Tucson Trepidations

I have been writing that science fiction novel for two months now. I utterly loathe it. So entirely mired in cliche and schlock that I read the pages I have penned and recoil in horror and embarrassment. So, I filed it away and began a new story more in common in the type of work I am comfortable in.

The new work - which at this writing remains without a title - is concerning the mishap friendship of two individuals who I once knew when I was living in the streets of downtown San Diego. One was a twenty-something blond hustler named Kyle who - between selling dope and his dick - was taking care of a shriveled and ancient black man named Billy. Billy was born with no arms. He was a mean, foul-mouthed old fuck, but funny as shit. I am going to attempt to make it a quirky comedy of errors laced with life morals and opinions of the state of today's American culture. I have written several pages and am quite pleased with the results.

So, here I am in Tucson. For one month more. I have decided to relocate to Tijuana and live a little. I realized I had droned on about this before, but there is nothing here for me now. This town is not very simpatico with my lifestyle. Lifestyle. Ha! That's funny. Me and the like minded seem to have become extinct, even among today's gay culture. Gone are the risk takers, the strivers, the sexually ambivalent, the independent man.

Anyway, the brutal romance in which I harbored for one of the locals came to an abrupt and sinister end. No surprise there. And, staying true to form, I simply no longer wish to reside here. I was going to leave yesterday, but thought another month of wrapping up loose ends wound be prudent.

The good thing is, I'll arrive in TJ with a good chunk of change. I really need a good beer and a willing rentboy right now....

Time Is the Fire in Which We all Burn

There’s a certain moment I live for. The moment after the seduction is complete, and I have him panting, naked, on my bed sheets. The moment before we fuck.

I can’t have real relationships anymore, I don’t need them. I found a substitute for a lasting relationship. To be specific, it’s the length of time, about twenty seconds - give or take - starting when his back hits the mattress and I hover over him, breathing, drinking in his flushed skin and looking past his eyes into his hidden, primal, nature. It ends, as it always does, with a questioning glance. He asks me if I will continue, and I will tell him “no” and ask him to leave. The disappointment. The attraction that bore hints of a promising relationship, or at the very least, gives one a reason to stay away from their own bed tonight. I love watching their reaction. I love how it varies between each man. I love the moment when they realize they hate me.

I don’t think I’m a masochist. And I highly doubt that I’m a sadist. There’s just this overwhelming euphoria, this absolute ecstasy, that lies behind letting someone down. It’s a drug that I crave, that I need. I tie the tourniquet as I enter the bar and press down on the plunger each and every time I hear them ask, “Why’d you stop?”

Sometimes they get angry. Sometimes they slap me. Sometimes they cry. My favorite, however, is when they stay silent. The unsaid words, the muffled curses, my imagination runs wild wondering what thoughts are coursing through their mind. Who do they blame? Is it me? Do they shoulder the burden of responsibility themselves? There are so many questions that I wish I could have the answer to as I see the quiet ones leave my apartment, almost as silent as they had entered. Their receding backs act like a peephole into society. If I strain my eyes, I can see how a normal relationship begins. I can see how they would have smiled at me, how we could have enjoyed the table for two I have perpetually on reserve at some nameless restaurant. But they will never know that. They will never know what I have to offer. And I will never give them the chance to find out.

Because you see, there’s a rush of endorphins at that moment. That moment between lust and love. Between first kiss and first fuck. It surges and overrides everything in my brain and I can’t see and I can’t think and he’ll walk out the door and I’ll wonder to myself: maybe he was the one who could have set me straight.

And then I’ll laugh and go to sleep.

The suits in my closet are always expertly pressed. I’m leaving for the bar tonight. I’m searching for the moment between human connection.

For you see, I can switch my polarity at will, and I can attract and repel whoever it is that I desire.

Happy Halloween

Pink Narcissus

Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door.

