#226

Logitech. All these damn library keyboards are logitech keyboards and man, there is a reason they do not cost very much. They're pretty new, I haven't seen this iteration of their logo before, but logitech is just reliably shitty. One rung above the kinds of brands that only exist long enough for the upper management of the company to abscond with conned millions, leaving unpaid hourly workers and ripped-off consumers in their wretched wake. 

Dunno, maybe this new logo impresses a new durability. I will say that it does not equate to improved ergonomics.

*

There is that school of thought that implies that ripped-off consumers are a section of the free market that has only itself to blame for its gullibility. Maybe it's a correct claim, but it's not really a fair one. The problem is that even simple maxims like "you get what you pay for" don't fill your pocket, so the countertautology to that is "you get what you can afford to pay for". And now we are circling down the drain of total uselessness together, one of us thinking it is rad and cool to basically steal from poor people and is impressed with someone who knows how to pick low-hanging fruit and one of us can only gesture weakly at the notion that it is better to not do that, though there is no cogent reason not to. 

You are free to con whoever you want. A sucker is, after all, born every minute. But if you have balls, I don't know why you'd pick on suckers. I guess the same reason people climb mountains. But the creature derided as a sucker is much more often merely desperate, merely hungry, so the nobility of conquering an obstacle simply because it is there is absent, at least so far as I can see. Anybody can piss on a fucking anthill. Punching down doesn't make you anything but a bully and a louse, in my opinion, but I can't argue with the fact that the world will treat you like a champion and suck your dick for it.

*

Hey, I'm mad that my local library, one of the most well-funded in the nation for the size of the population that it serves, buys crappy cheap keyboards! There's like thirty computers in this area I'm sitting in, plus special fancy computers for the blind and deaf and otherwise differently abled in another part of the library, but I'm mad that I can't punch the keys. Do you see this, my cried river?

Fuck it. You should see the size of the monitor. Hella crisp display, too. Nobody gives a fuck about keyboards as long as they work and this is a rich person's library, even though they let homeless people chill in it.

If you're bitching, the bitch is usually you. Nine times out of ten, you are the bitch. So it goes. 

*

Been missing teaching, so after this post is done and I kill whatever time is left before they open the doors, I'm going to go down to the local youth center and see if they have any paid writing instructor positions that I qualify for. Got decent experience, much of it through the center itself, so chances are even. Most writers ditch this town, see. Most writers try to go where the action is supposed to be. My action is wherever I happen to be. So there is hope. I will probably volunteer if they can't pay me, but if I do that I'll either demand and receive a raise at work or I will find a kitchen that isn't being strangled by managerial incompetence (or outright sabotage, I can't decide which because they tend to look so similar) and pays an adult wage. 

There are dishwashers around here making two fifty an hour more than I get for prepping and cooking two hundred pounds of food a day on average, plus running the shift and making the schedule and doing part of the orders and stocking the orders and putting out fires and whatever fucking else needs to get done. I have mentioned having to clean human feces. 

What I am getting at is that the punishment I have felt it is necessary to take by working my job is feeling pretty much over. I am now feeling like my rent is punishment enough, and it should be easier to make enough dough to cover it.

This has been more bitching, and once again, I am probably the bitch. Time to change that situation, one way or the other.

*

Keep forgetting to roll myself an after-work joint. That is another thing that has to change. I mean, it's fine today, because I prefer to do interviews sober (I am a square like that) but damn. Not doing the post high takes a lot of flavor out of it, honestly. A lot of writers and artists would look down their noses at me for this, but fuck them. I'm here to have fun.

Smoke weed every day, children. Go to sleep stoned and wake up to get high. Tell your parents I said so.


--JL

#225

Man, I really wanted to make posts on the seventh and the eleventh. Circumstances did not allow. Those same circumstances dictate that for the second time in this blog's run I am typing this ridiculous and aimless missive from a library computer, on one of their phenomenally displeasing keyboards. At least last time I got a keyboard where you could punch the keys, even if they were crappy. This one right here, not so much. No way to satisfyingly pound. The sexual element is entirely absent from this device. 

Nevertheless, my typing is without doubt the loudest in the computer area, and draws glances like a spoiled haunch of roadkill draws the circling flies, eager to breed and sow outright, squirming stares.

*

Pretty settled into the new place. Obviously I have been very busy with that, plus it's not like work just stops, and the new budget has not yet allowed for getting internet hooked up. Probably I'll look at that starting December or the New Year. Til then I'll hope to get a better keyboard when I come to write posts here at the library. Updates will probably be kinda sporadic this month. 

Next time I will write out all the lists I owe you, dear reader, and bring them here to type them into the post. I know how everybody loves all the lists. Gonna be some long ones. Remember how shortly before I started filling this text field with lists, I talked about how I don't really write lists anymore? How I wrote a whole post about not having pictures of myself on the internet, and now I use instagram like a mad bastard, microblogging almost as explicitly as I blog? 

Just not a fan of setting anything in stone. The right to change your mind is an important one to reserve, and doing so requires a set of muscles it is important to keep limber.

*

Ok, I'm sober and I hate it, so I'm going to be done for now. Last time I came to the library to write a post was Saturday, the ninth of the month, and on that day I had a joint for the walk here and a joint for the walk home but what I did not have was my phone, which is a requirement for logging into the blog machine. Man I felt put out. Man did I feel a fool. Then I felt better, as I smoked my second joint. 

Also I have seen three regular customers from work in the short time I've been here and it is difficult to put into words how much it irks me to lay eyes on them.  

*

Been writing into my notebooks with a variety of pencils. Generating some shit. If this keeps up I might open 2020 with a new book. The poems currently spilling from my guts in electrifying fugue states (the new desk works just fine, happy to note; good desks want you to get down to fucking business on them) are very pleasing to me. Hitting one of those rare veins that really gushes, words coming pretty much right the first time, requiring only a light burnish. As opposed to shitting something out knowing in your heart that maybe it can be fixed, but most likely it wants fire to cleanse it.

peace the fuck out and get tough or die crying

--JL

p.s. Oh! Halloween was great. Did a rad job with my costume. 

#224

Last Halloween I wrote a post about staying in on this night of maddened revelry. Wearing pajamas, I think, and exhorting the manifold virtues of being careful. Well, I maintain everything I said, but tonight I'm gonna go dancing in a costume at a club. My take on an early draft of a "human" Joker. Tonight I'm gonna have outside fun.

However, I will endeavor to remember death, and honor the spirit world. That's the "core value", as I believe the cool kids declaim.

Also, today, "outside" has been spitting cold shitdrizzle, just as it has been for the last two days, when it hasn't been raining quite a bit harder. It may well turn to snow tonight. I predict a certain amount of vehicular chaos. I believe my carefulness is honed to a fine edge, but y'know, be careful all you like. Knock yourself out, genius! World's gonna do you how it does ya. Brain hemorrhage could interrupt your careful ass literally at any second.

*

Feeling the quotation mark vibe today. Came up with a word: apostrophastic. For when you're feeling just fucking enthusiastic about apostrophes.

Need to take a nap.

*

have a happy ghostfuck


--JL

#223

Ah, the two hundred and twenty-third post. Fascinating. Just keep waking up alive, you know? And sometimes I write. Mostly read. Do a my job at work as best I can.

