yeswritingsandwritings

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Guy Loses His Pants In Front Of A Bunch Of Chicks... Pt. 1

My holiday in the sun ends badly when the seagulls fly away with my swimtrunks.

Mercifully annie told her friends not to laugh as i covered my genitalia and the birds squacked victory

Back at the hotel i run the bathtub

Mercifully annie shouts from the other room saying they probably didn’t see a thing.

“Yeah i’ll bet they didn’t see a thing with how small it is” i said about my penis.

The water is warm as if radioactive. I go into it and leave the speaker on the cabinet. Only the finest opera for my shame.

Mercifully anne is trying to change the subject.

“We should try that new ethiopian place,” she says, her voice losing definition against the pizzacato violas.

“I’m down,” i say, but really i’m watching the open faucet gushing water onto my legs. The faucet is silver and i can see a foggy reflection in it. My face is cut up venetian blinds-like from the rainforest adventure yesterday and my cheeks are hot from the brandy.

This vacation is lame as hell.

“Did they say anything to you about it?” of course most of me doesn’t want to know but I can’t let it go. I’m concerned mostly about jessica, one of anne’s hotter friends who i secretly dream about fucking. Of course anne is not going to give me any real information about the situation. She knows i’m too delicate to handle the facts.

After the bath I am struck by the urge to go ask Jessica myself.

“I’m going to get some ice,” to Anne.

I even bring the ice bucket.

Jessica’s room is on the highest floor of the hotel. Her window, as I am soon to find out, looks over the docks and the beach where anyone on that whole side of the hotel could have seen my nudity scandal from on high.

I knock at the door. Jessica opens it in a towel. Another towel holds up her hair in a bundle. She looks surprised to see me.

“Where’s Anne?” she asks.

I am not sure what I am doing here, but I am possessed by a spirit which I don’t dare second guess.

“Did you see my weiner?” I ask her. “Down there on the beach?”

“I did.” she says.

This is great! It dawns on me that we could truly have a sexual relationship. She is deliberately overlooking her confusion, and her whole relationship with Anne, my lovely girlfriend, to talk frankly about my weiner. I guess everything really does happen for a reason.

“Be honest with me,” I say, extending an arm to grab the doorframe. “Sizewise… am I bigger or small than most guys?”

Jessica has a reputation as the village slut so I know that she is qualified to answer this question. Whether she gives me an honest answer or not is still up in the air.

Here she says “Did Anne put you up to this?”

It’s totally understandable she considers Anne’s role in this situation. I thought she’s be considering her more, just based on their friends-since-childhood status.

“Absolutely not.” I say. “Actually Anne doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“Well” she says “I didn’t get a good enough look at it.”

Here, of course, I step more deeply into her suite. What a suite. White carpet on hard wood floor. Floor to cieiling windows aimed at the sea. 18th century pottery sitting on hand-carved chamberdesks. Our room looks like shit compared to this one.

“How can you afford this room?” I ask her, lifting an ancient jar from the shelf.

Jessica was the frontdesk girl at a Mariott Resort Hotel. An important position in this rough-and-tumble society to be sure, but definitely not the kind of gig that would afford her a room like this.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” she says.

Ok, she is acting mysterious about it but I suspect a trust fund situation.

“What did the other girls say about it?” I ask her, bringing the conversation back to my genitals.

“None of us really got a good enough look!” Her voice is and high and wispy as if we were already naked.

“Alright well if I show you we’ve got to keep it between us.” I say. “Very quick, no long examinations, just get a quick feel for the size.”

In reality my penis is smaller than the average bloke’s, but matters such as that could not concern me less as I stand in the hotel room with Jessica. The size of the penis does not matter. What was important was that she witness the dong, and that she is able to reliably communicate her impressions.

“Prepare yourself,” I tell her, taking the beltline of my trousers in hand.

Slowly I draw down the boxers and bike shorts. Jessica’s concentration is such that the crashing of the construction site down the road does not stir her, and the magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hits at the moment barely made a dent in it.

The penis is unusually curved for a man of my stature, and it appears suddenly as a bat from a cave. In the flash of eye we both have the majestic thing before us, and Jessica is clasping her hands over her mouth. I wish she would not cover her expression. I’d managed to take in a taste of it but want the whole enchilada.

There is silence for a good while. I let the thing hang, bobbing quietly up and down. It isn’t as though I want her to interact with it physically (God forbid), but I do expect some sort of reaction beyond the surprise-face. Eventually I have to say “Is it different than you remember from the beach?”

The situation down there had been a good deal more intense, with spiteful words flying between Anne and I, and the policeman trying to calm us down. Perhaps the chaos had impaired her judgment.

