011212 Tick tick tick tick blink blink blink, what the eye misses the cursor catches and the second hand slaughters with surgical precision. How long til I justtrfvvvvvvvvbvvbbbbbbhhhhhhhhhhhh start drinking beer again? 041212 I have unsubscribed from Katy. That relationship was as broken as my marriage. Guess I "shouldn't be surprised" but I was, when I saw it. Actually when I believed it. When I gave myself permission to accept it, and let it go, even let go of the drama of all the times I've "let it go" before. It feels good. It was sad for about five minutes, and may very well be sad again sometime, but right now it's surprisingly not sad really at all. Sound familiar? Print shop, house, bike, car. I have one less key on my ring. And three fewer in the cup of junk in the junk drawer. My life is therefore less complicated now. Did I let myself get hosed? Probably. Probably could have worked a little harder at it, both physically and psychologically, and got a few hundred more bucks out of the old thing. But I didn't. So it's time to reflect on that for a little while, file it away, and move on. A cold front is moving in? The sky is once again invisible, the stars once more precise and scary. They look so fierce when the sky is so wintry clear and stark raving invisible. I have a crush on Orion. His bearskin thighs make me quiver. How the mind flits. I'm drinking cheap black tea with honey and milk. I like it. I like it a lot. I could see drinking a lot of this over the next few months at night as winter in Wisconsin once more grazes over our lives, our rooftops, our beards, and our grinning sorrows in this blackbird-infested dreamscape of midwestern sameness. And if you're thinkin I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm...not. Plus, the kid was cute. Sheepish. Looked adopted. The mom was creepy. "We're praying people" creepy. I didn't like her hat. I didn't like the way she said, "Could you get that beer can out of there, if you don't mind?" Fucking religious people afraid of a fucking beer can. I'm so over it. Yeah and then you're going to stand there and quibble with me over ten dollars. 750. "Seven...forty?" Okay, fine, whatever you stupid hypocrite. I hate fucking religious people. There. I said it. Yeah, I totally got hosed. But whatever. Won't help to dwell. Well, maybe it will help a little. As long as I can turn it off when the lesson's burnt in. Peggy said I have a flair for the dramatic. And when she said something about not being perfect when I said she was a great resource for me, I made this little prissy-faced faux-indignant gesture, and it was so unplanned and so gay. It makes me smile to think of it. Reminds me of the time I put my hand gay-wristedly on the rim of a beer glass at Houligan's when getting animated in conversation with Ann, back in the days when she was still pretending to encourage and accept me for who I was. Ah, good times. And Katy through all this was this songbird of idealized love. Ah, think of all the times I got myself incensed over how she was treating me, and then managed to talk myself into being the one that was broken, that was wrong, that had been so foolish and so blind. Well I was, but not in the ways I had thought. I was so foolish because I didn't realize I was right all along. When I was so pissed, that was when I was so correct. But fools in love are taught by fate. We never learn till it's too late. Only it's not too late. It's not. Just ask the bawdy band of colorful outlaws over to my left there. Yeah, them. Go ahead. Ask them. They won't bite. Or will they? Har har har.... I want nothing less than to free the river from its channel. And also those "praying" assholes came over here uninvited. Dude calls and leaves a message but doesn't wait for me to call back. Just shows the fuck up and then calls again saying, "Are you home?" Dude what the fuck ever. I want to free the river from its channel because the river is what I need right now but paradoxically in the shape of a river it's proving a bit recalcitrant at the moment. So how do you free a river from its channel but still keep it being a river? Possible? Or do you just walk away from the river and then come back, like that? Not sure yet, but not content with just saying "not sure" tonight. So.... Well, one thing you can do is you can make it rain. Make it rain. 120512 what hiding. What protecting? What feel you stand to lose? It happened again. Standing by the electric piano in the band room at north high school, noticed i was standing a little gay, changed it up. It’s a habit deeper and more automatic than a 30-year hair flip. And then it hit me, and peggy was there in my head to chime in, and i was all like-- Why? And i do know some of the answers to that, actually. For instance, I am going to Summit View to teach PE. And I do like to get attention from the little kids as some kind of--but why DO they like