Shit

The wind really started blowing about 10 minutes ago.

Five minutes after I got the hiccups. Damn strawberry daiquiris. Which of course means, at the moment, I’m in a relationship.

She kissed me on the forehead and said “Good night” about 20 minutes ago. Since then, I’ve been staring at nothingness. A blank Word document that stares back worse than any stray cat with a bit of rabies ever will.

“I’ll get you another beer,” she says before she leaves.

I answer with “Why? So I can get drunker staring at this fucking thing?”

Not the best way to handle that. She actually is the first girl I’ve been around that has encouraged me to stare blankly at the screen, notepad or what have ya, and put words down. It’s a strange feeling, really. Someone who believes in me when I still don’t believe in myself.

If I’m writing about some kid in community college who fucked his life up but got a second chance in the NFL/NBA/NHL/whatever fucking sport you choose draft, I’m great at that. I guess because the story is already played out. It just needs to be dissected and transcribed, so much easier than just making it up. Or is it. Reality trumps fiction, right?

Shit. I don’t know.

The many mistakes of my past stare at me currently. I don’t feel their urgency in gaining attention to things. God damn it.

Yep. I cuss God. Quite often in fact. Why? Because he’s never given me a reason to stop. Which, of course, is exactly why I shouldn’t stop, someone with a white shirt, tie and Gideon’s bible in hand will tell me.

The damn ping-pong ball is staring at me. And is ping pong ball hyphenated or not? God damn it. I hate that feeling.

Anyways, yes, anyways, not anyway, I decided to just open another beer and think about it.

On antibiotics that I need for my teeth, but only because I don’t get the dental work done on them that I should do, not for the cut in my hand which was so un-severe that the doctor scoffed at my even paying him 30 bucks to look at it. The shit and the fan just don’t love each other like they used to.

I hate most people I meet. Only because most people I meet work at the same place I do. Which means generally, they shouldn’t be working there.

If I meet someone at a party, heaven forbid, I love ‘em. The last guy I met probably wanted to shoot me in the eye because I wouldn’t stop talking about the Minutemen and Johnny Thunders. But hell, the last person I talked to at work about JT openly scoffed at his worthlessness. I think if I’d had a gun, I would have used it.

It’s why I lament the internet. We’re all so full of snark and bite. Yes. All of us are. Just a few of us actually draw blood. And I’m not one of them. So far. And it hurts. I just don’t think it hurts most.

How am I going to come up with over 200 more words to type?

Shit. Damn. Motherfucker. Cocksucker. Oh wait, that’s been done.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

Damn it.

I had a really good idea about throwing pizza out the window, but I just don’t want to think about it at the moment. That’s the real problem, isn’t it? Thinking?

Shit.

I’ve said shit a lot today.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Wet shit.

Drippy shit off your ass.

The kind that stays behind. Even if you used too much toilet paper. Enough to clog the freaking commode.

How the hell do you spell commode? Did you fucking know it had two Ms? I had no clue until 10 seconds ago.

Live and learn. That’s why we are here.

At least that’s what my teachers always told me. Fuck my teachers. The only one I’ve seen since I was “taught” by them spends his nights in the same bar as my dad. Drinking away the failure that is his life. Or at least the perception of failure. Shit. We are all failures if you compare it to someone better. So, damn. Just compare your life to the bum you see every day asking for change to ride the bus. I mean, even if you have no reason to live, you at least have the change to ride the bus? Right? If not, just fucking kill yourself. Shit.

Bye.

This was fun.

mistakes and masturbation

I’m sitting alone in my shitty house with a not-so shitty location. At least during the summer. Right now, however, it’s winter. And cold. Snow will be on the ground by this time tomorrow. I won’t have anyone to cuddle with. To fuck. To even leer at. Unless someone happens upon the place while I’m outside tomorrow afternoon, because I’ll sleep in. Very late. I do that. Every day, usually. Even when I’m working. Some would say that’s lazy. Counter productive. I won’t disagree. Won’t agree either. But if a woman happens by and sees me in my soccer socks and short shorts, eating peanuts out of a can and thinks “damn, that’s hot,” then I’m in business.

Not counting my chickens.

Speaking of chickens, I wonder if chicken heads still think when they’re cut off. I mean, the body still runs around. Does the head still think?

Thinking is about all I do nowadays. I went to a buddy’s house yesterday. To get drunk, supposedly, and watch his six month old do six month old things. I drank four beers, ate some crappy frozen pizza and got a backache looking up at his giant television that’s hung in a terrible place on the wall for the person sitting on the left side of his giant leather couch -- me, on this night.

I could have done all those things -- minus the backache and giant television and baby and human contact other than me, most likely masturbating -- at home. I guess I made the right decision. I got a free haircut out of the deal. And a night’s sleep with actual heat. Although my sinuses get all fucked up when I sleep in heat. So now, my throat is itchy and my body is covered with static.

Maybe I’m never happy?

I spent a day at work. Did the late paper tonight out of choice. It was a good choice. There were more pages and that kept me occupied longer than the early two would have. I don’t understand why Grimace, which is the name I have applied the big, fat guy who works with me, stays in the office so long after he’s done. I have no life, and I’m assuming he has no life either. But I finish, I leave. I don’t want to be there, if anywhere. Oh well. I spent too many years of my life wanting to be in a newsroom. They’re sad places now. Empty cubicles and young people who don’t know the difference between their and there, let alone how to get a news story without a press release.

