Thursday, January 29, 2004
The air is wet with coming snow, but the roads are clear and dry. This would suggest that Michael is probably out riding. Which doesn't really mean one thing or another. If he could fuck the thing, I'm sure he would. It talks about as much as he does, and shows about as much interest in problem-solving. It is also about as helpful to me as he is being, doesn't give me references, take me on real dates, bring me flowers, you know the deal. Though its tank gleams magenta against its frame of female silver, I suspect that its reasoning is male. Which is to say, not at all.
No I am not jealous of a damn machine. I've seen it twice. It's purty. I'm not much on motorcycles b/c every time I tried to hang onto the back of one, its driver told me I was "leaning wrong". Yeah, that's right: feel rejected and kick the dog. Who knows. I might actually like the things, even though a cousin, to whom I wasn't close, died on one ten years ago. Ran smack into the van that made an illegal left in front of him. I'd like to feel pain, grief, family solidarity against motorcycles. But there's not much there.
Oh great. Another pneumoniac without the good sense to stay indoors and slurp soup or something. Instead he is slurping snot. That is not a good thing. I don't know where my earplugs are, but I think I need them now.
(oh, and he grunts to himself. lovely.)
This keyboard is the shit. They must have gotten it yesterday. Crisp, clean, nice action. This guy smells like cigarettes. Oh how lovely this becomes. Grunts and snot and smoke and now he is talking. Doesn't respond to shushing. All of a sudden, zero to sixty, I am pissed off. And the cigarette smell is somehow drifting at me, as if willed to do so. This is one motherfucker I would like to kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh
--you know.
I have my earplugs in, and they are not that much help. Those times I slept in the same bed as Michael, I always wore them. Michael snores. I think it's sleep apnea. The bwai needs to lose some weight and fast, in part because he is a hypertensive diabetic with bad knees. He's also depressed. I can see it there where it was not just last year. It would seem that the death of a parent--his mother, in this case, and not unexpectedly--can either galvanise or tear to shreds a person who hasn't completed the tasks of maturation. This doesn't bode well for me me me me me.
I can't seem how I'd suddenly become adult if one or both of my parents were to die about now. I haven't finished being a teenager. I guess Michael, though he has two grown children, a healthy bank account, a respectable profession (even if shoddily practised) and a cable dish atop his house, is mired at some point in his early twenties. Surely: about all guys in their early twenties can think about is fucking, and that would be one way to describe Michael. No wonder he won't take Prozac.
It's odd: I can talk about Michael--the changes in his physical appearance, his work habits, his housekeeping (he used to burn scented candles, and now the place smells like an old sweatsock); the fact that he takes cell calls in his extra bedroom (the one that, if he had a heart, he'd invite me to move into BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA) only to claim that they are from family (his granddaughter wants a "Mommy Barbie". I wonder if there is such a thing.), and that he will not give up his on-line life when there is at least one live female there for the investigation.
He has nothing to say about my writing or intellect. He has no suggestions as to how I might proceed with either sobriety or life in general. I can't describe the man, other than to comment on incidentals to the heart, and what he will and will not do. Though I have a rich and involved fantasy life, I have never thought myself capable of falling in love with, let alone loving, a cipher.
I'm answering my own questions as I write this. But I can't turn the "it" off, that "it" that fueled high school crushes, the dopamine jolt that accompanies unflaggingly unrealisticdesires. I hate that word, "desire". It's smarmy, rubbed in jism and left to dry on the floor of a Tenderloin movie house. You'll find it in glory holes, on cum-stained panties. Desire. Fine name for a streetcar, i suppose,.
This is teetering dangerously close to Erica Jong trying to butch it up.
Next you know, I'll be writing abou masturbation.
whoa horsie
Multiples. Blogs, I mean. I'm probably not capable of that sort of brute objectivity that would distinguish early Hemingway et al from his weaker bredren. So, I'm just gonna put my jits and jots of observation here, and hope that some kind of meaningful whole emerges.
I just encountered this ex-coworker from the last nursing home where I wiped shit. She's a post-op transsexual, and looking really good, really 'real' (I hope this doesn't offend any readers who are themselves transgendered). I don't know if I would want to go back there,b/c that place made a stone cold alcoholic out of someone who verged back and forth, more or less. A bunch of judgemental motherfuckers. I was like someone who had third-degree burns over 99% of her body: raw, and vulnerable to the vagaries of those frustrated folks who tend to work in nursing homes. Stephen King should try to mine that territory. I understand he's got a TV series about a haunted hospital in the wings. Debut this spring; should be a ratings winner.
