FILL-LINE FANDANGO

The male cichlid fish is my hero. Knowing that the female incubates her eggs in her mouthparts, the male has distinctive egg-shaped markings on its genitalia. The female sees the eggy mimicry, fears that precious seed might be lost, and starts sucking on the male’s sex organ. As she slurps in utter futility to “free the eggs,” the male surprises her with a blast in the mouth, fertilizing her spawn in the most infuriating way possible.

I (heart) that fucking fish. It gives me hope that indeed, my breed and brand of bastardry is found even in nature. I have a zoological, evolutionary precedent.

But we must never forget that Nature has a system—a karmic IRS—and keeps track of debts and debtors. For a fish, perhaps it is the wormy hook, the final snag and wriggle. For mankind…sometimes Nature repays bastardry in pain.

***

You drink the pain away; but here it is, six in the morning, and everything is worse off than you started. I nod and then I wake, and stumble towards something—anything—to grapple as I slowly lower my arthritic knee and wounded ankle to the ground, to test how sore the day will be. By the sound of the rain beating my window, I know it’s going to suck—with every drop and soggy dart a bullet, every storm cloud hushing mocking snickers. Even the very weather makes me ache.
My scars itch and the world still stings, and throbs, and spins a bit. I’m nauseous and I hate my life, at least until I piss. I look at the clock, and think of where I need to be, and when. I swig some mouthwash, crunch a pill, and reach for a two-liter of that new-ish Pepsi Meth, or whatever it is that has the Ginseng in it. My life’s alright, I guess; I just hate other people’s lives for now.

It's hardly the first time.

***

Though wonderful in theory, I’ve found it helps only incrementally to weigh one’s discomforts against the trials of others less fortunate—it’s all Christians and lions in the end: the suffering believer, counting his or her blessings, and thanking the Lord for the handful of pestilent tribulations that have yet to be bestowed, for the members of Job’s family that the Devil didn’t kill. “I’m about to be eaten by a bloody frickin’ lion, but praise Jesus that I wasn’t impaled from taint to septum on a stick! How merciful! The hysterical Roman spectators ripped my testes from their tender sack, but the Good Lord hasn’t let them twist my nipples off with rusty tongs and shit through my bleeding ribcage even once!—Hallelujah! He is risen!”

I refuse to define my betterment by the absence of the worst, in the same way that I would refuse to define my character by the scant defects it lacks—i.e., “He’s a drunken ranting pervert, but I think he only steals on Thursdays.”

But I digress. My logic isn’t always any better, and my path is no less cluttered up and clusterfucked with poisons, broken promises, and incriminating receipts.

You reach a point wherein you cease to see things as they are, but rather, as they might have been, had you not spent the former moment doing exactly that. You come to live behind a buffer of perpetual cognitive dissonance. We are only free within the moments we have ceased to name and number, wherein time departs because it never knew us, like our damned souls in the end. We eat when we are hungry; we sleep when we are tired; we care and cuddle without consequence, imbibe in that which stimulates, and speak as though each word might be our last (or very first)—be it unto ends we seek, or merely sights and smells and smiles along the path(s) we take for journey’s sake alone—without calories or cancer, weariness or obligation, STD’s or answers…sometimes, utter carelessness is a dead ringer for Zen. At very least, the area code is close.

But never underestimate the challenge that incites, the gauntlet thrown before our feet (and often on our toes): for it is an empty sort of Zen—and given fullness only when its grace remains, maintained, the morning after…in the consequence it shunned the night before. Otherwise, it is a liberty like any other: shackled to the same walls, with new links in our chains…whilst we glow like happy phantoms because we found a way to peer out of our cell, or touch another prisoner, or reach some other fetid dog-dish piled with clumps of something—Some Plump Anything—less rancid than the dish beneath our feet.

Too many an evening, I have gone to bed with Zen, and woken with a lung packed full of phlegm. And even when I wake from less eventful stretches, no philosophy or “gnosis” makes my leg hurt any less. No disregard for time makes the world spin any slower, or cease to spin without you. And no amount of zeal for living quite prepares you for when life itself appears to reach a screeching halt…not that anything ever truly stops, so much as it merely finds new settings—and abruptly loses your luggage along the way.

