New Year's Eve: I went swimming in the morning. It was Friday. Alvin let me go at about 12:30, and said let's cancel the rest of the year. I said, sounds cool. I got in the old gray wagon and drove to Oakland St where I found Matt Bennett's tattoo shop. About 20 minutes later, his friend and co-artist was busy piercing my skin 100's (1000's?) of times a minute, leaving the image of a big, black and red spider right on my sternum. It hurt. But it looks cool as hell. I went home and walked the dog, washed the spider 4 times, got restless, called Glenn, called Sara @ work, and finally figured out for sure that I was, in fact, invited to Robin's for dinner. I went over there and it was her, Glenn, Darlene and Joe. While Robin finished grilling the chicken for the salads, the rest of us played darts, drank wine, talked shit and apparently laughed a lot cuz I found out later that Robin was listening to us and smiling. At one point we gathered around while Glenn recitd a poem from his remarkable memory, about "little orphant annie" and the black shapes that will carry you off thru the hole in the ceiling. I felt like I was at Callahan's or something. We went to the Tasting Room, danced some. I went with Sara and her friend Eric from Colorado, outside to smoke some pot. Came back @ 11:55 and David Robinson recited his "Days End" poem/song. Is anyone happier because you came his way? Does anyone remember that he talked with you today? I held Glenn's hand across the table. I was having, and I told him so, the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience. Someone counted down the last few seconds. At "zero" Joe swung over and planted a huge kiss on Darlene's mouth, and the table broke up. I kept saying "what a man" and laughing and clapping and smiling. Darlene flushed and was bright and plump. Then there was a disturbance at the next table over. And oldish black man, thin, head kind of lolling, was being sick. The whole room got quiet. David and another guy, the percussionist I think, went over to help. We all sat and waited. There was a thunderous roar that seemed to roll over the roof of the place like a slow motion monster jet, then some cracks and booms from far away. Someone at a table in the middle of the room said quietly to someone else, there's some serious shit going down out there. I said to Glenn, for all we know there's no world left out there. I looked at the one window, small and high up. It was grey and foggy. I felt safe and scared all at once. The piano player clinked out a few chords, which at first I thought was insensitive but I changed my mind. It turned out the old guy was all right. They cleaned him up. He laughed. A little later, paramedics showed up. Glenn was genuinely touched that they were working on NYE. He said he had wanted to say happy new year or something but they were already gone. So there I was, thinking about bravery, responsibility, capability, feeling a little ineffectual. But the music started, the sounds started up again. A scrippy black guy made up a millenium rap and said it into the mike. Everyone yelled and cheered. David Robinson laughed about the "Y 2 Scare" instead of Y2K, about how civilization hadn't ended after all. I decided to enjoy it and not waste it. We got up to dance again. This time I took RObin's hand, and she came with us. The percussion made me nearly orgasmic. This keen looking black lady watched me, with approval I felt, and probably amusement, as I went through my gyrations. My heart was so full, and my hands clenched and unclenched and I laughed/cried. Robin laughed and said "you're funny." and we hugged and it felt really really good & warm like sunlight. She seemed to give off a gentle moon-white light. We all sat again. Glenn and Darlene gave me good go-get-her shit. Slava engaged her in conversation. Finally I got wicked enuf to intercede. I cut in. I kneeled by her and took her hand. We danced some more. Then sat again. Slava descended on her again. But eventually went away to be his weird, buggy Russian self somewhere else. I put my head on the table and Robin stroked my hair, a little tentatively but it felt nice. She said I had soft hair, I said you should meet my dog. She said I'd love to. Later she put her head down and I almost let it go by but then I started stroking her hair. And her glowing, elegant neck and forehead and temples. Glenn & Darlene gave me some more eyecontact shit across the table. It was nice. Also, Darlene at some point was trying to get me to say I was interested in Robin. But I kept noncommittal and said I'd rather do it myself anyway. Without machination or intervention. Sara made us get up and dance one more time. I was so sleepy. I was trying to explain to Robin as we stood there swaying in a relaxed half hug, about how amazingly nonintrusive and multilayered was the message (love each other) that I was getting from David and de Sunshine Crew. "You can just listen or you can--" And then the guy with the shell necklace who sometimes plays digeridoo started singing "Lay down...my brother...lay down and take your rest...." and without thinking I started singing along. Harmony, a little bit. He looked at me, said "Yeah." and I was pretty sure he meant it to be encouraging, but I was too far gone to let little doubts stop me anyway. The keen black lady walked by with a keen smile. We sang for a bit then the spell broke and I finished the line solo and laughed. Robin said "you sing like an angel" and I said thank you and we stood there a bit more, feeling warm and close together. Back at the table Darlene was being Jackie-like and trying to get Glenn not to leave. I said to Robin "I'm a little concerned." Went over to them, hand on each one's shoulder, and said "share with the class." I suggested to D that if G wanted to go he could go. But of course he was stumbling drunk and I said "why don't you let me give you a ride." partly cuz I was concerned, partly to give him a break from her, and partly because it sounded like a good man thing to say. I interrupted Slava & Robin again, with a certain loose grace I rarely find, to tell her I was taking him home and was she okay. She said she was. In the car, G and I saw them coming out of the bar, and I offered to take them (R and D) to Robin's car but she said it was