Cursed from Birth.

Lying in my hotel room time crawls past 2am - out in the dark musty halls crazed woman screams hatred and malice into uncaring night. Annoying cunt! I toss in fits of angst and nostalgia at the latest of predicaments that are of no faults but my own.

Not having enough for a room two days ago - I pawned my laptop after spending half the night resided to sleep in Balboa Park and I tell you right now them junkies and fags cruising nonstop can really tax a guy, you know. So, fed up with that shit and it just plain cold - round one in the morning, I slinked down to centro San Diego to take out the last of my last funds to pay one night. I was caught short but the queen at the reception took a liking to me and let me slide. Slept in a foul room that appeared not to been rented in decades - dust poofs out from between mattress when Your Reporter plops his weary carcass down for the night.

Next day, shivering in the China Blue morning and in contempt for my bad luck - I marched a block to the Pawn Shop and hawked my laptop - no worries, I tell myself, will be receiving first of three check this Friday. I pay the room, buy some smokes and munch on toast and sip good coffee at Lee's Cafe.

I figure should keep my options open just in case I get the full Wrath of God shoved up my ass - so I jump the trolley down Mexico way and check out the scene. Same old shit. I trudge along garbage covered streets as Indian women wrapped in burlap arms out for money holding dirty fat babies block my way, taxi drivers all on the hustle, pimps, junkies and whores of both sexes clog the teeming sad weary streets under that blasting unrelenting Mexican sky. I decide to look up some old friends and get the bum kicks when I find out through due process that they are all gone. At Cafe Patio only Daniel remains and he and I chatted it up. Thinking of moving back - but I really don't wanna.

My life was cursed from birth and to live up to that fact, no money today. SSI says won't be deposited till Sunday and Monday and that three hundred from the IRS is freefall in the mail - seems I am always caught a day short. Well, I guess another free for all blood guts or nothing night in Balboa Park seems to be in order...

Right foot - Left foot.

6am and the phone on the wall loudly buzzes till it falls crashing to the stained littered carpet. I leap out of bed shivering in the predawn light of night and splash water on my face, brush the pearlies, shake the roaches from my clothes and take the rickety croaking moaning beat hotel elevator five flights down into those sleeping mad streets. The gray mist hangs malevolent through that concrete canyon as some hobo hacks into the filthy wadded napkin lying next to the entrance - dart into a 7-11 and buy a paper cup of hideous overpriced java fom the giggling Hindi. Jump the trolley and clakclakclak over to Vinnies to see about getting a bunk. I am grudging this, you see. I really want to stop this insidious cycle I have been spinning in the last decade - but am flat broke and the first is still five days away and I'll probably hafta pawn my laptop - again.

But I am getting sidetracked - so onward. I bop up to the Niel Goode Center tucked away from rich and snooty eyes of the San Diego well to do and a wave of funk hits my nostrils of unwashed bodies, sour feet and that rancid nicotine residue as the place is wall to wall with crazy hobo action. I walk through the gates of Moloch and am greeted by Bruce - a geriatric hobosexual that has been living on the mean streets since day one, Mary - and pumps my numb noggin with all types of transient information.

8am rolls round and wait in line to see about getting a bed - any professional bum knows all about waiting in line - will wait in line for hours spittin' on the pavement and puffin' them rollies if the shit is free. Anyway, had a stare down with some hard looking black guy that wanted to prove what a badass he was - told the flabby jerk 'shaddap'.

So, no beds which was no surprise seeing that the economy is crap and the recession is swingin' like a boywhores balls and I twiddle my fingers at Bruce and say toodl-loo and stride over to the main building two blocks away amid sidewalks of urine and shit and the rotting cadavers lying in it. Waiting in line again to get a 'homeless ID' I strike up conversation with old friend Raul who I hadn't seen since the Outback Steakhouse incident. He lookin' hella fine in his suit ready to look for a job. It's all a shame though, you see - he just playing good cause they are going to throw his cute ass out on accounta he was written up three times for intoxication.

Well, says my adios to Raul, get my ID and jet over to Lee's Cafe for a good cheap plate of eggs and hash. And some decent coffee.

After resting at the hotel a bit, I dig that new movie Quarrantine and man it will creep the crap outcha. I sat at a cafe basking in the warm sun sucking on that cigarette so nasty wondering what I am going to do the proximity of time. Move into Vinnies and save a few checks or relocate back to Tijuana and live there or rent a room at my current hotel and write that book. I tell you - all these decisions make a faggito crazy....

