Stand Up Act 4

Act 3

So speaking of sex, I am, like the fraction of people on the face of the Earth that is left when you subtract the fraction of people having sex and the people required for them to be having sex with and the people having sex with inanimate objects and the people having sex with animated objects that are not human, not having any. Not in the sense of Madea, prototypical, big body, big attitude, possibly half black half hispanic chick who is for some reason also part Italian and who speaks just enough Spanish to half mast men between the ages of 15 and 15 at heart "ain't havin that", but more like it's something that just doesn't happen to me. Which is of course not at all my fault.

It's out there. If I could walk around with my fly down all day and not get immediately arrested and or tackled by angry citizens and patriots of so called decency, I probably would. When I was a kid, I've been told I once spent a day naked. Just a-walkin around doin my thing sans robes. I don't remember that at all, but I wish I could because it sounds like the most awesome summer day imaginable. Nothing but deluxe jumbo sidewalk chalk, empty chalk boards, water guns, and G.I. Joes. Or maybe that was just a dream. I may very well have dreamt that.

Not to stray too far, but I just remembered I kissed someone in a dream I had the other night. That's kind of fucked up. Who the hell was it that I kissed? What if they show up in another dream and they're pissed off because I don't remember them from the first one and they try to stab me to death with a snapped off tea cup handle, because we were for some reason having tea on top of an 18 wheeler barreling down a train barreling up the train tracks in the middle of one of those stupid riddles where the answer is that the entire premise is false and you'd know it if you paid attention with more brain cells than you can muster for just about anything at 5 in the afternoon without having to be asked long winded questions about bullshit scenarios you'll never actually have to deal with in real life unless you became a train conducting mad scientist sociopath with a taste for apples, pizzas, and buckets of multicolored marbles.

At any rate, it's not my fault, but if I never had sex again I don't think I would be particularly ticked off. Don't get me wrong. This is not a complaint at all. It is an observation that if I were to offer myself up to women on say death row I would probably get passed over by the entire starting rotation twice before getting picked up by the bench warmer still running her case through the appellate courts because I do not understand how that interaction is supposed to work on a pretty basic level. If however I were to offer myself up to the men on say death row I would probably get passed over by the entire line up too, but probably not twice, because let's face it, when you're staring down the barrel of a death sentence in solitary confinement every person you meet is basically the last man or woman on Earth as far as you'll ever know and "if you give a dog a bone" and so forth... ...I don't know what the chick half of that is... Unless they have tv in there. Then all bets are off. If I watched more television specials about how bad ass the bad asses in Federal "holy fuck that prison is hard core compared to my life" on the Discovery channel I would know the answer to that. But I don't. Life is full of mysteries. I think I do live in a magical and fucked up time. Here's why: by the time I reach a point where I will be desperate to get laid and/or lay someone technology will in all likelihood have created an affordable artificial human being that I can purchase to satisfy my every whim and thus complete the compartmentalization of myself into the American technological socio strata and finally make me utterly oblivious to the larger issues of human existence and thus quite happy. You remember in the Matrix when the humans were all hooked up to that machine? What if the machines found it much easier on processing power to stimulate the body instead of the mind directly with a feed of images through the eyes and attendant nose and mouth nonsense. I bet the crotch uplink to the matrix would be the most awesome piece of technology ever. Go to the future and steal one. Is what I would do. Screw finding the machine city. I was just go steal one of those and go nuts until my brain stroked off from a lack of oxygenated blood.

Like the mystery of why any woman on the face of the Earth would ever complain at any age that no one wants her. I personally do not believe that there is a special one person out there for anyone. I won't say that I know it for a fact, but I will say that I'm pretty damn sure just about every relationship that was a sure fire thing that I've seen up close for an extended period of time has basically become either a business agreement, a perpetual fire drill, or has been blown apart with more permanence and finality than a gross analogy about female plumbing and giving birth to triplets. Or maybe I'm just cynical.