right over there. So I took G home and he said "All my friends are awesome--even you!" And we hugged and I went on home. NExt morning I realized I was going to leave around my neck the little blue beads Robin had put there. Walked Dex, saw Michael and his folks, said Happy New Year and meant it. Michael told me some stories about some of the badguys he and some of our other neighbors have apprehended, and he kept saying as if he really wanted to teach me something: you've got to get involved. keep an eye out. don't hesitate to pick up the phone. knock on a door...you've got to get involved. we don't play no shit here." and i really want to learn what he's saying. When Robin came over last night and I waited outside until she got in her car, despite her sweet protestations of “it's cold out here! go inside!" i felt like maybe i really do have it in me to be brave. \*\*\* My apartment smells bazaar: bacon, french toast, coffee, slow-cooking apples, tobacco smoke, nag champa, patchouli, and the melting January air coming in through a crack in the storm. \*\*\* My life changed forever when I met the holy cocksucker. I was sitting in a cafe on the low and funky side of town when he walked in. Yeah, I looked up. Just like everyone else. That particular cafe, if you open the door and walk in, everybody looks at you. The tables are even arranged to make it happen naturally. Sorry if you don't feel comfortable. There are other cafes . . . . So anyway, in he comes, and instead of the usual defensive disinterest stiffening his demeanor, his face actually brightened as we stared at him. His walk slowed down. He fairly sauntered to the counter and ordered, in a clear alto by no means effete, a double white chocolate mocha. Yes to the whipped cream. Quickly I counted nine patrons in the room (and two employees behind the counter). Of the patrons, fully 8 of them wore a stare/not-stare, a weedy perimeter of caution more than choking back any flowers of interest. I don't know what made me open my hand to find the little blossom there. Flowers have always been my weakness, I guess. Maybe it's like this where you live, too, now, but at that time in that city, flowers were a definite weakness. "Hi," I said to him as he was turning away from the counter with his steaming cup. That one syllable split open the chilly room--fissures triangulated and spiderwebbed the whole space with shattered radiance. "Hi," he said, reasonably enough. "Mind if I sit down?" I could hear the turntables of all the other conversations in the room reluctantly yet eagerly grind back up to speed. The needles had squawked, the skips had skipped, and everything was grooving again. "Please," I said. "Mind if I smoke?" he asked, settling lightly into the chair opposite me. "No," I said. For some reason I was actually eager to see him light up, and I detest cigarettes. He produced not the cosmetically cosmopolitan smokes I had expected, but a pack of ordinary Marlboros. A yellow Bic appeared in his hand. He spun the wheel, the flint scraped, the spark jumped, the gas hissed, the svelte flame danced its brief life away, yearning towards the tip of the cigarette, convulsed once, twice, and flickered out of existence. The young man leaned back with a look of greater contentment than I had ever seen. He sighed largely, and smoke shot out of him like ink from a squid. "Thank you," he said, smiling guilelessly. "No, thank you," I said, without a hint of the usual sardonicism I normally used for such stock replies. "Do you have a motorcycle?" he asked. "No," I admitted. He considered this. "Too freaking cold for that anyway," he said at last. In fact winter was insinuating its acetone self even through the plate glass near which we sat. "Car?" he asked. "It ain't much." "Can we get these to go?" "Well--" I got up and left the table, to return shortly with styrofoams and sippy lids. "Excellent," he said and his eyes were neon exclamation marks. He squashed his cigarette into the ashtray, paying more attention to this act than most smokers seem to. Without another word we exited the cafe. My station wagon was still there, decomposing under a rime of salt and snowmelt. It was a beautiful old piece of shit. A Chevy and no doubt about it. Gray as the lake when a sawtooth wind is blowing in. Dependable as a manic-depressive girlfriend. In a flash of gender-defiant chivalry I unlocked and opened the passenger door for my new acquaintance. He smiled demurely, gathered up the ends of his enormous wool scarf, and got in. On my way back around to the driver's side, the thing that happens to me sometimes, happened to me. I looked around and saw where I was, and it was good. I saw a sign for ---- Street hanging in the angel air like tears in a bricklined garden. I saw the cafe behind us, now rendered as an antique photograph, now glowing like a small campfire in a big woods. I heard cars hissing down winter-wet pavement. I swear, I actually heard a saxophone, small and aluminum-sounding, from somewhere off stage. Everything was just right, like two marbles clicking together. Like the phone ringing and a strange, good friend saying hello. Like waking from a dream of safe mediocrity long enough to see that yes, this is it, this is the real, cold, wet, aching world, full of music and going somewhere, through shifting constellations and ghost-ridden nebulae to the mystery planet, the place we all left home for aeons ago, the place we forgot we were trying to find as we played cards and smoked and drank mochas in the corrugated corridors and crenellated crannies of our interstellar vessel-- "Sorry," I said as I clambered in behind the wheel. "Let's get some heat going here." I turned on the car and the Dead gushed out of the speakers-- Lately it occurs to meWhat a long strange trip it's been . . . . \*\*\* Leave the skillet in to season until 6:30. Winter. Smoke. Drums in the kitchen. The snow and the presidential race are all outside. I am a mole in a mole hole. The politics that does interest me is getting to know my neighbors. Let me put my shoes on and we will go out. It smells like hot oil in here and out there like wood smoke. I have had good friends, and have been loved. 