why bother, you pee blood...

The fucking Police was playing when I walked into the bar.

“God damn I hate the fucking Police,” I yelled. Then I remembered something important, I was at the bar because a friend invited me. That friend? He’s a cop. And the bar was filled with cops.

So, like Tim Roth says in Reservoir Dogs, you’ve just got to jump right in and swim. That in mind, I walk up to the jukebox, just as Sting finishes saying something stupid over a backbeat provided by a drummer who appeared in a reality show about storage unit auctions. I put my dollar in. I picked my song.

“Right about now, N.W.A. court is in full effect…”

A few seconds later, a couple hundred cops were chanting along with Ice Cube, Easy-Z and Dr. Dre.

I watched this scene for a few seconds and thought back to 1988. I was a teenager who wanted to be James Hetfield. I drank like him. That was about the end of similarities. I had more of a Dave Mustaine mullet. I don’t think about high school much. Nothing much happened.

Kind of like this party. It’s at a strip-mall bar. It stinks like pee. I want to go home.

But I don’t. Why? I don’t know. Maybe something will happen.

I order a shot of Jameson and a Miller High Life to chase it down. I gave up drinking soon after my stroke. Well, I didn’t “give it up” as much as I just stopped because it hurt to drink now. That made it silly to do. Yeah, I still think about the girls and women of my past. And now, I don’t fight with them anymore. I just look at them and nod. Yep, still here.

Then I eat some unsalted nuts out of a can from CVS.

I take a sip of the beer. Fuck, it tastes bad. Then I take the shot. It tastes worse. But the beer, now it tastes OK.

Why am I friends with a cop? I’ve never had a good experience with one. It’s weird. Except that guy who showed up at my apartment in New Bern at 3 a.m. one night. I was blasting The Faces, signing along with Rod and Ronnie, and drinking way too much. I guess one of my neighbors complained to the police. Instead of just knocking on my door. Of course, I opened the door when the cop showed up in my shorts only. Beer gut hanging out, bottle of Shiner in one hand, devil horns in the other.

“Yes?”

“Sir, could you turn down the musi….Hey, is that a Jump in the Fire Metallica poster?” he said.

“Well, yes it is,” I said slurring just the it.

“Soooo awesome, man.”

“It is?”

“I never got to see Metallica, but they’re my favorite!” he said, to me, I guess still.

“Saw them twice in a month back in high school,” I said, puffing my chest a little bit. I have seen some good music, even though when SHE happened, I mostly stopped.

“Cool, cool,” he said. “But man, can you turn down the Rod Stewart? Neighbors complained.”

“Yeah, not a problem. Gotta be at work in the morning,” I said, fully knowing I went to work when I wanted. Some days at noon, others at 5 p.m., and still others never. Being the boss at that point of my life was a good, and bad thing.

“Night officer,” I said, slamming the door behind me and turning off the stereo. I drank the last half of the Shiner in my hand and threw the bottle in the trash can. It hit another bottle. “Clank, cla, clank.”

I went into the bathroom and peed … blood.

Probably should have paid closer attention to that stuff, I think, now back in the bar in a strip mall in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cops I don’t know wondering where the fuck the one I know is?

Probably getting a blowjob in the bathroom, his brother says to me. I guess I’d been narrating stuff out loud again. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’ve been punched three times because of it and slapped twice. And got a girls number. Why? Because I fucking asked for it. Who’da thunk that actually works?

How the fuck did Sting get so damn rich? I think.

I order another beer and another shot. It’s going to be either a really long night, or a very short one. I hope for the latter, but know I’m in for the former.

“She’s here,” my buddy, not the cop, but the other one at the party I know says.

I look over my shoulder and yep, there she is, not HER, but instead her. She stole my heart for a moment because I left it out to rot. She kept if from rotting, and poisoned it instead. And her mom told me she liked me best.

Like mother, like daughter.

I look at her and then I smile. Why? Because I figured it out before it was too late.

