lines

I guess I’m supposed to write now.

All I have is time.

No job. No kids. No responsibilities.

So, I sit and stare at a television instead.

Or I attempt to read a book. I made it to page 10 of 447.

I ate some cheese and peperoni on corn tortillas.

Drank some water.

Watched a dog stare at me.

Watched another dog roll around in the freshly cut grass.

Now the dogs are asleep.

And I’m staring at a computer screen.

My carpel tunnels doesn’t hurt as much since my job ended.

I need to go pack up the rest of my stuff. But my girlfriend seems to want me to hang around here.

Doing nothing.

I wonder how long before she’ll start to get antsy.

We love each other. I know that. But when one of the two is being a bum, it grows old.

Fast.

I have money to survive for quite a while.

It’s weird feeling that way.

I won’t get unemployment this time.

And I think that’s for the better.

I didn’t get hungry enough to lower my expectations until the checks stopped coming.

Of course, the irony was, the day after I took a job, the checks started coming again.

I guess the checks never actually came. I got a debit card.

They charged you for checking the balance on it.

That made me laugh.

I checked the balance once.

It had more than two dollars on it when I stopped using it.

I wonder where that money ends up?

Does someone get it?

Or do I always have an account with two bucks and some change in it?

The card is expired. So you can’t use it anymore.

Maybe there is some guy in a cubicle who has figured out his Superman III/Office Space way of a quick buck?

He’s collecting all the scraps off of expired debit cards from unemployed folk. Most of which probably never got a decent job again.

I see friends and former friends and never were my friends who have taken jobs not doing what they used to do.

Some do contract work.

Some flip burgers.

Some sit at home and lament the fact they didn’t network better or get the right skills for the current economy.

I said it’s all bullshit.

If you know someone who runs a company, and they like you, you’ll get a job.

If you don’t know anyone in a company, you probably won’t get a job.

Unless you’re lucky.

Or God damn good.

And that usually doesn’t matter.

I have been bitter before.

I don’t want to be bitter again.

I’d rather be better.

Ugh.

If you think, you live better.

If you just exist, you don’t live.

I want to get in my car and drive west. See a state I haven’t seen. I think I may do that. Just to stop the monotony of life.

I applied for a job as a security guard today.

I probably won’t get it.

I most likely won’t get a call back.

If I do, I won’t channel Chinaski.

Unless the person interviewing me has nice legs.

Then I won’t be able to help it.

Television is numbingly bad.

It always has been.

It’s not like there was some great time in the past when it was a good thing.

It’s always been an opiate for the masses.

Something to placate them.

Keep them inside.

If you go outside, you’ll see just how bad things are.

Except on your cul-de-sac in the suburbs.

Two cars and three kids.

A dog and a cat that get along.

Sex once a week.

Sounds like a prison to me.

Except for the sex.

If I was in prison, I’m pretty sure I’d have sex more often.

Not that I’m pretty or anything.

But I ain’t tough.

It’s why I’ll live in a box on Broadway in Hopewell, Virginia, before I do anything to go to prison.

Of course, being homeless can get you sent to jail. Which seems very odd.

Land of the free and all.

Why can’t I be free of a residence?

A job?

A career?

A family?

A dog, cat, snake, etc?

Maybe it’s because you don’t believe in God?

Nah, lots of people don’t believe in God. Even when they say they do.

If you actually believed, you’d do more. You’d help. You’d be selfless.

But, instead, you buy stuff at Best Buy and ignore the homeless guy right outside.

You keep your sunglasses on so he can’t make eye contact.

But he knows.

And so does He.

If he exists.

I don’t think He does.

But I can’t be sure.

Until I’m dead.

Then I’ll know.

It’ll suck if I was wrong.

But, it’ll suck if I’m right.

Maybe if I had done a porno when I was younger life would be different?

I could Google myself and see it.

Just like an employer.

I got rid of my Myspace page because of that.

But I leave up a blog. That isn’t kind to me or others.

And I don’t care.

I started an on-line career assessment test yesterday.