1/31/00 I thought the KOOL cigarette ads were so deplorable because they showed hot women being coyly, sexily, irresistibly being drawn away from their boyfriends toward partially visible hot men, with tight-ass jeans, who clutched boxes of KOOL cigarettes. I thought the ads reprehensible but even worse were the contemptible, ridiculous, pitiable, unevolved souls who would fall for that kind of insultingly obvious propaganda. And yet I smoke tobacco myself. Especially at bars, in social situations, or when my failure to write a book or have an adventure leaves me sitting at the kitchen table with time and ashes on my hands, feeling almost but not quite like a man. feb 5, 00 (Counting Crows is on the radio, on David Dye's World Cafe. The world is a blessed place. My home is a pocket of warmth. I know I shouldn't forget that the world is also a cold place, that there are pockets of curses that blow up and down the streets like dirty plastic grocery bags--but don't worry. I can't forget that so let me live in here in the bacon-smelling warmth for at least an hour or so; please let that be all right.) 2/14/00 Last night Robin told me about her dead boyfriend and I thought, wow, 'I could never take the place of your man,' and it felt all right just to hold her. And she told me I was like the Neverending Story, like that world, and that made me cry and I said that's my life goal if I have one--to make that world and this one meet, in some way that is not trivial. And I showed her the Goethe quotation Dad wrote under my Tonahutu photograph and I said I thought it was an expression of his faith in me, as well as a handing down of a responsibility. April 29, 2000 Claire April 30, 2000 I want to paint my nails now, or masturbate, or drink water or eat something else or call someone else, or type some more, or stretch or do yoga, or lie in a cornfield with Taelin who left me that bastard, left me in Seattle to go back to Missouri after practically begging me not to leave him--or did he never really do that? Well anyway, I want to do something. Something that feels good. Something you could get from a Purveyor of Bodily Joy. Maybe get a massage get a massage get a massage. Or visit a UFO like the one Katy comes from, the weird torus-shaped metal world where they smile at you and everybody else knows why but you. Or spend hours learning how to encode the earth--all the pebbles pressed firmly into the tight mud by somebody's heel as i turned around to talk to her again after long silence and she had turned into an alien ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i'm working monday. who am i telling this\>to\>me\>or? April 30, 2000 Claire. I want to suckle at your tit, I want to sidle in between your wet breasts and breathe, I want to stroke your hair and neck and see your smile, i want to feel you squeezing me and i want to taste your skin as we fuck. I want to feel protective of you again. I want to breathe in perfect, thrilling sync with you again. I wanna hear you say, "You wanna fuck me?" again. Will you still say it when your kid is there? Do you still want it? Or is that all in the past now? May 9, 2000 so this is what it's like to be in a journal and hit the space bar with your left thumb. May 9, 2000 on second thought, maybe not Claire. At least not THAT way. May 9, 2000 You wanna fuck me again? May 9, 2000 Cuz I wanna fuck you. May 9, 2000 Whoever you are. May 9, 2000 My imaginary boyfriend. so this is what it's like to be a grownup. Let me send a message now, if I [still] can: let me see. What do I want you to see? Do you care? What do you want me to see? Can you believe I want to sit here and hand down advice? Me, with my fractured and closeted little mind? More? You want more? But that's what got you [me] into trouble in the first place! Hey--you remember the airplane? Yeah, the Florida one was pretty cool. But I was thinking of the one back from London. You know, I think I'm afraid of coming out because a) it seems like everyone wants me to--at least everyone in my mind--or else doesn't want me to b) i don't know if i really mean it or just want some drama to distract/attract me c) i'm afraid i do mean it but no-one will believe me (or care) d) it would be embarassing if it did turn out to be "just a phase" and I went back to being straight e) when was I ever straight? well, now in one sense I was straight before I got on that airplane back from London, and--what, crooked?--when I got back. Because on that airplane when the future me said to the present me, remembering that airplane, "Ah, that was back when I still hung around with women. That was when I still cared!", chuckled in a fond, protecting way and then disappeared like a fish back into the lake, it was the first time I looked at my gayness and smiled. and in one sense I was straight before Chris Velander. Sure, I loved him. Why not? He had those cute, pudgy little red hands and yet he could muster such fierceness it'd spray off him like sweat. how well he wrestled me down, in my dreams, made me beg, in my dreams, made me his slave, in my dreams, made me wear a dress and parade about outside, in my dreams. touched my chest with his chest. no confession is ever complete and neither so shall this one be. fucking drama queen [what a thing to call your ex(future)-self!]. sitting there planning everything you're going to say and masquerading as smart yeah whatever. you can't scare me with that shit any more, man. i got thirteen reasons why not. 1. i will kick your ass if you don't shut up. 2. i am invisible and everythingproof 3. because i said so 4. because i love it when you talk dirty to me baby 5. because because because i know you would never really say that to me and mean it. right? 6. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. sheep7. yeah whatever dude just keep it up 8. because i'm not waiting around for you to hurt me any more; i bought a horse and am going downtown. you're welcome to come along if you can catch up 9. because it's true and i don't care 10. because i'm not 11. ? 