Empty Platitudes

Empty platitudes scribbled on a bar napkin by some poor guy who was probably just trying to get them out of his system. The kind of stuff printed on posters and shipped across the country to schools and office buildings, the words that promise an impossible future. The handwriting is sloppy, but this makes sense given the number of napkins that feature a ring of condensation, the only memory of the drinks consumed, beyond any regrets this guy has tomorrow.

The bartender is flirting with a young man who is waiting for his friends to arrive. The young man is handsome, but in a conceivable kind of way and the bartender acknowledges this with both his wondering eyes and steady, affected voice. The young man laughs politely at a joke the bartender told, but his smile is strained and empty. The bartender does not seem to notice this and walks away with a look on his face that shows his belief that the young man made up his friends as an excuse to stay at the bar and talk to him. Minutes later, the unimagined friends arrive and them and the young man leave. The bartender does not betray his previous, silent burst of pride. He cleans a glass and asks if I'd like another drink.

I collect the napkins and sort through them, rolling my eyes periodically to assure those around me that I find no comfort in such shallow banality. I pause at one napkin that reads, There is no time like the present. This is a very stupid thing to believe. The moments which predate the current time are identical to the present. They were created and lived through, ten swallowed by the chasm of time which is currently working to collect this very moment and consider it the past. The future will likely work the same way, though, as another napkin dictates, The future is unwritten.

I try not to check my phone and am unsuccessful for a matter of minutes. Then I see that he has not responded to my messages and I place my phone back into my pocket and stabilize my collapsing head on the palms of my hands, leaning towards the bar, beckoning for someone that does not exist. I sigh, finish my drink, and eye the bartender. I do this somewhat flirtatiously, now that I know his loneliness. The method is effective.

The bartender gives me my drink and asks what a guy like me is doing alone and I am granted a sudden understanding of that man's false laughter. The man is more closely related to the series of napkins than someone like myself. But I am too alone to be judgemental and tell him that I have been stood up. He tells me that my drink is on the house and gives me a patronizing frown that costs me more than the rum and coke ever would.

An hour later and the bar is nearly empty. The bartender breaks the tragic news that it is last call to us and I pay my tab and consider the door. I turn to the bartender and ask him what he is doing now that his work is done. He flashes me a cheesy smile and, after all the patrons have gone, pours us both shots.

We have been talking for around thirty minutes but he has not left his side of the bar or invited me to join him. So, I sit and he stands, a barrier between us that insists on classifications that no longer apply at this time of night. By this time I have grown sick of his voice and either want to move this thing along or depart. He has only spoken of his friends or work. These are both dull topics, for his work seems to consist mainly striking out with guys and his friends have names like 'Danger Dan' and 'Big T'. I consider kissing him to shut him up, but then he excuses himself out the back exit for a cigarette and I'm bored of the taste of cigarettes. He makes me promise to wait for his return. I don't.

At this point of night, the street is mostly clear of the herd of obnoxious 30-something drunks, but the young drunks are still collected in packs, hoping at this time the 4am bars will deliver forgetful experiences. Such a bar does not exist, which leads to the existence of the 30-somethings that are only now returning home.

I forgot to turn the heat on before I left so my apartment is as cold as the night surrounding it. I turn up the thermostat and grab three heavy blankets and resign to the couch. I flip through a novel that drips with pretension and then I flip through channels that hold nothing but infomercials and reruns of shows I didn't care about the first time around.

After a while the heat is functioning and I shed my blankets and stare at the ceiling. I began to whistle the shitty pop song that was blaring from a cab's radio outside the bar. I stop whistling and think of the bartender. He was likely sad when I left, for both the lack of conversation and the physical aftermath he considered implied. He likely picked up the stack of napkins, sorting through them and finding some solace in their simple words. Perhaps he will finally be capable of appreciating the journey in lieu of the destination, or realize the percentage of untaken shots he will miss.I suppose there are worse things than empty platitudes scribbled onto napkins. I suppose there is the bar with the missing guy without napkins that reveal the lives you could be leading.