Each day is a test and a gift. That's existence, best as I can figure.

*

Today I'm going to draw some pictures and haul some furniture from place to place. Gonna put some stuff in boxes and take all the naps I want. Perform smoke rituals. Eat cheese and bread. See how things go. 

*

Bought a wooden desk, a wooden library chair with a green cushion to sit at the desk in, couple beach chairs with crimson, red, pink, and white plastic straps stretched over yellowed white metal frames to sit outside in, a comfy-ass blue leather armchair and a comfy-ass short green leather couch. Big fan of leather, me. 

Armchair don't really look like much, the design is kind of clunky, but it is one of those chairs that, when you sink into it, reminds you what a comfortable--a pleasurable--sit actually is. I'll be spending quite some time in this weird-lookin, slightly blown-out baby.

I'll describe the desk after I've sat at it for a while, while sitting at it. That's the only way.

Upcoming attractions! Bam! Pow!

*

Read Bazaar of Bad Dreams, by Stephen King. Reading Firestarter now. I'm gonna write a long-ass post about reading as much Stephen King as I have been once I'm through, and the way things are going I'll have obtained, read, and reread all of his books exempting the Dark Tower cycle before I seriously read anything else, and probably I will buy and read the Dark Tower before that too. This process might be complete by the New Year, or early 2020. 

Man! 2020. Comin right up. New decade! It is going to fuck us up. Best strap in. 

*

Been treating myself to a lot of chocolate lately. I love milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, gianduja in whatever density and style you care to name, cacao nibs, all of that. I fuckin love chocolate.

When I was twenty-five I went to Aldi's three or four times just to grab about six pounds of Utz chocolates--chocolate wafer, motherfuckers? strawberry cream? yes please, four packages--and slam that shit over the course of a week. I walked and worked a lot, just like now, and carried on with a pretty spare diet, so it didn't ever make me feel sick or anything. If you make room for it, chocolate is the best thing you can eat. That chocolate made me feel radiant with health. Just felt extra good all that week and the week after.

Don't like chocolate cake. Takes a very particular bake to produce a chocolate cake I would enjoy. Only run into a couple all my life. Good chocolate ice cream ain't as rare, but most is no good either.

Brownies are dank. 

*

Ok signing off that's the end no punchline no moral 


--JL

#222

Yes! The two hundred and twenty-second post! I fucking love numbers like this. 

Looked at my twitter today, really dove in. Even tweeted.

Man, what the fuck is up with twitter. What the fuck is up with people when they tweet. That website has screwed us over a fucking barrel, and I don't give a shit anymore. Twitter proves that we deserve the worst apocalypse we can imagine for ourselves.

*

Related: I have instagram now. I put selfies on it and everything. 

Unrelated, mostly: maybe I'll start a crappy punk band. As I say, I gave up giving a shit. Maybe being in a band will be fun again if it's just absolutely no work for me at all.

*

Never really taken lots of selfies before. Feels like unclenching my asshole, the asshole of my self-conception. Kinda cool. I've begun to feel that the aloofness (based in fear rather than arrogance, usually) that has kept me separate from the essence of my own life and the lives of people around me is something to overcome.

Terrifying notion. Gotta face it, though.

*

Why we should be afraid to be who we are is a profound mystery. The terror is real, however, and insidiously stealthy.

Ok, also, people might kill you, depending on what you let on about yourself. That's just the world we live in. Certain camouflage must be adopted. Certain patterns and compromises are unavoidable. Even still. To be as much yourself as possible and harmonize with the world as much as possible--that seems like a dope riddle to try and solve. 

Or just be a clenched asshole.

Bigger and bigger mysteries, all the way up, all the way down!

*

Signed a lease on an apartment today. It is the upper floor of a small house, a space in which I will live alone. I am very excited to finally live alone; I have lived with twenty different people over the course of my twenties and have fucking earned this. Loved most of those people, but cohabitation breeds unique and venomous hatreds, too.  

Roommates and housemates can be good people and those good people can behave in ways that make you want to gleefully murder them, butcher them, and cook them in the kitchen, whistling the whole time. Instead you make nice and try to be the bigger person. And they are tolerating your bullshit right back. Results vary wildly.

That was fun and all, but it's time to move into a stage in life where someone else's shit isn't strewn all over the fucking place and you can get into the goddamn bathroom. 

*

2 2 2 

two hundred and twenty-two posts, motherfuckers

sit on a dildo and scissorkick your way to heaven


--JL

#221

Hello! Hello. Welcome to the two hundred and twenty-first post. It falls upon the twenty-first of October, in the year of Our Lord two thousand nineteen. I should post this on the twenty-first minute of the twenty-first hour of the day, but man, no. I won't. 

There is a pretty good chance this kind of thing can happen again two years from now, if I live that long. Every day is a day you might not have woken up YOLO

*

Anyway, coincidences are a fake concept. It is a denial of reason to assert that anything is provably random. At the same time, nothing is provably certain. You might never die, because time might just stop. Or, the eternal recurrence. That good quantum shit. Who cares, actually. Shit happens. Just does.

*

Going back to the previous post a bit, for a few a loose ends. If you haven't read it, you might not want to, but it's there, along with many other posts detailing private things and idiotic ideas and bad jokes I must be fucking insane to put on internet. I'll keep it brief.

In truth, there's only one thing to say: shit happens. Just does. It's not easy to accept that, but it does. I watched Hostiles finally, a western worth watching if only to see three perfect forty-minute acts. I mean exactly forty minutes for act one, act two, and act three. Also it is extremely good in many other ways, I loved it very slowly, warming up a little at a time. One line leaped out at me over all the rest: "We will never get used to God's rough handling."

Perfection.The context it was in elevated it tremendously; the case of the movie was proven in that moment; ironically, the one moment where the camera focus was less than perfectly controlled (it is a painstakingly controlled and curated picture, sharp enough to cut, huge, and intimate all at once).

We won't, either. We get stronger and stronger, and things only get harder. The universe rises up to meet us, and the only way to live and die is by grappling, by wrestling with angels and demons. And every good thing you've found and been able to hold onto in order to steady yourself can blow away in a strong wind, in God's breath, and you have to keep going. 

I wouldn't take back what happened to me. It made me who I am, and gave me the life I've had to live. It's a life I'm grateful for. I wasn't always, but I am, and I hope to feel that way every day until I die.

Fuck it. Fuck them. Still get my kicks. Still kickin. Had a lotta laughs and a lotta love since then. Borne shit near as bad. Worth it. I'll take the rest to the last drop, the sweet and the bitter dregs.

*

Ok, yesterday's post was the longest ever, and I just gave it a fucking appendix. That's enough for the day. At least, once you get through these lists I'm about to drop.

Stephen King books I have read since last time I wrote about that:


Dreamcatcher, Needful Things, Under the Dome, Elevation, 11/22/63

Other books I have read:

The Death of The Master, by Patrick Kyle

Books I have purchased since last time I wrote about that:

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Throat and Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub
Dracula by Bram Stoker (a recovery purchase)
Military Mavericks by Daniel Rooney
Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, Brian Holland, and John Higgins
Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors by Jhonen Vasquez
Alan Moore's Magic Words by the titular dude and like a dozen other people I ain't typin out right now
The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin
Shadow Box by George Plimpton
The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
The Wonder of Birds and Living on the Earth by the National Geographic Society
The Atlas of Scientific Discovery published by Crescent
Coral Kingdoms by someone named Roessler but it's under a bunch of other books right now and I'm not about to move anything right now to see more. It is published by Abrams.


