Archive for November, 2009

Master Bacon was in town this eve.  He left a few cryptic texts to which I responded abbreviatedly, and he finally called sometime after eight.  Happy shit.  Just what I needed.  He bought me drinks.  He bore holiday greenery.  He counseled me.  It was good.  He gave me more or less the same advice every other smart person I know has given me.

Let it go, back away.

For now.

Now I’m cooking with butane.

See, it’s not really quantifiable.  To know Bacon is to understand he’s the shit.  There’s no real describing or explaining him.  He still dispenses humor and wisdom in the same tone of voice, with almost the same face.  Almost.  A third visit would allow me to verify that via triangulation.

See, I’m cooking with butane.

It was good to see him and I’m flattered that he again made time for me.

Conversations with him are a lot like conversations with Nebeker, Hataway or Fuckin Faris.  Even if it’s just casual, it’s deep.  Michael Bacon is a gentleman and a scholar.

Curious to be at a place where friends are approaching the import of it all.  Very lucky to have the friends I have.

I make most of my decisions based on my projected energy level at the time.  See?

Butane.

I watched at least one episode of My Name Is Earl tonight where Norm McDonald  was Jr. Chubby, Son of Sr. Chubby played by Burt Reynolds.  Bacon gave me nugs.  Norm is a funny mother fucker.  Reynolds didn’t suck at all.  His kinda role.  Nice toop.

Bacon’s classiest move was to buy me another drink for after his exit.  While paying the bill, he ordered another double Sapphire for me to nurse in his absence.  How cool is that?  I walked him to his mother’s Cadillac whereupon he stuffed a big fat bud into my half empty box of American Spirit cigarettes.

The bar he tends in San Francisco will be closing in a few days for renovation by new owners.  He has no idea whether he’ll still have a job but he’s paid rent in advance and intends to finish his doctoral thesis on Victorian literature.  I can’t imagine anything I’d like less to read but his concept of “gentrifuge” is so clever and he himself is so bright and vigilant.   I can’t wait to read what he has to say on a subject that finds me so under informed as to have no opinion at all.

I’m at one of the lowest points ever in my life and I feel as though my friends, including my hot, kind and compassionate girlfriend, are the only things keeping me from careening spastic like a full to bursting red party balloon without a knot at the bottom.  I realize my grasp is tenuous but there is comfort here in these people.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’ll be at my lifelong best friend’s mother’s house.  A remarkable woman for whom life hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.  A single mother who raised three whip smart and intimidatingly talented children.  She can cook like a house afire along with her son, my best friend.  She put up with being Den Mom to every aspiring teenage artist or musician Carson City could afford her for years.  I will have plenty to be thankful for tomorrow.  I hope you do too.

Bacon wore a pinstriped affair but there was no shirt and tie.  Something else underneath, I don’t remember.  A gold watch with a sophisticated face but a vintage vibe.   I spent as much time talking to his head and his head talking to mine as I could.  His manicured beard lent the conversation a Freudian flavor.

Hey Bacon, were you wearing glasses?

You were.

It is said that you can tell a lot about somebody by the company they keep.  As far as I know, my closest are warrior/poet saints.  They all seem to have found peace.  I seem to have lost mine.

It’s temporary I’m sure.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Drinks for my friends

Seven days a week.  At least five. I know all of their faces if not their names.  Nice kids.  As in far younger than me.  Kids.  Still wanting of the future.  Still aspiring.  Faces fresh, bodies able.  Willing and determined.  Full to spilling with hopes and dreams.  Goals.

They share them with me.  I kinda like that they do.  That they include me is flattering.  They tell me what they’re working on.  What they wish for.  What they’re working towards.  What they hope.  I join them in all of that but I’m careful what I say, I encourage but try not to advise too much.  Could be a slippery slope.

I imagine it means they estimate me to have a certain amount of wisdom, the benefit of age and experience.  I think they like me.

I hope they do.  I want for them to.

I remember when that was me.  I remember it.  It’s there,  I did it.  Maybe they see that.   Maybe I showed them that.  Maybe on days when I was happy and optimistic, they saw it.  I let them in and showed them my enthusiasm, because I’d realized my dreams and become who and what I wanted.  I drive a cool car.  It’s a nice neighborhood.  I’m an accomplished individual.  I’m a success.

Sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I wish they would ignore me.  Sometimes they annoy me.  They are needy and shallow and ask me stupid questions.

They are bright and curious but shallow, inchoate.  I might not be the success I think I am.  I might be pretending.

It’s just fucking coffee.

This morning, they take stock of me sideways, glances, what might be a modicum of concern.  I don’t know.  Confusion.  Suspicion.  Fear.  All of the above, I’m not sure.  They see me every morning.  They understand something’s bad.  Wrong.  Been in there consistently for a few years now.  They see it.  I’m far from right and far from what they are used to.  I can’t imagine they really care but they all see it.  It’s glaring.  The contrast.  They are callow but see me like I’m fucking naked.  I am fucking naked.  I’m a hot mess.

I’m so exposed.  What am I doing here?  I should have gone through a drive thru.

I decided not to wear my shades because I can’t find them and I hate that people do that inside anyway.  I’m in sales and if we’re indoors at a trade show, and even if you’re a client, wearing your sunglasses indoors, I won’t talk to you.  I loathe you the minute you approach my booth.  With your stupid fucking shades that prevent me from looking you in the eye.

You’re a dick.  Automatically.  I want to see your goddamn eyes.  I hate that too cool for school bullshit.  Ask me a question and I ask you to please remove your glasses.  If you don’t, I will mock you and not answer your questions.

I’m in trouble.  They see me every morning, they can’t help but notice.  I’m beyond uncomfortable.

Beside myself.

I looked at myself in the mirror.  I know that I fought with him sometime before he left my bed.  Before he left my bed?  Fuck.  There was blood.  Lots of it.  Not all of it mine. A lot of it not mine.  I did some damage.  Not very much of it Watership’s.  I hope.  I think.  I know.  That happened before.  Before we fought.  I don’t remember but I know what I know.  I know he slept with me in my bed afterward.  I know that before that, we beat the shit out of each other.

What fucking madness.  I am dying while losing my grip.   It is the most furious confusion.  I am going mad.

It’s ridiculous but it pleases me.  I fought and I inflicted, and spilled his blood but what does him leaving my bed mean?  Did he fuck me?  Literally fuck me?  I’m sure I’d know and I’m here to tell you that it didn’t happen.  My ass is not sore.  I don’t understand why he was in my bed, it makes my hands and fingers shake but I assure you, nothing like that went on.  Maybe that’s what I was fighting.

Why can’t I remember?

Furious confusion.

Days have gone by.  I think that was Friday and this is Monday.  I look better now.  No contest.  I look much better.

I just don’t have this coming, I’m so confused and afraid.

Scabs much smaller.  Not so much black and blue.  More yellow now.  Much less grief and violence in my brain.  My hands and arms barely as sore as they were before.  My back and ribs still ache.  It still hurts to breathe deep.  My neck, like it had been wrenched and then I think of the hair.  I have lots of hair, copious, but it was everywhere.  I gathered it while I sobbed over the slaughter of Watership with the early morning sun slamming in.  If I remember that, what happened to the rest of the story?

Monday morning.

Starbucks.

So weird.  So disconcerting that they see.  They look at me and stare at me from their corners.  I wonder how hard they think about it.  They whisper.  I wonder about the mess I must be.  What do they think they see?  What are they guessing, what conclusions are they making?

I want to ask how fucked up I look.  I can’t.  But I wonder what they see.

They imagine it’s drugs and I’m really more or less okay with that.  It’s convenient at least.

What would be better, they assume I’ve been in a bar brawl.  That would be best.

Hey kids, not as fast as I used to be.

Maybe that’s my story if they ask.  I lost a fight but I don’t know that I did.  It’s cruel comedy that their guess is almost as good as mine.

I have to remind myself that these are not important people in my life.  They are not family or friends.  But I see them everyday, and I remember that I can’t seem to share anything with family or friends either.  Can’t or don’t while I stand in line and ask myself why.  I begin to realize that I have guilt.  It’s heavy.  My head gets hot as I understand that I think I somehow deserve all of this.  How can that be?

I can’t afford to even think about this now.

What have I ever done?

How?  I’m not perfect but I try.

I treat people well.  I’m kind and considerate.  What have I done?

I’m sweating.

I feel it at the small of my back and on my head.

I’m sweating.  I hate to sweat.  It starts to run from my forehead and down my neck.

There’s this one girl with the most magnificent ass.  It’s huge for her small frame and makes me understand that my appreciation borders on fetish.  Her ass makes my palms sweat.  It’s so round.  I’m telling you, it’s gorgeous.  She’s black and I just want to see her unclothed buttocks.  Just once.  Fortunately, it’s all I’m attracted to about her beside her personality.  She’s very friendly and sincerely sweet, sees me when I walk in to join the line and my beverages are ready on the bar to my right when I hit the register.  She’s not here today.

I’m grateful she’s not here to see me like this.

There’s always tomorrow.

There’s another with a smile that could melt snow cones in a blizzard.  I like noses.  She’s got a nose that allows her smile to blaze and present underneath it like a billboard.  It’s big but shapely.  Her nose.  It somehow frames her smile.  Her eyes are green and flecked with gold and her lips are full and rosy.  She is lovely.  Porcelain skin.  High cheekbones.  She usually beams at me but not today.  A flicker of a grin.  Cautious, embarrassed recognition.  She reminds me of a girl from my youth named Wendy.  Horrible kisser but adorable.  Gorgeous.  Sweet eyes and an infectious sincere smile.  She was a doll.

Not today.

I must look that bad.
I can’t believe I don’t know their names.

I think of them as Mandy and Mandy.  I like that name.

Mandy.

Then the guy with a gold lightning bolt earring that I can’t possibly take seriously because of his dumb earring.  It doesn’t work on many levels, the foremost being that he doesn’t have long hair.  If he did that might be more pathetic but it’s just so out of context.  He’s a good guy but his jewelry shouts something at me.  He gives me fliers for his band and tickets all the time.  He reminds me of show times and I tell him I don’t make records anymore and hate going to clubs.  They all know my name.  I checked his website once.  I listened.  Pretty good thick rock, tuned down to a drop C and some decent melodies.  Good song structure and some decent hooks.  Not bad at all but then there’s his stupid earring.  Is he making some statement with it that I don’t get or an egregious fashion mistake?

I don’t really care.

But I do because he’s nice and enthusiastic and his band doesn’t suck at all.  They are quite good.  If I was still in the business, I’d pursue him.  I’d ask him to lose the earring.

Long story, my hand up when I say it.  Rough night, I tell them.  Corporate interference I lie, aggressive takeover I tell them.  Led to a stupid bar fight.  In court today, I tell them because I’m early in a jacket and tie.  They are young and afford me some respect I don’t understand I deserve.  I say as little as possible but still feel I’m babbling.

They do seem happy to see me despite the mess I am.  Maybe it’s me, but they brighten some at my lame explanation.  Because I usually look them in the eye and talk to them without agenda or because I’m not just some dick and they treat me well so I reciprocate?  I hope that’s it.  I tip well.  I’ve demonstrated an interest in their lives.  They are kids to me.  Weird enough.  Did I ever actually tell that guy with the earring that I used to be a record producer?  I don’t remember it coming up.  I must have.  How else would he know?

Man I’m confused and these people don’t mean anything to me but I see them every morning and I’m worried what they think.  It’s really fucking with me.  My stomach hurts because I think they used to respect me.

Sometimes I buy the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.  I take my Venti iced water, iced Venti drip, dump a little, glug of half & half into it, stir it with the straw and leave.

I’m not a fancy coffee guy.  Hot coffee makes me sweat in the summer so I order it on ice.

It’s then I realize I’ve told the wrong story.  Their friendliness is because they realize I’m lying and they don’t know what to do but be polite.  Effusive forced.  My face is a mess and I’ve just stood in front of them and said things they know to be lies.

They now know I’m a dick.

One Venti iced drip and one Venti iced water.

$2.65

Every now and then I sit at an outside table and smoke half a cigarette.

This morning I leave in a hurry.

Furious confusion.

I sweat in the car in the LA summer and the air conditioner feels like a cold hose on my face.

My Audi has the best fucking air conditioner ever in any car I’ve ever known.  I’m so ashamed.  My hips feel greasy and my legs are rubber.  I’m a loser.

My air conditioner burns at the wounds on my face but stops my head from sweating into them.

I drive to my office striving for numb before I get there.

