Writer's Block

Mr. Regular

He sat alone in an unfamiliar bar listening to the static of the night. A grim smile hidden behind his shallow features. He held a glass of vodka to his lips and hesitated. His small penetrating eyes watching the room. He liked the bar. He liked the vodka. He liked the sound. He hated the people. He hated the smell. He hated the loneliness.
He finished his vodka and wavered to the bar tender for another.

Heterosexual Diversions

Oscar arrived late at my apartment. His breath ranked of stale liquor and a look of abject sadness on his copper-colored face. He confided that he and his wife had it out three days previously and had not spoken to each other since. We lay watching a porno and drinking beer naked. I asked if I could snuggle up next to him. I loathed being with someone so...heterosexual. But he was an old friend and it was my duty to offer what ever help was possible.

"Okay." Oscar reluctantly rested his back and head against the end of the bed and I joined him against the wall. I got on my right elbow, facing him, and gently ran my fingers around his nipples. He closed his eyes, licked his lips and began stroking his penis. I leaned lower to lick his hardened nipple; he let out a whimpering ‘aahh’ and increased his speed. I swirled my tongue dizzily, then with my free hand, reached the other stiff nipple and pinched it. Suddenly, my ear was flooded with warm liquid.

"What the fuck?" I exclaimed.

I lifted my head higher, getting the continuous gunshot spray of Oscar’s cum shower. He was shooting literally everywhere. He could not stop. He was hitting his chest, his face. My quivering, shocked body was trying to clean his jizz from the side of my face and my inner ear, all the while he was now down to a depleting drizzle from his cock head. What is really surprising was throughout all of this, he made no sound. None! His eyes again were clasped shut and his mouth was perched to one fine point in the middle of his face: an ugly ‘O’ face. I rested on my elbow again, studying his contorted countenance, wondering what internally could cause this, traveling over the now loosening lips and the drifting, flicking eyes, witnessing the deep breaths through his nostrils. Then I realized this fucker was falling asleep.

I hurtled over his spent body, “Want a towel?” I grabbed one and quickly cleaned myself off.

A “Yeah,” was muffled towards me. I threw it at his chest.

Oscar quickly wiped himself down, his face first, then his chest; I requested him to clean the backboard and he responded with awe at his performance. While he diligently wiped his sperm from my bed, I put on some khakis and a black shirt, slipped on my shoes, and informed him that I needed to use the restroom. I walked into the hallway and turned into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I turned on the sink, washed my face briefly, dried myself, and stood in the mirror for a good minute, giving Oscar time to collect his belongings, get dressed and leave. After a minute, I extricated the bathroom, entered my room only to find Oscar still on the bed naked, attention fixed on the television.

I have lived in this country and dealt with his type for so long, I knew the score. Bust your nut then jet out the door. Girls first, fags secondary.

“Aren’t we done?” I asked. “It’s late and don’t you think your wife is going to worry?”

“I don’t care.” He said, eyes fixed on the flickering screen. “I don’t want to go back right now, anyway. I rather stay here with you.”

Well, don’t that take the rag offen the bush?

The Right to Write

Lean brown side turns - lights a cigarette. The Chinese takeout festering on the hotel end table. Half empty bottle of Fundador next to it. Cheap $15 a night joint. Earlier that morning, I went to the San Diego psychiatric clinic in lieu of my ongoing depression – couldn’t take the badgering of those damn psychiatrists anymore. Enough to drive you mad.

   We both got dressed and I walked him to the corner, pulled a couple of crumpled bills outta my pocket, handed it to him - we shook hands, parted and I headed to a cafe for a coffee.

   Shot the shit with Tomas and he was trying to convince me to stay in Tijuana. I don’t know...just don’t know. Been checking out Mexicali. Sounds real tasty. Kinda the rough edges of Juarez City but not as fucked up as Tijuana - if that makes any sense. Of course it doesn’t. How the fuck, you The Reader, can possibly ever understand?

