{ 32 } The Truth Is Never Pretty

Hey there, Super Fans!

I've got a new find for you. I guess it's really not a "find" since I never lost it, but I have had it tucked away for a decade. It's another one of my "This Happened to Me" pieces, like "Billy."

A few distinct key differences: where "Billy" was raw and real and my soul laid bare, this piece is slightly more... embellished. For example, the main "me" character is way more shallow than I have ever been.

Next, "Billy" has an ending, a very concrete ending. This story ends with an adverb: "then." Why, you ask? Not entirely sure. Maybe it was due to laziness, maybe that I was all I had to say, or maybe because it's a story that doesn't end. Maybe it's still being written.

Also, in "Billy," the antagonist is dead and had been for awhile when I wrote it. In this piece, the antagonist is very much still alive. And that's why I waited to publish this piece. I wanted him to read it before I let all of you, because it's not exactly flattering. So, it only took a decade (original creation date is September 2005!), but he finally read it and I got the green light.

A quick bit of backstory: when I wrote this piece, I was surfacing back from one of the biggest meltdowns of my life. If you've ever seen me meltdown, you know that's saying a lot. There was so much hurt and anger and sadness and confusion going on, none of which was made better by the free-flowing alcohol and severe lack of responsibility. It took years and years for some of the hurt to heal. But it finally did, like it always does. I'm just glad (most) of us lived through it.

Enough of that. On with the show.

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SAM

Enter, page one, our first character: Sam Dumpy Mousekiwitz. From henceforth he shall be referred to as “Sam,” “Dumpy,” “Dumpy Mousekiwitz,” or “Mr. Mousekiwitz,” but never again as the name in full. Here is the last time you will see it in print in its entirety, so take in its full magnitude and remember it well: Sam Dumpy Mousekiwitz.

Of course, this was not the same Sam I had fallen in love with a year before. No, that was Sam the REAL ROCK STAR, self proclaimed. Never mind the fact that he could barely play guitar and sung no better than a sty full of sow. He did, however, possess that certain je ne sas quoi that only rock stars have, including the abilities to do copious amounts of drugs, drink like a fish, and throw temper-tantrums at the mere thought of not getting what they want.

I had initially fallen in love with him, as stated a year before, as a way to give in to my rebellious urges. Sam was the king of Robert Smith hair, a self-perpetuating alcoholic, and hotter than the ever-blazing fires of Hell. I wanted him bad, but alas, I was spoken for and he was only nineteen.
Regardless, he eventually aged and I eventually singled and, after a painful lust year, I finally acquired my prize.

In the beginning it seemed ideal: me, a punk rock princes with my gorgeous trophy rock star on my arm; him, a slobbering drunken mess with a fabulous older woman there to clean up after him. It was a match made in Hell and I relished every hardcore minute of it.

We spent the vast majority of our time together drunk and on his couch, surrounded by a never ending parade of other drunks. Sam still wasn't old enough to patronize the local bars, but I was more than happy to float through the days on our blurry oasis. The closeness of our persons and the constant state of intoxication, however, were beginning to cloud my judgment and make me overlook certain unavoidable, damaging traits that Sam was beginning to acquire.

For example, the sexy army pants he most commonly wore had been replaced by a heinous pair of orange (orange!) slacks from J. Crew (J. Crew!). What was happening?

Sam also had a black leather punk jacket, meticulously adorned with pins, paint, and patches. The delicious leather jacket was one of the things that helped define Sam as a rock star. Every shiny bit of metal that graced its surface was actually a medal, a badge proving he was worthy of stomping around town, throwing up on sidewalks, and screaming his particular brand of “music” into microphones. The jacket may have been a typical and traditional uniform, but it was also one of the very reasons I had initially been attracted to him, as ridiculous and petty as it may seem in hindsight. What can I say: I like shiny things.

However, more and more recently, the jacket was shoved to the back of the closet in favor of a disgusting red and black striped knit sweater, frayed at all edges from the constant picking, twisting, and tearing that Sam's busy hands would subject it to. It was hideous.