12. because i know the difference 13. and so do you. you;ve gotten a lot more somber over the years, buddy? or is that just me, looking back, seeing it that way? i'm not sure. but in any case, I love you. I do. I'm not just saying that because that's what you say at the end of the-- when did I learn to mistrust so? gotta mow the yards tomorrow. said i would. sometimes i hate how much of my dad i got in me. other times i don't. that's all for now. i will come back soon to see if you are here. hey--on second thought why don't you come with me! Yeah! It'll be great. I'll take you to the land of the pillows, where you'll know everything! We'll feel each other breathing, slick each other's bare skin. We'll fit one inside the other like--one! I'll show you I trust you by bringing you with me to this, the other side of the mirror! What do you say? Well, okay-- Thank you. I can't promise you excitement but I promise I will let you look as deeply as you wish. You{I already am}are. May 16, 2000 Hello. It is near5ly o'clock. I am stoned, listening to Van Morisson (down at the Kingdom Hall), still checking my thoughts as always, a little green around the ankles from Weedeeting Alvin's yard, and finally coming around to thinking about Ann. Ann..... Annnnnm.....Annnnnmmmmmmmmmmm . . . . . . . . . it's as if if i have any doubts i'll jynx it or something. we we we we we All day at work: ("did she call? why did i tell katy about it? it did feel good to talk about it. also felt a little good to see katy bemused. i felt kinda grown up. over at alvin's, staring at the grass: did she call? she called me bunny! will she keep calling me that? will she say it all sexy-cute-wicked like she did at Linneman'S? will my penis be hard enough often enough to keep her coming around? does Glenn hate me? when am I going to call him again? when is he going to call me again? why did he sound like that on the voice mail? am i going to be sorry i didn't hold out for a boyfriend? could i not still have one anyway? what are the parameters here? are there any? do you want some? and so on.") listen. she says you gotta name the wolf. the wolf needs a name, man. he knocked you down two times already; that means he likes you. she says you wouldn't train in the dojo with her and you're thinking that's because you can't do that job for her. but you can name the wolf, that seems all right. plus you can't wait til she wakes up and tells you you named it. you can't wait to see her forehead uncrinkle again as she gets safely (impelled, you hope, at least partly by the soothing wind of your caressing presence) through the dark place with the bad guy and through the door into the green and wonderful magic place. you can't wait to hear her laugh like that again--relaxed, alert, opulent--as you're both, what, riding the horses? what was yours named again? taking a swim in the river? or touching the chameleon, blue? you can't wait til she wakes up to tell you but you don't want to wake her because you want to keep watching her smile, hear her utter one word here, a few words there: " . . . no, you! . . . . . you stay here by the water . . . . ." and you feel kinda like you're eavesdropping but it feels all right and anyway you don't think you could quit if you tried. and maybe later you can go in your own room in the cave, the one she said was there for you, behind a tapestry like the others, the one she said had lots of drums and a desk so you can write. so you can write. so you can't wait to see if she still wants to touch you, if today is still like yesterday and you're still captivating her attention. and then you just can't wait because lately i haven't been feeling quite as guilty as i used to. not quite, not all the time at least. "you can be as big a loser as you want, just don't be an asshole about it." (my latest spell. i suppose by the time i write them down they're just about chewed up, but who knows. maybe it'll recharge if it sits a while. a lot of them do, you know.) and you wonder whether she's lying or not but but but why would she and does it matter? she cleaned dexter's ears. and you wonder whether you're lying or not and why would you and does it matter, right? but somehow you don't want to extend the courtesy of those questions to yourself, now why do you suppose that is. finally it comes down to getting in that hot air balloon after all, the one they wouldn't let go up that one day because the wind was blowin and they didn't want to be liable for two little kids and their mother. the one that when you didn't get into it and go up it was the greatest relief and the biggest disappointment in your life. so far. so what's it gonna be? so what's it so what's it so what's what's it gonna be? ooooooooo lord, tell me, what's it gonna be come on come on sing it. May 16, 2000 ps: also she said she didn't mind if you were slow to open up. matt, when was the last time you met someone who had a little world, just like yours only different! June 16, 2000 most people like their highspirited, mischeivous, unfettered people to be on TV or in the movies, where they can safely be lauded and applauded but where their self-injected freedoms can remain fantasy, phantasm, something that cannot touch us and wake us up, say hey you asked for me you got me big sucker, now what are YOU gonna do? July 10, 2000 Finally got the computer the way I like it; got rid of that pesky Internet crap, got a nice view of the inside of the ship from here (so what [but {so what} less threatening than when I was 29]). August 26, 2000 Took all the bars off the windows and all the heavy draperies. Security, Schmecurity; I need some fucking light! September 2, 2000 already came once today (by myself) and still got the precome-rub-up-against effect by sleeping next to ann. It's because we stayed up all night talking again, and i feel closer to her again. less obligated to have sex with her to enjoy her. Sept. ?? 