Shanghai

My studio mate was pretty insistent on getting me to research Chinese musical instruments, find one I like, and have him pick it up for me on one of his business trips to Shanghai. I finally got around to doing a little investigating and settled on the Pipa. I'd forgotten I'd made the choice until I started getting a flurry of emails from Abe. Turns out the pipa is larger than Abe (or I) had expected; and, as Abe put it, it sounded bad ass.

Abe was a little concerned about getting it back to the States and I'm sure he went through a few hoops to get it done. At that point I'm pretty sure he was more excited about the purchase than I was. I met him at the studio to pick it up. We spent a few hours playing with it and the zheng Abe picked up for himself then we headed our separate ways and I decided to take the pipa home to mess with it a bit more.

I'm not sure when I noticed Lien-Hua, the girl that came with the pipa. It might not have been until we got out to the car and I heard the passenger door shut. Or maybe I'd always noticed her but hadn't thought about what to do with her. She would need to be fed, sheltered and all that after all. And the wife might have something to say about keeping the pipa. It was late though and I didn't see much alternative but to get her home and figure it out in the morning.

Lien-Hua was hungry. She didn't say anything of course but when we got home she went straight to the kitchen and looked around until she found a bag of rice (we only had Basmati), some soy sauce and beef flavored ramen. She cooked all this stuff up while I was taking a shower and then she offered it all to me. She didn't touch a nibble until I'd had my fill. It was the best rice I'd ever had and when I was done I noticed she'd spent her time cleaning up the kitchen until it was cleaner than when she started cooking.

I took her upstairs where the guest room is and gave her a white towel. I opened the upstairs bathroom door to show her around a bit. I don't know if she took that as a hint or whatever but she was naked and ready for the shower in the blink of an eye. I turned on the shower, explaining that the hot water took some time to get all the way up to the upstairs shower. I cupped her breasts in my hand and we started to kiss. The bathroom was full of steam when we made our way into the shower where I made love to her for the first of four times that night.

On the fourth go, I could tell she was pretty tired. I left her sleeping in the guest room and slipped down into the master bed with the wife and child --too tired myself to worry about the morning encounters. I woke up late to the easy mundane sounds of activity in the front room. The child was talking to her toy ducks and there was the sound of clinking china, certain kitchen activity.

The wife did give me a look but it was contained and brief. She was relaxed, sitting up at the counter with a hot cup of tea. Something delicious was simmering on the stove. Lien-Hua was kneeling by the sofa, attentively listening to my daughter who was showing off her dolls and ducks.

Lien-Hua gave us both warm oil rubs that night and it was as quick as that that her presence in the master bedroom was unquestioned. Although usually the wife and I would venture to Lien-Hua's room for sex --the distance from child being the thing.

Lien-Hua rips it on the pipa but I'm coming along nicely with her support. I'm not sure how we got along at all, pipa or no pipa, before her.

I Wanna be Free to Not Ride

The guy down the street had a cougar. My friend Joe knew this much like he knew all other kinds of useful crap about our neighborhood. I was relatively new to the place, and left to my own devices I would know practically nothing, and would have happily gone about my day playing Atari and watching kung fu movies. Joe introduced me to things like skateboarding, surfing, reggae, punk rock, using your vocabulary without being embarrassed and, of course, 'Ripides. 


The guy who owned Rip should have seemed a creep, but he had two kids around our age and Joe insisted he was on the level. Still, hanging out at Richard's place was a bit of a challenge when it came to selling it to your mom. It's not easy convincing your mother that the forty-something guy down the road has a badass cougar in his backyard that he often lets run free in the house, and that he also has a game-room in his loft with full size pinball machines. Any mom worth her salt is smelling child rapist from miles away. Somehow I managed to convince my mother that the guy was not into my ass, no doubt in large part thanks to his actually meeting my mother and her meeting his children.


Never mind that his kids were much worse a threat to our livelihood than the fucking cougar. Those kids were pretty damn feral all on their own when it came down to it. For one, they raced motorcycles with an absolutely reckless abandon. Their lack of consideration for the survival of their family line glared through the moment they reluctantly strapped on a helmet. This led to the great motorcycle incident of '82. 


I never was the kind of kid who fearlessly leapt in harm's way with little care for personal safety. No, I was the kind of kid who hated eating ice cream from a cone because I was too concerned with avoiding the sticky sensation of having any dry on my fingers. I regarded motorcycles as rumbling icons of danger, never to be trusted. And I regarded guys like RIchard's kids as minions of the devil, sent to earth to corrupt innocents such as myself into the bidding of their dark lord (dad in this case). 


So here it was, the day that Richard thought would be the best of all days to let Joe and me give the dirt bikes a whirl on the old suburban pavement. For me, this meant certain death. 


I knew damn well that nobody was ever going to master the art of not dying on a motorcycle when their all-consuming thought whenever getting near a running one was not to shit their pants. Call that innate knowledge. I was on it. But those fucking little demon spawn and their pushiness. I was too young to tell them no. It wasn't even an option to me. It was time to die. 


I would like to add, as an aside, that my brother hopped right on the thing and blazed about the place as if the bike was an extension of his confident ego. All this from a boy no older than seven. Joe was up next, which I already knew was a no-brainer since Joe already had experience on bikes. And then it was my turn. 


I managed to get on the bike and still keep relaying the message to my asshole to keep it in check. I sat for a moment in abject mortal terror. The eyes of Richard, Joe, my brother and the spawn fixed on me in glassy anticipation. I even thought I heard a slight growl of delight creep from the backyard. Predatory mammals always sense the presence of imminent death as if it really were cloaked in hooded garb, ready to throw down on the chess board. I couldn't back out. Backing out would have been worse than the glory of a violent, fuel-soaked death. It was time. 


I let out the clutch, gave it gas, more gas, the gear engaged, more gas, TOO MUCH GAS! And the fucking thing took off from under me. I was performing an impromptu wheelie, but unlike the acrobatic maneuvers of stunt men, the only part of my body still touching the bike was my hands. I was now literally running behind the bike. Best of all, I was headed directly into the path of a busy street with plenty of traffic in both directions. 


If you've ever been waterskiing then you are familiar with the suicidal urge that grips those inexperienced riders who fall but for whatever reason never think to let go of the rope, and thus are dragged through the water like a broken doll, flopping around, waterlogged and ridiculous. It's hilarious to watch but really painful to do. I know, I've done it. Twice. Once on water, and, joy, once on a motorcycle!


I pulled the wheelie all the way across the busy street, clutching the handlebars with a death grip so tight, you would have had to break my fingers to remove them from the bike. All this time I was still running as fast as I could. I could hear those bastards behind me yelling to "Let go!" repeatedly, which no doubt seemed sensible to them, but was well behind my sphere of influence. 


