I got next

Yes, please

The right woman needs to shove me up against a wall by my throat and make out with me hard. Soon, and a lot.

Isolation Army

I like to fool myself into believing there’s a nobility that comes from spending inordinate amounts of time alone. The human brain has this uncanny way of rationalizing just about anything.

As much as I hate to admit it, I do my best work alone. Always have. It all stems from this pretty crazy terror I had as a child of being abandoned. My big recurring dream as a kid featured my mother having to leave me behind forever on some mysterious trip. Oh man, I would just lose it after those nightmares.

When the nightmare finally came true, it snapped me out of a roughly two-year patch of a sort of forced isolation I’m sure I’ve alluded to here before. But it allowed me to hole up in my room and draw up a plan. A really good plan.

I still kind of marvel at that guy. I mean, what a fucking mess. And to actually put one foot in front of the other and march your sorry ass through the perilous journey that took you exactly where you wanted to be in the first place is an accomplishment that can never be underestimated.

Then there were the two years almost to the fucking day spent in (REDACTED). Yeah, the first year or so was the stuff of instantly legendary MTV reality shows no doubt.

But so much less attention is paid to that last eight months or so. Living in that studio apartment on the northernmost tip of town. Locked in a futile battle with a creeping army of cockroaches (those goddamned bugs let me tell you…), now that was doing a motherfucking bid right there for real doe. Niggas say what.

Everyday I would trudge to that soul-crushing ‘job.’ And I would set about doing the task appointed to me. Oh, and I ate. A lot. Combined with the non-stop sitting on my ass, let’s just say I wasn’t at my physical peak by any means.

I joke about it now, but I’ll always remember the day Mama Universe blasted me in the shoulder with a .22 and broke a couple of ribs with a lead pipe. Deep winter. AKA mid-January. I’d left work and was walking towards the train station. It was bitterly cold even for this notoriously frigid burg. I was wrapped head to toe in a good percentage of my wardrobe at the time in defense. I was sporting some fashionable wool overcoat. I turned onto (REDACTED) Avenue, and a blast of arctic wind (known by people of my father’s generation as “The Hawk”) stopped me in my tracks. Breathing ceased. Everything slowed down to a blurry not quite halt and tears pooled in my eyes. It was too cold for them to do anything more.

I somehow staggered into the nearest recognizable storefront: Urban Outfitters (oh, the humanity). I stumbled towards a large wall of coats. Pawing through the pile of Gore-Tex and nylon until I found it. The biggest, bulkiest snowboarding coat I could find. Fake fur-lined hood and everything. Made by a company called Drift (they appear to be no more. Huh). That orange-lined beast became my best friend. I threw the useless overcoat in the trash and never looked back.

At work, I posted a page from I’m pretty sure “Los Angeles” magazine. There was a photographer who took pictures of the Pacific coast horizon at different times of the day. He would use really long exposures and get these really rich, shimmering images. There were two such shots stacked on top of each other on the page I posted in my pathetic work cubicle. And I stared at that picture every day, all day. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t stop until I was looking at that very same scene in real life, and that place would be home.

Six months later, I was being put up in a posh Beverly Hills hotel at my new employers’ expense. It was April Fool’s Day. I’ll never forget it. Somewhere, there’s a folder with that crumpled magazine page still in it. Soon, I was standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and that image was so fucking alive it brought more tears to my eyes. The good kind this time.

And it goes on. Once again, I find myself begrudgingly doing another stint of totally unexpected isolation (isn’t it always though?). As always, my mind is working overtime, all the time, furiously figuring out an escape plan. I though I had a clear lane, but that was just an illusion (AKA one night stand). There was a pretty sweet conjugal visit in there, too. But this is a real one. FML, as the kidz would say.

Which only means one thing. I gotta set the focus dial towards the desired destination, fuel up and lift off. The Mothership doesn’t run on just happy thoughts and fierce determination. What did they say in my brother’s day? 

Ah, yes:

“Gas, grass or ass. No one rides for free.”


Drink banana daiquiris until I’m blind

There is an amazing Prince song called “Another Lonely Christmas.” I know, yet another amazing Prince song, right?

