word to the wise guy

I began, as a defecation of my mental state years ago, this blog online as a literary experiment – a personal confession I was certain no one would read. How could anyone understand or justify what I what doing? I sure as hell couldn’t.

   Unfortunately - or fortunately - depending on how your snooty ass perceived it, to my dismay anonymous people began reading this excrement of literary soul cleansing. A multitude of forlorn and fascinated curious seekers the globe over sat snug and comfortable reading my work and thanking little baby Jesus their lives were not so bad as what vomited out from my blog on almost a daily basis.

   Fact: Strange and fairly unpredictable phenomena will occur when you leave your conventional suburban existence, quit your job and walk out the door; never to look back.

   I sat in my borrowed flesh and typed away anonymously all the degraded horrors I put myself through - because back then, I held a morbid and perpetual death wish and was not preoccupied by guilt or hesitancy of my choices. Evidently, my prompt demise never came to pass. Traveling the hemisphere by the seat of my pants - the eccentric and perverse of the world sought me out and I was enlightened enough never to disregard its numerous offerings.

   I must admit I had committed exploits which would cause Caligula to scream like a bitch and flee in terror – nevertheless, I harbor no regrets. I am who I am. I answer to no one. Shunned by elitist friends, excised by members of my family - I continued and I will continue - just for jolly...

right here right now

Under the blast of a vibrant golden sky the pueblo of Tucson hummed with hipster activity. Coffee shops, used record stores, and neon signed eateries stood plastered with garage band fliers and notices of local art shows...

...a three foot fag with a blond pompadour stood in the entrance of a hair salon smiling moronically, wringing small, stubby hands. As the Olds chugged by, he noticed me gawking and curtly mouthed, “How do?”...

Drunken Indians shuffled through Ronstadt Station waving away attacks of phantom cowboys under the red flickering neon of Hotel Congress, hub of homosexual hipness... homeless teens played hacky-sack outside the Mayor’s Office as El Primo peered through closed blinds with silent, frustrated lust...Tall cactus and angular rock formations set the back drop for Road Runner cartoons.

i'd have the same reaction

my habit

When I slid most of my cock out I could feel the breeze of the ceiling fan blowing on it, cool from the drip he coats me with. Then back in, deep, and finally warm again. He clings to my neck and I kept one hand on his hip and one under his ass, spreading him open. I pushed up and into him while he presses down and onto me and this is us: fucking, sweating, kissing, all tensing muscle and slight corner-smiles. Hector takes my earlobe between his lips when he squirms in orgasm, and when it’s my turn, he rolls onto his back and places my cock to his mouth. With me on my knees over him, he jerks me off until the thick white bursts out my head and flops onto his face and waiting tongue. He swallows my cum and my cock and I fuck his face for a moment while the rest seeps out. I fall back spent and we lay there looking at the ceiling fan, trying to make it spin backwards with our minds.

“Buenas dias.” He says.

“Good morning.” I blink groggily up to him.

I feel you. I see you. I taste you. Through the hollow stillness I reach out my hand and gently press my fingers against yours. Elysium greets us with the old familiar smell of swirling white asphodel. The wind tickles the trees and scatters the playful leaves. I open my eyes and look down at my arms. In this waking dream the skin is smooth, no scars.

In this waking dream there are no scars. For now, no more blue tomorrows.

Hector traps the cylinder between his pout. Gently gripping the filter the way you would hold a lover’s earlobe between your teeth, applying just enough pressure to communicate your desire. The flame of the lighter teases the end of the cigarette to life, like the tip of a quivering tongue, tracing the lines of a lover’s lips to stimulate a hungry response. He inhales sharply, with a sexy little hiss. Smoke fills his lungs, like tiny whimpers of pleasure echoing into the sensual cavern of his wicked mouth. He arches his back slightly and tilts his head to one side, exposing the muscular curve of his vulnerable throat; exhale...he smokes slowly. Each time he tilts my head back to exhale, his mouth remains parted in a small O shape, like he’s frozen in a moment of orgasmic passion.

My hands tighten to fists. I gnash my teeth and dig my nails into the flesh of my palms. It’s all I can do to stop myself from pouncing on him… and licking the residue of nicotine from his lips and fingertips.

