deal with”

My first, but really second moment like this
Interrupted over and over
Spilled directly into awkwardsville
“oh well then”
Months from now in the middle of the night
Months from now in the early hours of dawn
Months from now we’ll remember this time and laugh
We’ll look back fondly
Speak of fucking and taking things fast
Speak of how better everything gets
Months after things get worse
Weeks after things get worse
Even days after things get worse
They seem to get better

Her gaze even better in real life
Better than hours of phone calls and letters
letters on a screen that have something
“nothing will ever stand in the way”
Not women you’d never meet
Not men I’ll never meet

Eight months later
Almost to the day though
Light in my eyes that makes it hard to even sleep
Darkness that makes it easy to sleep
Why is it when I feel I’ve done wrong
I can sleep better at night?
I always have more light in my head
The way I pull information though
This gigantic flashlight
A flashlight made of fire, frustration and sixteen other words that begin with the letter F

August 20th, 1976

“More Than a Feeling”

Sometimes I have this thing where I will be talking to a person, like a real nice person. Well, you know, like one of those people that you can’t imagine a single person in the world doesn’t like. I will be talking to them and then just be overcome with this urge to just punch them in the face really hard. When they fall to the ground I will get on top of them and just punch them over and over until their face barely exists. I have a similar thing happening right now, sitting in this Starbucks. Everyone in here seems to know each other, there is a school nearby where a number of Jesus people are and I am wearing a shirt with an upside down cross on it. Everyone here is talking, laughing, typing away on their laptops. I keep imagining standing up and just mowing everyone down with a machine gun, every last fucking person in here. Even the ones pretending to be dead. I’ll get them too.

“Peace of Mind”

I do enjoy the trees and the winding roads out here. Everything is packed together nicely, convenient to a point, but not too stuffy. One thing I could not stand in Los Angeles was just the lack of things to see. Anything you saw was some sort of man made creation. Even the “Los Angeles River” was a joke compared to the Merrimack or Charles. Spending a week on the road by myself I made sure to take everything in and keep it inside my head. Maybe someday I will share it with someone else, that drive. There are only so many pictures of that shit you can take before you start telling yourself it isn’t going to be the same.

“Foreplay/Long Time”

This grey sky here feels familiar. I remember it from years and years of long winters here. It feels familiar and how it should feel. Days on end of sun and blue and dry air, yeah it’s great, but this grey sky. All of these people still smile and move right through it. They don’t know how to handle clouds out there on that coast. They don’t know how to handle weather under sixty degrees. At some point I forgot my visits there were always just enough.

“Rock and Roll Band”

So I want to start playing music again soon, however I have no desire to do everything else that comes with playing music that isn’t composing and performing it. I don’t want to go about calling and e-mailing and making friends in other bands and seeing bands I have no desire to see, etc. How do I go about this? I know everyone and everything I need to know now. I guess once I get something happening I will be better about this, but fuck the thought of all that other shit is horrifying. Creating music though, I am dying to do it.

“Smokin”

I can’t move backwards. It seems like they all look to the past for comfort. Things that excited you when you were a kid, they excite you now still. None of this is inside of me. I don’t really know when or how it left me, but holidays and birthdays and cartoons and shitty movies and yeah doing things that remind you of your childhood. Why? Do people want to just not grow old? Does chocolate milk appeal to me still? Sure, but does having to have some sort of security blanket to hold on to doesn’t. Watch them and how they act. Watch some children now and spot the differences.

“Hitch a Ride”

Please never tell me what you think I might be into. Please don’t try and suggest something you think I may like. The only people ever even remotely close with this kind of thing are “girlfriends”. As awful as it sounds, your opinion on anything, I don’t care about it and never will. I’m sorry, actually not really, that you thought this was some sort of jerk off party where we throw ideas back and forth about awesome stuff but it isn’t.

“Something About You”

She is so beautiful that I have “no idea what the hell to do” half the time. I can stumble around and cause problems and try to fix problems and compare her to others from my past. I can look in her eyes and try to figure out where she is. Since things have changed and we’ve become even closer recently, I can’t look into her eyes and see where she is coming from. How horrible and wonderful of a fate is this?

“Let Me Take You Home Tonight”

I can’t really be where I am without wanting to just fly away for good. Moral bankruptcy every fifteen minutes and every time I turn around. I can’t figure out if I am just stunned, surprised or let down. I want to become what they fear. I don’t want to be anything like them at all. I have to be vague when I talk about things because of the shitty nature of it all. For years and years now I have done things to try and not be anything like them. When it comes to where I want and need to be I have to walk alone.

