Automotive Difficulties & Walking Reveries.

It’s all dark now, in my mind, in my soul, but that’s no surprise to me. As fucked up as it all is, I anticipated this. As fucked up as I am, believe it or not, I am painfully self-aware. The spotlight that shines on my mind is utterly agonizing, and I can only assure you. The impacts that truly prove to leave craters and crack and so provide me with enlightenment, with self-realization — they’re curious and intense, to be sure, no matter how much you might demote them once witness to their particular manifestations, but I urge you to hold your judgement…

Every time there is an issue with my vehicle, I begin to reassess my life.

After consideration, I have concluded that this is largely because since January 26, 2004, I have worked at the same fast food job and since August 1 of 2014 I have lived alone in this one-bedroom apartment some 22 miles from work, or roughly 23 minutes away, give or take — for, given these circumstances, if I no longer have a functioning vehicle, this means I have no way to work. Unless, of course:

1) I have enough money to pay for repairs,

2) I can borrow enough money from someone and am capable of paying them back,

3) someone just gives me the money for repairs, and/or

4) someone is willing to pick me up and drive me from work and back, at least until I have the money for the repairs, the repairs in question are completed, and I have a ride to the repaired vehicle.

The common denominator of all the above is having to ask for help from other people, relying on other people, being a fucking burden on other people, and as a consequence feeling indebted to other people either/both financially and/or emotionally (in the form of debt that Nietzsche — that dark, mustached genius — accurately described as guilt).

I hate debt. Not only does it fill me with obligations I’m not certain how or if I can fulfill, but in either case it makes me feel like a weak, incompetent, pathetic parasite, a creature unable to hold his own, to manage his life without assistance, implying that without life support I would have been dead, dead, deadinski long, long ago.

In other words, I hate these issues with my vehicle because it betrays a putrid and profound (and profoundly putrid) truth about myself: that when it comes down to it, I am simply not fit to make it in the world. This culture. This society. That I cannot hold my own or manage my own shit. That I am a square peg in a world of round holes. That I can never be independent, never be free, and that I only make it through this hellacious maelstrom of my existence because I am lucky enough to know so many good and empathic people that either pity me or feel for some reason as if they owe me, and so as a consequence feel at some level an obligation to rush to my aid, to rescue this incurable dumbass in eternal distress.

I survive the recurring shitstorms of my existence given my lifeline of luck. That’s how I feel: it hasn’t been earned. It makes me feel guilty so much that it kills me inside, and yet without it I would be on the streets, homeless and hungry, clueless and hopeless. I can ignore this fatal flaw for varying periods, but the spotlight inevitably shines down on it soon enough. If I’m lucky, it remains latent long enough for me to forget it is there, but this only serves to pack the destined punch, as it ultimately rises into manifestation to remind me what a lost, anxious, naïve, ignorant, helpless fuckling child I really am, despite having lived in this flesh for a little over four fucking decades. And all feeble semblance of confidence I’ve managed to conjure from the depths of my being evaporates in a mere moment.

How do I exit this circumstance?

Well, I could find a decent job I could walk to, or bicycle to if I need to. I don’t hate vehicles, but if I didn’t have to rely on one to get to the place where I have to make the money I need to make in order to survive, if I could manage to get from home to work and back again without such a vehicle so I could still pay for rent and groceries and the addictions I need to feed and the vehicle repairs that would make my life slightly easier — if I could, in other words, eliminate my reliance on my vehicle — well, that fear would be abolished. Flame of fear snuffed out. Threat eliminated. Quality of life would be more secured and my peace of mind given roots and at least the hope of blossoming into true joy.

I came across a video or two recently regarding people who traveled and lived abroad and then came back to the states, and this one girl explained how when she lived in Denmark, maybe Norway, she had a car but eventually sold it because she didn’t need it. She could just walk or ride her bicycle everywhere. Imagining myself in that circumstance, these waves of relief and pleasure and security just washed over me. I imagined how much stress would immediately be eliminated from my life, and, ignoring my loved ones for a moment, I had the sudden urge to just save up as much money as I could and buy a plane ticket and get the bloody fuck out of dodge. I felt like I could make it in such an environment. I’d always feel like the odd duck, I’d always feel like I was on the outside looking in, I’d always feel like I’m an alien and I don’t belong, sure, but I always feel that way, I’ve fucking made peace with that, it’s just a basic element of my character, no matter what the context, or so I’m convinced — but I would be so much happier, so much more at peace.

I remember words of a beautiful fucking woman I know and adore whom I call Pretty Penny, and the comedian Doug Stanhope, who echoed her — or maybe its the other way around. I don’t know, I value them both. Pretty Penny more because I know her personally, her character is insatiably alluring and she’s a sexy little beast. In any case, the insight was simple: you can always leave. Pack up your shit in a car and move away to another state. Pack up your shit in bags and flee this goddamn country. Simple as that, they both say, my two drunken wise-people upon the proverbial mountain. You’re only as trapped as you think you are. You know the earth is round, but you look at the horizon of the sector of this small fucking beautiful wad of dirt you’re trapped in as if it were flat. There are regions so far beyond, and you can live there. If you aren’t happy where you are, you do know you can just go, don’t you?

How I wish our technological evolution had already advanced to the point where wormholes, or folding space in a teleportation manner, would have not only become possible at the macro level but affordable and routine, for I’d hop to Norway in a goddamn heartbeat and come to visit those I loved frequently, but that shit just isn’t possible now. So it means that to achieve my absurd ideal I would have to find a job close to where I live that would enable me to Uber out without putting me in debt or buy a plane ticket that wouldn’t put me so far in the hole that I’d have no fucking hope of ever crawling out — or, conversely, and much more realistically, find find a place to live close to a new job and that both would have to be in close proximity to those I love.

This is far from what I’d consider utopia, but its a fucking start.

It would still be far from the sun, in other words, but at the very fucking least I could finally see our shimmering home star as it rose above our blasted horizon.

Believe in that distant star, but move towards it in (albeit intense) baby steps.

Of Masks & Microchips.

At work, Steve’s wife came into the dining room, and as often happens, we struck up a conversation. After venting to me about her daughter for a bit, we somehow get on the topic of the pandemic.