But the little man sprinkled some extra special purple magic dust on this one. Maybe it’s the reverb-heavy production that makes it sound like the song is being recorded in the middle of a snowstorm outside in a field somewhere late at night, stars stars everywhere.

It will forever remind me of her. Let’s just call her M. M was the first girl I fell head over heels in completely irrational love with at the unfortunate young age of 15. If I could ever sufficiently tell the story of M and I, it would be the most beautifully tragic story since Romeo and Posh. There was a Christmas when her and I were in the middle of a(nother) huge row, and we didn’t talk the entire day. Of course I was all sad and shit.

The next day, I bought a 12-inch copy of Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas” (it’s the b-side to the single for “I Would Die For You,” I think) and just left it on her doorstep.

God, we were such little drama queens.

Nothing nearly as fun this Christmas. Well, I guess that’s relative. Alternating between OG Kush, Jim Beam and cocaine, I definitely wasn’t feeling any pain. But other than the random people behind counters that sold me things, I did not physically interact with another human being at all yesterday. And that’s a first.

There’s always been at least a girl there to put on a dress and smile and make everything all sparkly and holiday-like. Without one, I was a complete, fucked up mess. Hm. That little itch should be telling you something.

Oh, and that movie He’s Just Not That Into You? Well. The whole Ben Affleck/Jennifer Anniston situation is the crux of my whole fucking problem. Whenever given the opportunity to step up and be a man and make some obnoxious, blatantly sincere gesture (thanks, Hollywood) to prove that yes, my sorry ass just might be worth hanging around for a while, I blow it. Every time. Which is why I spent Christmas 2009 in a drooling haze. And completely alone. Cuz in the end, I'm totally Bradley Cooper's character, just not nearly as effortlessly good-looking. Whatever, I'm at least a good two feet taller than that dude.

But.

It gave me a lot of time to think. Like, really think. And listen to The xx album so many times there are faint x’s over each of my eyes. While Prince no longer has any interest in soundtracking my personal drama, the kids are still alright.

I call it the Murph

OK, maybe it’s not exactly Murphy’s Law. But it’s definitely on some fucked up shit.

Check it. The girl dumps my sorry ass for real. Totally stonewalls me at every turn, regardless. Lose my job and have a sibling die. Still nothing.

I go through all of the random stages of grief. I do a shitload of drugs and jerk off like a crazy bastard to insane amounts of porn. The usual shit.

FYI: I’m watching this movie He’s Just Not That Into You for the first time, and at this point I want to shoot Scarlett Johansson’s character with a very big gun.

Anyway.

When I finally go through all of the stages of rejection or whatever, I had this weird little moment yesterday. I realized that I was good with it. She had moved on and I was part of her past. I was moooooving the fuck on, too. We were dunzo. Fin.

Later on that same day. That same fucking day. A text message. She has some free time between now and date in early January. And if I wanted to get together for coffee, she would be cool with that.

Hm. Really now. Isn’t that...interesting.

Yeah, there’s definitely something murphyesque about that one.

PS: Jennifer Anniston’s character in this movie can fuck right off. Ben Affleck needs to start fucking whatever he wants immediately.

The last resort

I know he meant well. He always does. That’s between him and the road to Hell.

Far more concerned with creeping life epidemic the whole situation epitomizes.

I mean, we’re all friends here. That much is true. So I didn’t have any expectations whatsoever when he would mention how this one girl was coming to town for an extended stay. One thing I’ve learned in life is not to be presumptuous.

But he kept pressing it. Email, text message, dude even left me an actual real-time voice message like they used to do in the olden days. I was always polite. No expectations, remember. Another thing I’ve learned (but still have a very difficult time practicing) is to NEVER start imagining how things could be with another person ahead of time. It’s akin to sitting around dreaming of what you would do if you won the Lotto. Motherfucker, you don’t even play the Lotto. Feel me?

Woke up today in a fog. Weed, whiskey, COCAINE (so much cocaine…), vodka, whatever. It has to catch up with a person sometimes. But still I ride, like Bon fucking Jovi. So I nut up and give this girl a shout. Hey. I’m here. You’re here. We’re all friends here. Let’s actually BE friends for a change.