2000 I have surrounded myself with toys but miraculously it hasn't helped; I'm still this half-empty husk of a man who wants to be alive but isn't quite, who woke up half-created and now wanders blindly in the mud room, looking for a door or a window or a way out, not even knowing what's out there or how it compares to what's in here, just shambling tensely about registering pain and a sort of numb confusion, not quite being able to form the question, "why am i here, doing this," existing only, breathing, eating pathetically, shitting. i bang listlessly, painfully on the drums, trying to summon? or conjure a force beyond my comprehension. there is no-one on the island but me. my shack is built up against the elements, preserving me only for my own preservation, not because a ship might come or anyone cares. waaa, waaa, waa. whatever, dude. you can't even forge out of whining self fuckoff let me the fuck away from here, i can't stand staring into this thing any longer and it doesn't help and it tastes like a chalky, bitter prescription from a short-haired evil doctor who doesn't know me and only wants to touch my mama but she's oblivious and sticks me back in the hot-leather-smelling Lincoln and we drive away with the windows sealed up til I can feel them squeezing my neck like the turtleneck she made me wear and i can hardly breathe and the air conditioner's on and it makes the air syruppy and the streets outside hiss silently and i give up and plop back into the leather seat and it slowly slowly sucks me down in in in in in in in into another world and i wake up in that world not quite knowing what's wrong with me, just knowing something's wrong and i wake up in pajamas in the brilliant outdoors, surrounded by trees and bright green leaves reflecting marbled sunlight and there are birds twittering about and moss and rocks and i get out of my straw pile, stretch, dust off my pajamas, and think, what about a quest? somebody said there was something about a quest, but all i have is my pajamas, not even a knife or a wallet or a pair of shoes, and little nemo flashes through my head but i immediately let that thought go because who wants to be so helpless. who? who wants to be helpless? and the quest ends there because i haven't the strength to conjure any animals, friends, or enemies, and so i just stand there, blinking, in the sun until the sun starts to fade and right before it goes completely dark i have a flash of pain in my heart like, i could have done something here in this world, if i had only wanted to, or been awake enough, or had some energy, or not fallen into the leather car seat trap, i could have maybe done something, gone somewhere, and now it is too too late and i will never ever get another chance and here comes oblivion thank god but it is oblivion unearned and so i will not feel like celebrating the nothingness, the resting will be stickysweet and make my stomach hurt and i will not be solid nor thumped on the back by other warriors, no one will know who i was or what i did, and that, friends, is hell. i feel i could go thru reams and reams and reams and never really get what it is that is bugging me, that's all. and this isn't helping. what will? do i hafta let go of something? because i'm not very good at letting go of things. and then there was the man who wrote poems and stories and he gave them away free, he distributed them in quirky local bookstores and on the Internet, he left them fluttering in the breeze and tacked to streetlights, he left stacks of them in restaurants and coffeeshops. he gave them all away. and then when he was about to die, someone asked him why he never got any of them published or sold any of them or claimed copyright credit for them, and he thought about his answer, and how all his life he had told himself it was because the fame didn't matter, it wasn't notoriety he was after, he had just wanted to say those things, type those things, and giving them away had made them free, made them honest, and finally he said to the person who asked, "because i was afraid they weren't any good." September 4, 2000 When I was a kid I could just type, and forget about meaning anything, forget about everything being a parable, even forget about making sense. And weirdly, sometimes the stuff made a certain kind of sense. It had allure because it was freeing, whereas now I have to work too hard and the reward is this choked stuff that fails to be like someone else's better work. Is this at all what they're talking about when they talk about losing innocence? Or Van's sense of wonder? I don't know, but I'd sure like to feel like I had permission to just type again. I guess what I'm saying is, I wish it were fun again. I wish to be excused from the obligation to be a tough, cynical, insightful old bird who's nobly fighting off psychic opposition at every turn. I even live in this shitty neighborhood because it makes me feel more legitimate, more suffering. Well, partly because I can't afford to live too many other places in town, but that's a different story. I guess misery just isn't working for me. I need something else. What is it? Should I get hypnotized to find out? Spend more time alone? More time with friends? Spend less of my energy trying to get laid by my ex-girlfriends-club? (Probably. That one's really making me feel slimy lately, especially after Katy pointed it out when I sidled up to her from behind: "It's times like these when I wonder if the only reason you're friends with me is because of sex." Oh katy, it's not the only reason, but it's the main one. Of course, any time I get a new girlfriend katy wins back my attention with sex, but I guess that's different.) So maybe Bukowski could sit up and write poem after poem, poems that saved his ass and that other people, at least now, want. Maybe I'm not as lucky as him. Does that mean I should just stop altogether? There's people that shoot bigger wads of come than me, too, and more often, does that mean I'm going to stop ejaculating? Hell, no. I remember reading in Douglas Adams that most people just want a fairly safe, mediocre life, maybe a nice house, nothing too much scary going on. And at the time there seemed to be something dreadfully wrong with that, and I was afraid I was going to be one of those people. Now it seems that most of the time, I act like I am one of those people, and yet there's this lingering sense of something missing, something exciting, alive, or even just plain old unpredictable. So what's up? Do I just linger on, live out my life sanely and mediocrely, or do I go pick a fight with the gods? What am I waiting for? Why do I keep asking some variant of this question, over and over, as if waiting for someone besides me to answer it, then damning them for failing to do so? I obsess over whether it's possible for me to be a great writer and whose fault it is that I'm not; Ann obsesses over why donut holes are called donut holes when they're not, really. Who the fuck is more sane? September 5, 2000 I call up Ann at work and she