9.29

[I have made several changes to the blog. Things have gotten slightly snarkier in the sidebar (sorry for calling you sheeple; it was the thing to do) and I've added an annoying scrollthrough gif which has blown my mind for the last few months and I've been dying to do something with it. Tell me if you hate scrolling through it each time. I'll probably get tired of it after a month and shift it down or something.]

Can't I taste my own blood on my tongue? Or do I have to bite my tongue first?

I wish incorporeal mediums would stop giving me bad advice. I welcome you with apprehension, apparition, for apparently I'm apathetic.

Appropriate.

9.27b

The writer slips, rough-shod, on his sounds. He gives no care to the staves of the barrel of his words, looking only to whether or not the metaphorical wine stays put when it pours. And it never rains but it pours, does it? The sound of his tired cliché escaping him, he reels in, mock terror. "Oh no! What will Chuck Palahniuk or David Foster Wallace or Steig Laarson think of me now?" These masters of the public opinion, so far below me in their art, the art which we share at a breakfast table over toast after I slept in their beds and drooled on their pillows and found their secret stash of pornography (Meyers' trilogy) under their mattress, these I use to level my table when I have need.

9.27

I feel like a paper man.
I have a passion for cigarettes and origami, but the problem is I keep burning all of my square chunks. Those are the rolled-up pieces of me that I drag on and the smoke of my burning self fills my god-forsaken flat-as-ash lungs. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly manic, I fold and fold until the edges of me are indistinguishable from the sides, and the sides from the front, and the front from a crane. These are the sweetest drug I know: filled with a toxic blend of self-loathing and as-it-were-egotistical-masochism disguised as megalomania of the richest kind, a Cuban cigar of constructed lies and me-angles protruding from a two-dimensional mouth.
And I am no one-note-or-trick-pony. I am two-dimensions, as wide as I am tall and as flat as I am thick. From the front, you almost can't tell I'm not real.

9.24

It has been exactly one month between writing things I like. Before that, a month. I have to be honest: I'm only inspired when a woman walks into the room.
Hard return.
Tab.
New paragraph.

9.22

[Disclaimer: the voice is not affected.]

She, walking so smooth
up
to the pulpit.
She, sliding so smooth
in
to awareness.
She, the target
(of every eye)
(of fluttering hearts)
(of surely crushing thoughts).
Her conscious choices augment (bloodflush lipstick black black eyes) her sexual attributes (thewaist thebreasts theheight thehair thepout theneck covered to see) and she sways her way to the front.
She, filling our hearts
with
envy or lust.
She, loving us all
for
loving her.
But--and the silence beckons us--her voice parts her lips and welcomes itself into the room. Breath. The only description for the crowd: holding it. Breath. The only description for her voice.
Her voice is all breath and moan, silvery smooth, sex and ice. It, slippery, slides to me and whets me.
The women all want
to be her.
The men all want
to have her.
If we deny it, we're lying. Her voice has us under her spell
filth in a holy place, sex in a sanctuary, flesh incorporeal.

9.20

I have never been afraid of you, but I am afraid of your tears, your heartache, your heartbreak, your doubt, and your sadness. I am afraid not of you but of hurting you.

Do I walk on eggshells, dainty like a thief?
Hell no.

9.18

[talk like a pirate day tomorrow, the 19th]

I drove away and a stranger met my eye. I turned a corner and he watched me go. I stepped on the gas and he decided I couldn't see him anymore. He ran at breakneck speed, like he was going to be locked out or left behind, into a building which wouldn't be locked for hours.
I felt voyeuristic, not for the first time today.

9.17b

[On Thursday, a young man died in his apartment. He wasn't found for twenty four hours. His parents want him cremated because he's a hassle. His friends worry that his parents are jerks.]

When I die, Katy gets all of my cameras, film, and picture frames on the stipulation that she hang enough pictures to warp the drywall.
When I die, Philip gets my passwords, accounts, and video games.
When I die, Brooke gets all my cooking equipment, even though she probably doesn't need it.
When I die, Mom and Dad get my car and any money in my bank, because all the expensive stuff I own is theirs anyway.
When I die, Josue Feliciano gets the rights to my plays for all time.
When I die, God gets my soul.

When I die, you get the blog. Print off your favorite and take it off the web. A daily endeavor is no place for the dead.

9.17

[No fiction today.]