This business of looking for work is daunting. i don't know if I deliberately dressed the part of the laborer when I went over to the local rag to apply for a gig as a "production assistant". (This is actually very physical work--no lights, camera, action.) I was nervous and lost my voice, and I suspect that I had food in my teeth. Lately, this has been a problem--my teeth are not so good anymore. I'm afraid to tote up the damage done by bulimia and simple neglect (and those OTC bleaching strips that don't work and are bad for the choppers). There was this woman at AA last night: her face had collapsed around her mouth, around the hole where her teeth had been. Goose on my grave. My mother lost her teeth when I was eight (she had a hillrod upbringing, and her dental hygiene was less than optimal), and seeing her try to smoke a cigarette with her gums packed with bloody cotton--that picture still tweaks my stomach a little. May that never be me. (Imagine meeting the hunk of meat of your dreams in your local bar/coffeehouse/gym, getting jiggy later, and discovering that that person's blindingly white smile can actually be removed and soaked overnight, food particles left to float on the surface of dingy water. uuuuuUUUUUUGGGGGGGHhhhhh.)
Well, at least such a person couldn't crack gum. That might be an acceptable trade-off.
Michael has remained non-com since I asked him--again, via e-mail--for another reference. (The first time this happened, he recommended me to his then-employer and I wound up fired in four weeks. I don't think he was pleased.) I don't know what to do with the idea of Michael. He's depressed, dismissive, and has let himself go, gained back all of the weight he had lost this summer plus some. Fucking him is like trying to fuck a beanbag, only upside down. He couldn't get in last time, and I tried to help him, and finding the thing under his stomach--this was, let's say, difficult. I'd liken it to swimming in a cave. (MIX those metaphors.)
It's not about the stomach, though: this man is maddening, and I lack the balls to confront his more troubling behaviors. I don't know why I'm drawn to him; must be the outlaw thing still in effect. Which is hardly a basis for a crush, let alone grounds on which to define a "relationship". I checked his stomping grounds--yahoo--yesterday, and he's been "active" within the last three days. He's been on the puter, seen I've mailed him, and done nothing. Right now, I'm, like, FUCK him. Not the shy flower I was little over a year ago, but hardly the sort of woman who can ask the questions that need answering before anything else, including fucking, ensues.
Well, this entry wasn't what I intended. Juvenile, for one thing. I'm whupped and need sleep and have once again begun to worry about making any kind of money, rent and such. I guess that shows.
Crazy
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
The enneagram. Wow. I'm a type 4, an Individualist. The unhealthy aspects of this supposed 'type' describe me eerily well. I took the short version (you gotta pay thru the nose to take the longer, more 'official' one) online someplace, and I imagine it's available at multiple locations on the Web.
I'm going to have to look into this subject more deeply. I'd always known it was there, yet blown it off (for reasons I can't finger; the construct seems like one I'd find fascinating.
wonder about other ppl here...
These multiple blogs might be too much. There is the compulsion to write something that means nothing in every one. Will see. Will see. Time's about up now; gotta re-log.
A funny thing happened on the way to the library: a cop gave me a ride. I was thumbing, he was off-duty. I came on all aw-shucks, I know thumbing's illegal in this town, et cetera. He didn't have much to say. I was pretty damn grateful I didn't have liquor on my breath, for I'd be in the pokey again right now, instead of here, in this warm, well-lighted place.
I almost tried to drink last night. I'd been to AA, and two ppl pissed me off but good. Ah: rejection. Sure to bring on a bevy of bats from the belfry. But I got my arse into my pjs, turned on the TV and found a police procedural that I could actually watch. It's cold here in the near-midwest stateside, though not nearly as cold as it is at home (Philadelphia, PA). An inch of cold blowing beneath my front door, and I just couldn't do it, couldn't go outside and down the hill and into the humiliation of the convenience store where they sell my favorite cat-piss beer.
I had a dizzy little trip: pretend tonight at AA that I'd gotten drunk. Try to make the two ppl that dissed me feel bad. Not that they would, and I'd just wind up looking a bit more pathetic than usual. That passed. Sometimes bad ideas do.
