Tag Archives: relationship

Imagine if love wasn’t the main reason for existence?

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We’d wake up every day, wouldn’t we, we’d lie there looking at the wall or looking at the closely weaved cotton of the sheet. We’d look through the little crack in the blind to see what kind of day it is and that one by three centimetre view we’d judge our entire day. If it was all blue we’d think it was a lovely day. If it was grey we’d think it is a different kind of lovely day. The colour checks to see if it matches with what we are feeling. If we are ashamed and depressed then the little piece of bright light blue is cajoling, mocking. If we are ashamed and fearful and depressed the grey is a blessing, it says “go on, stay in, stay in and read. Don’t bother talking to anyone”. We’d do different things you and I but we’d eat something. We’d eventually go and let the piss stream out of us, eventually. The smell of our own urine comes stronger in the morning,  we are like doctors, we are checking ourselves, we are looking at our tongues together, pink is good. If we are scared and sick our tongues are white and our piss is dark and our face is sullen and your eyes are crying out to remember something, looking at someone in the mirror trying to remember to want. It’s not the same every morning, no! It is mostly the same every morning, some mornings you are not alone and you cannot smell anything but the coffee that someone else has made and that they have opened the blinds too early and it all feels different and fresh and alive and you piss quickly to get rid of it like an animal does, cover it up. Brush your teeth the same way still staring at yourself, your worried look, your rushed worried look, your purposeful look. Body Maintenance: Not Dead. It doesn’t matter about the ‘sky’. We’re just sitting together with hot coffee and talking about, oh, what was it? I think I said I have to brush my teeth again and you smiled, sorry, they smiled, but not for any reason, but something happened the night before, something…we don’t know anymore because it is not something we want to remember. Just the morning, that different morning where everything was more than usual, and fast and light. We don’t always start like this. In the morning. It’s very much in the afternoon at our desks too when we are sitting there, looking at all the little things on the desk surrounding a luminous flat screen. We are still checking the sky to see what it wants us to do, we are still letting the day go on, we are still pissing in the afternoon, clear, clean, empty urine. There’s nothing we forgot. We wouldn’t be able to work right away, not for a little while. Oh I guess other people would talk to us, wouldn’t they? Asking mainly. We’d have to look at them together and smile perhaps and talk. Answer mainly. Answer them right away. I would even last three days like that sometimes. Three whole days of waking up and answering questions and looking at my eyes and pissing and eating like that. Looking at the sky to see what it was supposed to be like today. Sometimes we’d listen out especially well, there’d been a time together and we heard so well, so clear. We weren’t alone then, in a small room, the sky was bright blue and then sun was the lightest clean white on the carpet, on my leg. Like a perfect day. We’ll be out of there soon, outside, alone. We’d wake up like that again, with coffee and the blinds drawn to wake me up so I can have a shower in time to get the train you’d say. Mostly you’d get up first like that and make the coffee. I remember. I didn’t forget you. Sometimes five days goes by like this.

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The Rabbit

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The dread from inside
Keeps coming out
To remind you
That the beautiful love you feel
Can not last.
The head will be cut off,
The rabbit will run
Half headless
Into the darkness under the ferns
To die there alone
Panicked and starving.
But that little rabbit
Held trembling
Alive
Kisses your fingers and looks at you
So honestly
Because it needs you
And you can feel its small body
Breathing and shivering
And settling down in your lap
It forgets that there is a world
Away from your lap
That wants to eat it
And boil it
Or put it in an oven
Because its better that way.
That's how you eat a rabbit.
Didn’t you know?
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Jonah and the Whale

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Jonah’s older brother was mean. Mean like when they were kids, Jonah eight, Mark ten, they had baths together still and even though Jonah would cry and cry and yell ‘no’ their would put them in the bath and close the door to the bathroom. Now, as we know bathrooms echo a lot. They are probably the only room in the house that shouldn’t echo, really, but there we have it, we’ve made the most embarrassing, bodily function-centric, gross room the most cacophonous vestibule for us poor we-don’t-want-to-be-animals-animals[1]. So locked in that chamber Mark would begin at first pushing the bathwater back and forth in a tidal wave, just for fun at first but greater and greater until the water caused Jonah to move about and for great amounts of water to be displaced. Jonah hated both aspects, the mess and the fact he was not in control of his small body rocking back and forth in the bathwater[2]. Tossed about with Mark laughing, he felt sick and alone and his crying out was over-shouted by Marks fun yells, as if the two brothers were having fun together, playing, having bath-time fun with games and splashing and all of that. After some of this, and not every night but often enough, mark would stand up and start pissing on Jonah, in his face as much as possible and Jonah would try to avoid it under the little water left in the bathtub. Coming up for air like a whale he would just get the rest of the piss stream in his mouth, tasting his brothers piss and trying to breathe, not really drowning properly but no really able to breathe properly either. When Mark had finished pissing on his bother, and had nothing left like that, he’d soap himself all over, throw Jonah the soap and fill the tub up with more water. Just hot water. Jonah would try and turn it off but Mark would hold his hand under the hot water coming out and Jonah would cry out and Mark would yell “Muuum…..Muuuuum” and she’d come in and see the mess, the water, the hot water pouring out and set it all right, as in, get Mark out and hand him his towel so he’d leave and close the door and the mother would wash Jonah properly in the small amount of three inch hot as hell water and Jonah would give up, his legs as he knelt there burning in the hot hot water and his mouth full of salty tasting piss his brother pissed into his mouth almost three or more times a week, more and more as time went on.

Sitting in his room drawing a lot, Jonah, 11 years old, drew scenes from the bible, Exodus, Job, New Testament Mathew Mark Luke and John stuff (it’s all the same). Drawing Moses with his staff commanding the Israelites, commanding God’s punishment upon the Egyptians. Drawing the boils on the skin, drawing the fire coming down on them, drawing really drawing with a red pen a lot the fires and the burning dead of those who opposed God’s chosen. In Jonah’s class he heard the story of Jonah and the Whale, imagining himself getting stuck in the belly of a whale, praying in there, waiting in there.  His teacher put on an animated video of Jonah in the whale; making a little room for himself and staying in there, talking to the whale and the whale answering back apologetically and eventually releasing him. Mark is like the pestilence, coming in, pushing all his work to the floor, pulling him over onto his back and hurting him really bad by twisting his arms and legs together and saying things like “you love god now?” and “mum doesn’t love you because you are so weak” and as Jonah calls to his mum and nothing happens Jonah starts praying like he has been told and actually says the words of the lord’s prayer out of his mouth which makes Mark hurt him more trying to get him to stop saying that stuff.

In the family home there now lived Jonah, his Mother and Father. Mark was gone, living by himself in some house with a few friends. No one had heard or seen Mark in over a year. Jonah was happy and free and not scared for the first time in his whole life. He heard his mother worry about Mark and his Father console her but he was happy that this person was gone.