*

Hey! Next time will be the two hundred and twenty-second post. How about that, man? I'm so pumped to see that.


--JL

#220

Guess I've told a few stories about myself behaving badly and causing bad things to happen, a few about how the intensity of my emotions makes existence fraught, and a few about how work is hard on me. This is a story about bad things happening to me, which I don't think I've really covered yet.

Well, it's not like I'm the only one. Still, it may make for some unpleasant reading.

*

From the the year I turned eight to year I turned ten, I rode the bus home from my Catholic school in Caracas, Venezuela, where I was born and lived for the bulk of my childhood. My uncles on my mother's side went there too; St. Ignatius of Loyola. Jesuits. A strange and rigorous portion of my education, in the classroom and out. Could yarn for days, and someday I will, dear reader.

*

My first impression of the bus driver was extremely on-point. I beheld a hideous gargoyle, a fucking bridge troll with knobbed and venous graspers clutching at the steering wheel. That's all he was; a bogeyman. He gazed at me with one furious dark eye and one misted hideously with cataract, generously older than sixty, his dark brown skin nested with wrinkles and flaps, his mouth collapsed, his swollen gut pooching over a swollen crotch. Yet though his spotted dome was long-bald, the hair around the sides was gray still showing pepper along with salt, voice sharp, movements fluid. But it was the mouth that really told you without ever moving, that you were dealing with a real son of a bitch, a motherfucker that would see you dead without the ghost of sentiment passing through his soul. A downcurved tightened moue of hatred and resentment. His lips looked fleshy, but the iron line between them and the overdeveloped muscles of rage and disapproval around them rendered them hard as the rest.

Clearly I froze at the sight of him, because those lips parted into a sneering of rage, and he spat at me to get on or get the devil away. I was eight, and my mom was right there, but this was not a dude of considerations. Believe me, this dude did not consider. My mom asked him what the hell the matter was with him and who he thought he was, and he snapped right back at her, same rap, bundle your brat into the fucking bus or find someplace else to rot.

For reasons I must chalk up to adulthood mysteries to which I have not yet been initiated, my mom did usher me onto the bus, and because what the hell else was I going to do, I got on a bus piloted by a demon and boarded by the damned.

Kids as young as five--my younger brother one of them, not long after I started riding--rode that bus along with teenagers as old as high school seniors. I guess that kind of thing can go fine sometimes. I wouldn't know the first fucking thing about that state of affairs, though, because the older kids on my bus--all of whom had undergone Confirmation and accepted the Eucharist and did their Mass twice a week and were called young men and young women by priests and teachers--were subhuman fucking devils with hayrope for hearts and dull axeblades to think with.

They terrorized us, tortured us, made us cry salt tears and scream in pain, endless rounds of bullying, insults, and brutalization. Once they forced chimó on us. That's a kind of tobacco reduction; you press ten kilos of tobacco leaves and boil the extracted liquid down into a syrup which dries to a paste--one kilo of chimó, and if one of us little kids had swallowed one of those little black balls--well, it ain't like swallowing chewing tobacco. That shit could have killed us.

Other than that memorable incident, they mostly kept it to stuff that didn't typically leave marks but hurt bad and humiliated worse. Some days they even kept to themselves in the back of the bus. But those days were precious and few, and mostly is not always.

*

Usually the back-of-the-bussers, in their blue middle-schooler uniform shirts and their beige high school ones, would content themselves with tormenting those of us who sat in the middle, the elementary-level whiteshirts. The kindergarten and preparatory (an interstitial grade between kindergarten and first grade) shirts were red, and they sat at the very front. Sometimes, though, the back-of-the-bussers would barrel right past us to get to the littlest kids, who were young enough to insulate themselves in all sorts of ways from what was going on further back. 

The other whiteshirts did their best to avoid notice, tried to ignore what was happening, tried to shrink into themselves for the most part, tried to just wait till it was over, till they got bored. Not me, and to a lesser degree, not one other whiteshirt, a year younger than me, a red-faced, wet-mouthed kid named Raph. We got along okay, and he'd stick up for himself sometimes, and even if not, he screamed. An amazing voice for screaming had old Raph, and if nothing else, it was so piercing that the bus driver (I remember his name, but fuck that cursed word) would sometimes holler at everyone to sit down in their seats and shut the fuck up or he'd stop the bus. Only one time do I remember this threat being carried out, and I admit to some satisfaction--he roared down the aisle of the bus toward the back, shoving and slapping and bellowing like a demented ape. That earned us one afternoon of relative peace, and we had Raph's high-pitched, repetitive keening to thank for it.

For my part, I appealed to their better natures, to their Christian faith, raged, argued, tried to placate, tried to hurt their feelings back, tried to fight them when desperation drove me, and the main drive of this desperation was keeping them away from the front of the bus if I could, keeping them away from my little brother. It was all more or less amusement to them, especially the fellow Christian thing--they laughed and laughed. I remember the sound of that laughter, the exact way it contorted their faces. 

Three faces in particular stood out--the Pig, Frankenzit, and the Witch. The Pig was a short barrel of a dude--relatively short, of course. He towered above me, big ole gut, tits out near as far as the gut, heavy slabs of pimply arm, furious little eyes that disappeared to slits when his laughter raised his acne-scarred woodchuck cheeks. He had curly, dense brown hair tending to red, beetled eyebrows, and flecked spit constantly when he talked. A great pincher and kicker was the Pig, and a great laugher. A cackler, really, shrill and sinister, and he was in particular amused by my efforts to engage in reasonable dialogue and by the ineffectiveness of my paltry blows against his padded hide. He threw it back in my face, grinning hugely every time I did try to fight. "What happened to your faith? What happened to nonviolence? I didn't even do anything to you hardly and you broke! Why should I keep my hands to myself if you don't, you little hypocrite?" And a few more pinches and a slap or two, enough to knock me back into a seat, before he retreated for a bit, laughing, his weirdly small ass flexing jauntily in his pants.

Frankenzit was about two feet taller than the Pig, duller, slower, much stronger. He had a massive bulging forehead, spectacularly studded with angry zits. Evil, if not cutting, words oozed from his tiny mouth in a low muddy voice, but they didn't hurt the way the Pig's barbs and jeers and vicious logical contradictions and inconsistencies did. Though if his fingers didn't hurt the way the Pig's did either, and though he never kicked, he made up for it by lifting you above his head and shaking you before tossing you, twisting arms, slapping hard, punches to the belly to knock the wind out of you, jamming the palm of his gigantic hand hard into your face, shoving you back into your seat over and over like he was bouncing a basketball off a wall. His arms were fast and strong in a way his mind could never match, and it was almost impossible to get a hit in on him if you tried to fight back.  

Those two were the worst, technically. The Witch was bad for me in particular, but mostly all she did was cut with her words worse than the Pig could ever dream, and laugh. Bitch loved to fucking laugh, and how it lit her face to see us tortured. Not that she was above joining in a time or two. The Pig and Frankenzit were easier on the girls that rode the bus, not to say that they were safe from their attention, but mostly it was Raph and I who provided them with the bread and the butter for it. The Witch would come forward and spit poison at the girls, and this was like watching a giant wolf whisper dark nothings at a little flock of sheep, huddled together and helpless to avoid hearing, pinned by that lupine gaze. She was tall and well-built with a big handsome cloud of frizzy brown hair, but her voice was harsh and grating.

