Master of Puppets

I can push and be pushed into any situation. I try to make my own decisions here and there and really, I never do. I let situations dictate them. I don’t think I’ve put more than a few minutes into a choice in a long time. I have no fucking patience for sitting around thinking if it involves other people. I can just as easily ignore people forever. I can leave them alone and never pick up the phone again if I need to. Most people can’t do this, they are weak and always cave in. I think because everyone ever has failed me I don’t put any kind of stock into people at this point. Everyone is selfish at the end of the day including me. If I had it my way right now I would disappear into the middle of the country somewhere. Miles away from the ocean and the internet and coffee and listening to people ramble on about things I have no interest in, listening to the same questions over and over. Miles away from every single person invading my privacy, family, friends, strangers, I volunteer information all the time so the invasion doesn’t really exist, but really. Someone thinks I have something interesting to say. They must be blind, or have some other motives. Hmm.

Until I get back to reality and living some sort of new routine, this routine is the one. Staring at a ceiling fan, listening to animals in the back yard, watching people read their bibles, fat housewives sucking on milkshakes disguised as coffee drinks, all whites all the time. I sleep three hours a night, the rest of the time I am waiting for some sort of alarm to go off. The rest of the time its all noise all the time. Nowhere to go to avoid their deafening voices and taunts and uninteresting feelings about life.



Early morning dream 06/02/10:
Was in some sort of pantry area trying to run some sort of device that needed to be hooked up to a tank of gas and it was not working. Tank eventually came disconnected from hose and flew around small area before crashing into a wall.



Looking back now on trips I have taken, people I’ve taken them with, certain areas of the country and which were the best. I’ve never done extensive traveling with another person really. When I did it had a specific function, moving. The whole trips were complete stressful times for the majority, and there was nothing really relaxing about those trips. Trips I’ve taken in New England have been okay. Some have been hard to deal with because of whatever weather we were having, and usually the trips were too short. I know everything that’s here at this point for the most part. I’ve been to the top of Maine and looked across a river at Canada, and to the bottom of my least favorite state, Connecticut. So I feel like I’ve seen almost every inch of New England that I need to see. It’s impossible for me to get lost in Massachusetts.

Maybe because they are more recent, or because of the company I was with, or because I am better at traveling than I was say ten years ago. My trip to Disneyland for my birthday last November with G was great. Great that it was early in our relationship and although still didn’t know each other as well as we do now, it was great to spend my birthday at that place I loved as a kid with someone I love. Our trip to Morro Bay/San Luis Obispo this past March was also great. I didn’t know if it would be the last time I saw her or not since I was moving back to Boston a couple of weeks later. That is a great area of the state and I think I really fell for her there so it was particularly bittersweet to leave that day. I couldn’t write enough shitty songs and poems about that smile and well, other things.

Now that I have been back here, and have listened to all of these songs that remind me of here and then remind me of there, I feel like I really want to go back there. I know what is here and I know what is there. I put these things on a scale the other night. Ups, downs. Pros, cons, you know...It’s noisy and crowded here. If I get to the ocean here, it is rocky and cold and I feel like I am pushed against the sea.



"Hey Charlie"
I landed on the ice with a giant “thud”, and got up immediately. I think I had been running but I’m not sure when I think back to that night. Charlie wanted to catch up with me this night, but I wouldn’t let him. I ran, and ran, and ran. Charlie always had a slew of questions to ask me. Charlie always wanted me to tell him a story “from the old days”. I liked Charlie, but he was just too much sometimes. Charlie always wanted me to lend him a cigarette, although he never gave back the “lent” cigarettes I gave him. Charlie was never in love from what I can tell. He was always telling me of some girl he was with the night before, but I was never interested. In retrospect I guess I should have been a bit nicer to Charlie. Charlie pushed. Charlie outright bugged me most of the time.

I don’t think many people knew of Charlie. I never told my friends about Charlie, or the day I met him in the coffee shop. Charlie was sitting at the stool two over from me, and when the large construction man left, Charlie introduced himself. I had seen Charlie around my building, but had no clue he lived in it. In fact, he lived right below me. I didn’t really pay attention to anyone there, except for the couple next to me, whom I HAD to pay attention to because they were so loud. Arnold and Louise, what a fucking couple they were. So anyway, this particular night, it was raining, which made the ice on the ground even more slick than it was. I was coming home from my friends’ place where we had just watched television for five hours straight. Charlie saw me turn our corner, and started in with the questions. What's up? You staying up? Every once and a while I would let Charlie in and we would hang out and get high. Tonight I wanted to go to bed right away. I’m going to bed Charlie. I’m not doing anything tonight Charlie. I started yelling a little. I’m GOING IN CHARLIE! Charlie kept at it. I started running down the street in fear at this point. After the thud on the ice, I made my way into the apartment building.