Home again Home again - Jiggity jig.

Like a David Lynch sitcom everything wrapped up in the end. Made all good - okay somewhat and it's gonna take some time - with my Father. Uneasy truce at the moment. Had a long calm passionate discussion and for once I made sense to him - maybe he decided to be a Father and not a Badass this go round. The last two days they was quite pleasant and would have left on an upbeat note if it wasn't for a hostile call by an over opinionated gossipy sibling. Some people just don't know when to shut up. Don't give a crap about this siblings life - why can't the favor be returned?

Father flipped the bill and I hopped the next bus outta there. The five hours passed fast for I met a lad from Guanaguato and we talked of innerestin' things. He being a migrant worker working in the Olive Groves of Northern Cali. In San Francisco, jumped the BART onto the airport flinging my frayed ass down to San Diego all the while wedged between the grinding hips of a massive black couple. But they were sweet and made the flight fun.

San Diego. The whale's vagina. To pick up where I left off a year ago. To stabilize. To realize. To organize. And to finally finish that book. Seems Tijuana will be home for a bit more - we will see.

Checked a week into the Plaza Hotel - a twenty five dollar a night roach coach in downtown SD. Will figure out what needs to be figurin'....

Wind through Black Trees.

I stumble out of the Eureka Rescue Mission - guttural coughs and hacks of halitosis from the hobo populace - old man stares with glassen eyes into the cold grey. Just had dinner - puke on a plate - after the obligatory speech from Jeeeeeeesus. The store shed was supposed to be secure, I guess not. I was rolled for my luggage - almost everything I own. Well, clothes wise anyway. I still have my laptop and satchel with the essentials.

I curse God - I curse him for me coming here, I curse him for the weather, I curse him that there were no beds, I curse and I curse.

The black void in my mind opened and I stumbled through the Norman Rockwell scenery - happy white people dash laughing to and fro getting into the holiday spirit. I gaze up into the sky with the color of a dead television channel and I wonder. I wonder out and down through these mad streets engulfed in my seething anger. Walking through the edge of night and it gets dark I can tell you here - the stars a blanket of glittering glitter across a black velvet sky. I wonder till I have no road left - until I reach Highway 101 and I wonder onto that.

Somehow I come across an overpass - a lonesome fog horn blows.

"Mr. Blasini, why did you abandon us?" Hissed a voice out of the darkness. I whirl and it is an agent from Control. "All agents defect and all resisters sell out? Isn't that right?"

"And a writer lives the sad truth like anybody else - the only difference is - he files a report on it." I whisper over looking the over pass - below me the cars roar by. There is no safety rail on the bridge.

"You lost everything now." The agent hissed. "You're family, your possessions, your mind. You have finally hit - how do they say? Rock bottom. You know what you have to do - you are no longer any use to us."

I stare down at the concrete thirty feet bellow - that swirling vortex hits me.

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" Started the chanting like some obscene game show. I burst into uncontrolled hyperventilation, sobbing, screaming. Nothing made sense. I howled in despair at the empty lonely uncaring sky. "Do it!! Do it now!!"

"No!! You are not real! Don't make me do this!" I scream into the night.

"All that pain all the madness will end with one step - do it!"

Screaming, howling like an animal my mind overloaded with millions of tiny images, chest hurting from lack of air, eyes stinging from tears and sweat. I stumble to the far end of the bridge repeating no,no,no. I see in the near distance a grocery store shrouded in fog and reach the pay phone dial 911.

Sobbing I stutter out that I have attempted suicide and try to explain why. The lady on the other line pleaded, "It will be all right, sweetie. Help is on the way - it will be all right."

Behind me I hear the agent and we both state simultaneously, "No it won't It will never be all right."

A rush of black wind and I pass out. I awaken in the Eureka Psychiatric Ward with the night nurse standing over me. I am lying in some cot. Smell of chlorine and unwashed feet - some cadaver hacks phlegm into a filthy napkin - the moans of demented anguish and confusion echo in the halls. She feeds me pills and checks my vitals and I sleep some more.

Next morning, I am right as rain. See the shrink and fill him in on what's what and where. He releases me. I come out of the institute refreshed and vitalised - not physically but mentally. I have metamorphosed into something else. No more will I dwell in the past and let it haunt me. No more will I care for those who do not - no more will I placate worthless shits who do not like me for me. I am on my own from here on out till the end of my years and I will definitely live them the way I see fit. It is my life, it is my struggle and it is my adventure.