Rippinest Town Pt III

Well after 2:00 AM and I’ve had thirteen shots of espresso today and still annoyed myself by hearing some grown man at the coffee place say “expresso”. Really people, how hard is that word to say? There isn’t even a letter that looks like an “x” in it. Drives me up the fucking wall. Worse than “supposebly”.

Have spent every extra minute here writing for what reason? I have no idea. This evening had a nice dinner with my two friends who weren’t born in the United States (Matt and Crystal), which I thought of briefly while we were hanging out. Not that exciting of a fact about them though really, but anyway, we had a great time and went back to their apartment and talked about music and politics and travel and drank espresso based drinks and now here I am, seven hours away from the reason I came out here for this trip. I think I lied to most people I know and said I had some “family thing”. Heh. Anyway, yeah so that is tomorrow morning and then the rest of the weekend who knows. This trip is kind of worth it in a way. Even though I am coming back in a week it kind of gave me that one last chance to say “yeah I think I’m going to stay in California”. I already knew the second I decided to move back here that staying in California wasn’t an option no matter what happened. This is where I want to be which is all that matters. People out here and out there and what they think, well it has no bearing on anything I will ever do again.



I am writing way too much online lately. Oof (?).

I am going to document my trip across the country again like I did here before The original idea for this blog was mostly to write when I went on road trips or any kind of vacation which I tend to do quite a bit. I get a little obsessive and want to track everything like when I moved out there last August and I listed every single song I listened to on the way out to California which I gathered from an Excel sheet. I dumped playlists in it every night from the iPod. If I happened to listen to an actual CD I would write that down and add it in myself. I originally planned (there is definitely someone or something stirring outside this house up and around the windows. The two windows in this tiny bedroom look out into complete pitch black. I am a 40 year old guy that people tend to say looks “mean” or whatever and you could not pay me any amount of money to open the curtains right now and look out there. If I did that whatever/whoever it is would surely jump up and start banging on the window or break through it and grab me to pull me outside to meet my fate...perhaps the real reason I came out here for this trip [!]) to also put music in this file that I heard in gas stations and restaurants, hotel lobbies and department stores but decided against it at the last minute. This time around (whatever it is out there is sounds like something keeps sighing and clicking some weird like old crackity tape machine thing, and then when I go to look around the room I see these old dolls and crucifix on the wall and man I just don’t want to be in this room) though I have come up with some easier ideas. I am going to do some video stuff, maybe with me talking I have no idea I hate what I look like and sound like so who knows if I will do that. I also have ideas for writing exercises. Well, I have a list of “rules” I made for driving across the country at one point. So maybe doing one each of those and talking about it might at least give me some sort of focus rather than writing this (yeah okay I get it you’re out there) and that about how lonely I am and boo hoo my life is no fun. I have some “games” to keep myself entertained....maybe something like “Let’s wear this Eyehategod shirt in Texas and see what happens”, etc.

Speaking of keeping myself entertained and generally being kind of a jerk. A week or so ago. Fuck I hate bad drivers and I am not going to blame it on LA or Boston as they are everywhere. It’s a cliche, I”m probably a bad driver to someone else, who cares though? So I am in this parking lot where my mail box is and I am pulling out and this guy in a LIncoln Town Car just breezes through the stop sign like he never even considered stopping an option. Of course I did that thing where I jumped out a little like I was going to just go and he had to swerve out of the way. I didn’t really have anything else to do for the rest of the day so I decided I would follow the guy and just “keep it real” as I like to call it. He eventually pulled into a parking space and I pulled a U-Turn. I then slowly at drive-by-shooting speed I drove past his car and held my phone out the passenger side window and “took a picture” of his car and license plate. He has just gotten out of the car and then noticed me, I then pointed the camera at him and “took his picture” and the guy stood there with his mouth kind of agape. He was maybe in his late 60’s, white shorts, moustache, typical asshole. I then sped off and saw he was just standing there the whole time as I pulled away. I then got nervous he was going to call the police and thought they would confiscate my phone and see that I did not take a picture of this poor fuck who doesn’t understand stop signs, but really I wonder what could have happened? Wow how weak of a person am I for kind of harassing some guy to feel better about myself. Actually I did it because that guy was shit.

