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slow, heartbeat song churning in my head (cheezy, cliché’, and precarious)

There is someone who is out there who is dying to know someone who does know you, who is craving to be near you, to finally fear you, to be dear to you and speak to you as fire is to cold as shy is to bold as crying is to holding is to comfort is to nestle, slightly wrestle, touching under where it’s crazy, being so lazy, chill and laid back again unto you, so far into you that I’m through you, nothing new to you or to me so we see where we’re going, always knowing that we’re throwing disposition through cognition…

Feel free to continue. I gave a head start of 104 words.

Hose

There’s a German kitchen store two blocks away. They sell a faucet. That’s it. A faucet. No handles, no seats or springs, no diverter valves. No plumbing attachments, period. It’s 5,000 a sq. ft. showroom for one faucet. No photography allowed. No catalog listing. It costs $10,000. The salesmen are, I kid you not, Sprokets. The store does indeed have wicked cool track lighting.

Lefty. With paws that look like Uggs. And a manscaped belly.

Leaving

My beloved cat was just diagnosed with lymphoma, my teeth are in terrible pain, and I’m in the middle of disassembling my apartment for an epic move to Manhattan this week. I am not in a good state. And by that, I don’t mean New Jersey.

Lefty stopped being Lefty gradually at first, then, suddenly. The ravenous, rambunctious creature stopped eating and drinking a few weeks ago. Lynn and I took him to the vet last weekend and it was a horrible experience for the three of us.

We needed something to transport Lefty, and the crate I had for him from his kitten days probably couldn’t even contain his rather large butt today. We went to PetSmart and bought a “Kennel Cab” suitable for intermediate-sized dogs. Turned out to be perfect for Lefty. We brought it home and wasted no time in putting it to use. Lefty even seemed to enjoy its cozy comfort.

Lefty was sort of himself again in the vet’s office by being relentlessly uncooperative, and he didn’t exactly endear himself to the pros trying to diagnose him. As they wrestled him down to get a blood sample, he fought as if his very life depended upon it. The wailing sounds and screams that came out of his tiny mouth and the wide-eyed look he shot me of of betrayal, confusion, and pain broke my heart.

He was in the throws of pure terror. I was not privy to give him comfort.

The vet left to test his blood. While she was gone, Lynn and I were left with Lefty and calmed him down. The poor guy was absolutely traumatized. Lynn’s maternal instinct kicked in and she fetched him some water. He drank it like he’d been wandering doomed deserts for days.

After about 45 minutes, the vet came back with the tentative diagnosis. The blood work, combined with his symptoms meant kidney disease with a likelihood of cancer.

I had already lost it while he was wailing, but managed to hold it back to my best ability. Hearing this news put me over the edge. I know it sounds weird, and I knew this day would come, but mortality isn’t part of the daily sentience of affection between a man and his cat.

The thought of losing him is unbearable.

Further tests were needed to confirm the diagnosis. It required that I leave him overnight in a strange place with sick animals—and without the comfort of my lap for him to lie in. I left the vet in a zombie-like state, with a touch of desperate despondence.

I took home an empty Kennel Cab. And not to get maudlin here, but a heavy heart as well.

Back in NYC. This was the view from 20 miles south as the gull flies over the ocean, 9-and-a-half years ago

Ascend from the ruins my friend

Crawl from the ruins my friend.

Crawl from into the core, the frozen core once molten and flowing, the core once popping and hissing and hissing and sizzling, glowing orange and ever on the verge of redlining into passion screaming to escape.

Nails bursting from closed coffin, six-foot settled earth shaking seismic to the turf ready to burst seam splitting wonder why I am not like me you are there.

I swear it I’m in here somewhere official proclamation to look border pass touch kiss me please free eons of nova star gravity. Please look again once more I will let you close I will please crack the safe lock combination tumblers clicking in utter confusion. Unknown elevators cease and singe and see to my doom. Resolve utter confusion.