Except when the boys were done and you sat there, ashamed and broken for the day, tears leaking against your will, nipples sore from twisting and ribs aching from blows above a diaphragm sore from yelling, cheeks burning from slaps, your only consolation that you kept them busy so they didn't get all the way to the front of the bus for one more day. Then she would use another voice, the comforting voice. I'll come back to that.

*

Mostly I was able to hold onto that one consolation, that I had done my duty and kept my brother safe. I never tattled; being a rat was, culturally speaking, worse than being a murdering rapist, so I never told. It was almost impossible for me to even admit that the Vera twins had blacked my eye so bad they burst blood vessels in it when we brawled two on one over a recess dispute, and they had already confessed. A couple of times, though, the big boys would not be dissuaded, and they would get right up to the front and do their devilry not two feet away from the bus driver, and as long as they were relatively quiet about it, the old prick would not say or do a god damn thing. 

My brother does not remember the Pig, or Frankenzit, and I doubt if he ever noticed the Witch. He remembers his little bus friend, sort of, and that we rode a bus home, but it was nothing to him really, just transit. I did my job. He doesn't even remember the episode I am about to recount, which changed so much in me. 

It was one of those days that the back-of-the-bussers would stick at nothing but that the whole bus was their terror playground, like the day of the chimó. The little kids had been treated with some form of games day, with prizes, and such was their desire to fuck with that, such was their intensity, that for the first time ever I was forced to sit, first right behind my brother, then right next to him. It was of course the Pig and Frankenzit who placed all their focus on the two of us that day, because my little brother, only in kindergarten, was delighted with a prize he had won: a little plastic insect, whose thorax was a hollow bulb you could fill with water and squirt out through the mandible, like little single-shot watergun. It was a cheap, pointless little thing, but he was over the moon about it, laughing and playing with it. Like true predators, the two ogres had honed in on this, as well as my fear over it, and they meant evil, the kind of cut-rate evil their low brand of cunning would support. 

I tried to get my brother to put away his toy and sit quiet, but he did not. I argued, hissing, from the seat behind him, to at least keep it down in his lap where no one could see, but he didn't want to, even got annoyed with me because he thought I was jealous. The Pig hauled me out of the seat and let Frankenzit by him to sit by the window, then pushed me across the aisle without a word. My brother, absorbed with his toy and his friend, did not notice this. I asked my brother's friend to get up so I could sit with my brother, and  he vacated sharpish, because the Pig and Frankenzit were now complimenting my brother on his toy in friendly voices, and he knew that was trouble. 

My brother did not. His is a breezy soul, full of light, gentle and trusting. He was not born with the sense that you need to protect yourself from some people, most of whom love and adore him on sight anyway, and only grow fonder with familiarity. It grew in, kind of, but as a kid, no. No, he ignored my pleading and my stern indications that he was not to do what they asked, and eventually, handed over his toy for inspection. The Pig took it, examined it minutely, nodded as though he had ascertained that it was indeed gold and not pyrite, and handed it to Frankenzit. I watched all this as though from underwater, hatred coursing through me, knowing just as well as you do what was coming. Frankenzit waited three seconds, then twisted my brother's stupid little toy apart in his long thick fingers. I watched their faces split into the kind of laughter reserved for the climax of a professional comedy routine, the really key zinger, and then I looked at my brother. He trembled on the edge of it for a fraction of an instant, then opened his mouth and started crying, one long note of pure grief.

To be clear, I never wanted to fight these guys. I wanted them to act their age, to instruct and protect me as I had always been told it was my duty to instruct and protect those younger than me. When I did fight them, it was from a position of pre-defeat, of last resort, as a holding action, as a compromise. I prayed to God to forgive me for letting them drag me down and I prayed that they would see the error of their ways, prayed fervently that my words would one day take hold and the bus rides could become peaceful.

When my brother cried that day all that shit went straight out the window. I felt something at the base of my skull flex, right above the brainstem, like a snake uncoiling, like a crocodile going from zero to full lunge. Heat spiked from that spot deep in my lizard brain and filled my eyes with a brighter red than any blood. It was beyond rage. I lost my mind.

When the flash of red passed from my vision I was already over the back of the seat and my fingernails were clawing at Frankenzit's mouth, forcing the lips apart, digging into the soft meat below the gumline, trying to rip off his lower lip so I could fucking eat it. Even today I am gratified by the pained surprise in his eyes, and by the Pig's shocked squeals. When Frankenzit was able to finally seize my arms, blood running down his chin, I squirmed the rest of the way over and started pistoning my feet into his belly and crotch like I was riding a bicycle. His grip faltered and I resumed clawing at his face, wanting to rip the whole thing off, hoping for his eyes, hoping to blind the cunt son of a bitch. His fatshit turdfuck friend spared him that by wrapping his arms around me and throwing me into an empty seat so hard I cracked my head against the wall of the bus, but I did not feel this, only tried to jerk myself back up so I could leap back into someone, anyone, whoever. 

Not to be. First Frankenzit, looking crazed and cursing like a thwarted devil, used his fists on me in earnest for the first time, screaming that only a faggot goes for the eyes. Blood filled my mouth and the wind rushed out at me but I didn't stop kicking at his stomach, clawing and punching at his arms, trying to bite. He went at me for a bit, the the Pig took a turn, then a few others. I passed out. I came back to under a rain of slaps, one of the blueshirts, who called back to the back of the bus. Frankenzit loomed over me, I saw red once more, but he slapped me on the face hard enough to spray my mouthblood onto the seat and I went slack. Another blank in my memory. Then Raph, helping me sit up. I ached all over, all over, every muscle, couldn't breathe through my nose, and my guts felt like they had been scraped out of my body. The hollowness that follows untrammeled violence. 

Checked on my brother. He was trembly and red-faced, but fine.

*

After things had wound down, after the smoke cleared, The Witch usually slid into my seat. She would use her soft voice, her after-voice. She would come up to the front and sit by me and soothe me, try to calm me, her right arm around my shoulders, head leaned forward and over me a little so she could whisper that it wasn't so bad, that I was okay, giving me little pet names, the fall of her long hair obscuring me as her left hand first rubbed my thigh in a passable gesture of comfort, then explored further. What was there wasn't substantial, but what there was, she, in the wisdom of her seventeen years, found. 

I let her. Didn't really understand what was happening, and I always froze. I remember the rigidity that would grip me till her questioning got more urgent; she always wanted to hear me say that I was okay, that I was fine, and if I wouldn't say anything, she might squeeze. So I said I was. Then she'd let up and go back to the back of the bus before her stop rolled around. Either with one last harsh invective punctuated by her raucous laughter, or with a caress on my cheek. With her left hand.

I let her that day, and I'd let her before that day, and I let her again after that day. 

Like many kids abused in like fashions, my eating got out of control and I put on a belly. I was sensitive about this, and teased roughly for it (I come from a very fat-shaming culture). My first round of depression followed shortly after, which I am pretty certain contributed to a stomach problem that laid me low for three months. Stories for another time.