The change in clothing was nothing compared to the physical changes Sam was going through. His passion for drugs had waned and every night without an illicit substance coursing through his body became another inch around his waist. I didn't know it at the time, even though it is abundantly clear now, that this sickening, fat, terribly dressed thing I was dating was no longer Sam, but Dumpy Mousekiwitz.

Dumpy was Sam's alter ego. Or perhaps Dumpy was the dominate one. No matter: I did not like what I was seeing, and it was completely unacceptable for a woman of superior quality, me, to be dating this repulsive creature.

I had learned early on that the best way to improve my own social status was to date the best of the best: the ceaselessly attractive, the hardest partier, the most well-known. I am a social creature and defined by the societies I am surrounded by. It was a dog-eat-dog world and if I couldn't be the top of the food chain then I had no business eating. This was why Dumpy was so damaging to my reputation. I simply could not be seen with a sloppily dressed blob masquerading as a human.

Let's zoom back to page one for a moment, when you, the reader, first met Dumpy Mousekiwitz. Let me set up the scenario for you: I was sitting on the trashy couch in the trashy house Dumpy called home. The room was always in a perpetual state of disarray because of the copious amount of liquored-up children that were always crammed in between the walls. This is not a complaint, because I was a constant fixture in the room also. This was the place to come to see people and to be seen.

When Dumpy entered the room, everyone gave him an affectionate smile. I say affectionate, but I really knew they were more pity smiles. The others saw that the change had happened, too.

I hadn't seen Dumpy for a quarter of an hour or so. I figured he had probably been off telling the latest round of revolving-door roommates how happy he was to have them living on his couch. He stood in front of me and declared that we needed to take a shower because he was “all dried out”.
Dried out? He looked like he was retaining enough water to put out a forest fire, if squeezed the proper way. Plus, the very last thing I wanted to do was leave the party to, of all thing, take a shower.

Then-


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{ 26 } Poetry and Other Atrocities

Warning: this post is long and rant-tastic. It's also a great read. But, if you're short on time, feel free to jump past the diatribe on poetry and skip straight on to the (gulp) poems I wrote. 

In some sort of desperate attempt to recapture a missing part of me that I had forgotten I even had, I've been sorting and sifting through old files and old blogs, looking for little bits and pieces of writing. My really old stuff is all hand written, which is a problem because I have about a billion notebooks. But my files are limited and way easier to sort through.

To the point: I have some old new stuff to share with you again. But I should warn you that they are both poems. Faithful readers and new obsessive readers should know that I have a slight poetry fear, as I ranted about it in Post #15. The quick and dirty is thus: I find poetry pretentious and overrated.

Now hold on, hold on. I grew up on poetry. My parents were both huge poet freaks, in reading and writing (my dad had a poem published in American Poetry Anthology, 1984, ISBN 0-88147-008-2, for those of you that didn't read Post #15). Some of my first books were by Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, and Jeff Moss (some are even signed by the authors). I would regularly recite "The New Kid On The Block" and "Homework! Oh, Homework!" for talent shows.

I eventually graduated to Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Charles Bukowski. Talk about a leap. Sexton's "I Remember" can still make me cry. I have "So This is Love" by Lorna Crozier committed to memory. Once I hit 30, Judith Viorst's age poems rang so many true notes it was startling. A glace at my book shelf and I see no less than twenty poetry books.

Now you maybe wondering, how can I claim to dislike something that I seem to have such a fondness for? Easy answer: I read too much.

Poetry for me was like a favorite food. I would eat it every day. I would devour it. I would try to recreate it on my own. I would seek it out in hidden places, looking for undiscovered gems. But eventually, as with any craving, you start to get sick of it. The love starts to wane. One day you go cheap and grab something off a food cart and then it's over. Your favorite food now disgusts you. I read so many poems by so many "poets" that I couldn't stand it.

Please don't misunderstand my "pretentious and overrated" comment. There is good and bad everything, but it seems to be that bad poetry severely outweighs the good. If poetry was a girl, I could use Longfellow's words to describe most of his own genre: "And when she was good, she was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid."