Equal to the carcinogens slowly swirling through the room, my passing days with him are both intoxicating and delightful. He becomes my habit.

tears would ever pass his lids

The Old Queer fidgeted on a concrete bench in Plaza las Armas, Ciudad Juárez. That being in Mexico, pendejo. (Native adolescents stroll by, arms around each other’s neck and ribs); strain his failing organs to occupy young ass and thighs, dangling balls and hard spurting cocks. A boy walking past, turns, grins at him and yell, “Que tal, jefe?” Their schoolboy innocence achingly stroke across flaccid buttocks and drooping loins. The Old Queer inwardly screams, an enigmatic frustrated howl with dark glasses and grey face. Piss trickles warm on his withered thighs.

I set my pen down onto my notebook and glanced at the clock on the café wall. There was a vato at the counter giving me the eye and I returned a vague impression as if something half seen from a bus window smeared with grey smoke - the clock had jumped ahead like time will after 3pm - and I became conscious I did not want to know about him or anybody...

“Hector.” I mouthed the name silently, finish my coffee and cigarette – we recently fought and argued over silly shit. He wanted me to stay in Juárez for the sole benefit of my finances. Out of the nine billion fucked up souls on this planet, he elected me to support him and his mother.

“No.” I whispered.

The night prior, his cousin – by name of Adrian - had visited from Tabasco. A downright sultry, walking hard on with the air that no one, and I mean no one, will refuse his glare when he pin-points your ass to hammer in unbridled macho-lust.

   We three had sat on the roof of Hector’s one story, adobe-brick trap drinking beers and listening to cha-cha reggeaton as out in the paranoid City; citizens partied, fucked, and violently died. Gunshots in the distance mixed with jukeboxes and car horns.

I blew plumes of smoke from a joint up into a dark sky blanketed in a swath of twinkling stars. After the beer began to flow, Hector launched into the same old blah blah blah and it pissed me off, or should I say, irritated the fuck out of me because I was held in the trance of Adrian’s hypnotic spell and all I craved was that lascivious motherfucker to screw me into the dirt.

“You’re being a complete letdown and an all-around drag.” I drearily stated to Hector.

He then went into full bitch mode: Droning on about his financial woes and the cold, imperious nature of your stereotypical American homosexual which, if I didn’t know better, was aimed towards me.

I retorted, “If you cared for me as much as my bank account, you wouldn’t have so much to complain about.”

Hector flew into a tizzy (this macho homo who I first met was declining into a full, fledged fag) and stomped downstairs to warrant sympathy from his placating mother because he wasn’t gonna get shit from my gringo ass.

I sat there a moment, holding my caguama – silently contemplating the conundrum. Adrian had other ideas.

The sultry bastard rose up off the milk crate he was stooped on, silently walked over to me, gently pushed my head back and shoved his tongue into my mouth. I sat there – all things serene around us except for the occasional smack or slurp – when Adrian was violently hurled away from a rather pissed off Hector who silently slunk back up onto the roof. Hector roared at the well-inebriated Adrian to get the fuck off me or something like that as the two executed a short ballet around the roof swinging blows. I sat there watching this stupid mess and as I casually lit a cigarette, Mother of Hector swooped up and put an end to these faggoty-ass shenanigans.

A few words were exchanged and I muttered I was going to get a hotel room to think this silly shit through. And I did.

Nevertheless, I am sitting in this café thinking. No one here but me – syphoned in a booth. I do care for Hector. Physically. Mentally. Not too much emotionally. After a decade dealing with this culture, I am befuddled with the fact I still carry that snotty ass attitude of West Hollywood with me when dealing with these gay fuckers. Of course it would be a financial boon to him and his mother - they having near nothing. What do I get out of it? A few kicks? I require more. I want what every red-blooded homosexual desires. I want to be loved back. Unconditionally and without strings. An arrangement which seemed an impossibility in this land of Mexican machismo. Unless, of course, I hook up with some simpering, fey faggot, an unlikely option which truly sickened me.