Once I was over this illness, and feeling more like myself, I returned to school, and to the bus. Things picked up just where they had left off. The Pig and Frankenzit were as bad as ever; worse, because I fought all the time, fought harder, but they were only taken aback by that once, and made sure to always carry the advantage of numbers as well as the use of their size and reach--brave dudes, you know. 

The last time the Witch slid into my seat I froze as ever, until she murmured a pet name that triggered the red flash. "Gordo" is a term of endearment, an exception to the fat-shaming reserved pretty strictly for children and husbands. All the women in my family used it, but since putting on my extra pounds, I was made uncomfortable by it. When she used it, my paralysis broke, and I told her, in the most ferocious and ugly voice I had ever used in my life, that she was a black toad and to get the fuck away from me and never touch me again. Her eyes shot wide open and her mouth went into that big long "O" of surprised outrage. This time when she got up she slapped me in the face hard enough to cut my cheek against my teeth. It hurt, but she had used her right hand, and this satisfaction evened the deal nicely. 

That slap was indeed the last time she ever touched me.

*

So. All that shit fucked me up really fuckin bad, poisoned my faith, left me off-kilter, made my eyes crazy, drove me to drink, all that good shit. Cool. Yes. Good stuff.

Other trauma no doubt compounded and informed my reaction to that trauma and the trauma to come, but I think most of us can identify the big bad ones, the watershed trauma. That's mine, folks. 

There's other stuff to say, of course. Another time. That should be more than enough for the two hundred and twentieth post. Next post I'll write about something more cheerful, and make a list of books. Everybody likes that.

Have a good day.


--JL

p.s. I have not gotten a new computer yet. I'm just going to resign myself to my computer going all tabula rasa on me every time I load it up. This machine is now basically a blog typewriter. I'm going to write other stuff longhand till I get a computer that saves documents. No new books for awhile, I guess.

#219

Computer’s broken again. I mean to say, it wiped itself clean of all of its data again, which I imagine it will continue to do each time Windows forces through another update to its worst fucking OS ever. After I get paid this week I’m going to go buy a new computer. The odds that it will be a Microsoft product are low, and there is absolutely no chance at all that I will install their wretched fucking asshole code.

The post I promised last post is a bitter motherfucker to write. Sincerely. Not even going to consider finishing it without a keyboard, WHICH I AM TOO FURIOUS TO USE. Concentration has become impossible while trying to use the fucking thing, let alone strenuous emotional labor. 

Telling the story I am trying to tell is like pulling razor blades out of frozen soil with my bare fingers. I hate it, you’re going to hate it too, and I refuse to compound that by tapping it out on this iPad.

Yup, I am sleep-deprived, exhausted, and pissed the fuck off. Riding my ragged edge. Happily, even to the point of tears springing to my eyes, my crew has figured out a way to get me a weekend, starting this week. Just gotta make it through Thursday and then see how many hours of sleep I can cram into Friday and Saturday.

On one of those days, you’ll get to read the two hundred and twentieth post. Doubt you’ll thank me, dear reader, but hey, life’s a bitch, a big old mean German Shepherd of a bitch, and nine times out of ten she’ll come straight for the place between where your legs meet your body, jaws foaming and impossible to stop.


—JL

#218

Regular people drink, moderately or heavily, for a lot of reasons, a broad array. Alcoholics drink for a much narrower band. I think just four: genetic honeytraps, existential panic, total emptiness, and profound emotional trauma.

Some people, the bottle was just the wrong thing to grab, period. Poison candy. I have heard of lucky folks who recognized this immediately and put the candy away on a high shelf, never to be taken down again. Others, bright, alert, civically-minded individuals, with happy stories behind and a limitless future ahead, do not put the candy away, and all that shit is for balls now. It belongs to the bottle. A sprung trap laid was right in the weave of their DNA; neural pathways light up like a nightmare string of Christmas lights garlanding a haunted house, and that house is where they live the rest of their days. Unless they can quit.

Existential panic and total emptiness are the manic and depressive aspects of the death drive. Probably it's all more complicated than that but this is on-the-ground reporting, my shit and the shit of the people I've known, so I'll keep it straightforward. Alcoholics drinking in existential panic drink because their performance anxiety about life, the task of living, becomes overbearing and unbearable. Drinking is a pressure release. Eventually enough pressure is released that the anxiety is gone, because drinking is life, and life is finally thus contained, made harmless and eminently livable. Alcoholics drinking in a state of emptiness have the opposite problem; they are soaked in life, saturated and cannot take in any more, a sensation both leaden and untethered. There is nothing in life that holds attraction. Everything in it comes predigested, covered in shit, no points, no punchlines, no significance. Only drinking makes one feel warm, makes the heart beat like a human muscle instead of sitting in the chest like a cold rock in a river that has stopped flowing. You don't feel much better, usually, but less like a walking corpse. More able to keep up the performance.

Emotional trauma speaks for itself, I guess. One could write a great deal about its mechanism, and I mean to, but this is also where things get very subjective. Too many words for one post, too many bases to cover.

*

My whole deal is a spicy blend of all of the above; my uncle drinks. Most of the clan is made up of regular people, but here and there, like raisins in a porridge, an alkie, a suicide. Incidentally, few smoke anything to speak of, either; my uncle, though, enjoys cigars. That's a mother's side uncle. On  my father's side, my favorite aunt smokes cigs. And me, the favored heir.

Obviously, the death drive and I are old companions. Incidentally, I am already smoking cigs again. Fuck it. No guilt. It's blissful. As I told a dude yesterday as we smoked before dawn, a man needs a death ritual, or he'll die.

Next post, I'll dive into the emotional trauma that drives me to drink. Strap in! It's gonna be a barrel of laffs and a slap-happy half.  

*

Saw Joker. Movie of the year, movie of the decade, maybe the best fucking movie I've ever seen in my life. Just thinking of the sound engineering alone gives me a hard-on.

May everyone, eventually, get the joke.

*

Finished Doctor Sleep, read through The Institute, Everything's Eventual, and The Cycle of the Werewolf. Reading Dreamcatcher now. The King binge continues, and shall continue apace; let's see how many I can do in October. Gonna focus of the big bastards for awhile; Needful Things is on deck, then, Under the Dome. If I can do one more after that before November, I'll be happy. Still working sixty hours. 

Oh! Did a little interstitial with Caitlin Doughty's Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, lent to me by a coworker. Pretty good stuff. Pretty funny.

*

Listening to a lot of The Offspring. Playing lots of stuff to listen to in the kitchen, all kinds of stuff, particularly Funkadelic, Janis Joplin, Muddy Waters, and Santana, but what I want to be listening to for myself the last couple weeks is The Offspring. Feels like taking strong supplements of a long-neglected vitamin; the world feels brighter, food tastes better, and my attitude is lively. The Offspring reminds me that I have balls, basically, a good fucking pair that's seen me through some shit. Amazing how that gets away from you.  

*

It's been the most beautiful day. October is the most beautiful month there is, on average, in my limited experience. 


--JL

#217

Writing this wearing my leather jacket at my desk, a first. Noticed yesterday that writing about drinking erodes my self-esteem, which is still better than the gritty cheer with which I talk about it aloud (when I have to or am compelled to) in order to try and mask my deep shame.

