I am looking at the perfection of this typeface on the screen. It is round, it is square, it is the root of all clarity. It is produced by an evil corporation; so what. I am looking at a semicolon, thinking, why are you so reviled? I am looking at all my mistakes. Mistakes just stay on the page, even if there is no page. Just like they tell you at that one place, how every sound uttered just keeps going out and out and among forever and ever amen; well mistakes are the same way. Once made, they are the fabric of reality. And you wouldn’t have it any other way. Now would you. I am looking at the interstitial white space. I am looking at a future of macaroni, cheese, and despair. I am looking at all the reasons why I get such negative reactions. Roll the dice. 2D8 or whatever the fuck it is. I am looking at rum and Juicy Juice with a squirt of lime. I am looking at a strangely lonely but full evening. I am tired. So tired. I am looking at the onset of what they really mean but don’t ever say when they talk about “middle age.” I am looking at my knees. I am looking at a slice of pie growing ever thinner in the evening’s lack of trees. I am looking at a black window. Outside I know there is a tree. Whenever you get stuck, just write “I am looking at,” and start again. Is there any reason not to have the comma inside the quotes? Is there any definitive answer as to whether you should say “facets so smooth it can be balanced” versus “facets which are so smooth it can balance”? Beats the fuck out of me. I guess I have the disease of being average after all. Oh damn. Oh damn. Less visible of course and thank god than herpes simplex on your gob, but permeating and irredeemable all the same. I am looking at how powerful is the urge to check the dictionary. If you can’t spell, you can’t kick ass. But maybe you can. I am looking at a savage mind grown bookish with fatigue and leisure. I am looking at my knees. I am looking at the wafer thin slice of pie that is left. I am looking at the plate it used to fill. I am looking at crumbs. I am looking at the wall, only there is not a wall there. There is only a screen, and as we all know, god can see through a screen. I am looking at the space where god used to be, la la la. I am looking at an astonishing phenomenon: how many times typographical errors speak the truth and output results better than the ones you meatfisted on purpose. You hamheaded hock. You freak of typomastic denature. You are in the alley on your back, haunting with ethereal beauty. The old sweetgum rains down upon the garage roof. Soon this will all be rotten ruins. I am looking at you. I am longing, and I do not even know what for. I am looking at rain. Rain is such a cliche. I love the rain. Love is such a— I am looking at the time. It as almost time. I am always saying that. What the fuck. What else is there to do, except this? I am looking at my hands. How old they have grown, how old. I am looking at anything resembling a sliver of light; a way out. I am still looking at a semicolon. Wondering why I always follow directions. _______________________________ I’m thinking of scotch and soda. I’m thinking of rum and cola. I’m thinking of whiskey sours, and the plastic cup it comes in. I’m thinking of how sweet that drink is, and how sweet the company of the woman with whom I am drinking. The woman I am drinking. Every night she lets me drink her, and the drinking is forceful, like a firehose to the face. I love it. I lap it up. It’s the first disgusting thing I have ever wholeheartedly loved. I’m thinking of her perfection, which was nobler in the tits than in the brain, if you have my meaning. I’m thinking of how much of an ass I was with her, but you know what, I don’t really mind. I’m thinking of too much shit at once. That’s why I can’t do anything, apparently. I say too much, I think of too much but none of it is inventions or new computers or anything. It’s all just lady bugs and grasshoppers and the soap dish. You know, useless crap like octagonal glasses and red red wine. The frog’s leap merlot with Scott at Trattoria. The frog’s leap merlot. Can I tell you about that wine? Because we’re all jaded drunks here. I can tell you about this without having to worry that you’re listening. I know you are not. I know only the fish can listen, and he has been exiled a long time ago. Bon voyage, fishie fishie. Boa noite. Boa viage. I love you, fair slipstream. Slimy slim thing of a time-riddle stream, where are you now. But the wine. I’m thinking of how good that wine was. I went and got some another time, same brand, same