Fuck it. I exited the café and strolled through dusty, near empty streets. A mangy, yellow dog stared at me from a mountain of garbage. Jovial, fat Mexican waved at my white ass from his shop. A group of chattering Indian women hush up as I walked by on the smashed sidewalk. Yeah, I’m going back to Hector’s house. I think I love him. No, think is not the correct word, the correct word would be undeniably.

- Juarez City Blues, 1997

twenty minutes into the future

birthday

It is my birthday. A little bit older today. Huzzah.

monotony is key

The humid night invades the city in great hustler infested parks where rats infected with putrescent disease romp through ruined kiosks, the stone Emancipator, tired horse and tired rider...stone generals resemble frozen lunatics who advocate liberty under the ever-glaring eye of the withered Zonky. Two old Mayan pedophiles, fine as an ivory chessman, convene on an anthropomorphic limestone seat, sipping limonada... scrutinizing the rent boys slinking past, hawking their asses…

The throbbing brown crotch of a pimp swells and rots with syphilis, nacos blink in the sun, preteen boys sit in long rows under shaded galleries reading manga comics - they do not move their legs as people walk by...

There is something elusive the casual tourist never sees nor finds: Dirty undershorts thrown over a disintegrating concrete balcony, blistering iron roofs where non-descriptive flora in grimy plastic containers grow on perilous terraces, federale in a black uniform and black glasses, the dull life-sick hate congested in his eyes like scorpion poison... Smell of el Mar and vast garbage dumps, sewage, drying marijuana...

Row upon row of sinister hoochie houses in Centro stocked with doped-up whores, insidious agents of disease. The doormen, expert pickpockets like all in the area, can lift the turista’s wallet with a macho goose and stomp a drunken faggot into the asphalt...

A young man named Juan Carlos moved in next to my room, asphyxiating me with futbol scores...thin and sickly and continually fidgeting with candles and religious icons of that condescending bitch Guadalupe, goes on and on about his novia and lack of funds to support her...A cockroach crawls slowly up the blue chipped paint wall...I look out my window to the hotel across the street. A dark-skinned whore of Mayan descent with floppy breasts and discolored teeth stood in the door and asked for a cigarette from a scrawny young man... She steps in and takes off her yellow slip and stands naked...the young man drops his ragged pants - erection swinging free - and lies down on the dirty bed, smoking a Delicado, hard and waiting...

Cut to the Plaza...Spilling out in abstruse cavorting and sudden static outbursts of violence, a young man leapt to his feet brandishing a rusty switchblade and spins around, screaming, “No me toca, maricones! His eyes light up, flicker and go out...he collapses and shits his pants with fear, the police surround him and stomp him to dust. Tourists are warned theft and murder are epidemic in Tijuana and usually go unpunished...there are entire areas blah blah blah ...tourists amble about with the shadow of paranoid madness in their eyes...

Stroll through The Park for borrowed flesh. An old queen consumed in frustrating passion, fidgets on an iron wrought bench. Two young men saunter past him shirtless in the summer heat, smooth copper skin and corrugated abdomens…a boy turns, snarls at him and spits, “What are you staring at, ugly faggot?” Inside he screams in frustrated passion, outside an enigmatic mask of dark glasses and ashen face…

Zaphod's lament

THESE DAYS PEOPLE like to talk about having sex and tasting that hard cock with broken hearts which whirl around in their rib cages so they take a swig of alcohol and smoke a cigarette and then look up at the stars which remind them of his eyes he was always so beautiful I traced his spine with my fingertips I kissed his clavicles and I cupped his sorrow in my hands and his veins bled ink because he wrote beautifully and sent letters and sipped tea and petted his cat while he sat on the other side of the cluttered room and watched squawking television and he had a beer in hand and was totally wasted and his breath smelled like whiskey and sorrow and there were old books on the floor the birds were singing outside and their memories were swept away by the ocean and everyone was in love - almost everyone was guilty of this at some point.

(The previous was written in a post-narcotic induced state in the middle of the night. Management apologizes for any inconvenience.)

when your internal chaos goes meow

“Let me take that pussy from your crotch,” I said to Hector. The pussy in question was a 4-month-old black American short-hair beauty with round orange eyes. I had named him Lobo, Spanish for Wolf. Totally oxymoronic.