The Chicago paper put the wrong photo on their front page of a Hispanic baseball player that became a Cub. Some people tried to make it a race thing. If he’d been white and all that. Well, more than one paper fucked it up. And the source of the fuck up finally became known -- a bad cutline by the original photog with the AP. Gasp! A photog who fucks up a cutline? Anyways. Of course it shouldn’t have happened, and I believe up until about 2005 or so, there’s no way it would have happened. Now? All bets off.

One comment on a story about it I saw really made me want to puke. “That’s why newspapers are dead. All the Web sites just fixed it. You can’t just change a photo on 1,000s of newspapers.” Yeah, he/she is right (and wouldn’t it be funny if he/she was a ladyboy?), but … you’re also not held accountable for your fuckups. And the short attention span of he/she won’t remember that the web site always fucks shit up. But he/she will remember that one fuck up from the paper. Because it was on paper.

What the fuck is wrong with this country? The potential next president, put targets on congressional districts, and now months later is saying they weren’t crosshairs. Fuck you. They were. Own it. I’d actually have one once of respect for you if you admitted, that in fucking hindsight, it may have been crude. But instead, you lie. Fuck people.

I take responsibility for my fuck ups. I shit my career down the drain. I charged up my credit cards. I made really bad decisions about not wearing a rubber. I eat bad food. I drink too much. I didn’t brush my teeth enough in my 20s. I didn’t get the oil changed in my car for over 65,000 miles. Yeah, fuck it. I’m a pretty stupid guy sometimes. But, I keep trying.

I’m also going to New Orleans just for the hell of it. I’m starting to get my old itch back. Or, I’m finally allowing myself to fucking scratch it again. Just do it. See what the fuck comes of it. If I fail, fuck it. I took a class at UVA once. I was in over my head. Failing it. I didn’t study for the final. But, I still took it. Did well enough to get a D+ in the freaking class. Sometimes, the brain is a wonderful thing. Even when most of the time it isn’t.

It stinks in here. I’m done.

ring...ring

Echoes are the first thing you notice walking into this once-proud room. Even if moccasins are being worn, footsteps are impossible to hide.

Friends and enemies alike are gone. Debates are few. Arguments, non-existent.

When a phone rings now, the person at the desk cringes. Because the person at the other end could be a few rooms away. With a stack of papers for you to sign. Sign away your last ditch effort at wanting to do something good. Something important. Something that matters. Eventually, the numbers will fall the right way. It has nothing to do with luck. Not how good or bad you are. Those days don’t exist anymore. Instead, you’re an item on a spreadsheet. When your worth becomes less than your cost, the knife it falls.

Unions concede wages now and consider it a big victory. Pensions are gone. That 401k match? Ha. We promise we’ll get it going again by the end of the next fiscal year. All the while the bonuses at the top of the food chain continue. $1.3 million here. $2.2 million there.

I never wanted to be at the top. I figure other than great white sharks, grizzly bears and maybe piranhas, I was in a pretty good place, why did I ever want to be a CEO or Executive Editor? Seemed like too much awfulness.

Now, I’m in a newsroom with very little news people in it. If you dare rock the boat, you’re labeled a trouble maker, a malcontent, or maybe even just an asshole. I’ve been called all three by editors in the past. All those editors are out of the business now. None of them were bought out. None of them seemed to care. They were fired. Simply put, for being bad at their jobs.

As I sit at my cubicle, waiting for what’s coming next, I think of the day I made a mistake in my career. The only one, really. I quit one job before I should have. That led to bad choices for quite a while. Not mistakes, because I was trying to do the right thing, just bad choices as they turned out.

The last job I had, the phone rang on a warm January day. I had come in to work early to get some stuff done ahead of time. Interviews were complete, story half written when I saw a co-worker get a call. He went into the HR office. Ten minutes or so later, he came out, head hung low with a cardboard box in his hand. Soon, he was gone. The scene repeated for another co-worker. The day of reckoning had finally come to this little place.

Finally, my phone rang. Ever since my first days on the job, I kind of expected that call. I was paid well for the first time in my life. And I was happy doing my job. A relationship had sputtered, sending me into an emotional hell, which cost the company money. And, never being the ass-kissing type, I didn’t make the right friends.

Ring. I picked it up on the first ring. My boss looked a me in horror. He’d brought me into this. Now, he had to watch me leave.

“Well, it’s been fun,” I said as I got up to go to the HR woman’s office.

“Sorry man,” my boss said. I didn’t believe him then, still don’t.

I walked in to the HR office. Where the HR head and the EE were sitting. I took off my ID badge and toss it on her desk.

“Where do I sign?” I asked with a smile.

“Thanks for making this easy,” the EE said.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I replied. “It’s the way of the beast now.”

“Sadly, it is,” he said. Not looking at me.

I felt a wave of euphoria come over me when I exited the building. Honestly, other than a few first kisses and a slow dance I hadn’t felt this good, this relieved, this happy since pushing the accelerator to begin my first solo cross-country drive in 1994.

Everything was a blank slate. Well, everything but my debt, which I wasn’t too worried about at the moment. What was next? Anything was possible.

So, that begs the question: why are you back in Eastern North Carolina, sitting and waiting for a phone call? I guess I wasn’t ready for the unknown. The change. The exit.

This time, however, I am. Seven months of toil, with one major rejection later, I know it’s time to say goodbye. To a lot of things. One by one I’ve tried working through them. Some I tossed aside. Others I made a shaky peace with. Lastly, that telephone call needs to come.

And I know it will. It’s just a matter of patiently waiting.

…