Most Things Haven't Worked Out

a) I think she was crazy. I know her mom was crazy, and her ex-husband was crazy, and I was crazy, but all of us were like this in a good way.

b) At Lynch Park we sat and drank wine coolers, and I think you threw up. At that age, it was easy to throw up. If you throw up from wine coolers nowadays, you’re considered a pussy.

c) Ted fucked Vicki about 25 minutes after their shift ended at the video store; on the way back to her car he mentioned that he thought the most efficient way to get things done is if they are MILITANT with making people drop the videos in the box, rather than leaving them on the counter. When Vicki got in the house she drank half a bottle of Robutussin and fell asleep in her blue company shirt.

d) At one point on the train ride, I think it was in Nebraska, I came out of the bathroom and there was a woman waiting, the window between the cars was open, and it was dark. I smiled at her. Upon returning to my seat I imagined how intense it would have been if I had thrown her out of the window and returned to my seat to read another fucking tired Jack Kerouac novel with my stupid fucking goatee and cardigan.

e) On our way to the carnival, everyone in the car is a little drunk except for me, I’m trying to give Candace directions, and mix her drinks for her. We arrive at the carnival, and just as we are walking in, Tim looks at me and says “there’s that dude from McNeil’s house last week”

f) I ran out of things to say, so I started allowing people to walk all over me.

g) I may have stopped breathing that one time. Ambulance shows up and I keep picturing those gross piercing blue eyes she had. I hated them, these tiny little eyes of hers. I should have known what was up right off the bat.

h) Children, being eaten by a gigantic woman with no eyes.

i) Isaac Hayes + Billy Crystal + John Coltrane = Luke Perry

j) She ordered the wrong thing, so when the waitress came back, I told her that we would need the check, and if she could call my date a cab, she obviously didn’t read my rules.

k)I had such a good idea or so I thought. I could type this true sentence every five minutes forever.

l)In the basement, I felt insecure and out of place. Every fucking basement. I have a long history of feeling insecure in basements. Make sure, no, MAKE FUCKING SURE, you never take me to your basement. I am vulnerable there. I will listen to everything you say, I will think every remark is a criticism of how I am seen. I’ve never had sexual relations with any person I’ve met in a basement. I’m like the guy who throws up from wine coolers nowadays, a fucking pussy. I’m a fucking pussy in the basement, go ahead, make fun of me.

m) My phone never fucking rings anymore, all of the fuckers who said they would call months ago, they never call. I don’t call, they don’t call, nobody gives a shit anymore. Soon we’ll have those conversations “hey, did you hear so and so got shot?”.

n) Annette Funicello walks into my fantasy and asks where the nearest Starbucks is. I tell her I loved her in “that one you did with the black guy and Don Rickles”

o) The one time I decided to start shaving my head myself was a week after my barber told me I shouldn’t go into the city because there were a lot of n***ers there. I think I read that piece of racist shit had a heart attack in the middle of a haircut once. Who do you tip when your barber dies in the middle of a haircut?

p) To pass the time we would argue about which was more important film or music. You would always win with your fucking film school knowledge, and my short term memory lapses coming on strong in the face of confrontation.

q) The night Steven Spielberg fucked my wife.

r) 1-800-ECSTASY

s) It seems that when I drink this red wine, I decide I don’t mind drinking after all. Don’t call me a hypocrite you fuck. If people didn’t change their opinions daily, and grow and learn different things daily how boring would we be? I like the wine right now, tomorrow I will say I think my friends are fucking losers because they looked at a glass of beer.

t) We got this woman fired one day. She was out of line, and out of hand, so we had her fired. I am a fucking pussy, but I looked her right in the eye and said to her, well I said some shit that you normally wouldn’t say. I fucking told her some shit.

u) Imagine not knowing all of the lyrics to every single Black Sabbath song by heart?

v) A man watched us fuck in the car. We saw him and you started freaking out. Plus, you were late and your dad would be waiting for you. I thought that your dad would probably be more upset at what I had called you while I was fucking you, as it’s impossible to have two fathers.

w) He sent them a card and told them he was sorry for what he did at the dinner party but “the next time that faggot wants to tell me Zack Wylde sucks I will do more than throw a fucking bottle of Michelob at him and his crippled fucking wife. See you guys at Easter - Tommy”

x) She did so much cocaine in one night that the next time I saw her I punched her in the nose so many fucking times she wouldn’t be able to snort anything for at least two weeks. I broke up with her a week later.

y) The unfortunate experience of having to tell your friends you are getting your wisdom teeth out.

z) People who actually enjoy things at this point