To point out the obvious, between my parent's history and my early readings, poems were some of the first writings I attempted. And, as I said in Post #15, most of it was, indeed, horrid. Shamefully horrid. I remember writing some of it and thinking, "Oh, man. This shit is good. It totally conveys my feels and will express to the world what an awesome talent I am." Then, years later I'll find it, read it, and wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Page after page of audacious, self-overrated crap. John Keats I was not. Hell, I wasn't even Warren G.

Enough ranting. I did have a point here somewhere... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember...

As I pointed out in Post #15 (which you should probably just go read already. It's even got a Dune quote!), I did manage to crank out some acceptable diction over the years and I was going to self-publish a book of poetry. Mostly juvenilia, but possibly some newer stuff, of which there is little). Which brings me back to my original thought: I have new old material to share, written in 2008. I think these are probably the last poems I wrote. Maybe they suck, maybe they're good. I don't really care. If nothing else, I think they do prove that I smoke too much. To sum this all up: mayonnaise.

 * * * * *

Keep Working - 4 Feb. 2008
Nine a.m. comes early
To those of us without a schedule.
And things are over again,
Just like they've been over before:
A final prospect which I know to be true.
The dogs scratch, the cigarettes melt
Like they've done since time began.
But now time is ending.
Sleep is an impossible dream,
A far away phantom which I cannot catch.
To try is to fail.
To achieve a small victory is to lose.
Misgivings give way to an unspoken good-bye.
What you thought was a reality
Is now a dream you will never have.
The clocks tick,
I should sleep.
Nine a.m. comes early
To those of us without a schedule.

* * * * *

Stay Busy - 27 Feb. 2008
This is an empty house.
It can be filled it with smoke,
But it is fading.
They look at me with sad eyes.
The ones we love.
The ones that need us.
I tell them no.
What else is there to say?
Another drink will not fill the void,
Yet the trying is real.
Supposing that nothing means something,
What is it that nothing means?
The house cries,
The loves cry,
Yet I have no words to comfort their grief.
Another night with my Best Friends,
Alone.

* * * * *

 

{ 25 } Oh, CRAP!

I just realized it's been ten months since I last posted, and way longer than that since I posted anything substantial. Such a slacker. But, life gets in the way of living, you know.

I decided that I needed to provide you with some new fodder. So, I dug up some old fodder to entertain you. I now present you with a very short short story with an open-ended plot I originally wrote 6 August 2008 called "It's A Marvelous Night For A Moondance".  Enjoy.

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It's A Marvelous Night For A Moondance


A thin line of smoke drifted toward the ceiling from the cigarette pressed between her fingers. Her head was pounding. It was the same thing, only a different day: tired, bored, and hung over.

She watched as the smoke curled and twisted in the slight breeze that was slipping under the bedroom door. What day was it? Monday? Thursday? It didn't matter any more. Everyday was like the last in her constant haze. All that mattered was that she was lying comfortably, smoking. In the back of her mind was a lingering thought that she had something she was supposed to be doing, but it was trumped by the feeling that her head was in a vice.

The phone rang and she disregarded it, closing her eyes. She mentally begged it to stop, but the phone didn't comply. Almost tempted to get up and answer it, she thought the better and didn't move. There wasn't going to be anyone on the other end that she wanted to talk to anyway. Her mom, a bill collector, maybe even a drinking buddy. None of them mattered. What mattered was that she didn't move. Her headache was too big.

Finally her smoke needed to be ashed. Where the fuck was the ashtray? The only thing she could see was her cigarette in the faint bit of light drifting in from the closed curtains.

She closed her eyes again. Movement was becoming a necessity if she didn't want to ash on the floor. The ashtray wasn't on the ground next to her. No, that was too far away. It wasn't balanced on her stomach. She'd be able to feel it. The only possible place it could be was on the bed, opposite of the direction she was facing. She slowly rotated her pounding head, eyes still closed.

Once the pain of movement had subsided, she allowed her eyes to flutter open. She had found the ashtray, but she had also gotten a first glimpse of the man lying in bed next to her.

She knew who he was. She hadn't brought a stranger home from the bar. No, she had brought him home from the bar.

He was in his boxers, sleeping peacefully enough: attractive face calm, hands crossed delicately over chest, breaths slow and rhythmic. Every inch of his body was relaxed and vulnerable.

It was then that her thoughts turned to murder.

* * * * *