A din of inequity clamors awaits one touch one break of the now the revelation of one sudden smiling magnetic kiss.

We shared a footprint.

Crawl back in and let loose the smothered primal screams, burrow back marking confident paths of escape.

Ghosts and demons and doubt and all relatives of tragedy await nebulous exorcism.

Blunted limbs call to arms the circus cast of inherent wonder.

Ego Eros Agape Amour.

First there’s now but now that’s gone come tomorrow Friday Saturday Saturday Saturday night a crow’s foot sleeping pill mapping a mystic path can’t make out lucid mumbles hinting of higher ground.

Frustration fills can’t follow.

Swallow. Breath. Blink.

Sleep can’t sleep can only think shut down the mind please put myself to sleep. Mommies to meet children to cherish I beseech you beseech you imploring imploding in the very now of now I’ve yearned and doubted.

I can sing and laugh and run and breath deep fleeting moments exhale eternal desire and moments of spark touch blanket warmth natal dance. Inching toward crescendo fakes me out every time.

Sorry my mistake.

Can’t leave can’t reach can’t crawl from cores of cleaven pancaked pillars.

This dream is keeping me awake teasing open eyes with a dare to blink back forever frozen moments. Driving beat goosestep legkick march stop nobody sees go fetal.

Comet star daylight vulture silver gleaming double down blackjack 22 bust.

Thought I left my coffee ‘round here somewhere.

Frozen hand touch turn molten gold lava.

Vamos a jugar con la playa

The crowd was subdued, but anxious. A bunch of us were at the bar trying to reclaim a door to 1990 via vodka tonics and Corona Light. The bouncers were letting groups of us out in small waves, knowing full well we’d be walking around the adjacent blocks sharing joints and hits of X. These were cool bouncers acting appropriately with a mellow crowd. We were almost too mellow, knowing exactly what we were in for. Doolittle.

I saw Bruce about a month ago knowing he was going to play Born to Run as a full set. Bruce bookends his sets with surprises, though. That’s how he gets goosebumps out of the crowd—by playing Rosie right after Jungleland.

This show was different. First of all, it didn’t take place in a concrete cereal bowl full of 80,000 people. It took place on a small stage in front of about 2,000 clued in fans starving for a different form of nostalgia. Something more akin to rebirth—not an acknowledgement of what had happened before—more like a revisit to some friends who no one fully appreciated at their peak. We thought The Pixies would be here forever to wrap our brains in Christmas tree lights. Turned out this was looking more and more like a last flicker of a tiny blue flame.

Second of all, I wasn’t baked out of my brain for some reason. I definitively imbibed more, but since I finished working for awhile I think I’m building up a resistance. The X might have had something to do with it, too. I didn’t have any urge to drink or smoke up, though the occasional Newport had me virtually writhing in menthol ecstasy.

I was offered a few lines but declined. Thou shalt not mix X and snow, lest your libido become an unpredictable blizzard. You’ll also end up with a blazing headache and a raging boner the next day—not a pleasant combo if you want to sleep, get laid, or all of the above.

They played Doolittle in its entirety, B sides included as well as the surf version of Wave of Mutilation. I felt old, and I think the band did, too. Francis was in fine voice. Joey was shy. David was thrashing. Kim was a goddess. There were some youngin’s there trying to mosh, but nothing much came of it.

All in all, it was like traveling through a time portal back to Boston circa 1989. The X and weed helped. But nothing could bring me back to those days of first discovering them via the purple cassette. That tape has long since been chewed by an old Toyota Celica I still have never forgiven for dining on my first beloved Pixies album and losing its transmission in one horrid day back in 1992. I finally realized after the show that it was time to move on. To where, I don’t know. Lucky for me, I have a wide open future.

I felt close to Kurdt and refelt his 1994 suicide the whole way home. I still want to grow up to be a debaser. I don't know about you but I am un chien andalusia. I want you to know.

