October 2003 My microhouse has a brick background, pink windows, and cinnamon highlights. I dig it. I can grow a little older here, and with spiked incursions into young. I hope. Hey, you know, weblogs and the like could be a manifestion of the ”other forms of resistance” P K Dick was asking about, in response to the new forms of tyranny. That cycle, that endless cycle. Yes, we are responding, and yes they will crack down again, but because we are mutts and renegades we will always stay one step ahead, one level underneath. I’m glad text isn’t totally obsolete yet. I can’t imagine myself making THAT upgrade. WHAT???!!!!!?? * The walls were green. Mashed-up “pale” mint green. There was a black playing card pinned to the wall above the desk. All black, no pips, no hearts, no nothing. The card was curling against its pin, a formaldehyded bug. A black song was retching out of the radio behind and to the left. It made things a little less lonely. Passion was drained. RGB cyberWaifs modelled their noses and gazes and feet on a scrim. Love had warped the mind a little, yes, but now.... Wish I had some weed. He set the half beer down on the old sewing table he used as a desk. The wood grain was worn. It was stained an awkward ruddy orange color, always had been, and this aesthetic mediocrity had become a point in its favor. Sometimes one needs ones basic accoutrements to be dingy, imperfect, beneath too much concern. Visions of perfectly cruel doll girls kept swarming around his metaHead. It was as if the computer didn’t exist. It wasn’t supposed to. Physical presence in a computer is a sign of obsolescence. However, it still sucked his eyeballs in. The strain was becoming unbearable--or would have been so, if not for his utter lack of awareness of it. Almost utter. The awareness of the slipping dream was his. Does this code scan? What does it do? As always, who fucking cares. A pinecone cares. A footprint in the sand, that time capsule, cares. A demonic burr caught in one’s sock. The haze of the end of summer in the lowest plants, scrubby and scruffy, underneath the mighty riverward trees. Having someone to go back out of the shade and lounge with, on the beach, one last time. One last time. Why are you still up here? Why don’t you go somewhere where they have gumball machines, mica glinting in the sidewalk cement? Air? Why don’t you go breathe? Jen stopped the little roda tonight to pick a speck out of Ydira’s hair. It made me smile. That’s being a woman for you. Oh dear, no one’s ever going to believe I’m a lesbian! A warm place in the rock, full of real water. Ann’s home. Oh well. What am I waiting for to have finished? I’m sure it’s not her fault, but so what? Oh god. Not this again. Also there was this lady who works at the Y whose neck simply made a lot of my BLUE girls look like so many doilies. Her neck was gracefully, in spite of her turbocharged enthusiasm, lined. Her lips were narrow and shiny. She was slender, not brittle yet but you could imagine it’s coming. I loved her. I wanted to smell her and touch her and be taught by her. But I was not young enough, not right at that instant. I don’t want to get old. There. I said it. I dread getting old and soft and limp. I hope I die before I get old. I want to get younger and younger as the women get older and older. That would be heaven for me. Hell? Go figure. What we all get. Purgatorio = now I guess. Unless anticipation is hell. 2 October 2003 I need a sort of Norton Utilities for the psyche. They have that, you know. Oh my god that is so cool. I’m typing on a real keyboard and it feels so cool. Still can’t decide whether to use 9 or X on this silly ass computer, but one thing’s for sure: THE PROBLEM IS THE PROBLEM>?\ (fuck me) Oh yeah, I got to get me one of these keyboards. This is Suh-WEET! 100403 I may be many things, but laughable is one of them. . . . oh yeah, the usual nobly tortured artist rigmarole . . . . I’d be much more interested in {A SPECTRAL IMAGE MAP OF YOUR SUBJECTIVE MORAL PERSPECTIVE} 100703 What is the difference between {provisioning, maintenance, cleaning, husbandry, mending, organizing, etcetera} and {dumping an entire bag of flour on the floor, blowing it around, watching little curlicues of air blow it further, in ways you may never have imagined} * WET HUSTLE MATCH ETHEL MUST WATCH WATCH HELMUT SET THELMA CHEWS TUT THELMA CUTS THEW MUCH WET STEALTH WEALTH CUTS THEM MATTHEWS CEL HUT THEW HATES MULCT WAH TECUM SHTETL * COPYING is a legitimate battle tactic--but one to be used with caution. 100803 Yep. I’m going to kind of miss this attic room. But only just kind of. It never really all the way worked, I mean except for the few times when it did. Mostly I think it’s just a hair too far away from the rest of home. I’ve got to get apart, but not TOO far apart. Let’s hope the basement in the new place works. Long live the basement. Let’s hope I can get some good ventilation down there. Tonight. It’s. After Capoeira. The group I am really a part of, I mean as much as anyone can be a part of anything. I mean, not that much, necessarily, but definitely in that range DANCE DANCE HOP Got my ice cold Diet Coke (product placement!). Got my smoke, alas! my beautiful graymaned maiden! Got some things to "talk" about, but want to take "my" "time." Got my "quotation marks," clearly. got a twisted B R C got a beautiful scene on the back of my eyelids got one tiny, universal speck of the sublime got a new, though skeletal, JanusNode! (thank you, cwestbury!) let’s see what she has to say: Commendable on its last variety; my poppy wanders into an obnoxious car. Wall alrighty then. MAJOR LIFE-CHANGING EPIPHANY No. 1747: poetry homework WAS: a poem a day IS: "Day’s End" [poems are 100% optional] Capoeira homework WAS: various moves and drills IS: have fun all thru the week [specific moves are 100% optional] I may have more to say about this later, but for now, suffice it that it is everything, it is who I really am, it is the beginning of the beginning (again!)