Second post in a row the first paragraph ends with the word "shame"! It is possible that my self-esteem is just plain low right now and that is why I want to drink, and am talking about drinking. It is possible that my drinking is rooted in low self-esteem.

Alcohol--when false bravado just doesn't cut it anymore! HaHA!

It is also because I believe in confession.

*

Hmm. As soon as I wrote that last sentence, I took my jacket off. 

*

There are three drinking acts of which I am particularly ashamed--four, really, but the fourth is for another day, and something for which I repaid society, according to its appointed juridical extractors. 

*

One is driving home from a certain friend's house so plastered I don't remember doing it. Letting me do this quite unhindered is only one of the many ways this person was not the best friend in the world to me. The friend is completely beside the actual point, of course; it's dangerous to try to stop me from doing whatever I want to do and I'm glad they did no more than ask if I was sure I wanted to do that. I try, but like anyone who really drinks, I'm maybe not such a nice guy, maybe not put together a hundred percent right no matter what kind things I say and beautiful things I try and keep faith in. 

This was after my relapse--a fun, sad story--and one thing I had always carried an alcoholic's brand of pride over--yes, a boast I proudly made, while I drank and after I "quit"--that one thing I had never done in my drinking days, which spanned years and years, was get behind the wheel of a car. Well, I did, that night. Nice, right? Classy shit.

"I may be a fuckup, but I'm not that selfish/fucked up/retarded/insane/irresponsible," I said, any number of times. 

Good lesson about myself. Much like the next story, which funnily enough, happened not long after! 

*

My relapse didn't last a full year in its dangerous stages, I started out okay and drank like a normal person at the end for a period of eight months--a mirror to the eight months I drank hard in secret and with friends (as well as ostensible friends which are, to degrees varying from the subtle to the screamingly obvious, not true friends and only drinking relations) while pretending to drink like a normal person in front of family and my partner and housemates and God and everybody.

That's another way the relapse was worse than the drinking years. The first time around I drank angrily and openly, it was frankly incredible that my parents never really caught on when I was living at home (barring a few isolated incidents, which terrible though they were did not hinder me) and they were close to giving up on me once I was on my own. I wouldn't call for weeks, never had anything to say for myself. I'd picked up my mom at the airport once with a gin hangover, the raw reek of it seeping out my pores. She said she could smell me sweating gin, and I told her that this was logical, given the quantity of it I had drunk the night before. That left the conversation where it was, but I did switch to whiskey for keeps right after. Mellower cloud. 

Not great. But far, far worse was this sneaking around my ex-fiancée, drinking again instead of confronting our failed relationship. To my credit, instead of dying, or worse, living with her a long long time, I did end things (a little while after we mutually decided to break our engagement, a long and excruciating story), and after a few more weeks of heavy drinking, I leveled out, then pretty much stopped. The narcissist and I shared a few drinks, and awhile after I got out of that, I had a drink or two with my friend that let me drive drunk, who is also an alcoholic and inextricable from my relapse.

Sometimes you meet someone, look into their eyes, and know that you're going to hold hands as you go into a dark place together. You're not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but you know as sure as you know you're gonna draw breath for a certain amount of time and then stop, that it is gonna fucking happen. It's like that, with that friend. I don't have them in my life anymore, part of me hates them for the way they treated me and for how things went, which is a long and complicated story--and it comes to me now, dear reader, that the purpose of this stupid and factually pointless endeavor, this idiotic blog, is simply to collate all my long and complicated stories into a shape that I can try to see and understand before I shuffle off. 

Anyway, people like that often drink together until one or both of them die. That's the actual basic reason we can't be in each other's lives, along with a bunch of other fucked shit.

During the dark time directly following the final break with my ex-fiancée I got so drunk in my backyard I walked into my neighbor's house, which was occupied by a bunch of twenty-somethings that also drank. Uninvited, their door unlocked, and as far as I could tell, nobody home, but I remember parts of it well enough to be sure of this: I was horny, and I meant to offer to fuck whichever of the girls happened to be home. I was drunk enough to think this plausible and to walk into their house, but not so drunk that I didn't realize what the fuck was happening, the fucking outlandishly insane and fucked up thing that I was fucking doing my god who the fuck am I, and leave immediately. I have not been that drunk since, have hardly even been tipsy--but I have taken drinks.

I have taken drinks, again, after shit like that and shit almost as bad. That is what an alcoholic is. Someone capable of continuing to drink even after shit like that.

*

The third thing was much, much earlier, years and years ago, when I was living in this very house with my first ex. Don't remember anything leading up to sex, don't remember much about it, just dim flashes of me furiously fucking her. Like, angrily. Not like myself.

Asked her about it, the next morning, ashamed, weirded out, not sure if I should. She was flat and noncommittal. Women often are when you've acted like some kind of devil in human skin, raging or spitting contempt like acid. I let it lie. Have never forgotten it. 

*

Okay, I feel sick. Haven't been sleeping well, and hey! Not sure I've helped my situation, here, with this typing. Christ oh fuck. Jesus. Drinking.


--JL

#216

Tequila was my first drink, in cautious nips from the freezer after I got home from middle school. Merely exploratory, almost scientific. What is this magic substance truly about, which stays liquid while the water around has assumed solidity? Why is this beverage such a titan to all peoples, and in so many forms? I believe the only things more culturally omnipresent than alcohol are adultery and shame.

Rum came next, and I got my first really unhinged vomitous drunk off rum. I was never able to enjoy rum again after that, but I fuckin loved rum, people. As a teenager, I loved rum. It had a non-trivial amount to do with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. At this late date, I can admit it had a lot to do with Jack Sparrow. It's always kind of embarrassing for a dude to a admit that he does something because another dude does it--that one imitated, at least, stylistically. We are proud to emulate what we tout as the good qualities of our available examples, things we think other dudes should emulate too. We are more reticent about why we wear our hat at quite that angle, with quite that feather tucked into the band, because we don't necessarily want other dudes to do it--I stole this for myself, motherfucker. I wear black leather because of Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, and smile lopsided because of Han Solo. This is less, say, defensible, though I wouldn't bother defending myself, than wishing to face death in like spirit to that of Seneca, to gain a power over one's own culture like to that of a Goethe or Da Vinci, or engage in the imitation of Christ. 

Christ preferred wine. It took me awhile to get to wine, even though my parents let me have a little sometimes, like parents do. Wine's alright. I'm more James May than Oz Clarke, at least in this matter.

*

When all is said and done, the chips are counted and the vessels filled, I'm a whiskey and beer man. As much gin as I drank up, as much as I also liked and appreciated vodka, the bulk prize of my drinking goes to the sixpack and the pint of scotch--or the case and the fifth, depending on how bad it was, this need to fill myself with a roaring drunkenness, and think the thoughts and feel the feelings that rose screaming from that storm like demon birds. Killed my first fifth in high school and I didn't stop until I stopped. Didn't always kill a fifth, or down a whole case, but I always knew how. I say scotch 'cause it's the best, but any strong brown liquor in that family would do me fine at any time. 

See how I talk about it? The vodka and rum and all that other nonsense is a vague memory, fine and all, but my mouth is fucking full of saliva right now thinking about a deep rich bottle of Tennessee devilry. Fuck me running, man.