Someday.

I asked myself a long time ago where I'd thought I'd be in five years. Or I should say, the question was posed to me and I had no answer and I went home and thought about it over Lord of the Flies, a fresh pack of smokes, and a pot of coffee. What I decided was this: I would still be myself in those five long years from now. Not to say I'd thought they'd be long, but more that they would go slow until it was time to look back on them.

I didn't see the point on trying to change. Sure, change can be good, but I thought I was doing okay: some money, a place to live, and some friends to drink with. Some music, the internet, a typewriter and a laptop. Clothes. Happiness, however that is measured (I found out from others that I was happy, I guess I'd never realized it) I moved from day to day in the monotony but contented. I spent the nights carelessly. I made love recklessly. I kissed the stars and found his lips like silvered spoons. They were beautiful and I was stuck on the ground.

We'll see what tomorrow or next week or two months from now or my deathbed has for me. I guess I'm anxious to find out, but not enough to see a psychic so I know. I don't like conjecture about the future. I like to live it. I like to take each sip of coffee like the Egyptian artifacts they are. Rarities meant to be found in the future by people who weren't me. My life a mystery I'll write in small sentences until it ends. Maybe someone will publish it, someday. Maybe I'll sink beneath the waves and I'll find peace. Someday.

Fear the Inevitable

There are some things that are meant to be seen, but never felt.

Sensations we understand come first by knowing their presence lurking in alleyways like forgotten trash left to dwell in between those triumphant, tall buildings. We understand their necessity, yet we ignore them. The human impulse to understand gets thrown aside and we accept the things we see, the gutter people, the litter, the signs of life we don’t even look down to see.

The way raindrops skip against puddles. The way smoke from fall cigarettes mingles with clouds as its welcomed to stay.

The way a ten foot piece of rope can be used to disguise our understanding of each other. To create chattel, to hang the people we refuse to understand.

To pull each foot tighter and tighter around a thin, slender throat, feeling the rough fibers coming undone and creating friction against skin, the veins and tendons clamoring for understanding and growing at their upset, the rope clinging to rope, the fibers clinging to skin, the pressure widening eyes.

And for once you understand what death feels like. Sudden, gruesome death. Both its inception and its aftermath, its beginning and its end.

Death knocks on the door and by the time you’ve let it in it’s already left. Finished. Moving on.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it stare at me from across the street, or linger in my cup of coffee, breathing its promise to find me in thin, wispy smoke. I can’t tell you why we’ve never met. I can’t tell you why I hold my breath.

But I’ve seen him laugh, and I fear for the day that rope is around my neck. Because I always fear the inevitable, I just wish I knew when.

Insidious Wreck

I gave it everything I had. My chest heaved and my body rocked. The tears flowed faster than I knew was possible. I threw everything I had into that cry. All the rage, all the frustration, all the pain. I threw the loneliness too. And the disappointment. I threw happiness in there as well, what little bit of it had managed to pierce the veil of my life these past few months. I put it in there because thinking of it, thinking of how foreign it seemed to me, threw everything else into sharper focus.

It was exhausting, crying like this, but I kept going. I needed this. I needed it out of me, because if I kept it inside of me any longer I was going to implode. The sadness was going to swallow me whole, and there would be nothing left. Nothing at all. This was me fighting against that nothing. I had been starting to go numb inside, and that’s not what I wanted. No matter what happened, I didn’t want to disappear from the world. There was always collateral damage when someone did that. I knew from experience, and I refused to do that to anyone. Ever.

So I cried. It was harder than I thought. I felt every moment of sadness from the past few months as it came back up. I felt as though I was living it all again, in sharp succession. But it was okay. I had survived it all the first time, so I knew I could make it through again. There had to be something else on the other side of this cry. So I kept going. I cried past the point of tears. I cried past the violent, heaving sobs into a softer, murmured cry. Then, eventually, it stopped.