“Well me and Hailey were saying it looked small, but it’s bigger than I remember!” she says, stuttering and wrapped up in the fever of beholding.

“That’s just why I wanted to come up here!” I say. “I don’t want there to be any misinformation about my weiner or anything like that.”

Although I’d been extremely embarrassed by the exposure on the beach, showing myself to Jessica here in this quiet suite seemed a sort of redemption. Yes, now she would go tell her friends that my weiner is perfectly normal sized, and I could go back to Anne knowing that I did my best to resolve an unfortunate situation for all of us.

I am just putting my fingers around the waistband to yank the shorts back up when the two of us hear Anne’s voice from the doorway.

Somehow we’d left the door to the hallway open during all of these shenanigans, and now Anne is there with a look of rage on her tiny face.

I understand why she’d be upset. It must look I was engaging in some depraved sexual act with Jessica, one on one with her exposing my private parts. Nothing could be further from the truth!

“Johnny what the f*ck are you doing?”

Oh the harsh language! So evil I can barely bare to print it here. But the truth is important.

I tell her as much, saying “Anne, keep your voice down.” Surely the other occupants of the hotel will recognize our group as classless heathens upon hearing such undignified words. Actions have consequences.

My pointing this out seems to upset her even more. Trying to compute it all she turns to Jessica.

“Jessica what is going on?”

#beach #nudity #life is strange

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Kurt

Kurt how many times have I walked with you thru

best reconstructions of your final days

To Cactus texmex and the Jack in the Box

on Capitol Hill

I met the devil she took me to The Lab

She bought my drinks and said she was getting

a thousand dollars worth of Oxycodone

I blocked her number but I'm holding out hope

she finds a way thru

[yeswritingsandwritings]

On the hotline they put me on speaker

On the hotline they put me on speaker

To cackle at me

They’ve heard guns pop and blood splatter thru the receiver

A hundred times

Nothing I could do to shake them up

I blacked out my mirror

I can no longer see the glitter

Crucified in the lines in my face

Suicide is reaching out to me

Like a concerned mother

[yeswritingsandwritings]

no glory in the breakneck binge

i leave the office for my room again

i see the wine stain

frozen, dripping down my bedside table

the flashlight of day in my face like a pistol

this isn’t the first time i've had a gun pointed at me

i close the blinds, lay down on the comforter

i've been glimpsing paradise thru a periscope

a spinning picture moving through a slit in the wall

a spectacle, baroque, organic

before long my alarm

is screaming like a desperate paramedic

“wake up now can’t you see my hand

waving in front of your face?”

#poem #poetry #original

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Copernicus Said

Copernicus said

“the moon revolves around the stars

          & the earth... is of no matter”

i think he was wrong

i’ve seen robins dive from their nests, kamikazes

leaving their eggs quivering about to burst

all for scrapping nibletts of bread on the pavement

they perform for the same audience

as the ghosts i've heard in the vast desert

whimpering of how the world turns slow

what do they know?

their echoes are vain and arcane

as Copernicus, pounding his fist on the table, insisting to the bankrupt room

that the moon revolves

around the stars

#original #poem

[yeswritingsandwritings]

autumns & potlucks

vacant blue eyes with the skyscrapers in them

glaze when they’re throwing back wine

your children will get born and grow old

throw laptops against the walls

sprint thru the hedge mazes

resolve to do better

you've got to stop but its easy to say “tomorrow”

you’re edging the reaper with that talk

you need a slap in the face

if you want to see that face grow wrinkled

turn pensive when it remembers

all the wildness and workdays

sprawled suburbs and firepits

autumns and potlucks

well

it was nice to talk to you

i’ll let you go now

#original #poem

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Scene From A Hospital

I watch you walk around the hospital

You seem so kind

The way you watch the clock

Is there a dying man in the other room

Waiting to meet you?

You’ll tell his legend for years to come

You’ll go to your kids and you’ll cry

He’s only an angel to you

His other contacts have gone

Why are you pacing so quickly?

Why do you watch the entryway mirror

As if it would show you something

Besides your own oblong blue eyes

I guess I could say “it’s tough”

Or anything

But I get the feeling

That nothing could penetrate your grieving

I look towards the elevator

There’s got to be something

To keep me from penetrating

my own

#original #poem

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Off The Road On A Blooming Star

Well I’m head over heels

For the words you said

I’m all about the way you sigh

I’ve been the blooming stars

Now I’m humanoid taking your picture

You’re posing on the staircase

& We’re such sensitive people

& You, the blushing goddess

Have all the time in the world

#original #poem #poetry

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Love

love is nothing but a holy daydream

[yeswritingsandwritings]

I Wrote A Song About Your Eyes

I wrote a song about your eyes

Can you believe that?