varietal. Is that a dumb word or not. What the fuck is wrong with variety. Why they gotta say varietal. I think jargon is about my least favorite thing in the world. It’s kind of a genius suit for idiots. I’m thinking of that wine. And the way it fuzzed in my mouth like Stanton’s cum. I’m thinking of that wine. And the way he took care of me. He took me out to dinner. How can I explain what that meant, except to say that it is a seaport on the coastline of my lower back pain. Ah, that pain. I’m thinking of that pain with a kind of sweet devastation. It has become who I am. I have become what it is. I’m thinking of alcohol’s greatest hits. How you think the song was written for you, even though you know it wasn’t. As soon as you’re like, 15 or 13 or 27 or whatever it was for you, you know. And then you drink to forget. As they say. I’m thinking of two things at once. One; how much it sucks to be interrupted. Two; how much it would suck not to be interrupted any more by the great, dark mass of woman in the other room saying, put the extra quilt on me please. And leave the window open. The baby has stinky farts. _______________________________ I remember. Go. I remember. Go. I remember. Go. I remember doing three cartwheels in a row at the beginning of my jogo, instead of the customary one. I remember when that seemed like a big deal. Sigh. I was never very much of an upside down kind of guy. I did do some pretty sweet ass cartwheels, though. However. I never got very far because I am a social animal. Let’s back up. Sit down. Think it through. Drive it away in the old orange truck. I remember really wanting to buy the orange truck, knowing I never really would. I remember the seventies, or at least what they mean to me, which may be the same thing. Words fail me when I try to draw a distinction between my actual self, and my actual perception of history as filtered through the fish-eye lens of who I think I am or was. I just don’t know. I remember one thing, though: the slivery grain of the anguished floor of the attic over the trancendental transgressive transponder house of transition. Where I went from one kind of life into another, into the one I’m “in” now, if that makes sense. I must have done that—we all must have done that a million times. Sometimes you can just see it. I mean, how many shooting stars have there ever been? How many have you personally seen? Okay. I remember tai chi with the three fates. I remember karate with the cartoon kids. I remember becoming a baby in the nineteen nineties. I remember fucking my brains out. It’s been so long since I have fucked my brains out. That makes me intensely sad. The thought of adultery is not cheap plastic, it’s the finest quality rust there is. It’s not about betrayal or lust; it’s about remembering. I REMEMBER when I was smart. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better. I remember I remember I remember, ah I remember a certain tree trunk of an aged, knotty girl-woman, saying things like that, in threes like that, and then sighing histrionically. Oh but she was a drama queen. I kinda wish—but then I remember her smell, like tobacco rotting in the field. I could never get serious with a stinker like that, I don’t care how poetic. I remember like seven minutes ago when I started this thing. Ah, what a long strange I remember semen stains on the pillow, and how weird that feeling in my stomach was. I remember when that was all so far away like stars and how fast I’d come back to earth. I distinctly, for one second, remember the tang of gin in the illegal autumn of clandestine drinking. My bad years. Gin. Ha. I remember the puke of Cutty Sark, and how Don was secretly proud of me but he didn’t know it. I think it was that he was releived that I wasn’t a total do-gooder pussy. Like some people I could mention. I remember some seniors saying I was a more for real person than my brother was, and how I was kinda swelled up about that and kinda pissed off at the same time, like defensive, only to be honest I think I was mostly just swelled up. With pride. I was for real! I remember when I was for real. I wore madras plaid shirts and spoke French. I was a real dancer. I was a goat. I was a lonely chanteuse, making her way in the plaid streets of a checkered past. I drove an orange truck and the boys wild. I was a frilly tomboy. I was drunk. On love. _______________________________ I remember her leaning over me to kiss me goodnight. Her hair was a dark halo of angelic shimmering softness. Her nightgown—nothing else in the universe was made of fabric so