***

I suppose my point—provided that I truly had one here—is that, by my own off-kilter terms, Zen may (or may not be) the art of being happy at your own expense. It’s the old Subgenius axiom: “Don’t just eat that hamburger, eat the HELL out of it.”

Eat like your starving; fuck like you haven’t seen a girl in years.
Sometimes it’s best to love as if you don’t know where it’s been.
Sometimes it’s best to love as if you don’t know where it’s going,
Or how badly things will turn out in the end.
Sometimes it’s best to love as if the cameras are still on.
Realize that every man on earth is someone else’s son,
And ignore him just as if he were your own.

They’ve pinned you to the Jesus Tree, and your choices—few and far between—are these: die for someone else’s sins, or fucking live for yours. And regardless of your choice, know the difference between a bad deed and a bad idea. As per what constitutes the former, I suppose I’ll have to show you; as per what constitutes the latter, I’m afraid you’ll learn this automatically, having accepted my invitation to the former. Funny how that works…

***

Nevermind; I never had a point at all. I’m just out of pills and felt like ranting.

But I suppose at 5am it’s all the same.

This isn’t going anywhere afterall; but then, that brings us back to Zen—learn to enjoy the journey, because the destination’s only meaningful when the writer gets a refill on his script. ;)


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ARTIFICIAL LIGHT

or "CERVIX WITH A SMILE"

I nailed her once out of curiousity, and twice for flinching. I needed sexual healing—and indeed, her love was like bad medicine, and she gave me medicine head. It was like a money-shot heard 'round the world, and all-too-often, by my roommates.

Sorry, guys.

She was a sweet girl, and with few regrets of our time ill-spent together, brief though it thankfully was—indeed, it was cervix with a smile. But something was amiss about the Ms. I couldn't put my finger on it, though I'd had my fingers in it several times. Perhaps this was the problem, in the end...

It was friendly fire from the meat rifle. You should never use your friends as sex toys.

Women have all the best toys, of course, and always have. I worked in a porn shop; it's the second lesson you learn (the first being, Use the bathroom next door…). Men's sex toys are never cool; they're fragile and expensive like a real woman, but they smell terrible, and no matter how much you spent or how good it looks, you're still a sad little man who comes home to a cold rubber hole.

That musky lube n' latex smell always stuck with me, long after I quit the shop. Cold and clinical—sterile yet filthy—it's like a quivering little dentist's office hunched down on all fours.

Eventually, this goes somewhere.

Ah yes…that night, that wretched night…

***

There was food and drink, and drink, and drink. And then, later, we drank.

She was a good friend, though she stood outside the circle; and like all who stand outside of circles, there was a high risk of possession. But low inhibitions love high risks, and to seek a higher love some nights is just to say you seek a higher proof. Some friends of mine desired her; but it was I, Rasputin, who appeared to hold the mantle—dusty though it was, and cluttered with denial. I sort of knew, but didn't want to. I wasn't sure I wanted her; I wasn't sure I didn't. I only knew I wanted something soon.

She was mourning the loss of a long-term fling and a short-term buzz like a widow at the wake… Well, I thought, there's only one way to console a widow, right? Weaving the last frayed threads of courage into a hangman's rope of utter ballsiness, I pondered my odds, ogled her curves, and took my best shot at my worst idea.

***

Score one for Rasputin, and a couch that might not ever be the same. If walls could talk, they'd just console the floor; the poor thing had an awful night. And yet the further I went, the closer I got to realizing just how bad this could turn out. In seeking an out, I pleaded no contest and no condom; but I was not about to get off quite so easy (or rather not get off, as such)—she came prepared, and I would either let her down or lay her down right then.

It was no longer my conquest; rather, it became hers. When the good get going, the bad get going at it really good. But with every awkward fondle and averted gaze, even the silent language of our pores and glands began to hint that this was not a good idea. Something about her pheromones threw me off.

It took forever to pick up on her signals. She made zero noise, and never moved unless I physically moved her limbs for her. I constantly positioned her like a doll, aiming for a response of any sort, and eventually a freckle for a target. When she came, it was like a shy and blushing Hentai chick—no sound, no shake, no motion…then an odd little grunt followed by a fine filmy trickle from the bunnyhole. The first time out, I didn't notice—I'd assumed I was a failure, until she finally pulled away, and breathless, said, "Last one." Sure enough, there was a small mess and the musk of her unsettling pheromones.

