Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Coffee Talk.


We’re all rocked by the waves of struggle when it comes down to those circumstances that change us from within. Whether you’re hurt, angry, jealous, or longing from afar, they prompt you to keep on fighting.
You’re carried on such currents from somewhere that was once near-perfect in a moment, and permanently tattoos every moved thought and emotion that traverses through the delicate fibers of which you are composed. Your downfalls are brought about by the hesitance to loosen the grip and let things be as they may. Returning to an existence that is uninspired is feared, and so you try to run from it by holding on to that short time when reality seemingly dissolved away.
You do whatever we can to chase down a fond memory, and in doing so, you bring out the worst in yourself. Your own emotions dig craters that go bone deep, and you’re left as cold and hollow as a winter’s night lacking even the slightest breeze. You begin to loathe time itself and the cavernous distance it creates between the past and present.
The moment you realize that it will only continue you corrode you from the inside out is the moment when you stop putting up a fight. Like even the best of times, the worst can be carried off with every stroke of the second hand as long as you make amends with what is, here and now.
The fondest moments will always bring longing bubbling to the surface, but loosening ties with it and accepting where you are is the only way to keep being and moving on up. Perhaps if time is on your side, such moments will reoccur.
Only the rise and fall of the passing days hold that answer.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Rotting Away in Grey


His eyes were sad and grey when I met him. They reminded me of a stormy Sunday morning. I asked him about it and he said they’re green and grey, hazel, or rather something in between. I never saw them green though, always sad and grey. There were days when they were little less grey, and when they looked black almost. Days when he’d come with fresh cuts on his thighs and wrists, still leaking small spots of blood. Days when he’d come with his skin blistered from the scorching hot metal he’d press on it until it boiled and hurt. Those days he’d come and his eyes were empty like used shotgun shells, just a hollow space where life used to be.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Some do. Some don't.


“There are two types of people in the world,” he said, without looking up from his glass. “People who go to bars alone and people who don’t.”
I wouldn’t have known he was talking to me if it weren’t for the fact that there was no one else around. Maybe he wasn’t talking to me, maybe he was thinking out loud. But I was lonely and he was handsome and it was just me and him and the sad half-empty bottles of liquor lining the wall in front of us, so I said, “There are two types of people in the world, people who drink before noon and people who don’t.”
He smiled, turning to look at me and then tilting his head towards the window, where drops were sliding down the pane.
“There are two types of people in the world. People who like to walk in the rain, and people who don’t.”
This morning I had wandered the damp streets for an hour, with no sense of purpose or direction, eventually winding up here. I wondered if he could smell the rain rising from my skin.
“People who drive to get somewhere, and people who drive to find somewhere.”
He nodded in approval, took a sip of his drink. I wondered what it was. Gin, perhaps.
“People who want to go everywhere, and people who want to stay in one place.”
“The settlers and the restless.”
“The lovers and the losers.”
 “The left and the leaving.”
“People who kiss strangers…” He leant across the space between us and pressed his lips to mine. It was vodka he was drinking.
He slipped away, settling back on his barstool. I saw his sad eyes and his alcoholic lips and his smile like a riptide in the ocean, like a crack in a frozen-over lake. Outside, the rain got a little harder.
“There are two types of people,” I said. “People who understand, and people who don’t.”

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Pinche Puta.

I have been re-editing Puta. What a headache. It is driving me crazy! Crazier. Let me explain a bit about that novel. It was originally a chapter from my first attempt at writing a novel. Basically the book was a watered down version of this blog and a vain attempt to produce a travel story arc thing. Seriously, squishing a decade into 300 pages was a headache. Well, eventually the character winds up in Mexico during a very long chapter entitled Juarez City Blues. It slowed the story down - while the rest of the book was about traveling, this show stopper was about a fractured romance. So, before I sent the MS in for publication, I edited the entire chapter out. Flash forward to after Tweeker was published. The company was badgering me for another book, so I pulled out Juarez City Blues and re-titled it Puta. I never thought it would sell...but it is.
So, I am streamlining it to make it more readable in a professionally written sense. Names are being changed, some chapters are being swapped around. There are entire paragraphs that i used in Tweeker, so those will have to be re-written. It's a mess. But, the story is interesting enough to keep.
And, so it goes...