Once there, I pause to put my briefcase and iced coffee in my office and head down the hall to greet the boss.

I wonder if it would have been better to just slip in quietly.

I’m self conscious. I begin to sweat again and my face throbs.  My head gets hot again. I own that I look like a pile of shit.  So I tell more lies.

Like the truth would wash.

You wanna shut the door? He asks. He’s alarmed, his eyebrows are up, friendly and neutral, but we’ve been close for decades and he knows something wicked has this way come.

Nope. I actually fell down the goddamn stairs, I say. I was hammered, I say. I look at him embarrassed because I am.  I was actually shithoused and fell face first down the fucking stairs I tell him.  He’s a big drinker too, so maybe. The stairs to my parking garage, I say.  I tell him I’m fine and not to worry.  My knees are what’s killing me I tell him.  I need to sit down I say.

My nose feels like a sliced plum and he stairs at it. I try to breathe quietly through my mouth. It’s not really working.  I’m about to snore or sneeze and it’s gonna make me tear up.

Sweet Jesus, he says. That’s gotta hurt like a bastard.

Fuck me it does, I tell him.  I laugh a little, I tell him if I tear up it’s because it smarts and it’s not because my vagina hurts. He laughs but he’s still looking at me.  I tell him my vagina hurts too and he chuckles a little more honestly.

His nose barely wrinkles and he squints a little; I understand he knows I’m bullshitting him. It sucks.  He knows I’m lying.

I can’t imagine sharing with him that I’ve been in a fistfight with a demon whom I can’t explain on any level but I think I won kinda but he killed my pet rabbit and my rage allowed me to prevail maybe but I still don’t have any idea what’s happening or even when the fight happened and I’m beyond confused and so freaked out that I’m barely able to hold it together but I’m happy to be here at work because it feels safe to me and I’m really happy to see his and every other face.

I feel safe here in the daylight.

The girls in the warehouse put their hands to their faces and give me a hug.  I assure them it’s no big deal.

I want to shut my door but I can’t.

I need to be here.  Otherwise, I would not have come.

I drop with care in my chair, it squeaks a riot of mechanical crankiness, turn the computer on, check my schedule and my list of calls.  I grab the phone and realize that even the phone against my face is fucking killing me.

My face hurts, it’s hard to breath and every muscle in my body is sore.  My kidneys ache and it’s hard to breathe and I don’t remember how to do this job.  It’s hard to breathe.

They all do the double take when they pass my office.

Mattie’s office is across from mine and he can’t stand it. By lunch he’ll have his angle. He’s six four with a fauxhawk but today I will kill him. I feel fucking mean. Nothing to lose. I will beat him to death with the goddamn fax machine. I picture it and crack a smile. My face hurts so bad tears well up.

The morning is pain and humiliation. No one has really liked me for awhile. They’re all confused and afraid. I can’t blame them.  I haven’t been myself.   I’ve been confrontational and antisocial for weeks. Today I show up with my face split open. Like that works in any way at all.

Put yourself in my shoes. How do you even begin the conversation? We’re pretty close, all of us. But I don’t even hope to tell any of them the truth. This shit is crazy and that’s all they’ll get from me if I open my mouth. They’ll come away thinking I’ve lost my shit. I hate it, but it’s true.

Best to say nothing at all.

Lunch is cool. Mattie has decided to forgo the canyon in my face as a topic. After the first few minutes, I understand this and I’m grateful.  Until I realize that he is frightened too.  This makes my stomach drop.  I’m freaking everyone out because they cannot possibly understand what’s going on and they see that I’m in rapid decline because of whatever the fuck it is.

So, not cool. Everyone on edge. Best friends and coworkers are beside themselves because of me. They try to include me in conversation, but look at me with cloudy revulsion and confusion.  They want an explanation but I can’t and I can’t tell them why.  They have no idea what to make of me and there’s nothing I can say that will put them at ease.

I’m a fucking mess that keeps getting worse in everyone’s eyes.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this.

I shouldn’t have come.

I want to scream that you people worry about how to pay a vendor, or when product will arrive, while I’ve been fist fighting a fucking demon every night. His eyes bleed and he drools. Fuck me, that’s not the half of it.

At day’s end, my boss, my friend, pulls me aside and tells me that if he can help in any way, to let him know.  Then he tells me to take the time I need to sort or solve or whatever I need.  He tells me he can’t have me here like this and puts a hand on my shoulder.  I tell him I understand and that I’ll be back as soon as I can.  I promise I tell him and he looks at me like he doubts me almost completely.

Then I go home.

To sleep.

To dream.

I get drunk first. On good gin.  Bombay Sapphire.  I drink almost half of it.  I kill damn near half the baby.  The bottle I mean.

All ice trays full.

I realize that my flat plasma throws heat because I feel it on my torn and bloody nose.

I go to bed.

I reach to turn off the lamp and on the nightstand.  A white plastic pawn.

A cheap, ivory white, plastic pawn with the tiniest smear of blood right there on the nightstand that wasn’t there when I stripped the bed and laundered the sheets this very morning.

My heart sinks.  My blood literally runs cold.

I puke in the bathroom sink and everything hurts.  Snot spills from my nose.  There is my hair on the bathroom floor.

Fuck me.  What do I do?  What did I do?

I am angry.  Furious.  My head is hot again.

I dig in the closet for my chess set.  The one my mother gave me after she taught me to play as a kid.  I place a black pawn on the opposite nightstand.  I check all the windows and doors.

I’m so tired.

Furious confusion.

About a year and a half ago, my uncle Larry was diagnosed with stage four cancer.  I wept as my mother gave me the news on the phone.  Anyone who knows Larry at at all would describe their relationship with him as at the very least, unique.  He’s a unique little bastard.  Unique, yep.  Indefatigable, ornery, lovable, loyal.

He and my uncle Skip visited a few years back and helped with some insulation in my sister’s house.  After that they rubbed it in my nephews beds.  When their skin became inflamed and the mad itch had set in, Uncle Larry advised them to take hot showers.

Unique.

Here’s an excerpt from a blog I wrote at the the time:

“He was a bastard.

He deliberately shocked me with the horse equivalent of a cattle prod. He told me he’d caught a frog and wanted to show it to me. With glee, he electrocuted me.

He once moved our Christmas tree into the front yard and decorated it with my mothers bras and underwear.

I woke up one morning with his socks in my mouth.

I watched him wipe snot on my mother’s neck from the backseat of my father’s Mercury Cyclone.

He visited egregious acts on everyone he ever liked. It really was his way of showing you he loved you. Really.

Ten or twelve years ago, the Hardings had a reunion in a small town owned by my uncle Tyke in Washington just south of the Canadian border. I brought The Fish, my new girlfriend at the time.

The Matriarch of the clan had just passed. My Grandmother, eighty nine years old. She was awesome. We’d been lucky enough to have her for the holidays.

There were color themed t-shirts indicating which family you were from. We were purple.

We tore it up.

A very small town. If you didn’t mention you were a Harding and therefore related to uncle Tyke, you got no service, not even a smile. Play the Harding card and you were royalty.

We tore it up.

One night we cousins got to talking about Uncle Larry and how we’d suffered his obstreperousness. His orneriness. We decided to act. We dispatched one of his own children to secure his motel room key. A younger Begat had caught a six inch fish in the creek that day; it was confiscated under rules of executive privilege.

We salted his sheets and crumbled potato chips in them. We removed all towels and toilet paper. We covered every surface with shaving cream. We turned the thermostat all the way up. I placed the dead fish inside his pillowcase. We returned to the reunion and drank with him.

We tore it up.

Last time I saw him was two years ago at another family reunion. He and my Uncle Skip are a pair. It occurred to me they may as well stick thumbs up each others asses. There was chaos that only the Harding clan produce or tolerate. I’m sorry now we didn’t visit much but it sure was nice to see him. I can’t honestly remember if he knows I was the mastermind behind that revenge.

He is sixty six years old and cancer has invaded his body. There are plenty of loving Hardings, In-Laws and Begats to do everything they can. They will.

I will come too. I will make sure he knows I put that fish in his pillow.”

Well, he beat it.  Lost his teeth and ended up around ninety pounds, but he whipped it.  His body was some seventy plus percent infested with death but he smiled, did everything his doctors told him and beat it back.  Cancer free.  As of two weeks ago his back was beginning to bother him but he was up to his fighting weight and treatment was behind him save for checkups.  Clean bill of health.

He was a jockey so he knew well what it’s like to break bones.  When he heard of my father’s recent injury, I was the one to tell him, he was devastated and told my mother he’d be here if need be for anything including to drive the forty foot castle to Yuma so they could winter there.

My mother called today.  It has returned.  The big C is in his spine.  Not fair.  Not fucking fair.  The universe has chosen to shit on this miracle.  He starts radiation right away and twelve rounds of chemo immediately after Christmas.

For the first time in my forty four years, there will be no Christmas with my family.  This is not so much because of my uncle’s illness as it is the result of my sister’s deliberate blindness and irresponsibility with love and family.  Life sucks today.

Drinks for my friends.

I mentioned prior that there are too many stories here for me to hope to tell.  So far, what I’ve related has been largely personal, as it should be, this is after all, my story.  It’s not lost on me however that I have an obligation to entertain you, the reader.  So many of the stories don’t necessarily warrant an entire chapter but they are important to my narrative in that they provide context for the absolute insanity that was my life.  The the constant and consistent wallpaper to my everyday existence.  Like any good Rock N’ Roll story, or medical drama or cop show, even the wallpaper was alive.

My life crackled and vibrated.

This may not be one of those stories, as it falls between the cracks of a tale about a famous musician most of you may not have heard of,  and my personal story of that musician.  Nonetheless, I would be remiss if I didn’t write about this one man in particular because he inspired me so much.

Sometimes, people come into your life or you accidentally enter their’s and you realize you will never be as good at anything as they are at what they do and despite that, they embolden you, by leaving you breathless and mesmerized.

Magic happens.  I’ve seen it.

There was this guy named Jeff Porcaro.  If you don’t read album credits, you may not know his name.  He was arguably the best studio, or “session”, drummer ever.  Easily one of the most recorded.  He played on some of your favorite records I guarantee, especially if you’re anywhere over thirty and no doubt if you’ve crested forty.  From Steely Dan to Toto, Michael Jackson’s “Beat it”, Don Henley’s  “Dirty Laundry” and “New York Minute” (which I worked on), Paul McCartney, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, Madonna, Peter Frampton, Bee Gees, Joe Walsh, Diana Ross, Bonnie Raitt, Dire Straits, David Gilmour and Roger Waters, Clapton, Springsteen, Miles Davis and Elton John to literally name a few.

Jeff’s fame flamed because he could effortlessly cop any groove.

I worked with and got to know him a little, on two or three Richard Marx records and a few other sessions.  Richard always hired the very best musicians and it was always a seamless pleasure.  The best cats in the biz always.  Often a different drummer everyday.  Jonathan “Sugarfoot” Moffet, Terry Bozzio, Russ Kunkel, Kenny Aronoff………the cream of the crap.  Making slave reels by eight o’clock, while waiting for dinner from any one of the best restaurants in Hollywood, paid for by Mr. Marx.  Make slaves and order whatever you want he’d say on his way out the door.  One of the coolest guys I ever worked with.  Funny, easygoing and knew exactly what he was doing.  Bill Drescher was his tracking engineer and he too was talented, humble and cool as fuck.

Hey Bill, you fucking cunt.

Recording sessions where we actually enjoyed ourselves.  Made music.  With shit hot players.  I can’t tell you what an oasis it was.  We had fun on the records that me & Al made, but this was long before that.  It wasn’t just novel, it was an aberration.

Porcaro was a genius.  Amazing.

Richard Marx, a great guy, and a talent whether you like his music or not, said that Porcaro “was the best drummer he had ever worked with”.  Marx wasn’t splitting the atom, just writing, performing and executing good pop songs.

Jeff literally died in a bizarre gardening accident in 1992 at the age of 38.  It was a sad day around A&M.  We all liked him and we were all aware of his genius.  He was thirty eight years old and an accomplished legend at that age.

My memories of him are fresh.

Jeff’s tech would arrive first thing in the morning with his gear and set it up and tune it with fresh heads.   If I’m not mistaken, it was Ross with Drum Doctors and it was a Gretsch kit.  Every time I worked with Jeff it was in studio A.  The room.  The best tracking room in the world.  One of two custom designed consoles built by Rupert Neve for George Martin of Beatles fame.