The local church was, not really a church thing per se that he had been brought in, more like a hall thing with a whole bunch of people that seemed normal and cool and happy and god-loving. Jonah liked these people, their openness, their honesty, their acceptance of the words he said and the other words they had that added to what he said. He said “yes!,…,yes!” a lot at the end of their sentences, sat listening to the preachers talking about a god they believed in and he cross-referenced what they were saying with all the stuff he had read. It didn’t make sense a lot of the time, sometimes they were talking about things that did not match with what he read written in the bible. A few times he said to them things like “but really do you believe that?” and they always pretty much said ‘yes’ and he quoted other bits; “passages” they corrected him and “um yes” he said and went on and told them the other ‘passages’ and they were solemn faced and said things like “that was the old testament” and “that is not really god” but Jonah knew it was, that was god, that was really god, in the bible and they were talking about the things that sounded good, just good and that was when he didn’t go back anymore[3].

Working was, of course, unreal at all times. No one knew of the soul inside, they were all smiling and busy and talking in words like “fiscal year” and “debt recovery” and “final transaction”. Jonah, surrounded n these concepts and words was sick, at lunch he rode his bike far away from the office where he was working in customer service at age 22 to a lake, on the edge of the lake he would cry, for himself mainly and he felt bad about that and then praying, started crying then for the human faces he saw every day. The sales reps, the older lady desperate to keep her job, the sexual young women smiling and flirting for money, the male managers gross, tucked into their business suits and moving about with papers in their hands, half smiling, going in rooms, small rooms, talking and laughing and not doing anything, just talking and laughing and staying late doing it. Jonah’s life was empty in purpose but he prayed every night for his brother Mark; that he would come back and be redeemed[4].

Uncomfortable place, but of course, they had expected that, Jonah and his girlfriend. Jonah had wanted to impress her by going to what he thought was a fancy restaurant. She said “wow, this is amazing” and they had only sat down and had napkins placed on their laps. Jonah looked at the prices on the menu and felt  a lump in his throat because it was really expensive and it seemed sacrilegious and he didn’t want her to think he was shallow like this, like he bought food so expensively. “You now, this is….this is..”
“I know” she says “this is too much. Let’s just hare an entre and a main, really, it’s ok”
“No, no it’s not the money it’s the…waste…oh, sorry…not a good date thing to say” and he is blushing and shy and trying to laugh and express how he really feels, who his is.
“I agree Jonah, its to much.”
“It’s ….oh god, it’s…”
“Shhhh. It’s ok Jonah, really” and they sit and order one entre and one dish and she orders a glass of wine and he smiles at this and orders a coke.

“What the fuck you been up to?” Mark says, Christmas lunch, getting there late, bringing his wife and three kids in the door while the rest of the extended family are already on the lounges and around the place, on the floor. Mark’s father stands up and says “Mark, don’t you talk like that today” and Mark says “Calm down old man, we’re all adults here and these kids, Christ, they wouldn’t know what the hell is going on anyway, would you, you little cockheads?”. The kids don’t even look at him, everyone else looks at everyone else in some way or another. Jonah gets up and walk over to his brother. “Mark, how are you?”. “Good as shit mate. Fuck look at you, you been working out?” ‘Yeah I have been a bit Mark. Good to see you”. “Shit yeah man you look fucking good. Hey, you met my latest bird? Hey, Stacey, check this shit out, my little bother is cut as fuck…hey Mum, get me a beer, huh”. “Mark, hey, come on now, this is Christmas, you can’t keep going on like that?”. “Huh. Jonah come on, what the fuck are you talking about?” “Mark, come on…there’s kids here, man:”. ‘Kids? Whose kids? Oh shit look at them. Dumb little cunts haha. Fucking cunts haha right?” “Mark!” his mother says, shuts him up. There’re all sort of sit downs in various spaces and getting drinks in their hands, sip them. Jonah looks at Mark like he’s waiting. “You want to say something Jon-ah? Huh?”. “No Mark”.

In ward E4, bed 103 Jonah lies watching TV, has three channels to pick because two stations haven’t signed the proper copyright agreements that allow patients in hospitals to watch TV shows. The ultimate copyright law that comes down to affect people that have absolutely no intention of breaking mere copyright laws. But here in an establishment it applies en masse. Been there two weeks, had his blood cleaned four times, had his head scanned by fMri three times, had his pancreas and a kidney removed, the fucking thing cancer it is, moving around being a prick and taking bits and pieces here and there. Jonah has told his wife to keep the kids way until he is looking better. Jonah’s Dad came by out of nowhere and was crying too much about losing a son before he was dead himself. Jonah couldn’t say anything because that was right. You shouldn’t die before your father. What could he say. Another week, he spoke to his wife on his iPhone she bought him. He mainly payed games on his iPhone really, a good thing to have when you are dying of a cancer doctors can’t find. In the pieces they cutting away, Jonah imagines himself a half human which is living with almost half his organs and big chunks of flesh missing. He imagines a leg or arm or both missing. One morning when he wakes up Mark is there, sitting there reading a newspaper. Jonah closes his eyes and Mark doesn’t see him wake up. He holds his eyes closed for a few minutes, starts counting up from one, gets to two hundred, keeps counting, trying hard to count higher and higher and, even though this is the last days of his life, would rather count up and up the numerical scale rather than talk to Mark. Seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven he gets to.


[1] There is most probably a religious-based reason for this.

[2] Bathwater: yet anther gross term,. Though it shouldn’t be. Some families these days take that water for the garden. How do the children feel after having cleansed themselves in the same water feel about this stuff going out to water the crops they will eventually eat?

[3] He went back a few more times of course, just in case these new amazing loving all good all nice god did exist. It turned out he didn’t and they were all so stupid and simple and amazingly false. They kept asking for money for one thing. Over and over. God…

[4] And he never wanted him to come back. He didn’t want to have to try and help him redeem himself, and he didn’t think it was possible. He hated himself for thinking that. He hated not wanting him back. He had read the prodigal son, didn’t agree with the message, felt bad about this disagreement.

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Shopping Excursion, bus 120.