Saturday, October 13, 2012

In Dreams I Walk With You.

Dreams. Dreams are the glue of life. Without them, we have no hopes, no ambitions, no reason to even get out of bed in the morning. The point is, how can we make our dreams into reality? And, I am talking about real dreams - not fantasies of high wealth, the perfect soul mate, or even world domination. Even though those three are dreams to some. Not I.
This life of mine - this life that I have lived of madness, adventure, and wondrous mystery is halfway done. I have done things in which many deem repugnant or insane or reckless. I have no regrets. Not one.
And because of my life in which I enjoyed, during the previous three years, I have been lectured and suggested and downright scolded upon that I need to "settle down", "get comfortable" and the most dreaded "be more stable". Well, Dear Reader, I've tried it and to tell you the truth, I fucking hate it. How dull. How maudlin. How outright insidious. I realize I have harped on this before. And, here it is again. Only with a difference.
Everything has a reason. There are no accidents. I was completely depressed and bewildered that I had returned to El Paso. How I loathe this town and it's small mindedness. The local "hipsters" in who I tried to connect with are a boring and self pretentious lot. Gossipy and un-inspiring. The gay ones are not even interesting and I am not speaking on a sexual level. They are simply boring. In conversation, artistically and too wrapped up in their cookie cutter lifestyle  of being accepted by their peers.
No, my time/space location is not here. Even though I had been rewarded with a means to live a sedate and comfortable existence here. That is all it is...existence. I want to live.
As I mentioned, the reason has revealed itself since I returned to this God awful hell hole. I am now saving every penny I have to relocate to my dream of living in Puerto Rico. The dream I had three years ago before I got stuck in this town. I will go. In six months. I've calculated, analyzed, and studied all options and I don't mind telling you they are all possible to attain.
I have acquired a very reasonable apartment, however, instead of filling it with awesome furnishings as I had done in the past, I have only bought a bed, television and the basic staples of comfort. To save money, I bought an xbox 360 and am addict (harrharr) to Fallout 3. A super huge game that is taking up most of my time - instead of squandering my royalties on fluff like things for said apartment, booze, and fine dining.
I had also laid off of that virtual showboat Facebook. Damn the people on there bore me to fucking tears. I'd deleted it once, but had received several emails by concerned associates on my where abouts, so I reactivated it only to be mired in the same mundane shit. Anyway, I rather have real world conversation than virtual, any day.
I will only focus on this blog from now on. And, my writing. I have been updating all the grammatical errors that I have been finding and updating prose, adding subtracting dialogue (I had previously edited them myself and recently hired a professional editor) and I am happy with the results. I just finished with Tweeker and have now began with Puta. Damned if my work will be read on the same literary level as 50 Shades of Gray!
I really am looking forward to moving to Puerto Rico - new adventures, new people, a wonderful climate and just seedy enough for my tastes. And I gather there is a huge writing colony there. (It doesn't exist in my present location)
And so, the dream and the second half of this blog continues...

Friday, October 12, 2012

Crazy?

Crazy? I was crazy once. My parents locked me in a round room and told me to sit in the corner. Corner? I couldn’t find a corner! That bugged me. Bugs? I hate bugs. They drive me crazy! Crazy? I was crazy once...

Thursday, October 11, 2012

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Psychiatric Hospital...