I don't know if you knew me when I was younger, but I didn't understand anything about women. I thought they valued the same things as me, or that they wanted different things entirely. It depended on the day or on who was asking.
The first woman I ever complimented, I actually said she was sexually attractive. To her face, of course, because I'm not afraid. Not just like that, but almost as bad. Anyway, I thought it was a compliment. I wanted more than anything else for her to think I was attractive. So I told her that. Probably a mistake. I could ask her; I still have her number.
Or worse than that, the first girl I ever dated actually kissed me because I swung too far in the opposite direction. I was positive she didn't want to make out. One of my friends looked me straight in the eye and said "Robby I bet she wants to go out in the woods and make out." I scoffed then, because that was before I realized that women do, in fact, have a libido. Some are worse off than me, I hear. I only hear, because what woman would attack me I don't know. I'm a big guy and I'm singularly scritchy.

So we've established that I'm clueless. A girl I like hangs out with me for months, probably waiting for me to have the chutzpah to ask her on a date, and I keep postponing. Finally, I ask her and she has a date with a guy that weekend or whatever. Great, ok. It's over. It's high school. Not like I'm going on a ski trip and her parents are volunteering to chaperone so she comes along too and the two other people on the trip back out last minute. We stop by her cousins' house and I'm such a non-entity at this point that I'm actually allowed into the building. I don't know how much her dad knew, but I assume he knew I liked his daughter. She and I are talking, unsupervised, in the room where she's going to sleep, because it's assumed that she could cut my throat with my own fingernails if worse came to worse. It's only now, a full year after my disastrous attachment to her, that I learn that she has had a string of boyfriends as long as my arm and not all of them nice. The first was a total dirt-sucking goat humper, and he did a number on her. She's been looking for a man to distract her from her memories ever since, and I was not that guy. I now know more about her when she doesn't care about me than I ever did when we were a thing.
We go to the mountain. I feel more and more like I'm in the way, and I'm incredibly apologetic. Get this: she tells me I say "I'm sorry" too much, so I apologize. She teaches me to snowboard. I get pretty good, but it wears me out. She and her parents go up the mountain one last time, and I head down.
Two hours later, I get a call from her parents saying that she flipped off the track into the woods and possibly broke her spine. They're all in the hospital and want to know if I'M ok. I apologize. My life turns into a short story with a tragic twist and I'm alone in an apartment with all of her things on her family's vacation and I'm so apologetic that it sickens her and so I apologize for who and what I am and for that I cannot change to suit her because I would and I just want her to know that.

She's with a man who is perfect for her now, and nobody but I remembers the trip to the snow and how terrible I was at reading women.
It's simple, really. Women want the same things as men want, just totally different (depending, of course, on the day or on who is asking.).

9.16

In my dream, I'm just a delivery man, bringing bodies to be interred. I flip my truck off the road and have to proceed through the graveyard itself. Mary and the Reaper are fighting in a sepulcher, but he abandons the fight to chase me.

I'm not metaphorically anything. I just needed the money.

9.15

[Hadley tweeted an article that does me no good. It was about male impulses to want a perfect woman: a woman intelligent, funny, independent, dependent, and strikingly beautiful. It chastised men for high standards and attempted to redirect their penchant for beauty. I don't need this article because mentally, I realized that fact years ago. It's just that my water witching has yet to catch up with my brain.]
[Another thing: the article said men think that the woman should be smart, like, really smart, but not so smart as to make the man feel stupid. I want to admit that I have felt stupid before for mistakes and overconfidence, but no one has been able to MAKE me feel stupid for years. Either I shrug it off (that's just not something I've learned yet), or I remember that I exceed them in areas (they don't know as much about survival as I do), or I can comprehend the science, math, programming, psychological phenomenon, or whatever they're explaining, so it doesn't matter that they knew it first: I know it now. The only way I can think of to make me feel really stupid is thefind a kid who exceeds me in intelligence (given his/her limited experience, a greater scope of knowledge would humble me).]

In short, I am not smart. I'm just wise in this one thing, and I hope I can communicate it to you. Don't base your self-worth on how much you know, because there will always be someone out there who knows more than you.

9.14b

I turn Face away from terror and join Arms with destiny, Legs running.
Can't I vent my Spleen somewhere without fear and doubt, let my Voice stretch up towards fate? Or am I condemned to crush Fists and Ribs in a never-ending dance?
Fly away, metaphor. You've gone too far.