I explained that though I’ve gotten my first shot, I was freaking out early last week, as I felt congested and my throat was scratchy. Within a day or two I convinced myself that it was all in my head, that I was just being paranoid, but I went out and got tested anyway, just to be safe. Thankfully, the results were negative, but I decided that for the time being, I’d continue wearing the mask due to the new variants out there.

She nodded and told me she should start wearing her mask again, too, but she found the thought of getting vaccinated “scary.” This despite the fact that she has already gotten covid and said she had never felt more sick in her life. That she thought she was going to fucking die, as a matter of fact.

What should scare her is the thought of getting it again, not getting the vaccine.

I teased her a bit, asking her if she was afraid of getting microchipped — and then I saw it in her eyes. She was. Calmly, I explained to her that if she’s worried about being microchipped, she should take a look at that device in her pocket. Edward Snowden already gave us the truth regarding it years upon years ago. They can remotely activate the camera and receiver on your phone. They can triangulate your location. They don’t need to microchip us.

“Not everyone has a cell phone, though,” she countered.

“Clearly not everyone’s going to get vaccinated, either,” I replied, giving voice to the obvious.

She knows I’m not religious, she begins, and I interrupt her.

“Please, please don’t tell me you think this is the mark of the beast.”

Indeed, she thought this could very well be the mark of the beast. She said that things in the Bible are coming to pass, and I try to tell her that people claim that’s the case at every moment in history. The so-called “predictions” in that damned book are so vague that it serves as a sort of Rorschach test. If it truly is the word of some omniscient creator-being, one would think he’d be a bit clearer so as to avoid such confusion.

She enlightened me in a way, though. I’ve been so frustrated with political cults like the Trumpanzees on the right and the Woke cult on the left that I have been entirely ignoring the continued prevalence of crazy religions in their original form, of the anthology of “alternative facts” they call the Bible.

I like the woman, I truly do, but that conversation left me feeling more than a bit frustrated and disappointed.

Among the Lost Souls of Planet Earth.

It was about a year away from when things in my head and in my life would go bat shit crazy. I was a freshmen in art class one day, listening to my Walkman as I drew. I was listening to a recording of a record (vinyl? I guess we call them vinyl now) my father often listened to at home, and which I found funny. It was basically two guys doing skits, pretending to be old, backwoods characters.

Derek was across the table from me, and while I recall him mostly talking to some guy beside him, he asked me what I was listening to, and I told him it was comedy. He wanted to listen, so I took the headphones off my head and offered them to him. He put them on for maybe twenty seconds, took them off, placed them on the table and with a dismissive laugh and shrug turned to the other guy and said, “its just two old guys talking,” and then went on talking with the other guy as if I didn’t exist. I was and am and will likely forever be one hypersensitive little shit, so yeah, it embarrassed me a little. Even so, I put back on the headphones and went back to my drawing.

I didn’t even remember it until recently, in the wake of Derek’s initial Facebook messaging. Even so, I don’t think it was his messaging that triggered this memory — not entirely, anyway.

After hearing about Bill Cosby being let out of jail, I couldn’t help but think of the records my father had of his stand-up, and how I used to enjoy listening to them as a kid. His stories about when he was a kid in particular. His story about the chicken heart. His story about lighting his parents’ couch on fire and how his father would shake his head and go, “What’s wrong with that boy?”

And then there was that bit he had that has always confused me as a kid, the one that dealt with his itch to get his hands on Spanish Fly, which I later learned to be a sexual stimulant. It kind of made me sick, thinking about all the shit that pudding-popping, Jello-jiggling, family-man, serial rapist got away with all those years. And so I thought of other records I listened to, and I remembered about Derek listening to it and laughing only at the fact that I could find something funny that he thought to be so lame.

Still, that was the only vaguely negative interaction I ever had with Derek. Granted, it was really the only interaction I can recall having with the guy, but even so, it didn’t make him an asshole, it just made him someone who had different tastes in comedy and might have been a bit insensitive in expressing that fact to a hypersensitive classmate.

I don’t condemn him for it, but he was clearly intent on condemning himself for being the asshole I never recall him being. Not just with respect to me, of course, but I can’t even recall him being an asshole to someone else.

And it did interest me to discover that this memory took place in the high school arm room, particularly given his apparent appreciation for my art and the desire he evideny always had to be an artist himself.

Art was also the topic of the message he sent me around noon on Wednesday, as I was preparing for work.

He said that I was a great artist and that he admired my talent. While he was quick to add that he was poor, he wanted to buy an original piece from me. If he paid for shipping plus whatever I wanted for it, he asked, would I make him something to hang on his wall?

Absolutely, I told him.

I confessed I would be horrible at commissions, but if he could at least give me a ball-park idea of what he was looking for, I’d do my best. He said I should call him, as it was too much to text and he had poor communication skills. I told him I was getting ready for work, but I could call him tomorrow.

Later, at work, he messaged me again, saying that he knew me, and that when it came to art I had the tendency to overdo it, and he wasn’t rich. All he wanted was something simple, like a caricature. I messaged back asking for more details and he again insisted that I just call him.

Goddamn it.

I thought he had been pressing me to call him because he felt that he communicated poorly through writing or it simply wasn’t his preferred means of expression, and I understood that. I’m the exact opposite. When it comes to communicating, I prefer writing and imagery to the spoken word. So I went to take the trash out and, out there by the dumpsters, I lit up a cigarette and finally called him. At least this way I’d have an excuse to get off the phone in a short amount of time.

He didn’t know who I was at first. Even after I said my name. Only when I mentioned we went to high school together did it finally click, and this should’ve been a red flag. It turned out that talking to him verbally made our conversations even more confusing. His thoughts seemed rather disconnected and he repeated himself a few times without even realizing it. His voice was all over the place and sometimes he struggled to say things, like he was placing incredible effort to remain focused and push out the words and string together the sentences. In short, he sounded horrifically drunk, maybe heavily medicated, but most certainly out of it.

I tried desperately to piece together what he was saying.

He spoke on how when he went to high school, he just didn’t get it, didn’t pick up on things, and it didn’t prepare him for the so-called real world. Not in the least. He left school thinking we were the only free country, he confessed to me, and that the rest of the world were the poor and oppressed, scrambling just to eat bread and drink water.

He kept bringing up duck and cover, too, as if him and I grew up in the 1950s as opposed to the 1990s. My assumption was that he meant to draw parallels with the education system, which was providing data that we were taught to believe would give us safety and control in the world beyond high school when in fact it was a bullshit sham propagated to give us the illusion of control and safety.