Train in Vain

Today is going to be another one of those busy days that I’m getting far too used to. It also includes another appointment with the dentist—my real, designated dentist—Dr. Acula. I mean Czernick. (Sorry Mitch Headburg. Couldn’t resist.)

Actually, Dr. Czernick is much happier to see me leave her office while not drooling blood than the perio guy who won’t let a 2-minute consultation go by without puncturing an artery.

Anyway, the day started in the usual way, with me not being able to fall asleep until the wee hours, then having weird dreams. The unusual part—that of waking up at the ungodly hour of 6:30—began with the jangling march of R.E.M.’s “Finest Worksong” snapping me from the good part of a dream that’s forever gone. I hit snooze to try and return to the dream state, but it was not one of those “To Be Continued” dreams.

Resigning myself to the actuality of awakening, I sprang up and fed Lefty his breakfast. He hasn’t been eating lately and it’s been worrying me. I, along with Chris, my ex-boss, good friend, and cat expert, have been attributing it to his ESP. He seems to have a sixth sense when I’m going to be leaving for an extended period of time. Since I’m moving to Manhattan (and, yes, bringing him with me) we were thinking that might be the vibe triggering his sixth sense.

But, something that happens all to infrequently to me actually occurred last night. Logic kicked in. I’ve been unable to eat comfortably for quite a long time because of my tooth.

What if Lefty has a toothache?

So now that possibility is going to take hostage of my mind. And since I dropped off my car at the body shop this morning, and since it’s not going to be ready at least until Friday, there’s not much I can do about it. Call the vet and make an appointment for Saturday, I guess. But first I’m going to have to get a crate for the big bubba. He’s not gonna like that.

Like I said, I dropped off my car at the body shop this morning. At, like, 8:00. This is crazy, these hours I’m keeping. I was about to call a cab to get a ride from the body shop to the train station so that I could make it into the city for my appointment with Dr. Acula who really isn’t Dr. Acula. A 10:30 AM appoint! Again, with the crazy hours!

I’m on the train to Manhattan now. (Which, hilariously, is the number one thing all time by far that people say when they’re on their cell phone on the train. It’s almost the only thing they say. “Hello, Bob? What’s up? I’m on the train. Bye.”) The train is due in Penn Station at 9:45. I’ll give it 15 minutes of being late due to congestion. Then, it will take me 3 minutes to walk to the southbound 1 train platform. Then I wait 3 more minutes for a train. Mathematically, that adds up to something like 10:06 AM. (What the fuck is up with these crazy hours? I’m supposed to be in bed, dreaming of waffles and bacon.) That gives me 24 minutes to make it to 5^th Ave and 20^th St. I’ll take the 1 train to 23^rd, and hoof it two loooong avenues east. That should get me there just about on time.

We’ll see how the day goes after that.

I’m on the train to Manhattan now!

*

Guess what? The day got shitty.

The train pulls into Penn Station and I instinctively check my iPhone (making sure not to call anyone to tell them I’m on the train.) There’s a voicemail waiting for me from a cell number in Manhattan. “This weird,” I think. “Bad weird.”

Sure enough, it is. I check the voice mail and it’s Menna, the receptionist from Dr. Acula/Czarnick’s office. Dr. Acula/Czarnick called in sick today. I have two options, reschedule or take an appointment with Dr. Ip. She forgot the third option: Time travel back into the past and don’t get on the train to NYC.

Normally, I’d take option two, the appointment with another doctor in the practice. But it once took this doctor an hour-and-a-half to fit a restoration. I was in the fucking chair with her using some bad ass dental pulverizes. I ended up with lockjaw, PTSD, and a restoration that fell out anyway a month ago to start this who circle of absurdity.

I called Lynn and she, as usual, got a good laugh out of the whole thing. Even though it was at my own expense, I got a god laugh out of it, too.

I decided to catch the next train home, which would be boarding in a little over a half-an-hour. I called Chelsea to make an appointment with Alysia to tame the rat’s nest on top of my head. She had a 12:30 open and my train, with any luck, would pull in to Red Bank at about 12:00. I killed the time before boarding by perusing through the glamorous shops of the Penn Station 7^th Ave Concourse.