I was proud of myself for making it through. I felt empty now. Not numb, but empty. Empty was good. I could fill the emptiness with something. This time, I'll try to fill it with better things.

a simple progression

I stood outside the shop thinking.

In my mind I pictured a simple progression: a smoldering cigarette catches the floor on fire, the fire spreads through the house, eventually reaching him, who would be too drunk to notice.

“Hey bitch, what are you waiting for?”

I looked up, but he was already walking away.

I hate his smug walk. I hate how he took up too much of the sidewalk. How his hands were always fists.

I stubbed out my cigarette and followed, wondering if tonight was the night.

A Mirror Darkly

I think the best thing about it was that you thought you’d gotten away with it.

You just appeared pretty much out of nowhere (and trust me I’m not exaggerating here because everyone was shocked) and then tried to act so naturally like it wasn’t strange that you’d said goodbye forty-five minutes ago and yet somehow here you were again.

That’s probably the greatest part about the whole thing actually.

Your casual reappearance; a stumbling fool emerging from the shadows wearing a grin I just wanted to smack off. You were so smug with yourself, swanning around with your false sense of achievement. It was wonderful to watch because everything about you was a dead giveaway - the sway, the slump, the slur, the stench - and yet you tried so desperately to maintain some semblance of coordination. We watched as you spat out a beer-soaked monologue no one could make sense of. We all shook our heads at you and laughed under our breath and tittered to each other and you didn’t even notice. Either that or you were too far gone to give a shit.

It got better when you followed us to the next bar and trapped someone in a confusing and illogical string of words and sentences too jumbled to be even called a conversation. Especially seeing as the other party did nothing but look distressed and attempt to retreat. You kept talking and talking in his face. I literally heard you say the words “he rips her arm off and beats her with it” and I’m pretty sure that’s when I choked on my drink.

I couldn’t stop staring. It was like one of those horrific car crashes that is so spectacularly bad that you can’t look away. I think I was just so mesmerised by the whole thing after all the jokes we’d made. To have someone finally embody the ridiculous enigma we’d all created in our minds. This concept that existed purely for our amusement.

If I really think about it, I’m kind of jealous that you got to be the one to strip me of my title but to be fair, it’s so befitting it would be selfish of me not to relinquish it. I dunno, maybe I’m still shocked I got to experience it. A run in with an imaginary idea; the real surprise trashbag.

Why him?

Thursday night: I’m sad sometimes, but it doesn’t rev up and swallow me like it used to. It sort of sneaks up on me at inopportune moments and leaps out from under me. It goes slow.

Slow like your movements in the tavern booth. The smooth steady pulsing of your temple as you tell your sixth beer how it all began to fall apart. You don’t blink. My fingers follow the water droplets on the table as I hear you, and I hear me too.

You weren’t enough for me.

For a moment we’re friends again, like being almost lovers never happened. Like we’re two lonely people, coincidentally sad and drunk.

You’re bold and concise with your words, but I know you’re hurt. I do the same with mine because it hurts that he wasn’t enough for me. And when I tell you, you smile and slowly shake your head. you tell me I’m difficult and I know that you of all people know. I start to shake as you remind me.

We’re drinking like a sleepy summer’s just starting, words slurring and heat rising. You have the same stupid jokes. you put your mouth to my ear, fighting ambient sound. I do the same with mine because I know what it used to mean to you. You haven’t changed, and you pretend like I haven’t either, ordering me bottles of sol like it’s 2010 all over again.

Outside the streetlights and new autumn night remind me I’m alone, even though you’re walking beside me. You put your mouth to my ear, fighting ambient 1am silence.

"I’ll just never understand — why him?"