And I like it.

Hate upon Hate upon Hate...

Shifting in fits of insomnia. The middle of the night was cold and dark and damp. Lay in my bed listening to the whispers in my head - then: "Goddamit?! You pissed the bed again?" A shrill weakened voice cried, "I can't help it!" It was my parents in the other room. Tried to ignore it. Then more yelling from that foul little man - then a great crash and my mother screaming, "Get off me! Get off me!" Voice reaches a crescendo in terror.

I bolt out of my bed and into their room and freeze at this image - mother akimbo on the bed half naked fear across ashen face kicking with horror at that monster that bent over her. "Get your fucking hands off of my mother!" I roar with hatred and fury I have not felt since...

He lunges at me and I stand fully erect and nose to nose I warn, "You lay one fucking hand on me I'll knock the rest of those rotted teeth outcher mouth!" Fear is in those ashen eyes - no longer am I that boy he can abuse, no longer that boy that he can control. I look at my mother - she withered and shivering in pain across the bed from him.

I have never hit a woman. I have never hit a child. I have never struck the elderly - these flashed across my mind at the instant that I was going to lay the old monster flat on his back and unconscious.

I walked out - grab my smokes and headed for the patio. I will not lower myself to that fiendish assholes level. A moment passes and that monster drags me inside. Pointing at the scratches on his arm and neck he goes into a futile attempt at telling me that it was a seizure on her account - pointing at those marks like a guilty child. "Looks like marks of someone trying to feign off an attack to me." I stated cold - so fucking cold inside. "Just go to bed!", he roars, "You don't know what you're talking about!" No -perhaps not - but I know what I'd seen.

A day pass and no words are said. As I was washing dishes, I explained that I am expecting a check in the mail in a few days and I will leave. Fine. It is for the best we both agreed.

Now, this morning the old fuck drags me to the living room for another one sided discussion. For the fourth time he asked what was my plan - for the fourth time I explained it. He then went on - thanks to the over exaggerated reports from a self righteous sibling - he expressed that I was basically evil. Yeah - I know.

More petty accusations spilled forth from him and that was it. He said it was time for me to leave. I was already packed - saw this shit on the horizon. At the door I calmly stated, "You know, I came up here to see my mother before she died and perhaps to make amends with you. You fought it all the way. After mom dies - who the fuck is going to visit you?" And I walked out.

The second day in that house I made my intentions very clear - I needed time to think things out with myself. I wanted to see my mother one last time and make good with my father. During the course of two weeks I was especially gracious - helping my invalid mother while my father worked, cleaning the house, hardly eating their food, trying to stay out of the way. Never did I complain - never did I ask for anything. However, I was - on a daily basis confronted by nothing but sheer arrogance and hostile derogatory remarks on his behalf. I tried to talk to him in a sane compassionate way - I usually got a sneering grunt if anything.

No more. No mas. Don't need these people - don't care for them. I have lived twenty years without their over judgemental idiotic nosing into my affairs - I can and will go twenty more. My emotions for my family - however frayed they be - are now completely severed.

And so, I am now utterly alone in this world and you know what? That's okay. I am now free...

Positives React.

To every negative there is a positive. Any fool knows that. No matter how bad you think things are going - at it's worse it can only get better. In my life I have learned it all depends on how you deal with the situation and the choices that you make of the out come.

I spent the weekend at my sister's house. An idyllic peaceful time. We talked, drank a few beers, threw a little bar-b-que, tended to some errands that needed to be tended. Enjoyed each others time immensely. Twenty year hiatus was cause of much catching up - and caught up we did. And her positive outlook was what I really needed, you know. Not just with her, I spoke with another sister via cell phone - her located in South Carolina enjoying the beer drenched debauchery of country lesbiandom - and a heated discussion of prementioned father.

Roll with it. That's what I know - that's how I live. I realize the Old Man will never change - he being one set firmly in his ways - so, just roll with it.

You long time readers understand, I have bitched long windily enough of the situation, that I want peace. To settle down and live a sedate lifestyle. Over the weekend I have pondered even staying here in Eureka - has everything I want, vital artist colony, a writers colony, modern cinema and an art house, good coffee shops and a Border's books. What else could I want. They have one gay bar here, however you understand American queer bars give me the jitters. Bu, perhaps that prejudice will change in time.

All things shall pass, they say. I guess it's time to put those old farts to the test...

Fractured Dark.