Charlie came to the door five minutes after I got in. Can I come in? Just for a minute. Charlie was in love apparently. He had mentioned this one girl a bunch of times, but I had never paid attention. I hadn’t been in love in three years, so I guess I was a bit jealous of Charlie. I all of a sudden felt a little compassion for Charlie, and listened to him. Hey remember the time you told me you fell in love with that girl, and she turned out to be your cousin? Yes I remember that Charlie. Remember you told me that it was much bigger than love, and that every time you were with her you felt like she was a part of you? Yes I remember that Charlie. That’s how I feel right now. Who is she Charlie? Her name is Darlene, and she works at the pizza place up the street. Oh, I think I know who you’re talking about, you’ve mentioned her before right? I offered Charlie a cigarette. He said he was quitting. Your loss I snapped. Darlene obviously doesn’t smoke I take it? Yes, she does. Oh. I’m going to marry her. You are? Yes, I think I am. The horoscope says I probably will. And that’s a good source of information for you Charlie? It never lies to me. How come every time I look at it Charlie, I ignore it if it doesn’t say anything good, and when it does, I ignore it anyway?

The next morning Charlie was on his way to the store when he dropped in the middle of the street. It seems a brain tumor fell him. I guess in retrospect Charlie was a good man, he just bugged me a bit too much. The one night when I finally let him have his night with me he dies the next day. I visited the pizza place after Charlie died to see Darlene. She’s at home with her husband the guy behind the counter told me. It turns out that Charlie was indeed in love with Darlene, but this was news to Darlene. Charlie wanted so bad to have love in his life but was denied it over and over, so he made up stories. I miss Charlie. I have no love either, and Charlie had some love, he seemed to love me, but I had none of it to give him when he was alive. My friends now have all gone on and pursued their dreams of moving out of this city, and into homes with their wives, and girlfriends. Today I went down to the coffee shop and sat at the counter next to this policeman. After he got up, I moved into his seat, and asked the man next to me if he was enjoying the unusually warm weather in January.



"Novembre"
Lets cut out the small talk

We are sitting next to each other and that’s all

I am not an interesting person

I am not an interested person

I have nothing to give you really

I can give you stories

I can follow you home

I am good at that

I can make you think I am someone else

I am good at that

I can let you think you know me

In the middle of the night though

I am pulling strings

I’m plotting revenge on you

You’ve done absolutely nothing to me

I know you’ve done harm to others though

I see through you all the way to Hawaii

I sit up late at night writing letters to your friends

I spend hours devising ways to harm you

I sit around inside my head

I’m no better than you

You are truly better than me, which is why I do this

You win one battle

In the end though, I win ten

You fight three battles

I fight none

And I still come out on top somehow

The second you asked me what my name was

That was the first mistake you made

You wife and kids seem nice

I’m really sorry

Really, I am.

Frame by Frame

This feels like one of those periods of time where I would do well to take a week by myself and look at shit I’ve never seen before or have only seen a few times before. Green fields and grass and hills and trees Ill never see fall over in the rain and trees that only go from green to black. Trees presumably jealous of our trees that go from bright green to bright reds and yellows and fire orange and crunch crunch when you walk through them in the crisp months. Surely they must be jealous of this.



It just gets boring sitting still like this, even if I was supposed to already be something and somewhere by now. I was thinking of how the Indy 500 is this weekend. Wait is it? Yeah, it is Memorial Day weekend apparently. I love Indiana. Most boring state you could ever think to be in in your life, but it looks nice. It seems every time I am in Indiana, it is the state I stopped in late at night, and get some sort of fresh start in the morning. It’s been sunny and wide eyed blue skied every time I’ve been there (four or five times now). The best way to start any day of a road trip, Day One, Day Eight, whatever, is obviously on one of those kinds of days. When I went to Oklahoma last summer and trained back home after that depression-fest, we left Massachusetts when it was pouring rain, it was like 5:30 PM on a Friday night when we left so you can imagine how miserable the first three hours or so. We were also dragging a car behind the U-Haul, had two cats and I was two weeks into not smoking cigarettes anymore after eighty three years or whatever it was. After that first night of driving, I was no longer allowed to drive the U-Haul truck. A few days of day dreaming in the passenger seat with a cat in my lap was just fine with me though even if her and I barely spoke and she had stopped laughing at my jokes at that point.