And so I ran my way directly between two lanes of oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding being crushed in what would have been the most pathetic auto-motorcycle accident in the history of the universe. Upon reaching the far curb, the bike slammed into it and the two of us, the agent of the devil and the little terror-ridden child crashed to the ground in a bruised heap of metal and shame. 


How I wished I had indeed died that day. It would have been superior in every way to the nightmare of having to face the leering mob rushing towards me in an obvious mix of concern and hilarity. 


I've been in two more motorcycle accidents since then. One actually within about a hundred yards of the one mentioned above. I was on the back of a bike that flew through an unpaved edge of a bayou. We hit a giant hole in the ground, grown over with tall grass and virtually invisible to the naked eye. I learned the joys of roadburn that day. The other wreck a side-effect of being behind a friend that managed to forget the bike behind him at the traffic light. He suddenly realized he needed gas, slammed on the brakes in front of us and we, having no time to react, slammed into his rear bumper, going forty. I re-familiarized myself with the pleasures of roadburn that day, and also discovered how to flip in mid-air, be as bruised as possible without actually breaking anything, and best of all, I learned how roll several times across the road into - wait for it - yes, oncoming traffic and bust out an ad-hoc stunt man roll into a standing position that must have looked planned to the stunned onlookers at the gas station. 


To this day, while I love the idea of motorcycles, I also know that tempting fate is something with which I have a rather spotty history. Best to leave the motorcycles to the pathetic, desperate yuppie assholes who think bikes make their dicks longer, people without children, crotch-rocket jockeys who pull miles-long wheelies down freeways at night on their way home to sexually abusing themselves in the mirror and those rare few who actually respect the power of bikes enough to make a lifetime of enjoying what they have to offer. I mean, you've gotta know your limitations. 

The Waking

A poem by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs the winding stair;

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Rising

My introduction to neurosis came at Houston’s now defunct club, Emo’s. I had heard about the band, and was aware of the involvement Houston’s own Scott Ayers had with some of the recordings for the Neurosis offshoot, Tribes of Neurot. I had heard about their live intensity but it’s ultimately one of those things you simply have to see for yourself. Live, Neurosis performs as if possessed, with every member seemingly lost in the machinations of the music. The only band I ever saw that was more intense than Neurosis had to be Today is the Day. That band’s front man, Steve Austin, easily gave the most intense performance I’ve ever seen from any musician. The guy was so into his stuff that he was spitting visibly with each line; and each line was also delivered in the most guttural and soul searing howl I’ve ever heard. I wasn’t even sure if I liked the music per se. I felt that it wasn’t even important that anyone actually liked the music. The point was to bear witness to the exorcism of the internal ugliness. The way they delivered it was something I could appreciate. It’s not a novel concept, it was simply executed so well I have to give them their due even today. 

The Neurosis show was one of those revelatory nights that ends up shaping your musical future more than you might have ever imagined at the time. 

For some reason it ended up being many years before I reconnected with Neurosis. it was just one of those things. I loved what I heard from them but I never made the leap. 

Eventually I joined a website sometime in the late 90s that was a sort of MP3 laden storage facility for independent bands of all stripes. All the bands that participated in the project added at least one MP3 to the site. These songs were always free for members to download and use as they wished. I learned about a ton of bands through that site. 

I downloaded a trio of Neurosis songs off of there as well: To Crawl Under One’s Skin, and Souls at Zero, from the album Souls at Zero, and A Sun That Never Sets, from the album A Sun That Never Sets. 

A lot of the stuff that I found on that site I enjoyed a great deal, but those three songs had a pretty profound effect on me. Every once and a while I hear some song or some album that has the effect of making me feel as though it has filled a sort of musical gap in my mind. It’s a “Where have you been all my life?” sort of scenario, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with this sensation, let me just say that it is an incredibly pleasurably feeling. Little did I know that those three songs were both off of what is widely considered to be Neurosis’ two best albums, all I knew was that these songs were like musical crack to me and the point at which I was in my life. Many years later and I pretty much feel that way for almost their entire catalog. 

If you know anything about me, then you must know at least a little about the changes I have gone through in the last couple of years. I am a father of two, recently divorced, and I am currently living with the love of my life, also a parent and also recently divorced. These weren’t random unrelated acts, either. The whole thing was undertaken together in a whirlwind clusterfuck of guilt, intensity and magic. 

Neurosis became my soundtrack. 

Assign whatever epithet you need to my name in order to get yourself through the day. Assuage your own fears in life and implant your sense of blame directly on my shoulders. I’ve heard it all, felt it all and lived it all - over and over and over. 

I’ve lost my place at the bar, and I’ve lost my power of sight. In the process I’ve learned to steer in a monsoon so familiar I am now with every last contour of the road. 

Something happened back there, back in the haze of the fading past. Something motivated me to plug in a guitar, to use my hands to create images, to use these hands to put words down, and in the end to let these acts speak on my behalf. On balance they have served me well. And I need serving. I need to know that there are minions, underlings, servants of the burning word spread throughout the landscape. I need to know that there is nothing that lives in the wake of these searing signs of life. 

I need to open that care package and be slapped in the face with you, with your scent, with your love. I need to know that I am not just spinning my wheel in total darkness just to create a shawl to cover the shoulders of all my pain.

I need to stand on the edge of something that is so white hot and explosive that to merely imagine it will cause me agonizing pain. 

I need to withstand the shockwave with my feet in the ground, unwavering, my hair singed away, my skin baked to my bones, my clothes erased. 

I need to swim in a pool of toxic murk from which nothing could ever hope to survive.

To sink to the bottom of an ocean where the light never comes, where the cold is a hammer and the tide is a thing of undeniable beauty. 

Souls at Zero. Yeah, I get that. Souls at Zero.

And this too ... 

Our pain cannot forgive the silent machine of the fatal flaw in man ... that brings us to the end.

Yeah, I get that too.

Come to me.

Waiting for the Punchline

My mother’s mother was dying. It was official. She had contracted lung cancer. Funny that diagnosis considering her never having taken so much as a drag from a single cigarette. In the end it didn’t matter because her husband was a cigarette and pipe smoker for decades. it caught up to her. Ultimately it caught up to him as well, but that’s another story. 

Taking on the mantle of the oldest daughter, my mother opted to leave her advertising job and make the exodus to the Midwest to tend to the moody matriarch. Mom knew well enough that if she didn’t do it nobody else would. We tend to be a bit of an insular bunch, my family. 

Grandma declined rapidly, and it came as somewhat as a shock to us what with our being utterly unprepared to deal with the emotional weight of something so direct and final. 

But before her undeniable end we all came together while she was in relative good health and good spirits and did our best to enjoy what we all knew would be the beginning of the end of an era.