you, dude? Is it really for the reasons you think it is? But more than that, it’s this: I’m afraid I’ll get made fun of. Big deal, right? And yet, there it is. Little wonder it should show up especially acutely in a high school. Because it does, right? Arrested development, anyone? Never quite left gym class behind, did we? This is why. It’s time to go ahead and get out there and get made fun of. There’s a reason the word “fun” is in that, after all. Strength in gentleness; gentleness is strength. Clues are everywhere. This just in: also, you’re afraid you’re going to lose your status as a sexual entrant in society, a sexual solid in the sculpture gallery, a viable sexual element in the -- something, i don’t know right now. Say more about that. Okay. There’s enough of a spark or a juice from the female, the female form, the shoes, the attitude, that you can go there and perform in some way, even if it’s a twisted way. So it has seemed safer to do that than to potentially abandon it for the unknown. Even though it’s not wholly unknown, in some way it might as well be. It’s black and white thinking again. You have to be a cop or a robber. We’ve been through this before. But every time thru i see some parts of the town, the grit, the sidewalks, the faces of the citizens, that i had not fully noticed before. Conflict is created by more than one person. It’s my fault that i’ve idealized women and used my image of them for my own protection. But that doesn’t mean i can’t vehemently quit doing it now. It just means i don’t have to carry around resentment. Also this: being gay isn’t the key to everything. Also this: this is one of those golden times. This is one, right now. Over the years, I may have gotten better at recognizing them sooner, although there is always an element of delayed awareness that is just part of the package. But yeah. Look around. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in waukesha, relaxing before i go back to work. I’m not in a hurry, i’m not desperately quiet or quietly desperate. I’m feeling the thrum of possibility in the weather and the cream city bricks and the street and my awesome coarse brown denim jacket. My kids are amazing and i’m taking them to a performance art show next week. I’m poor but i no longer think i always have to be, plus i’m not particularly ashamed most of the time. And most of all, most of all, most of all-- I’m free. 120712 I love my girls so freaking much, and they're so threateningly, hilariously, absurdly, unocnventionally cool. Xavier's over. They're playing Wii. Celi's making masterpieces. My heart expands about to the popping point when I randomly hear things like blue-and-teal-haired Megan saying, "My own creation is unbeatable!" It's hard to explain. *** I'm not against porn, except for this: sex doesn't have to be an accusation; sex doesn't have to be a pragmatic display. You wouldn't learn that from studying porn. You wouldn't learn anything that you didn't already know. That's the tragedy of the Internet age: how are our younglings going to be clueless now? Why, and while we're on the subject, the fuck do I have to be bisexual? It's so messy. I don't have a token to hand over to anyone when they demand one. I have nuance. I'm like a goddamned Democrat at the debates. Fuck. Me. Bisexuals are sneaky or asexual, right? Or tragically fashionable. Or weak. And the hell of it is, NOBODY CARES. They're the most neglected minority out there! They don't even get the invigorating hatred that drives other minorities to invent new folk songs and be strong. They're just relegated to invisibility. Most people, honestly, don't even believe they exist. And if they did, who the fuck cares? They can always pass as whatever the strongest faction is at the moment. Oh, sorry, gosh, you're a bisexual? That must be so hard for you. Gosh, hang in there, be strong. Nobody gives a fuck, you immature, adolescent, neotenic, mildly perverted, socially awkward nonentity. Wow. Gosh. Yeah. 120912 There's this strange underlying explosive thing. This sexuality thing, still lurking, still can't tell if it's as tainted as leering porn-mind thinks it is. Still this leering poison behind my eyelids. Still the constant readiness for surrender: the racing-heart, secret desire of the hart to throw himself on the hunter's spear. But who is the hunter? And why does it matter? It matters because it's behind my eyelids all the time. I suppose I could wait it out, just wait for it to die on the vine. But that's never worked for me before. Can anything ever replace #shitboy? I certainly can't go back to her; that was always my old strategy. Obviously that isn't going to work this time. Obviously. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Right. Obviously. Oh holy shit, are you freaking serious? You're actually thinking about it, aren't you? Hey, that's what they say about this writing thing. This is why it's scary. You have to face stuff. That's the raw power of it, isn't it? Well, yes, that's part of it. But you digress. So yes, acknowledging that there's a part of me, a wild, fevered, sick, unpredictable (and yet strangely predictable) part of me that definitely wants to go back somehow, to climb back down in the shaven, bumpy-pubed, mumbling, shame-sucking shithole of the pussy boy shit boy YOU'RE NOT A REAL MAN AND YOU'LL LIKE IT. I crave it so bad sometimes. My stomach swirls and my dick hardens just to talk about it. Could anybody else do it? Could it ever be healthy (that part of me doesn't particularly care about that)? Could anything else, any other identity or life, ever be as real as that seemed/seems? Would everything else always be like a teetotaller going to church--or, dare I say, like a fag trying to stick it out at straight camp? Am I forever a slave to that particular perversion? No wonder I want to be gay so hard. It's so much more socially acceptible! So much more societally viable! You get a much bigger set of premade definitions! I've already been outed as a shitboy. Now there's something I never expected. You're SUPPOSED to come out as gay. Nobody's on the sidelines rooting for a pussy bitch cuckold shiteater to come out of the closet though, huh. And yet, I did, albeit in the most unglamorous (though very dramatic) way possible. And so here I am. I don't want to be alone. I just don't know what else I do want to be. Except for those times when I DO know, and it scares the taste out of my mouth, and my heart pounds, and all I want to do is grovel and lick the sand and mud and filth off the bottom of the hard black boot she'll never wear for me again.... Oh, shit. Oh mother fucking shit. And yet, we fight so hard against the notion of losing this tawdry albatross. Because it drives so much, or so it seems, it drives so much of what we think of as being alive. It's like I always try gay on and wear it around and it's an exciting suit, looks good, feels good, and then I'm like okay, and now-- and there's never quite an end to the shopping trip. Maybe I'll just always need a buffet. I could start with a little cocksucking, a little service on my knees, and see where it takes me. Nothing saying I HAVE to be like the goody-goodies in those movies I've been watching. Allowing more of the gay into my life doesn't mean I have to become all sweet and domestic and, well, I don't know, GAY. I mean, if it didn't work for me before, just replacing her with a male version isn't going to be any damn better. I feel like I need some extremely large pieces of paper and a marker for tomorrow's sesh with Peg. To help me through this. Because I need to bring it up. I've gotten a little accustomed to just showing her the bright parts. It's time to bring out some of the slime. I trust she can handle it. Now can I? So just what WAS I saying when I said from the heart, "I've always known." It seemed so clear at that moment, the "I am gay" trope seemed so complete. What part of that do I need to hold on to? And what else do I need to add in? It's my fault. I fed her the lies I needed to hear. Everyone else did, too. By not so random chance, she connected with a monster who did the same thing. *We were all the same to her.* The power of my fantasy overcame my judgment; at any time during the *x* years, I could have stopped and said, this doesn't make sense. Every lie came with a pre-packaged excuse to believe it. Every lie was wrapped in enough plausibility for a desperate, needy person to rationalize it away. And that's what I did. Over, and over, and over again. No matter what "my sexuality" is, that's the part I can't go back to. That would be suicide. 121012 ugh. I don’t know *how* many times I’ve heard in high school math classes, “I don’t know; I don’t have a calculator!” for problems that *really* should *not* require a calculator!!! 121112 Blair Elem. Bilingual. Spanish-speaking first graders. Super cute. Especially a couple of the little niñas, so gorgeous, such radiant little smiles! I’m practicing my Dora-speak. My pronunciation is off, but I’m listening to the way they accentuate and emphasize. Sometimes the emphasis goes on the first syllable when i would have put it on the second; an initial “v” sounds kind of like a soft “b”; that kind of thing. “Aire” is “eye-ray”. God, I just, I love bourbon. Damn. Never going to give it up for good. Moderation. There’s still a magnet, and I’m still following it. Gay, bi, perverted, whatever--the point is that I *do* get to choose. I get to choose to follow the magnet wherever it honestly, with passion and integrity and joy, takes me, and I get to move my hips along the way, and almost accidentally say kind and helpful words to a twenty-five-year-old woman with an enormous smile, and get a compliment on my coat and my writing in the same night, from two vastly different people, with two