The response was lightning-quick. But I guess it doesn’t take much time to reduce someone’s existence down to cushy convenience.

“(REDACTED) did say I could call on you if I'm ever stranded and bored.”

Maybe there’s honor in being a bottom-bitch. I’m just not going to find out firsthand.

I joke about wanting to be a whore, allowing women to have their way with me. But this is different. This is…not fun. Booty calls are fun. This is a slow, sinking feeling two days before some stupid fucking holiday that died with your mother, father, sister and brother.

This is the last resort.

x
The girl smiling in the middle of the seemingly endless bukkake, happily bathing in the baptism of sperm bitterly discharged from the rotting loins of crushed souls more broken than her own? I know her. I’ll probably drive her home afterwards.

The rest is better left unsaid.

How do you want it?

This is pretty much how it should be around my house at all times.

My new favorite position

Happy birthday, Keith Richards*

Girl. Hot girl. Twitter, of all places.

Eventually found our way to AIM.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

At some point she's just not there. Hm. OK, cool. Whatever. La di da.

I make another whiskey and Diet Dr. Pepper cocktail. Still thinking up a name for that one.

Dig into my new bag of OG Kush buds (just purchased this afternoon from my handy marijuana delivery service) and fish out a few small nuggets. Toss 'em in the grinder, and throw 'em in the glass pipe. Yes, that glass pipe.

The glass pipe that traveled many miles before finally ending up here. I fire it up and think of her. I just saw that she's leaving for a trip to Chicago in the AM. Hm. It also seems she was caught in the undertow of the old big house we all used to call home only a few scant moons ago.

All I can think of is hiking in L.A. the other day, marching happily to a really inspiring mix of music.

The Neil Young song "Walk On" came up. And WTF? It pretty much says it all about 2009 for me.

Anyway, the AIM girl. I'm drinking, smoking, onlining, and she's still gone. The line is just open, like an errant phone left off the hook in some old-timey detective movie.

And then, right there on Twitter, came an answer to my unasked question.

"TRUTH: Theres something about the late-night-fucked up-6am-sunrising-orgasm that is just extra special. Were going to bed now...night"

So. While I'm sitting here wondering just what this mystery woman was up to, she was actually getting her poundcake on in some NYC dorm room, more than 3000 miles away.



We are all technology's bitch. Some more than others. I'm just polishing off a pint of Jim Beam, thinking how Keith Richards would have just slammed that thing during pre-game and called me a bitch.

Story of my life.

(Shout out to Jay McInerney)

white xxmas

My coke dealer is hilarious.

Not that I blame him. I’ve been hitting dude up for grams literally every other day for over a week now.

So tonight he had a better idea.

“Look, I’ve got this 8-ball right here. I’m sure you’ll get at least that much soon enough. Let me just front it to you. Give me however much you can afford, and I’ll get the rest later. I know you’re good for it.”

Here I am in my apt, looking at an 8-ball of cocaine.

And the postman delivered a copy of "Bang Van #7" to my door today. Good times.

Cult Logic

All my life I've been the slave of consequence
wondering how this life could be so intricate.
I wanna rewrite my heart and let the future in
I wanna open it up and let somebody in

can you free me from the logic that I knew
I believe it even if it is not true.

Am I falling asleep on my feet again?
I call out, is anybody listening
and it's like I'm diving into emptiness
but at least there's something beating in my chest

can you free me from the logic that I knew
I believe it even if it is not true.

Love is a grenade

It was late, a little after 2AM.

Suddenly, my phone erupted in a series of short, staccato bursts of vibrations.

Txt messages from...Sex Bomb?! Wow.

My crazy one-night-stand with an old and dear friend over the summer. The messages were self-explanatory.

"Just left the Viper Room. Someone gave me a line. I am exhausted. But awake. You got a line? Wanna do one and chat for an hour? Put a cap on it! I'll bring some wine?"