It took place over the Thanksgiving holiday, a holiday which happened to coincide not only with one of the earliest blizzards on record, but also during the exact time that my father would arrive in Ohio as well to celebrate Thanksgiving with his sister. 

What this meant was that my brother and I would have to be carted from family to family in order to oblige both halves of our broken family. 

This trip marked the first time I would have flown since contracting a serious case of full-blown panic disorder. To make matters worse, we were flying two months after the events of September 11th, a fact that was not lost on my paranoid self. 

The plan was to fly into Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport, meet up with my father, his wife and their six-year-old son, rent a car, and then head south to East Canton to my Aunt’s house. 

Naturally this all took place during the first blizzard of the season. 

I live in Houston, Texas. It pretty much never snows down here, and if it happens that it does, it virtually never sticks. Having said that, we have endured the occasional ice storm, and it is almost impossible to describe the near-total paralysis that overtakes Houston drivers whenever there is ice on the road. 

This is the sort of thing that gives people in places like Ohio no shortage of joy. Whenever they find out you are from Houston, this is invariably one of the first stories they will whip out at your expense. 

So you can imagine my amusement to find out that people in Ohio are just as hobbled by the presence of snow and ice on the roads as the people here in Houston. What makes them bigger pussies, however, is the fact that this happens to them every year and yet they somehow are still unable to remember how to drive on the stuff. 

After much handwringing, battling with my electric window happy half-brother, and near suicidal confrontation with an ice covered hill mere yards from my aunt’s house, we miraculously made it alive. 

After two days of turkey, hiking and Olympian battles of ping-pong in my aunt’s basement, it was off to the other family. 

The mood at grandma’s was decidedly more cautious. Everything we did revolved around a sense of finality. Worse, the main goal was to keep grandpa happy and upbeat knowing full well how hard the coming months would be to him. 

Adding to the Shakespearean drama of the weekend was the visit my mother had planned to one of her best friends, across town from my grandparents’ place. We were going there to eat dinner with J, a very kind and gentle woman my mother had known since high school. J lived in a beautiful victorian house listed on the national historical register. J also was in the throes of an advanced form of cancer. 

It might help to note that I was utterly incapable of handling the gravity of all this impending loss at that point in my life. No one I had ever been close to had died yet, and considering the inability I was having dealing with even the most basic of life challenges, I knew this trip was going to extol a heavy psychic price on me.

So the dinner plan was to arrive at J’s place, chat it up a bit, and then have my brother and me run around the corner to the pizza place and grab some pies. Before then, however, J gave us a tour of her house. With the weather and the general mood the place came off as a sort of Bates mansion. Every corner seemed to hide secrets better left unknown, histories that rolled out lives half lived and dreams left unfulfilled. It seriously was that heavy. 

Thing is, no matter how intense the situation during that trip, there was always something painfully funny to even things out. For instance, the place around the corner was called “Vittle Village,” and better still, the place was not so much a pizza place as it was a gas station. We trudged through the near white-out snowfall in the twenty-degree air, trying almost desperately not to let the pizzas get caught in a cross wind, just to feed our family. You had to laugh, the alternative was too much to even think about.

We sat down to eat; we were all happy to focus on our food and forget, for maybe a few minutes, everything else. The pizza was hot, and quite honestly, delicious. Tension seemed to melt, if ever so slightly, and discussion turned lighter. 

After dinner the talking continued for quite some time, and eventually my uncle brought out a bowl of peanuts for people to snack on. 

You have to picture now the seating arrangement. I sat directly across from my brother. Right next to him, to my right, sat my uncle. To my brother’s left, two seat over, sat my grandmother. When my uncle brought out the peanuts, the bowl made its way to my grandmother who looked right at me and infamously remarked, “Peanuts? Oh, I love peanuts, John!”

Thing is, it didn’t sound like “peanuts” at all. The lady was from pittsburgh, and in Pittsburgh the word “peanuts” sounds frighteningly close to the word “penis.” 

Therefore, as my brother handed her the bowl and she followed by sharing with me that she loved “penis,” my brother immediately looked directly at me. This was a bad decision. Our agonizing attempts to bury laughter were totally unsuccessful. Eventually my uncle elbowed my brother, leered at me and gave me one of these: he closed his eyes, and quickly shook his head back and forth in that “I totally disapprove” sort of way, which could only mean one thing - he heard it too. 

When I was a kid, I thought of my uncle as a hilarious guy. Over the years, it seemed as though the weight of dealing with the impending loss of his parents, and the impending arrival of his having to carry his emotional self on his own shoulders, simply wore him down and ended up robbing him of his humor. Worse, it seemed to rend him an insufferable asshole. 

During the pizza “penis” incident though, the guy was still able to see the ugliness of the world in that indelible Cramer/Deluca way: he saw it as being totally gut-bustingly funny. That’s why I know he had to be hurting inside trying to be the “man” at this trying time, desperate to place himself at the top of the familial totem and ultimately into a role that would propel him towards a hopeful future of sanity and stability. 

It had to take a herculean effort not to lose his shit. At the time that fact in and of itself was funny to my brother and me, but in retrospect I see things another way.

Within a few short months my grandmother would die, my grandfather’s heart would break as easily as would his oceanic will, he would die, my mother would virtually retire, move to Florida, acquire a series of illnesses and ultimately die herself, my uncle would pretty much fall apart, he would alienate himself from his sisters by taking on a tragic attitude as the greed-filled executor of their parents’ estate, and in the wake of all of this I would be sent on a trajectory of confusion and awkward stasis, admittedly happy just to be lost in a world of my own making for many years to come. 

Yeah, so maybe it’s all reading like a pulpy melodrama with little payoff, but it’s still a story that helps define my narrative; and I have always wanted to tell it; and I don’t really give a fuck if you like it or not, whomever you might happen to be. 

It’s too long, too depressing, too poorly written, and that’s my work in a nutshell. 

This is the marrow of the Blind Butcher for me. I will do my best to leave the door open, but be sure that you will always have to stay in the next room. 

These are roads that wear into the fabric of the future, and we might feel a level of control over the direction, but that’s a joke that delivers its punchline directly into your pocket and doesn’t wait for you get it. 

It never waits for you at all ...

Sedentary Travels

Thanks to Anonymous for submitting this post. Enjoy. -- BB

I try to be open minded to most things that life has to offer. If I find myself getting into too much of a habit of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (I think Einstein equated that to insanity), or if I find the every-day to be somewhat tedious, I will do something completely out of character to help myself feel alive and to keep things interesting.

I took mushrooms last week.

At first, I was very reluctant to do them, but I did research and talked to people I know who have done them, so I had some idea as to what I was getting into. One of my friends who had taken them before said that it would be a good idea to have someone sober around, a babysitter, so to speak. That person’s role would be to help steer the person back to something positive if they start to have a bad trip. Plus, I wouldn’t want to come out of it not knowing where I am, in jail, or worse.