Sad ladies out there who believe for one reason or another that you will never be loved, answer the following two questions: Do you have a vagina? Can you work it? If the answers to either of those questions is "yes" then fear not (knowledge of what "working it" is need not bear particular significance). Someone will take an interest in you to gain access to your vagina and perhaps discover along the way that you're a pretty swell person too. Or maybe the other way around. They might think you're an awesome person and hang out with you for a while and get to know you because you really are great company and then one day they might walk in on you while you're in the bathroom and discover that you have a vagina completely by accident and then stumble backward in disbelief before screaming for the deliverance of Jesus himself and go into shock because their best buddy has been a transvestite all along, but then they'll come out of their coma a few weeks later and have wonderful relations or something equally romantic. So don't sweat it. No need to fret. No need to write brutally long entries in your diaries with the daisies scribbled on them next to the balloons and other squiggly shapes your hands draw because your forearms are about as strong as damp marshmallows wrapped around found twigs. Someone out there in this big world wants to stare deeply into your eyes and whisper those magic words "I want to plow you" when they're fifteen beers in and haven't noticed that you've been sipping the same one for the last four hours.

Kidding. That was pretty harsh. But not as harsh as listening to women bitch about not getting laid or being unlovable. Not my fualt. But seriously, ladies, you're all wonderful most of the time. Some of you are awful all of the time, and some of you I wish were guys so we could hang out all the fucking time, get drunk and play football and videogames and fistfight and get into shit with other people at bars and basically piss excellence 24/7. And some of you are wonderful all the time. Or at least all of the times that I get to interact with you, because human interaction is really not my ultimate forte. At any rate I'm gay anyway so not only am I not interested in hearing about it from a logical standpoint, I'm not interested in hearing about it from a physiological stand point, and that means I'm way serious because the word I just used to expound upon my previous standpoint is twice as big. So it's twice as serious. It's the rules of English. Can't be helped and even if I could change them I wouldn't because changing them that drastically again would be like changing a clown's outfit so many times that he ends up wearing a three piece suit to a children's party, painted in white face, with the red nose and rainbow hair and that would scare the shit out of kids. Imagine if they thought that when they grew up they would have to work with clowns. Never knowing if their stapler had a joy buzzer attached to it. Never knowing if the next filing cabinet they opened would fire spring loaded snakes into their eyeballs or if their boss would mandate the entire office carpool in Fred's Huyndai accent with the seats in the back that aren't large enough to fit a baby folded up into a briefcase. That would be a nightmare for them. Not far from the truth, but a nightmare nonetheless. so I'm not going to do that to you with language. Encouraging irresponsibility is a shameful and hilarious thing that is to be, if anything, encouraged.

So what do I do instead of sex? I punch walls sometimes. Relieves stress in that same way and they both eventually end in tears and sore muscles. The only difference is after punching walls I don't need to take a shower. That and I can punch walls in public. Can't use sex toys in public. They will either lock you up or... ...throw money at you? Life lessons don't mix well with logic. Moving on though, I want to keep this light hearted as I have a habit of falling into myself like a cat into a toilet.

I'm still getting used to living alone. It's not a bad thing, but I was just thinking about it before I got sidetracked. For the majority of my life prior to age 25 I was either forced to live with other people, opted to live with other people, or had a space of my own in which to isolate myself, but could at any point choose to come out of that space and join a close knit public space of human beings. Since I've gotten too old to comfortably hang out in that space without freaking people the fuck out eventually and since I can't force myself to live with other people or force other people to live with me if I wanted to I am in the strange territory of lone man's land. It's been a learning experience.

The biggest thing you have to get used to is having no one around to tell you when you've got an exceptionally terrible idea that should not be pursued any further than it's inception, but much like when you were little and thought maybe if you watched where that little white puff of tree pollen went and followed it to its destination it would help you figure out where it could have come from and why it had the power to catalyze wish making, simply glimpsing the idea is enough to demand a second look. And then a third look. And then a fourth look, but it's drifting out of sight so if you want to make out its details you're going to have to pursue it, but only just a little. Just enough to get a better look. And then before you know it you're building a system of tubes to enable you to water the plants in your bathroom with your urine instead of getting sleep before you have to be at work in four hours.