I scratch my balls and think about cancer cells and Miller High Life bottle caps. This, I think, would make a great fucking story. And then I realize this is exactly why I don’t write for a living. Except for that newspaper thing any more.

the day i met her

“I’m not your dad,” I said as nicely as I could.

“You’re right,” she said with a dull glare. “He fucked me better.”

I looked at her, lying in bed covered with my 15-year-old comforter that had been to two colleges and across the country three times. I wanted to cry. Instead …

I left.

Usually, I’m the one who gets left. For whatever reason, I decided to be the leaver this time.

It didn’t feel any better. No matter what the country music videos show or the television commercials imply.

My heart was still broken, it’s just this time it was my choice instead of hers.

I sit in this tiny bar in Eutah, Alabama, still thinking about her to this day.

The first time we met, she told me “You’ll never forget me.”

She was right.

But, I haven’t forgotten a lot of people.

It’s just today, she’s on my mind a little more than usual.

Maybe it’s because I know she’s near.

The modern world allows you to know this. To keep tabs from afar. Tabs without actually travelling to where she is. Well, she’s always in my head, so that’s not true.

Exactly.

The baseball season ended for her tonight. For me, for the first time since 1992, it will continue into October.

I was 21 then.

I’d fucked just three girls.

I’d fell in love just once. Maybe twice, as I told another girl, who left me the next day. I wasn’t talking about her, and I don’t know if she really thought I was. She had that kind of power over me. She made me wonder what the hell she was thinking. All of the time.

I don’t think about her very often.

She wasn’t someone I wanted to grow old with.

Go to Van Halen arena shows and pelt Sammy Hagar with toilet paper with.

Eat peel-and-eat shrimp until we puked with.

Drive the long way, every day with.

Watch people live their lives the wrong way with.

Like I do now.

Without.

I have a life now. But it’s not what I expected. I write for money. Sometimes it’s actually pretty good. Each time I set out trying for it to be, but fall short most of the time. It’s the days when it works that I still smile. My crooked, golden teethed grin. I used to get told I had a pretty smile. I don’t anymore.

I still smile. It’s just reserved.

Unless I’m drunk.

Which doesn’t happen like it used to.

In the past, I’d go to work. Work. Leave work. Then drink.

At a bar. At a game. At nowhere. At home.

Alone usually.

I’d scribble down what other people say to each other.

One night a guy noticed me doing it.

What are you writing? He asked.

Nothing.

Bull hockey. He replied.

OK. I said. I’m writing about everything.

He stared at me.

Pussy. He said.

Nah. I replied. Haven’t had any in a while. So I don’t write about it. Sex. That is.

So then what do you write about. He asked.

A lot about masturbation. I replied.

He laughed.

I expected that.

I wrote it down.

Hey. He said. What are you writing? He asked.

Nothing. I said.

I woke up on the floor.

A nicer looking woman of about 45 years old was bent over me. Her tits were way too tanned. I still liked them. I stared.

You don’t know when to stop. She asked.

I figured it was a rhetorical question.

What were you writing? She asked.

Nothing. I answered.

Well. She said. He took your notebook. She said, pointing at him sitting at the bar.

A brunette was looking at my notebook.

I got up.

Walked over to the brunette.

You read? I asked.

Just your stuff. She answered.

Barkeep! I yelled. Two shots!

John, the barkeep, brought over two shots of Jameson.

I came here often.

Hey. He said, poking me in the back. Where is my drink? He asked.

She’s drinking it. I replied.

I woke up on the floor again. This time, my head hurt.

This time, there weren’t any tits in my face.

That made me sad.

My notebook was on the floor, right next to my blood.

Written on it were just a few words:

“You were rite,” it began. I smiled.

“You write about nothing.”

I looked at John. He nodded.

I struggled to get to my feet. I finally did. There was some blood on my left foot. Adidas Sambas, size 13. A half size too small for my feet.

Feet she called clown feet.

John already had a drink waiting for me.

I drank it.

Then I wrote about nothing.

I sold that story for $600.