So I mentally prepared myself, gathered a couple of DVDs, my Mp3 player, some food, and headed over to my friend’s place to get out of my mind. Once in a while, I wish I could see the world through a different set of eyes, so this, in theory, was just what I was looking for.

I was pretty hungry when I took them, which is the right thing to do. Food blocks the absorption. The “reality” of tripping was different than I had imagined.

For the first forty minutes or so, my friend and I sat and shot the breeze, every once in a while sort of testing me to see if it had hit me yet. He left the room shortly thereafter, and that’s about the time that it started to hit me. The walls appeared to be breathing, but my logical mind assumed that the walls were mirroring my breathing. The visual part was only minimal; no streamers like I thought there would be.

It’s somewhat difficult to describe how it was on them, though I remember everything clearly. The best way to describe it would be to say that I was emotionally tripping. There was a body high, but the way everything made me feel was the most noticeable effect. I was able to start breaking life itself down into terms that made everything more clear and bearable (vague, I know). Imagine looking at the intricate gears of a complex machine and understanding how and why the parts work. “Meaning of life” types of thoughts.

After a while, they started to have more of an effect. Astronomy and the universe are interests of mine, and my mind started going down that path. My mind’s eye started seeing some really interesting things pertaining to space travel, phenomena, black holes, and the like. At that point, I was having a blast. My friend then came in and asked how I was doing. Since my reaction was a good one, he asked if I wanted to take it to the next level. Of course I did. Mistake.

I took the second dose, and my friend went to bed shortly thereafter. At that point, I wanted to keep going with the thoughts of the universe, so I put on a DVD about the cosmos. I know now that we take for granted our ability to work certain things. The thought process changes so much when you’re tripping that you can space out what things are and how they work. The TV and DVD player became a puzzle, and it took a little bit for logic, trial, and error to finally yield the results I wanted. Play.

The DVD I watched was called Cosmic Voyage, which was originally an Imax movie totaling about 36 minutes. In a sense, time travel was possible. The DVD seemed to last for hours, though I know it is exactly 36 minutes. Morgan Freeman narrates, and I must say that his voice is quite comforting in that state. Sort of like an empathetic sage. It starts off in Venice, Italy, and slowly expands in meters by powers of ten, then in light-years by powers of ten. First you see people, then the city, then the country, then the Earth, and it keep panning out until it reaches the perimeter of the known/visible universe. I felt like I was going to these places, which has sort of always been a fantasy of mine. It then goes from the insanely large scale down to a molecular one. It starts with a drop of water and magnifies by negative powers of ten through a micro-universe until it gets down to the smallest known level, quarks. I was disappointed when the DVD ended and I was back on Earth.

I was told that even little events, noticing a pebble on the ground for example, could make one have mood swings, and I was in store for a big one in the following hours. There was other people in my friends house that I did not care to see (they were real people, not imagined). Well, once the documentary was over, I realized that I really had to piss. Lemon juice serves as somewhat of a diuretic, but it also helps the effects of the mushrooms. Here’s where it starts going downhill. So, as I headed toward the restroom (by this point, walking was not at all something that came automatically to me; motor functions became another puzzle), I noticed that the restroom was occupied. My friend’s roommate was fucking her boyfriend in the shower. Great. After waiting for a very long, uncomfortable time, they finally cleared the bathroom. During my trip, I started realizing certain things about my friend’s roommate that I won’t go into, but suffice it to say that certain issues I had with her that I could not quite explain to myself became crystal clear. As I mentioned, little things can hinder one’s emotions big time in that state. Well, when I went into the restroom, it was filthy and the floors were soaking wet. The discomfort of my socks getting soaking wet, paired with situational mnemonic devices from my past sent my mood into a southern downward spiral. After getting back to the couch, I noticed that it was very cold in the room, yet I was sweating. For some reason, I didn’t think to get any water, even though I knew I was thirsty and hungry (remember, I was hungry when I took them). At that point, I knew I wanted to go home, but there was no way that that was going to happen, so I tried to make the best of my situation. The worst is what I got.

Because it was dark, I could only see silhouettes of things. I then noticed that my hand looked like that of a corpse, which started me down the path of thinking about death. At this point, I started to understand insanity, which is very strange. Ever come across someone on the street or wherever and think that they’re totally fucking insane? Well, I knew them, and they made perfect sense. At this point, I lost the concept of self. My mind wandered, things happened to me (I was, in reality, simply lying on the couch), and I could do nothing about any of them. I found myself at a Day of the Dead festival, and I was somehow able to understand Spanish. English, on the other hand, was a foreign sound to me. Religion then entered the mix. I was surrounded by religiously fanatical, frightened people who were chanting something at me. Think of the people who see Jesus in a piece of toast and think that they’ve either been saved or that the world is about to end. I concluded that the chanters were all cowards who were looking to sources outside of themselves to save them, when all they really needed was a sense of self fulfillment. At that point, I knew I was going to die, but unlike the chanting fools, I was not afraid. They were weaklings who sought the good favor of a jealous and petty god with whom I wanted no relation. The subject of existence versus non-existence, pertaining to everything, not just things religious in nature, began to swim through my consciousness. Though I am not religious, the experience left me somewhat more spiritual (and less religious, if that’s possible) than I was beforehand.

For a brief period, my logical mind kicked in and let me know that I was not, in fact, about to die. I remembered being told that I was on a rollercoaster that could not be exited, so I had to just sit back and try to enjoy the ride. I thought to wake my friend up so that he could help me get back to a positive mindset, but I didn’t want to bother him. Part of me wishes that I had, but another part is glad that I faced those things head on. Plus, I’m pretty sure that I would have had trouble speaking. The whole thing lasted for about 6.5 hours.

The next morning was awful though. I ended up getting very dehydrated, which lead to unbearable nausea and a migraine headache. Needless to say, the following day was not too enjoyable.

In the end, the experience gave me a little more perspective on life and was a positive mental experience. Physically, it was awful. If I choose to do it again, it will be in the comfort of my own home, minus the presence of people I don’t wish to see, and I will certainly eat and drink plenty of liquid. It’s impossible to adequately convey the experience in words, but this should give those who might be curious a small idea as to what could be expected if they ever take them. The good was worth the bad.

Sucked

The Dial a Verbal Beat Down idea sucked. Mr. C made that apparent very quickly, as did the fact that he was literally the only person on earth to even acknowledge the idea at all. Moving on.

Dial a Verbal Beat Down

The Butcher would like to introduce a new special here in the shop. For a limited time, we are offering what we call Dial a Verbal Beat Down. It works like this.