*

Drunk plenty at bars and parties, plenty while out and about, trespassing and hell-raising, but for the most part, sitting at a kitchen table, or in a backyard, or a basement. Usually with a couple people, but alone a great deal, alone quite enough to be getting along with.

*

One thing about The Rock--the only truly phenomenal Michael Bay picture--is Sean Connery's line about trying your best. I think you should always try your best, but it's even better to just fucking gut up and win, to do and not try, and this line has a great way of putting it out; less direct but more flavorful than Yoda: 

"Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."

I don't know from prom queens, I'm not that kind of dude--I may have fucked one or two, but I'm not a prom king, is the point, and it didn't factor into my decisions--but this statement,  borne in mind, has sure as shit been goddamn useful. 

This attitude is key if you want to not drink and keep not drinking. I can't afford to be fucking around with my shitty little best. I don't fucking drink because I just fucking don't, and I won't. I go home, and engage in all manner of unmentionable activities.

Also God is with me. That is good, and frightening. 

*

All right, fuckers, I'm out. Tired. Work has been pissing me off so fucking much lately. I've wanted a drink and a cig like mad, that wanting that is the actual closest thing to the physical sensation of thirst. What a knocked-ass fuck of a life. You can't stop kids from drinking and smoking, and you usually make things worse when you try, but shit hell and god damn do I understand the impulse. 

This post has been a prelude to a drinking story. The kind of drinking story that turns into a few drinking stories? Yes. That's my basic plan. That's what I set out to do, and I did. 

Already home, and not a prom queen in sight! Well, I guess I'll just read a book and go to bed.


--JL

#215

Opened up Microsoft word and chose the font. Went with Cambria Math in fourteen-point. When I first started writing I thought to write straight into Times New Roman, twelve-point font, but that's better for proofing. Still dip back into it pretty often, it's not bad at all. It reminds you what you're doing, which is nice.

Pretty quickly I switched to Courier in ten-point. I would still use that for some stuff. I do not like Courier New. I quit using Courier when I began to feel that I had mastered my old typewriter, which I threw in the garbage in a fit of ego-destroying, memory-driven madness as I gruesomely extracted myself from a narcissist. I had stopped using Courier and its bastard before that, but more recently than I might care to admit maybe. Two and a half years ago. 

This is really basic font-talk, I'm boring the shit out of myself, and the reason I am writing here instead of in the word document I opened is of course that despite my bravado, I am terrified to begin. Hilarious. 

*

Started banging out stories with a purpose at the age of eleven. My fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Bates, made us, called 'em Super Subjects. Just little freewriting exercises. Ole girl knew what she was doing; I was a discipline issue when she took over halfway through the year, and before long mostly all I thought about was how to impress her with my writing. She was fucking tough, see. I sweated over the book reports she assigned and crumpled up I don't know how much good paper getting a paragraph just right. 

Get 'em while their ego is as enormous as only a child's can be, before too much self-consciousness has set in but the process is in motion. I actually hungered to read my work in front of the class. Immigrant boy, best writer in the class. Yeah I fucking liked that. I was, too. Ms. Bates didn't talk to anyone about their writing like she talked to me, not even to KdB., who was and remains to this day fifty times smarter than me. An essay I had to write for D.A.R.E. about why I would never do drugs was selected as the best by the program people and I was put up on stage in the auditorium to read it aloud in front of all the fifth-grade classes. That this should have been my first professional success is perhaps a damning mark over my career; I'm stoned right now and also am a fucking alcoholic.

Hell, I knew when I was filling out those D.A.R.E. worksheets that I was putting on an act for these people. I could feel already that I was fucked up. I remember consciously and cynically putting a tremble into my hand when I filled in some bullshit about how I didn't want to drink because blah-blah-blah and I've seen what drink does to my uncle. More on him another day, there's always good stories around a drunk*. I would be stealing nips from the fine tequila my dad had a bottle of in the freezer right after I got home from school within two years of reading that essay in front of a bunch of beaming cops and teachers. 

"So far above his grade level!" 

lol

Anyway, the problem with writing is it can get out of your hands, become bigger than you, drive you around. When you're a kid it's just something you do, even if it's something you are; it feels more like a choice even though it's really unchaining a drive which, when liberated, will perversely never let you go. No matter what goes wrong, no matter the severity of the ego death or the blindness of drink, you just fucking keep writing. Mostly just to see it burn.

*

So, beginnings are hard, maybe even triggering. That's why I wrote this blog post instead of a single sentence. But it's loosened me up, see? I'm not as nervy as when I sat down. I got a rhythm going and I'm not done with the good good fucking great-ass feeling of punching keys. So I'm gonna try again. Forget all the important work I lost; get hard and go. Writing is Ironborn: what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. Words are wind, and everything is built on the wind.**

*

Ready to start again. 


--JL

*I cannot help but notice, dear reader, that the most hit-upon posts on FP are usually the ones which rely on what I have called the sordid tonal qualities of cigarettes and alcohol. I see you motherfuckers. Well, so be it; I'm finna bring some drinkin stories out this fall for sure. Maybe even tomorrow.

**profound thanks to George R.R. Martin, who is a greater writer than he is taken for; I am aware that the man has risen high, but I stand by my statement. Like Stephen King, he is so fucking rad that to call him merely a great writer is to mildly insult him. The dudes are writer's writers and reader's writers in a way that will outlast much around us that will soon be deservedly forgotten. Speaking in a literary sense. They are at the center of letters and as universally despised as they are popular and beloved for a host of good, bad, simple, and complex reasons.

#214

This year, the first of September, summer died all at once. Autumn was present immediately, with a finality and a completeness that startled, but with such correctness, such inarguable factuality, that the calmest sense of the harvest season blankets the spirit. 

Some grieve the end of summer, but autumn is far and away my favorite time of year, and it was a privilege indeed to be out and touched by its very first breeze of the year, complete with the first sparse and gentle fall of little yellow leaves.

Spent at least a couple hours outside almost every single day this summer like I do, also. Feel like I got a real good strong pull of the season's bottle all the way through, which helps very much with transitions. Transitions can be rough.

*

Yesterday on my usual Sunday double I sustained some real hardcore burns. That was the fun part. The main thing was I had to clean putrefied human feces and shit-impregnated compost from an upright plastic bin, the wheeled kind with a hinged lid. This was quite a process, during which I heated, carried, and poured about forty gallons of soapy water in stockpots. I also used pine floor cleaner. Why not bleach, or any disinfectant, Joseph? That is probably what you are asking.

Because of the kind of workplace I choose for myself (bleach is poison with no excusable human use in those circles, much like canola oil), there is no bleach on the premises. Probably for the best; should I have had some handy, I cannot guarantee I would not have poured undiluted it over my legs and feet when I lost control of the bin and released a tidal wave of rotten shitwater into the back alley, dousing everything below mid-shin. Then again, I would have felt considerably more confident I wasn't going to develop a staph infection in the time it took to finish the job, drive home, wash off, change pants, and drive back to close out the shift, which I did by shattering a  huge panel of safety glass on our salad bar--if there had been any bleach around. But there wasn't. 

Also a dude called off a three-person crew, so it was all suitably overwhelming. 

*

It's a fucking gorgeous autumn day. I'm having a rough time, but because of how bad yesterday was, today feels exultant and unquenchable, and would even if the light weren't golden, the breeze cool, the trees blushing beautifully, the sky that lightest evening blue, extra distant, extra keen.