It finally happened and I mean really happened. I flew over the cuckoo's nest.
After I returned to El Paso from Tijuana, I was mired in such abject depression I realized I needed some help or I would had ended this turmoil then and there. I had attempted to seek a psychiatrist to administer a prescription to my meds to no avail. I was finally referred to the 1-800 number on the back of my medicaid card for references.
I called and out of the five doctors - one did not accept medicaid, four were not currently taking patients - I was finally told over the phone to try UBH. I had never heard of the place and after googling it, I found it was a brand spanking new nut house located near my apartment.
The following day, I walked the few blocks to the blue-painted hospital and inquired about making an appointment to see a doctor. Please fill out these forms and have a seat. I did and filled them out. Eventually, I was led into another waiting area. Filled with some seriously mentally ill individuals. One old man sat on a couch continuously sobbing about how he looked like Frankenstein.
Okay.
Anyways, I was finally seen by a polite nurse who escorted me into a private room and asked me a list of usual questions. I answered truthfully all until one:
HER: Have you ever had thoughts of suicide?
ME: All the time. I mean really, who wants to live a life like this? (I was referring to my personal hell the previous decades.)
She continued to ask questions, smiling, and then excused herself from the room. She quickly returned with another lady who also was smiling moronically.
"What brought you here today?" She asked.
"Well, I'd like to make an appointment to see a doctor. If that is possible. I recently returned to El Paso and I need someone to write my prescriptions." I explained.
"Well, what we can do is ask you to stay the night, then you will see a doctor first thing tomorrow morning instead of having to wait up to a month." She beamed.
At first, I said no. As a matter of fact, I said no several times.
"But it's only for one night. Plus, we have a pool, workout room...it'll be like a vacation."
"Ugh. Fine." I rationalized, I live down the street and I know sometimes you had to kiss ass to get things in these joints. I've dealt with them before.
I was escorted - after relinquishing my belt, shoes, and wallet (for protection from other guests. What?) out of the office and through a gated, steel door. clang! Two huge motherfucking black orderlies appeared and I was taken to a tiny office were another nurse informed me I was to be held up to ten days on suicide watch.
"This is bullshit!" I stated. "You can't do this!"
"Under Texas law, we can. You said in your screening that you had suicidal tendencies."
"I thought about it! I wasn't going to do it!"
"Same thing, sir. Now strip."
Several doctors came in and out of the room, jiggling me up there, jiggling me down here, probing and poking. Then I was shown to my room that reeked of vomit and bleach. A sparse room with three cots. My "roomies" consisted of a guy I nicknamed Clompy on account of he would clop up and down the hall loudly all the while yelling how he was going to sue the hospital for malpractice. He looked like Sloth from The Goonies. My other bunky I awarded the moniker Senor Fartabulous - more on that later.
Throughout the rest of the day, I kept being asked to sign this, initial that and they took uncounted blood samples. It was madness. The place was literally Bedlam - like the places you saw in the movies. Catatonic retards played at the air, smelly old bastards giggled at everything and nothing, people yelled, moaned and hollered. And it was co-ed!! Women were mixed in with the men! And I am sure not a sexual deviant among them.
I simply kept in my room and lay in a fetal position on my bed wondering how my day turned out like this.
Night fell, everyone was issued meds - except me - and put to bed. In the dark room, amid long shadows clop-clop-clop until 11 at night when the Thorazine kicked in. Then, Senor Fartabulous began to issue trumpeting farts that would had shamed tuba players around the globe. Long, loud burst! In all my years of staying in slums, shelters, flop houses, and grotto, I had never encountered anyone with the forcing blasts of that mans flatulence. How could his sphincter take that abuse?