If You're Gone

If you’re gone the days will go by faster, since the minutes won’t be so tied up with waiting for you to come home. If you’re gone, the skyline that has become my fortress will shine like heaven, will clog the black hole you left in my confidence. It won’t be until I lock myself into my bed for sleep that the independence, the invincibility I feel at having rebuilt my life will vanish.

If you’re gone I’ll feel small and disposable, I’ll start walking with my head down and singing songs about clinging to lost love. My morning shower will take fifteen minutes longer, because I had to stand under the hot water to sing the words to one more song you would never have understood the meaning of. My morning coffee will be drunk with my fictitious companions who visit me in the form of old 90’s sitcoms. I will sit back and laugh at the way life’s many obstacles dissolve with ‘I’m sorry’ or a martini and a muffin.

If you’re gone you’ll free up space in the soul of my existence to turn you into something that you’re not. You will give birth to a new self, and I will be the one to own this new you. This new man you’ll create will smoke cigarettes that don’t make me think of cancer and death. His willful ignorance about the world around him will be charming instead of the catalyst to another fight. When he refuses to hold my hand, I’ll believe it’s because he was trying to protect me from something, maybe himself. And instead of asking him about it, I’ll thank him by not resisting his desire to make love one more time.

If you’re gone I’ll forget you. But you won’t leave.

Scribbling Holes

I slam my head against the pages
hoping that the words will bleed out.
Crying because the Muse doesn’t return
and I have these emotions swelling in my brain.
There’s no release, no way out.
No getting rid of this feeling.
Scribbling holes into notebook paper,
trying to sling together how I feel
but there is no relief for those who try.
My eyes burning with each second I stare
and I’ve already dried my tears.
The lines on paper pulsing like veins,
taunting me with every beat.
Oh word, oh word, just take me now.

blackout

He woke up in the bathroom stall. Baptized by the murky toilet water. He forgot how much time had passed. As the music stopped playing at the dive bar. He didn’t know if he had died or was just temporarily broken. No worries, no mind. There was no time. Didn’t make a difference. Since he had never accurately felt a scientific measurement. Or maybe he just was never good at math. The condom machine had been broken. But he knew he couldn’t fix it. Finally realized that maintenance would never come by. It was someone else’s mess. As the hangover began to set in. He left the toilet without flushing.

Space Opera Blues.

Been scraping through countless nights of insomnia attempting to pen this new novel. It's not about rentboys or drugs or homeless or life's petty shit. It is completely different for me. A rollicking science fiction piece set in the 33rd century, kind of a hash of Buck Rogers and chinese chop-sockey movies called Colt Corrigan and his Adventures Across the Galactic Lens. It is a secret passion of mine. I've always fancied the rollicking daring do of the old Flash Gordon serials and John Carter of Mars books. I hope it comes out okay. It definitely will be a lavishly detailed work. Normally, my plot for a novel runs a page and a half, if that. This one is eight pages of twist and turns, cliff hangers, and political intrigue.

The most difficult part is coming up with interesting names and stuff. I have been reading on the Mayan Empire and Vietnam conflict for ideas of back history for the galactic culture and boning up on Japanese and Victorian cultures for the three planet settings....I hope it doesn't suck.

Swirling Mocha

I didn’t sleep well last night. As I lay in bed, I kept replaying the events of the previous evening. This guy I had met at the cafe had seemed very innocent. I figured he came from a conservative family with a religious background. His dogged insistence that all men were incapable of controlling themselves spoke of more than religious conservatism. It made me wonder if he had been abused. Raped? I saw how the older men of the cafe looked at him. Was that it, that he’d been sexually traumatized?

But then there was a blowjob.

No. That isn’t quite right. It wasn’t a blowjob. It was an attack of my cock. He went at it with such ferocity, it honestly scared me at first. But as I lay in bed thinking about it, I couldn’t help myself from getting hard.