In an last moment attempt to work out my psychological trauma - which in itself is an insidious monster - I thought it would be a good thing to come back to the source and a try to rectify the matter. For more than twenty years I have held a burden on my shoulders - the pure hatred that I hold for my father.

My childhood was a never ending parade of physical and mental abuse from him. Millions of painful images burn my mind like fire. He was not and is not a drunk - that would justify it, I guess - no, that old monster was simply a sadistic control freak. Sadistic in that he actually attained enjoyment from terrorizing the entire family. Why? I haven't a clue - he just did.

The crux - the turning point in my young years happened at this moment - when I was eleven or so, the old monster storms into my room beating me savagely. Screaming abuse and pummeling me with fists - it continued for a long time. I tried to induce myself to pass out but fate had me endure it. I saw in my father's eyes that he was actually enjoying it - watching my writhe in pain and cry out to stop. It was at that moment that I actually hated the man - purely hated the evil fucker - feelings that had not lessened but grew as the years crawled by.

This is just one of hundreds of incidences.

For years I had roamed not wishing ever to speak with him again - occasionally a relative would contact me and ask how I was and when someone would casually ask where are my parents. "They're dead." Was my usual response. Until recently some smart ass smiled and quipped, "Yeah, I use that excuse, too. Where they at?"

I purposefully distanced myself from my family - not because in fear of them finding out about my self destructive lifestyle - but because they are truly evil, as far as I am concerned.

The years passed and I had changed - into a cold, empty robot. All I want to do is die - nothing on this planet excites me anymore. And that is not being over dramatic - I literally mean nothing!

Lately I was contacted again by a relative to see how I was and it got me to thinking that I really need to deal with this and over come it. So, four days ago I arrived at their house and it has been crippling insidiously depressing. I sit in the living room ignored, answers to my questions are usually given by grudgingly guttural remarks. I have tried to stay pleasant with him - I helped clean, cook - nothing seems to please him. Driving home that I am not wanted - never wanted - in this household. Hundreds of pictures line the wall - sisters, cousins, uncles, grandparents - but, not one of me. Not one.

It is not my custom to stay where I am not wanted - so I am leaving. Where? Haven't a clue. And I guess it does not matter either. Staying here has clinched the finality that I am completely alone - no love, no compassion, nothing.

Like a super imposed photograph, I can easily fade away...

Home.

The bus careened up through the northern lands of upper California - nauseatingly fast and breakneck speeds. My seat mate - massive bulk of a native American stock in a jock like football player kind of way - shook and tweaked next to me handsome as can be. He didn't show any qualms of lying all over me - back of bus was crowded with noisy kids on their way to teenage concentration camp.
Night fell as we entered Sasquatch country and the aim of my quest - home. Well, the house of my parents, anyway. They say you can never go home, again. Well, they are wrong. Debarking the bus, surprise call to my dad with nervous trepidations.

Enter Home. I remember nothing - stare at pictures on the wall of people I do not know, do not recognize. Fifteen years was the last time I walked through that door, you understand.

Mother is there - ashen gray of old age and deteriorating from ill health but still has a smile for me. Her damn dog leaps up and licks me - I guess that was the official welcome.

I hunker down in my old room - dusty musty and used as storage of late - to find out and deliberate and think. I need to find out what the hell I am going to do - and that is the scariest most mind shaking thing at all...

Just for Jolly.