You send us your name (pseudonym if you are a pussy), some basic information about yourself (i.e. where you live, what you enjoy, your love life, whatever), and we finely craft a ferocious, completely unfair and totally humiliating verbal beat down of the highest order.

In case anybody gets the wrong idea and decides that we are so good at this that they want to contact their lawyer, we will issue a disclaimer with each beat down explaining that this is all in good fun and that we in no way actually mean anything we are saying in the beat down.

It will merely be coincidence, naturally, were we to, say, hit the proverbial nail on the head in the course of bitch slapping your good name all over the Tron-o-sphere. Don't kill the messenger.

If you would like to throw your name into the hat, please contact us via the submissions @ blindbutcher . com email address, and we will install your new asshole post haste.

You know what to do, motherfuckers!

Epic, Childish Ego

To begin with,this was not written for you. I am forgoing you, my target demographic for a loftier more refined audience, that being the dozen or so miscreants that subscribe to a blog called "the blind butcher". Im more used to this format and will cut and paste it there later. I have the distinction of being the dumbest person to post on that blog and have often wondered why I am still allowed access as an author there. I strongly recommend all of you in "Rebstock" (170 + strong now, represent yo!) taking the time to find it and no matter how painful it is , read as many of the butchers posts as you are able. My blogs are usually a festival of drug addled stories about deviant sex, This might stray. There will be no mescaline trips ( though I took an awesome one recently ), prostate exams by strippers named candy, or high speed pursuits. No skidmarks will be measured, no dental records consulted. I find myself unable to sleep this evening because i have a stabbing pain in the lower left quadrant of my back. This ,I know from experience is a kidney stone. No big deal, its not my first. I actually pass them pretty easily. Wide urethra. To assist the process im drinking huge Cape Cods and have brought my old friend Vicoden out of retirement. Piece of cake, just a little ouchie.
Some random thoughts..........
When did I lose my youthful idealism ?
Does anyone else love Craisins?
Mary Ann or Ginger?
Is Billy Squier really gay?

Just to catch everyone up on my life, (like you fuckin asked) Ive been back in Austin two weeks and life is perfect. Im seeing the boy (Rhett 8) several times a week and have the most wonderful girlfriend ever. The stone in my Kidney is actually welcome. I dont know where I heard it but a certain number of fleas are good for a dog, it keeps em from brooding over the fact that.....theyre dogs. Ouch! too much vodka not enough cranberry. Im adjusting to the idea that This amazing mystery woman has no scheduled crises for me. No surreal drama. No pending neurosis, psychosis or plans to hit me with this vodka bottle. Shes sane. Shes smart (except for seeing me). and im fuckin crazy about her.I haven't looked at or thought about another woman since we met. My plans to move to south western Australia and sell weed on the Roller Derby circuit are postponed and possibly canceled (sorry Funk). The one thing that has been neglected is my music. I haven't written a song or even played my guitar much since I moved. The few times I have been happy or content have been the least creative times in my life. I write in pain, when im alone, I write in prison. Fuck I guess ill take the trade. I have well over a hundred songs I aint doing dick with anyway. I do miss playing for people though , i liked the attention. But I am bartending again and that satisfies the urge a bit, it also pays, which is nice. The stabbing sensation in my back seems to be getting worse, hopefully this is an indication that the stone is loose and on its way out.
More random thoughts...........
Who are the tiny expensive 8 oz cokes for?
At what age will my son care about his zipper being down?
Why do I FUCKING HATE french toast?
Am I the only one that wanted to see Blair and Joe from "The Facts Of Life" 69 ?
Why do people drink Merlot and pretend its not sucking their face into some fucked up , bark flavored vortex ?
Why wont John answer his phone?


Anyway, Im in love and I cant write....or I wont write....whichever. I heard thats what happened to the Afghan Whigs. Dude got on meds and just quit writing. Our loss, but how could you want it the other way? Not that Id ever compare myself to Greg Dulli. Did i spell that right? Im sure I should be inspired. But my need to create comes from what isn't, not what is. Or perhaps I was just writing to get laid and now that doesn't matter anymore. I hope there's more to it than that. Knowing me I wont rule it out. I have no process. Ive never been able to sit down and write a song. Usually im doing something else and am overcome by one. I scramble for a pen and anything I can write on. A matchbook, napkin, business card, coaster, receipt ,money, etc. I once was able to positively define the difference between an artist and a songwriter when I found myself with no toilet paper, I pulled out a song and used it . An artist would have saved the song and just walked away. I am not willing to suffer on that level for art. Ok so I found my point, Id rather be happy than productive. No real revelation there. Im sure it doesn't have to be one or the other,but thats what it is for now. Perhaps in the future i can learn to write from an existence instead of an absence, maybe my work will even be better, I dont think it could be much worse. But the people who I hope will like it, always do and the people I could care fucking less about, well, who fucking cares. Ive got to go pee now.

The Butcher is in, Sort of ...

 I have tried, and tried, and tried to force myself to spit something out of value, something that I can hold up to the light and not watch as it disappears beneath its own negligible lightness. I have tried, and I have failed.

When I bolted from the increasingly claustrophobic confines of my previous weekly writing gig over at the Nonalignment Pact, I did so in part with this project in mind. I wanted to create a venue for myself, the Unspeakable, and anyone else I knew, barely knew, respected, loathed, and/or basically had something I thought could add to a blog that simply worked as a vehicle for the contributor to flex his or her creative chops. 

The framework around here is tentative at best, and at its worst, things around here get pretty goddamn sloppy around the edges. We have been lucky enough to have a reasonable number of posts from a decent number of extremely intelligent, thoughtful, hilarious, brilliant, and talented writers. 

We have received input from New Zealand, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Boise, and Minneapolis, as well as a fucking boat out in the Gulf. I have been eternally grateful for it all. 

But the Unspeakable and her very strong and consistent work notwithstanding, there has been little activity around here in the past few months, which only enlightens upon the fact that I have been a totally worthless asshole around here, and thus, I apologize. 

I have been crippled by forces that I know all to well, some of which I have mentioned in previous posts, and many with which I am more than familiar but hardly close to sharing with anyone at all.

Consider yourselves lucky. 

I have had many interesting and worthwhile experiences in my life. Learned hockey on a frozen pond in Massachusetts. Traveled the Atlantic on a massive French ocean liner. Crossed the Channel on a hovercraft. Saw the D-Day beaches at least five times (as well as watched my father fall into an allied bomb crater in order to take the perfect family photo). Cut my own hands on a rusty chain swing over another crater in a Paris park. Traveled to the Canary Islands and bought beer as an 8 year old out of vending machine. Had my picture taken with a chimpanzee, who I now know was undoubtedly forcibly extricated from its murdered mother and brought into indentured servitude by tourist preying scumbags. Moved back to my hometown where I had the distinct pleasure of walking to school in thirty-below weather. Moved with the family to Houston in an August heatwave, stepping out of the car and into an Dante-esque inferno from which I have yet to escape. Learned about trust, terror, many forms of self abuse, sexual abuse, rock-n-roll, love, hate, marriage, fatherhood, homeownership, divorce, acrimony, rebirth and salvation, the whole shooting match, all in motherfucking Texas. 