He felt betrayed by the school system, by society at large, and he has continued to feel lost, as if his life has been a waste. In a better world, shit might have been different.

He called himself stupid a few times, and I insisted it may have just been ineffective education and propaganda that were to blame for his ignorance and confusion, not some lack of intelligence. He also made references to being a bad person, though without saying it so blatantly, and I again assured him that I’d seen no evidence that was the case.

He then confessed to me that he had liver cancer, or that his liver was failing, and he may not have a lot of time left. This made me hope he wasn’t drunk. In any case, that’s why he started reaching out, messaging people, apologizing. That was the weight I had sensed in him — he was looking death straight in the eyes and found life to be unfair, and felt guilty over his suspicions that he had been unfair to others in his past.

At some point, after my cigarette had burned down to the filter, we got disconnected. I messaged him. He didn’t message me back until my break, when I was in my truck with Sean, and after I had taken two or three hits off the joint he offered me.

And I thought communication was difficult before.

Though he had spoken little of the art he wanted to purchase from me on the phone, which had been the reason I called, now he was back on the topic. I told him the last person I had sold a piece to, it had been only $25. I asked if that sounded good. He said no, it was too little. I asked him to give me a price, and he said no. I was getting mildly frustrated. The pot did not help matters.

Marajuana, at least when it comes to me, serves as a sort of amplifier for whatever my attention is invested in at the time. If I’m focused on relaxing, it boosts it. If I’m enjoying Cosmos or a nature documentary, I’m drawn in like you wouldn’t believe. Art, music? I’m entirely absorbed. Frustration and concern? Welcome to my personal hell.

Our conversation ended and I went about the rest of my work shift high, frustrated, and socially anxious.

Then I got a text. It referenced me by name, and said that with my permission, they would “post all my stuff.” The text had no name, just a number, but I assumed it was my sister’s father-in-law, who I had sold the aforementioned piece to. I was slightly confused because he had mentioned “stuff,” suggesting the plural, and he had only a single piece, so when I texted back “yes, please do,” I added that I assumed it was from him. The person texted back that I was wrong.

Instant paranoia. Depths of paranoia.

I knew he wouldn’t fuck with me like this, so it couldn’t be my sister’s father-in-law. So naturally my first assumption that someone had hacked into my computer and stolen all my writings, or found my blogs despite my pseudonym, and were going to publish them on the net under my real name and embarrass me and bring shame upon my family and judgement upon me by everyone.

I asked who it was. It took them forever to answer, and they kept fucking with me, and my paranoia deepened, I became self-loathing, and I finally looked up the number on the net. A Florida number. Derek told me he lived in Florida.

I checked Derek’s number. It was him.

Indeed, I was too high. When I texted back, called him by name and asked what he meant by “stuff,” his response was entirely incomprehensible. I didn’t respond and I haven’t heard from him since.

I was more than a bit irritated and emotionally spent by the end of the shift, but after that faded, my sympathy for him remained. He’s feeling guilty and betrayed and afraid and alone as he’s dying and maybe perpetually drunk as shit in Florida.

It feels as though most people are born into our society and they adapt rather quickly, that they can pick things up with ease, and they’re eager for adulthood. I was never that way. I remember when my sister, Eve, and I were attending school and my youngest sister, Linda, was excited about attending school the following year. So excited, in fact, that she filled up a bookbag with random things and hung it on the hooks in the hallway where Eve and I hung up our school things.

Unsurprisingly, she adapted to society just fine. Eve didn’t do too bad, either. Both have done infinitely better than I in this respect.

Maybe Derek, for whatever reason, is just another member of my category. Another one of the lost children of America. Another lost soul spinning in circles on planet earth.

Derek’s Message & the Omnipresence of Things Past.

He comes home from his shitty, passionless job to an empty apartment, perhaps an empty house. He sits at his dining room table and drinks cans of cheap beer as a painful reverie of all the shame, guilt and regret from his past plays over and over in his mind like a morbid, mental picture-show.

He picks up his beer, strolls into his bedroom, leans on his dresser, and stares at himself in the mirror, looking into his own eyes for a hint of hope in himself, for a reason to love himself, for a reason to live another day.

After awhile, he sighs and sits down on the edge of his bed. And after a few more moments, a few more swigs of liquid courage in the effort to swallow that persistent lump in his throat, he reaches his free hand beneath his bed, pulls out the shoebox, opens it, and stares down at the gun.

He puts down his beer on the corner table and picks up that little machine of death, staring at it another moment before putting the barrel into his mouth — but thankfully, he can’t do it. Trigger shy, as always, he thinks to himself. Even so, it focuses his mind on the moment, and the picture show in his mind slows, slows, until it lands on one of the many he’s known, if only in passing, and feels he had wronged during high school.

He puts the gun back in the box, fastening the top, and pushes it back under his bed with the back of his foot. He then takes out his phone, looks up that person on Facebook, and messages them.

Just to say hi. Just to apologize. Oh, how might this one respond?

Its like spinning the wheel of potential misfortune. Its like Russian Roulette without the mess.

And so he waits…

***

On my way home Tuesday, I stopped by Circle K and there was one or two people in front of me. Rather than just let my mind wander, I took a quick glimpse at my phone. On the lock screen I found that I had I gotten a Facebook message from Derek Maddow. I was confused and curious, but by that time it was my turn at the counter, so I elected to leave it to read when I got home.

Before cracking open a beer, I took out the phone and discovered that I had yet another entirely unexpected message from yet another person.

As for Derek’s message, it was short.

“Just saying hi. Sorry if I was a jerk. I was. That’s all.”

Though I went to school with him, I don’t remember ever having had a conversation with him, or even interacting with him much, really. I heard through the grapevine that he had “behavioral problems” and that his mother, a rather crabby-looking woman who worked at the school, had gotten to the point where she just couldn’t deal with him anymore. Nothing she did worked. She didn’t know what else to do. In the end, if I remember correctly, he got sent to military school, after which he fell entirely off my radar.

No one at school seemed to dislike him, at least so far as I could tell, and I always found him to be comedic relief during class — Mrs. D’s English class specifically. She was this short, perpetually red-faced woman with puffy white hair and intense emotions. She drove a red sports car and was constantly getting pulled over. The dynamic between her and Derek was amusing as hell, and as frustrating as his jokes and sarcasm might have seemed to her at times, he always got her laughing, which was something that tense little lady certainly needed, if you ask me.