Well, being literally farted out of the room, I was granted by the snickering security guards in the hall that I could change rooms. I found one, but I couldn't sleep - fears of leaving that place lobotomized swam too much in my head.
The following days were of course uneventful, but unpleasant. My new roomies consisted an old heroin junkie and an 19 yr old half mex/jap named Jason. A real cutie with a beautiful ass and at least I had him to keep me from really going under. Too bad he was nuttier than squirrel shit.
I saw a doctor during that time who came to the conclusion that not only was I sane, but he had plans to take my pension away and return me to the work force like a common peasant. Fuck that!
Things with the patients got worse. There were several fights, an old hag kept going on about how she was raped everywhere she went, Senor Fartabulous would walk up and down the hall with a sheet over him like a Halloween ghost and yelling, "Pinche putos!!" Then there of course "the Wackers". God!!!
We were let out every three hours to a small quad with a mesh roof to smoke. Jason and I chatted and met a kid named Greg who was locked up for ramming his car through his parents house. I thought, Why doesn't the news ever report these stories instead of mindless fluff and the weather every two minutes?
People go to the mental hospital for different reasons, ranging from self-mutilation to homicidal thoughts to eating disorders.
For some people the mental hospital will help them, but for others like me, it only makes them worse.
I absolutely despise mental hospitals. You are deprived from your reality, and they don’t really help you with your problems. They are very dreary and boring as well. They literally just make you sit in a room, where you watch t.v. most of the day. I feel like they don’t actually try to help you, they just lock you away so you won’t hurt yourself or anyone else until you can convince them you’re ‘better’.
The bathrooms have no locks, so you are constantly worrying about someone walking in on you. The showers turn off every 30 seconds so you have to keep turning it back on, and you cannot change the temperature so sometimes it will be too hot or too cold. The staff also does night checks, so they will shine a flashlight on your face every 15 minutes throughout the night to make sure you are still alive. They wake you up very early as well, and you have to go to sleep at 10 every night. The food is alright, I think they are trying to make everyone fat though. Make sure you eat every meal too, because if they suspect you have an eating disorder life there gets worse.
And if you make disturbances to the other inpatients or if you are deemed a threat they will stick a needle in you that makes you fall asleep immediately. They also put on antidepressants if you aren’t already on them. Antidepressants are horrible for your brain. They will dull your mind and you will feel like a zombie. That’s what it did to me at least.
Finally, days later, I was released - fully medicated and pissed off. When I was being processed, the offices up front were closed and I was informed that they had no way of opening the safe which held my affects I gave them when I was committed.
"My keys are in there. How am I going to get into my apartment?" I asked calmly.
The intern left to the front of the offices and returned with, I kid you not, fucking Nurse Ratchet!
"Sir, what we can do, is order you a cab - we will totally pay for it - and we will take you home. You can then return later for your affects. Someone is on their way right now to open the safe."
I wanted to punch that bitch in the face.
She looked at me. I looked at her.
"Don't be like that." She chirped. "Can I see a smile?"
"You have my house keys in that safe." I said calmly. "Going home would be irrelevant." No use being a raving lunatic, I'd be taken back to the ward.
She said she'd see what she could do and walked out. Moments later, she walks out with my stuff. Was that a test? Or were they just fucking with me?
I got out of that crazy-ass place as fast as I could and walked home.
Never again...