I would later have the pleasure of hiring Ross for a few records I was producing.  I was a small fish but he always treated me well.  A total pro.  Much respect.  All the people in this story were cool and professional.  As good as it got on that level.

Jeff didn’t usually arrive until later in the afternoon.  Superstar players like Randy Jackson, Steve Lukather, Lee Sklar, Marcus Miller, Fee Waybill had already been there for hours rehearsing.  He’d already been handed a demo of course.  He knew the tune.  A relatively small guy who carried his cool and legend with quiet grace.  He was barely 36 or 37 years old.  I was in my early to middle twenties.  I just can’t describe my enthusiasm when he walked through that air locked door into the control room of studio A.  I was thirteen again.  I’d been reading about and listening to him since then.  This guy, known only to the musicians and music people that actually mattered, was an absolute legend to me and to them too.  It was palpable.  Whenever I learned that I’d be working with Jeff Porcaro, I lost sleep the night before.

Here I was, surrounded by musical legends, and Porcaro made me into a comic book collecting, album liner note reading, adolescent.  He was there to play and he never disappointed.  Ever.

Recording studio control rooms are heavily air conditioned.  Not just cooled but conditioned and that meant smells and odors had a very short life.  Jeff always smelled clean.  Like lotion and soap and nothing more.  I couldn’t help but notice.  He had a pretty deep voice for a man his size but he spoke softly as he greeted all the people in the control room.  He smiled a lot.  He seemed to be somewhat shy but his demeanor did not at all belie his confidence.  He shook hands and looked everyone in the eye, even me, the second engineer, lowest guy in the room.

He was there to execute.  It’s what he did.  What he was famous for and why he made the big bucks.

In no time at all, he was behind his kit, listening on headphones to the work we had done that day.  He would ask that the lights be adjusted in the live room so that it was fairly dark.  With a joint in one hand and a pencil in the other, he would sketch the song structure on his snare head.  He’d listen once, maybe twice.  If he had any questions, they were few and rare.

Sounds, levels etc. would have already been dialed in with the help of Ross, who could play well himself and was intimate enough with how Jeff hit, to give us the big picture and prepare us for how and what Jeff would do.

Jeff would give a take or two to while he felt out the track and while we dialed him the rest of the way in.  Good drummers sound good and that’s that.  Then, two takes, usually live with the band.  I don’t believe he ever gave more and I don’t remember us ever needing more.  I will tell you that he was never there for longer than an hour or an hour and a half.  Only ten or twenty minutes of it actually playing.  Not on anything I ever worked on anyway.

Then he was gone.  Sometimes someone would say it out loud but as often as not, we all thought it.  Holy Shit.

He truly was the shit.  Formidable.  An expert.  Realistically, a genius at his craft.

He would play these fills that were like falling down stairs until he landed solid on the one and picked up the groove in the greasiest and most fluid of ways.  He never overplayed on anything I worked on or anything I’ve listened to since.  Never stepped on the vocal or got in the way of any other player.

Ever.

He nailed it every time.

He was NASA to me.

I tell you this having worked with many great drummers who’s names I will not mention here out of respect for them.  Many of them just as famous and all of them still alive.  A few I had the pleasure to actually hire.

I will tell you that I have never been so consistently impressed with a musician as I was with Jeff Porcaro.

Thanks Jeff, may you rest in peace.  You inspired, impressed and excited me and working with you will always be one of my fondest memories in a time that my hell had found it’s center.  It was you and people like you, that by example, allowed me to eventually rise above it.

It was the religion of music that got me through.  I worked in a flawed church but the music is what literally saved me.  The deity that we were all there for was the art of music.  In the end, it was the music itself and the rest of us that believed in it that saw me through.

I am lucky.

“All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open hearted
Not so coldly charted
It’s really just a question of your honesty, yeah
Your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity” -Rush

Drinks for my friends.

What bothers me so much about the senate bill is that it mandates we buy in, with penalty if we don’t, but the public option has been so diluted that it will only cover three to four million Americans.

This really chaps my ass.

The entire impetus of a public option all along has been to supply much needed competition for the Goliath, thereby forcing the whole clusterfuck bureaucracy into some modicum of accountability in terms of quality and affordability.   Well, do the math.  They bray at lung top that 98% will be covered, yet that number is egregiously misleading when it’s laid bare that it will be accomplished by forcing the majority to buy into the hopelessly corrupt monolith that has been selling death and discrimination to us for decades.  These numbers come not even close to establishing meaningful competition. Four million of 350 million living breathing Americans.

I beseech you, do the math.

Various Senators and representatives, including Anthony Weiner have come forward to say that it’s not perfect but a giant leap forward.  I like that guy, but the numbers are leaving my dick in the dirt.  Here’s another number:  The most important components of this bill, like the weak ass public option, are not due to manifest efficacy until 2013 or 2014.  Thus, the giant has five fucking years to mitigate, obfuscate, lobby with a million bucks a day to spend, to ensure that all protections and rights afforded us in the original legislation are stillborn.

This shit is fucked up from hell to breakfast.  Even if this legislation is passed intact, the fight will merely be in it’s infancy.  We get nothing for five long years and at the end of that road, we will be forced to buy insurance and our options might just suck more than they do now.  Forced to buy their product.  Forced.

Why is no one talking about that?

The great unwashed rail and stomp about a government usurping of free enterprise and democracy.  Fuck them in the neck.  Fools.  Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?

The government takeover of health care will most assuredly be complete because the government is a plutocracy.  Not for, of and by the people but for, of and by the corporations.

I understand that the progressives and liberals are optimistic for momentum.  They are gleeful for potential.  They seek, against impossible odds to set the ball rolling toward the the pins of avarice and corruption.  Hoping that inertia befriends them.  Once in motion it stays in motion and they can coax or accelerate it’s velocity despite it’s initial mass.  I fear that that the ball has a balsa center, it’s being released far too slowly and by the time it reaches those pins, they will be obelisks bolted down.

And thus the idea of public funded health care or even *gasp* single payer health care dies an ugly, painful and protracted death.

There are significant merits in this bill, such as the language that prevents cancellation upon actually becoming ill or the rendering obsolete of denying care for a pre-existing conditions.  Yet realistically, they are euphoric sentimentality in the face of a mandate that we all buy in to whatever is available.  I’m calling bullshit on the whole thing.  We are required to carry auto insurance but it’s barely regulated, so those that can afford it get ripped off while a third go without in some states.

I can’t see how the exact same scenario is avoidable in this instance.  It’s a prescription if you will, pun intended, for the status qou.  With the exception being that the insurance companies bathe deeper in filthy lucre as the fines imposed on those who can’t or won’t participate go directly into their coffers.  That’s right, did you know that?  What kind of shit is that?

Now of course, the procedural vote for cloture, so the bill can actually be debated without filibuster, has yet to even take place.  Word is that it’s scheduled for Saturday night at 5 p.m. West Coast time.  At that point, amendments will be proposed, hard ass Republicans will wail and whine and the outcome is anyone’s guess.  The way I understand this procedure, after cloture is achieved, it tooth pulling time.  The proposed legislation, if it survives, will emerge with less teeth than it entered the arena with.

Picture a Roman Coliseum.

I’m no legal eagle, but I’m no dummy either. At the same time, I’m not an expert when it comes to Senatorial procedural logistics, but it’s worth pointing out that a lot of these guys are obstinate dicks.  I can only imagine that the future of this bill and health care will not be scrambling for sunglasses in anticipation of a bright future and there’s a chance there will be a rush for fresh dirt for the coffin.

Somebody talk me down.

Drinks for my friends

I knew this was coming.  This blitzkrieg of all things Sarah.  I knew the book was coming.  I understood that no matter the political wisdom of every move she’s made from quitting as governor to tragically inserting herself in the district NY 23 race, that her intentions and decisions are far from nuanced.  She’s an attention whore.  A high school cheerleader with an insatiable thirst for fame or even infamy.  The nature of the attention we pay is as unimportant as the truth to her.

She milks us with tremendous success.

What confounds and disgusts me so much is that she is able to do this.  To do this to us.  That we are apparently so complicit.  That we are so willing to afford her audience.  To command our attention despite such a voluminous cornucopia of lies and empty rhetoric, absent policy, minus substance and with such prurient intentions.  Americans, at least some of us, adore idiots.

I know I do.

It’s true, I can’t help it.

But I can’t stand that she’s getting over on us.  Nixon fled the office of the Presidency with a near 25% approval rating.  So did Dumbya.  That proves that about one of four of every person I encounter is a dipshit.  So be it.  I hate that but what can I do?  She’s on Oprah, talking to Barbara Walters, being discussed on the network news and obsessed over by cable news.  She is literally fucking everywhere.  She’s selling mad books to all of us.

Or is she?

The Human Shitsmear declared her book one of the most substantiative on policy he’s ever read.  I don’t doubt that for obvious and numerous reasons.

Wallmart has her book at $8.98 and the right wing rag Newsmax, is offering it for five bucks and throwing in a four month prescription er, subscription.  Way off the $28 cover price.

Hmmm.

Let me tell you something, the fact that she has allegedly written a book (sans index), is proof that she has written more books than she has read.

What I want to know is why do so many of us pay attention?  Is it because we consider her to be compelling or is it the spectacle?  Is she interesting or is she a multi car pileup with flames and blood and sirens, highway flairs and stuff?

That she is already at odds over the facts with the McCain campaign staffers and personnel, belies her version of events at the very least, and her assertion that she was billed $50k for being vetted gives me pause.  Given what we now know and understand about her character and personality, the sudden and abrupt nature of the of the selection and glaring lack of process, it’s difficult for me to believe that any more than a few hundred bucks was thrown at the entire thing.

Gimme a break.  I doubt that much was even spent.  I think McCain woke up with his first piss hard on in months or even years and picked up the phone.  Two or three days later it was a done deal and they had a press conference that left us asking who?

She’s a one hit wonder.  She’s got no legs as we used to say in the music business.  She may yet exist in our periphery as some sort of pundit or talk show host but she will never again run for office, she has not the fortitude.  By 2012 she’ll be a mere memory of spoiled Alaskan fish on the palates of the intelligent or empty competition for the great unwashed on daytime television.  Probably both, but she’ll be a bigger threat to Springer than to Oprah or Martha or Ellen.  It is where she belongs.  I don’t think she’s dumb, just obviously intellectually lazy.  I can spot a person that hasn’t had their ass kicked in life and that’s because I have had mine own kicked up and down the block.  I’m here to tell you she hasn’t.  What is worse and potentially far more dangerous is that she has had her ass handed to her and she refuses to accept or even recognize it.

The latter is the truth and that makes her crazy and perhaps destructive, but only to the GOP.  Ha!  Good stuff.  Methinks disasters like hurricanes may be on the horizon for the party of “no”.

We’re just about the same age and she is as naive and arrogant as I have ever seen.  Not talking about a river in Egypt here, know what I’m sayin’?

It speaks volumes about the Republican party that she remains their most impressive marquee, their most convincing and visceral star.  I admit, this does excite me.  That their tank is still this empty…….do the math.  Romney?  Guy Smiley, seriously?

Sheezus.

My brother in law was the first person I ever heard describe George W. Bush as an “empty suit”.  I’ll happily co-opt that term in describing Sarah Palin.  Um, pantsuit though.

I know women like her.  Personally.  They exist in my own family with all the vindictiveness, jealousy and capacity for baseless recrimination.  They are loathed, feared or laughed at.  Those that are closest to them are the most disgusted or confused.  Occasionally they get punched down from above by those that are merely weary of their shit.  We do like that.

Drinks for my friends.

I read an article on Alternet recently that revealed the quarter pound double cheese burger from Burger King that sells for a dollar actually costs the average individual franchise as much as a $1.10.  For some reason this fact has been stuck in my brain and really has me thinking I need to get me a couple of them.  Apparently the bun alone has over 35 ingredients.  That’s some drama there.  Not to be outdone, McDonalds has the McChicken and their own McDouble among other items available for a dollar as well.  I read somewhere some months ago that the the house that Kroc built has enjoyed an increase of profits of some 200% percent in the current economy.

Have it your way.