Some magazine that doesn’t print anymore.

But what magazine prints anymore?

Mostly now, I dream.

About the day I met her.

And everything changed.

guts

I saw today that a former friend of mine got a new job. He got out.

It would be nice to follow in those footsteps. I got out the first time by being laid off. The second time by being fired.

Here’s hoping the third time, is a fucking shitastic awesomefest.

And that I get to make the choice.

Of course, I’m the one who keeps diving back in.

Gluttony and all. It’s my deadly sin.

I stopped writing months ago. Even though I get paid to write now. I feel like, rather, I know that I don’t write anymore. I got inspired for about 15 minutes today. At the desk. I threw out some e-mails and got some responses and then flat-lined.

It had more to do with a feeling than a fact, but I still have to face it. Head on. You know, for the penis.

I wonder too much about the past. I don’t wonder about the future. I don’t care about the future. At least that’s what I tell myself. I lie a lot. Not to other people.

Scorching forcing eating bumbling stifling working forking fasting fucking.

One time the girl looked at me and I didn’t look away. She laughed seconds later. I’ll never know if she was laughing at me or not. Because I didn’t have the guts to ask. I did have the guts to not look away, like usual, but I didn’t ask. She wanted to tell me. I didn’t have the guts to ask.

My mind still wanders over to her side of the bed. Every day. I can’t stop it from happening. No matter what. I’m happy now. Happier than I was before. Before what? I don’t know. Can I say I’m happier now, more content, more whatever than I was then? No. But I can’t say I’m not either.

It’s weird. I don’t know what’s right or wrong. What happened and what I want to have happened. It’s all a blur. I guess it helps one cope, the memory’s ability to play tricks on you. If we all remembered things exactly as they happened, every fucking second, we’d go crazy. We’d go mad. And I want that. I want to be mad, because of it. Not be mad because you think you are.

My head explodes with pain now. The teeth are rotten. The sinuses are infected. My heart probably is waiting to explode or just stop or whatever happens when they don’t have the strength to go on. Like a person, I guess. Sometimes they just quit. No warning. No reason given. It just happens.

Bye bye.

I stopped drinking soda for over 5 years once.

I dated the same girl for over 5 years once.

I drink soda now.

I’ve dated six girls since.

Why does that matter? Why do I type it? Fuck you. Fuck you in the ear. Or maybe a bloody eye socket after the eye was ripped out by feral cats. Sure, yeah, that sounds like fun. To watch. Maybe to make happen.

Probably not though.

You see? You see?

No. You never do.

Romanticizing the past like it’s some great place. Like a 78-year old who wants the 1950s back. Why? Because he's a racist shitbag. That’s why.

I don’t hate anyone. There are plenty of people, individuals I can’t stand. But I don’t hate. It’s a waste of time. It really is. Try not hating for a moment.

Of course, that’s a lie. Many times I’ve hated myself. Most would say I still do. I’m not sure anymore. I guess my behavior kind of says I hate myself.

Fucked up.

Do it. Smell it. Eat it. Fuck it. Lick it. Write it down. Drive the extra mile. Take the wrong turn on purpose so you can talk for another five minutes.

Why? Because you’ll be dead one day.

Either of old age at 91 or run over by a semi while getting a box of diapers for your newborn baby.

Which is more likely? Depends on the level of hatred. The size of the dick. The blue of the eyes.

I bought a new car two and half years ago. It’s going to pass 80,000 miles in a day or so.

Even the mechanics at the dealer go “Damn, dude. You drive a lot.”

No shit.

And I’m tired of doing it.

Not because of the deed itself, but the destination.

Then change it, asshole.

I’m working on it, I’ll say.

You’re always working on it.

It’s part of my charm.

And your destiny.

questions and crutches

“You still love her? Don’t you?”

That’s a question most every guy has heard.

The lucky ones, or unlucky, depending on your theory or perspective, are the few that haven’t heard it.

The answer you give, and the answer you know, they’re always different.