I bemoan my lack of objectivity here. Thinking of setting up a second blog for observations, social commentary, fragments of lyrics and the occasional abortus of a short story. And perhaps another, something having to do with being all kinds of crazy. I've been advised that I will receive no help in bringing such a blog to the attention of mental health/addictions bufus. And there is nothing I can do about that. Maybe at some later date, if things calm down some in my head and I have the proper 'For Idiots' text propped up to my left, I might be able to figure it out. Last go-round in school, I always played the dizzy old punk, Exene on ether, laughing at my ineptitude as I suckered some undergrad techie to set me up for a paper or some such. I used to be obversely proud of my ability to exist on a low-level con. I'm changing my mindset, though: I'd rather be competent at something else for once.
I don't know why, but I'm not angry right now. Give it a chance, I know: someone or something will blunder into the lull before the gnashing of teeth, the reddening of grey matter. (I have most seriously ground down my left molars. Guess that means something is twisting the right side of my brain.)
This is a cool place sometimes. You could get used to it, maybe. It is asylum. There is something that verges on hope, despite the homeless nodding off behind displays and fern trees, despite the occasional police radio squawking, the juvenile pickup artists and those who really should be nursing their pneumonias at home.
Damn those transitions and man the--nup, nup, no talk of weaponry today. I have a line on a job I could do; in fact, I called HR (with my Trac-Phone) today to find out if the position (bundling, lifting and loading newspapers at night) is still open. I'd heard about this gig from someone in a drug program at the mens' homeless shelter here, and figured that if they'd hire him, they'd hire me. Most of us have run afoul of the law, many more than once. I'm five-nine, about 150, and "widely sprung", as some put it: big shoulders, long strong legs. I look like a distance swimmer. And I'm strong. I can lift 50 pounds again and again. That's about as much as each of my folks' four dogs weighs, and I'm the one who picks 'em up and weighs 'em. I can dress heavier, too. That's not a problem. just work the "fresh start" angle until it almost bleeds. Nine-fifty an hour. I could hang with that.
But of course, I am scared. Always something waiting to go wrong. I used the weather today to stay inside until after noon; then I went to the Jack-U convenience store and had some coffee, and finally ventured into the still, bright cold.
Now, it's time to do some reading. A note to myself, though: I gotta see the doc tomorrow. Chances are good she has received the free Neurontin I've been needing, and the free Prozac too. Pity I must modulate this brain so. But I will wonder about that later.
Crazy
For what is most probably the first time, I am reading the blogs of others. Random titles that catch the eye, and I've happened upon some goodies. Pity I didn't stop to write them down, let along log them to return to (this, because I don't know how; what computer shite I know, I know well, but as far as the rest of it goes, it's Trac-Phonese to me). Yes, I got a Trac-Phone. No, I couldn't program it, despite--or more likely because--the fact that it came with instructions. All of yiz are so much more advanced than I.
Sometimes my hackles come up and take aim when I feel I have been bested, especially by someone whose writing suggests they are about fifteen years my junior. And sometimes I want to fist-fuck the air and praise the lord at the sheer wondrousness of some of this writing.
gotta go soon enough, into the cold and frieze of snow.
could be worse, i guess.
i hope this counts as a pivotal experience.
crazyhoss
"Spells for HER," I meant to say.
DAMN, these people next to me STINK. I can't describe it--the sour musk of desperation, perhaps, or hair unwashed for two weeks? The afterglow of borderline pedophilia?
This thirtyish guy and teenage girl--he SPELLS for, and kisses her neck--are offensive in a way I know I've been more than once, so I imagine it's not the bald, brute smell that is getting to me, but rather the fact that they are not quiet computer patrons. (Regardless of how profoundly I have stunk of caries, beer and bad sex, I've never been noisy in a public lab.)
I've not been in the pokey or rehab (although I concede the latter isn't a bad idea), but rather indoors, in my crackerbox, girded as best as I can figure against the cold. I try to be grateful for the fact that I have a crackerbox to hide in. And yeah, I was drinking some, but I think I finally scared myself away from it for a good while: I got the DTs. My first time! I was lying there in a cold sweat and dream from which I could not come awake; I was talking to--arguing with--people who were not there. I couldn't wake up, and when I did, I reached for the half a forty next to my pallet, and became violently ill. Retched to the point of blowing out the capillaries beneath my eyes. And there were the shakes. A feeling of having fallen loose and jangly inside. Tried to call my mother, but my voice wouldn't come out right. It trembled like water, and I didn't complete the call.
She figured something was bad wrong, and came and got me. Allowed me to fix myself up, get some chemically assisted sleep, B vitamins, and lots of water. By the next day--this last Sunday--I was looking and seeming much better. As far as actually *feeling* goes, I'm not sure. And as for knowledge, there was this: I must stop, and stop long and hard and in a way that will not, in itself, kill me, for otherwise, there is only the kind of death, precisely the kind of death, that I do not want. The kind that happens while my parents are still living.