No matter what culinary astrophysics are applied to zucchini or green beans, they will never taste as good as any item on any fast food dollar menu.  Not even to aborigines or rain forest tribes.  Even the French eat it.  You know Taco Bell has three tacos and a large drink for $2.99?  Subway’s got the five dollar foot long.  They screwed the pooch when they removed the tuna sub as an option though.  Pricks.  And I bet those sandwiches and tacos don’t look exactly the same after a decade like Mickey D’s burgers, McNuggets and fries do without refrigeration even.  No shit.  Not a single blemish of mold after ten years.  Absent only the glisten of hot grease.  The sheen of recent rescue from beneath a heat lamp.  That’s not food, that’s textiles.  You gotta hand it to them, in the fine tradition of Henry Ford assembly line methodology, it tastes the same wherever you go.  Weighs the same, looks the same and smells the same.  Here’s to two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

I love fast food.  I try to stay away from it but I love it.  I was a vegetarian for nearly a decade.  I got fat on pasta.  I read “Diet For a New America” by John Robbins.  I’m aware what meat production does to our environment.  They aren’t kidding when they bemoan bovine flatulence.    Yet I thanked the BK lounge for it’s delightful Big Fish Combo in the credits of the first record I ever produced, recorded and mixed.  Jack In The Box has seriously good fish and chips, make sure you get some packets of malt vinegar along with the tartar sauce, and their egg rolls don’t suck.  I’m pretty sure it’s because they keep neither item on hand, thus they are cooked to order.  The secret with the egg rolls by the way, is to ask for ranch sauce in addition to the sweet and sour and to shamelessly double dip.

The Extreme Sausage Sandwich from the aforementioned is a gut bomb like nobody’s business; an excellent prescription for depression consumption.  Get some mustard packets.

Without a doubt, In and Out has the best burgers, and fries animal style, is a meal of itself, though Wendy’s doesn’t suck.  I adore the Beef n’ Cheddar from Arby’s with the eponymous sauce, but I’m boycotting the one here in Carson Shitty for distributing right wing propaganda.  Have you heard some highway patrol organizations stock Coca Cola in the trunks of their cruisers for blood cleanup from asphalt after traffic fatalities?  Have you also heard it’s one of the best solvents available for cleaning the household toilet?

Should I be brushing my teeth with it?

I’m not much for sodas but when I do it’s usually diet, still, I can’t avoid the pairing of it with onion rings from Sonic.  Sour cream and onion potato chips are awesome in a vanilla shake and a can of SpaghettiOs has a full serving of vegetables and fiber.  There is no redeeming value whatsoever with Ramen noodles, especially the way I prepare it.  I fry them in butter after boiling and then add the sodium.  Talk about a booze mop, it’s either that or Bombay Sapphire at 9:30 in the morning.  One is the short cut to a vomit comet, the other a gastrointestinal trek in the peaceful forest to a rehabilitating nap.

Countdown to angioplasty.

I lied about my age to get my first real job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the gulag of fast food careers.  I was fourteen and said I was sixteen.  The Super Max of the food service industry.  Because of the pressurized vats of boiling animal fat and copious amounts of various flower recipes that harden to a near concrete consistency within minutes, the entire kitchen had to be hosed down with steaming water and scrubbed with a toxic, skin withering detergent every single night.  Giant squeegees were then used to direct excess water and flotsam towards the floor drains.  Finally a mop.  Winter nights, my pants would literally freeze to my legs on my bike ride home.  I stank like a dumpster full of discarded deep fried infant chickens.  Every Sunday we scrubbed the walk in freezer free of the fetor of it’s blood and gore.  We had to”break” carcasses by the case.  This involved snapping the breast bones, ripping off the tail and scooping the mucus yellow detritus of who knew what from iced boxes of chickens so young their bones were like paring knives that would lacerate my palms and fingers.  We actually competed for time in this grisly endeavor.  Those that would be champions would use their teeth.  It goes without saying I found myself to be a reluctant competitor.

Worse job I ever had with the exception of insulating a roller rink in the dead of summer and running a 90 pound jack hammer for my old man.

It was decades before I could attempt to eat at KFC and when I did, my bowels began to percolate instantaneously and I shat like a goose.  Volume and velocity.  Mere seconds from soiling myself in my own office.  What emerged, in the company bowl, floated like fowl in a slick of oil from a ruptured tanker.  It was delicious though.  Now they’ve got this batterless and skinless thing going on and I’m tempted, but so far lack the courage.

I went on to graduate with my masters in grease, saturated fat and carbohydrate slinging by becoming manager of a Der Wienerschnitzel.  Now, I know about hot dogs too.  But I still enjoy a good chili cheese dog with mayonnaise, mustard and onions on occasion.  There’s a Der Wienerschnitzel in Burbank that has Rolling Rock on tap.  Fuck me.

Questions?  Comments?

See, fast food is a uniquely American phenomena and arguably as important a contribution to world culture as is jazz.  Maybe not as important but certainly as significant.  Work with me here.  It is discussed at length in one of the most important movies of our time, “Pulp Fiction” and documentaries like “Super Size Me”.  Books like “Fast Food Nation”.  The industry literally feeds billions.  Bill Clinton patronizes.  They sponsor Nascar.

For what it’s worth, a good friend of mine died from mad cow disease.  That’s right.  Spongiform bovine encephalopathy.  He was a vegetarian.  When they say there are no American deaths as a result of it, they are lying.  In the same way they lie about everything else.

Here’s something else you may not have been aware of.  Too much oxygen and too much water can and will kill you.  I smoke between a quarter and third of a pack of cigarettes a day, I drink too much and treat myself to the infrequent fried or deep fried delight.  My body may be my temple but it’s also my only vessel for pleasure and by any measure, life is short.  I do my best to avail myself of life’s simple, and extravagant pleasures.

Beluga caviar and a good blanc de blanc.  A big ass cabernet or a pricey smokey zinfandel.  Sushi and cold beer, driving too fast and having casual sex.  A well written novel or an intelligent, well scripted, dialog driven film.  A really good crap.  The advice, consent and love of my mother.  A passionate well executed musical performance.  The color of the sky or the unconditional love and acceptance of animals in my charge.  The love of a really good woman.  Fireworks and art of all kinds. Family and friends.

I avoid the burger as best I can, but it is simple.  Life is bigger.  Much, much bigger.  It is the least of my concerns.  Moderation but still, indulge because we all fall down.  People get ready, there’s a train a coming.

Drinks for my friends.

The Obama administration has decided, with the wind of wisdom and intellectual honesty at it’s back, to prosecute various conspirators participating in the events of 9/11, in open federal court.  In America.  Land of the free.  Home of the brave.  I applaud this without reservation, but with some necessary modicum of concern.

The venue is correct.  After eight years of bullshit, so is the system and it’s location.

Military tribunals are for pussies and those with something to hide.

Worse case scenario results in some, if not all of the handful being tried, receiving reduced sentences or significantly decreased punishment because of their treatment under the auspices of the Dick-in-Bush administration.  Torture.  I’m here to tell you it’s a legitimate concern.  I understand it from every angle. So yeah, really, the only thing that might possibly mitigate the process in any way is the fact that we tortured the fuck out of them.

We did.  Shut up.  We did.

Wouldn’t that suck.

I do believe Eric Holder is a bright guy and has taken these egregious and flagrant circumstances into account.  Despite the obvious malfeasance on the part of the Dick-in-Bush dynasty, he will get his pound of flesh.  He has the facts m’am.  It will be allright, they do know what they do.

For what it’s worth, we’re no longer dealing with boneheads.  It really is different now.

I hesitate to judge, but I imagine they’ve got this figured the fuck out.

Outside the circle, there is every concern that collateral damage will obviously be brought to light and necessarily prosecuted along side.  There is legitimate hand wringing over what open testimony will focus the antiseptic of sunlight upon.  Beyond Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being waterboarded 183 times.  A practice by the way, we tried and executed a number of Japanese for.  A practice by the way, that allowed us to define various Japanese as war criminals for engaging in.  We killed them for it and we did it to one man one hundred and eighty three times and by all accounts, we got all of our information from him before we engaged in it, and nothing but fucking nonsense thereafter.

By “we”, I mean Dick-in-Bush.

By “we”, I mean idiots.  Fucking clueless fucktards.

What happens when everyone who hasn’t been paying attention discovers this glaring fact?  What if there is more that we don’t know and I bet there is?  Oh, snap.  Fuck me.  Fuck us.

This might be good.

I hate America, you see.  I’ll bet you can tell by my t-shirt.  Or maybe because I will tell you to your face that the the very least of my concerns is or are terrorists.  I think toxic waste is a bigger threat for example or the lack of health care.  Anyway.

It is here we discover the consummate fear of the right wing over this decision to present the facts against these men in in open court.  Military tribunals are a notoriously secret affair.  The record for terrorists by the way, is military tribunals or commissions = 3 (three) convictions.  Class C federal courts = 350 (three hundred fifty) convictions.

Do the math.  Orange whip anyone?

Does this look infected to you?

No one on the right or the left legitimately fears our ability to incarcerate these fucks.  We are really good at putting people in jail and keeping them there.  We do so with more of our people per capita than any other country on earth.  These guys are douchebags compared to your average imprisoned gang member.  Give me a break.

All of the right wing hacks, The Human Shitsmear included, fear that the policies of the Dick-in-Bush administration will be on trial as well.  The irony is that these fucks are now promoting a complete lack of faith or trust in our Constitution and system of justice, ideals they spend every other waking moment, breathlessly pontificating on the liberal lack of respect towards, deliberate corruption thereof or willful disregard for.  Now, abruptly, they revoke all faith in a system of beliefs which has served us for more than two hundred and thirty years; a construct of ideals for which they have never failed to accuse any and all who would seek to define them further, to be in blatant and shameful violation of.  They now denounce blatantly, the idea that this very system can serve us at all in the most extreme, important and precious of contexts.  These people are fucking fools.

I know, that’s convoluted but stay with me.

They fear the truth and justice of the American way of getting to the Goddamn bottom of things.  They fear that we’ll all learn more truth than they intended.  They hate that we will discover where they stepped over the line and made matters so much worse.  That Americans will know what the rest of the world already does.  That we prosecuted multiple wars for no real reason and that it was never in the average Americans best interest but only served to enrich already ridiculously wealthy Americans and that our liberties and rights were simultaneously eroded and allowed to atrophy by razing us with empty fear, empty nationalism and overt jingoism.

They did it all on purpose.  The very same thing the Right wing whackjobs would and do accuse the the mild and sensible Left of is what they panic about us discovering they’ve been up to.  Fuck these guys.  Notice Cheney has shut the fuck up?  Where’s his little dog Liz?  They know we’re getting close.

My guess is the goal of our AG Mr. Holder and the Obama administration is to bring these dishonorable methods to light while they debunk their efficaciousness, highlight the inequity, and ultimately demonstrate that torture is a bullshit methodology and beyond unnecessary in convicting these bastards but potentially jeopardizing and tainting it all together nonetheless. 

Pretty ballsy if you ask me but I like it.  I like it a lot.

And guess what?  The first pricks that decided to try and bring the towers down were dealt with in the same way.  By our flawed system of justice that exists for all Americans.  They’re all in American prisons for life.  Duh.  Remember?  Back in the nineties?

May I have extra sauce?

It’s an opportunity for our imperfect but still shining system to glow a little and show the world that the standard we have for our own can still apply to any who would wrong and kill us on our own soil despite where they come from.  It is my hope that the process will reveal a further glimpse into the complicity of our own and perhaps that is what they are most afraid of.  Nevermind the context or the circumstances, our system is beyond adequate in this instance.  It can, when challenged, mete out judicature in a manner that just might reveal as much flaw as it does direction for recompense and justice.  Ultimate and severe as should be the case.

Extra cheese too?

Nothing to worry about.  No matter.  We will see justice served.

If for whatever reason, convictions are not attained, we will still be supplied fairness with an eye opening understanding of the last administration’s transgressions and the compromises we’ve all become victims of.  Either way, justice will be served.  I am prepared for either outcome.  Are you?

I trust our system in this case.  I imagine it just might be a ripe and timely test of it.  I’m hoping it serves us well.  I’m really looking forward to the process of jurisprudence presenting some very difficult questions.  I’m counting on this being very interesting.  If it fails to at least be interesting, I imagine it will have failed us in general.

As an American, it’s all I can ask and no less than I have right to expect.

I’m asking for pickles on the side.

Waitress?

Drinks for my friends.     

The need to communicate.  To write.  Despite not having anything immediate to say.

I’m here in Carson City because I imagined it to be a haven of sorts.  If not that, then friendly.  Sanctuary from exorbitant bills and ridiculous drama.  I was weary of the drama and the bills.  Mostly the bills.  Spent am I.  Pun intended.  It started off okay.  Business prospects were promising.  I had irons in the fire.  Sibling drama did rear it’s ugly head but I was honest and above it.  Restrained.  I chose distance in light of the wildest cards and it served me for a time.  I’m smart.