“But I like pussy on my crotch,” Hector replied. And for an instance, the bulge between my legs filled up with enough blood to semi-harden, and a rush of raw excitement nearly split my cranium.

The fantasy was too delicious but I had to let it go. Hector is not just my friend but my mentor - “sponsor” as they’re called in the rooms - and he’s a straight man I’m learning so much from. I want him in my life for a long time. So I promised: Hands off.

These days I play the cordially aloof homosexual act. And will have to for a while until my Latin boy longings subside and Hector is no longer the blank canvas onto which I display all my secretive sexy pig fantasies. Which are rather vivid but fleeting.

He is impossibly unavailable, like trying to catch a flying plane with a butterfly net. But oh fuck, how I love being addicted to the emotional drama of heartbreak. I pursue hard-to-get men just to keep the romantic intensity going and to keep my body’s love-chemicals and stress hormones humming, simmering at a slow burn.

I don’t know what the future holds for a man like Hector and a queer like me. It’s probably going to end blissfully after we’re done with the 12th step. Or the relationship will mature into something I have never quite thought possible, or once deemed unbelievable.

For now, I’ll just keep shooing my black pussycat from his crotch and focus on how unattainable he is. Yet how wonderful a friend and brother he’s turned out to be. No conquest there for the starving class.

Acceptance also leads me to this: my desperation is palpable. I just turned 44 which means Grindr will be sending me a Death Certificate in the mail soon. Such are the times we live by, that an app should have root-deep influence. And the older a queer man gets the more fantasy-ridden romance seems to become.

Unless there’s liberation in all this? The eagle does fly alone for a reason.

rarebit fiend

The first few minutes are hazy confusion, the light too bright, the world too loud. It’s like this every time. I never get used to it.

Someone’s tugging on my arm, already attempting to urge me to my feet even as I try to get my bearings, even as the world seems to lurch around me. The tugging is insistent though, the spots finally begin to fade from my vision.

The scene which comes into focus doesn’t make sense. It’s night, I notice the stars through the window, yet everything around me is bright, too bright for night and candles and lanterns. A boy is the one tugging on my arm, but he’s wearing an expression completely foreign. On someone else - anyone else - it might be panic, but the boy doesn’t panic. He is calm and patient, smooth as a deep running river, and never yells, never crashes against rocks or sweeps up everything before him in a fury.

He is not calm now though and it is…unsettling. It is unsettling that his eyes are so wide, that his hands shake, small and tight as he tugs again.

The ground is finally steady - or maybe me, myself, is - and I notice the boy’s partner just beyond, clutching the Small Thing and looking much like the boy. He edges closer as the boy draws back, holding the Small Thing out urgently, pushing it into my arms. The Small Thing doesn’t squirm away or fuss, simply clings to the blanket and huddles into a Smaller Thing.

I can’t hear anything, not really, the world is too loud or not loud enough, and it’s still so bright, too bright. But the boy is tugging at me again, towards the windows now. My steps are slow and clumsy, but the boy doesn’t seem to notice, just keeps tugging. The window is already fully open and I can see why the world is so bright, though it doesn’t make sense. The house has turned into a candle and I don’t know why, but it is making the whole world around as bright as day.

I glance back toward the boy, whose face is wet now, and watches my lips form more words lost in the roar around them. I speak again, yet this time there’s no missing it, the sound curling through my chest instead of the air, lodging in the place where I realize the Waking Stone sits. The Word stays with me, as the boy and his partner kiss the Small Thing, as the boy does his nighttime blessings and presses his fingers to the spot just above the Waking Stone, remaining with him as he clutches the Small Thing close and turns his back to the window and falls, the ground somewhere beneath them and getting closer, stays with me as I stare up at the house turned candle.

the fallen have more fun anyway

I am crashing. Scared. In pain. Panicking. Wanting to be alone. Wanting to write. Wanting to yell. To cut. To ran away. To cry. in retrospect, I can’t fall apart. I must stay strong. No, not strong, simply the desire to stand. The failing desire to hold on. To have faith. How hard is that? I want to be okay. I want to not be here in this dark anymore! I want to climb out to be me; not what’s wrong with me. I want him back as we are supposed to be… I want things as they should be without all the dark. I want to write the way I used to, no, the way I am supposed to write. I’m going to do it… I am going to be the version of me I’m meant to be.

carne trémula

Their skin would be at a slow burn and they’d lay in bed so close Mateo could feel Alí’s chest heaving. He’d run his finger on Alí’s freckled skin and Alí would look back at Mateo, deeply into him, curiosity in his brown eyes; both boys with hard-ons.