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I am perhaps forty five or nearly fifty. You know I don’t remember? I know what it is generally but ever since my wife left me about five (eight?) years ago it has never been something I need to keep track of. Funny that. How life is marked by birthdays and father’s days and christmas and children’s birthdays. How they make you acknowledge it, another year, cards that tell you, pictures. I tell you one thing is that in the morning I see a face I know, hair getting wispier and wispier, man, and I smoke cigarettes again, now the god damned bathroom mirror; me and my face, my old whispering hair flying out from my head like a madman. Ha! And that cigarette on my lips man, I feel like a kid again, looking like death though really. God the mornings, the same mornings. Take a shower, iron my clothes, smoke a cigarette, feed the cat, put on my pants and slip my shirt on and do this dip thing to get my shirt into my pants, move around a bit, feeling so alone when I do this though, really, like a dance move, like a little doot da doot to get into my normal attire. Pull the belt closed, adjust the shirt, raise my arms up to pull a bit of the shirt out, look in the mirror to see how its looks and of course it’s the same every time. I fill my pockets up with wallet keys lighter cigarettes handkerchief coins phone and this little piece of coloured paper my daughter made me and she said “dad keep it with you” so I do. Now it’s barely held together, the folds on the corners have been worn away so that when I unfold it there are holes in the places where the corners are but I can still read it and see the picture she drew which, you know, is enough for me. At least for now and for the last three months since I’ve seen her. Yeah I know I know she’ll be around again soon, in a few weeks but man it’s been a while and this little thing, you know, it keeps me going. I know I know. Today, no, recently, though I’ve met this woman and she’s invited me on a shopping junket, it’s on a bus with a whole lot of other people and we’re going to hit all the warehouse sales and factory outlets and stuff for twenty bucks each but really I am going to see her and hang out with her and there’s a lunch in there somewhere so we are going to have lunch at Birkenhead Point which is like a place over the water near Balmain so we are going there with a bunch of her friends to shop and have lunch. It starts at eight am so that’s why, you know, I am getting ready on a Saturday to go out, just get out of my place. I need to put a load of food in my dog’s tray and some in my cat’s tray and put some seed out the back for the birds and half a handful in the dish under my budgie’s tray and there’s enough water there so I can get back later tonight. I’ve been running around so much my emphysema is playing up, man, so I have to stand over the sink and cough cough it out, fuck, breathe in…out…in, you know how it feels? And suck in that air and spit out that lung shit, man, at least I did this before I left and fucking hell why did I run around like that? Stupid really when you’re about to go out on a date, but shit it’s hot out there. I light another cigarette after that because, because, I can do that, I can smoke a cigarette and it helps. Um… that’s what helps because soon I have to walk down to get on the bus. She said eight thirty onParramattaroad. So early! I leave then, closing the door with the click of one lock and then turning the deadlock only my key will close.

Standing on the pavement smoking a cigarette, an old woman who I see almost everyday sitting there. She usually sits as a bus comes, people get in it and it leaves and she sits there. There is no differently destined bus coming, there is no other bus for this stop. I am never sure what she is doing there, perhaps she is hours early for some other pick up and she prefers waiting. Or worse perhaps she has nowhere to go and she sits there, sits there watching the cars and buses whiz by. It’s not a glamorous or lovely piece of road, this bus stop. It is very bad, very polluted, un-picturesque. Still, her in her make up, with her bag, newish clothes, she is there waiting every morning. The bus coming showing it’s purpose not so openly, so partially in fact that even Roe (that’s her name) stands up and take  few feeble steps forward towards the edge of the bus shelter.
“Are you going on the shopping trip?” I ask, normally, bending over to appear polite.
“Huh? No no no. I’m off to the city”
“Ok well, this is the shopping bus. We’re…never mind. Not your bus ok?”
“uh, ok” she says, slinking off in a shuffling side step, pulling her dress and bags closer together to get away from me. I step away from her and up the stairs onto the coach, the cold air conditioning immediately confronting. I scan the faces, half faces, people behind their seat and see the half-head of Justine I have known for the last few months. I walk down the aisle as the bus hisses the door closes, lifts and groans off along Parramattaroad. It helps me move down the aisle closer to Justine. “Wow you made it” she says, smiling at me and then to the woman sitting beside her. I feel young straight away, these woman are fat and wearing casual thin cotton clothes, comfort wear, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-how-I-look wear. Justine too, a thin t-shirt with way too obvious underneath brazier. I am overdressed, shirt and pants, but, it seems they like this, they are all smiling, bad yellow teeth, big cheap prescription glasses, no make up, no pizzazz, just showered fat eternal housewife women wearing the most comfortable clothes they have. “Yep here I am. Good to see you Justine.” She gestures for me to sit down opposite her in the aisle. It means squeezing in next to some other woman who is staring out the window and already clutching a plastic bag full of clothes. She shifts her bag over and continues looking out the window. Justine lets me in with “that’s Margret, she just spent fifty dollars on bras, we were just at the Berlei factory this morning”. “Oh ok” I say, not sure how this makes her rudeness acceptable. “Thanks for coming” she says, leaning over and touching my hand. “No, I look forward to it. There’s men’s stuff coming up right? Not just bags of bras…” and she laughs and we sit there as the bus moves on and on. She talks to her friend and the woman next to me looks out her window.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the third stop on our shopping excursion today, the Slazenger, Bonds andRiofactory outlet, in Sydenham. I’ve got you down for a thirty five minutes stop over so please, if you could alight I’ll be moving on in approximately forty minutes to the next stop in Alexandria. Don’t spend too much ladies it’s along day ahead, alright?”. They all stand up, I get up early to help Justine, she hasn’t bought anything yet so she is ok and turns back to her friends to say something and they laugh. Instantly I regret coming along. I walk slowly down the aisle with the rest of them, all talking and chattering and telling about what they want to buy and for whom. It’s as if their life has no other purpose than to feed and clothe those they are now obliged to care about and me, being basically alone except for seeing my daughter once or twice a month, am some kind of playboy spendthrift tight-ass weirdo (if that make sense) for tagging along or even being here. “Justine” I say, outside of the bus now, waiting for them all to get each other down I think of course that I should be doing that but the driver is and so it must be a part of his day to day, this bus driving shopping trip type of thing; paid for it. “Justine” I say again for no reason, looking about at the twenty or so women mingling around waiting to go in to the outlet. “Go in ladies!” I say, like herding sheep really. The driver says “this is it” and that seems to be enough to get them moving, all wearing individual name tag lanyards written in blue marker. Why would they need to know each others’ names? Inside, the all disperse in their familiar friend groups or two or threes, sizing up clothes, telling stories about who would suit certain things, barely shopping for themselves, instead clothing unknown families and nephews and nieces, each time its another story about who needs what more and how they should’ve talked to so and so to get some clothes hand-me-down but really they do need new ‘x’ or whatever thing they are holding to tell the story in the first place. The sales people are sitting there behind the counter talking too, not caring, this may be the second or third bus of a day of multiple buses they’ll have to process. I wander around, look at the measly men’s section, find a few t-shirts that I may want, decide I don’t need, look over to see Justine talking loudly and laughing with her friends in the bra section. Best to not go over there. Not into the bra and panties section just yet. What am I going to say, that I like something? I’d like her naked, that’s what I can say. That I haven’t seen a woman naked in five years? Hat they don’t want to hear. I am alone, down the aisles, at the end of the rows of men’s is the kids section. I turn away, look back at the reams of men underwear and t-shirts and sports wear. Justine appears and pits her hand on my shoulder with “anything you like?”.
“Uh, no, not really, yet…” and we walk into the kids section, she slips her hand in mine.
“Wow look at this” I say, pulling a small one-piece bodice from the shelf “do you remember?” I ask, holding the small thirty centimetre top to toe thing in on the coat hanger. “What? Do I remember having kids…Ron of course I do” “Yeah, remember how little they were” and I am smiling, probably too much. Justine turns and pulls an even smaller pair or socks from the rack “oooohh those feet, those tiny feet!” “Yeah…wow” and I bring another small piece over with me and we compare sizes, touching the places where our little children’s feet and hands would’ve gone, remembering together what it feels like when they are like that, those little things that we had once. “You know my daughter, she’s, well she’s fourteen now and, I’m going to take her to the gold coast in a few months…she, she wants to go with me. Just her and me. A holiday together after, ha well…it’s going to be great”. “That’s great Ron really, really great for you” “Yeah, I know…and…what I mean is that, it would be ok, I mean, realty great as well if you wanted to come as well, and, you could bring Jeremy too, I mean, they are about the same age and they could, you know, go and have fun and we could just, well, have a holiday and…I don’t know… I was just thinking about it that’s all”. “Ron! Really?! Oh wow, I mean, no really that would be great it’s just that, um, it’s…it’s not that easy to just say ‘ok, I’ll go toQueensland’ or wherever it is, you know. But hey, hey, look at me. Ron, I am going to say yes to you, okay? I am going to say I want to do that with you, ok? So, yes! That would be wonderful!” “Wow ok, really? Wow! OK, um, guess what…I’m going to go and book all that now ok? You don’t have to worry about anything. Consider it booked. Ha-ha! No, seriously, tell me if you don’t want to though ok? But cool. Hey, I’m glad I came on this shopping thing!”