Dad fell from a ladder, broke six ribs and a shoulder, madness prevailed on every level.  Soon after, sibling rivalry exploded like Krakatoa.  I wake up checking to see if I still have an ass.  I realize now I’m in deep depression once again.  I would risk the reader’s patience at this point were I to detail how often and how hard life has been punching me straight in the mouth in the last year or so.

I’s okay, I roll with it and drink a lot.

A carnival of nonsense.  My sanctuary a mirage.  I do tap the occasional oasis and it is like paradise by the dashboard light.  I get refueled, nourished and a chance to wash my face and hands.  I wash my stinking crotch and put on clean socks, put on a little lotion.  Don’t always know where to find those islands, but I know if I sail long enough……   No sooner than this and I’m waiting for vulgar to ring the bell.  Ugly will revisit any day.  It’s true I’m feeling sorry for myself but you can’t know what’s visited me in the last year or so.

It’s been pretty fucked up.

I am weary.

I hate most people and most things.  Sometimes.

Outside the wind rages, but inside Swirly Girl the Cat snores like a drunken boxer, whistling and snorting.  It makes me smile.  Her face flinches and flickers in the throes of a dream.  I smile some more.  Her paws are curled inward.  Her nose tucked between them.  We’ll move to the bedroom and she’ll sleep beside my head all night.  I am her father.  She is my beloved problem child.  She frowns and objects a lot.  I just love on her as best I can.

I have to care about what happens next but it’s easier said than done.  People really suck.  You have no idea.

I’ll take politics and world events for five hundred Alex.  If you visit regularly it’s most likely the reason.

Item one:

Can you believe this fuckhead Stupak?  Smoking tobacco is no different than smoking lettuce leaves.  He didn’t say that but I don’t care.  No real surprise that he rents a room at C Street and his head is misshapen.  Can you say hydrocephalus?  This guy is a dick.  44,000 people a year dying due to lack of health care insurance and he wants to make the whole thing about Roe v. Wade?  What an asshole.  News flash, we’ve got it covered with the Hyde amendment.

No worries dickhead.

To stir this brand of shit in light of just how important this issue is, is beyond irresponsible.  It’s plain stupid and I think someone’s ego needs a leash and a muzzle.  Thanks you peniswhipped cocktail.

Item two:

Sarah Palin and her new book and book tour.  She’s doing the “battleground” states.  Who cares?  Run the stupid bitch in 2012.  Please.  Run Romney and Huckabee and Limbaugh or Hannity.  The Keystone Cops, The Stooges, The Flinstones or maybe Tucker Carlson and Orly Tates and Wile E. Coyote.  Yep, bring it.  Give us a show.  I swear I equated Romney to Guy Smiley before the Daily Show did.  Bitches.  I’m way on top of this shit.  Sometimes.

Item three:

I’m very much encouraged to hear Obama has rejected all battle plans he’s been presented with for Afghanistan.  We don’t have the resources in terms of personnel and we don’t have the money to even attempt to support a government we know to be abstrusely compromised.  It’s a no win boys and girls.  The pooch was raped seven years ago.  People die for no reason everyday.

Time to take the long way home.  Russia failed.  England failed.  No invading force or country has ever prevailed despite it being among the poorest countries on earth.  We’re certainly no smarter and likely even dumber than those who’ve come before us.

We have no clear objectives or realistically realizable goals.  No one can define “victory” or a “successful mission”.  We are lost.  Strangers in a strange land fighting for what?  Use the money we are spending there, to increase security here, if the idea really is to be proactive.

I’m not talking about taking off your goddamn shoes or limiting the size of your toothpaste or shampoo containers before you board a flight from Burbank to fucking Reno.  I always travel to Reno at the behest of Allah because I don’t shit where I eat.  Ha!  Such policies are useless and miss the point entirely.  It’s all about demonstrating that someone, somewhere, is doing something to show the dumbest among us that someone, somewhere is doing something to protect us.  Nevermind that it represents nothing more than an inconvenience and an egregious breach of logic.  Somewhere, someone is doing something.

In the meantime, more people die everyday because of lack of health care or insurance than in our elective wars.  Pretty fucking stupid, huh?  It’s no wonder the world thinks we’re a big stupid bully.  It’s no wonder Sarah Palin still has a realistic shot at the presidency.

The only way to even find out if the conflict in Afghanistan is solvable is to escalate it to the level of the Vietnam conflict.  That means 50,000 dead Americans and millions of dead Afghanis, many of whom will be civilian.  Good plan.  Time to walk away.

Wait.  That’s actually more than we lose every year due to our health care clusterfuck.  Oh boy.  Now we’re cooking with butane.

Item four:

I don’t really care if the Ft. Hood massacre is defined as “terrorism” or not.  It was terrible.  Horrible.  Horribalism?  Anyone?  It’s a fucking tragedy and Republican efforts to label it as terrorism amount to nothing more than a cheap shot as well as shameful exploitation of what is simply an American tragedy.  Somehow these pricks believe that if they can succeed with the blatant polemic nomenclature of terrorism they can claim that a terrorist event occurred on Obama’s watch.  Good luck with that you fucks.  Your’s happened two months earlier under your watchful and diligent eyes and you lost three thousand in an event so contrived that I doubt we know half the truth.  We lost thirteen.

Idiots.

Drinks for my friends.

A prologue:

His name is Watership.  My pet Rabbit.  I adore him.  Unconditional love between us.  My best friend.  Even when he chewed through my nine hundred dollar speaker wire.  I’m what you call an audiophile and yes, I spend that much money on just the cables and wires.  I’m geeky.  Used to be a recording engineer /producer.  If your guitar is out of tune I can tell you what string it is.  I’ll tune your drum kit and it will never have sounded better.  I hear every thing.

I’m a goddamn expert.

A blessing and a curse.

He chews things.  That’s what he does.  It’s like his job, his aptitude.  It wasn’t his fault.

The time I spent with simple, cheap Monster Cable on one side of the stereo image made me crazy until the cable was repaired with it’s dialectic sheath repaired and intact.  Yes, I can hear a cable.  Yes it’s about the dialectic, and zero crystal, oxygen free, cryogenically treated copper.  Sound fucks with me.  A blessing and a curse.

He often challenges me at my job of rabbit proofing.  It’s a game we both play like chess.  Willingly.  Both of us.  It’s our game and we’re happy to play it as far as I know.  He has nothing to lose.  Oh well.  He chews, I provide things for him to chew, while finding ways to prevent him from chewing things I’d rather he didn’t chew.  Rabbits are whip smart and so is mine.  He’s clever and determined.  He’s cuddly and gentle and has an ever active velvet nose.  The softest and most adorable nose.  He’s my buddy, loping around the apartment as I go about my business of laundry or dishes.  He follows me.  Greeting me when I come home.  Standing in the entry way all forlorn when I leave.

His name is Watership.  I adore him.

His ears are clumsy, floppy but sharp.

He hears everything.

He is an impossibly soft cocoa brown. His eyes are  kind and bright.  If you don’t know him, they look scared. They’re not.  They are warm.  He shuffles and hops to rub his face on me.  Floppy ears, tender, quiet and sweet.  His nose slays me.

He seduces by simply allowing himself to be touched.  Unconditional love and affection as long as he has no reason to fear you.  He knows if you are dangerous.  He knows.

He knows me.  He follows me.  He understands what I will do next.

The truth is, we adore each other.  He’s my Zen.  I hope and venture to believe I’m his.

I love him in a way that is exclusive between an animal and a human.  He knows me and I know him.  There are very few surprises between us.  No mysteries.  He’s my boy.  I adore him.  His peace.  His love.  His velvet nose.

In light of things I’ve been forced to consider finding a new home for him.  My state of shock has been so overwhelming, I haven’t arrived at where to take him or what to do.  I’ve gotten as far as making up my mind to do something that will afford me to reclaim him once the storm has passed.  If I can weather the storm and find a place for him.  It’s been such a sudden and vicious nightmare.

My friend Jonathan is a good guy.  Maybe he can take him until I do my business.  Maybe he won’t ask many questions.  There’s my buddy Tindle but he’s kinda far.  I could trust either of them though.  I need to do this.  Make something up so they’ll just work with me. Promise a good bottle of wine and bring one when I drop him off.

He sleeps with me sometimes and he’s a snuggler.  Between my arm and torso is his favorite spot.  He’s never any trouble, serene and silk.  He breathes soft and embodies docile.  He parks himself and sleeps.  His velvet nose ceases with his slumber.  More or less.

The nightmare resumes:

He slips inside. The key is smooth, the knob twists. He enters and shuts the door behind,  slick and very quiet.  Clean but greasy.

He throws the bolt.

I see it in my head.

The bolt.

It slides and squeaks.  My stomach drops but I am glued.

I smell rotting lamb and garlic.

I’m aware but not awake.  Not conscious.

I am though.  I understand I think.

I breathe shit. Overwhelming. No air in these fumes. He smells homeless. He smells like piss and puke and shit and sweat. It’s a stench so monstrous.  No oxygen.  Pure noxious.

Fuck.

I gag.

Maybe I’m awake.  Am I?

I retch and convulse but the reek won’t allow for my consciousness.  I can’t swim up from the confusion.  Like a ladder I can’t climb.  I’m down.  Not here.

I’m dismayed and disoriented.

What the fuck is this?

I hear him begin to fill the empty ice trays on the counter. He turns the faucet off after the first one and he whispers….. too full. Very slowly, I hear the trickle, he pores a thin stream into the sink.

He says ah.

He moves to the bathroom.

I see the spring loaded roll snap into place as I hear it.

He says ah, again.

I’m confused and groggy.  Like vicodin and cognac.  I don’t want him here.  I loathe the idea.  I need to fight him but I’ve never had less energy.  I can’t lift my limbs or form a thought much less a fist.  I think about sausage biscuits and hash browns.  Green Tobasco and Hollandaise.  I slip into dreams about Dalmatians and scrambled eggs.  Rural milk delivery and the clinking of bottles.  Blue and smokey mountains.  Syrup and ham.

Dogs chasing and barking in the fog.  Mist in a river valley.  Carrots glazed and cooking in margarine, not butter.  I smell new tires.

My dick is hard.  I have to pee.  I’m suddenly afraid I’ll shit myself.

My eyes are crusted.  My face feels fat.  I’m swollen and lazy.

He’s rolling away from me. Out of my bed.

Crusty eyes and blurry vision.

Out of my bed.

What?

Out of my bed and I smell pigs.  Pungent barnyard.

The front door closes.  I hear the key turn.  The bolt clicks.

I kick my sheets off and stumble away from the bed.

He was here, in my head and in my bed.  I’m so frightened already that I want……I can’t tell you what I want.  This is really bad.

Woozy.  Dizzy.  Lead in my limbs.

I smell the copper of blood.  The ripe, almost metallic citrus of blood.  Bright, dangerous tang entering my nose and collecting on the back of my tongue.  Panic quickens me.  I’m frightened and I don’t know why.  Yet.  Oh my, my stomach knows.

My rabbit is dead.

Watership is dead.

He’s been slaughtered.

He’s been sprayed, torn and smeared on the walls of my apartment.

His skin is on the floor.  Like a bag. A sack on the carpet. Ears and all. He was my boy. His velvet nose.

His gore is everywhere.  On the lamp.  The windows are pink with blood.

He slept in his cage at night or he was in bed with me.  His water bottle smashed on the marble mantle. So sweet and docile.  Above the fireplace is a crude scrawl in his blood. It looks Japanese.

I think of that song by The Vapors.  “I Think I’m Turning Japanese”.

There is fur in the wire around the door of his cage, he liked his cage, he came and went willingly, so I understand he struggled violently.

Ever heard a rabbit scream?

I have. Sounds like a baby human.

Did he scream in fear?  Was he afraid?

I break all the way down. Collapse. Fold. Fall. Lose it.

I sob and scream.  I wail like a woman on TV who’s lost a child or a husband.

I am beside myself.  I get what it means to be beside oneself.  I begin to drink gin.  Bombay Sapphire right out of the bottle.  At first it’s ginger and pepper octane distracts me and then it’s medicinal properties amplify my grief.  I sob and wail.  I grieve while snot pours from my head and eventually I vomit nothing but air while my head swims with impossible despair.