So the first time I went to Indiana I went to the race track and took the tour and took pictures of cars for the dudes back home....and I just spent twenty minutes looking for them on this laptop and they are not here. I have a number of missing pictures I am discovering, as they are on my Windows machine I don’t have set up. What a horrible life I have, now I can’t finish what I was going to talk about here. Fuck you.



Some of these women that come in here, I mean there are some religious folks coming in here and they look like normal nice people. But then one will come in with all sorts of makeup on looking like she just snorted ten thousand lines of cocaine off of eight thousand cocks, but in 1986. That’s what some of the women who come in here look like to me.



I rarely judge people by how they look, but I will judge them by certain criteria. One is how long they can look you in the eye. Another is, and this one is very important and goes along with another situation as well. “How useful will this person be if some serious shit goes down?”. For instance, if we are under attack by armed men and women surrounding our house how good is a baby going to be in this situation? Sometimes you have to make tough decisions. I’m not suggesting you murder a baby, but they do make noise, and can’t use weapons. They can be used as bargaining tools though...If you have to leave to get away from the situation. Maybe go on the run for a while, you aren’t going to take your one legged friend with you, or someone who can’t drive a car right?



Another time I try and measure this same thing is when I am in public, especially an airplane, or any tight quartered place like a small restaurant. I like to survey the room to see who I should maybe try and team up with, who is going to be a pain in the ass about shit. Who might I have to knock out or kill just to make things easier? Who might be working against us, etc. If you don’t figure these things when you are out and about at places you’re not going to do well at all really. Right now where I am there are....twenty six people in here including the employees. I see about three I think I could really count on if we all of a sudden are invaded. Two guys over there would probably just immediately be shot by the invaders, I can tell which women here would probably not stop screaming and would also be shot and killed by the invaders. There is one woman here (the one who looked like the 80’s coke whore) who may or may not be working with the invaders. There is one black guy here, kind of big. Probably can’t run very far, but could be a good ally as he has a pretty good mean face like me. Everyone else in here is a fucking pussy. I think as long as the number of invaders was under twenty, we could probably take them with improvised weapons and some secret plans and techniques I already have planned out in my head. (80’s coke whore woman has just met up with someone and kissed him on the cheek, they are now sitting together. He’s about 5’4”, a little meaty on his bones, but his button down shirt and hairdo indicate I could easily take him out even if he does have a gun on him. Judging by how he looks and how he carries himself he’s obviously the “money guy” in this covert gang of thugs that will soon invade this Starbucks and try to kill all of us. Anyway, I could easily deal with him I think. I already se five things around me I could throw at him that would shock and disable him for a brief few seconds.)



So I have been off and on working on a “novel” among a million other projects that maybe someday will exist. I’m trying to come up with a good opening line for the novel though. Here are some I have come up with so far:

I walked among the brokenhearted buildings of a city that lost its soul when she left town.

Drunk and brains fucked out, we left my apartment for a cup of silent coffee, and loud haircuts.

He was part Michael Caine, part Ted Kennedy, and he was on PCP.

We John Coltraned ourselves downtown, and made our way into the disconcerted evening of nightclubs, smoky all night diners, and characters out of a bad Steely Dan song.

The night he broke Nobuko’s heart, he felt as if he had single handedly avenged the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and finally gotten the closure on this tired relationship.

Jennifer was ready, fuck was Jennifer ready.

With my messenger bag filled with memories, and mix tapes, I put on my Sauconys, and left Detroit for good.

She made me feel like Jesus Christ, I made her feel like a pile of dirt.

The acrid taste of the night before filled my mouth, as I emptied the contents of my pocket onto my dresser; this would be the final morning of my coke binge.

My father would have been proud; I strummed the first few chords of “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner on my guitar, and faced my first day as a transvestite with vigor not seen since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.

She fucked him for coke, he fucked her because his wife was pregnant.