It’s different back on the bus, sitting next to Justine, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, listening to all the other women talking and talking and mentioning name after name of their cousins and children and their children’s friends and children of children…it all fades away into a blur of names and crap and repetitive wishes for marriage. I lean over to Justine and kiss her on the cheek, she turns back smiling and says “what was that for” and I say “nothing” and she smiles, goes back to looking out the window, still has her hand in mine. She is so beautiful, a lost mother broken by her man. I am getting older and have the same problem. We can talk about that but not on this bus. This bus is taking us to three more places where we will all get off and go on shopping and talking and breathing and eating. A bus full of pigs getting pointed at troughs. I don’t tell Justine that, I just get off each stop, smoke a cigarette, find a coffee and go to the toilet. We do this over and over, at least three more times. Later on, after all this in and out and shopping, the bus drops me off near me home, I tell Justine I’ll call her, tell her I’ll see her and her son for lunch like I promised. She smiles, kisses me and says “You should have bought something you tight ass” and I say something bad about spending it on her or similar and slink off the bus, light a cigarette and walk away, hoping that feeling last as long as possible.

I finish a bottle of wine, open another one, drink a new glass. It’s late, I know, I have to work in the morning, Christ why do I do it like this. The day was so lovely. Justine, so lovely, her hair, her face. She actually wants to see me, she wants to go to diner with me and my daughter and her son. Man can you imagine that? I light another cigarette, blow it out in to roof, watch the light swing a little bit under the breathe of the smoke. My daughter isn’t here. I am here. Justine isn’t here, her son is tucked up in bed in her house. She got the house, of course. Like my ex-wife the bitch got the god damned fucking house. And here I sit, dreaming of Justine, in her house, probably fucked some other guy over to get that fucking place, right? Fucking hell man. I pour the rest of the bottle into my glass, it gets almost near the top. Good. Good! Fucking hell man here I am right, no daughter anymore, my beautiful girl, no woman, she’s off in her house she raped from some man. No nobody. Just me and my day and my drink and cigarettes. Oh god damn. I light a cigarette and do the thing I hate. I call her:
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring reing
“Yello?”
“Kate? It’s your dad”
“Dad! Jesus how are you?”
“Kate, come on, Kate. You know how I am”
“What? Dad…are you drunk?”
“Drunk? No. Me? Your dad? Come on….”
“Yeah right, so, you are just, calling me at, what, one in the morning for no reason right”
“No reason! No really Kate, really, the reason is, that, I wanted to invite you for lunch….yes…with my new girlfriend…”
“Really? Wow cool dad, well, yeah sure I’ll go to lunch….you’re paying right,….hahahaa”
“Of course I’m paying what did I say? Lunch, with you and me and my new girlfriend”
“OK dad sure whatever you say. You tell me where to be ok? Love you Dad”
“Yeah ok…love you too darling”

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Modern Couple

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She bumps her can of coke into the back of a thin guy getting on to the train. Pushing against the people who are dressed and smell like they are ready to work eight hours, her and him, they don’t look like they are plausibly together, perhaps they think it too but there they are stuck together like that. Bound by an unseen thing, dependencies, clutching at each other for the very simple things that are needs. Is this so different from a successful neat clean union, is this more romantic, is this base need a proper strange strong reason to keep entwined? They smell like cigarettes already, wet clothes and stale cigarettes, the smell of old clothes that already smell like cigarettes and that usual smell of people who just have to smoke the cigarette right down to the butt seconds before getting on pubic transport. The threat of being imprisoned within public transport with its smoking restrictions is so hard to bear that in the outside world they must take every last type of freedom left and get that detested illegal cigarette in and out. When you have nothing these simple freedoms become everything. Your rights, your ability to choose, do what thou whilst. They sit there, staring, just staring at nothing and no one, open mouths. They have a backpack they seem to depend on. The guy goes straight to opening it and pulling out a jumper and reshuffling the contents and says something she doesn’t hear and she says “what” loudly, too loudly, open mouth and leans in and he says it right into her ear and she responds loudly again and he says something else right into her ear and goes back to the back. She says “yeah but that because we needed two fives remember that was the ten we had” and he ignores her and she says “remember?” then goes back to staring at nothing, mouth open. They are on a journey, they are starting a journey, they are together and going somewhere, he is still trying to be a man in control, panicked like a man on a mission, with tasks and responsibilities, she is trying to be damsel in distress with the crutch of a good man. They are lost souls struggling to regain the sentiment of the classic male female role of safety and purpose and life.

Two hours ago they woke up next to each other on a mattress in a corner of a room with two other mattresses one empty, the other with a half naked thin man covered in contusions with shoes on and a bunch of clothes next to his bed. They woke up again at the same time and looked at each other sober and waking up, the pains coming on straight away, the reality of their day flooding back. The child-like innocence of waking lasting only twenty seconds. Get up get dressed get out get money get back to Tom get some H. Get up first. He says something to her this morning that is new, not that he hasn’t said that type of thing every morning, or that she has cried at night saying the same thing but this morning he says it differently, he says “no more” and that’s all he says and he says something else “get dressed we are done. You know. We are done. Ok. Let’s get the fuck out of here” and she may be smiling but she doesn’t know because it hurts in her gut in her arms in her bones in her veins and her head and she may be smiling but she says ‘ok’ but she says it like a scream, like “yes!” but she can’t say that word. He is on his hands and knees pulling things from the floor into a backpack and she is trying to get her clothes on and the thin man with bruises doesn’t move. He goes over to the pile next to the half naked not moving bruised man and goes through his stuff and it is nothing but clothes and underwear and pieces of paper and nothing. “Fuck” he says for no reason or mainly because there is no money there and she is dressed now in jeans and a hoodie and sneakers with no socks and she is smoking half a cigarette she found there next to the bed. That’s all they do they have that and they walk down the stairs and out into the street and it’s daylight, around six in the morning and there are people and life and they are sick and in pain. They stand there a minute and he takes the cigarette from her and takes the last few drags. “Let’s go upstairs” he says and they do go back upstairs and sit back on the mattress. “Ok, let’s do this one last hit and we’ll go ok?” and she has heard it before but she doesn’t hear the promise of the plan, she just wants that shot now in the morning, the fact that they have something to shoot makes her fall in love with this guy straight away, just like that, this man who can manage things like two people. He pours the rest of the H into a blackened spoon (next to the mattress), puts a drop of water from a nearby bottle in and heats it up, drops a small piece of filter from a cigarette in, draws it all up into a fix and gets it ready. She holds his arm tight and he pumps his fist, pricks in the needle and starts injecting the light brown liquid. “Hey hey hey, stop” she says. He does and pulls it out, says “quick” and holds her bicep with his hand, “quick” he says again. She pumps her first twice and pricks the needle in “oh baby yess…come on” and she pulls the plunger back, the flash of blood, pushes it all the way in fast. “Damn baby you’re….haaaa…” and they relax and let it work in their body, no more headache.