True story

The first girl to ever put it in her mouth. I'll never forget it. Parked next to the lake, the moonlight so bright it was like a scene in a movie. The feeling was a combination of complete exhilaration and a weightlessness, like I was floating in space. Her only stipulation was that I didn't come in her mouth. When everything melted into warm, creamy butter and I could feel my body start to levitate, I warned her in enough time for those soft hands to gently push me over the cliff and into the bottomless abyss of pure joy that I hitherto didn't imagine possible.

"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."

Thick ropes of teenage semen shot onto the windshield, once, twice, thrice...

Each time, her high, girlish voice.

"Oh my god."

EPILOGUE: I can't forget that I left out a particular detail. When she first unzipped my pants, she looked up at me and asked, "Which do you like better: The hand or the mouth?" I'd never had either at that point. But being a pretty bright kid, I quickly answered "the mouth."

Time, Clock of the Heart (Lifestyle remix)

Sex Rehab. It’s a TV show, it’s a religion.

Terror is recognizing you in those people. And I know terror.

Even their simple, made for TV techniques, however, have made a difference.

This week it was Amber Smith that showed me something about myself.

She was having a session with Dr. Drew and her mother about her now-dead alcoholic father. Somewhere in there, she starts wailing about the years she lost in a bedroom on a drugged-out haze. The time, she pleaded. Where did the time go?

Early this morning, when I first began struggling towards consciousness, I had a very vivid realization. All of THIS—the drugs, the porn, the debauchery—it’s all a reaction to a gaping hole of lost time in my life that has yet to be filled.

I’m not going to get into right now, but there was a long, drawn out stretch during my high school years where I became very acquainted with madness, and eventually the cold specter of death.

In many ways, I was a most unwilling warden of a makeshift prison hospital. I was a teenager. I was dealing with one of the hardest things humans have to go through, and I was completely unprepared for it.

As a result, there is the aforementioned hole of missing time in my life. Compounded with the fact that I was raised by good, hardworking people not exactly versed in the art of parenting, the results have been profound, to say the least.

For one it explains my last two relationships in alarming clarity.

It makes me realize that to be happy in life and in love, I have to finally make some hard admissions to myself. Then I have to deal with them.

Decisions that I only wish the people that came before me had been allowed to make. That they even knew that such options existed.

This one’s for both of you.

2. "Do another line and unzip my pants."

Snort the pain away

It's just weird, especially given the way that we ended. It was all so open-ended and "not the end of us, not by far." I should have smelled that for the bullshit it was. But my dumb ass totally took the words at face value. Stupidstupidstupid.

It's all right there. Pictures, funny little inside jokes (shared for all the world to see, of course), happy fun time and yay aren't we all so very happy?

Um, no.

There simply isn't enough cocaine. After tonight, I will have blown through an 8-ball in less than 72 hours. All by myself.

More, more, more. I'm actually tempted to say fuck it and grab two grams tonight instead of just one. Why the fuck not? I don't have anything to do tomorrow. I don't have a fucking job.

Ah, slow your roll, player. Dr. Feelgood isn't going anywhere. Besides, at some point you're gonna wanna call your OTHER Dr. Feelgood (the one that brings the kind buds to your door).

Yay, drugs?

"Cute and cuddly pothead nympho playmate"

This is MY Xmas wish. Please, Santa? Pretty please with sugar and hot fudge and cherries on top?

I just did a line of cocaine for the first time in what feels like forever

The first one didn't seem to faze me. I waited a few minutes and did another one. That was about five minutes ago. Right now I feel very warm and tingly and my heart is beating really fast. I can feel blood rushing towards my groin.

I wanna be down in the LBK

Because in Lubbock, Texas, there are girls like Rachdro and Cam711. Girls so magical that they score weed in the shape of tiny hearts. That's why I wanna be down in the LBK.

Vacation, pt. 1

Usually I can spot a set-up from a mile away. It was the person doing the setting up that completely threw me. It’s just so not of his nature at ALL. It’s like finding out that Lemmy holds tiny kittens and quietly weeps when no one is around.

So there I was, standing at the bar with him and this kind of hot, kind of hot little woman. Introduced as a “fetish model.” OK, tell me more.