asks how my day was. I maunder a little and say I'm feeling pathetic and depressed today I guess. She says that's bad. Then she says well maybe that's good sometimes. Which is funny because it's kind of what I had been contemplating before I called her, only it catches me off guard to hear her suggest it, instead of the usual line of pity-momma-love I'm accustomed to getting from my girlfriends. Then she says, well maybe being pathetic isn't so good. Maybe you need to get off your pity-pot. I am silent a moment, then say maybe so. And change the subject. Not bad, not bad. Oh and did I mention that the one thing that cheered me up when I came home from work feeling like a failed, untalented writer-poseur, was seeing her crumpled-up, dirtysoled "love"-embroidered socks on my rug beside the bed. socks on my rug beside the bed. September 15, 2000 That is supposed to say "sept 15, 2000" if it doesn't somethins' wrong. i went to Switch the gay bar to try and feel good and they had somenice people thaer who helped me not feel quite so bad for not having a reason to exist and not being a genius novelist who grew up freaky but then i had to come home andwolk the dog. fuck me fuck me fuck me oily up the sopping wet ass hole September 28, 2000 what do you do? October 1, 2000 MAYBE all my friends are crazy (and I). you want me to say what i'm supposed to say but you tell me you want me to say how i feel you act like you want me when i'm with someone else but when you have me you don't really want me to be myself. you don't really know what to do with me. and i could sit here and tear you down for it, rip you up, but that has never worked so far. . . . i'm not free to love (myself) because i haven't earned the right. everything's vivid but dark; like the lighting in a dismal, furry theatre tucked somewhere in a corner off an alley off an alley off an alley off the corner of a tube-lit custard-stand in the blazing midnight of an asteroid that does not exist. you worship your heroes and ignore your friends. September 11, 2000 um. even if you have, lets say, about a millionth of a millionth part of genius in you, you might as well let that much out by relinquishing your grasp on how everyone else has done it and what-all they have made themselves out to be. did you ever think your insistence at failing as a writer could have something to do with your insistence that you should be a writer? do you enjoy typewriters? then play with them. do you enjoy printing? then print. do you enjoy politics? then go get involved with peace action, or aclu, or literacy group downtown, or something. whatever it is, do it. even if it means sitting in this room drinking wine. but somehow i suspect there's more to it than that. ps: you always know a little something extra in the morning. this morning it was: whatever it is you're trying to prove, don't bother. yeah, i like that. i like reading thru this shit later. i like the way the words roll. sometimes i write in journals because it's something to do, better'n tv, etc etc, but the fact is i like to keep making more of it so i can eat it all up later. and secretly dream about how cool somebody will think i am or was when they read it after i'm not around or dead. well, okay, so fuckin rape me, so i'm conceited. there's worse things, right? like not living the life you were given. like not living the life you were given. you know what makes me feel good? walking fast. glenn's old leather jacket, even with the freaky pumpkin on the back that i know people are looking at funny. yelling. ranting and fucking raving. slamming things around, throwing things away. storming in and out of doors. slamming things down. throwing things away. yelling until my voice gets hoary and mellow. walking fast. it's cold. milwaukee. night. train tracks. even the god damn dogs that make me yell and storm in and out. even the god damn dogs. and the next thing i'm going to do, the as-yet unspecified thing that i'm going to do that is going to result in my touching some strangers, and hopefully riding shotgun with some strangers and hopefully laughing a little bit knowingly with strangers the kind of laugh that makes me forget all the dumb little places in my body that kind of hurt on and off all day. that's what. November 22, 2000 tomorrow i'm going to work early because today i was late because i didn't get up and make sure the alarm was okay when ann left and it wasn't and so i was late and even if i am imagining it i'm going to assume i did not imagine that alvin was pissed off even though he didn't exactly say so, he just said "whatever" at the end of my shuckydarn tale of why i was lAte and at first i was pissed that he was pissed because it's not like i do stuff like that much but i guess i'm sitting here thinking i havent' been real present at work and i used to be and maybe that's just howhe thought i was and not only does he maybe not deal with change very well but maybe he's just starting to think he made a mistake about me and maybe i don't want that to happen and maybe i think i can do something about it if i want to and maybe i want to and so i'm definitely going in to work early tomorrow. amen. commitment scares me so i start to not be present in the situation? or i have a right to be bored because if i were just in the right place with the right people at the right time as the right sex i would be doing so many better things it'd make your simple, provincial, contemptible, peasant head spin, turd. okay maty which do you think it is? or is it something else altogether. like what. i don't know, i just wanted to remind you there are always more than 2 choices. always always always. i don't know if i'm done. shake it off. the best thing don ever said to me. November 23, 2000 it's not about fucking, this gay thing. November 27, 2000 deanna: "two wrongs dont make a right. but a wrong and a right--that'll take you somewhere." i'm thinking back to living with pam and rachel. they --that situation wasnt "right" either but it sure took me some places id never been. August 30, 1956 dam it's weird being bisexual. boat. water flow. hydroelectrix and a gemini! \<gasp!