Having your heart broken isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a tumor. Some of them fester and become cancerous. Others just sit there and annoy you. You can cut them out, but most of the times they grow right back. You can ignore them, and they may kill you. Or they may not.

As I sit here in my living room, drinking a cold IPA and listening to the rain, the ghosts dance around the house like they always do. I’m use to them now. I used to not have the ability to function when they were around, but, since they’re always there, it became necessary to learn how to.

At first, it was alcohol. Nothing else. Just drinking and drinking. You lose a lot of weight when all you do is drink. Even if it’s beer. Your body sort of starts to eat itself and you lose weight.

You also lose teeth. But that’s a long-term problem. It doesn’t happen quickly. Unless you fall down drunk one night or morning or afternoon and they get knocked out. No, they rot. Like your heart does. Like your soul does. Like your career does.

Yeah, you can get off of your ass and “make something positive out of it.” Like all your friends will say. Like the shrinks will say. Like the self-help books and web sites will say.

And they’re all right.

Just like you are.

It’s a choice, right? That’s what the good book of life says. You choose to be happy, you’re happy. You choose to be sad, you’re sad.

Well, what if you don’t choose?

That’s something to ponder.

For minds deeper than mine.

I’d rather just eat peanuts out of a can and drink IPAs, while listening to the rain.

My friends all moved away from here. They all got married, too.

Me? I fell in love again. Yeah, it was good. I got my heart dusted again too. It hurt like hell. But not as much.

I waited a bit. Got tentative again. Drifted. Drank. Drove.

Then I got off my ass. Got a job. Moved to the beach.

Allowed myself to look again.

Fell in love again.

Got really happy for a little while. Then got crapped on by God, or Karma, or whatever you call it.

Spent a night in a hospital in New Orleans. By far the worst night of my life. I can’t even imagine how bad it was for the girl who’s eyes I was looking into the whole time.

I shudder just thinking about it.

Now, as July 19 approaches, it hurts even more than it always did. But at least I have something else to be mad about on that day. Not something that doesn’t exist anymore. That doesn’t think about me anymore.

I wonder which I’ll think about first that morning.

It scares me to think that it would be the first, not the last.

It’s a guilty feeling, I know that. If I know me, I know which one will pop into my head first. And it’s the one no one would think should be first, but if it happened to them, it would be first as well.

God damn that’s depressing.

Like the song says, I hear her voice singing every song I hear. But, the voice ain’t calling me back. It’s taunting me. Making me stay where I am.

“So do something about it,” the angry mob sighs. Ha. An angry mob sighing.

Well, I do. I drink. And I write. And I listen to songs that I’ve heard hundreds of times before. They make me sad. Every, single time. But it’s a little less. Every, single time.

And that’s about all you can hope for.

One day, probably soon, I’ll have to deal with loss again. Death seems to be coming soon. Not me, I’ve probably got the DNA curse of long life. Even living out of a shopping cart, somehow my atoms won’t quit, I’m sure of that. Maybe the mind won’t make the journey. That’s morbid. Even for me.

I had an idea. Start a business with my dad. Only problem? It came 10 years too late.

Or is that just an excuse? Like the rest of it. Like the words. Like the thoughts. Like that crutch?

Amen

The day started off like most other days, me popping open a beer and taking a couple of pills. After that, it usually got a little bit better. Or at least tolerable.

She came by my place at 10 a.m. It took some doing, but I was able to convince her that coming inside wasn’t too bad of an idea. She’d been there many times before. Most of the times late at night. Most of the times as drunk as me. But she was never there in the morning when I woke up.

Most guys would think that was paradise. All of the glory, none of the fight.

But I wasn’t most other guys. And it pained me every morning when she wasn’t there as I rose. It’s why the pills started. They put me in a better mood and made it easier to face the mundane tasks that the day would throw at me.