And there were assholes in school, without doubt, but Derek? Not once. Not on a single occasion can I recall him ever being a dick to me.

This is essentially what I told him, too, when I texted back. He thanked me and told me that using humor has always been his defense mechanism. He then told me he had always admired my artistic ability and that this was a talent he’d always wished he’d had.

I wondered if perhaps that was what had inspired him to message me, as I had recently posted some recent artwork of mine on Facebook after failing to do so for some time. Years, I think. I was rather shocked at the response I’d gotten in general. One other person, a girl I had also went to high school with, would also text me within the next day or two complimenting me on my work. And then my sister’s father-in-law wanted to buy one of my pieces, and as a consequence I sold my first piece of art in the last decade or two.

I never knew my artwork — or myself, or anything about me, for that matter — was ever on Derek’s radar.

He said that over the past twenty-plus years since we all graduated, he had messaged a lot of people and found himself surprised. Everyone who should have told him to go fuck himself had failed to do so, he explained, and those he anticipated might just say hi back to him more often than not tore him a new asshole.

I was still looking for some clue, some faint hint, some vague suggestion regarding what he might feel so guilty and self-loathing about. It clearly didn’t begin and end with me. I made one good, sincere attempt to get him to explain himself, to describe what it was he thought he had done that was so wrong, but he dodged all those bullets Matrix-style. He clearly only wanted to reach out and apologize — on the surface, anyway. I respected his right to privacy and pushed no further.

Its strange how we can judge ourselves, and how differently the same world can look through the lens provided by a different pair of eyes, a different mind, a different pathway of life experience. The guy seemed so tortured. And as apologetic as he was, it seemed to kill him inside so much he couldn’t bear to express, even in writing, specifically what it was that plagued him about himself so much.

Over the years, more than one person from my class of ’97 committed suicide, and after what he wrote to me, a concern in me began to emerge that he might be a candidate. Whatever plagues him weighs heavily on him and a haunting scene began to play out in my mind days later when contemplating this.

That was the little portion that proceeded this rambling of mine. Nothing more than a dark, worrisome fantasy of mine, I sincerely hope.

His message wasn’t the only I received on Facebook that evening, either. Another was from Claire, who decided to drop me a line after two fucking years because she was coming back to Ohio for a short vacation and thought it would be weird if she did so without informing little ol’ me. And she added that she guesses things are weird between her and I right now.

She guesses.

Things, really, they’ve always been weird between us, its just that I’m no longer willing to invest in the kind of fairy tale I’ve always cautioned her not to chase after. In other words, I’m no longer willing to be a blindly hopeful and hypocritical dipshit. Her and I would never work out because despite my empathy for her, despite the connection between her and I that I felt so strongly and cherished for so long, we’re too different. I’m too weird. Her and I, I had to admit to myself, are simply not compatible.

Hell, I’m not sure I’m compatible with anyone.

I’ve got guilt, shame, and regret of my own. Fuck, that heap gets higher by the goddamned day, but I’m not going to kill myself, nor am I willing to fool myself.

I know we can’t escape history. I know that the past is always present. But doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, that’s bloody insane. And with respect to that particular flavor of insane, I’ve had my fill. So I turn my back on this. I deny this. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the same empty hopes and delusional thinking I’ve fled to in the past.

I will not engage. I will not succumb to the temptation. And I refuse to kill myself, for the record, save for perhaps in metaphor.

I will get through this. I want to believe Derek will get through this. And for all I know, Claire, in this marriage — yet another fucking, fucking marriage — has already gotten through it. For all I know, she’s finally living that fairy tale she always fucking wanted and I would never be able to give her.

And I hope she’s happy. I hope that this is her present and her future and that she can leave me in her past, where I likely belong.

I keep telling myself that that’s enough.

And so tonight I yet again place that metaphorical gun back in the metaphorical shoebox and push it back under my metaphorical bed with the back of my metaphorical fucking foot, and then I pick up my phone and spill it all in my fucking blog. And then I decide to go to my new art desk and draw some more.

And I keep telling myself that that’s enough.

Curious Eyes & the Inner Child.

This last weekend I decided to finally drop by the Rite Aid near my apartment to see if they had any of the covid vaccines. Turns out they have all three. Though I still have yet to get vaccinated, I plan to by this week’s end.

And its taken this long, I should mention, because I’m a procrasting piece of shit and not out of any fear of being microchipped. I mean, come the fuck on. We have cell phones on us pretty much at all times. We tell Facebook and Google Maps our location, share photos and statuses regarding our lives. Algorithms on the net have built up a personality profile on each of us. When it comes to who and where we are, the data the government and corporations have stockpiled on us are an embarrassment of riches. They don’t need to fucking microchip us.

In any case, I was talking to the woman behind the counter at the pharmacy and as she told me that they had all three vaccines and an appointment wasn’t necessary, I was looking in her eyes. They were bloodshot, subtlely wiggling all of the time and occasionally shooting off quickly to the side before returning to their point of focus, which is to say my eyes. I was fascinated, but as I watched her it felt like my eyeballs were somehow becoming synchronized, or at least naturally trying to, and following her jerky gaze. It didn’t hurt, though it wasn’t exactly comfortable. Regardless, I kept eye contact throughout our entire exchange in part out of my curiosity.

I wanted to ask. I was dying to ask. Not asking was like holding in a massive shit trying to push its way out with agonizing pressure. But I had restraint.

I did not have restraint during a strangely similar circumstance a few days prior, when I finally burst and asked Emory a question that had been gnawing at me. Interestingly, this incident also involved eyes. Or a single eye in this case, to be exact.

Years upon years ago, Emory’s father frequented our fast food joint. While the guy could annoy me, for the most part I really liked him. He’d often talk with me and was often with his son, a cute little kid. Well, his son, Emory, is maybe seventeen right now and works in the kitchen.

Shortly after he started working here, his father died quite suddenly. He took maybe a week off, and when he came back to work he seemed to be holding it together really well. I’m 42 and my parents, who are both in their 70s, are in good health, but I know they won’t live forever, and just the thought of losing them fills me with unbearable dread. When they’re gone, it will unquestionably shake up my life, and a year later I’d probably be in shambles.