\> trees speak: stretch your back. breathe out. breathe in the beauty of something. be crooked by the bank of a river December 3, 2000 ask me why i'm not successful. go on. do it. i'll tell you why. i don't want to climb too high in that house because i think it's going to fall. listen to the radio. no, the other radio. December 7, 2000 and so we went December 21, 2000 excerpt from "those one nights" with jackie, #10: (i said:) and nobody will do it for you or make you do it for yourself, its jhust always waiting there right outside of your field of vision and you can feel it, at certain times in the day, and you know its there but still, it is not mandatory, it is entirely voluntary, and thats why, i admire so much teachers like richard klepack, my acting teacher who said, if you want it bad enough you'll jump up and do it, and then it will be your turn, i mean he edidnt hacve this okay you go now you go now , this kind of grade shcoole thing, it was just if you were there and ready you got to work on your scene and i loved that it was hard and (she said:) okay i am not a victim okay and i have bben physically beaten slapped kicked dragged by my hair threatened with knives ive been raped ive been humiliated i mean it was so much easier to lose myself than to stay with myself i did it to survive i didi it with crhis and the result of that is that im in debt up to my ass hole im like a hundred opounds heavier than i was when ienetered the relationship and im a fraid to do things im afraid to sieze opportunities im afraid to live my life if i could do anything diffent now i would and you know its constantly i mean every day is filled with aseries of choices and its just like putting your other shoe on first when you always done it another way its gonna take while for me to dig in and peel away and get back in there to the root of myself we do amazing things as humans to insultae ourselves from harm and so now im making diffrent choices im choosing to sit here and tell you all this stuff im choosing not to go to beffdf at 9 oclock im choosing to be with other people im choosing to sign up for dance chlasses and go to writing groups and cut all my hair off im choosing to call myslef bisexual im choosing to admit that i liek sucking dick you know i mean these are choices i could never have made so things are changing things are really changeing it just is it took time for me to coccoon myusdfl and its going to take time to break out but enough about me September 17, 2000 I like old, big, rumbly cars. I don't know why. Alvin wants to sell his Pontiac, and despite that I'm going to have to spend $300+ to get my license back, and I still can't afford insurance, gas, maintenance, etcetera, I'm thinking about buying it off him. I don't know, I just can't help it I guess. I love the way they cruise down graid streets, lurking and sharking like an underwater thought missile. I love the way you sit in them, on a bench practically, with your hands on the turgid steering wheel, and look out as the world slides by, oily and slow. I love the feeling of reserved waste and power as all eight cylinders growl and complain about the atmosphere. I love their unabashed ugliness. I love their boxy American-ness. I love the way they could fall apart at any minute, yet still you trust their wrenched-together bolts & parts to fly you to the stars. September 17, 2000 Tonight's little thingy is two-fold: \* I hope Ann doesn't think she has to bring me food and drive me around and stuff, just to keep me. \* I hope she doesn't have to. \*an attempt to record the way brown, blonde, and blonde prime are tonight. red is over at claire's house because i couldn't get it to sound mellow like these guys, and either she's trying to make me happy, can't say no to me, or just really doesn't mind, so why do i still feel a little like i may just use girls who adore me cuz i'm so cute and talented and what is it they want from me exactly and do i provide it on purpose or accidentally and does that make a difference as to whether or not it means i'm a slimy worm? September 18, 2000 last night: i was on an airplane with ann. no sooner had it taken off than it went into one of those steep banks like they do--but then it kept keeling over, around around, til it was obviously spinning too much, all wrong, and then it started going down, straight down, and i wasn't too panicked, just a littleE, and then miraculously right before it smashed into the ground the pilot managed to turn it rightside up and we landed hard but apparently unharmed. later i was standing on a wooden bridge over a jangly little creek and there were two pennies, one tails up ('67 I think) and one heads up. The tails one I picked up, thinking of the two tails ones ('67 and '68) that I actually did find and throw out of the barn on ann's and my missouri trip recently, and said, ah, the third omen, and i threw it behind me into the creek. the heads one i pocketed without looking at the date. also there was a part where i was at a huge stadium/field with katy and sheba and dexter were running around loose almost but not quite getting into trouble and when i went down to round them up i had to skirt around some kids practicing some sport on a portion of the field, and people in the crowd were making comments about their encounters with the dogs, and when i found katy she was in this guy's pickup truck who was, going to give us a ride back somewhere, and she kissed his knuckles and looked at me with this blank but unblank smile to see if i was jealous and i was, but only a little bit after i reminded myself that it was katy after all. September 23, 2000 been reading Dhalgren again, after a few-months' hiatus. it still electrifies, slowly, dimly, sometimes with dreaming warmth. still makes me jealous and encouraged at the same time. i mean, my whole obsession about how smart i am and am not. my whole despair over not being a genius next to my unwillingness to just completely give up being a writer. why do i have to exist as a less-than-perfect what-i-am? Why do i have to be a what-i-am? Am I? Or is that just how i distract myself from the boredom and nothingness of my life. Kid said most people probably live lives exactly as exciting (interesting?) as they can handle. Glenn said how can you write down the important parts, aren't you always going to miss something. Yes. I can't count on me to pick out the important parts, so i just write down as much