The madness of monotony makes me itchy

The madness of monotony makes me itchy.

It also makes for bad things. My mind doesn’t work the same when the body is unoccupied with something. Even as little a something as watching television or washing the dishes or picking my toes. It’s why winter is the least favorite month. I stay indoors. I sit under a blanket on my couch, staring at things. Thinking about the past, not enough about the present, and certainly not the future.

Plans aren’t my strong suit. I once had a plan. It worked out well. Until the bottom fell out.

Sitting here in my underwear, hoping that my tooth stops hurting enough to make it through the day, I wonder why I had to look.

Maybe it all stems from that wandering thought that popped into my head for no reason the other day. Over six years later, standing in a lukewarm shower on a frigid November morning, it dawned on me. She didn’t cry.

Every breakup that I think of ended with both parties crying. Well, except for the first one. But she was a toad.

But the one that “matters” to me. The obsession one. The one that friends are even too scared to say “get the fuck over it” about, she didn’t cry.

And that all of the sudden matters. For days I’ve been mulling over that fact. Something glossed over in the depression immediate, and the depression that followed. The depression is over, but some of the thoughts stay. It’s like I’m Jim Carrey from the Truman Show. Hopelessly wondering about some part of my past. Unrequited love and all. But it’s a sign of mental illness, no?

This latest thought revelation has helped me. I know that my way of looking at life is strange to most. You fall in love with someone, you don’t fall out of love with them. Either you change or they change. The person you were in love with, or the person you were, no longer exists. So, one or the other or both move on.

I think this thought has let me move on. It’s been a lingering thought, that’s been trying to bust out for quite a while now. I didn’t let it until that morning in the shower. A calm came over me when that idea was there.

There’s other things important now too. It always helps. This one is different. I feel it. And I know it. That’ll reveal itself soon enough.

So, what do I do to drive away the monotony? And with it, the evil that is my warped brain? No idea, really. But I’m working on it.

Drinking alone is no longer an option. I do it when I watch a game or cook out. But not when I’m just sitting. I’ve not learned how to open the floodgates of my head without the lubricant quite yet. It’ll happen. Or it won’t. That’s when I’ll finally realize that writing isn’t my thing. It’s been too long since I tried to write something other than a journal entry anyway.

Those cats on my stoop. They howl at night. I’d let them in, but they don’t like me. They just stare in disbelief or jealousy. Not sure which. Not that it matters to me. Or them.

Two glasses – Abita pint glasses – sit on my coffee table. They both are dirty. They both have apple juice in them. Apple juice used to be my friend. Now I’m told it has arsenic in it. Guess I’m full of arsenic. So don’t try to kill me that way.

My boss is a homophobe. He’s also a terrible boss. I’m going to close off the work world starting today. I want to leave. Need to leave. And the excuses for still being there are about as sturdy as dollar store paper towels.

I’m out of Pop Tarts. That makes me angry.

I haven’t shaved in two weeks. And while the sight of me is quite awful, even to mine own eyes, I don’t do anything about it. It just seems not worth it at the moment.

I don’t like being a passenger in my car. I freak out. It has to only be the fact that I don’t own it yet. And won’t for quite a few more years. I wonder what that says about me? I trust someone to drive it, yet I don’t like it when they do? Control freak? Nah. Just an idiot whose values are a bit warped.

Can you tell I struggled to make it to the end? This story had no meaning. And the rambles at the end were just that, blank rambles. Getting back on the horse. It’ll take some time. Maybe it’ll take a shot of whiskey or three. I just know it feels better this way.

A story? That’s the next step. Gotta involve the road, bars and redheaded women.

the kids...(attempt no. 1)

The kids, they all look up to me.

I noticed this happening around the time I turned 33. Why then, I have no clue. But I was an editor at a small-town newspaper, had a staff of three and a bunch of stringers. They were all younger than me. The closest in age was 26. He was a good guy. Name of Jerome. He ended up being the second-most successful reporter that I ever hired. Well, third best if you include Ed, the guy I hired in college.

The kids around me today, they laugh when I talk about newspapers. The good times, I refer to them as. Hell, I hated just about every other year then. Now, I’d give everything for it to be like that again.

“You actually printed stuff out. On paper?” they say in unison on those cold nights when my stories are all we have to get through it without fights breaking out or someone crying.

I’m 53 years old. And I feel every, single one of them right now in this house. It’s right on the beach. Moved into it back in 2010. The last year of normalcy I call it. They call it the year before the shit.

Back then, the United States was a crumbling empire. Today, just 13 years later, it doesn’t exist anymore. First, the money went bad. Then, the food went bye-bye. Lastly, the bombs starting falling and the guns started shooting. I thought I was going to move to New Orleans in 2011. Get a job washing dishes and writing crap on the side. I was two months from my final two weeks at work. I’d been in town setting up things for a week before, during and after my 40th birthday.

That was a great week.

I got really drunk with my friends. It turned out to be for the last time.