Maybe he’s good at hiding it. Maybe he only needed to grieve for a week. In either case, he seems like a strong kid.

When his father used to come in, he always wore these sunglasses. Given he almost always came in at night, I found this perplexing, though not for long. When he was talking to you he’d bow his head a bit to look at you with his naked eye — singular.

Shades are more stylish than an eye patch, I suppose.

For years I was dying to ask him, my curiosity nagging me every time he’d stop in again. Recently the question arose in my mind again, nagging me, though I couldn’t bring myself to ask Emory something about his deceased father out of the blue.

Then, just the other day, I found a convenient opening. It was just him and I out in the dining room and he had said to me something about his dad, though I can’t recall precisely what. In any case, it came flying out of my mouth before I was even conscious of what I was saying.

Curiosity killed the cat, and I was tired of being a pussy.

I didn’t just blurt it out, but began by confessing I had always wanted to ask his father something and then posed the question. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.

When he was really young, it wasn’t on his radar at all, but he remembers it kind of hitting him one day. This didn’t sound strange to me at all. When you grow up around something, its normal to you, so your less apt to question it. After he noticed the cyclops nature of his dad, however, he became quite curious himself and had asked his father about it all throughout his youth. In response, he only got the dodge — his father had always given him a goofy answer, reluctant to get into it.

Once he was older, though, he asked again, and his father finally relented.

Evidently he had come home from the bar one night and the woman he’d been seeing was convinced he had cheated on her, so she had shot him in the eye.

I was rather surprised, and I told him as much. Someone getting shot in the fucking eyeball and surviving? I always thought that kind of shit only happened on The Walking Dead.

“I knew there had to be a good story behind it,” I told him, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

People often talk about getting in touch with their inner child, but mine isn’t too far below the surface. But a thin veneer separates my inner child from this so-called outer adult, and he wants to burst out my ever-thin skin and ask blatant questions like a curious, innocent, ignorant child would — an in a manner only children can get away with. No build up, no candy-coating, no hesitation, no strategy working within the cultural conventions we commit to.

Yet while kids can get away with that, as I said, adults are expected to have more finesse. More restraint. And remarkably less curiosity to restrain.

Not to sound like a whiney twat, but that isn’t fair.

A Plague of Chocolate Starfish.

After parking at work the other day, I hung out in my truck, smoking a cigarette, wondering what the day would be like. As I scrolled through Facebook on my phone, I came upon a video. Just another video someone posted about a fast food joint like the one I work in where the employees have to deal with an asshole customer.

Just the other day, Sean, a closing manager, went to the clearly locked door with the clearly visible sign on it that said closed to address the guy standing there and verbally tell him we were closed. It was a biker. The guy spit on him and told him he fucked his mother. Very high school for such a bad-ass persona if you ask me.

Sean said he wished one of these assholes would punch him so he could go apeshit on their ass.

Not too long ago, the store manager was spit on by some lady, too. Whether it was because she got the wrong order or they made it wrong or the woman was angry our doors were closed due to covid, I can’t quite remember. This shit happens so frequently. And more so since the pandemic.

Hell, at another store in this franchise, not more than a few months back, some disgruntled employee came in and shot one of the managers.

You would think that after this enduring isolation people, just due to social deprivation, might be kinder and more empathic with one another, but that’s not the case at all. Not in the least. They’re bigger assholes than ever.

Jumbo, yawning, chocolate starfish flying everywhere.

All of this shit is running through my head as I start watching the video that I’m sure will display a circumstance all too fucking familiar. I had no idea how right I was. Strangely enough, the manager actually looked a lot like Kelly, my store manager. And the other lady, she looked a lot like Jan, another woman I work with. And the set-up looked remarkably like our store. Suspiciously identical, actually.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Monsters & Misperceptions.

6/2/21

When the store manager sent me to the nearby dollar store for supplies yesterday, I intended on buying two Monster Java drinks, but I only saw the Loca Mocha flavored ones in the cooler. Diasappointed, I thought that perhaps I’d stop at the Circle K on the way home, but I was too tired and lazy at the end of my shift. So I drove home that evening, vowing to myself that I’d stop by the dollar store before my shift started, where I’d settle for the Loca Mocha.

With the Mean Bean, at least, it was something I looked forward to on break and it would also give me sufficient fuel to drag my sorry ass through the latter half of my shift.

Despite the anxiety of driving in the rain today, I managed to do just that, but after I grabbed the two Loca Mochas from the cooler I was overjoyed to find some cans of Mean Bean hiding behind a row of the Mocha. Instinctively, I moved the Mocha cans over to expose them and took two cans for myself. Just as I did so, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was an elderly lady, an employee I had seen in there before. I had to ask her to repeat herself, but she said something akin to, “Thank you for moving those. We got it.”

“Sure,” I said.

I had woken up depressed and driving in the rain made me anxious, so perhaps that’s why I couldn’t read her vibe or tone of voice. I was too distracted, on overload, my head filled with noise. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t ascertain whether she was being sincere or sarcastic.

Was she irritated because I was doing her job for her or did she honestly appreciate it — and why does little, subtle shit like this hang in my head, buzzing around inside like an irritating, cranial-dwelling housefly, and bother me to no end?

It reminded me a lot of what happened on Memorial Day, when I again couldn’t get a good read on a situation.

I was working, of course, because people wedded to this fast food shit show only get two unpaid holidays off a year — unless, of course, we’re lucky enough for those holidays to fall on our days off. I got off work at 9:40 or so and left to get beer for Gus at Circle K. Since I was going anyway and Marjie was dragging ass, I offered to get her a Red Bull as well, which she could just pay me back for later.

When I got there, of course, of course, of fucking course the place was packed. All I wanted to do was go home, to be alone and free, but behind it all, Gus is a good guy and he’s done a lot for me.

Still, I was getting angsty. Cranky. My people tolerance had been far exceeded.

I could hardly fit all Gus’s beer in my arms, let alone the Red Bull, so I couldn’t grab the two 24s I had planned on getting for myself. My fluid to kill the fire within. In irritation, I decided that once I dropped this all off at work I’d just stop by the other Circle K on the way out of town and get my shit there.

The long, long line at Circle K was slow, the 24s and Red Bull so damned cold they were inflicting pain on my naked hands and forearms. I thought I saw Monica walk by, but convinced myself I must be wrong — and then I heard my name from behind me. I turned around.