Mental Masturbation

It was morning, like any other, in that I was strewn across my floor, sleeping off my hangover. There came a point in these benders where anything other than the fetal position on a wood floor felt like the spinning teacups on speed. I stared across my room at my digital alarm clock. The numbers were always hard to decipher from this angle. It was either 11, 1 or 7, and even though only two of those answers were acceptable, all of them were entirely possible.

It was in this deja vu, of waking up in a panic for the millionth time, that it really hit me. Before the sore back, and shooting pain behind my left eye would sink in, I would think; this is the last time. This time is different.

I planned to drink a liter of water, hit the gym and forget this ever happened. But that always never happened. That was just a sweet reverie I would sing before settling onto the couch, taking a fistful of Motrin and queuing up Netflix. The only place I would go on this day was the corner store, for my daily dose of Gatorade. It had become the only thing I could ever guarantee a weekly occurrence of.

It wasn’t ever different. It had never been before and I slowly began to realize that it was never going to be. It was always the same.

Different was the only idea that excited me anymore because it was still an idea. It was far away. Like a dream nestled in a cloud, different was anything I wanted it to be without the suffering of sacrifice, and the sober bleakness of reality. Everything yet to be experienced was so easy to sum up with my small minded fantasies and fears. Everything was something special before I was bored of it. I thought long and hard about how long something special could really last for a guy like me. The whole reason I would find my special something is because I was out searching for it, unhappy with my boring nothings.

And so it was made simple in that moment.

Do the right thing, feel smug and be bored or douse myself in gasoline, light the town on fire and shame myself for weeks after the dust had settled.

Wanderlust

"Way to go", was the last thing I heard from him.

It was over, like the proverbial blink of the eye. No closure, nothing. The pain, it was excruciating for a bit, but you know what, it was bound to happen anyway. And I’ve always wanted to travel.

I was an Aries and he was some other shit. I forget which it was, maybe the crab or the bull, or whatever, but I know now, we weren’t compatible.
How come I didn’t know that at first, like right of the bat. what a shame, a real life shame? He was real pretty though. That part hurts the most, because, well, his personality wasn’t as pretty.

Words.

I found myself with my eyes still and calm, for the first time in years as the original jotting of notes sprang to life out of my mind, giving the innuendo I carried in my heart for so long a name, a sound, a breath.

I wanted to cry, and I tried by staring at myself in the bathroom mirror and looking for that self-loathing I’ve had for so long but I was too disgusted with myself to keep the lights on and soon I felt nothing but darkness and longed for my sheets. I discredit sleep far too much and wish I had more time to write in it because my thoughts seem the most honest and painful right before and right after I do.

The sunset came over the biscuit colored Tucson mountains and the radiant yellow gained a reddish hue and the sun so big and burning in the sky, but not bright, found its way home on the coattails of the back porch and the spire cactus in the backyard, the humidity finally weighing down to rest.

I caught myself before I fell to sleep and typed out a few words I don’t think I’ll ever let anyone else read. Maybe I’ll burn them on the edge of that sky in that big sun’s flames settling down to be tucked in by the night.

SCREAMING

The bottom line is that when I’m discontent with my life and I automatically jump to the worst thing possible; why bother anymore? I’m miserable, and I want to use. But I know where using takes me. Using takes me to dope sick mornings, mornings I wish I just wouldn’t have woken up for at all I’m so sick. Using makes me into a complete and total monster, no one will want to be around me, I go fucking insane. I use anyone and everything around me to get that “last one more”. If your an addict, you know what that means. It’s that one that’ll finally satisfy all of your needs and cravings. And if your an addict, you’ll also know that it doesn’t fucking exist. Using makes me lose all of my friends. Who wants to be seen with the guy who can’t stop shoving needles in his arm? The guy who’s covered in bruises and track marks and the occasional dried blood. The guy so disgustingly thin and completely empty looking - the life has literally been sucked out of my eyes.

