LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: Romance, Rebellion and Running Amok

JUST NOW @ 3AM - DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE - THE CABOOSE CATCHES UP WITH THE ENGINE

Some poor bloke is outside screaming about not giving a fuck. He woke me up. He is very angry. I know because he's so loud that it echoes. Outside, the shrubbery fails to"Shush" him.

I'm pretty certain its about a girl. Made out a "right under my nose" and a "whore" which leads to my belief but I've been known to pull things from the ether and connect the thoughts between the dots and 
make a snowman out of a donkey.

Frosty.

Anyway, I can feel the hurt up here.  Betrayal hurts from up here. Him down there. Me in here imagining some manic neighbor with a tiny dog watching the show with his finger on the one hoping to hear a pop.

Guns do not sound like they do in the movies.

Guns sound like a face with a small rip on the inner thigh of her fish net stockings when she comes home.  Guns sound like a Carlton cigarette stuffed in the bed frame.  A pair of sunglasses in the back-seat.  A full pack of cigarettes accompany it.  Underwear on backwards - funny mistake.  Coming home drunk - somehow it happened while stuck in traffic.  On the last night, I had noticed she started taking care of herself again and came home with a rip on the inner thigh of her fishnet stockings.  Then she jumped in the shower after she jumped on me . . amorously.  We didn't make love.  She came out wet.  She demanded hot wings.  I had pawned something to get my medicine.  Thirty minutes later our relationship was over. 

These things catch up with me.  The engine whirrs.  The caboose catches up.  Or, more accurately I have finally come to the place where I can accept it.  I've learned how to let the anger come and not panic or want to smash something.  It comes.  I breathe.  It passes.  Heartache follows.  More anger.  Then nothing.  I think of some close friends who stand to lose everything and came from nothing - the economy - you, know.  I repeat the words, "dignity, grace and respect."  I feel like a hippy.  I think about the suicide evenings - there were a lot of them.  The feelings of that time - the whole - seemed endless and like it would last forever.  It passed.  Those nights passed.  Now I'm here.  I have the experience.  The anger and heartache will pass too.  Like everything, if you let it and don't lose sight of the weather. 

Yes, as this man's voice echoes the engine whirrs and the caboose catches up and I feel sick.  Physically.  I think he found out his friend was sleeping with his girl.  I said it before, I'll say it again.  I don't know how anybody gets through this life without becoming a mean son of a bitch.  These days, I pretend I'm enlightened and do the slight of hand thing where I find that in disappointment and affirmation that they are all - all of it - all of them - teachers - even it comes from a rip and the dank smell coming from her pussy. 

"Whore".  "I don't give a fuck".

I don't buy it.  None of us buy it.  This type of pain can ruin a man, woman, chimp, mountain but how I react to it is up to me because I came into this world screaming and was blinded by that first hot shot of light, like everyone.  That first glimpse was florescent.  It would be a long time before I would learn the difference between electricity and radiation. 

Tonight.  Still.  I feel like a screaming baby.  It's almost too much.  I hurts from up here. I want it to stop, so I roll over, scratch my balls and dig my way deep down into the sheets to claim my chances.

I scratch my balls again. I close my eyes ( it comes soon). I am hungry (now).  I empty my mind again.  I think of snowmen.  I feel like a donkey. 

The screaming stops.  Now what?      

I think i might get up and make a grill cheese sandwich.

MY GOD. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHY NOT.

I've been staying with my friend, Chuck.  He lives close to his friends from back East.  The type of "back East" that when people ask you where you are from you say "back east" because its a buffer between the snap assed sophisticates of Manhattan and the Magic Men from the Kingdom of Jersey.

These kids know a thing or two about a thing or two and I'm learning a thing or two from them.  Entrepreneurs they are.  Entrepreneurs they be.  On the west side of Los Angeles, this kid from the East Side - (I'm talking Covina) has succumbed to the magnificent pleasures of Chipotle and Pink Berry.

I don't know how I feel about that.  All I know is that when one's world and sense of north has been obliterated and their voice has become a trite meatgrinder of gimmicky self aware love hungry conceptual bullshit - a sophisticated repulsion to all things Chipotle ceases to be about rebellion and takes on the terror of a becoming the holy father to some meth freak lost in a perpetual state of confession.

I don’t really feel like getting specific about the string of events that has given me peace in the face of those delicious fruit scoops perched on the creamy lips of mother confection but you have to understand that dropping acid and running with the bulls was the lighter side of my rage and it took me a long time to get to this point of disposal. 

There comes a point where everything you’ve fought for becomes threatened by your sense of self and one’s rebellion becomes the only thing that can save yourself from your anger.  Which is one part beautiful and another part spoiled bitch and once you reach your thirties you begin to replace pride with dignity. 

Here I go again, slapping meat onto the Himalayan-esque question known as the lunch line at Chipotle – ahh, yes . . . enlightenment lives in a warm tortilla – but all I know is that something has happened and for now its just a feeling that manifests in the startling realization that sooner or later, if things keep moving along like they are – I may have no qualms about wearing sandals. 

Fingers crossed. 

Thank you.  Come again.      

Venice Beach - First day of summer. Sunglasses and all.

It works I hope. I rode a beach cruiser through Venice today and thought about the time when I came down to the boardwalk for the first time and saw this girl flash me a shot of her panties.  She caught me gawking, smiled and opened her legs up a little more and gave me the stink eye. 

As I weaved through the path avoiding j-holes and lovely lasses I thought about my sunglasses.  I bought them from the  Korean gentleman that morning as he was opening up his sidewalk store.  He had tape on his nose, sunglasses (of course) and one of those big straw sunhats that verges on "Man in the Black Pajamas" jokes about the VC and Nam.  But I'm half Korean . . . so I was really more interested in what was going on with his nose.   

The bike seat was causing my shorts to bunch up and my package had good gravity and I felt myself, kinda sorta getting hard.  I'm sorry.  I usually spend all my time inside some place with tap water in a bottled water jug in the refrigerator, three ice cubes in the ice tray and a half a bottle of white wine left on the counter and it is officially the first day of summer.  I was getting exercise. 

Thus, the bike.  Thus the purchasing of the sunglasses.  Thus the thinking.  Thus the flashback to miss flashy pants and her new found pet, "The Dolphin".  Thus the near head on collision with a kid on a skateboard who zigged when he should have zagged and got ran off the road. 

I thought to myself:

a) i've always been a pervert. 

b) i wonder what she's doing now.

c) My heart still hurts.

d) I have a boner.

e) I want a grill cheese sandwich. 

I'm just saying.  I have a soft spot for Venice beach.  Its sunny.  I forgot.

It's good to be alive.   

grill cheese sandwich

while having coffee an old guy asked for a cigarette. gave it to him.  i offered a light.  he had it.  he asked if he could sit down.  i said sure.  we sat there for a while.  he smelled like urine.  i said i had to go and gave him a thumbs up for old times sake.  he gave the the "ok" sign.  then i went and ate a grill cheese sandwich.