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Stupid Prick.


I woke up one day with a fear. I was absolutely positive that my cock’s gonna fall off. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t itchy, just an irrational fear that it’s just going to dry off, wither away and crumble, like chips in your clenched fist. My cock is a late fall leaf that fell off some sad old tree eons ago. I held my cock for three hours non-stop for the first time without beating it. Just held it as if it were a newborn baby that’s bound to die due to some unspecified disease. And unspecified indeed it was. I put on the tightest underpants my drawer was harboring, slowly and carefully got dressed and walked out into the world.
The world was terrible. A foul, filthy place filled with terrible creatures, rushing through me as if I were transparent. Everyone is in a hurry and I don’t let them even brush against my dick in the bus. I rush out of it as soon as I reach my doctor’s office. My GP is a middle-aged fat woman that I’ve never met before in my life. The queue is almost nonexistent, and yet I am sweating like a wild boar in a forest fire. They call out my name and I am in the office in a matter seconds. She looks at me and I presume my face is a chill pepper. You can almost cut through the smoke coming out of my ears. She giggles like a teenage girl and invites me to sit.
“My cock’s gonna fall off!”
Excuse me, she says.
“My fucking penis is going to fall off, I know it.”
Did I cut it, she enquires with a tone of ridicule.
“No, I didn’t fucking cut it, it’s gonna wither and die and I fucking know it.”
Before she could protest, my pants are down and her eyes are locked onto my private parts. I have no time to be ashamed, my dick is gonna fall off.
She stands up, kneels down, looks at it for nothing more than I tiny bit of time and tells me to pull up my goddamn pants.
“Pull up my pants? What the hell is wrong with me?”
Two drops trickle down my face disfigured with terror and I can’t tell which is which, tears, or sweat. I breathe heavily and she deduces that I oughta visit a shrink.
“A fucking shrink? I need a fucking operation! You need to scan my cock, MRI, or some shit!”
Call in the boys, everyone’s gotta see this freak.
She is writing me a referral to a very dear neurologist friend of hers, she says, if he can’t help you, no one can, she says, just calm down, she says.
“Calm down?” I say, ‘Calm the fuck down?”, I say, “I need my cock for future endeavors, don’t tell me to calm down!”
Moments later two guys are carrying my screaming body through the hallway, moments after that I am on my ass outside.
I start running.
What does a man do when he is lost? He starts running. And he runs and runs as the stars go by in the sky or right before his eyes. I’m talking about the white dots when one completely and utterly exhausts himself. When one’s knees start shaking and his arms start aching in exhaustion. When his own mind starts a failsafe procedure of firing up the fuel reserves of rage, when the images of him start flashing before his eyes only to shovel the coal of rage into the big oven.
I don’t know where I’m going. There is a river on my left side, and I can’t bear to think about that which is between my legs. I cannot bear to look at it, I can’t bear to touch it. I already start feeling that it is not a part of my body. A dire need flashes before my eyes. Scenes of gruesome violence embroidered with white dots randomly appearing all over my gaze. I scream and yell and scream. Then I fall down, tormented by exhaustion, filled with irrational fears. I feel somebody clenching my bicep, but I shake off and jog on.
It is cold and dark and my skin is steaming. Everywhere across my body I can see the steam. I have no time to stop and investigate this occurrence.
Pictures of him, carpet-bombing my memory more and more often.
I am my own worst enemy. I am literally my own worst enemy.
I imagine breaking his nose. I imagine him thin and bloody on the dance floor. I imagine him dried up and I think of my dick.
Out of my mind I start strolling back to my place. I stroll back because I cannot run. I cannot run and I will never ever run again. My cock is being separated from my body, and in some other universe, in some other body, I laugh at the irony of it. I am rolling on the floor and this is a comedy.
I feel the gaze of every and anyone I come across. I feel I look like seven different kinds of shit. I am going to end up a dickless beggar on the slimy streets of this dear city of mine. My dick is no longer a part of me. My hand feels its soft skin but my mind tells me it’s dry, almost crumbling into the inner parts of my underpants. Crumbs of my penis.
It has gotta go. This madness has to stop. It’s either him, or both of us.
The knife is sharp. Give it a few moments and it’ll be hot. Like hot knife through butter. I feel my cock with my hand and it is shriveled up. It won’t give up. It’ll never give up. It runs back into his cave, but he can’t fit entirely.
“What a prick.” I giggle.
My dick is on the table and this looks like a terribly low-budget pornographic picture. Somebody kicks my door in.
This is the police, don’t move, they say
“What you gonna do?” I laugh madly.
There is help, they can help me, they will take me to a place with white walls and my prick’s gonna be perfectly fine there. Words, words, words.
A man dismembers his penis in a satanic ritual, I can already see it in the papers. Fuck Satan, this ain’t about him. I gotta do this. I know you don’t understand. Neither do I, but I have to. There are no voices in my head. No voices but mine. And I am reasoning with myself. I have patiently waited for any other solution, but there isn’t. I cannot be one with my penis anymore. It’s either him or the both of us.
It is fine, the policeman says. He will help me, he begs. If it were a woman she wouldn’t care. They never care. They just welcome it for a hot party and then throw it out all drunk on juice and flabby. They never care, he never cared.
Let me help you, his words come as shocks springing me into the reality, but only for brief moments. I am my heart and they are blowing pulse into it. Every word of his is just a spike. A spike that doesn’t support another one. There is no spike after spike. Only a spike. One. One is not enough.
His gun is away and he is approaching me. His right hand directed towards the knife and left one slowly moving towards my dick. Now it really looks like a stupid porno.
Then I smile and say: “Sorry for the future nightmares”, and thrust the knife downward.

Monday, October 01, 2012