I don’t want to use. I know that, so when I feel like this, you wanna know what my disease tells me? It tells me I’d be better off dead. Because that’s what this thing ultimately wants. It wants me to be another fucking statistic. Another one of the junkies that just couldn’t stop. It wants all of my money, it wants me miserable, and then it wants me to fucking die so it can move on to the next person and take their life too. Addiction doesn’t care. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like, if you have a family, friends, a good job. None of that. All it cares about is making you miserable and killing you. It literally sucks the life right out of you.

I am a slave to to it. Once I have that first one, its game over. It consumes my thoughts. And even the days I seriously don’t want to use, I have to. There’s this little voice in the back of my head SCREAMING at me to get high. And there’s no ignoring that voice, no matter how hard I fucking try. And it never goes away.

And you want to know what the craziest part about all of this is? I could literally wake up tomorrow and not feel this way at all anymore.

strangers in hotels

He kissed fiercely, with his teeth. Engulfed my entire mouth. Chewed my tongue. Rough fingering. Decent fucking though. I was getting ready to leave and he pushed me facedown onto the bed and I protested a little and definitely could have said no, but I spread my legs and allowed him to continue. And now I’m at home, wearing red truck’s shirt, eating pizza in bed, watching It’s Always Sunny, and pretending that I don’t care that this is what I’m turning back into.

We Can Be Heroes Just for One Day

"Why? Why did you do it?!"

"Do what, quit?"

"How could you!?!"

"How? How do you think? I sat down instead of standing up, that’s how. That’s the definition, kid."

"But…"

"But what? You needed me? For what reason? The crisis was averted. The world’s still spinning. Your problem is that I wasn’t the one who kept it on its axis this time."

"But you’re…"

"Lemme guess, I’m your hero. I’ve been a lot of people’s hero kid."

"Then how could you…?"

"Because I’m human! Because it’s not my job to be your hero. It’s not anybody’s job. There are a lot of things we don’t get in this world, kid. And one of them is a person who’s perfect to look up to. I’m not most kids’ first hero. They start with folks like Smoke and Blaze, the edgy ones. Then the first footage they see of those idiots beating up people who have long since been knocked out shatters that. So they move on to Prism, or Paradox, or any of a hundred others. Then they’re let down again, and eventually almost all of them make it to me. So far, that’s worked out well for everyone. But clearly, your luck’s not quite so grand. But as your hero, the least I can do is save you from yourself. If you keep going this way, you’re gonna be one of those people. The ones who cycle through heroes, constantly finding new people to look up to. That’s a bullshit way to go through life. And the end result of that is you sitting somewhere, unhappy with your crap life, looking up to someone for inspiration that you’ll never act upon anyway. Let me tell you something  Let’s say you save the world five times. Then on the sixth time, you don’t do anything. If no one steps up to take your place, then you’ve failed. My goal is to try and be more than human. And that challenge is unwinnable. But there is a victory in inspiring someone else to give it a try. I’m old now. I’m tired. And my world’s not quite so big anymore. The faceless masses have been replaced by the faces and voices of the people I love. I’m done kid. It’s your turn to save the world.”

Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground

Tuesday.

We made love lazily, spread out over the vastness of the bed. It took up space and time, a lot of space and time between the two of us. Later, I applied mango body butter to my stomach and thighs and he realized he disliked the natural smell of my skin. It did not matter.

We tasted the Japanese green tea I had bought on a whimsy, and tiny flecks of tea leaves swam inside the porcelain cup long after I had taken the final sip.

I said, “You always think something better will come along, and that you should keep going and hold out for it. For somebody new and improved. But that is not true.”

He said, “Nothing better comes along, if anything things get worse.” I licked my lips and nodded. He claimed the thicker pillow for himself and the sheets smelled like mango.

We both knew it did not matter at all.