Indeed, it was Monica after all.

She spoke to me a bit, and I immediately asked her if she had found a place to live yet. She explained how she was still homeless and kind of preferred it. I’ve asked her this before, too, and her response hasn’t changed, so I’m inclined to believe her. If that’s her path and that makes her happy, more power to her, and I told her as much. Different strokes for different folks. What I’ve been telling her since forever and it seemed she’d finally come to agree with me about is the nature of the people she tends to associate nowadays — those that lie, cheat, steal — and how it would be in her best interest to get the fuck away from them.

She went on about a few things, like scams she might engage in to make money, but I told her she has to be careful or she’s going to end up in jail again — or worse.

She followed me from the counter to the truck and, for once in her life, seemed keenly aware that I was eager to go. She seemed authentically pleased someone had just taken the time to listen to her, and thanked me for doing so, and made some off-hand comment that prompted me to tell her that I did indeed care about her, despite what she might think, and that was why I was always so concerned.

Though I didn’t say it to her, the issue has always been that she’s a hyper-chatty extrovert and I was a hypersensitive introvert and I could only take her in small doses.

I politely escaped her tractor beam, told her to be careful, and drove myself back to the grease-laden fatty-food distribution center where I work. I put Gus’s beer in the trash bin by the corner, as usual, and ran in to give Marjie her Red Bull. I them stopped at the other Circle K, got my own beer, and headed home down that long, dark road.

As I’m driving, I find myself behind this car that’s driving at varying speeds — over the limit, under the limit, and occasionally swerving back and fourth a bit, playing pingpong between the white line and the yellow ones. At one point, the car swerved over the yellow line and came a bit too close to colliding with oncoming traffic, at least enough to make me uncomfortable.

It was Memorial Day. American holidays are an excuse to get drunk. And I’ve been behind drivers that seemed to be drunk before, and they did the speeding up, slowing down, pingponging back-and-forth thing. As I have before, I slowed down, kept my distance, winced every time they inched towards the ditch or swung towards oncoming traffic.

Its always stressful, being in this kind of situation. Draining as fuck. And I was already drained. So when an opportunity came, I decided to pass him.

I rarely pass people, always terrified I’m not going to get over in time. I’ve seen cars pass other cars and come so unbelievably close to having a catastrophic, Hollywood-style accident. I did not wish that to be me, even a close call. I don’t prefer to drive behind unpredictable and potentially inebriated dumb-fucks on the road, either, though. So yes, I proceeded to pass him.

When I do this, is pedal to the metal. I want this process to be swift, and for them to be behind me as quickly as possible due to the aforementioned fears, so my truck growls. And how it growled. But no matter how hard I pushed down on the pedal, no matter how aggressively the Tacoma roared, the car remained right beside me.

This motherfucker was matching my speed so I couldn’t pass him.

My anger was defeated by fear, and I slowed down and veered back behind him. Then I cussed him out in the privacy of my truck. It initially came out as an aggressive, pleading question:

Why? What the fuck?

Back behind him, he exhibited the same behavior as before. I awaited the point that my anger overpowered my fear and another opportunity to pass him arose, and when it did, I proceeded to pass him again.

The same thing happened. Fear of hitting oncoming traffic again overcame my anger and I slowed down and veered back behind him.

This time, I was enraged. Highbeams were on. I was laying on my horn. I was imagining doing violent things to the faceless driver. Screaming descriptions of the perverse, torturous things I was going to do to him in graphic detail, in grotesque poetry.

All I saw was red. I was spitting fire. Blood was boiling in my veins. I was roaring louder than my truck in my failed attempt to pass this irredeemable fuckwad.

Some guy in a truck a few cars behind me shot passed me and the irredeemable fuckwad with ease. No response from fuckwad. No change in his driving behavior.

Did he not see the guy coming? Was that guys truck just faster than mine? I know diddly shit about vehicles. Or was it that this fuckwad, this diahreah-gargling gutter-twat, had something against me specifically?

So now I was enraged, afraid, and irritatingly self-conscious. Its safety first, so caution won and I decided to stay behind him, but still, I felt homicidal rage.

Then another guy — maybe in another truck, maybe in an SUV — appeared behind me suddenly. On my ass. And he had those bright blue, shimmering, retina-scorching headlights. I was confused: was this an asshole defending the asshole in front of me, participating in making a strategic, autombolie sandwich in which the innocent victim, myself, was hopelessly wedged between these two, evidently-impenetrable asshole-slices? Or was this just the random and unlucky circumstance in which I happened to have an asshole both before me and behind me?

Or, perhaps, was this a good Samaritan stepping in to defend the person in front of me, thinking him to be the innocent one, having only witnessed the aftermath of when the asshole in front of me passionately refused to let me pass, specifically when I blasted my brights and started honking the horn like a maniac?

As often happens when rage or fear soar to such heights, I don’t recall what became of the vehicle behind me: he may have turned down a road, he may have passed us, he may have vanished into the ether or even teleported to another planet.

When it came time for my turn, I turned, and fuckwad kept going forward. Part of me hoped he sped up and drove into a brick wall, but that was the blind-rage part, and that part swiftly left the scene once I escaped the circumstance. Another part of me began to question my perceptions, however.

I found myself thinking: what if it was somehow me who was in the wrong? What if, despite the fact that he was driving slower than the limit, for some reason my truck just couldn’t exceed it as I attempted to pass him? What if he wasn’t a fuckwad and I overreacted to an absurd level and Captain Bluelights behind me was, in fact, just defending the innocent? What if I was truly the asshole?

What if I’m just bloody insane?

I suppose the simple solution to issues such as these would to stop giving a fuck, but I clearly have a bottomless bucket of fucks and have the irresistible impulse to give them out far, far too liberally.

I really do hope I’m not insane, though.

Of Couldabeens, Maybes & So-and-So’s.

The last few years — perhaps longer, as my sense of time becomes increasingly skewed as I continue to age — I made a deliberate effort to stop dwelling on and mulling over the past, and I met with surprising success.

I just stopped writing about the past, stopped reading and editing old things I wrote about the past, and tried to focus more on the present — weaving in past experiences into my writing when they’re relevant to current experiences, yes, but that is different in my view. I also do look back on my incredibly strange experiences over the years, though again, I find this different, as I typically do this when I’m exploring hypotheses, doing research, doing my damnedest to build a context through which those unusual experiences might make sense.