markedly different resultant emotional responses in my own body and mind. Good living is like good writing. The words come first. The blank page comes first. The magnet always comes first. Today, now, in my new old wise young exhausted excited life, I get to choose to listen to my magnet. And this time, FUCKING NOBODY is going to take that away from me. 121512 Double you tee eff happened to my five hundred words a night? I famously failed to keep it up. What happened to my not drinking alcohol? Failed that, too. But it's okay. That's not the real problem. The real problem is-- is-- I don't know. Did I mention Lisa is trying to set me up? Oh, lord. How am I going to not have this be totally awkward? Why didn't I just come out and say, "thanks for thinking of me, lisa, but I'm gay"? Partially because I'm still not convinced that that's the unvarnished truth, and partially because I was scared of her disapproval because I'm so desperate for adult friendship, inclusion, and companionship. But even if I'm not 100% gay, whatever it means, even then, what's the odds that her ex-client high-school teacher friend is going to be the person I'm looking for? Pretty mother effing slim, that's what. So it's going to be awkward. It would be easier to just say I'm gay. Wouldn't it? But dammit, it really isn't that simple. *This is just so exhausting, and nothing has even really happened yet.* I mean, shit, I got slightly aroused looking at Holly's extended middle finger, imagining it fucking me while she smirks at my upturned white ass as I whimper and grovel. That's not gay. But it sure as shit ain't exactly "straight". I just don't see how I'm ever going to have a so-called "life partner" ever again. My incompatibility with "normal" rules out the vast majority of potential mates. My ambivalence & ambiguity rules out the vast majority of abnormal mates. Or does it? Maybe I'm making too many assumptions here. I think it all comes down to just getting out and about and interacting with a wider range of people in general. Got to get yourself in position for a happy accident here, as in writing, right? Maybe? It just feels so ridiculous to still be struggling with this. At my age. At my age. At my age. But that's not even the most immediate problem. The immediate problem is-- - I cracked up my van - My digestive system is fucked up - My belly is too big and floppy - Some of my toenails are fucked up - I still yell at my kids sometimes - I'm fucking broke That's really about it. When you look at it that way, it doesn't seem as horrible as when you look at it through the mist of anxiety's nighttime high tide. I mean, it seems overcomeable. I think I can take it. A couple times lately I've had that flash. The one where the phrase, not necessarily the passion, definitely not the conviction, but the mere half-formed words flash through my mind, the old stupid "killing myself" trope. It always pops up when things seem cyclical, repetitious, hopeless, when it seems like there's never any progress and I'm just spinning in place repeating the same grunting pains and retarded mistakes over and over again. It was common during my marriage, so common it almost seemed like a part of my body. But these last couple of weeks have seen it resurfacing for the first time since she went away. Weird. Wonder what that's about. Wonder if I'll bring it up with the Pegster. Don't want her thinking I'm suicidal. Don't want her to go into "if you talk about hurting yourself" mode. There's still that superstitio/fear that she'll stop thinking of me as the one she doesn't have to diagnose. Dude, what, is she going to try to have you locked up? I mean, come on. But still, there's a big risk in telling her. Not exactly sure why. Like a slashing of the couch cushion that going to her has become. Back to the bare boards of the floor. More base level work to do; a revelation that the "upward" progress I thought I'd made had left something behind, and I need to go back. A flunking out, a being held back a grade. A bad dream of going back to high school and not knowing anything. Being naked too, what the hell, why not. There, that was more than five hundred words. It didn't get my canoe guy anywhere though. He's a little pissed about that. But fuck him. He probably has low testosterone or something. What's his fucking problem? Staring at dude's back all day, staring at adolescent girls licking popsicles, but he doesn't have the balls to do anything about anyone. What a fucking loser. Who has time for his silent melodrama of introspection. Jesus. Give me a fucking break. God, and her teeth! Her straight, white, big, soft-focused teeth when she smiles one of her wistful, ironic, glittery, delicate, biting smiles! What it comes down to, I just want to keep having fun. Keep having fun and putting words together. That's always been my true lego set. I'm looking back across acres and acres of