   So, I light a Lucky and sip some coffee and eat a taco and yap in my atrocious Spanish as some naco puto eyes me from the Plaza, but I am definitely not feeling it. I have grown so cold inside. So inherently distant from the human race I don’t think I am ever coming back, you feel me? You dig what I am saying? No? Fuck you.

   I spot Saul on the corner and after a backslap and a hip handshake I cop some weed from him and we walk around the corner to his no window, single room trap and smoke that shit. Now I am already dosed up on psychotropic medication - add some chronic to the mix and I am one happy cowboy - yeehaw!

   I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle…

   We bust out onto the teeming street and that fucking Mexican sun is big and bright under a dazzling blue sky and we trump down El Revu and pour into El Caliente and hit the slots but don’t win shit. However, I got Saul by my side and to be quite honest, I sincerely believe I am falling for the boy.

- excerpt from novel in progress borrowed flesh from the first chapter, Tijuana Bebop

Cigarettes and Cum

But there’s a void now. A hole of sorts that won’t heal or close up. Because if someone stabs you in the brain with a butcher knife, and you panic and yank it out at a janky angle, then you might wind up damaging yourself forever, and you won’t be able to able to chew your food properly or ever remember your social security number again. You won’t be you anymore because something will be missing. That’s what the void feels like because you’re not all of you anymore, and whenever there’s a void you feel like you have to fill it and it doesn’t matter what the fuck you fill it with. Just fill that bitch up. Fill it with macaroni and cheese and cigarettes and cum. Because it burns when it’s empty and vulnerable like that. Just fill it the fuck up even though your body will reject it every time, because it knows that it’s not you and it won’t settle for substitutes. That void wasn’t there before, and before, I enjoyed my solitude. I relished in it. The void makes being alone completely different, because you no longer have all of you, so you’re more alone than you’ve ever been. Wherever you are and all day long you’ll feel like you’re searching instead of living. You’ll carry yourself differently. You’ll wander throughout your life a little more weary, and nervous about who you let in, and how you approach people. You’ll feel like you’re being judged more often, and you’ll begin to struggle with the idea of what people think of you, which will break your heart the most, because you never cared before, not even for the slightest split of a second, what any other mother fucker thought of you. You’ll have to start closing your closet door at night, and you won’t be able sleep unless both your feet are under the covers.

So when someone takes that from you, and we’re not just talking about me anymore, we’re talking about you, me, and everyone we know, because we all have pieces missing. Craters and holes from the all the blows that we’ve taken over the years. The empty parts that we try to fill with dicks and drugs and booze and boys and the internet, and how we distract ourselves from it by talking about one another behind each other’s backs. Because we’re all a bit broken, lonely, and incomplete. So when someone takes that from you, you give up or you keep going and it’s as simple as that. Try not to think about what was taken, even though it may feel impossible, because you don’t know if they even kept that piece of you safe, or if they just left it on a bus somewhere, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life trying to find it.

There’s a void now and it burns, but I still l do things alone. I go see movies and go out to eat and I go for long walks when the sun is out and I dream of better days like I always have. I just don’t have all of me anymore, and I’m still getting used to the holes as your ghost follows me throughout my journey, and I’m scared that your ghost will never leave me because ghosts can’t die. But just because it still haunts me doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of you. And maybe one day you’ll haunt someone else.

Maybe one day I’ll find what I’m looking for.

Oscar

He is shorter

than me by a head-

He looks up at me

sometimes and blushes.

I don’t know why

but it’s cute.

He never has kissed

me in public-

I thought maybe

he was shy,

Then I figure out why he blushes

as he turns around,

stands on his tip-toes

and kisses me.

Rant No. 7523.4

I hate electronic cigarettes. That’s not what fucking James Dean or Brando smoked. They probably smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes as they wrenched out repairs on their muscle cars in white cotton t-shirts smeared with oil and grease. Bette Davis wouldn’t have been caught dead standing on a balcony in Paris at four in the morning as Vanity Fair’s Oscar party came to a close smoking an electronic cigarette. She’d be finishing off her pack of Virginia Slims, already fighting off her hangover and blowing smoke into the sky in her ball gown.