After getting half-way through, I gave up.

I don’t want a career anymore.

I want to get paid to do something cool.

Even if it’s standing on the curb and selling Coronas to tourists.

There are worse things to do.

Like working for a newspaper that hasn’t had news in it for years.

Lots of press releases and opinions by “writers” who can’t tell the difference between “your”, “you’re” and such.

Eating a sandwich on a sunny day is not sultry.

Fucking a watermelon isn’t going to give you AIDS.

How come it’s so hard to lose arm fat?

And spare tires?

But legs get skinny fast?

Boxes will sit full for months. Never looked at. Never touched.

They are full of memories and money spent.

Is that all there is?

Is this all there is?

Are you all there is?

Am I all I am?

Scary to think it.

Not pretty at all.

please, don't pee on me

It can be awkward. Letting someone into a mind that’s been solo for so damn long. So long, in fact, that it doesn’t know how to let somebody inside anymore. You spend too much time blocking things, stopping them, avoiding them, eventually, they stop a callin’.

Someday I’ll find a way to describe the longing inside of me. Find a way to explain it. Make the words come out right so that it doesn’t hurt her feelings when I say them. But I just don’t know how to right now.

There’s so much inside of me that I don’t like. It’s like an infection or an abscessed tooth. You know it’s not good to keep around, but you don’t do anything about them. You could mow the lawn, or you can let it grow. Eventually turning to weeds and dandelions, which of course, are just weeds.

Moments come and moments go. They seem right, but turn wrong. It’s impossible to explain that moment, but you always know it when it happens. Yet you’re powerless to stop it. And then you wonder if you would have tried with the ability to do so?

I think about my dad sometimes. The state he’s in now. I seem to be heading in a similar direction, and it scares me. I don’t like where he’s at. I’ve rarely liked anything about the man. But every so often he shows the good that’s inside of him, and I fear that I am just like him. So many have told me that I shut them out, I keep them at arms’ length. Of course I don’t see it that way. Who does though?

Words are a struggle sometimes.

Eating is easy. Eating right isn’t.

I used to exercise because it was my mode of transport. Then I got a car, a job and I got fat.

The tingling won’t go away like it used to. It scares me. A little more every day.

I hear songs in my head when I type certain phrases. It annoys me.

I wanted to go to the circus. But I didn’t.

The eagle crashed in my back yard. I looked at it. It looked at me. Then another eagle swooped down and clawed the other eagle. I guess eagles fight too.

My beard annoys me. I think it’s a problem.

Trying to do this every night has been a breeze. Until now. I need a beer. Or six.

The dogs sit on my carpet and never stop moving. It’s strange. I’ve never seen two dogs who just can’t settle down and crash out. One is just old. The other is nervous. Guess that could be me.

One day I stood in front of Barry Bonds. I stuck out the baseball and he signed it. I didn’t say a word. I was 16 or 17 years old and still had a bowl haircut. He must’ve been really impressed.

There are days when I wish I’d now crashed my bike. Even though the scars are cool. The aches in my jaw aren’t.

The cockroach stumbled out of the house when I came home today. It seemed like it didn’t want to be inside. I wonder what is so bad inside? Maybe he just wanted to see his friends, the outdoors cockroach family?

It used to inspire me to listen to certain music. Inspire me to get sad. Inspire me to drink. Inspire me to write. I don’t think it inspires me anymore. Love is like that. It comes, it flourishes and then it goes away. Leaving you behind to wonder what the fuck happened.

The tuba sat in the pawn shop window for 11 years. The price never changed -- $150. So, Edward decided to change it. He made it $175, but also put a big “On Sale” banner next to it. Damned if the thing didn’t sell the very next day.

So he tried it with other things. And without fail, they sold.

This was the beginning of advertising. And lies in advertising.

Ok, it wasn’t the beginning of advertising. Or lies in advertising. Just lies in advertising for Edward the Pawn Shop guy.