I was a copy editor at a shitty newspaper now. I used to be an editor. Used to be a reporter. But I’d lost the fire to chase after it anymore. It happened while I was unemployed. Laid off by a newspaper that I thought I was doing a good job at. Won some state press association awards, covered some shit no one else wanted to. Shot photos. Shot videos. Laid out pages. Read other people’s stuff. Just a little of everything. But, I wasn’t friends with the folks I worked with. Most of ‘em at least. And I guess that wasn’t part of the plan.

Anyways, while unemployed I wanted to do something else. Anything else. So I applied and applied for jobs. Public relations jobs. University jobs. Business and even furniture sales writing ads. Jobs at recreation departments. Jobs at super markets. Jobs in different states. And I didn’t get any of them. In fact, only a couple even bothered to send me rejection emails or letters. Those days of actually contacting folks interested in your jobs are long gone I guess. I once had an opening that over 200 people sent in their resumes for. I sent a message to all of them.

Finally, I had to bite the bullet and interview for newspaper jobs again. I was broke and my time on the dole would eventually come to an end. So, I did it. And immediately I got interviews. At first, I was rejected for the job but only after they hired a friend. Then I got offers. But I couldn’t pull the trigger on them. I didn’t want to move to some shit hole in the middle of nowhere to work at a job that would barely pay my bills.

So, I called a friend and got a job where I’m at now. A shithole little newspaper, but I live at the beach. And that was enough.

For a while.

Now, it’s not anymore. I want to do more. I want to write. I want to get out of my cubicle. I want to interact with folks. Will it happen? Yes. Where I’m at? Only if they let me. And I’ll find out soon if they will.

She looked at me.

“You’re always somewhere else,” she said.

I looked at her and smiled. She got me. But didn’t want anything to do with me. Well, the me that was me now. She’d met me before all of this. Before depression and hatred took their toll on me.

We used to go to the bars downtown and just laugh and smile and have a good time. Then one day I changed. It wasn’t because of her, but it was because of a she. And that she killed me for a long time. I’m not fully recovered from my death yet. But I’m working on it.

That’s why she still comes around. She’s seen the other side of me, and knows it’s closer to being back than it has been for years.

“Did you write last night?” she asks me.

“Of course not,” I say. “I did scribble some, but it’s not much.”

“How many words?” she asked.

“About 3,000.” I stated with a yawn.

“What did you write about?”

“You really have to ask?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “One day you’re going to do it.”

“You’ve been saying that to me for years,” I replied. “And maybe I’m just another one like so many. I’ve only got one story to tell. And I just haven’t figured out how to tell it. Once I do that, I can become the Sparks of my genre.”

“Fuck that,” she said. “You could write about kittens with machine guns and it wouldn’t be funny. It would be awesome.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

She frowned at me. It made me feel small. She was good at that. I slinked over to a cooler I’d left on the porch last night. I kicked it. The lid fell off and inside were two Lone Stars. I reached in and plucked them out. The water was still cold, and so were the bottles.

“To a great day,” I said handing her one of the bottles.

“Amen,” she said, taking the beer and popping the top off.

“You working today?” I asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“My drive starts in an hour,” I replied pointing at my beat up car. I bought that thing new and it already had over 120,000 miles on it. In three years and seven months. “In my chariot.”

It was a Hyundai Accent. Three doors and a busted air conditioner. I liked going to work all sweaty and gross. It kept the bosses from talking to me. And I liked it that way.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later tonight?” I said in the most hopeful voice I can muster.

“You know you will,” she said with a smirk.

“Amen,” I replied.

holiday in cambodia

First the car died. That was in May of last year.

Then my favorite shirts started to fall apart.

Next, the only buddy I have here, stopped really hanging out.

Signs?

I thought for a moment. The last time my car died was in late 2005. I also bought a lot of new clothes that year. And, my girlfriend of six years dumped my ass early in 2006.

Yeah, I should take these things more seriously.

***

“When did you get so old?” she said, very matter-of-factly. “The last time I saw you, you looked no different than in college. Except your hair was short. Now? Damn, you look like a different person.”