The second biggest thing you have to get used to, well I should say, the second biggest indicator that you're probably not ready or used to living truly alone yet is when you realize you try to talk your way around the messes you made so that you don't have to clean them up. I don't mean like you tell yourself you'll clean it up later, I mean you hit the full blown "I didn't spill that so I shouldn't have to clean it up" argument. With yourself. Right after you the milk you were pouring on your cereal got a little too enthusiastic and did it's milk dance right over the edge of your bowl. When you're standing in your kitchen on Sunday morning bargaining with yourself and telling yourself that you'll take out the trash, but if you do you'll have to treat yourself with a beer and doggie biscuit for helping out because most of that trash isn't yours anyway and you've been taking out the trash and washing dishes all your life to earn a place to sleep and you shouldn't have to do it here and now in a place you are paying for outright. But you both know there's no chamber boy to lay out your formal shorts and take out the trash so what the fuck have you just been blathering about for the last hour. Just wipe up the milk and get on with your day. And that's when it hits you. You're still not used to getting up in the morning and having a sink full of dirty dishes with no one to blame but yourself and even then the understanding of your culpability escapes in the face of the simple and ridiculously sound reasoning that "maybe someone else did it".

Did I say sound? I meant unsound. About as sound as sex jokes in an STD clinic. Laughing yet? Me neither, but I do feel slightly better about myself so maybe you should too, if it works that way. I don't really know how that rule works.

Trying Hard

I'm sorry, I meant to meet up with you sooner, but there have been obstacles. Tough ones. Familiar ones. Unfamiliar ones. It's been very difficult to relate to other human beings on the simplest terms of things that should be universally understood except that when I make the calls to those things there is nothing more than empty drawers and dead lines. The ringing is back. I must have spent a solid twenty minutes looking for a telephone in my bedroom before it occurred to me that I keep my phone on silent. Then I went out into the hallway. As soon as I touched the door knob it stopped. As soon as I went back inside it started again so I went to bed. Then I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing with it's single beep (the beep it makes when it's set to silent). Fourteen times today and not once was it actually going off. And then the name calling started and stopped and started again. No one in my building knows my name. I know their voices though and no one in my building has a single one of those voices.

I've been trying to eat, but it's horrible. Ridiculous stomach clenching anxiety. And then the sounds my body makes while it's digesting. And then feeling like any second it's all going to come straight back up. It's hard to deal with. It felt like it was all control. All I had to do was keep my fingers on my head functions and the rest was easy and now even with that awareness the rest rips away like a table cloth in the hands of a retarded magician and sends it all to pieces on the floor. It was a nice sunny day. I tried to go outside. I really did. I got so far as putting on a sweater before I had to take it all off and start over again. I didn't do it right. And then it was dark outside, but the bus stops were all full of people and I can't go out like that. Not with them there.

What is there to be afraid of? What is there to be afraid of? I don't know, but it's fucking there. I've been trying to fight sleep, but it's the only place I know and feel secure in. When I'm sleeping I don't have to eat anything. I don't have to go outside like here. I don't have to hear my voice talk. I don't have to hear their voices talk. I don't have to hear at all. I don't have to rely on my stupid eyes. Just hearing the neighbors talking through the walls, apart from the untrue voices, made my head feel like it was busting like glass in a poorly packed cardboard box. Everything is people. I'm so fucking nerve wrecked at work because I have to keep checking to make sure I'm not being watched. I don't have anything to hide, but I'll be damned if they think they can hunt me like some oblivious dog. They think I don't know, but I do.

There were keys in my door locks earlier today. I thought my chest was going to cave in on itself listening to the locks open and the door swing, but I got up anyway to face it. There was nothing there. Not at my door or the neighbor's door. Still scared the living shit out of me. I don't understand where it's all coming from. I just want to go to bed and not have to be awake anymore. Whatever it is I want it to come kill me already. How long is this chase supposed to go before it's over?

A friend of mine passed away recently. Maybe that's what's eating up my control. I hate myself for a lot of reasons, but mostly for not being more accessible. I don't know how to fix that. I can't make people want to spend time with me in the same way I want to spend time with them. Who want's to hang out with a fucking retarded person who can't talk straight and who, when he can put words together out of his mouth, can't relate complete ideas the few times there are complete ideas to relate? I wouldn't. It's not about being normal or not. It's just massively frustrating. I would ask what is wrong with me, but I already know what's fucking wrong with me. And I feel selfish for even wishing he'd gone farther out of his way to hang out. That's simply ridiculous. I am the seldom seen fucked up individual with the bad history and the not so great outlook and why the fuck am I licking my own perpetual gashes...I don't know. I want the spit to make me better, and it doesn't. I don't miss him so much as I miss the him that everyone else got to know and that fills me with so much fucking rage.