We’re chatting, and this girl is just making 80-yard-Drew-Brees-into-the end-zone passes at me. I’m eagerly catching them, mind you. She’s tiny, but her fire was tremendous. She starts showing me pictures of her fetish model work. It’s the ones of doing ‘suspension,’ or hanging from hooks in the flesh in her back, that I found the most intriguing.

Soon enough, the setter-upper is nowhere to be found. I’m at the bar openly flirting with this woman. At some point we just started making out at the bar. She put her hand on my dick. The bartender gave me a thumbs up. This, ladies and gentlemen, was officially a vacation.

So Happy I Could Die*

I love that lavender blonde
The way she moves, the way she walks
I touch myself, can't get enough
And in the silence of the night
Through all the tears and all the lies,
I touch myself and it's all right

Just give in
Don't give up baby
Open up your heart and your mind to me
Just know when
That glass is empty, that the world is gonna bend

Yeahhh

Happy in the club with a bottle of red wine
Stars in our eyes 'cause we're having a good time
Eh eh, so happy I could die
Be your best friend yeah I love you forever,
Up in the clouds we're both higher than ever
Eh eh, so happy I could die
And it's all right

I am as vain as I allow
I do my hair, I gloss my eyes
I touch myself all through the night
And when something falls out of place
I take my time, I put it back
I touch myself 'till I'm on track

Just give in
Don't give up baby
Open up your heart and your mind to me
Just know when
That glass is empty, that the world is gonna bend

Happy extra days to party, get naked with strangers and eat like bastards

God bless America*

dirty*blue

pure fucking evil

I wanna Just Dance
But he took me home instead
Uh oh! There was a monster in my bed
We french kissed on a subway train
He tore my clothes right off

He ate my heart then he ate my brain
Uh oh uh oh
(I love that girl)
(Wanna talk to her, she’s hot as hell)

That boy is a monster
M-m-m-monster
(Could I love him?)

bite down harder...

Don’t be scared
I’ve done this before
Show me your teeth
Don’t want no money (want your money)

That shit’s is ugly
Just want your sex (want your sex)
Take a bit of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bite my me
Show me your teeth
Let me see your mean

Got no direction (no direction)
I need direction
Just got my vamp (got my vamp)

Take a bite of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bit of me boy
Show me your teeth
The truth is sexy
Tell me something that’ll save me
I need a man who makes me alright (man who makes me alright)
Just tell me when it’s alright
Tell me something that’ll change me

I’m gonna love you with my hands tied
Show me your teeth
Just tell me when
Show me your teeth
Open your mouth boy
Show me your teeth
Show me whatcha got
Show me your teeth teeth teeth teeth

Got no salvation (no salvation)
Got no salvation
Got nor religion (no religion)
My religion is you
Take a bite of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bit of me boy
Show me your teeth
I’m a tough bitch

Got my addictions (my addictions)
And I love to fix ‘em (and I love to fix ‘em)
No one’s perfect
Take a bite of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bit of me boy
Show me your teeth

I’d rather be sleeping*

1. I don’t know what is going on with me right now. I feel like I’m going through some bizarre physiological changes—as if my actual cells are re
arrang
ing into…
s o m e t h i n g

e l s e*

I could chalk it up to my new Patti LaBelle-inspired approach to life. Even though I still need the new shoes and new hat, it’s all been really working out so far. Ms. LaBelle is proving to be quite the effective guru.

It could also be attributed to the lack of powder in my life, or more specifically, my nose. But I’m finding myself going to bed earlier and earlier, and waking up at previously unheard of hours (it is currently 6:18AM. I’ve been rolling around my bed with my brain on fire for at least a good half hour).


I brought my computer into bed with me, which is something I never do. But here I am, in the dark, pecking away at this piece of plastic that is nothing less than an extension of myself. I don’t even need to look at the keys anymore. I just write. Which is insane to me. I mean, I just KNOW which buttons to push to make all of this come to life? Pshaw. I’m just a funny-looking kid from some hokey Midwestern town that's dealing with mad head shit. Um, like how I was picked on the bus every day during the insufferably long ride to ‘private’ school during my 4th grade year. That shit was just wrong.