My neck crackles every time I move it. I wondered a few years ago what it was, so sure it was a clogged artery that would one day kill me. My doctor laughed at me. Said I was fine. Now, I’m not so sure about his diagnosis. He really didn’t inspect me too well. He was a drunk, like me, after all.

The dog is staring at me. He hates me I think, but is so desperate for any kind of attention and love, he hangs out. He lies on my feet. He wags his tail. But he also pees on me. Which if you’re not getting paid for isn’t very fun.

hand-me-down advice

I sigh as I plop my ass down on my old, dirty hand-me-down couch. It used to be some kind of off-white color, but that has long ago disappeared. I was given this couch by my sister’s boyfriend. His words upon offering it up were “It’s the dog’s couch right now, but I’m sure a little bit of Woolite and some elbow grease will make it all good again.”

It didn’t seem like a particularly dirty couch. It had some slobber marks from the dog just sitting there on it all the time. Since the dog was fixed, I didn’t need to worry about red-rocket stains. So, I snagged it up and took it to my house at the beach. Yeah, I said my house at the beach. The three-bedroom shithole that I rent for $695 a month. A little price to pay to live at the beach, but a hell of a price to pay on my paycheck.

On the couch are a pile of bills that came in the mail while I was away on vacation. The girlfriend and I spent five days jaunting and juking about the country. We saw 11 states in all. Went to Louisville for the first time, as well as Batesville, Arkansas. Add Huntington, West Virginia, to that list of new places as well. Plus all the small towns in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and others that I’d never been too and it was a damn productive trip.

I also made it a point to find the time to write. Each day. Sometimes in the morning. Sometimes while she was driving in the afternoon and one time late at night. But, it got done.

“What are you writing about?” she asked.

“What we just drove by,” was one of my answers.

Another was “Sheryl Crow.”

Still another was “you.”

She crinkled her nose at that. I asked why.

“What do I do that needs to be written about?” she asked.

“Everything,” I said.

She smiled.

This reminded me of a conversation I once had. A writer of more renown and talent than I was sitting on the beach with me one hot summer day. It was Memorial Day because we were listening to the Indianapolis 500. Hundreds of tourists all over the place and there we were, sipping on Budweisers and listening to a transistor radio. I always dug that about him, he took that trusty old radio with him everywhere. And damned if he couldn’t always find something interesting to listen to. A much better success ratio than those with XM Satellite radio. However, I do believe he now has it.

But the topic of writing about people came up.

“You’ll lose friends when you write about them,” he said.

“Then were they really friends?” I replied.

“Trust me, when you write about somebody, they’ll take it the wrong way. If you mean it as a compliment, they’ll take it as a dig. If you mean it as comedy, they’ll look at it like a tragedy. It never fails.”

“I’ve written about just about everyone I know. Some have read it, some haven’t. I don’t even know who has or hasn’t. It doesn’t matter, really. I just need to type things. Scribble things. Jot them down on napkins or receipts. If you say something funny that I want to use later, the only way I’ll remember it is to write it down.”

“Exactly, and people will want to read it. And then they won’t like it. You could write like Hemingway, or you could write like Nick Sparks, either one they’ll hate it because it’s them.”

“It’s the only way to get people into a story,” I continued to rebut. “Real conversations top fake one’s every day.”

“Yes, I agree. But be ready for the consequences.”

He was right, of course. I’ve written about a lot of people. Friends, family, co-workers past and present. Ex-lovers and current ones. The ones that stumble upon my scribblings usually don’t know what to make of them. Especially if they see themselves.

“You’re such a good writer,” they say, “but what did you mean by this?” And by this, it always means the stuff about them.

“I don’t remember, really,” I respond, completely honest in saying it. “I write something that I feel in the moment. Not something I’m going to dwell upon. Well, except for the damn breakups and tooth decay.”

Sometimes I get a laugh then. But usually not.

But I don’t write for others. The time I tried to do that, it blew up in my face. “You don’t write like you did before,” she said. Well damn it, it isn’t like it was then. “You wrote about her so much better than you wrote about me.” Ugh.

Get off of the horse and you have a hell of a time getting back on. Without the stirrup, at least.