homemade tattoo

Being poor isn’t romantic. It isn’t some kind of soul building exercise.

It’s just horrid.

I feel this way pretty often. Tonight, it hit while I was jerking off in my room. I had to turn the fan on loud and put headphones on while doing it. Soon after, I found myself listening to The Plimsouls and wondering where did I steer off in this direction?

She was crying yesterday. It made me feel sad. And it made me just feel. I told her things I’d not told anyone else. At least not face to face. I didn’t feel quite as lonely that night. Until later, when I got nauseous and felt as if I was going to either die, pass out or throw up everywhere. Thankfully, I did none of those things. Instead, I just felt really terrible and moaned a lot.

The ability to cover up the way I feel sometimes eludes me. I have no poker face. But I’ve known that for years.

Today, the boss pissed me off. So I snapped at him. Like a little bitch, I’m sure he thought. Hell, it’s what I thought. Soon after it was forgotten. But it bothered me that I let it come out like that. I’d done so well getting out of that mode. I know what it means. I need to leave. I need to run. I need to find something new to sink my life into.

Yet, all I can think about is scrounging up the cash to buy four tickets to a concert in Nashville in a little over a month. Take the girlfriend and have some fun. Get drunk. Do stupid things. Maybe even get a homemade tattoo.

I want to take myself serious, but I don’t seem to have the ability to. It drives me somewhat crazy. And that’s the problem. It should make me mad. Insane. Fucking nuts. Instead, it causes bother.

Lately I’ve been wondering why I don’t remember my dad being around. Except when we went places. I don’t remember him even being at my high school graduation. But I know he was there. I just blacked him out. Put a little black bar over his eyes in my memory so I wouldn’t remember him? Of course, I don’t remember anyone else being there either. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t? It’s just another layer of lost.

I wish I could afford to get my teeth fixed. I don’t know how much longer they’ll be in my head. They don’t hurt much. But I stopped taking the supplements that seemed to hasten their demise. Of course, that has hastened other demises. Fuck, getting old sucks. Especially when you haven’t taken care of yourself.

Only me to blame, though. Jack Lelane is laughing at me.

And so are you.

The sky was a burnt orange color when she came outside. I was sitting in my usual place on the front stoop. It was light blue with pieces of the shitty concrete falling off into the lawn of mostly weeds. I loved dandelion flowers. Almost as much as daisies. They both grew everywhere. I know my neighbors hated me for that. But they only lived there for three weeks a year, so fuck ‘em.

She grabbed one of my busted up beach chairs. This one had dolphins on it at one point. Every day I used to comb the beach, looking for the discards of tourists. Koozies and beach chairs. The occasional umbrella or cooler. The stuff people buy for a day then toss on the ground next to a trash can is remarkable. I would take pictures and publish a book on it if I thought it would sell. But who really wants to see 100 pages of pictures of plastic shit? One day some hipster kid would find a copy in a thrift store and it would be popular for a moment. He’d blog about it (or whatever form of on-line communication exists at this point) and it would become a phenomenon. They’d seek me out on the internet, only to find me on my stoop. Wishing their parents had bought the book in the first place so I wouldn’t be living in a shitty, wood-paneled renter in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, drinking Shiner Bock’s out of a beat up old pint glass that I got at the Chevron station next to the General George Patton Museum in California.

We looked at each other and smiled.

“When we leaving for Nashville?”

“In the morning, honey. In the morning.”

the worst one yet...

It’s in the 40s outside tonight. That makes me angry. The steam rising from ponds by the side of the road. That makes me angry, too.

Cold weather means winter is coming. There is no stopping it. I could run from it. Head South. However, at some point, I’d hit a snag.

Water in some places. Borders to cross in others. It’s a shame how much we can’t travel anymore. If this was 1401, the only thing I’d have to worry about would be falling off the edge of the Earth. No one would care if I got in my boat and sailed.

Born in the wrong time.

Hell, if it was 1957 I could hitch my way somewhere else. Someone would even pick me up. Well, maybe not me now. At 40 years old. Hoboism sounds so good.

Now? You get on the Internet and look at photos of some place you want to go. Chat with someone who actually lives there. Instantly. At your fingertips. Seems to me that takes some, if not all, of the adventure out of it.

But I’m cynical.

I watched a guy at work today really mistreat his dad. He has for two weeks now brought in his dad.

He sits there in a wheelchair, barely able to speak. The kid scoffs at his words and yells at him when he doesn’t do what he wants him to do. Two weeks I’ve had to watch this unfold. The kid gets meaner and meaner every day. It’s like he’s gaining confidence that we won’t say anything. Do anything.

He’s wrong.

The seeds were planted today. As he cussed him out and then wheeled him into the bathroom. I went a bit later, and there was pee all over the floor. I’m guessing son didn’t want to help father too much.

It’s sad.

Another guy at work and I, we decided if it continues, we’ll say something. Has to happen.

That was after the son asked the dad for money. “I paid for this dinner,” he said. “You owe me $5.”

Fuck. What a miserable existence.

There have been many times when I hated my dad. Or thought I did. But I never really did. I’ve stood up to him. He’s stood up to me. We will never be lovey-dovey to each other. But we respect each other now. A lot more than before. I get him a little more. I don’t think he gets me. It’s ok though.