Under a cloud, took the long bus from Key West to Miami. Never will return to that hole, again. Frowning aloof faces of lonesome sad people, pass the bogs littered with dead iguanas and diseased armadillos - debarked the Metrorail and checked in the night at my old haunt - the Miami Sun Hotel. Debating my next harebrained scheme I sat sweating from that sticky humidity in the local McDonald’s and as I chewed on them cheesy cheeseburgers I got on my laptop and bought a plane ticket to San Francisco. Why not?
Next morning as the rain pounded, I sat outside the local Starbuck’s sipping hot coffee and nibbling on a blueberry muffin pondering my immediate future. Ha - I have none. What do you do when you have stepped out of the loop and stand there looking in? All those people. All those stressing unimportant problems they have accumulated - I feel nothing for them, I dare say.
I down some Dramamine and an hour or so later jumping through the Kafkan loops of airport security - funny, here I am, this literary tramp always Grayhounding or thumbing a ride and I find myself in this monstrous high tech airport with the international jet set.
It is raining cats and dogs outside the airport, grab my bag and jump on the plane - hurtling through the air at 10,000 feet on a Baron Munchhausen kick headed to The City by the Bay - Fagtown, Jotosburg, Bearvilla, Leatherlandia - Queer Capital of this fair land. Just for jolly, it seems - want to stop in City Lights Books to grab a copy of Kerouac’s Tristessa.
I make a transfer in Charlotte, North Carolina - one mishap, some fat bitch placed an open container of water in the overhead compartment, spilled but made no major problems with my laptop that was up there with it (Expecting smoke and sparks from my old friend). Slingshot through the stratosphere uneventful - The Hulk 2 was the in flight movie and overpriced sandwiches on the menu. I still can’t stomach flying.
Screech to a halt in that megalopolis San Francisco in the chill of dusk - jump the BART and purchased my Greyhound ticket in a cold wind. As any traveler knows, every Greyhound terminal has a kiosk that displays cheap and savory hotels for weary travelers of the road and I acquired a room at the hotel Pontiac off of Mission down skid row - dark street packed with hobos lying in piss and hip blacks on the hustle crack rocks in quivering cold hands - liquor stores and blue red purple neon of porno shops show it all nasty all night. Paid the greasy Hindu flashing gold tooth and he pass me a frayed towel through a grate. Slide up the swaying elevator to my single room with bath down the hall and all kinda sick junkies screaming in the alley.
I hit the cracked pavement and find a bar full of hip kids and fags - sit there savoring my beer when black man rail thin barges in and sizes me up as an easy mark, I reckon.
“Now what you need is a safistamacated woman.” He breathes liquor and halitosis into my face.
I smile and say what.
“A safistamacated woman, boy. One that’ll fuck ya all night.” When he says ‘all’ his yellow eyes roll around his lined scarred head.
I tell ‘em scattah and he stares me down but jets, anyhow - leaving me to my beer. Tired from the trip I return to my room for some early touring of the surroundings locals.

Wake up early and step out of the hotel and over a hundred hobos till I find a Starbuck's - served by twinkling queer teen and he inform me of Folsom St. Fair. Can't do it. I bop around Market watching the clanking trolleys and the bustling people and this city seems so ominous to me - snap some uninnerestin' pics until I hop that Greyhound bus and I head north...

Key West Doldrums

And so I spill forth my report on Key West. A vile and insidious island of steaming rubbish inhabited solely by pot bellied burned out hippies, arrogant hobos, and fat white guys on scooters zipping around shirtless like a swarm of killer bees.
For diversion, the islands only claim to fame is Duval Street - their 'Bourbon Street' of the Keys. Fuck that shit! Tired flabby tourist shuffle on either side sweating profusely in the humidity of Moebius with that look of petulant arrogance common to all tourist - Tijuana, Juarez, New Orleans, New York, Guadalajara - don't talk to the locals, Mertle, all of them are con men! The street is lined with price gouged curio shops and bars all catering to the wealthy tourist.

Barkers lean bored depressed against whitewashed wood cantinas vibrating off of the effects of Meth addiction waiting to squeeze your wallet dry as some blubbery female tourist wobbles by in short shorts cottage cheese and varicose veins glistening from sweat. The homosexual inhabitants live in abstract fear of the burly sailors and greaser bikers that patrol Duval with huntsman stealth patiently waiting for their next Hate Crime. With that, everyone is unfriendly - one thing my time in Mexico has done is I greet everyone passing on the street. Here you pass some frowning fuck and the local habit is to look abysmally in the other direction. Sad sad bitter Angels lost in their own Paradise.

My first recollection of a beach on this island was a strip of sand a mile long but ten feet wide. No waves. Mostly covered in five foot mounds of sand and blanketed in stinking dead seaweed, two nudist bathed in the sun - old, dried up prunes of high social standards to be sure. As I shuffled by, Thurston rose to fart and retrieve a beer in his black thong, gut sagging, tired balls drooping, face sad and frowning. I could have stomached even that until Lovey decided to rise in the buff - I wanted to drop to the ground screaming and tossing sand in my eyes. A shriveled apricot with sagging flat breasts - why is it that only ugly people nude sunbathe?

And that smell - the wafting continuous smell of rotten eggs and brine. The seaweed blankets all the beaches - sullen mutters of revolt from the peasantry: "My teenage daughter is cunt deep in shit. Is this the American way of life?"

Over priced, under stimulated. This is not a paradise. A waste of time - even though I came here out of necessity. Tomorrow I am ever so glad to leave. Where? Well, I got two junction points and I think I'm leaving those for a surprise! I will continue to find my time space - but, every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.