Lately, though, I’ve found my mind drifting back to past times, to old friends and aquaintences, as well as old relationships — the few I’ve had, but mostly Anne in this area. In any case, what I try not to dwell on is regret: what could have been, might have been, perhaps should have been had I been wiser. What if I had committed myself to Anne? What if I had finished college? Even earlier than that, and more to the point here, what if I had did what my art teacher suggested, put together a diverse portfolio, and tried to get myself into art school?

When I entered college in my thirties, I did so as I had decided what I wanted to do: become an English teacher. I’ve wrote every day since as far back as I can remember, and to be a teacher in that area had become profoundly appealing to me. Not only could I make an impact on young minds and hopefully do my little part in trying to make the world a better place, but as my creative writing and literary analysis courses in high school and college revealed to me, I could incorporate damn near anything into my teaching. I could talk about social issues, philosophical issues, religion and spirituality, politics and the paranormal. I could both stimulate minds, give them a space where they could engage in self expression, and guide them towards more effective means of translating what they held within to those who were receptive. On the way to earning this role and once I managed to embody it, I, too, would learn about such things and be able to share my knowledge. It was not only a meaningful vocation in the sense that I would be helping others, thought I, but a path that would help me evolve myself as well. In addition, I would have a day job involved with what I really wanted to do, which was write for a living.

I did great in college, too — until my last semester, when I had my first public speaking course and it all went to shit. The first (and last) day of that class that all-too-familiar anxiety attack reared its ugly head.

In college, I had focus and structure; a meaningful goal and a step-ladder approach to achieving it. And then I fell off that ladder, flat on my ass, and that dream was crushed. It was a horrid ordeal. I dropped out and tried to accept my pathetic lot in life.

I’m still working on that.

Maybe it wasn’t the right path, though, or at least the right process. I should have gone to art school, disciplined myself in the visual arts, and established myself as an artist. Once established, once making money by means of my art, I could have then branched out — writing articles, books, blending my passion for writing and the visual arts through producing a comic, children’s books, and onward from there.

I just needed some foundation. I feel it should have been art, but it could have been writing as well — in any case, upon that foundation I could have then had the necessary discipline and opportunities to pursue and incorporate the other passion. Multiple passions.

Insights from this lifetime that I hope carries over into the next incarnation and has a considerable impact on my decision-making.

Yeah, yeah, its not too late, even as I’m bound in my present flesh. I’m only 42 and could live for another half a century or more. Or I could die tomorrow. In any case, its never too late, so they say — and though I would argue it certainly could be, at this exact moment, at the very least, I confess there is no certainty that it is.

After all, So-and-So didn’t publish their first book or become a respected artist until they were fifty-something, you constantly hear. Still, there is no certainty that I am among the So-and-So’s.

“Why not try?” Asks an internal voice. “You have nothing to lose, so much to gain here in the mere attempt. So what, then: are you a pussy?”

I mean, I am warm right now, moderately moist, and wound tight inside, so the comparison might have some merit.

“You’re deflecting.”

Well, you’re attempting to manipulate me.

“I’m trying to inspire you. And if that constitutes manipulation, I’m only trying to manipulate you into veering down what you would experience as a more satisfying and productive path. And anyway, I’m you, dude. Can’t you trust yourself?”

Not entirely. I mean, I am sort of dwelling on the past again.

Of Chronic Daydreaming & the Evolution of Insomnia.

Most of my time is spent daydreaming — subjecting memories to analysis, playing with ideas, fantasizing in this internal simulator of mine — and this is the case regardless as to whether I’m loafing or engaged in some physical activity. I suspect this is what my last psychologist, who I saw back in college, meant when he said I was “very cerebral.”

I’ve been like this for as long as I’ve been myself. My mother always explained me as that stereotypical kid in the classroom who wasn’t paying attention in class, but rather looking out the window, mind wandering freely. I even daydreamed at night, which may stretch the definition — it was in the evening, after all, and so couldn’t technically be daydreaming — and I remember this especially being the case when I got my own bedroom.

What I called insomnia when I became a teenager wasn’t something altogether new, I realized at some point. I’m just nocturnal, it seems. There were differences, however, and this is when I came to distinguish “passive insomnia” and “active insomnia.”

Passive insomnia is what I did as a young child: I’d remain beneath the covers atop the loft bed in a dark roo., contemplating, remembering, and fantasizing for hours on end. Only in my teen years did I shift to active insomnia: turn the lights on in my room, fuel myself with caffeine, and begin engaging in activities — watching a movie, documentary or show, but often enough drawing or writing, where I could put my chronic daydreaming to some use in the external world.

While I don’t produce artwork as often as I used to, and despite the fact that I write I write less than I did in my 20s and 30s, I still daydream like mad. And I sure as fuck engage in it at work, too — almost 80% of my day, I’d say — and this is one of the few true benefits of being a detail maintenance man stuck in a shitty fast food job at 42 years of age.

Short of acquiring money through doing creative things I’m actually passionate about, this kind of job may actually allow the greatest amount of subjective freedom available. Maybe.

So as pathetic as my lack of ambition is, as deep as my hatred of this job has grown… there is that.

Of Moody Minds & Altered State ID’s.

When I’m depressed, life is agony, my mere existence is almost unbearable, and I feel like I’m moving through the thick, hungry mud of some grueling swamp. Though I would never allow myself to do it, the depression often reaches such depths that ending it all seems like a far more rational, merciful course of action than continuing to force myself to endure this self-evidently wretched corporeal existence, to keep dragging my feet through this empty, ultimately meaningless life. There is this feeling of certainty that things will never get better, and that even if they did, I surely wouldn’t deserve it, and in any case it wouldn’t last anyway — life would be lifting me up for a single, solitary, and purely malicious reason: to set me up for the inevitable descent. The higher you climb, after all, the harder you fall, and life is so determined to fuck me so hard in the worst way possible that it is willing grant me that temporary reprieve if it means it will ultimately be able to use it as a means of exacerbating my torture.

Then I get some sleep, take a hit from my vape pen, watch one of my favorite stand-up comedians, or have a deep, meaningful exchange with a friend and the impossible happens: the dark, heavy stormcloud lifts. I’m fine again and I can hardly wrap my mind around the dismal fellow I was just a short time ago.