First I went into Duane Reade and bought two scrumptious cans of Beef-a-roni for lunch later (it was on sale!) Then I bought two bottles of PowerAde (also on sale!) and a bag of ultimate munchies: Doritos, Cheetos, pretzels and Sun Chips all mixed together. I’ll be dining like a king today.

Then I went in to one of the four Hudson Bookstores that are within 200 yards of each other. I saw a mouse run under the soft drink cooler. Mmmmm. Mouse juice.

The time passed quickly and I boarded the train. I have some books with me, but I decided to type this, instead. Now I’m going to read a Staples Catalog and fantasize about being organized. I think it’s becoming a fetish for me.

Over and out. For now.

*

Made it to my haircut appointment. Got the usual. The one that makes my hair look like and feel like the fluff of a baby chick at first, then settles down after a few days to look datedly rugged and rockstar-ish, then bed-heady, then just plain randomly tussled, then completely unkempt. It stays that way for a few months, then, I repeat the process.

Baby chick stage.

This time, I went seven months between haircuts. Alysia, the woman who cuts my hair was shocked at how horribly my hair had grown out, and began making fun of me for the mullet that had began growing on the back of my head like a vestige tail. While she was cutting, we discussed our respective spouses. She’s impressed that I met someone with the Job-like patience to tolerate me. I complemented Lynn on the same thing. Alysia was taking her boyfriend to the Knicks game at the Garden for his birthday tonight, so I praised her for that, and then blind-sided her with the pics of the Red Sox games at Fenway Park Lynn took me to for my birthday. I think I won. Not that it was a contest or anything. But I think it’s obvious Lynn and I celebrate birthdays at sporting events like a boss compared to them. We rock.

*

Power Surge

Okay, want hear about me? The characters in this book are fictional. Any relationship between them and anybody dead or alive is a fucking coincidence. This is about me and no one else. A power surge brimming with words, that’s me. Power surges and blackouts, corresponding to nothing but several different days. Stress several, that’s me. Brownouts in crucial moments leading to foggy social transgressions, all me.

I’m about to embark on a journey under the seas. I am going to dive, stay down for a while, swim around and surface when I can no longer hold my breath. You see, I’ve been spending the past few days/months/years (take your pick) trying to dock into some kind of port. Fuck that. Time to dive and resurface somewhere else. Wherever the hell you are when you resurface is what determines whether or not you will submerge again. You like it, you stay. You don’t, take a deep breath. I am a swimmer, not a boat. Boats dock, swimmers surface. Please don’t bring up submarines. They fuck up my metaphor.

It’s 2:30 AM, I am not tired and I need merciful sleep. So what do I do? I pour myself a caffeine soaked rum and Pepsi. It’s also rum soaked, so things won’t be too intolerable.

Ever tried to create a character? It’s impossible. I don’t know how authors do it. How can you create a human being for someone else’s imagination by scribbling words onto a piece of paper? Believe you me I know what innocence looks like. I know what rage and faith look like. But how to slip them out of my mind and onto a piece of paper is beyond me. Maybe I’ll just write about all the people I know, mix them all up, and wind up with something nice and unbelievable.

This rum and Pepsi is going down way, way too fast. Must not be enough rum in it. I distinctly remember pouring three glugs. Maybe I counted wrong. I never was good at math.

What am I good at? If not math, than what? Not spelling. Math and spelling, my two biggest downfalls. How the hell did I ever get past elementary school?

I play third base pretty well. I can throw a football pretty far, but I’m not too good at basketball. I guess this means I’m sort of athletic. To a slight degree, that’s my image. If someone just had to pin me down, that’s probably the sector of society they drop me in—the jocks. I’m not a jock, though.