He was my boy.  My pal.  My harmless innocent boy.  Never could have or would have hurt or destroyed any fucking thing.  My boy.  Innocent.  Fucking harmless.  What have I done?

Dawn breaks.

My legs don’t really work.

I scrape his remains.

Gather them.

Thoroughly.

I collect them, all I can get or lift or gather, and deposit them in a ceramic pot I made in grade school.  A Home Ec. project.  His skin.  His bones.  I sob and leak mucus and tears.

I don’t know what to do with the bowl so I cover it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. I’m disgusted by it but it’s all I have.  I drink until I can’t anymore and then I lose consciousness.  The next day I take to it a pet cremation service and explain he met a lawnmower.  They look at me sideways but I suspect they don’t usually ask questions.  I’m confused because if I saw the mess that is me with a ceramic bowl full of rabbit I’d call the fucking cops.

His name was Watership, I adored him.

As I sit here, I miss him. He was innocence and unconditional love.

There’s a big piece of lumber always propped against the wall by my trash chute. It’s handy for forcing fat bags of trash down the maw. It looks vaguely nautical, like it should be on a medium sized sailboat. It’s been here for the two years I’ve been here.

I take it with me. Back to my apartment.

Afternoon the next day and I still smell his fucking pigs.

I will wait forever for him.

He is fucked.

I’m not sure what he is. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill him.

The onus is mine.  The responsibility is mine.  It is my dragon and I will slay it.

We are no longer fucking around.

Silence and then groans of metal fatigue.  Pings and spiraling silence.  Foreboding as we take on water.  Fear and chilly sweat.  Panic rising.  Dry mouth.  Quiet.  Long broad lanes of time with nothing but the creaks and moans of a vessel way too deep.  Attempting stealth.  Hiding.

Damn this empty and hollow.

It’s me.

It is me.

I’m in a submarine, way way down, hull compromised. Pinhole leaks will soon begin to gush.  Slamming and sealing bulkhead doors against an onslaught, an invasion by the depths. You’ve seen the movie. Once that shit starts, it’s the beginning of the end.  Battling rapidly rising cold and stinging saltwater.  Green blue foaming soda lapping at first and then abruptly invading your crotch and ass crack, your armpits and ears.

A death, horrible cold and muffled by the invading sea.

It is me.

I am it.

We are none.

I know this to be true but I continue to walk through life as it is, as I find it.

I’m in real trouble.

Put yourself in my place.  Who do you tell and what do you say?

I’m in very serious trouble here.

There is a straight up fucking monster invading my life.  He keeps getting bolder and I have no idea what to do.  I first noticed him on a Slurpee cup.  Any suggestions?

Anybody?

I understand I’m fucked but I refuse to recognize just how much.  I’m a jigsaw puzzle in the rain.  No chance for resolve, resolution or completion.  Washed out.  Smeared.  Unrecognizable.  My days feel soggy, soiled and desperate.

I’ve got no place to go.

Now he e-mails on all three of my accounts.  Not constantly but regularly.  Consistently.  Nothing too sinister, emoticons and random punctuation that I’m sure are supposed to correspond or be in context somehow with my glimpses of him.

Glimpses that are becoming experiences.  Experiences developing into episodes.  Episodes than are waking nightmares.  Horror movies that make me feel as though I’m trapped in a disabled submarine.

And well, they are.

Numbing.

After the mall sighting there was an enlarged smile of a colon and an ellipse looking up and then down somehow.  The trail of recipients and senders so convoluted that I can’t be bothered.  Lucifer and Lucipher and Louie and Lewis, Lou Dog, Lew Man, Lewinicious, Loustoppingme, Lewanal, Louswelter, Louiville and lewevil among them.  I ran a few of them and came up empty.  Scat porn or ultra right wing hate, Nazi bullshit or nothing at all.  He is mine and I am his.  I know that now.  I smell the scent of cheap aftershave right after I click on one.  Seconds later I wonder if I imagined it, yet it haunts me.  Dime store.  Hoodlum.  Greasy and sinister.  The smell of brown, spicy brown, obvious and offensive like early seventies Avon in ridiculous decanters.  Amber plastic tops and cheaply silvered vessels.  The smell of the look.  Roosters.  Chess pieces and elk or birds of prey.

Ridiculous.

Pungent.  Cloying.

Stifling and stupid.

We are in play.

I haven’t filled an ice tray in weeks, they’re always full.  Toilet paper installed on the dispenser always.  Sometimes the lead sheet folded in a triangle.  Things I never do.  He’s here almost every night now.  While I sleep.  Mornings are creepy, my hair standing up but I know he’s long gone.  I brush my teeth and smell the pigs or the cheap.

Nobody knows the trouble I see.  Nobody.  Who would you tell?

The wind blows hard but when I step out for a smoke, the air is still.  I smell beasts.  Pigs.  The cheap.

Radio in the middle of the night.  Not loud. Weird stations that sound like Ham radio, CB chatter or live orchestral broadcasts from the forties or fifties.  I can’t know if it’s imagined or real but it’s always on the liberal talk station I’d set it to when I wake.

The line between waking and dreaming is getting blurrier.

What would you do?

Then there’s the pigs.

I ask her if she’s noticing them. Not so much says she.  My girlfriend.  I can’t tell her about any of this.  I’m trying not to.  What would you say?  I adore her and she is beautiful and she already suspects my lack of balance.  She knows I’m disturbed because I’m keeping her at arms length.  I’m afraid when she spends the night because I don’t know what he’ll do or whether he’s even been here.  I fear for her but what do I say?  I wrap tightly around her.

They seem to be everywhere.

Pigs.

Iconic to a degree in American culture, she points out, smirk gratis.  She teases me about it but looks at me funny.  They’re so prevalent I say.  So she tells me, people like bacon and pigs are symbolic she points out.  Her eyes wonder at me.  Sometimes iconic she points out.  We eat out Asian and I order chicken with our noodles instead of pork.  She says nothing but I feel her questions and glances.  She has no idea and will assume I’ve lost it if I even try to explain.  How do I tell her?  What do I say?

I can’t tell her.  This shit is crazy.

So I distance myself.  For her safety, I repeat to myself.

I am busting inside with fear and confusion.

She knows it’s wrong.  Something is very wrong and she helps me widen the distance between us because of it.  It’s painful, but I’m so grateful.  She assumes my love has gone astray and I absolutely must let her believe that.  I adore her and love her but it is the best way to protect her and she can’t hear my truth.  She won’t understand.  I don’t understand.  I can’t explain this to anybody that I know.

I could call my mother I guess.

Nope, not going there.

Why me?  What did I do?  Who the fuck am I to deserve this?

I can’t know how crazy I am.  I have no evidence but my torture and terror and I have no evidence of that.  The ice trays?  The toilet paper roll?

See, I just don’t know.  I’ve nothing to measure it against.  No one to talk to.  Maybe I should see a professional.  A medium,  a psychic or a shrink?

The pigs.  Maybe I just notice them more. Everywhere from news magazines to National Geographic.

The thing is, I smell them.  Their filth.  Their disease.  I smell their madness.  How do you explain that to anyone?  How do you tell them it smells like cheap aftershave?  It smells of straw and shit and animal and well, Brut and or Vitalis or Barbasol.  And pigs.  Fucking pigs.

The ones in the Geographic have dirty tusks and crazy eyes swimming with violence. I smell them when I wake in the middle of the night and I know he’s been here. I hear their cloven hooves in other rooms, stomping and snorting away.  Down the halls.  Away from me.

They squeal and clack on my balcony.  Always away from me.

They’ll eat anything you know.  Anything.

They are smart but look stupid.  Retarded.  They will eat a dead human.  Pigs.  Swine.  Boars.  Corn or slop or flesh.  Or a corpse.  Snouts greasy with blood or garbage, they care not at all.  Mindless vicious acuity.  Pigs.

Fucking mad fucking pigs.

The very next time I see him, his eyes are filled with blood. Our entire encounter, he blinks but once.

There’s a big ass Ralph’s supermarket across the street. Tremendous selection of frozen meals as well as standing at the fridge food.  It’s a fabulous place to shop.  You know, cheese, pickles, smoked turkey franks, hummus…….. Good soup kiosk and a really good salad bar.  Single males understand this food dynamic as well as the need for as many plants as you can possibly get down into your goddamn gastrointestinal.

It’s an excellent place to shop.  Tons of different mustards.  I like really big super markets.

I favor a Spring Mix with arugula or baby spinach.  I hate iceberg or romaine.  Empty flavorless calories.  Bullshit. A salad should be a miniature meal.  Tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, red or green onions, black olives, cranberries or raisins, pine nuts or sunflower seeds, feta or bleu cheese crumbles, bacon, artichoke hearts, shredded carrots, cracked black pepper and cheese festooned croutons.  Goddamn good for ya.  Vitamins E, C, B and A.

Anyway, sometimes I start on the right because I’m in a hurry. When I start left it’s because I’m cool and I have a little time.  Salad bar and soup kiosk on the right along with liquor and toilet paper, cheeses and salad dressings etc.

It’s an afternoon copacetic as I enter left off the elevator with my smooth and noiseless cart. I turn left then right and set to perusing the produce section and I’m picking out some avacados, tomatoes and onions. I proceed down the middle north to south aisle. It bisects the store and aisles on my right and left.  I’m in a place of relative peace and sanity.  I’m  calm.  I’ve begun to take comfort in public as I can’t picture bad things happening to me in front of the madding crowds, the great unwashed, in broad daylight and all.

Always comfortable by myself, on my own,  I no longer prefer that.  No longer comfortable.  I fear it.  I want to be among people.  One of my few peripheral thoughts being how this all saddens me.  It is a loss to my identity.  A subtraction of me.

He appears at the head of the first one.  At the end of the aisle.  Right there looking right at me.  Ten yards down.  Anger and fear swell in my torso like a thick balloon.

If I had a sword or a gun.  A weapon of any kind.  I think.  Do they sell hammers?  Axes?

His eyes are rimmed with blood. His hair more yellow. I think of a naked corn cob. Right there, thirty five feet to my right. Not showing his teeth yet today and that’s a relief kinda, because the lower front of his face struggles to contain them and they are huge.

I keep moving.

Next block down, he’s at the tail of that one and thirty five feet to my left, chatting up a housewife.  Charming her and disarming her.  She doesn’t see what I see.  I wanted some bean with bacon soup today but I keep moving.

The next aisle is a block party. Fireworks bust and spatter in the open night overhead. The nexus of this venue.  Frozen food.  Red and gold popcorn carts, clowns, balloons and herds of women in pastel stretch pants, heels and absurdly big hair.  Huge boobs and big asses.

I am reeling.  This can’t possibly be happening.

I’ve always been able to shake myself from a dream when it gets too crazy.  It doesn’t work today.  I can’t stand it.

I’m shaking myself hard.

I feel incarcerated and I’m panicking.  I’m losing my shit.

Out of breath.  Pulse racing.

I jerk my basket left down the next lane and it’s just carnival games and more frozen food.  Corn dogs, fish fillets, peas and corn. He’s at that end, so I roll up on him while he stares at me through eyes full of blood. He blinks slow motion and his lids are squeegees.  Fresh red blood runs from his eyes and onto his teeth.  He begins to smile.  Slow.  It’s gushing now.

I am frozen.  Still.  Confounded.

He’s got dozens of pigs with him. Some are hogs. Some are boars. Some are swine.  He carries some kind of staff almost as tall as he is.

They stink like everything from pomade to a shit pile.

My hands are locked like perfectly sized twin wrenches on my cart.  I am a machine.  I’ve become mechanical.

I understand then and there, that if I’m not his demise, he will be mine. I smell this when I flip a bitch in front of him, stare at him hard and head down the aisle on the opposite side.  Lean Cuisine, frozen burritos and pizzas, battered chicken strips and tater tots.  I show him my back after staring him down.

I throw diet meals, soap and shaving cream in my my cart with a lack of chalance.

I get all I need from doing that.

I know that I have no choice.  There is no help or solution.  It will come from me or it won’t come at all.  He is mine and I am his.  It is black and white.  Cut and dried.  One of us will kill the other.  No other thing is even remotely possible.

I will kill him.  I will cut his head off.

He follows me and he’s loud. He marches and bangs his feet down hard. He constantly sucks drool back through his teeth.  Slurping and breathing.

I know now he’s trying to show me.  He knows what I know.

He chuckles and slaps himself while he points out items on the shelves.  Pace Picante, he shouts.  Progresso he announces.  Ladies and Gentlemen he barks, Nature Valley Granola Bars!  Here we are in the dressing aisle he screeches, what will he buy next, he wonders at the top of his goddamn fucking lungs.  Honey!  Mayonnaise!  Ketchup!  Relish you cunts!