I fucked a redheaded stripper. Never thought that would happen. She actually gave me herpes. Never thought that would happen either.

I also fell in love for the last time.

When I drove my blue Hyundai Accent the 1,300 or so miles back home after a great week, I never figured I’d still be in this wood panel-filled house for the rest of my life.

Funny how things happen, ain’t it?

About a week after getting to North Carolina, I started selling off all of my possessions. The economy had been showing signs of teetering on the edge for years, and I was finally starting to take notice. Get out of debt and just survive became my mantra. I think the day I watched the movie “Collapse” on my laptop was the moment I decided to do something about my impending doom.

I sold my video game collection. Got top dollar from a guy in California for it. I sold my baseball cards. Not what I ever expected to get for them, but they were just dead weight to me. I found someone to take all a bunch of old band T-shirts as well.

Finally, on May 14th, 2011, I cashed out my 401k. I sent the entire amount to credit card companies and was completed bad-debt free for the first time since I was 20 years old and my mom paid off my one credit card that had an overdue balance of $348 dollars. Bad move mom. Didn’t learn anything from it.

Three days later, a war broke out in Central America. Someone invaded someone. The details never became fully clear. Some say it was our own troops, dressed like another country’s. Just trying to stir up shit to get a war started.

This caused a panic. Food became scarce. Gas almost non-existent. I started working from home just because I couldn’t drive the 41 miles in to the office. It was actually kind of nice for a little while.

I wrote when I wasn’t laying out sections. I scavenged water and lots of canned food every time I could. “Stockpiling like a madman,” the lady at the newly dubbed $10 store would say to me.

After three days of “war” the news stopped coming from Central America.

Three days later, a nuke went off in Israel.

Four days later, a nuke went off in Milwaukee.

Two more days and one went off in Boston, Cleveland and Moscow. Then Paris. Then Berlin. Then Bagdad. Then somewhere in New Mexico. Then Hong Kong.

The next day, nothing.

Then the news networks all went down.

Then cable.

Then the phones.

Soon, the folks with guns were running the place.

Soon, no one cared a massive hurricane hit the Atlantic Coast. Then another. And still another. The U.S. was fucked. I was fucked. I took in six people -- all friends from up north. They thought my place would be safe from the battles going on. They were right. For all of three weeks.

(i liked the beginning thought here. but hated almost everything after it. i had a great beginning, then i lost it in my head while trying to go from my car to the computer. by then, it had morphed into this. i think, for the rest of the week (ha!) i will try to write this same story, over and over again. until it goes somewhere better).

Anchor's Away...

Sitting here on my couch, looking out the same door I’ve now looked out almost every night since I moved to the beach over five months ago, something is missing.

I know what it is. And I shouldn’t be sad. But obviously, I am.

A little part of my past disappeared today. In a very good way. It’s me, however, so I’m a bit melancholy.

I sold the Red Shark. To a Marine. With a wife and kid. He called me early in the week. Luckily, I was able to get to my voicemail on the phone that I broke in a drunken haze last Thursday. The night, I most like lost a friend. I don’t know if I could call her a good friend. We had a lot in common. In too many ways, I figure.

Superficial things ended up mattering, I guess.

That car drove me through the end of the best time of my life. It steered me through the complete worst part of my life. And then died during the dullest part of it. Fitting? Maybe not, but that really doesn’t fucking matter.

For $300 that car is no longer there. It’s not killing the grass out front of my house. It’s not a potential accident for every drunken cougar that pours out of that shitty dance club across the street. Of course, the amusement factor of watching drunks in their $90,000 cars doing everything they could to not slam into my $300 car every night will be missed. The mailbox is still there, though, and it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to see in a drunken Ira Hayes haze.

Back to the non-finned shark. Mike D. named her that way back in the SJ days. Sitting out in the parking lot, wishing we were all somewhere else, or having a different boss, and possibly seeing the right person finally getting shit-canned. It’s funny how you look back at times where you were miserable then, and love every second of it. Miss it even.

That car came to symbolize a lot of shit. A lot of pain. More than I’d ever like to face again. But, most likely, will have to.

And now it’s gone.

Good riddance, I say.

My ex gave me that car. I flew down to Florida for the last time that I would. For Thanksgiving. My Celica, whose name was Carla, was wobbling on the last legs of a bad transmission replacement. Heck, the shitty replacement lasted over 99K, so it must not have been that bad. But anyway.

The arrangement was to take the Shark. Not called the Shark then, instead, it was Uncle Larry’s car. He bought it for $24,999 in cash. The receipt still in the car as the Marine drove it away while I was at work this afternoon.

Heck, the transmission slipped a little then.

It seemed like a great thing. “I’ll be able to visit more often, now that I have a decent car. And so do you!” was what I said.

She said “love isn’t enough.”

Ha. I scoffed at such talk. “Of course it is, you just have to believe it.”

Of course, now I know, she was right. Well, we both are, I think.

Love isn’t enough.

Unless you believe in it. Unless you give yourself up to it. No matter what it ends up doing to you.