I’ve only seen them thru this one screen

How do they glow so mercilessly?

I pray they let me go

I sink and moan and press record

This may be important

You never know

Maybe we could call again

And you could tell me

again

How Trump keeps the kids

in cages

“Not to give you too much power

but you’re kinda my muse right now”

I said to the stranger the other night

She was blushing somewhere far away

beyond the screen

I gaze to my IRL lover

What is it that separates us?

Is it our will to power?

Is it our eager hatred?

Should we separate and make peace with the separation?

Should we agree to misunderstand each other?

Shake hands in the face of it?

I never want to be caught

In its shadow

[yeswritingsandwritings]

What Year Was The Summer of Love?

What year was the summer of love

Alexa what year was it

That we were nodding off into strange heart spaces

Pulsing with each other in breath

And solum euphoria

And telling each other thru muted eyes

That blasted like cannons

I am and always will be

What year was that

And where are we now

When eyes peer out from masks

And I give you your shopping cart

And we go around the market

But there’s a meat shortage

So we buy siracha and eggs

I heard it was hard to learn to speak

Easy enough for me

And of the broken shards of shadow that mingle below our feet

Curse you, let me wake up and have breakfast

Let me wake up and have that lovely breakfast with the only girl who can make it

But who will die and die and try to teach me death is only life without the flSH

I’ll never learn, tossing flowers at her tombstone

And outwardly she is the whole world

Inwardly she is a poem

She learned there’s discriminating factor

Between the two states of being

And rigid with ruin she basks

Black wound on black good

Good tender fire

Let’s burn it all tonight

[yeswritingsandwritings]

COVID Diaries; Pennies

It is March 2020 and I’ve channeled the spirit of Paul Revere. As Los Angeles erupts into rioting and mass fentanyl suicide, I dive headfirst into the cabin of the Mazda, and gun the packed ship upwards along the vacant I5 corridor. Every smouldering city under Gavin Newsom looks further gone than the last. The navigation takes me on some perverse fantasy detour thru post-apocalyptic San Francisco. It’s been a long time coming but now it’s solidified. The mayor and her delegates have chomped their cyanide pills and now the streets and bridges offer rotting cars beside silent, beautiful Victorian manors. Still in full color, the sky is blue and the sun is yellow, gleaming indifferently. I am nervous about San Franscisco County. The shelter in place order says no one shall be out on the street without proper reason. And, proper reason or not, I have a pharmacy of drugs in the trunk of my car. Will it be enough to wait out the pandemic in my mother’s house? Enough to keep me sane tucked in the basement of the compound on Cougar Mountain, Issaquah, Washington, for GodKnowsHowLong? My very own Bavarian Alps.

For years in LA I have lived for high speed and hard sex in a blackout frenzy which no young American could denigrate without looking like a nerd. In our culture of excess I sought the most insane, unexplored corridors. Chavionistic romps through the bitter forests of lust, contamination, too-young suicide, too-good blowjobs that leave explosions on this cast of characters flown from every corner of the globe, all with the same indelible fever. I come to now, in this chaotic month handed down by God, March 2020, and I’m withdrawing from all of it in the penthouse on the side of the mountain.

In this moment the fantasy is fading fast, like being jolted from a wet dream by a home invasion. For a lot of people the American dream was already a flickering ember in the distance, a relic of some stupid pilgrimgrage for egoic glory, a blind propaganda puzzle piece with no jigsaw to belong to. But I had formed my own relationship with the concept, and, until now, had believed wholeheartedly in the myth in America; or at least that myth’s capacity to spur significant action, which could abolish hunger and pain, mistreatment and misunderstanding, which could deliver us from evil and unto the kingdom of heaven.

I am not, to many of her 300 million pairs of eyes, a portrait of traditional American success. I am the starving artist archetype. I’ve lived in abandoned buildings and shot cocaine into my veins in the speeding bathroom of many an Amtrak carriage. These may be my most definitive traits, save for the music I somehow manage to draw out of all of this. Albums worth of potential answers to the impossible questions. Sometimes I think I’ve reached the peak, with the LSD and the naked festival girls. I am 26 years old and feel incompetent. I go to pay a traffic ticket or am electric bill and find myself paralyzed at the entrance to the website. In a moment of otherworldly strength I call the bank and my debit card has been cancelled. I stare at the parking ticket in my pod, which has been rented from a company called Up(Start), and is arranged in a row with twenty others. At least I’ve made it to Los Angeles.

Up(Start) is a strange place. I find most people don’t last very long in this community. They leave back to their hometowns or find apartments. The ones who stay haunt this place like ghosts, with no discernible goals and mysterious incomes. I’ve learned not to ask how these life-longers pay the rent. The answer is not translatable.