They would kiss and whisper silly things - “I love you” - and those I love you’s would again be said but not until decades had gone, and they had grown up somewhere in the world as unsteady, wrinkled and foulmouthed servicemen.

Their memories of unabashed love swiftly take shape and then retrieve to a corner like scolded children.

How lustful and stupid the young are. How I long to go back there myself; regress and be a fool! Back there, when all is full of wonder. When undressing is frightening bliss; and the love that ensues, cataclysmic.

Tonight however, memories turn against Mateo. And yes, against an aloof Ali. Sweet memories of light, warm touches and great fucks; which once broke through their isolation, now rush in like enemies.

How to rescue them, I beg. With my own eyes filled with water, my heart booming with ire, to a goddess who seems to have left them in the grip. And me, alone to wrestle with my insatiable demons: longing and loathing.

sage in a pit of angst

“Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world,” said he.

“Yeah,” I reluctantly intervened, “In my experience however, when a man no longer wants to be in my life, I help the bastard pack his bags.”

I couldn’t help it, I had to get my two cents in. He was not impressed - immediately - it took a pause and the cocking of his head for him to ask me if he could use that in the future. Then the little tiny voice of my conscience warned my words had already been printed somewhere else. And they weren’t mine.

Plagiarism is like loving Tina, knowing you might have an addiction yet choosing to stand over a kitchen counter, over a buffet of little crystals just itching to get smashed into powder. Renders a boy helpless. The heart fluttering, the devil inside murmuring, the cold sweat beading on the brow. What to do? What to do?

I should let this one slide. I don’t even remember where I read the bit about helping an Ex pack his bags. There remained the truthful chance I didn’t even read it! I might have heard it quoted by some sulky hack at a reading back in June 2001. Oh my–

“I can see your gloves hanging from the waistband of your trousers like someone clawing to get out,” he said, snapping me back to the murky, musky reality of the shabby gay bar.

“Absolutely not,” I scoffed without acknowledging my gloves, “those words are not for sale.” I turned to leave, noticing a glint of confusion and perhaps a little elation in his rheumy eyes. I immediately freaked out, what could he possibly be thinking about me? I took a confident step or two forward, well what I thought was confident for a gay man of my fading stature. Nonetheless he stopped me with this, “Perhaps you could feed me some, I don’t know, flowers or something. Menu-wise, it might not hurt me to branch out a little.”

I’m not the brightest of the boys nevertheless I am of the .01% who are stunning to look at in my uniform of drab gray and black ‘50’s retro rags. In fact, it is all I packed for the weekend. It is all one needs really, and a cute set of sunglasses, but I picked up on his sexualized contempt - I don’t know if he intended this himself - but he certainly wasn’t going to get me to put out. So I replied, “I can sense your emotional suction cups aiming straight toward me and frankly, it’s scaring me away.”

But then he ended it all, my self-esteem included, with a soft and masculine glare. The kind of stare only a very famous unattractive older queen can give, because they can afford it.

I didn’t stand a chance. It was as if attempting to cut across the coming waves on a rowboat filled with weeds, seeds and dirt.

“In the basement there are two restrooms, one marked ‘Men’ and the other marked ‘Gentlemen’. Inside each is a toilet, a sink and a paper towel dispenser, meaning whichever you choose you get pretty much the same treatment. Thus it comes down to how you see yourself: as regular or fancy.”

The queen knew.

minute by minute

I’m sitting pin straight on the edge, flinching away from the leather upholstery of the burgundy couch. It’s the back room of Shot in the Dark, a café-bar-lounge in Tucson, Arizona. My tongue presses up into my incisors. My right foot encased in a black leather shoe taps itself on the grimy, lacquered wooden panels of the floor.