You fucking weak ass fucking cunts he wails.

Gesturing and gesticulating while blood runs from beneath his mirrored sunglasses.

It’s all I can do to not turn and attack.  Tear him apart.  Swing and swing and swing my fists, my engines, my justice because I did not ask for it and I do not deserve it on any level whatsoever.

Hostess pies!  Beans, baked motherfucking beans!  Relish!  Ever filled a glass with relish, mustard and ketchup and drank it like a shot of whiskey you bitches?   You fucking filthy dirty cunts?

I am kind and generous and compassionate.

He stomps and screams and stomps.  His feet so heavy they shake the floor.  My cart rattles.  I don’t have any idea what to do but finish my task and check out.  Pay for my stuff.  I’m so rattled and disturbed that it’s all I’ve got.

This can’t be real.  No one else sees it so I need to maintain, pay for my shit and get the fuck out of here.

Nobody pays him any attention at all.  Like he’s not even there.  They see a man but they don’t see or hear what I see.  I’m losing my fucking mind.

I’m panicking. My heart in my throat as my brain screams about how life is brutal enough, why me today?  Such an insipid message for my brain to offer.  I’m gonna shit my pants or piss myself.  Nobody knows.  Nobody sees.  No one reacts.   I am so motherfucking fucked.  So confused.  So panicked.

I glance back and his nose and ears have joined in the gush over his giant teeth.

Red blood streams into his maw like rivulets before a wash.

His entire head is gushing blood.

Right behind me.

I head towards the bank of registers.  Checkout.  Haven, I hope.

Now he’s ahead of me eating slices of pineapple from a can. Blood and fruit juice run over his chin and down to his shirt to look like sweat. I wonder if I have just minutes to kill this crazy motherfucker.

Do I, must I do this now to end this?

Should I try to kill him now?  Will anyone object or try to intervene?

Can I?

I know I can’t do it now.  I’m fucked and crazy.  Unnerved and very afraid.

He beats me to the register.  All I can think to do is complete my task.  Finish shopping.  Pay for my shit and leave.

He bags my groceries. His shirt is a dark blue now and his eyes are bloodshot but clear.

I tell him paper & plastic and to pack them heavy. He does all that.

I still understand that I have to be this guy’s fucking hurricane.

One of us will kill the other.

That’s the way it will be.

Fuck this shit.

People don’t vote for governor based on who’s president of the country.  I mean really, this the most profane instance of the media tail wagging the dog of politics I’ve ever witnessed.  Ridiculous.  Fox, CNN and even MSNBC need to get a life.  Have a drink, make a sandwich or do some fucking thing fer chrissakes.  I honestly don’t give a mad fuck about who runs New Jersey or Virginia.  And whatever happens certainly isn’t some bullshit referendum on Barack Obama.

Good God we are a shallow mess.

I swear to the deity of your choice that I wrote that paragraph before watching the Daily Show.  I say this despite my endorsement of Jon Stewart for deification.

Not defecation.  Anyone.  Bueller?

Seriously, this shit is out of control.  It reminds of a rained out sporting event when the announcers have no option but to babble or pontificate while the surface for the intended sporting event dries.  Even better, when there’s breaking news astounding enough to interrupt regularly scheduled programming and nothing significant transpires for like, five hours.

They talk and babble.  It’s equal parts boring and embarrassing.

Oh the humanity.  Oh the insipidness.  Is that a word?

Can you say Balloon Boy?  See what I’m saying?

To see this charade play out on a national and or political level is pure defecation.  See?  I made it work and made my point, which is, it’s crap.  Spare us.  These are local elections of little or no consequence nationally and certainly not worthy of the magnifying glass afforded by the networks and cable.  Cable being far more complicit than the networks for what it’s worth.

It’s irresponsible to deliberately distract us from what’s important.  It’s not journalism, it’s a carnival of sensationalism.  It’s for the simple and the stupid.  Well, therein lies the rub.  We are simple and stupid people.  Dumb as dirt and susceptible to any story from tainted meat to sexual misconduct.  The bubble headed bleached blond comes on at five.

What I do think are important contests in terms of our national identity and aptitude are the initiatives in Maine, prop 1 being an effort to defeat the bill passed by the state legislature earlier this year to allow for gay marriage , and the race in Houston for an openly lesbian mayor.  As I write this it appears that the proposition in Maine will prevail, thus defeating the the right of every American in Maine to marry whomever they choose.  How sad and backward, but we saw the same thing happen in California of all places not long ago.

Fuck me but this country is full of assholes.  Proof of the lack of separation of church and state.  Proof of willful ignorance and way too much dipshitedness.

I’ve long maintained that this is an issue of civil rights.  Before long, a gene will be discovered that will prove plain and simple that folks are simply born this way.  What will the fundamentalists do?  I don’t give a shit if it’s choice or genetic, it’s just that when they prove that no sane person would willingly suffer the slings and arrows of such outrageous fortune, it will finally be an issue of racism and if they cling to their spurious religious dogma, we’ll finally get to call them shameless bigots and walk away.

It matters not to me whether it’s choice or nature triumphing over nurture.  I’m confident it’s nature so we’ll be able to punch them in the mouth with the reality of ingenuous.  It will be definitive.   I hate them.  I really do.  They stir shit because our president is half black.  They hate for reasons they can’t explain or are even supported by the flimsiest of logic.  Horrible people who covet their fear because everything else scares them even worse but they like very much to be afraid.

Ask them questions.  They can’t answer.  Push them to explain.  They simply cannot.  Waive your hand in front of their faces and they don’t know to blink.  I loathe willful  ignorance above all else.  Welcome to America.

Oh, the irony.  Oh, the nonsense.

Drinks for my friends.

The latest figures indicate that the fiercely embattled public option will cover a mere two to three percent of the currently uninsured and the CBO says premiums will most likely be somewhat more than current market price.  Sounds like a wash to me.  Sounds like the sucking of a drain.  This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous.  Smoke and mirrors, dogs and ponies.  You can bet your ass, along with your lunch money, with those kinds of numbers, the whole thing is doomed to failure.

Spruce Goose bitches.

It will flop like Gerald Ford coming down the steps of Air Force One but it won’t ever get up again, at least not in my lifetime.

Good job everybody.

Jackasses.

The only customers it’s poised to attract will be our sickest and least likely to succeed.  No prom kings or queens here.  Bottom of the gene pool, unhealthy, lowlife, walkin’ the dog saps.  So it will be fiscally overburdened by virtue of our lowest common denominator and our last shot as the richest nation on earth to provide health care for our citizens will probably not even enjoy another attempt for at least half a century.  Good job Democrats, you fucking pussies and even better job Republicans you obstructionist, plutocratic, avaricious, disingenuous, lying pieces of self serving shit.

I really hate you guys.

Did I say that or just think it out loud?

Is there a difference?

Well, let me say this:  Fuck, fuck, fuck, snot and mucus and bile and shame and fear and stupid and puke………

You, Joe Lieberman, who’s state is ground zero for health insurance HQ’s and who announced publicly the intention to filibuster the very debate,  and you, John Boehner lay off the embarrassing spray on tan and you, Chuck Grassley you lying prick and you, Mitch McConnel with more chins than a Chinese phonebook and you, Max Baucus who can suck my caucus and you, Kent Conrad and you, Blanche Lincoln, you Democrats in name only………every single one of you has sold out the best and most important life or death interests of the American people in general and your own constituents in particular for what you know will line your pockets, get you you re-elected and is nothing more than a pack of aspersions, distortions and preposterous calumny.

Whomever the asshole was that declared health care reform to be Obama’s Waterloo, forgive me it was Jim DeMint, might just have been exactly right.  I don’t care who you are, that there’s fucked up.

This party might just might be over.

Have you no shame?  No decency?

Y’all negotiated and philandered, lied and decried, wrung your hands and whined like little bitches while thousands died and ended up with the pussy party (D), still being able to save face with a donut hole public option, the asshole party (R), still able to fool some of the people most of the time while still screwing them with an atomic fucking jackhammer that put them there and paid there salaries and benefits all of the goddamn time.

Sick.  Fucking sick.  Pun intended.

Everyone got what they wanted, what they imagined they needed, while the lobbyist pimps, four to one for every legislator, spent a million bucks a day to make sure they and their corporate sugar daddies maintained the status quo and everyone got paid.  You and me excepted, of course.

Because a horse is a horse of course of course and what does that make a dumbass donkey?

Cigars and cognac all around.

Some one hundred and twenty two people die every goddamn day because they lack the insurance to pay for what is killing them and the naysayers would have us debate socialism.  Government takeover.  Bullshit.  Not just a theater but an opera house, with excellent acoustics, of the shrill and reverberating absurd.

I’m needing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Seriously.

Some tomato soup.

Mission Accomplished.  Major combat operations are at an end.  It’s all over but the shouting.

If I did my job as well as you do yours, I wouldn’t have one.  Either that or I’d be a CEO.

This health care bill, all 1990 pages of it is going to be such a charade, facade and so spectacular a bellyflop of POLITICAL PORNOGRAPHY, so profound and disgusting, that any chance of, or attempt at, meaningful reform in banking, civil rights, justice, execution and prosecution of wars, foreign entanglements, energy, food supply, federal aide, education, accountability by any bureaucracy, institution, agency, corporation or industry will be so stained and suspect and blood spattered from other more egregious crimes, that this administration, all it’s good intentions intact, will experience a serious faceplant and we will all have been complicit in climbing decades backwards.

There’s you and there’s me, rip off the mask and let’s see.

We’ll march I guess, with rotting teeth and stage four cancer and we’ll get coupons for nachos and Hostess products at the 7-11.  They’ll sell those bacon wrapped franks along the quarter mile route.  There will will be tents for the overexerted at the halfway point.

Watch your NASCAR and your World Series while the politicians dither away at your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  By the way, I was more than happy to see the Phillies hand the the Yankees their ass tonight and did you see the wrecks on Sunday at Talladega?  Nice that both Newman and Martin walked away.  But by the time both contests are actually decided, your life or death fate will most likely be determined well in advance.  If you are uninsured, it is likely you will remain uninsured.  Categorize yourself as therefore fucked.

The irony of death panels is that it’s a reality here and now.  The irony of health care rationing is that it exists and is practiced without compassion today.  The irony of socialized medicine, which we have now via Medicare and Medicaid, is that no country that enjoys it would ever give it up, us included.

There is no irony about the lies and obfuscation.  They are simply lies and and obfuscation.

The idea of single payer health care is among the most humane, compassionate and progressive notions ever implemented by modern states, governments and societies.  It is growth and progress where the human condition and even evolution are concerned.  After all, it does serve to affect the perpetuation of our species in a constructive way.  To utilize a small portion of the proceeds from our labor and largess to care for the people who are responsible for it, is a profoundly good idea from the perspectives of either the often mutually exclusive concepts of morality and commerce.

It makes fucking sense.

At least pot is legal in LA.

Drinks for my friends.

I  know things you don’t.

Things you can’t.

Things you would deny.

Things you would refuse.

I know things.

Things that would change everything you do and everything you might know or want to know.

Things you wouldn’t want to know.

I’ve suffered because of what I know.

By the time I’m done telling you this, you’ll understand that there is no such thing as a Jesus.  Or Allah or whoever the fuck.  I’m merely a man and certainly not here to disabuse you of any notion you might see fit to cling to, yet the idea of a benevolent savior is so absurd…..  yours is not my problem.  Your God is yours.  Rest your head on your pillow and be the best you can with that.  My object is not to wrest it from your panicked fingers and the peace you enjoy in your own bed, between your own sheets, on your own pillow.

Or maybe it is.

I’m going to tell you what I know.

It’s awful.

Thick black with ever more and stumbling heat.

All so sweaty.  So moist and cloying and pervasive.

I am trying to tell you there is no God.  It is what I want to tell you.

There is no room for one.   No God to mitigate our suffering or advance our joy.  God is not real.  The universe does not suffer one mad fuck at all.

You’ll see.

The Devil however, is on Holiday.

Satan.  Lucifer.  Beelzebub.

I don’t name him any of these.

Lollipops and necklaces of candy.  Chocolate eggs at Easter and bicycles at Christmas.  That’s all there is.  That is God of  the contemporary.  The God of goddamn fools.

If there  is a God it hates me.  I imagine it always has.

