Pregnant & smoking

11-20-2013 Journal

Let me turn for a moment, my attention to the pregnant girl who was out smoking with us after the lecture.

The distance between her nose and her lips is a vast frontier with a wide valley running down the center. Every time I see her, that's all I can look at. My eyes go on a journey from her nostrils down the middle of that valley to her upper lip. It's such a long trip. At one point, you feel as if there's no end. Like driving through Montana. 

The only thing that breaks the monotony is a pierced stud. When you see that chrome sphere on the horizon, your almost to her mouth which is a volcano of Newport Menthol smoke.

Elk in a Glade

Becca reminded me of an elk I saw once deep in the mountains. I paused and noticed it for a fleeting moment before the herd leapt forth gracefully and was gone. 

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I was a camera salesman at a failing photo shop when we met. She worked developing prints. At the time I had carefully & methodically conned a doctor to write me scripts to the powerful opiate, OxyContin. I carried the drug in many forms, from long acting tablets to instant release pills all in a backpack that included a kit to crush, cook and inject the drug intravenously. It was my lover. It was summer when I met Becca. She was a girl of mystic, faelian beauty out of another time, another world. 

I felt different in her presence and things began to change. My chemical lover was an imaginary relationship and she was real. When I shot the pills intravenously, I was an angel departing from a horrible world but now, there in that very world was something beautiful. I wanted to stay but I couldn't. The horror of withdrawals had become so severe, I no longer knew where hell ended & heaven began. 

My doctor retired, the scripts ended and I spiraled into a dark world, living out of my car by night and hunting street heroin by day, all the while trying to write a novel that could describe the place I felt I lived: A wilderness far below heaven, but not quite in hell. 

I arranged to check into a rehab clinic. The day before I left, I met her at a playground and we took a walk together. 

76 days later I came back and arranged to live in the unfinished basement of a multi-plex apartment building. It was dismal but I decorated it and did the best I could. 

Becca had bought flowers for me and one night we walked around the lake together. Finally she agreed to come over. 

The one thing I'll never admit except here as you read this is I don't seek satisfaction, gain or submission from women. What I seek is one moment with them. One fleeting moment where we're the only 2 people in this wilderness. It's a moment in time where the galloping herds and beasts of prey fade away to silence and its just us. The night Becca came over she gave that to me when we kissed. Whether she was prepared to give more, I'll never know. 

No one can ever take that moment away from me. In the years since, as I've laid in hospital beds or jail cell floors, I've gone back to that moment and no matter how far I am from heaven, or close to hell, I can remember it and feel like I did when I was a child, looking at elks in the glade. 

Ever do any modeling?

This would not be the first time I've attempted to dazzle girls at a party with an iPhone4S & 2 credits of photography at a community college only to have the whole thing backfire.

I let them whore it up for the camera so I can swipe the screen, showing the magic of all my photo editing apps. Then once they see how pretty they look its suddenly like I'm the only adult at a little girls birthday party.

They say: "Oo I like this one", "Can you crop this one?" & "Keep taking more pictures! You'll want to get me in this light over here." Suddenly, my iPhone is surrounded by a mob of ravenous girls, desperate for free glamor shots or a pony; who can tell.

In that manic moment I can see so many parts of them. Insecurities, fears and dreams all here at the crest of womanhood. If I could show each one of them how beautiful they really are, then it should be worth spending the whole party giving all of them a photo. It should be worth my walk home alone that night.

Unfortunately the version of me that would do that died many years ago of a broken heart and possibly heroin. That poem writing, flower giving, desperate romantic died in the friend zone where all those emo little pubes end up.

Not to sound callous but I'm well past boyhood. A man doesn't needlessly plead for what he wants nor needlessly express his emotions. The real secret of manhood begins with "Dear Diary..."


..impressions from an uptown house party --v









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Location:Uptown

No Internet, no God

Yesterday I walked home at 3am through a ghost town. Street lights flashing, rain gently drizzling with lightning in the sky.

The woman took her keys back, my mother doesn't return my calls, I moved, broke into the heart of the city to an apartment with no amenities. No Internet. No god.

Next to the passing cabs, I asked god to be with me. I felt alone. So I got home, had a drink & climbed into bed next to my phone.

Morning came with the sounds of thunder. I looked on my laptop and there was an Internet signal. There was a God.

I put on Netflix. A light in a dark room.




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Location:Minneapolis, MN

Train Stations

I had this dream I was arriving at an international train station. This young Nigerian girl behind me was hungry and asking for this smoothie I had bought out of machine so I gave it to her. We walked off the train & continued to talk until I forgot where I was or what train I was supposed to be on. So I stood there on the platform, people moving all around me, completely lost.

I've been couch surfing for 2 weeks now. I got into an argument last week with my roommate & she called the police who came & arrested me. The whole situation was messed up & I had had enough of being screamed at.

So without any of my medications, I laid in jail, curled in a ball for 3 days under a shoddy blanket. My cell mate made sure I was awake for roll call. I didn't eat, I didn't drink water for 3 days. Then I was released into 10 degree weather with no coat on & thankfully a friend came and got me. Thus began my nomadic state of being.

Last night I woke up at 9:14pm in a dark room in my boxers and a t shirt. I had no idea where I was. There's something about being homeless that puts me into a state of desperation & misery. I feel like I have no rock to lean on. Dreams go bad. I'm confused & stressed when I wake up & can't remember where I am.

I spend whole days at different coffee places or wherever I can find wifi. I wait all day until I can go home with whatever friend is nice enough to take me in that night. My favorite coffee house closed down so I spend hours on busses traveling the twin cities.

Today I got a new job. I didn't apply for it, I didn't look for it. It's with a prestigious company my father is consulting & the CEO has known my family since we lived out in California.

At this job I have to: never smoke (ever) even though I'm a chain smoker who smokes easily a pack a day of strong, all natural tobacco. I have to get my teeth fixed & replaced. I have to make it to work on a long bus line from a variety of long distance couches. I have to come off Suboxone which I've taken for well over 2 years & has helped me kick and stay clean from heroin all this time.

All these things have me so stressed out. I feel lost, I feel enormous pressure, I feel afraid.

Here are some scenes of my adventures & the closing day of my favorite coffee place.




















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Film Review: double feature

"The Perks of being a Wallflower" was really good & I was fully prepared to hate that movie. I think I even had some smart remarks rehearsed.

"Paranormal Activity 4" on the other hand was so dreadful & so incredibly underwhelming, I built a minecraft log cabin during the film without missing any of the highly predictable plot. The plot in fact, was identical to the prior film and outside of giving you secret feelings for an underage girl that should never be shared or blogged, there was nothing interesting about it.

"The Perks of being a Wallflower" started out talking about how great "The Smiths" were which happens to be my favorite band. I was seething with cynicism because after all, I was into that band long before it was cool, long before you knew anything about them, you total poseur.

Anyways when a film starts out that way, I'm immediately stand off'ish. Who do they think they are trying to win me over so quickly? I'm a delicate flower that requires time and care. Not some indie slut easily woo'ed by Drew Barrymore directing a Roller Derby movie with a criminally cool cast & soundtrack.

In the end, the film had bullied me, drowned me in sorrow, broke my heart & mended it again completing the full circle that was my own adolescent experience. Add a bunch of good music and a beautiful girl at the end, it's a low down dirty trick that totally worked. I feel so taken advantage of.

Someone else without the biases of mental issues or a vinyl collection needs to go see this film and report back on how it actually was.




Here's that log cabin I built during Paranormal Activity 4.

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