Gained and Lost

It looks like an ordinary parking lot. The asphalt’s been bleached a lifeless gray color by the unkind sun; scraggly yellow weeds poke through ugly, winding scars in the tarmac; carts lie, abandoned and askew, throughout the abyss. It’s hard to discern one parking space from another, the paint jobs neglected for years. Cars long come and gone decorated the lot with iridescent pools and bottomless black stains; discarded grocery bags flutter by like suburban tumbleweeds. It is, most people think, an ordinary parking lot.

Except it’s not. It’s not an ordinary parking lot. It was there, under the cloak of night, that you held me close and said you loved me; it was there that you told me I made you happy, happier than one else ever had or would; it was there that you decided we should forget all our friends and their judgment run away together. It was there that I fell truly, madly, irrevocably in love with you, and you kissed me with such passion it was if the world were ending around us—and it was there that you left me, just as the hazy sun appeared, blowing kisses to me and driving home to your wife, who you conveniently decided—hours later—that you still loved more, despite the blandness, the distance, the misunderstandings.

No, it’s not an ordinary parking lot. This is a parking lot of loves gained and lost, of stories that ended before they could begin—and now, whenever I walk past that extraordinary parking lot, I think of you, of the short, sweet time we shared together there, and—with an insincere heart and a head permanently full of what-ifs—wish for you a happy life.

the Mug

The mug seemed to shatter before it ever made contact with his head. By the time it got there it was in shards, and those shards embedded themselves in his skull.

The satisfaction was what took me by surprise. I'd imagined shattering the mug over his head dozens of times, but the intense satisfaction I felt as each piece drove itself further into him was something I hadn’t been expecting.

He lost consciousness instantly. When I realized this, I was disappointed. I'd wanted more time to savor the fear on his face, the same fear he had taken the time to enjoy on mine.

But even amidst my disappointment, I was mesmerized by the blood coming from the wounds on his head. I was always surprised by how viscous blood was. It moved slower than the watery substance I'd envisioned. There was a trail leading from each of the shards, and as they made their way down his face they joined, then separated again. By the time all the strands had made their way to his chin, an elaborate pattern had formed.

I watched it come together and was fascinated. This wonderful mosaic was more worthwhile than anything he had ever done in life. I stood back, admiring my masterpiece, proud of what I’d done. I then lit a cigarette, walked into the other room and sat pondering out the window. Tucson is becoming a bore.

Insects Bug Me.

They loved dust.

In my mind’s eye, they would creep out every night to roll in it delightedly, legs skittering on the floor with glee.

A man could never understand the problem of a cockroach—a live cockroach—in a bedroom. A man doesn’t understand the hidden violence in a moving thing.

I’d read in a magazine that roaches love dust, so I swept every day, up and down the brand-new apartment. I hadn’t seen one yet. A Tucson miracle!

When I met him, he was wearing terrible jean cutoff shorts, white strings hanging all a kilter. It was easy to be light and loose on our date. The first kiss was nothing to write home about. We had different styles. I liked to kiss at 45 degrees. He liked to kiss straight up and down.

The second date, though, he anticipated—met me at 70 degrees. Perfect. We were on a dirty thoroughfare, sticky from Vietnamese food, his hands in my hair, mine grabbing at his t-shirt outlining just how many muscles were in that back, and how soon could I get my hands on all of them?

The sex followed quickly, and it was good. Damn good. By date seven—a blissed-out day hike—I thought we were on terra firma. Home in the city, he ran to his apartment to get clean clothes, promising to come by afterwards.

I was alone, dripping from my shower, humming to myself, ready to get laid. And there it was. Moving like an insane thing. Gleaming. Crazed.

I leapt to my bed, shouted, “Get the fuck out of my house!”

By the time he got to my apartment ten minutes later, the PTSD had bloomed magnificently: Saucers for eyes. Ragged breath. I handed him ammo: Windex; a bookbag, a boot, an umbrella. Told him to kill it. That we were sleeping at his place that night. I saw the alarm in his eyes.

He couldn’t understand. The creature on the body that shouldn’t be, with all its moving parts.
He never called again. I bought traps.