It felt so petty to even notice, yet something waiting out the whiskey deep within whispered and insisted that it all had meaning still. I almost lost interest; there was something weird, familiar about that scent. I shrugged it off, and took my turn. The condom ripped; she offered up another. I don't recall the brand, but Lemmy help me, I'll never buy it. They were cheap, tight, and desensitizing. The spermicide smelled like bile and melting plastic, like someone had been trying to eat Tupperware and heaved. I was about twenty thrusts to payday when it hit me…it wasn't just her offbeat chemistry, or some Third World spermicide—on any other night, I'd never care. It was a combination of things, a conspiracy of tactile discontentment…sight, sound, smell, and taste…an alien sensation, like I wasn't meant to be there. Bah…whiner.

I finally placed the scent as the friction stirred it up…that sterile-but-dirty, sickly clinical hospital smell: she smelled just like a sex toy, an artificial vagina.

Combined with her silence, limp passivity and lack of natural response, I felt more so then than ever like I was viciously screwing a blow-up doll.

***

One man's daughter is another man's disappointment. But then, Need is a harsh mistress; and when staring face to busoms, nose to nipples with a word made flesh that spells relief, release, and nobody's fault but mine, anybody's tune can change, anybody's life can become a Lynyrd Skynyrd lyric, and this bird you'll never change—happy as a lark until the vultures gather 'round, to see who stumbles naked from your room.

One day, you awake to the smothering falseness of the world around you. It was Wednesday; I was due. "Reality is what you get away with," I said; and some nights, I get away with far too much. One day, the Veil of Maya lifts, and you realize it's as filthy as all your other linens in the pile.

It's all a distraction; it's all a diversion…a Black Iron Prison, and every Need and Want about you just the spear of a centurion.

***

I knew what I needed, and gave her what she wanted, until I needed her not to want it anymore. I had second thoughts going in, and a third thought going down…

I don't generally fuck people I like; it's better if I feel like they deserve the abuse. Hunger says I need to shoot the lamb; the Will to Eat says, "She's a dirty, dirty lamb. Aim for the head." Love is the Law; Fire at Will.

She basked in a brevity of afterglow and a heaviness of sweat. I basked in the metaphors around me, bitter esoterica with the smells and tastes of all I didn't need. Huddled in a murky, sunless room, bathed in flickers of artificial light, a lasting ick and lingering swishes of another successful failure, I was fingering the stitches that held a deeper wound together, with a blaring of the stereo and a bottle full of sleep.

Sometimes, it's fucking great to be alive; and sometimes, only "sometimes" is enough. Suicide is only cowardice if you do it in your sleep. Again, I insist within, that I'm prolonging the inevitable. Tonight, we'll say I'm referring just to sleep. Sleep, like death, is something that we often resist merely out of habit, and frequently out of formality.

It's an artificial peace. Even when the mornings fall on afternoons…the aches, the dread, the throbbing head…the calls that never cease… imminent alarms blaring out imminent doom.

***

I sent her on her way. We'd reconvene sporadically throughout the week, but I found myself needing greater and greater levels of intoxication to make it through. I didn't want to hurt her feelings; but she'd gone from a good friend to a slinky, writhing mess of all and everything I didn't want. I found myself erect out of sheer courtesy and awake out of sheer nuisance. "Not tonight," I'll say. She'll pout and cock an eyebrow, "Headache?" "No," I'd reply, "Liver failure."

I sip the caramel-colored hemlock more evenings than I should, but I've always known the truth from hype—be it "wise spirits" this, "spiritual drink" that, or "love by candlelight and triple-barrel distillation"…the truth is that no bottle of booze in existence—regardless of malt, price range, or reputation among other inebriates—has ever been, nor ever will be, a "wise liquor," a "spiritual drink," any "worker of love," or anything apart from an alcoholic pipe dream…a "bourbon legend." I've said it oft before, and even still I only sometimes listen: The piss-ant, when pissed on, does not become more "ant." Thus, no drunken man, upon further drinking, has ever become more "man." However, some have compared favorably with the aforementioned ant.