wet dewy letters and emails, and holy shit, I do put words together. That's what I do, and that's a thing that is made of the zip-zapping energy between and among people and other chumps and chimps. And dogs. And yes, dammit, even motherfucking cats. And dead guinea pigs, god if there was one rest their homely little souls, be they buried in the backyard or still stuffed in some grocery bags in the goddamn freezer. And so that's what I do, and JUST LIKE I KNEW ON THE MOTHERFUCKING AIRPLANE, I don't fucking owe anybody a clear manifesto or definition of my sexuality. I DON'T OWE ANYBODY SHIT, except my integrity. Except my honesty. And that's something that has evolved, from spiderwebs through hatboxes and old computers, to whatever it is made of now. You know what? I could make this big speech to the girls about why the tree isn't loaded, isn't groaning like a pregnant fish with presents this year. I could go into detail about the words, the highways, the irony, the drink, the wonder, and the CHOICES, but you know what? They wouldn't get it. It still sucks to be poor and not have a bunch of presents. That's the beauty of it. It's not bullshit. Being poor really is being poor. I said I didn't care when I was in my twenties, and I'm paying for it now. And if they don't get it right now, they might get it someday, and they might forgive me. We'll see. But the beauty of it is, it's real. I always wanted something real. So I guess I'm lucky. I'm not posing. The shitty hard difficult part really has come home. And here I am, ready to grapple with it, with chicken beak and wiry hands. I'M NOT FUCKING DEAD YET, YOU MOTHER FUCKERS. I'm going to go out kicking and motherfucking screaming. It's who I am. It's what I do. Think that's a pathetic cliché? You're probably right. AND FUCK YOU. I'm a snapper. A tweaker. I go off. Oh and PS: I don't have to trim my beard like some kind of fake poser-gangster teenage blowjob band bullshit little lines and fine trim. I can fucking grow whatever the fuck I want out of my fucking face and if you don't like it, fuck you. :-) I guess I was kind of brilliant in my twenties & thirties. I may never be that exactly again, but what the hell. Like I said, I'm not dead yet. I'm not nonhuman yet, so I guess there's still some time to get consumed by bacteria and viruses, and we LIKED it, by god! You goddamn kids with your damn remote access and airplay and shit. We used to have to put plastic stuff into metal stuff to play songs. And they didn't just stop and start and randomly come on and off and shit. They by god played until they got eaten up and spat out as a mile and a half of weird tapeworm-shaped brown spaghetti, and then you had to buy or fucking physically copy a new one! I'm so glad I fucking dumped Kate. Katy, I would've maybe fucked around with some more, but that Kate, man, I hate her fucking guts. I never did like her. She killed Katy. I really liked Katy. Maybe even loved her. But Kate killed her, and I sure as hell got her back. I unsubscribed from her little treehouse, yes I did. That means I won, yes it does. I fucking jizzed in her face and walked away, fuck her. So glad. I won. YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU NEED BUT ME> ANYTHING ON EARTH YOU NEED BUT ME> Should I have a nother drink and keep looking at the underwear of the Internet, or just stumble up to bed and sleep a few hours until the little squirrel feet of my daughters start pattering and pittering around the house and punching me in the face demanding breakfast? Oh shit, there's such a thin membrane between me and panic. Funny how that feeling has pretty much been a baseline (thank you digital files for this retrospective awareness), even though the stakes have steadily risen and risen and risen. It used to be just me and a damn dog. Now, shit. Yeah, okay, one more drink. THIS HEART SAW YOUR PORCH LIGHT ON 121612 Here's the nutshell on Kate: Not that she'll ever ask, but if she did, I could see myself saying something like, "Because you're one of the most selfish people I've ever met, and that's just a little more than I can deal with at this time in my life. What the reasons are for that may be perfectly logical and understandable, but I'm not taking all that on any more." 121712 CRUX Case: This is going to take some getting used to. Like playing a sopranino. Why couldn't they at least have made it like a Zagg keyboard? These little fuckers feel *EXTREMELY* cramped. But maybe I can adjust. We'll see. When will I ever learn not to get gimmicky shit like this? Fuck me. Okay. Rented a car. Going to go to MO even though I don't even know how much it's going to cost to fix the damn van. Stupid? Maybe a little. Important to me to go? Yes. Partially for the girls, and way more than I might have thought because I want to see Scott. Gotta have that long weird conversation, man. TSF is making me feel quietly good and true.