I like to write. I want to write is what I should say. What I want to write, though, I don’t know. I’ve tried a lot of things: poems, stories, what else is there? Fiction, nonfiction, I’ve tried it all. This is fiction. But the only things I can possibly write about have actually happened. The names are the same only the faces have been changed to protect the pseudo-innocent. I’ve been known to be arrogant, between crippling spells of shyness, that is. When I accelerate I always check the rearview mirror. Maybe to see what I’m leaving in the dust, maybe not. Maybe it’s so I won’t see where I’m going. That’s a pretty stupid thing to do. Maybe I want to hurt myself. Death wishes are subtle commands. Are they cries for help, or they just inevitable conclusions after stretches of stagnation followed by blistering acceleration? I choose the latter, if for nothing else than to protect my fragile, but ever towering, ego.

Rum and Pepsi: gone.

I think way too much, that always hurts. I ponder pain. Not physical pain—my physical wounds heal abnormally fast. The mental wounds take a lot of nursing. That’s where I’m fragile and almost—but not quite—brittle. I drink a lot. I don’t ever get falling down drunk, but I will admit to tipping the bottle occasionally, when time provides. I have a lot of time, that’s the problem. Everyone I hang with is either just as bad or way worse. A lot of them smoke weed, which, I’ll admit to having done once in a while once upon a time. But no more. It slows me down, induces laziness and antisocial behavior. It dehumanizes, and am already dehumanized enough, thanks to game shows and video games, which, ironically made me quite animated when I was stoned.

Back to booze. When I go to O’Brady’s, I know most of the folks in there and they’re all doing the same thing I am.

I’ve now been writing for 15 minutes.

I can go anywhere in the area, any night of the week, and not have to worry about being alone. I know what to talk about with most of the frequent faces. That’s the key to me—knowing what to talk about. I don’t induce conversation, I nurture dialogue. I feel out with the other person wants to say and I help them say it, I make them say it. I don’t coax, I just listen. I love to listen and learn.

I like it better when they want to hear me. Who doesn’t? Maybe that’s why I get so frustrated sometimes. It doesn’t seem like many people are willing to listen to me. It’s beginning to hurt thinking about this, so now I am going to change the subject.

What the fuck subject was I on? Holy shit, give me a tangent and I make a god damn tributary system out of it.

Crying is strange, foreign. I think I have a backlog of tears that will come out someday.

Children. They will certainly change me. I want to be a father. Someday, but not necessarily immediately. Being a father has got to be intense. There so much love to offer a role like that. I have so much inside just waiting to be claimed by the right girl and our offspring. They can clean me out, take it all. I’ve stockpiled so much, I know where to get it and how to make it last. The past has taught me that. My past.

The past. We draw life from our roots in the past. I heard that somewhere once. We all have the past. Some of us are likely to of several to choose from. Me, I got but one, and I kinda like it. I can’t say much about it, only that I wouldn’t be what I am now without it. And if anyone can’t say that, they got some serious personality disorders. It’s simple and true. If you think about it enough, and apply it to yourself in a somewhat sophisticated manner, then you might just learn where you’re going. Notice I said learn. Learn, as if the answer is there, just waiting to be found. Learn—not plot, not project. I’m not talking about destiny. I’m just saying that your past gives you a future. It’s always the prelude to the present. Without a past, or actually, without accepting a past, your shapeless, vulnerable, ready to be molded by anything. This is not a good scenario, my friends. The past shapes, gives definitive form. It brings with it character and balance. If you ex out your past, what are you? A lot of people ex out their past willingly. They’re not helping themselves; they’re robbing themselves of the chance to bask in their very own history, to learn about where they’re going to be, to prevent anything else from shaping them.

Don’t mix experience into what I’m saying. Experience is not the past. The past is the great wind that carries you. Experience is just the shit you have when you land. Maybe, just maybe, you use the experience to steer your sail, but most people, including and especially me, are too stupid to know how to do that properly. That’s wisdom, and I don’t have much of that so I’m not even going to mention it.

Forget I even brought it up.