Yeah, I learned that Texas, despite all the legal and political wrangling or otherwise, is, was, and will always be its own country. And here I sit, open-hearted ...

Yeah, here I sit, and try to tell you something to make to you connect with me in one of the few ways I am comfortable throwing it out there. From a great, cold, and digital divide. 

That's why when the phone rings, and rings, and rings, and ... I never seem home. Yeah, I know, the lights are on ...

My mother once told me, in one of her brutally frank if not entirely satisfying moments of unwelcome honesty, that she suspected I might suffer from a mild form of brain damage. Oh no, don't take it the wrong way, John, I mean well. 

Perhaps she did, though I am still racking my brain as to how this helps my self esteem to know that my mother thought I had brain damage. 

She said that to her it was odd that I was never very ambitious, that I was the kind of guy happy to simply sit back and let life happen, or something like that. 

Guess I am. I mean, I am no go-getter, that's for fucking sure. I never set foot in college, never cared a whit for the backslapping advancement of corporate ladder-climbing, never had the slightest desire to keep up with the SUV driving assholes next door, the Joneses. Never, ever. 

See, I pretty much made a pact with myself. If I survived past 25 it would be a fucking big-league miracle. 

I'm 41. 

I'm still trying to figure out who the fuck I am and why I matter. 

Kids help define that a hell of a lot. Being a dad is quite a dip in the perspective pool. 

I still pretty much hate who I am, have fairly regular bouts of almost no self-worth, and yet, being a dad means no one fucking cares about me. Which is a good thing. 

It's good because what matters is that I give these kids in my life (mine, hers), all three beautiful, brilliant, spirited, and creative children, a stab at this toilet life that comes with a pair of very sharp fangs. We all know how bumpy the ride is, it's our job to make sure these little fuckers are armed to the teeth when they have to go out there and face the very, very ugly music. 

And, boy is it ugly. 

My mother, gone forever, turned me into something worth a shit. My dad, an amazingly talented athlete and an intensely gifted artist, gave things to me as well. Good and bad. Both of them, really. It's not the time for finger pointing. Dad and I, not real close. It's complicated. We barely know one another. 

This electronic world, Tron as C calls it, is such a cruel mistress. For me it's like a glowing wonderland of brain-crack, a window into a world in which I hold almost no trust, a world in which a distance is a welcomed enterprise, and yet, a world that that is not a world at all, but more a dream that lies before me, through which I can travel at will and still come back when the road runs dry. 

I am going nowhere with this, which is par for the course. 

We need life in here, at the Butcher shop. 

We need new life, sure, but what we really need is more life from this little chunk of the Butcher netherworld. I have fallen far behind. Far behind from nowhere, which is a place I have known my whole life. 

But then again, what do I know? I have brain damage. 

Where Now?

I haven’t wanted to write. Well, that’s not true. I’ve wanted to write, indeed have attempted to slam it out, but in the end, have come up with very little of value in a growing number of months. It was weeks, but it’s blossoming like a cancer.

There is an ugly milestone that brings me no joy coming up on Wednesday and this being the third anniversary of my mother’s death, I find it isn’t any less lame. No, I don’t sit around weeping, don’t flog myself emotionally in an acute inability to handle her loss. No, it just sucks, and has continued to suck now for three years. Thinking about going to her home the day after her death, seeing her little computer setup, with her card game notes on the notepad, her reading glasses, and her gum, is no less pathetic and empty now than it was then.

I realize now that her being gone has changed me. Subtly, perhaps, as it’s taken me three years to start to see it, but still, I have changed.

I’m not really any angrier at the universe than I was before, I think that’s virtually in critical mass. I think I feel a bit more rudderless without her now, even if I could perhaps always be defined that way.

This is no way to memorialize her. I’ll change tack.

My mother was brutally honest with me in many ways, about many things, and I will be eternally grateful. She was a sly, tough, and scathingly funny woman, who never missed a trick, and was nearly impossible to fool. She had a very formidable mind, and I watched many foolish people get embarrassed by her wit and her directness all without her ever trying to be so piercing. In fact, she was a very tender and careful woman when it came to the way others felt around her, it just took some time for her to let her guard down enough to trust that the person before her wasn’t a total idiot. I alway loved that about her.

But writing, writing, writing ... here I am writing again, about writing (or maybe not writing as the case has been lately), and there has been so much. Still, I will only share so very little.

The bloated murk of the summer heat is starting to wither, and I am deeply pleased about this. As our mild but very comfortable winter rolls around, I will take the time to go camping with the Griswolds as much as we can, because, well, that’s just what we do.

So what has happened lately? Where has this end of the Butcher shop been, what with my being virtually absent from this forum?

There was a big shakedown in my world that I found rather disturbing, as well as fairly infuriating, and knowing how I am, it will be the sort of thing that will effect my thoughts for quite some time. I may appear to magnify how much I sell myself short, but that’s all wrong, because I know my flaws so deeply, so intimately, and so innately, that it is insulting to be led down a path that stinks of ignorance and misdirection in the light of blind arrogance. In this I feel an amount of anger that borders on myth. Enough on that.

In many ways I am ridiculously happy. I am insanely in love. Have been for a while now, and that has given me not only purpose and focus, but also an emotional boost during a time that I quite honestly would most likely suffered greatly alone. I am so thankful for the love I have and the family I have carved out of the massive stone facade surrounding me.

Beyond that, I am a man who thrives on anxiety. I just do, and I can’t avoid it. I can perhaps manage it (more or less), but it will never go away.

Sometimes it’s simply crippling, and then it can go away, waver back and forth like this in a matter of minutes, hours, days, etc ...

I make a chore of bearing my presence in many ways, and again, this is something for which I am acutely aware. I should come with a manual, or a warning sticker, or something.