Some people never get their heart broken. They meet a guy/gal, fall in love, get married and never look back. Never get their heart ripped out. Or stabbed by a rusty screwdriver.

Me, I’ve been down the road. And I don’t regret it. I still cry too much over it. It’s been over 5 years now. Almost as long as the relationship itself.

There are good days. There are horrible days. At first, the horrible days outnumbered the good days 10 to 1.

Now? The good days and bad days are about even. But it’s not because of her anymore. It’s because of me.

But that car is gone. The last real reminder of her. Yeah, there are other little things, but not ones that literally weigh a ton. Heck, half of that damn car wasn’t even around when she was. New muffler. New tires. New windshield. New wipers. New radiator. New alternator. New timing belt. Although that stain of bar-b-que sauce was still there. All these years later. Threw a book on top of a McDonald’s pack one day. Then it sat under it for over a week before I sat in the passenger seat and noticed it.

I wonder if she ever did? If not, it’s just a memory. Not a shared one. Not like they matter. To her, anyway.

An anchor it was. And now she’s gone.

And I still never had sex in it. Despite promises.

But we all know about promises made vs. promises kept.

a moment of pure bliss

It wasn’t something that I should have been surprised by. Yet, the feeling that washed over me as the rain pelted my Blackened Voodoo shirt and old Arizona State hat from the hurricane did.

It was a moment of pure bliss.

What made it that way, I started to consider. It wasn’t the soaking rain. It wasn’t the wind or the sand or the huge waves eating parts of the dunes like giant pieces of pecan pie.

No, it was the silence. It was the lack of movement. It was the aloneness.

As anyone who has ever lived at, or just spent time at, the beach knows -- people tend to be everywhere. Except when summer is over. That’s when everyone gets back to their hurried lives of buying things and watching shitty television. Of believing what the bloated heads on the cable news networks tell us. Taking comedians take on the news seriously. Of eating things that slowly kill us.

I’m guilty of many of those very same things. I don’t watch much TV anymore. Just what I download if something sounds remotely interesting. I try to read. But I make excuses not to a lot more than I used to. Which makes me feel sad. I have bought 1,000s of books over the years. I used to say they were my gift to myself at retirement. All the good and bad writers. From Hemingway to some guy who wrote pulp novels in the 40s.

The collection has been chopped up over the years. Just like me. Some stayed in New Orleans, probably drowning in Katrina mold. Some stayed in Florida. Probably settling into a landfill about now. Still others were left behind in apartments and houses in Arizona, Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina. Left to be found by the next person, and hopefully enjoyed, but most likely tossed into a plastic garbage bag to be semi-preserved in a dump.

It’s what happens to all of us anyway, right? We’re preserved and stuck in an airtight metal box with 1,000s of other dead souls. Why anyone would want to be buried is something I can’t comprehend. If the soul lives on, does it want to be stuck in a box? Will it get out before all the chemicals are put in? And what if we’re just supposed to die and rot? Become part of the food chain.

That’s always intrigued me. Becoming part of the food chain. The chain is pretty broken right now. Smashed into obedience by large corporations. But hey, I’d love to think that one day some fat idiot in Long John Silvers is eating a part of me. So I can course through his meaty, sweaty ass-funk smelling body and poke at his liver till he drops.

Yeah, that’s kind of awful. But it’s true, like everything is frightening.

My wish is to be tossed into the ocean, so the fish and sharks and whales and little organisms can just chomp on me. Then, those fish or whales or sharks will be eaten by other, bigger fish, whales and sharks. Eventually, they’ll bite the wrong hook or swim into a net and end up on a dinner plate. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But back to the aloneness.

When I first arrived here, everything was slower. There were not a lot of people around and it was agreeable. I was able to walk on the beach in the morning or late at night, never seeing a soul. In the afternoons, there would be a few, but not too many. Mostly book readers and shell scoopers.

Then came Memorial Day. Still the worst day here, in my opinion.

The people came in waves. Much like yesterday’s hurricane. Just people, cars, dogs, babies, bikes, and anything else.

Plus, drunken marines.

The aftermath was a wasteland of garbage and crap. Chairs bought hours before were mangled and thrown away. Beer cans and bottles dotted the roadsides and the beach. And then there were the cigarette butts. If anyone tells you people don’t smoke anymore, come to the beaches here. Butts everywhere left behind by asses.

So, as I walked alone in the streets, pelted by rain drops and random flying things, I realized how awesome it is to be here.

When they’re not here.

Am I a misanthrope? These thoughts pop into my head.

Do I hate people?

Nah, things just seem better when they’re not around.

Until you find yourself painfully alone too much of the time. And then you sit on your porch watching, looking for a way to connect. Walking amongst the hordes, once again trying to find a way to connect. Drinking from a bottle, thinking maybe it will provide the strength, the courage to reach out.

It happens so rarely. But when it does, you remember being the guy walking down the street alone in the rain really isn’t so fun…