9.14

I can't help but think that he's not up there for God; he's up there to impress us, prove that he's better than us, sway our minds and hearts in his favor. We love him, and he moves us. We respond like a shudder, the crowd shaking with desire, whether sexual or spiritual or pathological--a disease we can't shake--I don't know. It's my ignorance that fuels my belief that he wants us to love him. He's actually a star and we worship him. He's actually a cultist and we follow him to death. He's actually Eve, and we, as Adam, follow his fragrant, enticing, valuable form through the jungle of the crowd, pushing closer just to hear his words.

He extends to us damnation and we see only heaven. Is it he or we who bear the shame?

9.12

My friend Steinburg once famously said that mankind is not happy getting what it wants. Any attempt to pry into his meaning was thwarted by his inability to communicate with beautiful women. Alas, I think that may have been his point.
Yesterday, Michelle came over to my house with her girls. Her girls played with my girls while we girls played. Soon, irresponsibility could be heard ringing through the house.
You see, Steinburg is a pediatric dermatologist. All Day, all he sees is terrible skin conditions and cancer and rashes and reconsctructive facial scarring in the shape of half a crescent moon dripping down a nine-year old's cheek like a silvery tear. You would think that he would come home to his completely normal, healthy-looking girls who have no melanonchia, adiposis dolarosa, dermatitis, genodermatoses, chronic infantile neurologic cutaneous and articulate syndrome, or racquet nails, you would think, and you would think that he would burst with joy to see them rosy pink and happy, but Steinburg didn't even want children, I think. He just went along with it because it makes his wife happy.
Get this: Michelle is just crushed by the state of their marriage. If she could escape, she says she would. I think she's in love with my husband, But I can't prove it. Everytime her husband comes up in conversation, she turns to me and spouts off some garbage about how lucky I am and how she would trade places with me in a heartbeat. It's all hogwash anyway. She's just tired of him coming home and vegetating I front of the television every night.
Steinburg has a hard life, of course. I know he does. His work is overwhelming. His wife is oppressive. His children are a disappointment. You know, I'm frankly surprised that he's doing as well as he is, all things considered. I mean, his daughter--
That poor girl. She's got such distracted parents. Her father didn't want her, her mother wanted her to be wanted by her father so her father would want her mother. But that's not how babies work in a splitting marriage. The baby is used by spouse against lover and nothing gets resolved or closer. That poor girl. This summer, she started having trouble adjusting to school. That's how her mother put it. Two years in and now she can't adjust. I don't question it because it's not my place. But now the poor girl chooses--chooses, mind you--to starve herself. You don't understand. She won't eat anything. She was always a picky eater, but her mother made sure to enforce a solid dietary regimen. It's just now that she's old enough to make decisions, she has decided to not eat. The parents have made a choice to feed their darling daughter through a tube. Maybe now that the girl is in school again after the summer, she'll eat because she wants the feeding tube out.
Anyway, Steinburg is a nice guy. Wife, kids, home in the suburbs, well-paid job with people who rely on him. What I wouldn't give to be him.

Ah, well. We can't always get what we want.

9.10

The bug ate through my stomach, you see. That's why I leaked acid on your floor; I really didn't mean to. I would lean down to wipe it up but I think we both know it's for the best if I don't. Sorry.

Oh, that's alright. I don't usually hug. Or wear suits. You know, minor inconveniences.

Oh, I haven't been allowed on public transportation for years. I'm classified as a biological weapon in sixteen states. It's been hard because my mum lives so far away now, but what are you gonna do, you know?

Anyhow, I'll let you finish mopping that up in peace. I can feel a burp coming on so I think I'll make my way on down to the bathroom. Thanks for the lovely party.

9.9

[Consider this found poetry.]

We were guilty - w4m - 48 (Red Bank)

Date: 2012-08-22, 1:23PM EDT

I know you won't see this but that's ok at least I can get it off my chest. I miss you terribly and yes I guess we are both guilty of the same thing. I would be lieing if I said I regretted it because I don't. I'm trying really hard to get my life in order. When I do, and everything has straightened out, can I call you then? 
If you know who you are all you have to do is respond with where we were. I'll understand. 