I’ll see him tomorrow. Just for a bit. Going to be a long one. Work for 8 hours. Drive 90 minutes to watch the fights. Then drive 3.5 hours home. Sleep a few hours. Drive to Richmond. Go to festival. Drink some. Talk some. Then try to sleep. Get up. Do laundry. See parents. Go to sleep. Get up, drive to work. Five more days wasted. Then some days off. Two Lucero concerts. Good stuff all around. No money to do it with, but hey, has that ever stopped me before? Yes. A lot more lately, in fact. I guess I may finally be growing up. A bit, at least. I was hoping not. So, we’ll see.

I look at my wrist. There are two ugly bug bites there. They itch like hell. I scratch them. Immediately regretting doing so, because now they are itching and inflamed. I can’t remember a bug ever being on me in the last few minutes. How did these bites get there? Are they flea bites or mosquitoes? And who thinks about mosquito bites in October? I guess everyone. That was a stupid question. But you can’t ask one, a journalism professor once said to me. Well, he said it to everyone.

I disagree. I’ve asked plenty of dumb questions…Usually involving women. But not always.

Maybe I should learn to play the tuba?

Take a cooking course?

Fan the flames?

Take up smoking?

Shoot up heroin?

Fuck a transvestite?

Eat raw eggs like Rocky?

Stuff a sock in my pants before work?

Draw a line in the sand?

Jump out of a third floor window?

Sleep in the road?

Get a pet spider, name him Harry?

Put a personal ad on Craig’s List?

Only listen to the Dixieland cassette tape for 10 days straight?

Eat Strawberries?

Drink SoCo and Limes for lunch at work?

I did finally say something to the cute girl at work. She’s married, but I finally said something to her. She smiled. That always makes things better. Even chasing the unobtainable. Why stop now, right?

i tried some pills for my heart, but a little too late

Good decisions are harder to remember than the bad ones. Bad decisions not made are impossible to forget. Good decisions not made just aren’t there…

Talked back from the abyss.

I remember sitting on my sectional couch that my buddy gave me before he moved out of eastern North Carolina, looking at three bottles of pills. One was full of Oxycodone that I’d gotten the last time I had kidney stones. The other was Zolpidem, sleeping pills I’d gotten because I couldn’t sleep. The last was, Budeprion, some anti-depressants I had because, well, I was depressed.

Work sucked at that moment. I’d gone through some issues with a story I didn’t want to write. About a kid who died.

Things just seemed hopeless. And sitting in my apartment, by myself, every, single night didn’t help matters. All I seemed to do was cry. Think about how crappy things were. No girl. No money. A job I hated. Yep, this was where I wanted to be at 37 years old.

And those bottles all had what I thought was the answer.

Death.

I wasn’t very lucky at that point in my life. Well, that’s not entirely true, but it’s the way I felt. My friends who were local, of which I could count on one hand at that time, didn’t seem to see anything wrong with me. Or if they did, didn’t bother to say anything.

I clung to opportunities to go and hang out with anyone. Usually, ending up in a chicken wing joint or just on a barstool. Not exactly theraputic, but it helped. Anything did, really.

But the abyss kept getting closer and closer.

I don’t know what exactly pushed me to the edge. But, there I was sitting in front of three bottles of pills, wondering if the combination would be enough to kill me. If it would put me to sleep and not hurt.

I had no clue.

But I think I was about to find out. I curled up in a ball, crying. I don’t know how long I was there doing it. I grabbed the bottles and opened them up. Pouring their contents onto my footlocker/coffee table. The one with scribbles on it from a three-year-old that touched my heart and made me live for a little while again.

That kid was gone. At least from my life.

After getting the crying done. I stared some more at those pills. All white and awful.

I grabbed my cell phone. Looking at the numbers in it. Wondering who would even answer the phone if I dialed them.

I called my mom. Saying to myself…if she doesn’t answer, it’s a sign.

She answered on the third ring.

I broke down. Completely. Utterly. I told her how much pain I was in. How little I felt and how much I felt. She had no real words for me. She never does. But she listened. And she cried. I felt horrible. She was at work. But she put off everything to just listen.

And that’s all I needed. After a long time of a lot of words and a lot of crying. I hung up.

I put the pills back in their bottles. I wiped my face, grabbed my keys, and went to work. Just like I always did.

That’s the day my mom saved my life. She’s one of two people to do that. Maybe I’ll write about the other time and other person some other time.

Is life any better now than it was then? Nope. It’s pretty much the same. I don’t have any money. I have no friends where I live and I’m single as single can be. Also, every day begins with a ritualistic listening of Rick James’ “Street Songs”. Why? Because I’m scared of what the day will bring if I don’t do it.

The highlights of my days are writing, now, however. So that’s an improvement.

I still have two of those bottles, as well. They both have two pills left in them, so don’t be scared for me. The Hillbilly Heroin went away a while ago. I used to take one every so often just to help me sleep. Or if I was in pain.

Now? I just want to go to sleep. And get up tomorrow and go to work.

The weekend is coming. I’ll probably do nothing but watch and observe and think. Maybe even read a bit. I’ll write something down too. Maybe it won't be forced? It’s what I do.

Better than the alternative.