! 101303 I’m in of course the airport. Milwaukee. It’s quiet & musacky here. I’m at a payphone booth, a little chair in a little alcove where you can use the phone, plug in your computer, listen to the annoying hard drive whine under the level of the annoying background music. So far no-one’s asked me to leave, or otherwise bothered me. This could be a place to come. On the way home I was alone; no dog, no baby, no wife. And it’ll still be no dog when the other two rejoin. I don’t know what to say about that yet, so I won’t. My imagination is still fallow, so I shan’t labour the point at this time. I’ll go look for a place to smoke & wait for my in-laws, bless them, to come pick me up in the Ford machine. * What am I going to say if she asks if I missed her? ’Cause I don’t really. I love my solitude! Last night, falling asleep, I remembered how much I love to sleep alone. And get those faint aqua-white flashes of dream on the incoming alpha-theta highway. I miss my solitude. It made me nutritious. Nowadays I almost never really rest. Damn. * Jimmy smells like New Orleans today. Papaya in the warm rain. Nice. Odd from such a duck as him, of course.... (this is the end of this stultifying, stifling format. for further days, look around you. In chaos, I love you, amen. 101503 Nuke the Duke. Faye sloshed through the shit. It was up to the uppers of her fine calfskin boots. I used to love those boots. More than I loved Faye? Who can say. wish i had ginseng, these fuckers don’t know how to make a cup of tea, it’s hot in here, etc etc. All the Z-rated drones of the cold hearth. a post-erotic notion: castrated by cel phones Cholula said on the fone, “You’d better be wearing something nice for me when I get home.” “Oh yeah?” I giggled, trying not to sound like a boy who would giggle. “Yeah. And maybe you’ll get rewarded.” What’s left of my cock animated. What’s left of my pants felt the old familiar strain, if only for a moment. For that moment then, I guess you could say I loved Cholula. Is it that simple? Is he confusing love and sex? Could he really be that infantile? Yes. Yes it really is that simple. Because sex isn’t just sex anymore. Not in this blasted country. It has something to do with willingness and visibility. It has something to do with being a martyr and a saint. It has something to do with Gulp Remaining Bigger Than Was Thought. Why does the idea of getting cheated on by a voluptuous vixen turn me on every time? It’s fuckin weird, man. But it still always works. If it’s not just a pale imitation of a cheat, that is. The threat must be real. The loss must be real. The pain and degradation must be real. Or else it’s just Monopoly in underpants. Smoke, type, drink, smoke, type, drink, when does he have time to think? When I’m reading, of course. Sruky pounds away. Faye sloshes thru. They are becoming closer together. Thru the rivers and canals and liquid streets of shit, Faye can see the cafe where Sruky sits. She can’t hear him pounding away yet, of course. All she can hear is the “slish, slosh” of each one of her pert little arrogant steps. God I loved her once. Desperation is the device driver of the cock. Death is a central figure in my fantasy/dream/life. Program that, mother fucker. Code that one and maybe you’ll be rewarded. We’ll see. Did I tell you that the other day, before the trip to MO, I dreamed of riding in a big American car with Rich Daume at the wheel? I asked him in profile if he had decided what he wanted to do. Because we are running out of time, I said. And it was true. Then he drove through a dingy yellow downtown, down a wide, deserted boat ramp. There was the sea, the great lake, some untold body of water, a few feet away, waiting to suck us all in. The water seemed higher than its own surface level. There was a pause. Then he wheeled the old car around, and we drove on up the street to some other night-lit destination. But yeah, Death. death, whatever. Whether self-inflicted or eroticized in the form of anal penetration by my father’s serial murderer, it keeps on coming back like a smoking cigarette. those boots, those boots. . .. . Sruky would be sexy if he wasn’t such a git, Faye thinks, rubbing shit off her boots onto the mat. The door says “Bang! jingle, jing.” She clomps daintily up to the counter. To order something or to order someone around. Lord how I wish I still qualified. I know she knows I’m not looking at her, but the horror is I also know she doesn’t care. Much. Enough. She cares just enough to keep me wondering if it’s going to be enough. Again. What’s the difference between acting depressed and being depressed? What’s the difference between acting like a smoker and being one? What’s the difference between each one of Faye’s still-perfect tits? Each one more than perfect. Each one aged a little, each one having smile lines, each one having played the perfect centerpiece to two too many perfect, perfect lies. I look down hastily in case one or the other of those tits should smell me looking.... If it were later in the Fall, her tits would be cold, I imagine. As it is they kiss the summer, warm and wet, goodbye. Half emergent from a crimson strapless hug. I don’t look again, then look away. Smoke! Help! I am dingy over here. I can’t even suffer for her tits, for her boots or for her anymore. My tongue