I despise my cell phone. Marlyn wouldn’t even know what to do with it. She probably had phone sex with John F. Kennedy in one of the suites at the Hilton, talking on a rotary phone, naked and wrapped up in the phone cord and holding the phone in the crook of her neck as she breathed out her orgasms into his ear while he jacked off in the oval office.

I fucking hate Instagram. The fuck would Audrey Hepburn have done with Instagram? If she had had an instagram she probably would have felt the need to filter her face, which would have been a fucking crime against humanity. Instead she was photographed in black and white and developed gracefully in dark rooms by Italian photographers who always told her that she was beautiful even though she never even believed them. She wore her flaws with pride, even though she didn’t actually have any.

I loathe Okcupid, Tynder and Grindr. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton never would never have wasted their fucking time. They were too busy smashing liquor bottles against the walls in the midst of one of their passionate hurricane like arguments and making up by fucking on the kitchen counter, slicing their feet open on the broken glass and not thinking twice about it. Even though it all eventually fell apart, they both can still say that they had a great love in their lifetime. The kind of love Hemingway would have wanted to write about. Good luck trying to find that shit on the fucking internet.

I’m ashamed of my mood stabilizer. Where the hell would we be if Joan Crawford had gone on a mood stabilizer? We wouldn’t have those movies. All those movies where she accented her broad shoulders and stood up to the leading men and fought back. We wouldn’t have gotten to watch her rise from the ashes over and over again and admire how she always kept her eyebrows in check no matter how precarious a situation she found herself in. And most importantly, Christina Crawford never would have had anything to write about, and Faye Dunaway never would have had the chance to win that Razzie.

I despise airbrushed celebrity culture. It would make Katharine Hepburn sick to her stomach. Four Oscars under her belt and she never accepted any of them in person, because she didn’t believe in it and because she would have rather worn pants. She was the kind of woman who made it very clear that she could do it on her own in every way shape and form, outside of a man. And we don’t have that now. That used to be the norm. Now strong women are a minority.

I wish I was somewhere else most of the time. A time period where we were more present as human beings, and spent more time looking at the sky than screens. It keeps me looking back instead of looking forward most of the time, but I like sitting there in the back row by myself with my fantasies. I can be whatever I want back there. Because when I’m back there with ghosts that I feel like I can actually relate to, I feel more like me, and I feel free.

Mexican Purchases

I had purchased a small refrigerator from the market which sells used and shady items. It was a nice refrigerator - not too big, not too small - about five feet tall. Black and silver. The fat bastard in the filthy t-shirt said "One thousand pesos". About eighty-five dollars?, I thought. Fine.

Inquiring about delivery, he quoted fifty pesos yet when the older than fuck fucker wobbled up with the truck he flatly demanded one hundred pesos. Ah, the gringo rate.

Hurtling through chaotic traffic, the old man squinted and swerved nearly hitting every vehicle and pedestrian who crossed his path.

"I don't have a clutch in this thing" He stated. The fumes of burnt gas emitting from the yellow hood of the truck burned my eyes. Every time he staggeringly halted at a red light, he had to shut the engine off and then restart it again.

"How old are you?" I jokingly asked.

"Eighty-two!" He stated proudly. "I can't see worth a damn, though."

I'm going to die, I thought as we almost careened into a bus crossing our path. Hell, the seat belts were even worthless.

Of course, ultimately, we made it back to my house in one piece. I stated if he would mind simply sliding the refrigerator to the lip of the back cab, I could carry it to my door alone. He then went into a tirade about his bad heart and his hip ulcer. Sigh. Fine. I jump into the cab and retrieve the appliance myself.

The small left-front foot popped off. Great. My neighbor, who was out on the sidewalk selling used garments and brick-brak inquired how much I paid for the thing. I told her. She chuckled and said I got ripped off.

"You think?" I laughed as I dragged it into my front door.

At least it goes with my brand new stove - which I yet to buy a connector tube for the gas main for. Muy sympatico...