Seriously.  Even though I doubt it’s even there.  Or if it can do a single thing.

All human beings serve at the pleasure of evil no matter what name they give it.  I’m going to show you that with my own example.  I have lots to show you.

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

I first noticed him rather casually.  Yet he was the Devil and I knew it.  He had no horns, no bifurcated tail, no cloven hooves and no aroma of sulfur.

He kept coming.

Sometimes, I smelled cloves.

Sometimes, I smelled pigs.  Dirty.  Porcine.

Why he came to me, I can’t know.  But, I saw him and I knew what he was.  I tell you this and I’ve never been religious.  I’ve never even worshiped.  I’ve long been suspicious of those that do.  I am and  have been an atheist my whole adult life.  I never bought any of that crap.  Jesus was Santa Claus for adults as far as I was concerned.

But I prayed before it was done.

I came to know him because he kept coming.  Even in a vacuum, He kept coming.  He, the Devil.  That’s how I knew what he was.  He kept coming.

There is no God but there is Hell and it can be in your backseat or your backyard baby.  Ever feel it tap you on the shoulder?    I have.  It fucking banged on my back those first few days.

He keeps coming.

I had fun with it.  For awhile.  It’s true, I did.

I wasn’t afraid at first.  Not really anyway.  I was cocky.

But,  there was his emptiness and viciousness.  A terrible course without relent.  The malignancy of his breath, the toxicity of his purpose.

Still, I didn’t think he was all that.

I was wrong.

At first like picking at a scab, scratching at a wound, tongue constantly probing and prodding a sore in the mouth.  I couldn’t stand it.  But I liked it.  I was infected the first time I laid eyes on him.  I knew him to be a pathogen incarnate.  Yet I revisited and reappeared.  No worries.  I liked his disease.  It’s how evil works.  It’s cancer seduces you and before you know it, you’re complicit.  You are black.

Like heroin or meth.

Not this though.  Not this at all.

This was entirely different.

Within the cage of a single season I was neck deep.

Still,  he was an enigma in the most consummate of ways.  Odd, kinda funny.  My lack of fear was my demise.  My skepticism.  My naivete.

Entertaining the notion someone was only fucking with me.

*************************************************************************************************

All this until he stood over my bed on a windless night, when some sense caused me to open my eyes.  He inhaled and it rattled.  What he did was suck back mucus, blood and drool collecting in his cavernous, lantern jawed mouth.  He sighed then, as though he lamented being so disturbing.  Like he was sorry for just how horrific he was, lit only by moon, breaking through a window behind him.

He paused while he vibrated over my bed.

There were instances when I would be confused and empathetic.  Such instances didn’t last.

My mortal enemy.  My terror.  My waking and sleeping nightmare.

The bane of my everyday and everything.

************************************************************************************************************************************

I believe I first noticed him on a movie poster. Outside of a shopping mall in the Valley. One of those faux shelters for public transportation.  Then maybe on the side of a bus.  Yep, the side of a bus, looking right the fuck at me as I drove along side.

I laughed at it.

Disturbing but compelling.  Some new model,  fifteen minutes of Madison Avenue fickle.  Maybe only disquieting to me.

In no time he really was everywhere.  Nefarious grinning.  Mirrored sunglasses concealing what I somehow knew to be bloodshot eyes.

My own personal goblin all at once in perpetual ubiquity.

He just kept showing up in everything I looked at.

I remember thinking once, after clocking his countenance out of the corner of my consciousness, one of thousands of times, that he was one creepy motherfucker. At the periphery of one of those visually exploding advertisements for some insipid action movie.  Mouth open in mock terror, fingers scraping at the air, clawing with phony panic, volcanoes or aliens in the background.

Sometimes, he registered only after the fact, in my mind’s eye.  Clear as a bell.  Even behind his chromium lenses I knew his eyes were bleeding road maps.

I knew it from my dreams.

Weird.  But still.

I pondered my sanity.

Doubted my senses.

Nobody seemed to see what I did.

It was impossible to tell.

Time passed.

I swear I saw him behind mirrored cop lenses in a potato chip ad on the back of a comic book.  I don’t really read them anymore, but I thumb through them when I come across a display.  I still love their smell.  Inky industrial.  I collected them back in the day.  I have thousands.  Organized, alphabetized, bagged and boxed.  My girl and I sweated over them for a week or two in the dead of one summer.

Not long after, he was an extra in a cell phone commercial on TV. I wondered at how many times I’d watched that one before I noticed him.  I’m almost positive he wasn’t there the first few times I saw it.

Tall.  Pale. Gaunt. Always staring right at me.

There he was pictured on packaging for disposable razors at the 7-11 as sort of a cartoon.

Then again, in the very back of an advertisement for a new amusement park ride on a plastic fast food cup. I’ve always kept those cups. They hold a lot and it doesn’t matter what happens to them. They make excellent mini trash receptacles for a coffee or bedside table in the apartment of a single male.  I tap my pipe into them after the hit is gone.  My toilet paper, once I’ve blown my nose or spanked the monkey.

Didn’t hang on to that one.

Didn’t remember it until after I’d thrown it away.

I could only imagine all these companies hiring him for these ads must have thought he was kinda goofy and cool somehow, they were infusing their shit with character or quirkiness, or something.  Not unlike the concept of “heroin chic” from the 90’s.  How could they possibly entertain the notion that such a brutal and ugly countenance might possibly promote any product or cast it in a positive light for the great unwashed?

Or was it me?

I’d been genuinely spooked by the faces of actors or print models as a young boy.  I was freaked out by everything when I was seven.  Sometimes even the women in the ads were a hair across my ass or a frost across my shoulders.  But they rarely recurred and were never so consistent.

I checked myself.

This was entirely different.

This was insidious.

Was it me?

If it was, it meant I was crazy.  Delusional.  Certainly paranoid.  Schizophrenic maybe.  Fucked up.

I didn’t really think so.

But I didn’t know.

Now I know.

Still, it was my own private mystery.  I coveted it in a way.  I’ve always liked secrets and I keep many.  I never share my first sexual experiences or some of my darker urges.  I’ve seen people do things when they weren’t aware of being watched.  I often know when people are lying to me and pretend that I’ve no idea.  I’ve done things.  I’ve done some unspeakable things.  Seeing him everywhere made me, made me, think of those things.  He sought my worst and brought it out.

I did bad things.

He was mine in a way.  I owned him, he was exclusive to me.

Exactly what he wanted.  Precisely what he intended.

More time passed.

He became three dimensional.

He came to occupy space and time.

My space and time.

He became actual.

I would catch a glimpse of him walking opposite me while driving.  I’d  look back and check my mirrors.  Rubber necking like a stupid tourist, my stomach sinking and rolling.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  I’d be gassy for the rest of the day.

Not fun anymore.

The rest of my day all pensive dread.

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Oversized front teeth, buck toothed.  Yellow.  Incisors. Carnival red hair. A crew cut flat top. Pale blue eyes that were unbelievably bloodshot when not concealed behind mirrored lenses.

Get this, he always wears brown corduroy pants, blue suede Puma Clydes, a maroon t-shirt with a breast pocket under a leather biker jacket, sleeves up and he’s pigeon chested. Yeah, he’s all lopsided and the fit of his leather coat emphasizes it. His shoulders are narrow and he’s very tall.  Six Five at least.  Sinewy and long limbed.  Veins in his forearms and neck. A glance at his hands corroborates each could kill if it got you by the throat.  Acne scars and purple lips.

Giant fucking teeth.  He likes to smile.  He drools.

Bear in mind that by now I’d seen him in almost every pose, glimpsed him in dozens of televised commercials.

My man.

Scary as fuck.

He began to appear in my dreams. Pretty innocuous, cameos, but more overt than waking life.  At least thus far. Winking, whispering hello to me.  Hey buddy.  What’s up?  Walking by, pointedly somehow, a little wind as his wake, corduroy pant legs shrieking quietly with the fierceness of his gait.

That sort of thing.

He kept showing up in different places.

My dread swelling as he grew bolder.

In the audience on a talk show waving at me I was sure.

Ever more ominous and foreboding, as a blackjack dealer in Vegas once.

I nearly dropped to my knees on the colorful gaming floor carpet.  Clacking and ringing and shouting.  There he was, out of his usual attire, a green translucent novelty visor, clove cigarette in a holder cocked to the side of his pale yellow tombstone grin, red satin shirt with ruffles, a black vest and garters around his biceps.  Tight black disco pants betraying an enormous package.  He nodded at me while barking instructions at the gamblers with teeth clenched on his black plastic smoking appliance.  The sweet perfume of hams baking, courtesy of his clove cigarette.

Burgess Meredith as The Penguin.  Less comical.  Far more sinister.  The horror of violence promised by a relentlessly crazy countenance.

Just a nod and a cup of his enormous crotch when he saw me.  I swear he hissed.

Blood rushed from my head and face and my legs went all bobble head, cheap thumb toy.  Walking with a group of business associates and struggling for composure.  I reeled.  A bar just around the corner.  Double Bombay Sapphire and excused myself for the Men’s.  I’d started choking.  There I crapped and sweated.  My hands shook and I wiped my sweaty head with toilet paper in the handicapped stall.  I cleaned myself up and summoned some amount of game face.  I ambled unsteadily to the bar and my drink.  No one seemed the wiser as we were all an evening’s length into cocktails already, thank God.  I sucked hard at my glass and raised my hand for another.

And another……

By the wee hours, I’d nearly forgotten except for a carping perspiration.  A subtle but almost cloying sense of desperation.  Low but nattering panic.  I thought I slept well but there was a whiff of barnyard in my room that morning.  Who knows what had occurred there before me after all.

Slowly owning me.  Relentlessly taking possession.  I was his intended.  His object.  His device.

One day, weeks later, he was pumping gas a couple islands over at a Shell station right next to where I live.

Early seventies GTO.  Dual hoodscoops and dual exhaust. It was a metallic lime green with whitewalls.  Wire spoked hub caps, not rims. He pulled out very slow.  It throated like a Harley but with more sinister a baritone.  He never even looked at me.  I heard him accelerating a half mile away.  Ripping down Ventura Boulevard.

In a mall I saw him going down an escalator on a lower level grinning up at me before he looked down, sprinting the last few moving steps before disappearing.  Agile for his size.

Days ago, I was at Starbucks waiting for my unsweetened iced crack and he was backing out the door and firing a gun at me with his thumb and index finger. I pissed my pants. I’d like to believe no one noticed.

I had to go home.  Change my shit. I was late to work. My boss gave me the look and some voice to my performance of late. I nod and apologize.

He always bolts or turns away when I see him. He knows me.

Obviously.

Is he afraid?

I am.

I’m fucking petrified.

He’s huge and supernatural in some way or another.  This I own.  He’s no clown.  I know people.  I could have his legs broken.  I know that’s just not an option.  It’s not on the menu.  I don’t understand why, but I know we’re nowhere near Kansas anymore.

He’s capturing me.  Trapping me.  I understand I am prey.

For whatever reason the universe has, he’s mine and I’m his.

I understand.  I realize we will share doom.  No matter what.  I can’t help but know this.

It’s not just some puzzle for me to solve.

I’m in real goddamn trouble here.

I was frozen.  Paralyzed. The sliding door to my balcony was open, some breeze clattered the vertical blinds, bringing the odor of gasoline and animals.  Pig shit.

He said nothing that night.  That first night he came.  He placed his index finger on my sternum ever so gently as he towered over my bed.  I smelled dirt and grease under his long chipped nails. He said nothing but he looked right at me.  Not through me, but straight at me.  He smelled of swine.  Of their food and their waste and he smelled of an old garage.  He stank.  Things rotting and seething in dark places.  He fucking stank.

He grinned; a rictus affording massive and misshapen incisors. He began to drool a syrup of dark blood and mucus, his breathing was labored and it rattled.  His chin shook some and his sputum quivered a little.  He chuckled and stabbed a little harder with his long dark finger.  Still gentle.  He sucked back violently through his teeth.  His giant head whipped back. He blew air past his lips and he laughed like a lion, so loud I pissed the bed.  Seriously.  It happened before I knew it.  He turned and walked away tapping the walls as he went, away from my bed and out my front door. I heard him close it quietly behind him and somehow lock it from outside.  He tapped the walls with his knuckles all the way down the hall.

I don’t sleep much anymore. I’ve begun to obsess about pigs. They scare the shit out of me. Are you aware of how smart they are? They will eat any motherfucking thing. And we eat them.

I was left in my own piss.

This is bad.