“Hey! Nice to see you too!” I replied. Yeah, I was hurt by that. I know my hair is gone. My teeth are crooked and yellow. But I’m still the same little kid inside whose heart you crushed back in 1992.

She’d been married. Divorced. Then married again since then.

Me? I’d been in three relationships. So, I guess I was keeping up. In some way.

She looked older. But she was actually sexier than she was at 22. Her curves were more defined. I guess you’d say she resembled a Jewish Courteney Cox now. Hell, is Courteney Cox Jewish anyway? Making that a really silly way to describe her.

“What are you doing with your life now?” she asked.

I loathed this about seeing old friends. Ones that I’ve stayed in touch with, but who haven’t really stayed in touch with me. Every so often they’ll remember to send me a card on Christmas. Maybe my birthday. But only after I’ve sent them one. Which I always do. But really, she’s got kids. She’s got a successful career. I’m just a guy she made out with a few times. A guy who fell for her, but she didn’t fall for me. I’ve always wanted to ask why. But I’ve always kind of had an idea of why. She was always very success driven. I wasn’t. She saw me becoming exactly what I’ve become -- just an average guy. Smarter than most, but not looking to get anywhere except to tomorrow.

I guess she was right. Either that, or I have low self-esteem. Well, I know I have that. So I still don’t know.

“You know, the usual,” I said.

She stared off into the distance. Her kids were playing on a swing there. I knew right then, I’d probably never see her again.

And here I am, three years later and I haven’t.

***

I walked in. She was blasting Aerosmith’s “Rocks” way too loudly for the dog. He was sitting in a corner, hiding from Steven Tyler’s dragging out of the word “Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng.” I didn’t blame the mutt for doing so.

Walking straight to the stereo, I turned knob to the left. The digital readout of volume went from 55 to 34.

“What’d you do that for?” she asked me.

“Sidney’s in a state over there in the corner,” I said. “I think he’s still mad about the whole American Idol thing.”

“Huh? You’ve never even seen that show,” she said derisively, knowing full well that I left every time she turned that God-awful abomination on on my 32-inch Toshiba tele. The non-high def kind as well. I refused to buy into the notion of “having” to buy a new, more expensive and more importantly -- cheaply made -- tele just so I could watch broadcast TV. It really seemed to fly against the whole “free airwaves” concept that supposedly the broadcast channels, including “public TV”, were given to us Americans.

Now, I hear the voices of the over-educated masses telling me that nowhere in the Constitution does it guarantee the right to watch “The Simpsons”. And yes, you are correct in this proclamation. But it also doesn’t say you can get amour piercing bullets for your guns that you only have for “family protection.”

Fuck. I need a beer. Another mindless day at work will do that to a person. I want to have sex, but I can tell by the look on her face, that she doesn’t. I figure I can just go in the bathroom, jerk off into the toilet and be done with it. Hope she won’t want me to move any furniture for a few hours, since my legs will be out from under me for a bit.

The kitchen is its usual mess. No dish has been washed for about two weeks. I can tell because even the old 1970s Hardee’s plastic cups I bought one day in a thrift store are dirty. She’s really a mess. But damn she’s cute. I’m a sucker, my dad would tell me if he was here. “Probably rank this one a 5, just because she’s so damn cute, otherwise, she’s a 2.”

I go to the back room. There, my hidden fridge is waiting for me. And by hidden fridge, I mean my cooler outside by the trash can. It’s in the 40s still at night, so the beers stay nice and cool. And I don’t need my mountains to turn blue to be able to tell.

I grab a Shiner Blonde, pop the top and take a long, deserved swig.

“Life’s good now,” I say, bastardizing the corporate slogan that my father has taken to saying way too much. I wonder for a moment if he’s in therapy? And if he’s seeing the same doctor that one of my Facebook “friends” is so obviously seeing. No one says “Life is Good!” that many times. I don’t fucking care if your life is peachy. You just don’t rub it in everyone else’s face on a daily basis unless you’re told to do so. Like being a prisoner of war in Cambodia.