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
Showing posts with label drinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drinking. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2019
Thursday, October 3, 2019
#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
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
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
#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
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
Thursday, November 1, 2018
#53
Spring is a dangerous time for me. Most of us spend most of our lives on a set of rails, imposed by circumstance and held to through our own will. The designs of others come into and out of play, needs and duties tug, perhaps a switch of rails is needed every now and again, or a dramatic once.
Some of us are not so good with the business of staying on the rails. Some of us get off. Off the rails, the undergrowth is dense, and maybe you can't ever go back to the old rails. Maybe it's not so sure a thing you find some new rails. And everywhere, amongst the twisted roots and dead leaves, the bones of those who don't. The best you got for signposts, out there, off the map.
Used to work at this Chinese place. The boss's husband was an officious, ignorant, busybodied skinflinted little prick. I've known worse dudes, way worse, but this dude was a wet shit. I only kept my job because he was a little scared of me, as he wouldn't have tolerated a lot of my nonsense--chiefly, putting my feet up and reading a book when there weren't any customers in-house or orders to take, and also complaining immediately and saying no to his face if he said something stupid or told me to do anything ridiculous. These were regular things, with him.
Some of us are not so good with the business of staying on the rails. Some of us get off. Off the rails, the undergrowth is dense, and maybe you can't ever go back to the old rails. Maybe it's not so sure a thing you find some new rails. And everywhere, amongst the twisted roots and dead leaves, the bones of those who don't. The best you got for signposts, out there, off the map.
Used to work at this Chinese place. The boss's husband was an officious, ignorant, busybodied skinflinted little prick. I've known worse dudes, way worse, but this dude was a wet shit. I only kept my job because he was a little scared of me, as he wouldn't have tolerated a lot of my nonsense--chiefly, putting my feet up and reading a book when there weren't any customers in-house or orders to take, and also complaining immediately and saying no to his face if he said something stupid or told me to do anything ridiculous. These were regular things, with him.
Dude was nice to me sometimes, though, and we did have some laughs together. Yet he also sold me my first lemon, a terrible old Plymouth van that barely wanted to start and whose muffler fell off after about a week, which was a fucking bullshit move. But! I never signed the thing over to myself, so when I left it parked in the apartment lot where I lived, and the city towed it, it was him who got hit with the real fucking bullshit. He made noises at me about paying him, but let me tell you, I ignored him completely. His wife ended up making me give him a little out of each paycheck for a while just so he'd shut his mouth about firing me or whatever. I got paid cash under the table, so I couldn't really argue that much, short of quitting, and since I could do the job hungover every day, I wasn't much interested in scanning the market and putting my best foot forward.
No, my interests lay in drinking and smoking myself to death, passing the time by fucking my girlfriend, watching movies every day, playing Super Smash Brothers, and reading the rest of the time. Sometimes I dropped acid, or consumed some other hallucinogen--I was tripping on acid and sitting alone at my typewriter at the moment of J.D. Salinger's death. I wrote a lot of shitty poetry. The bits worth polishing, by the way, survived and made it into one of my books. I scribbled and slam-typed hundreds and hundreds of pages, but only sixty-four are left standing, much amended, and one's the title page.
Thought this was all okay, for my part. Probably the absurd confidence that I would soon be recognized for my vast, unprecedented talents and thrust into a new life took a lot of the edge off.
Man, I hope that's funny to you, because I really just want to rub my face until it vanishes when I think about that. Is there anything more risible than a young writer who has rejected writerly society, secretly convinced that one day, they will beg and plead for him to assume the mantle of literary lion which he so richly deserves, and which he would wear so well? But no! I would never give those...those phonies the satisfaction!
Ah, youth.
Punched out of work one fine Spring day with fresh money in my pocket, though less than what I would have made if I hadn't had to pay that fucking guy money I shouldn't have had to pay him. A half-shift at the Chinese place was always six hours, ten or eleven to four or five and four to ten or five to eleven. Off at five, all high on the money and in a good mood, I thought I'd have a drink at the bar like a gentleman before going home. I did not ever do this. Usually I went straight home, where I would drink at a wooden table by the kitchen window. If I did go to a bar, it would be with my girlfriend, and usually at least one other friend, who cared more about bars than we did.
Had the barman draw me a pint of Two-Hearted, and settled down to read my book at the bar. By the time I was into my second a little bit, a big old fellow sat for a chat, weighing in at least deuce-eighty and aged almost seventy, but still hale, agreeable, breathing well, sound of mind, and of good cheer and friendly disposition. He had a large-cheeked, florid, bright-eyed face behind his big aviator-style glasses, messy white hair, and an affable way of talking. He made conversation by noting that it wasn't often he saw a fellow reading at the bar, in a tone that indicated comradeship rather than the xenophobia of the barely literate, which dissolved my rigid mistrust of anyone older than me that wasn't a dead writer or certain sets of living musicians (after working as a musician a bit*, I now mistrust every living musician.)