The Pretenders - m4w (Where you left me)

Date: 2012-08-28, 11:14AM EDT

We didn't really love each other. We both know that. We pretended to just so we wouldn't feel so guilty. It was a game and we both played it well. We knew there would be no winners, and we both knew it would end bitterly. It was fun while it lasted though. There's no denying that.

We made each other feel good. We made each other happy. We each provided the other with a temporary escape from our little self made prisons. We knew it wouldn't and couldn't last. We each wanted so much more than the other could ever give. We knew the hurt was coming, but we also knew it was worth it.

You can't appreciate pleasure without knowing pain.

I know we didn't want to hurt each other, but we were reckless. We let ourselves get in too deep. We started resenting the fact that what we had was only a fantasy. The times we had together were always so rushed. When we would part company, the real world was waiting for us. I would look forward to seeing you again, but it was with mixed emotions. I wanted you and I needed you, but I hated myself for letting my feelings get all twisted up like that.

There was no way we could have done the things we did and not get emotionally involved. We were both starving for affection and intimacy. We both needed to be needed and to feel wanted. I just wish we hadn't hurt each other as much as we did. The damage is irreparable. I miss you and still think of you quite often. I hope your life is going well and that you are truly happy. I'm sorry that I hurt you. I know that we really didn't love each other, that we were just pretending, but it was close enough.

both guilty - w4w

Date: 2012-08-23, 12:36AM EDT

Might want to rethink saying yes when you have a wife and she knows that it's you posting on here. Or you better hope she keeps you. 

Re: Both Guilty - m4w

Date: 2012-08-22, 2:44PM EDT

Its a Yes and A Thank You with tears Running down my face, I won't bother you anymore 

[It's found poetry because I've taken the liberty of rearranging the timeline. If you want it unarranged, it goes one, four, three, two. Source. You're welcome, I think..]

9.9

Another dream.
Trapped by a neigh unkillable man whose reckless behavior is sure to doom us all, my wife and I crawl through his plans to nibble at the wiring. Luckily, our enemy is vainglorious and megalomaniacal, so he keeps us around. I'm running to the Egyptian room to look for the knife that can kill him; they're commonly put in crypts. My wife found the last one. Our enemy identified it. I realized its importance because, you see, this knife can kill ghosts. I look for a burial knife but I only have thirty seconds. I run back out to the hallway, wife trailing. He can't catch us in the egyptian room. He's oblivious, but he's not stupid. He can put two and two together. My wife looks puzzled, though. Wait! I never told her what I know--that the knife can kill ghosts and cut dreams to ribbons, can sever a metaphor and carve apart a memory. I've got to tell her; she can look while I occupy his attention. He sees only me as a threat because he's a man, but I married a clever woman who can save us all. I turn to tell her

Fresh morning air. Perhaps the dream will come back. But I doubt it.

9.8b

Slip out of the brief confines of your life, my dear. Join me in sweet eternal bliss. Meet me in rapture and we can have heaven together to explore. All you need is love you haven't got. So get.

9.8

I awoke this morning with a head full of dreams. I was a woman in therapy. I was with dad, trying to resolve a woman's problems. I was with Philip and Katy, trying to explain why he wanted to live off campus next semester with his wife. I was an old man giving a young man as good as he got. I was the young man, driving through the South African countryside. I was in a commercial for the vehicle I drove. I was the young woman, trying to overcome the deep psychological trauma of her past.
I think she was the woman from the first part of my dream. Then, she was in a self-help group with two others. The moderator was omnipresent. The other woman was young and irresponsible. The young man was attractive and funny. We both wanted him. The other girl dressed more provocatively to get him. I didn't, but I thought about it. Seriously, I did, and as soon as the thought crossed my mind that I could own him--so completely--just by being a sexual object, I was revulsed. I was so disgusted by myself that the dream itself took another shape and I became me to run through six other dream shapes and finally come back to her, standing in the South African heat in a sun dress, following her spirit guide through a stream. Why is she third person? She/I walked down a twisting path past a singing capuchin And to the stream. The path became a metaphor for my psyche and underwent tortuous convolutions until it corkscrewed under the water itself. My feet stuck to the path and my spirit guide yelled that I needed to hear the water in my own life. I yelled back--

"I don't mind hearing the water, but do I have to see it as well?"

I dissipated as I awoke, but I could still remember how dirty I felt at having my body be a weapon and how it felt to have that body turned against me by society and my subconscious. The worst part of it was that I was a subtle weapon: the young man would have believed himself to be making the decisions rationally. Anyone who looked at me would think the thoughts I gave them, even me. I didn't realize my image had done this to myself until three sentences ago.