My phone is in my left hand. We haven’t texted since we switched our meet up from Thursday to two o’clock today. I presume I couldn’t wait that long. Did he forget? Should I text him now? I’m caring too much. A sharp inhale rips my nostrils open wide. The expansion in my lungs allows the butterflies more room to rupture my insides.

I hold the breath in.

My lips smirk. My right canine digs into the corner of my dry mouth.

I met Antonio on OkCupid a week ago. We talked for two minutes about nothing in particular. He just complained about being away from the city, about being in his hometown in California or Nevada or wherever.

Wherever? (The breath won’t let me force it out) Oh, who am I kidding? I know it. I’ve been rereading the messages since we talked again last night (wings flutter and cut the muscles of my rib cage) and we exchanged phone numbers. (Blood rushes to my light head) We texted about movies and writing, which he doesn’t know yet are my two favorite things after beer and coffee.

I filled myself with that instant of him.

It doesn’t hurt that he looks adorable in his profile pictures, either.

My left hand vibrates and the screen illuminates.

“2:02 PM: Are we still on for today?”

“2:02 PM: Yep.”

“2:02 PM: I’m here.”

The breath rushes up my windpipe. My chest collapses and crushes whatever was within me seconds ago. I chuckle silently at my anxiety.

I discern what I desire. When I date (which is extremely rare), I’m only looking for two things: to feel good; to feel it now. That’s it. My cravings smothered the moment I feel them. The confidence boost of talking to a stranger and meeting them, without the self-doubt of struggling to form a real relationship.

The modern age has given me the perfect solution. I meet all the guys I online—OkCupid, Scruff, Tinder, Grindr. It’s easy. It’s instant. It makes me feel good to get a star, a woof, a match, a message. It’s the helium to my ego’s ever deflating balloon.

I recall the news article by that Yale girl who died, Marina Keegan. It concerned a college girl whose boyfriend died. The girl hadn’t loved or even particularly liked him, yet remained with him for the convenience of always having someone there to hold, be with, talk to. Before the funeral, she found the boyfriend’s old journals and realized he had considered her in light of similar convenience. The girl was shocked, but at the end of the story she still wanted to be with a stranger she met at a party to get her fill, in just a moment.

That’s me. I want the rush of some guy liking me, some guy liking me back. I need him to make me feel like I’m worth anything. I want it now.

Or perhaps it is someone else entirely that I want?

I amble to the front where the coffee bar is. He is standing there waiting. I recognize him from behind.

“Hey?”

“Hey!”

We greet, shake hands. He’s just as cute in person. We make small talk, normal first date material: “Wow, where in California are you from? Your whole life? You didn’t like it?” sort of stuff.

He orders a cappuccino. I get an Americano.

We go to the back by the bar, and someone’s taken my couch so we sit at the lofted wooden table on aluminum tubed stools with matte brown seats. We are across from and facing each other.

We begin with easy stuff.

I ask if he likes coffee as much as I do. He doesn’t.

His voice is warm and smooth. He tells me about his school. I tell him about me and my writing. I bring up music. I get harsh about the Grammys and Kanye West. He laughs at me and then his lips purse.

“Music doesn’t make me angry like that!”

His laugh is rich like chocolate and the heat of it melts his eyes. The grey streaks from the skylight reflect off them in contrast with the darkened space. My teeth are biting my bottom lip again. There’s something rustling above my diaphragm. Must be kindling.

“What makes you angry, then?”

He’s talking now about what makes him angry in movies and his favorite screenplays and the passion shows in his bared teeth and furrowed brow and flushing cheeks. I feel my heart beating faster as his silky words flow out of his pink lips to my peaked ears.

His eyes are so brown, deep, full in such I can’t look away from them. I put my right cheek in my palm and look and listen. There should be smoke in my mouth on account I’m expecting a fire to begin to burn inside my chest. It’s simply that he cares so much when he tells me about movies and life and the future and the past that it makes me care too. My mouth curls up into a smile. Still I taste no smoke. Instead, there’s a fluffy sweetness like marshmallows or cotton candy.