They wake up too fast. It’s not enough, or not good enough. It’s all they have and it will do for now. He gets up slowly and kicks her and she rolls over and he says “get up lets go” and she does, after a while, after a few minutes after saying incoherent things and saying she wants a cigarette and a coke and he says  “I’ll get you a coke”. Back down the stairs again, a backpack, a cigarette lit, in the street, maybe seven am this time, same types of people, less pain, more people. They are walking, trudging really, sliding their feet together, holding onto one another. Walking it’s called. Walking. “Hey, hold this” he says, giving her the bag. “Where you going?” she yells too loudly, he swings around and says shhhh also too loudly. People look and keep moving, used to it, seen it or even them before. Same two, in the morning, will they ask me for money again? She sits down on the street, opens the bag and gets the cigarettes out, lights one, picks at her face and the black stuff under her nails. Spits. Feels bad about it, feels like she should be in a hole. Feels safe in the hole, starts dreaming about being away in a hole and alone, feels her eyes shutting and her body falling back, resting on the stone wall behind her, a shop front. She open her eyes to hear him yelling and pulling her arm, pulling her onto her feet and swinging the backpack over his shoulder. “Lets go Christ come on man lets get the fuck to the station we gotta go” “huh?” “come on babe I just got money from that newsagent there come on we gotta go come on” and they are running sort of now, he has his arm under her and he is like a hero with his heroine, running and bumping through the people and getting them out of there, getting them away from the police sounds and the yelling and that bad feeling inside. Getting them down the stairs to the train station, being proper and buying tickets, real full priced tickets, getting her under his arm again and down to the train. Standing there and giving her another cigarette and lighting one for each. Smoking and watching and holding each other up and he is telling her to be quiet and all the other people, moral people, working people are looking at them and he is resisting the urge to yell at them like he normally would because his heart is beating fast and she is staring at the train tracks.

No one is following, no one is calling out to stop them. He has about eight hundred bucks in his pocket, a backpack full of clothes, half a packet of cigarettes, no more H and a girl he needs to take care of. He leaves here there and buys two cans of coke from the machine. He opens one for her and she takes it and drinks. They both do. Breakfast. He lets himself breath and relax, drinks a lot more. The train comes at last. The longest two minutes. She has forgotten what she is doing, she has started to think about getting the next fix. She is staring at nothing. He is starting to think about the next fix. Where the hell can you get it from? Immediately the list of places comes in his mind. He wants to kill those places, kill that knowledge. She looks at him and the train pulls up and the workers gather closer to the doors getting their position. The workers pile in, they finish their cigarettes and flick them in between the train carriage onto the tracks, pushing in against the other passengers and make their way downstairs. They sit for a moment not doing anything. The train tries to take them away.

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Adam and Eve (no escape)

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The snake curled it’s tail in a way that it flicked just the tip on her clit and she felt that laser shoot up inside her a little bit and she squirmed back away from it and the snake curled up into a ring and, sleeping, let the sun bathe on its skin. She closed her eyes and laid back, wanting to sleep or just at least dazed off and let her hand come down and gently touch on the hood of the clit and move over the soft flesh there up and down and it felt good and pure and the sun was just like a soft warm blanket that meant she could feel happy there. God killed a lamb and it was horrific, it was screaming and half dead and it’s stomach was open and her and the snake stood up and looked at that fluffy body writhing and crying and they had never seen that before and it wasn’t horrific because they hadn’t seen it before and it was just strange and confusing. The young naked man came back then at this time to see it all and saw the snake and stepped on the snake’s back and the snake flipped around and curled up and extended and bit the man on the leg but the man just watched it happen and looked over at the half-blood half-white wool mess that God had made and pressed down harder on the snake’s back, raising his other foot and really pushing down in a  half jumping way on the snake until the snake stopped squirming and the lamb was still and not crying and the woman looked up at the man and saw him changed, different, but the man was as blank as ever, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

In the afternoon he sat in the office kitchen, drinking his coffee, eating a biscuit and she comes in and she is wearing a tight skirt and an even tighter blouse, makes a green tea and looks over at him. He watches her eat the biscuit, watched her lipsticked lips close over the cookie and all but suck off the edge of the biscuit she takes into her mouth and then her closed small lips moving up and down slightly as her small teeth chew the small piece of hard biscuit she’s managed to pry of with those succulent, decorated lips. She almost looks over and he averts his eyes back to the table, finds a magazine there and pulls it closer, flicks it open and almost as quickly looks back at her body, the outline of her figure simplistically available, imagining her naked isn’t hard, her ass and legs, her waist, her breasts and neck and face all stand there and he looks back to the page again, mainly looking at words and reading them over and over. She finishing dipping the tea bag in the hot water, takes it and drops the finished tea bag in the bin, then a smile at him and leaves. He sips his coffee, tastes bad, looks back at the page, reads that line, over and over.

She was washing away the blood between her legs, she hadn’t ever had this happen before and she thought she was dying. For three days she washed away the blood, in the stream and each time he came close she told him to go away. She lay on the grass beside the stream and waiting for more blood to come, closing her eyes and listening to the water to soothe her mind. On the fifth day the blood stopped, she finished washing herself and cried out to God to save her life. God said that now that you have had the pleasure of the flesh, you will now know the changing of the season, and every month you will know this, like the changing of the seasons, you are now unto the Earth. She was happy because she felt closer to the world she loved, the dirt the grass the sun and the animals, she collapsed sighing and feeling all of nature now inside her and without. God became furious, and so condemned her to feel an unnatural pain in childbirth.

Her father comes home, closes the door, hasn’t seen them all sitting there together on the lounge room floor yet, her and her sisters and her mother, playing a card game and they were laughing and playing. They all watch him walk over to the table they have near the door and empty his pockets like he does every night and the mother says “your turn” to her little sister and they all look back at the game and are aware that they are pretending now, not playing like they were but playing now as an exhibition, as a way of telling the father that they are happy and have a life too. He walks over and kisses the mother and they all savour that smell, the smell of their father coming home, like wood and smoke and old clothes, sweat they don’t know about yet but it is his sweat and the three beers he had after work with his co-workers. They try not to stare too long at him kiss their mother’s cheek but they love seeing it and he smiles at them and silently disappears into the kitchen and the younger one throws down a card that matches the one underneath and the mother looks back from her husband and says “Snap!”.