He was a computer whiz but from the day. Without revealing too much, he was one of those dudes that had run the huge old computers that cost two billion smackers, ran hotter than a volcanic chute, and couldn't do the thousandth part of what an IBM would be doing in just a decade and change, let alone what your pocket rectangle can do. Dude had his hands in it from the start, and he told me many fascinating stories from the old days, and I was only too happy to listen, interjecting when I felt I could with some question or witticism or to show that I was listening and relating. He was a friendly dude with a good way about him, and I was being as courteous and erudite as I could. We were having a nice time.
Then comes the first break in my memory, somewhere after the fourth beer. I hadn't eaten anything in hours; I meant to go home after one drink.
Next thing I remember I am running back and forth in the bar, yelling and singing something unintelligible, but filled with a ferocious kind of joy. The old fellow's smile was gone, he was shaking his head, torso twisted around on his barstool to regard me gravely. I noticed this, but it in no way dampened me or slowed me down. Another blank spot, and we're at the door of the bar, he's handing me bus fare and actually looking a little alarmed, telling me to just go home, get home and lie down. I brashly assured him that I would, I would, of course I would, couldn't wait to!
Another blank, and the next thing I am aware of is just finishing a word, my finger in my boss's husband's face. No idea what I said to him, but I had put my face about two inches away from him to say it. He looked completely bowled over, and just started moving his head slowly from side to side. "You gotta go, Joe," he intoned slowly. "You gotta go."
Drawing my lips back from my teeth, I growled silky through a rage I hadn't realized I'd been feeling, let alone acting on. "Okay, man. I will. I will."
Yet another gap. I'm getting off the bus, laughing hard, laughing my ass off. It was way before my stop, barely halfway home. At the time I didn't know why I'd gotten off so early; it is fairly easy to deduce that I had done something to get myself kicked off the bus, something which certainly had never happened to me before. Don't like the memory of that laugh. It had grown dark. I started walking, feeling like some kind of king.
Flashes, now. I found myself trespassing on a pharmaceutical company's private property--no fucking memory of jumping a fence and wading through some kind of mudfield just to get someplace I wasn't supposed to be, but there I was. I don't remember leaving, either. I remember staring at a traffic light with my mouth open. I remember screaming--fucking screaming, long wordless shrieks like to break glass, tearing at my throat, at a dude walking his dog. I know that dude didn't do anything to me. I have no idea why I did that to him. He kept his head down and kept walking. I would have done the same, some fucking nutball piece of shit in torn muddy jeans screaming blue devil in the darkness so hard he leans over and balls his fists. After that, nothing until opening the front door.
Got home so late that my girlfriend was home. She had been on shift when I got off, must have witnessed my screaming at our boss, and got home before me. I had wandered considerably after the bus, more meanderingly and slowly than I thought. She was waiting, along with my best friend. I had not been picking up my phone.
Their eyes, their wide scared eyes--they both have such light blue, such expressive eyes, eyes I knew so well, eyes so filled with pain and fear. All on me. By me, for me, because of me. If we exchanged words in that moment, or after, I have since forgotten them. But I will never forget their faces, their postures, most especially, their eyes, as I walked through that door.
Would have preferred to walk into four splinter bullets shattering into my torso and genitals than to walk into those eyes.
*
Don't ever be like me. Don't suffer people like me in your life. Shit like this, much more like it, and some even worse, is why I am a ruined nervous wreck with no friends**.
--JL
*roadied under circumstances I'll go into sometime; been in a few bands. Bad scenes, ranging from mere tomfoolery to actual abusive situations. I still make music all alone. Maybe someday if I make some more recordings I will share. The recordings I have, I don't know what decisions to make about them yet. But I have been playing music since I was a toddler; some of my earliest memories are of a musical daycare I attended and have always loved fooling around on pianos and xylophones, loved whistling and singing. I played trumpet and tuba in middle and high school, taught myself bass, drums, harmonica, and guitar, and have fooled around on countless weird electronic instruments. That's why I mention on some days off that I played some instruments.
No, my interests lay in drinking and smoking myself to death, passing the time by fucking my girlfriend, watching movies every day, playing Super Smash Brothers, and reading the rest of the time. Sometimes I dropped acid, or consumed some other hallucinogen--I was tripping on acid and sitting alone at my typewriter at the moment of J.D. Salinger's death. I wrote a lot of shitty poetry. The bits worth polishing, by the way, survived and made it into one of my books. I scribbled and slam-typed hundreds and hundreds of pages, but only sixty-four are left standing, much amended, and one's the title page.
Thought this was all okay, for my part. Probably the absurd confidence that I would soon be recognized for my vast, unprecedented talents and thrust into a new life took a lot of the edge off.
Man, I hope that's funny to you, because I really just want to rub my face until it vanishes when I think about that. Is there anything more risible than a young writer who has rejected writerly society, secretly convinced that one day, they will beg and plead for him to assume the mantle of literary lion which he so richly deserves, and which he would wear so well? But no! I would never give those...those phonies the satisfaction!
Ah, youth.
Punched out of work one fine Spring day with fresh money in my pocket, though less than what I would have made if I hadn't had to pay that fucking guy money I shouldn't have had to pay him. A half-shift at the Chinese place was always six hours, ten or eleven to four or five and four to ten or five to eleven. Off at five, all high on the money and in a good mood, I thought I'd have a drink at the bar like a gentleman before going home. I did not ever do this. Usually I went straight home, where I would drink at a wooden table by the kitchen window. If I did go to a bar, it would be with my girlfriend, and usually at least one other friend, who cared more about bars than we did.