And what happens when life and time and fate bring you face to face with your torturer, so many years later? It was the least likely setting ever, but oh so fucking perfect.

That same rangy bastard that would taunt, tease and torment me mercilessly on the back of the bus. The fucking piece of shit that once stood up, turned around, and shoving his ass like right onto my face ripped the most noxious, soul-scarring fart you’ve never had the misfortune to, well, eat.

I puked like a mother on the bus that day. And boy, did everyone think it was hilarious.


Now, he’s just…old. Like, an old-ass man old. He can’t be THAT much older than me. But he has those sagging, folded wrinkles all over his face, and boy, under his eyes. He even still wears that stupid hat, his bushy hair now all course and saturated with gray. But in his eyes, I could still see the evil. It was tired, defeated, toothless. But it was still there, dully judging, pointlessly cold. Watching him slowly counting the money, I was suddenly gripped with a clammy panic. Please God, just tell me that I’m not looking in a mirror…

2. "Kids are always honest
Cause they don't think they're ever gonna die"

This is not for you*

Does your public image and/or social standing know where you are right now?

Always watching...

Shaved kitty

even the losers

"You know it was a good Saturday night when you wake up on Sunday morning with a hot, naked Chinese girl in yr bed."

life is just like jr high school forever and ever amen*

A week earlier, I’d pretty much lost my shit, and in front of a lot of people.

Since what’s the point of having a full-bore meltdown if it isn’t public?

I ask you.

I guess I’m just soft. But when I saw her (shudder) flirting—with guys—some of which I like, know...

Well. Suddenly, the bottle of Jim Beam in my hand made perfect sense.

The shittier part is that it ruined what had been a fanfuckingtastic night and was on par to being one of those watch-the-sunrise epic mornings that you talk about in quiet, reverential tones many years from right now.

I’d already seen a sweet show with friends. That’s right, the lone motherfucking ranger went out with other people. A pretty old friend at this point, and his kind of staggeringly awesome girlfriend.

We hung out, and drank and chatted and laughed and even made small talk with the two Latinas in front of us that knew like every single factoid about the Strokes imaginable. Good. Times.

Onward to the birthday party. And it all goes to hell in a purple basket.


First, it was hot up in there. Then, the (shudder) flirting. At least I got to have my moment with the birthday girl, as lovely as ever. Sigh. 

I let the whiskey take over. I was restless. I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t stay. I did laps. I tried to talk to people. A friend asked me if I was OK. “Because you don’t look OK.”

Awesome. Getting better all the time.

I try to leave, but just drink more and go back inside. I run into (REDACTED). Oh, great. This is beyond perfect. The one (REDACTED) always gave me shit about. 

“You want to fuck her. I know you do. Don’t deny it. Do you think she’s pretty? Do you think she’s hot? I fucking hate that cunt. She’s so stupid. Did I tell about the time she…”

I’m looking at a pretty girl. She smiles and touches my arm. I calm down just a little. We actually talk, and somewhere in there make a date. Like, a date.

Dazed, I stumble towards the door. Only one person between me and an early morning spent driving aimlessly around L.A., drunk out of my fucking mind, smoking the remnants of the night’s joint. (REDACTED). But of course.

I tell her I’m leaving. She gives me a hug and a strangely hard kiss on the cheek.

I make it to the bottom of the stairs without falling, crying or crashing into anyone jammed onto the staircase leading to sweet, blessed freedom.

Well. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Kissy face

I want to smother this face with kisses until it's all happy and laughing and kissing me back. That would be a fantastic day.

She's a dream

Be my Muffy.