9.7

"Good morning," I grumble, flinging my coat into the deep recesses of her office.
"Yes, what do you need?"
"You, I suppose. But you won't give yourself to me because I won't to you."
I watched her stand up, all ice and business. "It sounds like you have my half of this relationship all figured out."
"Yep."
"So tell me, do we work out in the end?"
"It depends."
"Does it? I was under the impression that you were leaving my office."
That was when I forgot my coat. Don't worry. She'll mail it to me or something.

9.5

I can't say I enjoyed it, but I watched it. Well, you know. I was on a date. Yes, all the stuff that goes with the territory: she was draped all over me, we gasped in the scary bits, laughed in the funny bits, and left feeling bigger and older than when we went in. What was it about? Quite frankly, if I admit that I paid attention, I will look like I've failed. Thanks, though.

Oh?
Yeah, we're out again tomorrow night. Perhaps then, I'll remember what the film was about.

9.3

Augenbite of inwit. Conscience. The pangs of remorse. Guilt.

Well, I didn't really start out with the intent of killing a man, but he disrespects me in front of my boys. What am I supposed to do, stand aside? Not happening. So they beat him up. I get the last shot but there's nothing left; a bag of wheezing bones. So I kicked him, hard, in the side. I figure I can't do any more damage than they. So he had broken ribs and I punctured his lung. He spent the last few minutes of his life drowning on air.

Do I regret it? No. But I regret being caught.

9.2

[I started writing a serious blog post about my serious thoughts. I started writing a sketch for 4109. I started a new show. I can't seem to finish anything. Here's my problem: I have nothing I feel particularly burdened with. How about you? Have you ever woken up one morning and found yourself blasé? Did you, as I, find yourself to be trivial? Am I talking into the void, or am I talking to Janelle, Ashley, intermittently Paige, Ali, Kyle, Katy, Alyssa, and mum? Is Amanda still around? Why is Kyle the only male who reads my blog with anything approaching interest? Do men read anymore? Can I not write for a typical male viewpoint? How many more questions can I write before you get fed up with reading them in the same uptic tone at the end? Two? Am I irrelevant?]
[I read Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth recently. I would italicize that but I'm on my phone. Count this as apology for the other twenty tons I've done the same thing within recent memory. Back to Jimmy. It's an incredibly dense graphic novel with visual themes and consistent metaphors the likes of which the comic medium has not before (nor since) seen. Peaches? I still haven't figured it out. It left me as lost as Akira, and made me feel more inadequate because at least I could rationalize getting lost in Akira's scope, or its foreign mindset, or hope that the key to its release was lost in the translation. Back to Jimmy, and hopefully my point. Jimmy Corrigan was about making you feel, inch by inch, the same gripping weightlessness that grips Jimmy every day. But see I didn't need any help. Apparently the thing they don't tell you is that when your life goes too high, too fast, you stall out and fall. Weightlessness follows when you're falling faster than the earth can drag you past your surroundings.]
[Today, and I suppose for a while now, I have felt weightless. I'm going to ask for it tomorrow. I will ask God for it, and the people I hope can deliver it. If they can't, then I guess I'll ask God again. If he won't, I'll be satisfied and write about falling again on the blog. Hope to see you then.]

I know what terminal velocity feels like. You don't have to prejudge me like I'm some sorority girl out for her first walk of shame. I've been around the block. I know where the kinks are in the system. I've fallen four miles on ten separate occasions and I've never had the chute misfire at the bottom.
Find your trust. Find your center. If you don't, I'll pull your chute myself.

[I guess.]

9.1

"Margaret, what brought us to this point? Was it the grilled cheese I had for lunch, or was it the metaphysical decisions forced upon me in my formative years? Do the decisions that we make have any effect on our lives, or do the contents of our stomachs rule our days?"
"What's your point, John?"
"I feel trivial. Oddly so. I want to figure out if it's reasonable."
"You've kissed me, John. On the mouth. Now you tell me you feel trivial?"
"I suppose so. I hadn't drawn a connection between the two."
"Well?"
"I suppose that was a mistake. I apologize."
"The kiss, or the disregard?"
He took a long, thin whiff of her perfume, because he knew it would be the last time he smelled it.
"Both."
He was right.