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.