It's Called a Heart

There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart
You know how easy it is to tear it apart
If I lend it to you, would you keep it safe for me
I'll lend it to you, will you treat it tenderly
There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart

There's a sun shining in the sky
But that's not the reason why I'm feeling warm inside
The answer isn't classified- it's my heart
From the moment I started
I tried to be good about it
Yes I've tried my best
And more or less, I spoke from my heart

There's a lot to be learned
And you learn when your heart gets burned

There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart
You know how easy it is to tear it apart
If I lend it to you, would you keep it safe for me
I'll lend it to you, will you treat it tenderly
There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart

Hearts can never be owned
Hearts only come on loan
If I want it back
I will take it back
I'll take my heart

But I will try my best
And more or less
I will speak from my heart
Yes, I will speak from my heart
Speak from my heart

There's a lot to be learned
And you learn when your heart gets burned

There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart
You know how easy it is to tear it apart
If I lend it to you, would you keep it safe for me
I'll lend it to you, will you treat it tenderly
There's something beating here inside my body
And it's called a heart

The difference is now

What if?


I didn't numb myself with cocaine.

I didn't blame the world/my family/my circumstance/etc for my problems.

I let people get to know me and made/cultivated real friends.

I learned how to love and forgot how to hate.

I didn't have to turn to Kristina Rose to achieve sexual satisfaction, but a real, live woman. So many xtra points if the actual woman is Kristina Rose, obvs (well, a boy can dream, damn it).

I let love happen instead of chasing it away.

I worked on something for me for at least one hour a day.

I just got stoned, worked hard and realized all of my dreams. For real this time.

What if? No, really. What if?

new color, new dimension, new value

When the drugs are gone, and the air is silent, it comes.

I close my eyes, get really still, and soon I can sense your presence.

Today I caught myself just standing in the foyer, looking at the desk in the living room. Six months ago, I’d wake up on any given Sunday morning to find you there, already logged onto the New York Times website, intensely studying the week’s latest marriage announcements.

You’d show me the ones you liked the best, and talk about how ours would be so much better. I would just laugh nervously and ask where you wanted to go for breakfast. You would just smile and tell me to hold on a minute. You weren’t done reading yet.

I stood there long enough until I became overwhelmed at the memory. I can’t even imagine what I would do if you were here with me now.

If I could ever find a way to coerce you back into this chair. I would wrap my arms around you and tell you that I loved you. I would kiss you gently on the cheek and tickle the back of your neck. Instead of going to some stupid restaurant, I would cook you something really good for breakfast that would be way better. Afterwards, we’d walk to the coffee shop and have a drink. Then we’d come back here and get back into bed to take a nap. When we awoke, I’d kiss you all over before we leisurely made love for the rest of the afternoon.

All the while, I’d think of the perfect way to ask you to marry me. Maybe we could go on a trip somewhere special. Or just take a ride up the coast to Ojai, maybe spend a couple of nights in Wine Country.

I would wait until the perfect moment to get down on one knee and ask you to spend the rest of your life with me. We could start our own family, go somewhere so far away from all of this nonsense. Have a yard and a porch where we could watch our love take root and grow into a dreamy magical forest we could call 'home.'

In a perfect world, you would say yes, yes, yes, a million times yes.

Just say yes…

"my love is something that niggas will take & use to their advantage"

She asked me the question in all seriousness.

"Why you gotta be this way? You know this is fucked up. Like, majorly fucked up."

I looked up at her pleading face, all wide-eyed and incredulous, waiting for a suitable answer.

Pain roiled in my stomach. I rubbed my face with my hands and sighed.

"It's called the hate that hate made. You can only endure so much venom before it starts to affect you. Pretty soon, you're craving the taste. It becomes fuel. Since none of this matters and we're all gonna die anyway, why not be like this?"

She looked at me for a long time before speaking.

"Well. You can't tell me that you're happy. At all."

I laughed a single "Ha!"

"Happy? Please. No one is happy. Even the ones that think they are. In actuality, they're all just doing everything they can to distract themselves of the truth. I've just chosen a different distraction than most."

She tried to smile. But he was unmoved, giving her a cold, blank stare that made her shiver just a little.

"So...that's it?"

He lit another cigarette and stared at his shoes. Battered old New Balance shoes he scored at some stupid party a million years ago. They reminded him of those times, when he too just ignored reality, busting ass just to stay in step with the zombie-sheep masses.

"Yeah. That's it."

based on a true story (AKA "The Break-Up Song")

The sound of some annoying song chirped from her mobile phone. At least that’s what he thought when it erupted in digital melody sometime around midnight.