In the beginning Lucifer Morning Star was the first Angel, with the unwitting power of a true God, and as such the ever loving God who created him became scared of his creation and cast him down to the world of the mortals and so then Lucifer taught the mortals fire, life, love and companionship and told them that one day they would be like God himself and when he was finished instructing them God in his anger made Lucifer King of Hell where he was told to punish all those who did not heed The Word and when hell was overwhelmed God came down himself in the flesh of a man named Yeshua and felt the painful sting of humanity and hence forth changed what it was to be saved or condemned and so Lucifer, now righteous, holds his place by Gods side as a saviour of human souls.

Around the table in this meeting we talked about how having these poor sales performance figures was most likely related to how our sales people were getting old and they kept having things happen to them like heart attacks or hip replacements or sick children and how we could directly see their ailments reflected in our figures and we decided really quickly that we needed newer younger sales people and we discussed how that having the younger ones coming in would yeah sure take them a while to catch up to the expertise and capability of the older ones that in the ling run we would as a company be better off by having these fumbling, learning, need-to-be-hand-held new ones come on would actually in the long run be way better to the bottom line because, hell, surely these older ones would get worse and worse, right, I mean, this is symptomatic of having an ageing sales team, I mean like what’s next, you know: cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver failure, you know, what else kinds of old age stuff would we have to deal with, I mean, they need to use a computer at least and Christ like osteoporosis would mean soon we’d need to give them , what, aides and things to help them do their job and we’re not a charity I mean we need to let them go right? A young bright executive discovered a good way we could legally pay them out.

Adam was so in love that he cut off all his hair and, crying, told God that he hated him and thought he was an insane lunatic who didn’t care for anything other than to be blindly worshipped. God asked Adam where he got his ideas from and Adam said “from you, you heartless monster!”. God knew it was the snake who had filled his mind with sick thoughts and so madeEdena horrible place to live which of course only made Adam hate him even more. God was confused and asked Adam after a thousand years why he did not hate the snake instead and Adam replied “what snake?” and God told him the story and Adam knew then it was hopeless: God created the snake.

He had her head in his hands, lying on top of her with both his hands under her head and she was crying and they hadn’t finished making love and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said nothing in that half true way women say it and she had her eyes shut tight from the crying and he let his penis slip out of her, losing the erection anyway. He stayed there like that holding her and kissing her cheek, feeling with his lips how hot her cheeks were and looking at her clenched eyes. He started massaging her hair and kissing her cheeks more but she shook her head to brush him off so he moves off her and lays beside her, both naked and she rolled into a ball and cried harder and harder. “What’s wrong?” he asked but she didn’t say anything, just lay there sobbing. He stood up and put his pants back on, walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed wrong, not his. He wondered if he had raped that girl or did something wrong. He smiled at himself in the mirror, just to see if his own face was still there. He washed his hands and went back into the room. She had a blanket pulled over her and wasn’t moving.

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We had a child

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We had a child
That died
But that was so long ago
It now feels like
We had a life
That will never exist.
“Why don’t we have another baby?”
“Because you are so upset.”
“I think I am ready.”
“But you will always have lost a child
Forever
And the personality,
Our hope for this child,
Will be always
An imagination.”

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There is only a viscousness left

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I had her by the cunt you could say because we didn’t fuck anymore but she wouldn’t leave me because I got the money, I went out at 8 ah em and I came back there 7 pee em and that suited her just fine. I come home to her half pissed, half naked in clothes as impossible as that sounds:

“Did you leave the house today” I yell, first thing, spitting.

“No I didn’t fucking leave the house why the fuck would I leave the house, nothing out there nothing in her it’s all shit”

“You wouldn’t leave the house because where the fuck would you go. There is no place for you to go. Where you gonna go?”

“I’m not going anywhere. You get some smokes?”

And I did and I throw them at her and I take a cigarette from my own pack and we are in the place we live moving around smoking and not talking. I get a beer from the fridge, the last one and I open it a drink half of it and I open the fridge looking for another one that isn’t there.

“You can’t keep some fucking beer in here at least!” I yell across our home.

“What?” she yells back.

I walk back into the room, she is exhaling a plume into the open space.

“You are fucking useless”

“And who the fuck are you, huh? You walk in, throw my some cigarettes at me, now you’re gonna call me a piece of shit. Go get your own fucking beer you piece of shit”

“And what the fuck have you been drinking huh? You’re pissed already”

“Yeah well I’ve been drinking with Tommy today”

“Tommy is another fucking loser. You fuckers know how to get your hands on alcohol, right. You know what? Fuck this. Get the fuck out of there. Get your skanky ass clothes, shove them in a bunch of plastic bags and fuck off!”

“Yeah? Yeah? You want me to go? I will go if you want me to go”

“Get the fuck out!”

 

x                              x                              x

 

He was trying to get some work done after work, you know, real work. The stuff that keeps him going; to know He is still a person who has something beautiful to give that’s not bought and paid for by a bunch of moronic assholes (etc etc). Staring at the computer screen and the keyboard, screaming at him to create, make something, do something. The fucking world wide web has all of this shit on there come on and add to it. And then he added to it and it’s just some more shit into the pool.

 

x                              x                              x

 

There is no advertisement that can persuade you to purchase anything anymore. They all have the evil stink of self-interest. Worse; the advertising industry know this and have employed teams to get you to recommend products to your real-true-friends so that they buy what you have been convinced (by some means) to buy already. The fact that you genuinely tell someone about a product or service these days has been carefully calculated by ad agencies so that you are equipped to deliver the one line benefits straight to your nearest and dearest so that they too become purchasers (read: lifelong customers) of a particular brand or product (synonymous).

 

x                              x                              x

 

“Ah fuck you know I’m sixty now, sixty! and you know what I did love this girl, this one girl and she married my best friend, you know, what forty, fuck, forty years ago and, christ I was their first born’s godfather. And I still loved her. And I went there and did the thing in the church and I helped them paint their first house and still, still I loved her and I just wanted to be near her so I said ‘yes’ to being their kids godfather and I bought him presents and I was there on his birthdays and, and when he was a child they put him to bed so we stayed up drinking and it was always so close, the more I got drunk, so close to me telling her I loved her but that husband, my best friend, was there and it was so strange because I loved them both and I didn’t know how to say it and after more drinks it went away and it came to that thing again where I just talked about my life and how shit it was and they laughed because it was funny, really, and I made it all a joke but what I was really saying was how bad my life is because I was in love with a woman who was married and had kids and how fucking strange it is that I am one of those kids’ godfather, I mean go damn what the fuck happened to my life that this kind of shit would happen?”