as i can stand. which isn't very much. but it's more than none at all. and it really is feeling a little like an obsession lately. I was thinking, my whole demeanor (reading Delany makes me want to use fancier words; "life" just didn't seem adequate right there) seems to be expressible in lower case. i'm neurotic; not Psychotic. I'm bright, not a Genius. I write journals, not Novels. I have these oily, slimy suspicions about how i'm deluding myself, but no Revelations. Still, it makes me feel a tiny bit (and that's a lot, sometimes) better to type sometimes. (but does it Save my Ass?) (Does my Ass even need Saving, or in that, too, am I lower-case: it soothes my butt.) September 24, 2000 it's actually the same night as the one above. anyway, if i have learned anything tonight, it is that if i start spending more time alone, i mean really, more time alone on purpose, something different might happen to me. i'm not sure what. i could be wrong. i could be just as disappointed after such a test as i am now. i could find that nothing, nothing at all ever is going to make me the character i wish i could be. but then, how would i know ann came by and somehow her staring at me with her red lipstick and her curled hair and her strange breath and her constant, fibrillating, vibrating shakiness, all just made me feel very, very pedestrian. she talks about work. i answer briefly. it all feels so normal, like toothpaste. i find it hard to care about that--no, i find it hard not to resent that stuff. because it anchors me here, here in this mundane world i have so blatantly come to live in. but i don't like it. i don't know if i deserve to leave. i don't know if i have the right kind of passport. but i (think) i want to leave (at least for a while). can you come back? do i have the strength to go thru with it? the first day, i'll be at work and i'll be terribly terribly alone and depressed and scared and i'll come home and call somebody, maybe not her but somebody else just to fool me into thinking i'm doing somehting different. i don't even really know what it is. is the desire to spend more time alone just another way of withdrawing from a world that barks my failures in my face? not an artist. the courage to be not an artist resulting in sounding (to yourself, to--?) shallow, naive, trivial, conforming, utterly, utterly forgettable. i'll never bring blasphemy to the altar steps; no one cares. i could fuck a steak in flag underwear but who cares. is all this just rehashing the stories i've read? can i see anything of any kind of "real" world, or is it all just torturing myself on the spikes of stories i've read. if so, make 'em good. make the spikes leather phalluses, make the impaling in my ass, my wrists in chains, my legs giving out, slowly, inexorably, so that as the long, sleek night slinks on by like a hard mistress's limousine, my ass is opened, coldly filled, deeper and deeper, inch by glaciating inch September 28, 2000 the danger of getting in a groove is people (incl you) will think you should stay there . October 4, 2000 gibran's soliloquy (p 92) works as a way to explain what happens[ed] to the place of the way. read it as the place talking to me. October 19, 2000 i wrap my silky hand around his veined, bulging penis. it is like a shaft of wood, the shaft of a great pipe to be smoked in honor of the people still living. in this world, i was the one who died but glenn staid alive. he has (finally) permitted me to come back to life--provided i be a girl and be in love with him. "Silly," I say, delighting in the freedom to say such curvy, teddy-bear things to his grizzled face, "I was already both!" and we come here, and he comes here, and he comes in my arms and my cheek in his neck and i taste him October 19, 2000 Which is better: being uncomfortable to look tough, or being comfortable, looking like whatever you look like, and actually being tough? Uh, duhh . . . . October 20, 2000 what do i believe in? I believe in dressing up and women's close and having fun, and i believe in my mistress kate, and i believe in talking on the phone and coming i believe i am getting older but that is like going down the waterslide; why be sad, you get to hike up the cement walkway again, up the serpentine hill and every0ne is laughing and glistening with splash-pool water on their skins in the sun and soon enough you get to the top again, and you get down in the pool again, and you get on the mat with your friend, and your friend, your best friends and you hold each other close and you shove off--maybe facing forward this time, maybe facing backward maybe lying on your stomach and-- you go down the slide again i love you i love you i love you i tell you three times. October 25, 2000 I don't have to do dishes any more, because my whore does them for me. I don't have to have a car because my whore lets me use hers. I don't have to be a good boy because I can fuck whomever I want, and then come home and tell my whore about it while she moans and sucks my cock. I am not making this up. Ain't it funny how my life changes and does not change at enormous speed. October 26, 2000 W#ine, wine, bring me more and more wine. Mermaids to bring me wine. Sawdust creations to take the shape of women and pour the wine right into my mouth. The sweet foul smell of barnyard and planks and violins, wine and firelight, tromping the boards dancing with all our feet but bring me more wine. One, two, three, let me count them out, the people I travel with, the souls I need to find my way, the ones without whom I am nothing. Play what roles you will, all you souls, but please, wait until we are all dead to leave me this time. December 10, 2000 Just reading some of the "those one nights" conversations with Jackie, and realizing I'm an asshole. I tell Ann about this as she sits in the tub with Godbody and a 40 of Miller High Life, and she says after a pause, "I don't think you're always an asshole." December 16, 2000 What it's so hard to say to her: I was happy when we were dating, hanging out, having fun together. I'm not so happy now. I think what I meant when I said marry me was let's keep this moment forever. I don't even know what marriage is. I've felt this pressure around the whole marriage thing. Let's just live together instead. at least for now.