lingers over the memory of the taste of the shit she prances through on her way here every day. Back when it was me here waiting, waiting, laughing at the willing compromise of my own untouchability! But now.... Because she remains aloof, there is a sheet of plexiglass around me. Give me one black cup of coffee, a hot ceramic idol with which, privately in public or t’other way around, to worship her. Let’s have something happen between Faye and Sruky before she leaves. It would serve me right, after all. All those times I stole Sruky’s panting prey from right beneath his eager nose. All those times I was younger than he. All those times I won by default, a snotty kid not caring. She’s got whatever she ordered. She walks, she walks over to his table. He stops pounding on the little drum. She stops walking. They stare. What’s that word for a point that’s nowhere on the line between points A and B? That word’s me. We’re running out of time. Sruky sweats inside his tank top. He never gets any older. Faye gets older and older until she’s just the age she wants to be. She wants a younger man. She gets one. I was one, once. But that doesn’t matter any more. You already knew that, I’m just reiterating because I’m pathetic. My little dick stirs again. “Show me how to play that,” she sweetly commands. Sruky scoots over so she can sit down. Their hips touch. It is all over. He pounds. She breathes. He pounds. She opens her mouth to let in more heat and air. Her face is turning red. He pounds. He pounds. How did he become so skillful? He pounds away, and away, and away, and she gasps, and she moans. Her naked back on the cold table top. His back lean and taut. He pounds. She begs. She has forgotten I ever existed. She doesn’t even have to forget; I never existed. She screams. I lick the shit from her boots off the crusty doormat. And now I can go home, disgusting, inanimate, and for one killing moment in the alley filled with night and clicking beetles, happy. He is still pounding and she is still groaning when I slither out. No one noticed. Else. *** DAYS. Everything else is a distraction from this, a decoy, a system of booby traps and titty traps rigged up so I can maybe work, protected from the clueless cruelty of my own ignorant interventions. Or maybe this is the decoy. I’ll never tell. And you’ll never know (as if you’d ever care)! When I get to the place dead people go, I’m sure I’ll have sunshine & egg on my face. And I hope to god Faye’s boots will be there too. Or else I’m not sure I could stay there. I might have to come back, come back and slosh thru the shit, come back and pound away. Come back and have one more coffee, one more smoke, one more time, one more time, one more time. Or maybe I won’t want to, then. Who the fuck knows (who can tell, that is)? Or wants to tell. Come on, you motherfucker, tell! I’ll be a girl for you! I’ll wear something nice! Just tell me what it’s like where I’m going. Where you are. Where are you? Do you even want a girl any more? Did you ever? We could maybe share one. I could maybe have two choice tits, one for you and one for the other. Dude I gotta go. We’ll talk more later. 101803 Dexter is still trying to teach me things. I didn’t graduate before our session was over, so now he sends me messages while I sleep. He’s a good dog. I’m a dumb human. That’s the funny part, of course; that we think we’re so smart. * Hazel. You make my tits ache and my cunt burn. I still want you so much just thinking about what you might be wearing tonight, far far away surrounded by dancing women, clears out my sinuses! God please fuck me again, I really think I might do anything. My status is always Available, yours is always Invisible! 102003 Whatever. Toilet paper wipes up the jizzy smear of my butt-raped fantasies. 102903 Lula’s gotta find her wallet--somebody musta packed it in a box or bag at random--before she drives the huskies to Washington. Maybe she’ll have a fling with her old ex there. I’ve been away from the computers for a few days. That’s a good thing. When its motor heats up, the AB Dick 1200 feeder smells like baking cookies. John just tossed an ink knife onto the broken counter. When I was younger, I pretended not to pretend not to think I knew what love was. Last night the radio in the tinny Tracker said, “This is basic training in sound.” At that moment, driving, I looked out the window and saw a narrow strip of ochre vinyl siding between two doors on someone’s pumpkin-lit porch. I wondered again what the small pieces of everything think about all day and night. Who they are. Which bit am I. Where, while I’m standing trying to piss in a bar urinal, in the “G” of the fixture’s brand name, engraved on the spotty chrome, do I live. I live in the bottom of the bowl of the “G,” a little to the left. Holly and I really didn’t get talking until we got drinking. YNOT YNOT. Tony’s Tony’s. She showed me a folded-up, undelivered love letter she carries around. It started, “OK, so...” just like something her sister might have written. As I was looking at her animated face, shining in the blue neon, I realized (again; what is it about that place) this is Esriel. This is Olivia. This is even Erputiba, god bless her fragile heart. I’m sure even Sruky was lurking, somewhere behind the broken daisy coffee maker. Those people are all around me, all the time, and I can talk to them any time I want, and I do, even if I’m not aware, and I love them. And sometimes they love me. They don’t live in the computer. They live with me. We live with each other. Period. (ps: All the little bottles were still up above the bar, but they didn’t look as bright as that one other time.)