I’m getting tired, but I know sleep will not come anytime soon. What usually happens is I get tired, turn out the light, put down the pen and pad and lay there. Lay there and think about baseball. I try to retrieve a sharp mental picture of fielding a one-hop liner at third or zipping in a fastball out of the stretch position on the pitcher’s mound. Or even, dare I say, swinging away with all my might on a 3-0 count. I’ll just lay there, awake, trying to sleep. Time ceases, and when time ceases, daylight edges in. I’ll slowly doze off about a half an hour after the birds begin tweeting. Then I’ll wake up and fall asleep at bizarre intervals. With the most peaceful sleep coming later and later into the morning.

Once, a long time ago, I tried to fall asleep before midnight. It almost worked. A girl I met that day came to my door and woke me up, we went outside for a walk and I didn’t get back to bed until four o’clock in the morning. I’ve been accelerating ever since and I may be out of control, but I do have brakes and I know they’re working because I can hit them and feel their pull, but I’m just testing them because I like the feeling of acceleration. Acceleration—not speed. Acceleration is when you feel the pull of momentum. You are the movement. Cruise control sucks because you get numb driving at one speed for a long time. You lose perspective; it will dull your senses. Acceleration keeps you on your toes.

This block of thought has nothing to do with my driving, and even if it did, this is fiction, remember? I’m trying to create characters. I’m shaping voices, voices without a past. But it’s all me. Every pixel is all me. And just think: there is no way possible for you to know that for sure. Do you know me? Do you try? Have you ever heard of me? Is this what goes on inside of my head? Obviously, it is, because it had to come from somewhere? Why did I put a “?” there? I had no intention of doing that, it happened like a reflex. Anyway, if it is me, and these are my thoughts, which side me did it come from? Why can’t I create these things when I’m brooding and quiet, ready to be loved? Why can’t I? What different things do we create in different states of mind? What kind of balance over character does mood actually have? How do you know that if I talked to someone at this moment, that I wouldn’t whisper and sooth? I guess I’m admitting to feeling a certain amount of aggression right now. So what? Arrogance? So what. What’s wrong with that? Why can I not accept the simple rationalization of feelings? Why do I feel guilty about sweeping mood swings? Why do I venture from pitter pat cautiousness to thundering restlessness with nothing to trigger it and no time to transfer or rationalize the feelings that are supposed to come in between? Do I feel anything in the between points? Do I swing too fast? I do like to accelerate. It gets me places.

Who do I think I am as I sail into a somewhat glorious conclusion?

Synapse snap

When his psyche is weak, he spreads himself out thin. He stretches to the snapping point, taught and transparent, from one end of the terrestrial mindscape to the other. He covers the things that worry him and the things that comfort him with this thin blanket of synapse. He focuses on the comforting thoughts as often as possible. He learns where they are and he grooms them. They purr. They evolve.

Zap

Among his most interesting peculiarities is his electrical field. He shocks easily. Every once in a while he walks past a street lamp and it will flick out. He has yet to determine what, if any, patterns are involved. He amazes his friends when they believe him.

Stuck in traffic

All at once he feels the rush to hail a cab and to stop living in the past. The noontime flow of the town is mild, but the sidewalks are still slightly crowded and the pace is hurried compared to the usual laid-back attitude of the population.

He’s not commanding his own direction today, rather, he feels bullied into avoiding head-on collisions with other pedestrians. Normally, he finds a clear path through oncoming crowds, blazing trails for those behind him without blockers of his own. This crowd is different. They are immovable from their chosen paths down the sidewalks.

He’s losing battles today, battles of eye contact and battles of direction. Perhaps they all have individual sacred destinies. He smiles and slows his pace. A woman pushing a stroller smiles back at him and he moves out of her way. He watches her eyes as she works her cargo through the crowd with patience and mild aggression. Her eyes are green. He realigns himself onto his dissonant course, comes to an intersection, makes a right and heads down a wide-open path. There are no cabs in this town, he thought.