I don't know if the publishers will allow me to release my book under the title Borrowed Flesh. I have already been given an ISBN number for an earlier, disastrous release and the damned thing is still lurking on my amazon page even though I took great pains in attempting to bury it. I was thinking a different title and so far I like Cursed from Birth. Even though the book is an extremely experimental take on this blog, I hope I can use the title Borrowed Flesh, it fits more. A ver...

Ronnie Rocket

cannabis notes

"I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him who fits."

"This skin, willowy and alabaster in its pigment’s allure, drapes over my shoulders to the sleeves of flesh born to fit." His eyes darted towards the shambling door ajar in the blue entryway, ritualistically slapping the heels of his tattered leather boots in four consecutive movements, then a measured pause in the rhythmic cipher of his feet, then proceeded to drift each foot in a deliberate, dispassionate and timed twirl in four steps apart, as his soles halt in a parallel distance. The man glared down at his abiding movement with absentminded determination, each seemingly aimless placement of his feet resembling the small hubris of a child immersed in freewheeling harmony with the solitude of dismal, stripped formations of trees cascading across barren acres. He was eating a dried stalk of celery, his thin lips moistened by morsels of lukewarm blue cheese that he lightly applied on the celery from a small, plastic vat perched on the center of his groin’s static posture.
I feel malcontent. Inside the intestinal annuls of my digestive system, there was a constant and violent surge, like the ruptured and coarse catacombs of a macabre tyrant’s mausoleum inflicted by seismic tremors perishing its structural fortitude into colorless wisps of ash and dissipating debris, as my fingers would clench desperately between each intermediate bout of trembling emanating from the incomprehensible activity that thrived within my bulbous abdomen.

Borrowed Flesh excerpt

   'As evening fell, Saul and I both were bored and I came up with the brainstorm of visiting every bar we could and at each cantina down one shot of tequila and move on to the next. We became adequately faded - Saul and I stumbled down Calle Coahuila, home to many squalid dives and whorehouses.

   Ambivalent transvestite hookers drift under yellow street lamps, eyes luminescent with methamphetamine, they lean against outcroppings of crumbling red brick walls, talk in silent, catatonic gestures, frescoes of elusive depravity, flat two dimensional howls drift into the night: “Orale! Joselito! Carlos!”

   Stagnant patter of commerce: “See the show! Naked lady!”

   “Nice girl, meester?”

   A hideous soiled mouth blows smoke rings into the night, “Wanna fuck me, baby?”

   Saul and I jet into the bar Kin-kle, a tacky queer joint with a mangy, over stuffed bullhead above red metal double swinging doors where guys would show you their erections for a beer. In the dark alcove booths, drunk and horny, Saul and I made out under the vigilant eye of a waiter with a hard on. Patrons passed us with indifference as I masturbated Saul to an unscrupulous climax under the red covered table, his lanky body entwined with mine.

   “The fundamentals of it all, it ain’t right.” Sniffs the envious old expat sitting alone and indignant at the bar. He ejects his resentment like a thick fog.

   “Why dontcha mind your own business for once?” I slur, wiping the glistening residue of Saul’s discharge off my thumb with the red table cloth.'

- excerpt from new novel in progress Borrowed Flesh

Monday's Darling

Oscar’s love is so powerful that it becomes selfish, and people suffer. They suffer in the best way possible. The kind of suffering that will make you wise. This boy I know ultimately believed that life was a game that children played best. The rest of us were just losers competing with one another. He could either win or possess what could ultimately, in his mind, defeat him. He had quite the collection, and he loved them all the same.

A Dream of My Mother

I awoke in the middle of the night with a start. Wrapped in a fit of depressed sadness. I turned on my lamp, grabbed my notepad and scratched this out:

It had been four days without eating, without bathing, without sleeping, and I had found nothing… I was restless. The feelings in me were growing again, same ones that had caused my mother to disappear one day. Except she stayed in her room, where I found her that morning. I wasn’t there when she decided to leave, without a word without anything, no “I love you” not a thing, but a warning to the people who lived around me… “She must never know.” Which meant, that if I was to never know something, she knew the one thing I needed to. And if she knew the key was with her, not in these books I’ve been wasting my time on.