I feel the rustling again. There is no crackling flame beneath my lungs. There is a warm and fuzzy gerbil. I never feel that for these boys at all.

Last September, Karen O released the album Crush Songs. I was infatuated by it. I must have listened to it at least three times every day for the entire month. At the time, I didn’t understand why I enjoyed it so much. Her words and raw acoustic sound ignited emotion which both lifted me to the sky, bathed me in energizing rays of sun, and held me underwater, suspending me in soothing tides. The album is only thirty minutes long with no track extending past two, yet in that short time Karen O forced me into such strong rapture I was sent to that other side of reality that is a crush.

A crush is a short period of heightened emotion. A state of intrigue. An obsession. All of me begins to burn for some guy. Even if that guy doesn’t want me back, even if he barely distinguishes I exist, the crush always fools me into believing he does.

It makes me feel good. I feel it now. I know that my body sometimes trembles when my thoughts won’t let me sleep once the night comes. I know my body, mind, soul are wasting away and the crush tears me up. I know it, but I don’t care because when I have that glimmer of a feeling all my pain is somehow gone. In the morning I get up and forget and move on from it because the crush has made me feel something, if even only for a moment.

That’s how it goes. My crushes are concentrated and intense, yet short enough I can ignore the beasts they are. That’s the only way I like it. One shot of espresso with water, no frothy milk to deal with. It’s just a second-long obsession, a down-low high, a soon-forgotten secret.

Short.

Instant.

It gives me my fix. It’s everything I need, and everything I think I want.

Right?

It’s already five thirty. I want to stay here with him but he has to go. He’s meeting a female friend for dinner before they go to the cinema. We get off the stools. I want to look him up and down but my eyes can’t get off of his face. My grin flashes to meet his. I lead the way to the front and out the door and onto the sidewalk. I feel the heat of him following a few feet behind me.

The blinding yellow light of the late-afternoon day hits us and his pupils constrict. His skin is tan. His short hair moves when the breeze hits it.

“Are you taking the streetcar to the university, or…?”

“Actually, I was going to go home first and drop my bag off.”

“Oh, Okay.” I can see that his bottom teeth are a little bit crooked and I really, really like it. “I had fun today.” The tip of my tongue flicks out and licks my bottom lip. His lips are smiling.

Those eyes are smiling too. “Me too, I’m glad we did this.”

“So (his head cocks and I’m leaning forward) would you want to (his eyebrows raise up slightly, my right foot shifts onto its outer edge) do this again?”

His teeth show, smiling. “I’d love to.” We’re looking at each other. In my periphery I am very conscious of his mouth and I almost lean in and kiss it.

I don’t.

I hug him in a semi-awkward, end of the first date hug. He walks to the corner where the streetcar station sits. I walk south on 6th Avenue. Something is scratching my lungs, they’re black and scarred enough, I barely feel it. I don’t look to get another glimpse of him because I am afraid he won’t look back to catch another glimpse of me.

I realize we won’t do this again. It’s fine, though, honestly. An instant of it is all I wanted.

A little crush is more than enough.
I’ll be fine.

By time I reach home, there is a text: "Meet me at the coffee shop tonight at midnight. We can pick up where we left off?"

Dinner seemed so much yummier that evening...

really damn shoddy

After a month of mounting despair, the depression had reached its inevitable climax. Outside my window the sky was a bright blue and it was a pleasantly warm afternoon. I sat in the cool shadows of my room, sobbing by such unmentionable loss, a kaleidoscope of bitter memories, a poisoned river of anxiety and sadness. I had finally reached the end.

I grabbed the steak knife from the top of my dresser and sat back down at my desk cluttered with nostalgic memories of my broken past: piles of books, photos of forgotten travels, notebooks scribbled with stories no one was ever to read. I placed the blade to my wrist and I cut. It was cold. Somewhat painless. My mind whirled as a line of blood made its way down to my elbow and formed a crimson puddle onto the tiled floor.