And I can't even grieve properly because trying to focus in on the meaning of his absence is like trying to fire a gun from the rocking deck of a vessel burning and sinking at a target so far distant I can barely see it clearly. I'm sorry. I just can't put it together. I'm slapping the god damn pieces back on and more fall off and the whole thing is functioning if only just. The closest thing to a functioning family and I'm so far out of the loop out of necessity. I'm just trying hard. I'm trying hard not to lose all grip, but it makes me so fucking tired. I still have so much left to do. I just have to gut it out. And if that means screaming into a balled up sweater for minutes or hours till the shit turns off then fine. If that means locking myself away safe for days or diving into the safety of unconsciousness for 13 hours then fine. Not fine. It's not okay. I'm sick of telling people it's fine. But, I have to wear that. I've already learned once that it's unreasonable to share this with people. I guess that's why I've been dodging you for so long. It takes a lot to get up everyday and it's completely unfair, just wrong, to spread the dysfunction. He should still be here. I guess, more than anything else, my life is committed to ending it's proliferation. I should not be here. And the means to that end is also this blueprint to understanding why that has to be so.


///Morcheeba - "Diggin' a Watery Grave" ...not all at once

you know what ive realized?

doing what you love for a living is not really anywhere near as important as making time to do what you love regardless of what your living happens to be.

ive also realized that i will likely never recieve a giant robot for a birthday gift and i will have to build one myself.

ive also realized that i can make this thing look even better with a little more work. well a lot more work, but itll be good work.

ive also realized...

... no thats all. thats it.

i have a very strong urge to weld something. maybe ill build ... no thats a bad idea. i was going to say maybe i should build my own metalurgy thingy... black smithy furnace thing with the anvil and the hammer and the sparks and the bucket of molten metal. but that is definitely a bad idea. the first reason being that i dont have a way to get raw metal. the second reason being that i dont have a way to transport raw metal if i found it. the third reason being that i know nothing about welding.



what else... no thats it. sadly. im busy with book learnin. and book writing. isnt it ever disappointing... like thrillingly upsetting that the people that hold the keys to your future know nothing about you?

well not so much that they know nothing about you as much as they are completely ignorant as to the ramifications of ... well no thats too super villain...

does it ever just punch you in the jaw some nights? knowing that you're holding back because you have to?

i dunno. the prospect of a perpetual caging leaves me with mixed emotions, but then what else is new.

///god lives underwater - "from your mouth" a song that struck me when i was younger that still has a mixture of sounds that rings my guts like metal pipes in a zen garden. it makes me laugh a little bit thinking of my little head in my little hands back then, rocking back in forth on my bed and staring out the shitty bedroom window onto a view of the broken shed/patio roof that always stunk of mold and thinking of how overwhelming the problems seemed then. just a little bit. sometimes it feels so unreal as to become unreal.

zoetrope 05/29/07

Subject : zoetrope
Posted Date: : May 29, 2007 11:53 PM

here we are again. writing to you from my cave. i realized i enjoyed living in caves a while back. i built myself a den instead of a loft. it was great. i had a mattress that was bigger than a queen size. and christmas lights. everythings better with christmas lights. and fireflies.

so im a little docile. i ate a couple of mouthfulls of robitussin to help me sleep. so i can wake up rested you know. i was gonna go jog today but i ended up walking around in my flip flops for half an hour instead. im really looking forward to sleeping so early. its only 1am. the good thing about having so much energy during the day is that it feels so satisfying when its all gone.

what is not satisfying is that my paycheck is going to be delayed by about two weeks on top of the two week waiting period. im too tired to cuss and spit about it so i wont. i am really bushed. i miss sex. and smoking cigarettes.

i saw some children playing today. riding tricycles as hard as they could. i thought about how hard i tried to grow up so fast and i felt something stab through me that was probably regret. could've been disgust. or envy. but if i had to lay money on the table i would put my chips on 22 black. everything is wasted on everyone. whatever happend to contented living. its the one thing i think im going to really take away with me this summer. few things feel better than watching the sunlight slide down the window pane after work with the moon grasping for its tails.

i watched the first stars pop out tonight. they felt warm.

///boards of canada - "zoetrope" a song featuring all the shifty mixed feelings starlight can induce. but also a song that pulses and thins like sun streaks from an aperture that catches too much light... like dreaming at 3.33 in the afternoon.