When I’m anxious, this unbearable tension grows inside me. I imagine pulling back on a bow, but rather than releasing to let the arrow soar towards a target the hand keeps drawing it back further and further until I feel certain it can go no further — and then it goes further still. I can’t understand how I can bear the inner tension, how it doesn’t rip me apart and drive me irreversibly and unquestionably insane.

In this state of profound anxiety, the world, to paraphrase Jordan Peterson, becomes a dragon, a monster of inconceivable size, a powerful and malicious animal hungry to devour me, to squash me, and so I collapse into myself, feeling small, powerless, defenseless against it.

Anxiety attacks take generalized anxiety and then crank it up several notches: it’s like a relentlessly painful process of dying without the sweet release that comes with the finality of death.

Hot flashes wash over me in waves. My mouth is dry as a desert, my throat as narrow as a straw. Too much energy seems to be residing in my eyes, which are feel dry and cracked despite their watering. I’m blinking with decreasing frequency, too — its like my ocular highbeams are on. Every inch of my skin seems laminated in cold sweat and my entire body feels like a white-knuckled fist. My jaw is clenched like a goddamn vice and when I walk or move it feels jerky and stiff, as if all my joints need oiling. If I have to speak, I feel as if I have to physically push out the words and my voice, its all over the map, as wild and unpredictable as a runaway firehose.

Only when I’m pissed. angry, enraged, it appears, does my full-spectrum hypersensitivity vanish and this venomous insensitivity rush in to fill the vacuum. Confidence, or perhaps simply not giving a fuck, enable me to push away my baseline empathy, send my inner restraint home for the day, fire my fear of guilt and walk the sadistic fuck off the property. Consequences be damned: I become viscious, ice flowing in my veins and red staining my eyes, poisonous filth flowing ceaselessly from my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying — if indeed I do at all, as memory always seems so spotty in retrospect. In verbal fights I’ve had, I can’t always remember clearly how things went down or what I said, and at least on occasion, as with my one or two semi-physical fights, I’ve blacked out entirely.

When I’m drunk, I’m happy but hopelessly stupid. Its an escape from the ego, from the inhibitions that typically hold me in chains, and that is liberating. Ideas that seem great while drunk, however, reveal themselves to be utterly insipid when sobriety returns.

When we used to go out barhopping in the college town on the weekends, I’d often call or text people apologies for my behavior when memories of the goings-on crept back into consciousness. Now when I get drunk, typically at home and alone in my apartment, I feel just as embarrassed about comments or YouTube music videos I shared on Facebook while under the influence and have developed the habit of promptly deleting them when possible once sobriety returns. Even if I might have said or done these very same things while stone cold sober, often enough the mere fact that I did them while drunk fills me with embarassment, shame, guilt and self loathing.

Almost every girl I’ve had sex with, fooled around with, or has merely made me horny has commented on how I look angry when I’m horny. I’ve had to explain that its just the aggression I feel, the intensity of the state, and I am anything but angry. This state is the easiest way to become focused and absorbed, to become simple and singleminded. How I wish I could access those qualities in other states…

When I’m high on cannabis, at least nowadays, I feel happy and comfortable, inspired and entrigued, absorbed and peaceful — so long as I have control of the set and setting. At work, a hit or two from a joint or a vape pen lifts my mood, though too much can trigger self-consciousness and anxiety. This is due to being in an environment that isn’t my own, that I don’t control, at least to some degree, but its also due to the presence of other people. I become too concerned regarding how they perceive me, too paranoid about revealing how weird I really am. When I’m in my one-bedroom apartment, when its nighttime and I need not fear anyone knocking on my door (which almost never happens), I am entirely at ease. In my experience, the altered state of consciousness that marijuana delivers you into is one in which your focus becomes amplified: if you are anxious, it will exacerbate your anxiety; if you are experiencing pleasure, it will enhance your pleasure; if you are interested, it will amplify your curiosity. It elevates that which you draw your attention to, and it begins to work for you once you realize this, even if its not at an entirely conscious level. Once you start using it to amplify your enjoyment of things you already enjoy, you condition where you tend to place your attention while stoned and you can, as a consequence, then carry that conditioned enjoyment into other contexts.

That’s my working hypothesis, anyway, at least with respect to personal experience.

What I’ve called my dark moods are the most difficult to explain. These occur once a certain type of weirdness arises in my life once again. I feel very inside of myself, very still and hyper-aware, and the external world seems overcast, yet crisp, vivid, clear. I am in a state of fear, awe, and a strange kind of powerlessness. Immedeate affairs seem laughably trivial; only the big picture matters. The birds eye-view looks down at my worm self and the rest of the worms and finds our lives and perspectives so silly, so primitive, so utterly childish. It feels as if we are part of a far greater context than we could ever hope to imagine — and yet the details elude me.

Finally, there are moments of happiness, of joy, which come all to rarely. When it happens, the universe appears indescribably beautiful. I’m in the moment, rooted in the here and now, and feel connected and grateful to be alive. This has happened in the rare, deep and meaningful relationships I’ve had with certain women, it happened during a particularly intense out-of-body experience in which I found myself floating in space before the earth, and also during the first night I ever tried MDMA.

Its amazing how our outlook on the world and ourselves can change so dramatically given nothing more than a shift in mood, in a change in our state of consciousness. Not only do we more easily remember things when we are in the same mood in which we originally learned them, but mood alters the way in which we interpret our memories. Similarly, our outlook on the world in real-time and our interpretation of it also changes, specifically in a manner that tends to reinforce the mood in question. Most unnerving, however, is the fact that our personality can change, either moderately or drastically, which is to say that we can have state-specific or mood-dependent identities: state IDs, if you will.

Each mood, each state: a new world, a new altered state ID.

Once you throw in the fact that some moods or states — such as anger, for instance, or the dream state — can also involve amnesia, you begin to suspect we all have the psychological ingredients that, if combined and baked in the right way, could lead to Dissociative Identity Disorder.

With this crowd in the broken mirror, where could the true, inner self reside — the soul, or whatever you wish to call it? The closest thing I’ve experienced to it is that state I’ve had but a taste of in the midst of meditation, that place within us some have called The Witness, where you look upon all your bodily sensations, all your thoughts and emotions, as some spectator from a third person perspective.

It may constitute the pure inner light that is broken up into the spectra of states or moods through the prism of the mind, and how I wish I could anchor myself there…