For some cockamamie reason, a flash of rationale exploded in my reeling mind and I snatched my cellphone and called the suicide hotline. Some broad named Donna answers. I gasp and plead for the number to the CRC – the local loony bin. Goofy bitch puts me on hold…four times! I kid you not. If I wasn’t busy using a towel as a tourniquet, I would had just googled the damn number.

Within minutes, two fat dykes are at my door and rushing me into a unmarked white van. At the door I simply mumble, “Once more into the breach.”

On the ride, I am silent; not answering the obligatory words of comfort softly spoken from one of the women. I am admitted into a large clinic on the edge of town, rolled in by gurney and promptly stitched up. Later, I am sitting in the cold sterile lobby of the psychiatric clinic. Alone. Massive doors barred with no way out. A bloated retard keeps peering at me from behind a pylon – fat, bearded, slack-jawed. What the fuck you staring at?!

The pinch faced cunt with an atrocious hairdo behind the desk calls my name and I shuffle over still infuriated about the phone call with Donna and her complete lack of compassion. Seriously? Four times? I recall the old Rodney Dangerfield joke but I’m not laughing. Hairdo lady has me fill out the entry forms not once inquiring if I was in any mental state to write anything down – I purposely mark incomprehensible scratches. I come to the question: What brought you here? My chest caves in and I begin to sob from the sheer thought.

Weighed, poked, and questioned by another nurse, I am then ushered into another room and asked to change into colorless pajamas. I know the drill. The head shrink comes in all smiles and we have witty banter as she chatters off the same questions I have heard countless times before. She asks if I am okay to return home and have no desire to attempt anything “silly” with myself. I state that I am with no desire to be thrown into a dorm room that reeks of vomit surrounded by the screaming insane. She then says I will be detained after all for my own protection and I am promptly escorted into a dorm room that reeks of vomit surrounded by the screaming insane.

Okay.

Do I even receive a cot? Nope. They offer me a weird reclining chair with a blanket and side table. I lay there silently amid the gibbering and howling of the demented attempting to pay attention to whatever mindless program that was on the large screen television mounted on the wall adjacent to me.

After a meal consisting of a stale turkey sandwich and fruit punch, I am taken to a room by some hipster chick and asked more questions. I was quite frank and actually enjoyed the furrowed brow reaction from my inquisitor. I spun tales of my travels, my passions and addictions, my views on life and the utter desire to end this mortal coil strictly from boredom. During my interview, I am issued a plethora of drugs which comically began effect during our talk. I began slurring my words and her voice faded in and out in waves.

Blackness. Nothing.

I have a brief memory of lying akimbo on the cold floor in a dark room and some bitter female voice droning, “Could I have an intern? I have a client here who fell and he keeps yelling why are we keeping him prisoner here?”

More silent blackness. Cold, numb blackness.

My eyes open and I am crouched in a well-lit hallway against a locked door with seven or eight interns standing around me ordering me to stand up. I holler at them, “Could you stop yelling?! I’m not deaf, goddammit!!” I glance up and jut my open palm out toward the ring of faceless interns. A female hand grabs mine and helps me up. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” I remember slurring to no one in particular.

I wake up the next morning in my foul smelling recliner next to the mop-topped youth babbling bible verses. Nothing concerning last night’s weirdness is mentioned by the staff. Another plump and tired looking doctor comes to my side and asks how I am doing. Lucid and calm, I state I am fine and inquire about my release. She smiles and walks away. I eat a breakfast of cold cereal and tepid coffee. I spend the majority of the morning watching Nick Kids cartoons (Seriously, that was the only channel). Another doctor arrives and asks the same question, I repeat the same answer. He says since I was self-admitted, I will be released later that day.

I wait and wait and wait until finally I am issued my smelly and wrinkled clothes by a brutish intern. I was told that I would be chauffeured home by the clinic. Fine with me.

The first thing I did once outside was light a cigarette and I tell you what bliss. I return home and lay in my bed. The crusted knife still on the desk, the coagulated blood dried on the tile. I lay there, upset still that the damn suicide hotline had put me on hold four times. Shoddy, really damn shoddy.

I slept off the rest of the meds they had me hopped up on. The following morning, I awoke somewhat groggy and cotton mouthed, made some French toast with coffee and went on living…