Sometimes it's be thankful or die. I mean to stay thankful.

*

Picked up more Stephen King books on Saturday, as I read The Shining again and have never read Doctor Sleep, which was among the ones I had not yet grabbed. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie when I went to see It: Chapter Two and it reminded me it'd been years since I reread The Shining, which used to be a favorite and which reliably made me mongo-freaked the living shitfuck out. That book is still a hellacious creepshow. It creeps. Thank heavens.

Loving Doctor Sleep so far. I had no faith that I would when it was released, but I was wrong, which is kind of always the consequence of lacking faith. Faith bears disappointment better than certainty, which is vanity in the first place. But it is amazing how consistently faith bears out; miraculous.

I need this book right now, in fact. With that magic pertaining to wonderful books, it waited till I needed it most. The feeling of needing a drink might be on me very strong right now, were it not for these two books. 

One year sober, folks. No one to give me a chip to carry on my keychain, no cake or candles, but I guess I can share that here. Actually it was a year back in August, but it don't matter.

'Course, I been sober for a year before. Haha! Staying thankful.

*

Anyway, the books:

Saturday

Doctor Sleep

Mr. Mercedes

End of Watch

Dolores Claiborne

The Institute

Sleeping Beauties

Today

Blockade Billy

And, other books not by Stephen King that I also obtained:

Saturday

At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing edited by George Kimball and John Schulan

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (recovery, given to my younger brother)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Today

Neuromancer, by William Gibson (recovery, given to my youngest brother)

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

What is the What by Dave Eggers

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

The Song of Roland translated by Frederick Bliss Luquiens, introduced by Nathan A. Smyth

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot

Jangle the Threads by Scott Beal, Aracelis Girmay, and Rachel McKibbens

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (recovery, given to a friend a long long time ago feels like. I guess twelve maybe thirteen years is a long time but when I use the numbers it feels like less time. so weird)

Dragon of the Lost Sea, Dragon Steel, and Dragon War by Laurence Yep (I checked this series out from the library like a dozen times as a kid, I fucking love the shit out of them. Now I am heedlessly driven to obtain Dragon Cauldron, maybe the best of them and definitely the creepiest. I read that one the most as a kid, and was able to get my hands of Dragon Steel fewer times. The first and last of the series were around about the same frequency. I don't know why things just play out like this sometimes but there is always this kind of reverse play in life with stability mixed in. Wild)

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick

After Dark, by Murakami Haruki
The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well, by Philip Pullman
Animorphs #51: The Absolute by K.A. Applegate

*

Been driving around a lot. I drive again, I guess. All part of the endless healing. Gonna go do that now.

Peace, you golden clits

--JL

#213

Boy oh boy, people of Earth. It is such a time to be alive. 

Often as I walk to and fro I am reminded, because of my propensity for inhaling smoke on purpose (really? Think about it. Really? What a stupid fucking monkey is a man) how amazing it is that the air is still breathable at all. Dirty enough, though. I can tell shit is worse because cities smell like shit. Cities always have, but man, my sense of smell has only gotten worse and less sensitive as I have aged, and I think every city, every town, smells way way worse than in 1995. Man, I went to New York a few years ago, and I never in my life want to go back. Talk about a location that is its own brand of ordure with every step you take. New Yorkers are a proud people, and rightfully so; it is possible that no other city in the world presents such a complex assault on each and every sense the human body possesses, and to be a part of the tradition that has brought about such a state of affairs is surely the province of a powerful culture. God love the place and all, but I wanted to sink down to its bedrock and die there, where there is nothing to smell at all. 

Anyhow, we'll get the turtles, and the crocodiles, some other shit that made it since practically the start of the game, but the algaes and the jellies and the sightless worms that feed on heat in the places where only human beings have ever brought visible light are all going to be fine. This planet has way many life cycles left in it, way many, and we do not matter. Try to live your best life. Fight! Be brave, because courage is more significant than life; or, courage is what makes life significant. The symbol is more than the paper and the ink. We've gone down into the impossible crushing dark and fucked the moon up with our dirty feet; what more could you ask for?

Oh, you want to spread, like a dang virus. Ok, we who live in the Philip K. Dick present will determine how bad the Ridley Scott future can be. Let's play the game. Let us... extrapolate.

*

Almost finished with The Running Man. After I complete it--after its clock runs down, so to speak--I'll probably eat chocolate and watch a movie. Those are the decisions I make in the face of the sixth extinction, as democracy dies in the darkness or some other thundering bullshit an asshole sells.

*

Today I looked at the news and found myself unable to parse the headline. It meant less than nothing to me; it was composed of words I knew, each of them I knew, but together, in the order that they made, they became less than themselves, the reflection inside of a box made of mirrors. Pictures of Donald Trump's face in close-up--really only that, for about a fucking minute, as the headline blared the void itself. I have no idea what the voice-over was saying. It was all extremely grotesque, like licking green furry mold off a log of watery cheese. Sometimes bad tastes can actually cause your tongue to feel like it has withered, withered like a dead flower. Ever experienced that? Think of my brain as a tongue. Think of your own brain as tongue, and watch what you put in your mouth. 

My mom tried to explain it to me. I consider myself a decent presence of mind, on a good day if I'm paying close attention, and all I got was that Donald Trump talked on the phone, and what he said might have been illegal. I almost died of a surprise-induced coronary, I did. Look: if that dude made a promise to somebody, that person is getting fleeced. Bouncing memos about what a criminal says to other criminals--be real; these potentates are each and every last one all washed head to toe with blood, from the meanest to the most exalted, and they all lie to each other and to their lying coworkers and to their real bosses and especially to us--and calling it something to pay attention to? Someone marked the memo urgent. Well holy fucking shit.

Man, I'm glad we can get an economy to run around this kind of bullshit. I'm glad someone's getting paid to run the worst rigged game show, contemptuously scribbled by the most cynical writers on the planet. 

I paid extremely close attention to all sorts of news for a few years there. If you're on that tip, have fun while you can, before you pay close enough attention to see the seams.

*

Before I forget, today I bought volumes 14 and 15 of One Punch Man. Also The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia, companion volume to The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, which has been a jewel in my collection since it hit the shelves. They look so fucking handsome together that I want to take my last shit and drop dead. I'm serious. The latter deepest, richest green, green of the fathers of all firs, the former a blue whose royalty humbles Royal. The heft of them, their smooth, velvety covers, the astonishing image quality, the wild, rich, somehow fleshly scent of their pages, deep in their centers...

Man, I love making pornography of conspicuous consumption. I love being an American. And I fucking love having sexy books. Used books are also exceedingly sexy, but sometimes ripping the plastic off a coffee table book you actually want and being the first living thing to smell it is like having a new woman. Bam. I fucking said that, and I mean it.

Have a beautiful evening. Yes books are yonic and yes the brain is phallic and yes that interpenetration is the perfect balancing of sexual energy because reading is fucking and being fucked, like all good things, especially fucking, and writing*.


--JL

*I discussed this quite recently. I should give in and read more of Peter Sloterdijk's books. I have mentioned this also, I think. If you allow it to be, Peter Sloterdijk's name is both phallic and yonic, but if you've gone that far, it's phallic twice.