 

x                              x                              x

 

I shouldn’t have given her my number, fuck, so I hang the phone up thinking thank fuck I have a phone you can hang up hard a proper with a handle not just a button. It rings again, so lovely to know someone wants you, or wants to tell you something that they have burning in their belly. I do it, I do, I pick it up.

“Fuck you don’t you fucking hang up on me”

“Sorry, ok? Sorry. But man you were talking all kings of made up imaginary bullshit there”

“What?! Yeah because you’ve worked it all out right, you already now what I’m gong to say”

“No, no I don’t but guess what I can probably work out why you’re bothering to say it”

“Oh fuck you”

“And, so, what’s up then? Hm?”

“I can’t event talk to you anymore”

“Really…really? And here we are on the phone. You know what I’m doing? Hm? I’m staring at a plain white wall, a cigarette in hand waiting to go outside and smoke it. That’s all. That’s what I can see and feel and I have a voice, you, on this thing. Okay? Too literal?”

“Christ you’re annoying”

“And you still aren’t saying anything interesting”

“I…I don’t want to see you this weekend. And…” long pause, me sitting there staring, holding back the urge to say anything, impatient, sure, “and I don’t want….this, anymore, this, thing we do, over the phone, this bullshit, text and call and…” and she exhales in an ‘urgh’ like that

“I get it ok, I get it. Guess what? That’s why we don’t talk. What are you bothering for?”

“Goodnight then”

“Okay”

And I hang up and get to feel horrible and cruel for the rest of the evening.

 

x                              x                              x

 

We, I, well we, I mean. Okay. It was one in the night and there was only that orange light that the council set up two weeks ago to stop all those junkies breaking into cars but what it did was give them all night to work and bathe our apartment in a sick glow that made us mad and crazy and awake too long. The baby was crying. We had a baby, we did that. We had a baby and it was weird. We didn’t really want a baby but we wanted a kid and we talked about how good it would be to have a good one, like, have a good kid that would grow up and be better than what we were and could be the best person ever and we talked about it and talked about what type and all of that and started having sex where I’d have to come inside of her to make a kid. It was funny because I’d say “what if I didn’t like it” or she’d say “what if it didn’t like us” and in these ways we’d laugh but now she was full of the thing and it was six months going and you could see it kicking and see its footprints pushing against her stomach skin and it’s like ‘whoa’ and I go back to my job and miss all those things and come home and want to watch TV but she wants a back rub and holy fuck of course there’s a thing inside you. I need to stop talking about it sooner or later. Can I skip ahead? We had the baby out of her and into our life and we did so well for so long, I mean we had a room next to ours, fuck the ‘lounge room” we never had a lounge anyway.

 

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Reunion Voices Sing

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I can tell you that I didn’t ever think I’d see her again and if I did I would have to talk to her instantly, away, by ourselves and tell her who I am and how sorry I am for what I did even though it wasn’t so bad and evil and all of that but still so wrong and stupid and that I know it now and that I am so very sorry and I would want her to talk, say whatever, say everything she thinks. I mean, Christ I have no idea who she is now or what she’d say or anything or even if she thinks the same or even needs me to say all of it out loud like I want to but as soon as I saw her, dressed in a nice proper dress and with her combed back and held back hair, walking into that room with a man on her arm I can tell you all of that and more came straight though me and I was transfixed and heard someone talking to me right next to me and that was the only thing that snapped my out of it and I answered and slurped down some beer and looked back at her but she was talking to someone and I thought “later”.

 

Look if I tell you now it’s going to sound…no, really, I wasn’t there for the high school reunion, and, as bullshity and improbable as it sounds YES I was there seeing a friend, yes also from high school, but it was coincidentally the time when he was moving interstate ok? So we had lunch and oh god what a bunch of unknown weirdos were congregated there that I had to sit near and because I was late I was at the crap ass end of the table where all the loser people who got pity invites were sat so I knew I was in for a bad hour or so but luckily being late meant lunch stuff was over and these morons where leaving. I only had to endure a few conversations like “what do you do” and I lied and they told me what they did and I said “that must be so boring” and like that until me and my friend and his now ex-girlfriend (thank god) were alone-ish to do the goodbye stuff you do but the real story lies ahead in that I was the same damn town that my high school reunion was in and for fucks sake the same old people I went to school with filed into the pub I was meeting my friend at so there we all were, me from the city back where I grew up and all of them touching me and drinking and being friendly so yeah sure I got caught up in it and yeah sure so I agreed to follow them down the road to the reunion.

 

High school reunions have all those people who come from your misty history and have maybe appeared as weird representations in your dreams where you forgot a whole bunch of information and you thought “I should have prepared, god damn it!” but of course you wake up and think fuck that I am glad I am not there anymore. That’s a reunion, being awake inside a dream and seeing pretty much the worst apparitions or reflections of your past because they are real and more horrific than you could have imagined. I walk around in the fog and every person I bump into has a big smile and so do I I feel and we say three lines and each one I can feel makes me seem so callous and theirs are so honest as if they are real people who actually live lives and believe the things they say. It happens so often that I end up sitting with those I have known for long time/were friends with in high school and they say “what’s wrong” and I answer “what the fuck is going on” and we laugh together.

It’s bad, straight away it’s bad, I mean the venue is bad to begin with, as if the pensioners have left because bingo is finished and there’s one middle aged woman behind the bar not knowing what the fuck is going on because there are people there after seven pee em and we want drinks. Oh god do we want drinks and after I’ve had maybe five glasses of wine she shows up. Oh man fuck I say in my head and I knew her and I can see what she looks like now and I think oh fuck that better not be my fault. She walks over and we see each other but she is hugged by some massively overweight ‘friend’ who I sort of remember but I guess they know each other since those days and I finish my drink and finish talking to this muscle bound moron who I used to know was ridiculed by everyone for being basically feeble and ugly so he pretty much found hid place bulking up and joining the army and I can only say over and over “you’re fucking HUGE” to my detriment.

 

She comes and sits with us because we are from the same clique, that’s how we met and in the most natural of implanted-in-our-psyche way we end up sitting next to each other, not listening to anyone else and talking. It is so lovely and we are smiling and it is as if the decade meant nothing. She had three kids and I have none. This doesn’t matter, I touch her knee and tell her she is so thin (we used to like being incredibly thin) and she says my face is chubby and I say ‘hey, I am healthy…fat and happy!’ but she reassures me in her way that I am not chubby and we laugh at ourselves now and how we used to be so incredibly insensitive to fat people. And we look over together at a fat woman we went to school with grotesquely kissing a much older beared male she brought with her and we screw up our faces and like “ewww gross” or similar and laugh and I light a cigarette and when she says ‘oh you still smoke’ I feel stupid. I try to make her see me as independent (i.e. different to her) so I say “Yeah” casually, blow out smoke and take another sip of wine.