Her heart sank. She already knew who it was. But she put on a show for his benefit anyway, dramatically sighing as she sat up to check the message. She held the sheet over her breasts, but he pulled it away and began sucking on her left nipple.

The message glowed ominously in the bedroom dark.

“Please let me know if you’re ever in need of a cuddle-buddy over there.”

She’d been receiving messages from her ex for weeks now. To call them ironic would be a terrible understatement.

From the moment she’d sat across from him in the Thai restaurant and shakily but resolutely informed him that enough was enough and it was time for them to take a break, she’d wanted him back.

And she tried. Phone call, emails, text messages, you name it. She barraged him on a daily basis, asking to get together. For dinner, a movie, sex.

He was kind of shell-shocked the entire time. Granted, the relationship had gone to shit, and it was mostly his fault. Between the stress of trying to maintain his precarious position at work on top of keeping a very Jewish, very marriage/baby-obsessed girlfriend even a little happy had taken a heavy toll.


Their rambunctious sex life (there was the now-infamous 8 times in a 24 hour period, which she’d bragged to her girls about for months) had shriveled down to cold, silent dinners punctuated with stilted, tear-filled arguments about why the fuck won’t you just marry me already, you fucking bastard?

So when she brazenly announced a ‘break’ the moment dinner arrived in the middle of that vast restaurant filled with chattering faces all around them, he kind of checked out.

In his mind, they’d turned a corner. He’d come to grips with the sexual weirdness that had taken hold of their relationship, a sad combination of personal neuroses, sex addiction and childhood trauma. Add her need for him to make it official all but drained any ounce of passion from his side of the fence.

“Oooh look! Baby. Baby. Baby. Baby…”

It had become a scary mantra whenever they got within the vicinity of a human under the age of five. Her eyes would go all glassy and blank, and she repeated the word in a dull monotone until he would finally snap and say something about it. Which, of course, would be fodder for the next round of silence and bitter arguments between not fucking at all anymore.

But he had it all figured out. The secret was getting out of his box. He'd already tried letting women in, but that was disastrous. Like a bad horror movie or something, where a poor girl is trapped in a house of horrors and ends up scarred in her death-defying escape.

If he just said fuck it and gave life a chance, anything was possible. Any kid of his would be the coolest. She was a closet freak, so sex would never have to be an issue.

This all occurred in the two weeks or so since she'd finally given up and now. He must’ve had some kind of goddamned revelation she thought to herself as the lazy nipple-sucking had now moved south and he was licking at her clitoris under the covers. Getting oral had never been a big deal for her, but it made her feel powerful that someone so important was lapping at her pussy while she deflected text messages from her ex.

She’d had some help getting over him. After that one fashion show on Wilshire she went home with (REDACTED) and his friend to their bungalow at the Chateau Marmont on the promise of cocaine and Patron.

She got so fucked up that she played dumb and had sex with both of them that night. After (REDACTED) fell asleep from some pills she couldn’t identify, she blew his friend in the living room before eventually fucking him, too.


Here she was, in the bed of a famous (REDACTED) who at the time was enthusiastically gobbing all over vagina, while the man she truly loved was trying vainly to get her attention.

“Hey, you down there.”

(REDACTED) stopped what he was doing and looked up at her from under the covers.

“Yeah?” He replied quizzically.

“Where’s the blow?”


He reached over and grabbed a mirror with a sizable pile of white powder and passed it to her. She chopped out three really fat rails.



“Wow. Is one of those for me?” He smiled at her sweetly. 



She leaned over the mirror and snorted all three of the rails in one rapid swoosh.



Looking up at him with a smile, she said “No. Now fuck me hard and fast from the back. When you’re going to come, pull out and shoot it all over my back, OK?”

He gave her a funny smile.

“Um, sure.”

She turned around and leaned forward on her knees, pushing her ass high up into the air.

“Do you want me to suck it or can you get hard?”

She looked back at him with a serious face.

His cock was already standing at full attention.

She repositioned herself and said to no one in particular, “Well, have at it then.”