sheer, soft, and slight—softly fell down as she leaned in, and showed her breasts. They were perfect, inquisitive, aromatic, strange, and comforting. I was showered by her love; I was in the center of a gentle storm of shooting stars. Celestial music. There was just the faintest smell of smoke. _______________________________ In first grade, there were numbers above the cubbies. The number one was red. The number one has always seemed red to me. Primary, urgent, cocksure. Number one. The other numbers have their own colors. Two is orange, three green, four a more grayish green. And so on. Another thing from grade school was those playground balls. It was years later that I learned they came in all different sizes. The only ones we had were the ones maybe just a hair smaller than a basketball. They made a very distinct PANG when they hit the asphalt, hard. We had asphalt for everything back then, remember. And then there was the time someone swiped a broken ball point across the faux-leather-grain of the rubbery back of the bus seat in front of the one I was in. Said it was blood. Argument ensued. It is blood! No it isn’t! It would seep into those cracks if it was blood! Why did it matter so much? Why do I remember that? _______________________________ How about the locusts outside my bedroom window at Dad’s house? Were they really locusts? Does it matter? They sounded exactly like streetlights would sound if streetlights were friendly, organic, ancient, and merrily sad. The slow rise. The insistent, symphonic, triumphant sustain. The sawtooth singing of celestial impermanence. The explanation of the night. The exclamation of raw, cold neutrality as stained by the blood of prepubescence. The window. The metal box fan. The metal screen. The streetlight. The neighbors’ house. The unreality of green. The locusts. Falling. The locusts. Soon, they will rise again. _______________________________ He wore Izods. So did I. He wore Levi’s. They looked nice but I didn’t know why. Wouldn’t have occured to me even to wonder why. Wasn’t aware I was impressed. Scott said he died of cancer. Lucky bastard. He said my story about Superquack’s fart-propelled flying was “crude.” He hoped I wouldn’t pick the Hairy Elbow Show for my week’s favorite story. I did anyway. He had some things to learn too, you know what I’m saying? I taught him some things. I’d like to think so, anyway. David Sides’s story about masturbation and being gay—now that was crude. There are a lot of different kinds of crude in this world. Killing a guy so sweet and so beautiful, a guy who made us—let us!—write a story EVERY SINGLE DAY, with cancer? God, now that’s crude. _______________________________ I was at Esriel’s Cafe with Milt. Okay, kidding. Kidding. I was at Ernie’s with Taelin. We had shroomed. All I remember was the fries. God but they were golden brown, square cut. Some had a bit of peel on the end. They cascaded across the plate, like planks in the sun. And the salt. The salt was so square. So perfectly, imperfectly square. So many bouncing, jouncing cubes just singing about salty life in the perfect sunlight. God we were young. At least I was. And now here comes Beth, in her freckles and her breasts, and she doesn’t want to do acid with us tomorrow, but you know what? It’s all right. Because I’ve still got these fries. These fries are my guitar. These beautiful, individual pieces of salt are my three chords and the truth. Amen. _______________________________ A time I remember rain. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Let’s see. How about when Pam and I danced our fucking brains out at the pagan fest. Lightning. Thunder. Drums. Us naked in the mud, pelted by that rain. A slim woman watching. A bunch of fat people watching. And everybody else, watching. Some of them might have realized it, and I bet a bunch of them didn’t: we were it. We were what they were praying to. We were the god and goddess. Next morning in the butterfly sun, they’d walk around, do their little rituals, put the glass over their eyes, cast their eyes downward and say the phrases they’re supposed to say, only instead of god you say goddess. Instead of he you say she. Instead of bare ass fucking naked, you say skyclad. Whatever. It’s all the same fucking thing. Only instead of being quiet in church, you fist fuck each other’s mouths with food out in the woods. You can see why I was interested. I’m not bitter. Not anymore. Now that I’m not so afraid. I just think it’s funny that hardly anybody knows, we’re god. We’re the goddess. Fuck us. Fuck us good in the rain, baby, with drums!