And now I will end the open book, and shut it down once again; and in the process, I will dole out the garbage, kick it to the curb, and make you suffer through it, were you still here, and were you dumb enough to take that bait ...

we turned over the log at the bottom of the pile and they scattered, a swarm, a colony, a cancerous mass running from the light. and there in the remaining heap, an albino, a horror, a curiosity, something to focus upon with the scope of your fears. and then kill it at all costs. you left notes for me at the bottom of your closet. maybe too silly to send on, to ultimately share, wrapped up in their tiny envelopes. and yet, I found them, because you maybe wanted me to. and I want you to know how much I loved, still love, you in that moment, and that your job is never done as long as I am still alive, and that this is true power. I sat, red-handed, completely without fault, and yet completely at the mercy of a machine as cold as they warned it would be. and it all comes flooding back, why you don’t play, why you never were given the rule book, and why you ball your fists and bring them down, like massive unyielding hammers, and crush everything that gets in your way. it’s all about belief, isn’t it? it’s all about what you believe, at any given moment and why. am I foolish to see the grass blow in the field, wet, the ground dark and soft, the smell a slight tang, a sting that almost burns my nostrils? am I foolish to escape to places that are cool, enveloping, muffled, and dank? am I foolish for ever spending this time, making the effort, heralding the arrival of another packet of meaningless grey? am I? is it worth explaining, because is it even there at all? this is a slow march, this is a cold tide, this is a half-opened door, this is the way towards ... what? towards what, anyway? anyone? I’m begging you, show me where I go now.

The Hemp Gardener

My aunt emailed me the other day to ask advice for a debate topic for one of her night school classes. I wrote her back suggesting the debate that has been on my mind this Summer, the legalization of hemp. She said her teacher had specifically told them not to write about cliché topics like that.

I can understand the teacher's stubbornness on the subject. I'm sure she's read lots of tired arguments; and I realized sending my suggestion that it wasn't exactly original. However I do feel like we are at another cross-roads in this amazingly long-winded prohibition. And of course I believe it should be legal.

Early this Summer I got a seedy bag of schwag. I was planting cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, marjoram, rosemary, eggplants, and other stuff. I couldn't resist planting the schwag too. I'd heard that it's actually easy to grow if you don't have to do it clandestinely. Hemp loves sun, needs lots of it.

I've got a high balcony so that's where I put it. It gets plenty of sun but not so visible to the neighborhood. Started with four plants and used a training technique that keeps them short and bushy so as to give them a low profile. I didn't know much about growing this stuff so I got online. Not hard to find chat groups on the subject and it wasn't long before I had a considerable wealth of knowledge on the sexual nature of hemp which is important stuff to know if one is producing hemp for certain reasons.

The main thing you got to know is how to identify a male plant because you want those out of there as soon as possible or they'll turn on the females and they'll go to seed. The male plants flower too which makes it confusing. But as it turns out male flowers have distinctive traits and look like little hairy balls where as the female has white furry bits and a V-shaped leafy bit. I started to get turned on and wanted to fuck my plants.

But I didn't. I got jealous though and ripped that male out of there and I was left with three. They're budding now. Bunch of hot bitches getting ready to turn me on.

Some days I sit on my porch staring at my ladies thinking how easy it is really to deal with this stuff and also how absurd it is that I am doing something illegal by having some leafy green plants in pots on my porch. That actually makes me mad as hell. I get excited about growing because it's fun. Thinking about going clandestine but that makes me angrier. I'm gonna go to all that trouble because of these friggin asinine laws?

We're at a crossroads though and I think we're gonna take the easy road home. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing and like so many things in this friggin country, wait for the country to catch up. Although catch-up isn't the right word. I feel like I'm waiting for the country to get its head out of its ass.

The Expanse of Constriction

I remember June 29th like it was yesterday. it wasn't yesterday, actually, because as it turns out June 29th was literally one day over seven weeks ago.

Why is that day important? I mean, aside from it being the second day of my 42nd year of life - a fact, I should add, that utterly baffles me considering my past bent for self-destruction - it marks the last time I made a post for this my little creative baby of the electronic underworld.

That's a side-effect of something I have battled to function under for the entirety of my creative life: writer's block.

As a kid I developed an early affinity for drawing, and right on the heels of this discovery was a more insidious one. As comfortable as I feel expressing myself with pens/pencils/ etc ... , I am equally at home being crushed beneath the weight of self-doubt and second-guessing.

Joy.

Eventually, working on art became something that unleashed its rewards a little too slowly for this attention span-deprived young fellow. I needed an outlet that could dole out rewards like a morphine drip, one button push at a time.

Playing music.

The molester down the road was plugged in to the parental gravy train. When you have an overgrown pituitary abnormality of a bullying closet-case son, I suppose it might be easy enough to try and fix the real issue by plying the beast with any and all manner of distraction. Anything, really, to keep him from unpleasantly acquainting himself to solo-swinging youngsters stealing the remaining minutes of a waning afternoon. The spare bedroom in his house, previously occupied be his feather-haired, Gloria Vanderbilt jeaned older sister, when given to his juvenile desires, became a wet dream of Farrah Fawcett and Loni Anderson posters, and damn near the best musical gear money could buy.

I was relegated to drums. In his fevered ego, drums did not warrant the player the buffet of pussy that would undoubtedly come his way the moment word got out that he could stumble his way through the opening chords of Cat Scratch Fever.

Once I moved away from that neighborhood, I knew that drums were not a reality for me; and plus I already had an acoustic. Eventually I was given a Gibson Melody Maker and a Fender Princeton amp by a clueless uncle merely glad to unload the stuff that had gathered dust in a dark corner of his parents house long after he had joined the country club and sampled the joys of the "good life."

Thus began a love/hate affair with the guitar. I literally played one several hours a day, almost every single day, for many years. I joined a number of bands, recorded and released several albums, and easily pissed away the most creative years of my life agonizing over what wasn't working and why.

Then came the cold grip of my old friend. After literally two-and-a-half decades of fairly consistent playing ... nothing, or damn near nothing.

I pick it up now and I get angry. I begin to pick and I don't want to hear it. I force myself to play every few months, force myself to keep at it until it feels comfortable once more, and then put it back and don't care when I do it again.

I revisit both art and guitar here and there, easily more art than guitar nowadays, but neither one still keeps me in its thrall.

So what now? I am like a supremely fucked up ascetic in a number of ways. I will die without a form of creative expression, but it has become increasingly less desirable for me to entertain the idea of expending massive amounts of personal energy in order to give it away.

Why should I give it to you? You don't deserve it - one, and you don't really want it anyway - two. Copping out?

Maybe.

So I am writing a post because I want to write a post, because I have to move forward, like a goddamn shark, or I can't dredge the oxygen out of this ocean bottom that I call home. Yeah, that and I have to write this post because if I don't I'll write a post about cheese, or Yo Gabba Gabba, or whatever else it was I solicited and consequently got back in ugly spades.

And yeah, I am more than a little partial to the Unspeakable, but she's got a point. A post on the Juggalos is easily something I could see myself waking up to in the very near future. Because some things are so inexcusably bad, so unremittingly horrific, their endless litany of agonies lay out before you like a conga line populated entirely by one-legged, gassy, she-males, their rocks splayed through the sequined sides of their moistened leotards like a synthetic-diamond dealer on the very farthest edge of town; and things like that, well they need to be preserved. I am the taxidermist of your nightmares.

Here I am, ripe for the taking.

