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A story about everything

How do we start this? How do I tell a story about everything by telling a story about me? Why would you care about me? I certainly don’t. Why should you? I’ll give you a reason. This isn’t a story about me. It isn’t about what happened to me, though that is all I’m going to tell you. Every word that follows is about you. I only know what I’ve seen and read, so I can only write that. But none of it is that specific. I’m not that good.

This is my story, so it’s everyone’s story. It’s my voice, but it’s your voice too. My friend told me I was self-absorbed. I’ve been wrapped up in the vision in my mind since I knew I had a mind. Her calling me out is just saying the obvious.

We were talking about lovers. She’s happy with hers. I’ve been juggling. I was telling her that as I get older, it has become very easy to talk people into doing what you want them to do, especially sexually. We have this whole pretense, mostly women, about how sex is this fortress that needs to be climbed or conquested. It is not. It wants to surrender. It wants to be given up. It just needs a reason. If not for the world, then for itself. Legs want to know why they are spreading. I didn’t know that when I was a boy. I was always looking for a superfluous cause. Everything is so simple if you don’t make it difficult.

It’s why drunks succeed before they get too drunk. Alcohol removes pretense. It removes that chameleon dance where you jump and jump and try to fit this skin or that color. And instead just be the fucking lizard that you are.

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Deep Ellum

I stood with you, three feet away from Robert Cray at the Gypsy Tea Room in Deep Ellum. The blues. I’ve always had such an affinity for sadness. Some come to mind. I’m not sure if it was born or learned, but it certainly is. I watched the movie, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, because I thought it might be sexual (spoiler alert: not really, unless you’re very patient). And then I tried to read the book because I liked the title. I bought the titular Fine Young Cannibals’ first album for the same reason (and the Screaming Blue Messiahs). I still don’t understand the former. I still listen to the latter.

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Can you kick it?

This is always how it starts. The voices and music don’t come until much later. But this is how it starts.

The anger and the boredom build. Drown them both in wine. Then regret. And try to stop. Usually, on your own. Usually, it works. Overdose on B12 and fill yourself with water until your bladder bursts. Take cold water baths. Bath because you don’t want to seize and fall in the shower. Not too much water, because you don’t want to drown like Whitney Houston. Soft music. Shallow cold water. B12, B12, B12. Valium if you have it. Ativan, but that usually requires an ER visit. Lie down in the dark, someplace soft in case you seize and fall.

Who would choose this? Your judgment means nothing. I don’t want this any more than the people who love me want to watch it.

And I know you’re mad at me. I said some shit before I started trying to kick. That ain’t me. I mean, I guess it’s obviously a part of me. This fucking predilection. I guess I mean it, but it’s shit you don’t say out loud, yet you do when you’re fucked up.

Am I going to kick this time? Probably not forever. It’s a running joke among addicts of every kind: it’s so easy to quit, I’ve done it 75 times. But that, if there is one, is the devil. And when you dance with the devil, I promise you, the devil doesn’t change. You do.

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Hindsight

I’m at my best early. And four am is such a cliché. I remember our shared, casual sadness, bathed in a hope that cried for the sun to rise. This human condition is weird. Defined by its humanity. Your body. Where the skin was so soft and where the bones were hard. Those determinations were not yours. And what they wrought was sometimes choice. I like to think of you as soft. But I’m not speaking about touch.

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Binary determinism

When I was younger, better looking, and dumber, and still knew everything, I was convinced in the indisputable truth of binary determinism. All problems could be solved algorithmically. Broken down into its smallest components, every problem could eventually be converted into yes/no questions that always had a correct answer of yes or no, 1 or 0.

As I’ve gotten older and not-so-wise, I’ve realized, “Hey, not so fast.”

Some questions have proven irrefutably, repeatedly, exasperatingly, and counter-intuitively to have not just more than one answer, but impossibly, every possible answer.