 

Making my way though the idiots, trying to reminisce over things I could hardly care about anymore and some are really trying to sell me the idea of moving back and I can only say “Back? Doesn’t that sound bad to you? ‘Back’?” but they laugh because I have always been strange to them. I am next to her and she eventually finishes up the jargon to some other stranger and I say “Hey” and she says “Wow, you’re here. I didn’t think you’d come” “Why? Because I’ve always said reunions are stupid and weird and that I’d never come to my own?” “Well pretty much and also because why would you bother?” “Well that’s pretty complimentary, I mean, thinking I’d have way better things to do or even that I would b so occupied with my life that I wouldn’t even know about it or something” and she laughs dismissively remembering she knows what I’m like and all that so it goes on. I tell her I think about her every day and I can tell my her reaction that I need to finish off the sentiment by telling her “no not like that I mean you come up, you pass through, you are a thing that happens and, here’s the funny thing, as soon as you pop in I am forced to think of all the others, so funny, like a conga line, ha ha…her and then her and her, you know…it’s funny”.

 

It’s a weird moment, the end. We’re all getting up, finished reminiscing, finished watching and looking one another over. I am just looking at her. To girl I first loved. She is looking at me and we are smiling. I tell her I want to talk to her again and she promises me we will. I get an email address and I giver her my mobile phone number. It’s so terrible because we both know I will never write and she will never call. She has her family and her life and I have so much to write. I compose hundreds of emails every day, but to write her is something different. In the age of paperless transmissions, where we can communicate every five minutes or less, still there is something powerful in writing to someone who you used to love, and have seen them again, and have had that ting again where you remember what you had, and the beauty in knowing that you had to exchange something in order to let yourself go again, this time to a fate much different when you stupidly broke up over childish reasons twelve years before.

 

I get four more glasses of wine from the bar because I don’t want to go back there and I am sitting with them in front of me and she takes one and says “thanks” and I say “they’re all yours…”. She drinks half the glass down and says “Don’t worry. It’s ok.” “What?” “What you did to me” “Christ fuck, yes I know. That’s just so, oh man so fucking gross you know, I don’t mean you I mean me like, what the fuck kind of asshole juvenile dick was I?…thank you, thank you though for understanding…Christ I mean what has it been like, twelve years? Oh god its so,…I think about it every day. Really…every…day. I can’t even kiss a woman without thinking about it. And I wasn’t even drunk or anything!” “Okay okay calm down, geez. You’re acting all crazy” “Yeah? Ffff God okay I’m sorry. I guess, I’ve just been thinking about it, you know, in isolation, like, just my ideas and stuff. Can I say…I am so sorry for that, I mean, it was stupid and weird and wrong and…” “I get it, okay?…I was there you know, I was…pffft well, we were kids right, stupid little kids. I know, no.. I mean, I’ve been with a bunch of guys and you know, it’s always fucking weird, you know? It’s a fucking rape game this sex shit I tell you” and we laugh and chink glasses (plastic cups at this shit place) and we are smiling so it’s all good and I just needed to day it all out loud to her and it fades away; this sick feelings I’ve had.

 

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MENTAL HYPERTENSION, AGAIN, IN WHICH SOME THINGS FALL APART BUT YOU REMEMBER, THEY ARE APART

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If she said anything, I know it would be a whole bunch of things that I’d have to respond to in more and more intricate ways, things I’d have to remember and recall not only during my long winded explanation and examination but much later, as in, two or three weeks later when this type of yell/fight/conversation thing whatever it’s called comes back again. She’d say “you said this ‘line’” like its an affidavit and I’d have to again go into the intricate reasons and realities to justify a single line out of context for a moment, so I am careful now[1]. I asked her ‘do you want me to be careful from now on, like, do you want me to only deliver fully fledged finished complete sentences you can use tat have been so thought out and carefully matriculated so as to be all encompassing and so finished that really there is no room for argument and are intelligently thought out to a degree that even my momentary feelings have been packaged and presented in such as way that can be taken and processed with minimal if no rebuttal/confusion/refutation/confusion?”[2].

 

I didn’t say any of that, I thought that after saying these really horrible ridiculous things. Like how ‘I need to keep drinking in order to deal with this world’ OR ‘How terrible it is to live though all this shit and not drink a lot of wine very day’ OR ‘How I can’t possibly live with all these humans doing all the disgusting slash beautiful things that they do and NOT have a bottle of wine every night to handle it all’[3]. That’s, in the end, what she hates: The Bottle of Wine. I switched to a cask and that helped (because there were less empty glass bottles left over and it was harder for her to count). I can keep talking until the cows come home about how important it is for me to drink wine every night and I am hard pressed to get any resolution or intervention from this. The only way out is to be loved and supported and feel safe, that my world is crumbling and that people are useless and stupid and that I am dying in vain and that I have a future in which I am alone[4]… Ironically it seems that this low level drinking thing could cause the latter lonely life yet I have no evidence from the rest of the writing world to substantiate this analogy, only the tale of morons who had nothing to contribute in the first place[5]. Sorry for the arrogance, but…[6]

 

I forgive myself every morning, only when dressed of course. In the mirror I see a person I am becoming and it’s refreshing, better and better, not worse and worse as before (although to be honest in some sick world ‘worse and worse’ was also doing so damned well as well…). Dying is not scary, dying is in some ways honest and proper. I’m not scared of dying, sickness yes, it sucks but dying itself is somehow loving and proper. Inevitable. Now for me its dying in the most humane way and with a certain level of accomplishment. That’s all it is…if I can touch a large population with the things I know and feel and have seen then guess what? Bye Bye. Lovely and finished and done. I will be heartbroken to see her go but I will know that my love is real and true and even though I have said so many bad things and been so horribly manipulative and false and leading a multi-faceted more than double life, I will know deep down that I gave what I could, now, knowing all I do. We’re worms[7].

[1] The delicate word play and emotional management, we think, is so important when in reality, truthful emotional response to every and any thing is the most desired, true and cared for result. We don’t do this often enough…we want the other person to smile and then as a result we can smile again as well like we have achieved something, like we have made the world better but what have we done rally but continue pretending, behind our own backs this time. As if sweeping emotion under the rug is the cure for cancer.

[2] Disgusting, but, if you can do this well (to your soul’s detriment) then there will be no more nights like this, but of course, then you will be watching a movie with actors and you are a director or at least the lead actor with a his or hers trailer.

[3] Lies, falsehoods, justifications…how easily we fool ourselves and how funny they are in hindsight. Like ‘oh my god did you seriously say that? You didn’t even believe yourself, let alone convincing someone else. You are an idiot. Don’t pretend you don’t wake up somewhat hungover and thing ‘no more please god no more, please help me I can’t stop, I know it now and I don’t want this anymore’

[4] No comment…it sounds worse than it is. I am happy.

[5] More justification for my behaviour. Like posting Wikipedia links or telling long winded stories about how pretty much every good writer was a borderline or fully fledged alcoholic…Kafka, Carver, Dostoyevsky etc. I can’t do that right now, I am not a fully fledged published writer…sure I wasn’t born in the renaissance of creative fiction, I was born in the grey goo of modern blog/self publishing/video log days. No editors, no publishers, no reason to listen to anyone anymore.

[6] Not really…have you been reading/writing?

[7] http://www.minion.co/short-stories/worms-a-love-story

 

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