Pancakes' Post

Author: Frankie Pancakes

I’m Frank, and I have lousy luck with men. I’m a girl, not that that significantly changes the story. This topic is usually the stuff of comedy routines, but I’m choosing to tell you the singularly most unfunny one, because I’m still scratching my head about it.

I truly do have cracker-jack skills at picking them, and it helps to be colorblind to the particular scarlet shade of relationship red flags. Pretty much a life-long theme; my first boyfriend wasn’t my “first”; my first wasn’t a boyfriend; my object of affectionate obsession wished he had been my first. Quite a bit of boy drama for this awkward late bloomer. College was fun, too. There was the classmate with the little gherkin (he holds the record), the freakishly tall TA with the dick that was too big. I broke up with the sensitive guy who responded to my expressed opinions with “you’re cute” and demanded to know when I was going to be in love with him. (This month’s no good for me, how do you feel about never?) I’ve been dumped on Valentine’s Day by a guy claiming anxiety attacks, blamed for being uncommunicative by a spaz who would bait me into arguments just to upset me for his entertainment. His saliva stank. Seriously, it festered on my pillows, I couldn’t sleep. I was dumped by a 50 year old self-help addict who gave me an ultimatum to seek professional help for clinical depression. The basis for his “diagnosis”? I have a lot of stuff in my apartment. He was crap in bed. Three How to Have Sex books, and he didn’t have a clue. And his cat peed on my side of his bed, and he didn’t feel like changing the sheets, too tired. I cannot make this up.

Lat summer I met a guy at a bar. Sounds bad, but hear me out. Friend of mine bartends on Sundays, super sweet guy, and I felt like hanging out with him for a couple of hours. It is not in my nature to just go to bars by myself, my social anxiety and loathing of strangers prevents it. Bartender is a movie geek, and always has something cool in the dvd players. Another patron at the end of the bar was picking at his laptop and talking with Bartender, and eventually I joined the conversation. Patron stepped out to smoke, and we kept talking when he came back in. He asked me to continue the conversation outside for his next cigarette. Pleasant enough, plenty of common tastes in music and movies. Gainfully employed, homeowner, dogs, actually not sounding like a loser. First red flag was hoisted when he mentioned the pending finalization of his second divorce. Didn’t see it.

Later he asked for my info, and I thought, why not - at least I will have made a friend. We danced around our mutual interest for a week, then met for drinks and wound up cuddling at his place. Second red flag snapped in the wind as he told me he was “broken” and he didn’t understand why I liked him. Overlooked it. I thought, he’s just hurting from his marriage failing, I’d be worried if it wasn’t affecting him. The next two weeks were pretty great, lots of nookie, watching movies in bed, him telling me he was falling for me, that I felt like home to him, that he was broken and was going to break my heart.

The Sunday evening after his divorce was finalized, I called him and he told me to come over. He was drunker than I had ever seen him. He sat me down on the couch and told me he was tired of living with pain (he had a couple of cracked ribs from a collision with another player on his kickball team, and had refused to see a doctor), and the pain from being broken, he was committed to his damage. He looked me in the eye and said he was going to kill himself and there was nothing I could do or say to stop him.

There is a particular warmth to the adrenaline surge you get when the floor drops out from under you, and when it swirls and eddies with the haze of being utterly gobsmacked, it makes your ears buzz, or at least my ears, anyway. I knew he had it in him, I had caressed the vertical scar on his right forearm. Thus began 36 hours of crying, arguing, begging, explaining, reasoning; he told me about his first attempt, being found in the back yard by a friend after opening his veins. He told me about the second time, when he had put the gun in his mouth as he sat in the garage, and the new ammo didn’t fire. He told me the neighbors had his gun, but would give it to him if he asked. He told me I could have his house, and his dogs (they liked me, and he didn’t want his ex to have them). He told me, and this is the most unfathomable, that his closest friends were okay with it. In what warped universe are “friends” okay with someone’s unnecessary suicide, so much so that they are willing to “be there when I do it”? I followed him around, somewhere in there we slept, he called in sick to work, we went to my place and watched a video. He told me not to worry, he wasn’t going to do it now. That was his idea of reassurance. Stop worrying, I won’t do it now. Sometime, just not right now.

I lived with this for a week, no one else knew. How could I tell them? What should I say to my parents, my friends? I lied to them, things were dandy. He kept putting me at ease, not now, later. He continued to torment me. Maybe he’d do it after he served as best man at his buddy’s wedding ( the one who was “okay with it”). Maybe he’d do it on his birthday. Maybe he’d grab a trooper’s weapon at his job. He continued drinking himself into a stupor on weekends, forbidding me to contact him. I finally called Bartender, hating to involve him, but now knowing how to proceed. He told me to call the cops next time he threatened. Then I really did it. I contacted his friend, the suicide supporter. Sent him a message telling him I didn’t know what else to do, that I was not okay with what I was hearing. Got the call that night. Livid. Who did I think I was? How dare I involve his friends in this? (But...you already involved them, they’re so okay with it they’re ready to witness your exit, remember? What the hell.) I was cut off, no more contact, ever. Stunned again, staring at the phone. Did that just happen?

Within a day he was requesting my friendship again, calling me. I was unconvinced. And I finally let my friends know. Lee told me it was emotional abuse, what he was doing, and I felt that adrenaline squirt again. I may lack in self esteem, but never thought it so severe that I might open myself to abuse. Shit. I composed a missive explaining to him how fucked up he was to do that to me, that I had done nothing to deserve it other than enter his life, and he didn’t defend himself.

This is the dumbest part. This is where you lose any shred of respect you may have tenuously held for me. We stayed in contact. I wanted to know. I wanted him to be okay. I cared. I am an idiot. He led me to believe he would get healthy, he was in therapy, he told me the dogs missed me. He kept me at a distance, telling me he couldn’t face me knowing what he had put me through. But anytime I pressed for a little more contact, he would lash out in a serious overreaction, if I couldn’t respect his boundaries, we’d have to reevaluate our friendship, blah blah. He bit my head off a few more times, in between sending me little app gifts on facebook. Then I got the email one morning, “check your messages” on myspace. He was sorry, he didn’t mean for it to happen, she was just a friend at first, but he was in love. In love. I told him fuck you for doing this during the week so it affected my work.

And that was it. No more contact. And I really didn’t feel like getting out and running that risk. I got sick, and lost some weight, and then began walking every day, for miles, walking away from that nightmare. Haven’t run into him around town yet. Pretty sure I’d throw up if he spoke to me. Not a lot of interest since then, one fella this spring, but it didn’t end well. I know you’re shocked. It appears that the menfolk of this planet can fly more red flags than an Olympics opening ceremony, and I’ll still be willing to give ‘em a chance. I’m such a slow learner.