Had the barman draw me a pint of Two-Hearted, and settled down to read my book at the bar. By the time I was into my second a little bit, a big old fellow sat for a chat, weighing in at least deuce-eighty and aged almost seventy, but still hale, agreeable, breathing well, sound of mind, and of good cheer and friendly disposition. He had a large-cheeked, florid, bright-eyed face behind his big aviator-style glasses, messy white hair, and an affable way of talking. He made conversation by noting that it wasn't often he saw a fellow reading at the bar, in a tone that indicated comradeship rather than the xenophobia of the barely literate, which dissolved my rigid mistrust of anyone older than me that wasn't a dead writer or certain sets of living musicians (after working as a musician a bit*, I now mistrust every living musician.)
He was a computer whiz but from the day. Without revealing too much, he was one of those dudes that had run the huge old computers that cost two billion smackers, ran hotter than a volcanic chute, and couldn't do the thousandth part of what an IBM would be doing in just a decade and change, let alone what your pocket rectangle can do. Dude had his hands in it from the start, and he told me many fascinating stories from the old days, and I was only too happy to listen, interjecting when I felt I could with some question or witticism or to show that I was listening and relating. He was a friendly dude with a good way about him, and I was being as courteous and erudite as I could. We were having a nice time.
Then comes the first break in my memory, somewhere after the fourth beer. I hadn't eaten anything in hours; I meant to go home after one drink.
Next thing I remember I am running back and forth in the bar, yelling and singing something unintelligible, but filled with a ferocious kind of joy. The old fellow's smile was gone, he was shaking his head, torso twisted around on his barstool to regard me gravely. I noticed this, but it in no way dampened me or slowed me down. Another blank spot, and we're at the door of the bar, he's handing me bus fare and actually looking a little alarmed, telling me to just go home, get home and lie down. I brashly assured him that I would, I would, of course I would, couldn't wait to!
Another blank, and the next thing I am aware of is just finishing a word, my finger in my boss's husband's face. No idea what I said to him, but I had put my face about two inches away from him to say it. He looked completely bowled over, and just started moving his head slowly from side to side. "You gotta go, Joe," he intoned slowly. "You gotta go."
Drawing my lips back from my teeth, I growled silky through a rage I hadn't realized I'd been feeling, let alone acting on. "Okay, man. I will. I will."
Yet another gap. I'm getting off the bus, laughing hard, laughing my ass off. It was way before my stop, barely halfway home. At the time I didn't know why I'd gotten off so early; it is fairly easy to deduce that I had done something to get myself kicked off the bus, something which certainly had never happened to me before. Don't like the memory of that laugh. It had grown dark. I started walking, feeling like some kind of king.
Flashes, now. I found myself trespassing on a pharmaceutical company's private property--no fucking memory of jumping a fence and wading through some kind of mudfield just to get someplace I wasn't supposed to be, but there I was. I don't remember leaving, either. I remember staring at a traffic light with my mouth open. I remember screaming--fucking screaming, long wordless shrieks like to break glass, tearing at my throat, at a dude walking his dog. I know that dude didn't do anything to me. I have no idea why I did that to him. He kept his head down and kept walking. I would have done the same, some fucking nutball piece of shit in torn muddy jeans screaming blue devil in the darkness so hard he leans over and balls his fists. After that, nothing until opening the front door.
Got home so late that my girlfriend was home. She had been on shift when I got off, must have witnessed my screaming at our boss, and got home before me. I had wandered considerably after the bus, more meanderingly and slowly than I thought. She was waiting, along with my best friend. I had not been picking up my phone.
Their eyes, their wide scared eyes--they both have such light blue, such expressive eyes, eyes I knew so well, eyes so filled with pain and fear. All on me. By me, for me, because of me. If we exchanged words in that moment, or after, I have since forgotten them. But I will never forget their faces, their postures, most especially, their eyes, as I walked through that door.
Would have preferred to walk into four splinter bullets shattering into my torso and genitals than to walk into those eyes.
*
Don't ever be like me. Don't suffer people like me in your life. Shit like this, much more like it, and some even worse, is why I am a ruined nervous wreck with no friends**.
--JL
*roadied under circumstances I'll go into sometime; been in a few bands. Bad scenes, ranging from mere tomfoolery to actual abusive situations. I still make music all alone. Maybe someday if I make some more recordings I will share. The recordings I have, I don't know what decisions to make about them yet. But I have been playing music since I was a toddler; some of my earliest memories are of a musical daycare I attended and have always loved fooling around on pianos and xylophones, loved whistling and singing. I played trumpet and tuba in middle and high school, taught myself bass, drums, harmonica, and guitar, and have fooled around on countless weird electronic instruments. That's why I mention on some days off that I played some instruments.
**my ex is still my friend, and time has put this all behind us. I have many friends. I am simply too often fool enough to forget that. Frankly, that paragraph is profoundly stupid in every way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)