How profoundly that changes life and how it’s lived. More accurately, it is this realization that causes perceived change because what is always was and will always be

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He penikala melemele

You know, when I’m holding a pencil and my hand hurts and I don’t have a computer to type in because last Thursday I got drunk and walked away from my laptop in the park? Run-on sentence. You probably don’t know. I’ll tell you what happens, and you act incredulous. Iʻll try not to say the things alcohol would say. But you can’t tell the truth and tell people what they want to hear. Am I happy? Fuck no. Are you happy? I don’t know anyone who is happy for the next five minutes after they smile. It’s an inconvenient truth how much it hurts to open your eyes in the morning. I look at my son. I look at my daughter. And there is a true respite, however brief. Then my son cries because something hurt him. What is the correct response? Kill what did it? Here’s the truth about life. It’s mostly really boring. Some good shit happens that you planned for, some happens just because. And some shitty things happen. It can’t be avoided. People lie. People die. Nihilism is an easy choice. It’s very easy to wander, and the conclusion that nothing matters is within arm’s reach. You know, I look into my girlfriend’s eyes, even after a fight, even after she just said, “I’m not your girlfriend.” In her weird European accent. And it makes me smile. Those eyes are so beautiful even when they’re crossed. You know what? No matter how much I hope for the contrary? I will die. Everyone I love will die. And if I’m alive when it happens, I won’t like it. What are you going to do?

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Boulder 1991

So I can sit here full of rage. Or I can put the fire out. The last time I was fat was at the Cuervo (beach volleyball) in 1991 in Boulder with Kep and assorted hot girls. I had tweed, multi-colored board shorts with a thread unraveling to my left knee. It’s funny what you remember.

A voice from the pretty crowd said, “Sit down, fat ass.” Quiet calls for calm and respect mocked in four syllables. Da da da DUH. And I was embarrassed. I pretended I saw who said it. I feigned anger. I felt shame.

Two months of steeped fear later. I lost all the weight. Then I lost more. And I was pretty like you’re supposed to be. Happy is a long-term find. It doesn’t just land in your hand because you did what you were supposed to. It’s a ghost whispering at sunset, fleeting. It is a smile clenched. It is never again and probably never was. It wins six nights in a row on Jeopardy. Hollow.

Yes, you understand pain. But it’s different. You were born beautiful. You hurt because people don’t act like you expect. I hurt because they are what they are.

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7-11

I don’t feel lucky, I feel saddled. I feel trapped within this bubble of “supposed to be.” I played along. I really did my best. Best is never enough. There’s always better. There are past mistakes for everyone. Eidetic and see them every time you close your eyes. Close your eyes, but your mind is 7-11; always open, taking anyone in. The power of pathology is difficult to explain to people who function as people. Get married, have 2.3 kids, buy a house, just be happy. There are those of us who look like you. Went to the same schools. Eat turkey at Thanksgiving. We look the same. But this cognitive dissonance between what I see and what I feel is undeniable.

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I get to judge

There are two kinds of hard rock fans. The first enjoy Brian Johnson’s vocals, as do I. We all loved Back in Black. The second, remember when Bon Scott came out with bagpipes and a kilt, and I’m in the group too. He gave zero fucks. And Angus Young was thrashing half-naked even as a boy dressed like a schoolboy because he was one. Then Kiss blew up and merchandised everything that a logo fits on. And Ozzy was snorting ants in the parking lot on a dare because he said he would do anything, and he certainly did even more than that. I understand that impulse. “You can’t possibly swallow that whole thing.” “Give it to me. Right now. Give it to me.” “I don’t think that’s safe.” “Now you’re the voice of reason? Give it to me.” Oh yeah, Mötorhead opened and Lemmy never looked down from the microphone and made punks look like hippies, which in a way they are. I have the word punk tattooed across my neck. I get to judge.

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Unreliable narrator

I am an unreliable narrator.

I make no pretense to disinterest. Everything I use to fill the vacuum of this life is done by choice. Consciously or subconsciously, I am neck deep in my interests and biases. So are we all. The difference is my memory. It is eidetic. I can often remember things exactly as they happened. The trick to being unreliable is the interpretation of these events to suit the argument I am making, which may or may not remain consistent. It really depends on the moment. It depends on the audience.

Now for the hard part. Sometimes I am the sole member of this audience. And the cognitive dissonance that occurs during the process of packaging a situation is far more dissonant when the package is for self-consumption. It’s not impossible, clearly. And by what I’ve witnessed, I’m not the only person doing it. You see it in a color-by-numbers, kindergarten-simplicity when the law becomes involved. Statements are taken, snap judgments are made, then all evidence that fits a hypothesis is hoarded, while anything that subverts the accepted idea of “what happened” is summarily dismissed as coincidence or superfluous. In our personal lives, we do this shit on a whole other level. Why? Because we are fighting for our perceived actualization and the definition of our capital-s Self. That is a constant battle waged from cradle to grave, and everything is sacrificed in its effort.

The few individuals who can subvert this compulsion, or rise above it, are pointed to as heroes and anomalies of selfless wonder. Again, I don’t include myself, even remotely, among these beautiful freaks of human nature.