I had a weird adventure last week (transitions be damned). It had to do with EPOs and cops, but I wasn't the one arrested. Rather, I gave someone up. Someone who was going to employ me as a laborer, or so he said, and someone whose woman-beating past I didn't know of. Now, my smoke detectors are back on, and I'm sleeping--or lying on my pallet, as it were--with a knife. Not that I know how to use one well.
I am tiring of these tawdry adventures. If I last long enough to make those AA 'amends', there will be people that my addictive behaviors have deeply hurt, and not just small, silly me.
I made it back. So now what?
charleyhorse
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
The brittle season has come. High headache sun riding down the grey skin of sky. Temperatures to sink below zero, wind and moisture factored in, and my spidey hole is just a leaky cardboard box. Mize well be living on the street, in a cheaper cardboard box, but that would probably be illegal in this oppressive town
Regretting things said, sent, posted. Being without work in this kind of weather, bus-dependent, no quality cold-weather clothes, stinks. Looking for work regardless stinks as well. Just don't ahve the confidence to think I'll get anything other than cold day labor. Which is, yes, better than nothing at all.
I'm spineless, something that favors warm salty water. Greg showed up at a meeting the other night. Smirky smarmy creep: and he doesn't ignore me, but rather rubs himself in my face. I keep safe distance.Michael--well, I guess I got what I deserve. I just didn't figure on his wanting sex right away! Hated myself for giving in so easily, for this eternal confusion. I'd hoped he would have left me an email today, but no. I'd really feel sick if I hurt him--I think my behaviors in extremis are the work of sodden emotions run amok, and thereby not much to react to, insignificant. I may be wrong about this. Well, I'll just say that I am sorry about a couple of things, and sigh and keep on swimming below the surface of the ice until I can hold my breath no longer.
just sad, B.D., and whoever else happens to take a look at this thing. Damn, I wish I had my own puter. I hope someone comes up with a way to have a puter and not need a phone.
me
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
I hope to soon be known here as 'CrazyHoss'. Don't want to hunt down trouble, or kill it--although a life without trouble would be a good thing right now. Michael did get back to me--and sounded a tad pissed. As usual, was prepared to explain jack. If jack's well in his brain, no need to, I guess. I could spend my life with this person, given a few minor adjustments on both parts. His roommate ripped him off, on top of all the other shite he's had to deal with this past year. I see spirals for the both of us.A.dot.C gave some indication today that they might want me back. Heck, that job did hella keeping me sobre. I was actually applying some of the stuff I took from AA to handle the cliqueism and other things that bugged me (it is usually the coworkers, rather than the work, that gets me tizzied and in line for a pink slip).
Last night, extreme weirdness. Greg the freak showed up at AA and I becme pissed off, despite preparations for same, and game-face effort. He snarked at me like someone about to fall in love with their reflection in the pond. I grunted, moved, kept shifting my dark glasses. Caught a ride with ppl Greg refers to in a vile fashion (and I told him this, early on: one of those men had tried to 13th step me, and I was not quite happy about this. Felt like I had 'major damage' tatted across my wrinkly forehead. There is this woman sucking snot right beside me, and I want to kuh-kuh-kuh--OH, NEVER MIND).
Anyway, Michael. I didn't think he'd respond to the off-kilter message I left him last night, for he must leave this town for another around six p.m. He indicated (despite Yahoo's flagrant argument otherwise) that I was the only person he'd taken seriously in a long time (for all I know, his sense of time is as distorted as my sense of ppl). That brutha is on drugs. I seriously believe so. And that wouldn't be a problem if he leveled about it. How else is somebody gonna lose four jobs in a year and a half? The guy has a rep as bad as my own on the nursing home circuit around here. Again, if he were up front about his using, I could handle THAT. But I can't do being lied to--he told me that a quilt I'd admired was hand-made by his grandmother, and M is 55 years old, and the thing was screaming, 'A factory made me'. Yeah, I had been thinking it was a gift from one of his Yahoo girls. And maybe he picked up on that.
I'd have more and deeper to say, except that Snot Woman is just begging for a good whuppin. Keep your damn cold at the house, you flippin pig. Unless you have someone overseas, you just don't need to be out spreading your little uglies (what I usually call my titlets) to others.
CrazyHoss/Broken Little Finger on Left Hand.
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rant of career screw-up, social retardate and bad references walking, all grown old
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