“Her room." I said to myself.

I grabbed my car keys, and walked those spiral stair cases to the infinite left end of the house that my mother and father had made years before I had been born. I opened that far end and entered into the darkness.

Cough.

Fuck. All the dust, and dampness. I grabbed one of the old candles from the marble stand near the entrance and lit it. I maneuvered through all the cobwebs until I had gotten through to her bed. I remembered her secret book case underneath the frame. I knocked a few times. Every corner. Until. I hit. The loose. Wood. Bang.

Opening the loose drawer, I pulled out old pictures and books. There were pictures of my mother and father. I never knew him. Dark brown hair and eyes, pale features, a lot like the devil. I shared his pale face and dark hair. He disappeared, after my adulthood in a blaze of searing hate, my mother told me. She told me something happened to him. There was another girl in a few of these pictures. Blonde, blue eyed. She is with my mother and father when they were much younger. Then, gone. Last name is the different. Her face is exactly the same as mine when I was a child. It suddenly hits me.

My older sister. She was the Chosen before the boy. She was the one who died. It was my turn to choose, because she had been taken already. My father disappeared because he couldn’t bear the thought of possibly losing another child. My eyes began to well up in tears. Parents are left without children, children are left as orphans, and The Chosen, is left to become a hideous…

“The Ones Who Walk Away From Columbus" by Elgin. The book that every family in Columbus is given. Here it was, all the history of Columbus, and the truth that has been hidden from me all these years.

Sometimes life is dark. And it is lonely. And it is cold. Filled with hate, paranoia, and fear. Just dance to your own beat and everything will be fine.

Bothered

All that spilled over into high school, when I stopped telling my parents when my swim meets were. They took it as a sign of independence: their son was strong enough that he didn’t need hand-holding. But it was something else. I legitimately didn’t believe I was worth getting up or getting dressed for. I started making the excuses in my head: my parents would have to get up early, drive to Atlanta, and what if I didn’t win? Then it would all be for nothing. All their effort would be for nothing.

Spilled over still to adulthood, to boyfriends: I was plagued with men willing to date me as a backup, but I didn’t demand any particular importance. I certainly didn’t demand something as crazy as a Saturday night. They didn’t even have to make excuses for themselves—I already had them lined up. I had grown used to minimizing my impact. That was a good thing, right? Who wants to be bothered? If I could only curl into a space no bigger than a butterfly, then I would be the best son, the best non-boyfriend boyfriend ever.

Scribbles in The Margins of My Days

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Sessions

Psychoanalyst: I understand that you had a good friendship with your last psychiatrist. You had continued seeing him for thirteen years. His loss was sudden. I’ll be your new doctor. Let’s begin with a clean slate. Tell me about yourself?

Me: *the longest, most sarcastic sigh ever emitted by man* I was in the winter of my life…and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me…and my only real happy times. I am a writer…not a very popular one; I once had dreams of becoming a noticed gentleman of letters. But a plan and a series of events saw those dreams dash and divide like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind it because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it, to know what true freedom is. And when the people I used to know found out what I’d been doing, how I’d been living…they asked me why, but there’s no use in talking to people who have a home. They have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people…for a home to be wherever you lie your head. I was always an unusual person. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality. Just a hint of indecisiveness that was just as wide and wavering as the ocean. And if I said I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way, I’d be lying…because I was born to be the odd one out…the pariah. I belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone. Who had nothing, who wanted everything. With a fire for every experience, and an obsession for freedom, that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about it. And pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people. And finally I did, on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore. Except to make our lives into a work of art. Live fast…die young…be wild and have fun. I believe in the country America used to be. I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever. I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself, I ride. I just ride. Who are you? Are in touch with all of your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself, where you can experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. But I am free.

*He sits and stares blankly at me a moment*

Psychoanalyst: I’m upping your meds by 500mg. See you next month. *He hands me the prescription, not looking at me, holding it between thumb and forefinger like a used, filthy condom. I silently walk out*