Artificial colors, artificial flavors—every word but "80 proof" is just a hollow lie. It says "very rare" on the label, but they had a thousand bottles on the shelf. At least as many empties clink across the bedroom floor. "Imported," but it's made in Tennessee… "Premium," but it's seven bucks a fifth…

It's an artificial confidence, to quench the coward's thirst…to lend an artificial joy, to all our joyless toys and worse.

***

Hormones, pheromones, erogenous zones and grating tones…sometimes you're better off waking up alone. I'll bemoan waking alone…bitch n' moan, bitch n' moan…and yet I wouldn't let her sleep with me. I gave her what she wanted, took the minimum I needed, and sent her on her way.

At the end of the day, I would be a notch on her bedpost disguised as a notch on mine. I don't believe in "love" so much as psychosis-driven affection. I've often posited that there is no "good" or "evil," only actions with consequences—some favorable, some not. I likewise contend that there is no "love," but rather, desire with tenacity—some desires being more tenacious and enduring than others, like syphilis without all the brain hemorrhaging.

Love shall light our way like lamps of burning human fat…
But it's an artificial light. (Nero's lanterns burning bright)
Beyond the old heave ho, it only heaves with old(er) hat.

***

She made life seem less empty for a time; but the void that cuts upon her absence expresses only that it was merely a distraction. But from what? The faith I don't have? The hope I can't see? The gods I can't hear? The penultimate truth I can never fully know? I don't need to go out and find myself; I'm not out there. I'm right here, awake with only increments more angst than any other godless morning after, mourning afternoon. I won't find myself in anyone's beliefs. I'm not lost; I just did something I wish I hadn't—the key is that I know. And the Tree of Knowledge bore fruit tasting of Sunday's satin undies on a Tuesday afternoon, with a scent of bitter loss and inexpensive mall perfume. It's not quite paradise lost; still I shall slither back from Eden, having done the Devil's work.

Religion is no less a distraction. Most religions and philosophies, myths and metaphors we live by or live against, are like crumpled-up old sailor's maps…street guides before the age of GPS: the map is not the territory, and no map can ever show you the exact locale of every shark or giant squid at every time—hell, even in this day and age, 95% of our ocean's unexplored. No road map tells you what the traffic's like, or if the cops are out in force tonight, or if some neighbor's drooling offspring is playing ball out in the street. The menu is not the meal; and no menu's gonna tell you if the cook teabagged your food.

I don't buy into absolutes, though my disbelief is couched in absolutist terms. No shepherd's scroll or tribal legend, no hero myth or Channeled Regent, is ever there to warn you when the walls come tumbling down. That's not to say that one can't dodge a bullet now and then, living by the book or heeding words of old…but it is to say that those books, those words, won't tell you the location of every gunman, garden snake, and gloryhole. You have to think for yourself, and be prepared for sudden stops, or giant squid, or cock hairs in your food.

And sometimes, you have to be prepared to accept that you're a lecherous alcoholic who ruins countless friendships with his penis. Oh, wait—nevermind; I found some Vicodin. Carry on.

Be it love or faith… kisses, cock or codeine…it's all diversionary. It's an artificial hope, bathed in artificial light. But truly, these are artificial times.

There's a raven at my door, and Old Crow in my glass; let's shed a (tiny) artificial tear, and let it pass…

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BASTARD ZEN

October 4th, 2006.

While this present vacation/banishment/exile has been somewhat of a drying-out period, today I have been going coffee-whiskey-coffee-whiskey- coffee-whiskey ad nauseaum, and in that order...which is to say, that I have gone sideways through time.

I am told there is such a thing as a tesseract, however, I suspect that to be a half-truth, as there may not be such a thing as "is."

Many years ago, when I studied Kaballah amid my awkward transition out of Christendom, I was told that "God" was a verb. It may or may not be true; but whether "God" be verb or noun, I am fairly certain that the Universe is a Dirty Limmeric (or might be, if not for that tricky "is" thing).

I call that the "Nantucket Hypothesis," by the way.

Anyway...here's my final pseudo-drunken revela-hallucination of the evening:


BLESSING VS. ENLIGHTENMENT

A man, knelt in prayer, asked the Lord if He answered prayers. The Lord answered him, and he was blessed.

A man, knelt in prayer, asked the Lord if He answered prayers. The Lord answered him, saying, "No." He was enlightened.

***

Thank you and good night...I'll be here all week.


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