Willow is one of these life-longers. She always talks about moving out; sometimes to an apartment in LA, most recently about some nebulous palace in France. She says her grandmother died and left her everything. She shows me a suitcase full of watches and rings that still can’t fully convince me of her story. She drinks vodka when she wakes up and convinces me to fuck her when Jesse leaves us in his room alone.

Jesse found his way out to a beautiful house in Silver Lake. He had been at Up(Start) for a year before that. He is the nicest guy I know, offering the coat off his back for nothing but a swig of your vodka in return.

I left these characters behind, keeping a steady 65 on the interstate and stopping only to black out in a hotel room in Redding, CA. Summer, inspirational barista and blowjob queen, dared me to stop and see her in Portland, but my body was crawling from scabies from Lucy, (who was also in Portland and, I would later learn, infected with the virus) and I sped right through.

My younger brother Jon was at the house and had been awaiting my arrival. I instantly understood why. My mother had become a figurehead for the national panic, and shoulder-hugged me with her mask on. She is, as we speak, sterilizing the place.

I’ve gotten to spend a good amount of time with Jon, and am somewhat surprised to find that he faces the same existential torment as I do. This is not something we talk about, but I can feel it on him. He is super into Xanax, and orders pressed bars off the darknet. I share the drugs I’ve brought with him. Kratom, weed, and, —most enticing— Flubromazolam. I learn that he has been kicked out of UW on academic probation. I ask him about it in front of my mother and stepdad. With a casualness that shocks me he says he just didn’t care about any of his classes. But he’s got reaccepted to the school and he says he’s going to make it this time.

I show him how I order my drugs online. I show him the designer benzodiazepines on the clearnet, pennies per dose. We place an order for O-DSMT. It’s an insane solution to our problems, but I guarantee you it works.

I tell Jon about my life in LA with the stuff. Taking it and driving weed deliveries all day. I don’t tell him about the long nights with Lucy, telling her the love I feel from the opiate is sourced from her, then failing to get hard.

Jon, for his part, tells me about the peak of his Oxycontin habit, poppin 7 OC30’s a day with his buddies at Rolling Loud. I was just a few blocks away. I didn’t know he was in town.

We order the O-DSMT to his apartment in the U District, stopping to and snag it on our sole vacation to Dad’s for dinner. Two packages have been delivered. We have the save pavlov response. We carry the packages to his apartment on the top floor and split the bubble wrap with a butterfly knife. Out of a manilla envelope comes 100 green Xanax bars. From a bent UPS envelope comes a gram of O-DSMT and 250mg of 4-ACO-DMT, a bonus for me (Jon says he hates psychedelics).

We set to the scale and split the gram, dosing 50mg then and there to get through dinner. The next day he visits me in the basement, saying “Yo, this O-DSMT shit… it’s dope.”

I say “I’m with you.”

My days are spent deep in the dream flow, recording songs for a hopeful fourth album. The third one is still far from complete, but I can’t go back and meddle with those songs now. Wouldn’t dare touch their Los Angeles essence with the hand of the evergreen state. They will go to Rob and Twon and Andy as they are.

I’m back to guitars for the new album. Cardinal sin AC/DC type songs. I think it may be a double album, quarantine permitting. I want an exploratory, unstructured, throw paint at the wall and see what sticks, White album/Life of Pablo situation. I want solo piano pieces and Aphex Twin-esque 808 excursions. I want the label to release it on white vinyl with extensive liner notes. Indulgence. I want this album to be the one where I say “indulge me.”

If Rob is vehimently opposed to the idea I had the fantasy of making an easy album. Taking songs like Parade Owl, See You Tomorrow, Miss Can’t Sleep and putting out a whole album of them. Good rock music. Take a step back from the frontlines; the cutting edge. We’ll see what sticks to the wall after this quarantine is over.

Weeks drift by. There’s a trade route for all the beer that gets brought into the house. It goes from the garage fridge to the basement fridge to my eager hand, to my mouth, to my blood. Night by night the ritual recurs, til my mom takes out the downstairs trash and finds all the empties. She makes some subtle comment. I tell her to buy more White Claw.

Despite the drug flow my inspiration seems to be drying up. Rob took a listen to the twenty five songs I’d completed since arriving in Issaquah and said they sounded like Dogs. The old band. The old rock and roll band we’ve been trying to move away from. I was disappointed to hear him say it. I was disappointed he wasn’t excited about the songs. “Fuck it, should I scrap them all?” I asked myself. Then I started to look around the house and understand that if nothing came of these songs… I must be insane. I must be losing it. The stupid research chemical stimulants don’t help. I thought they would. Productivity and all… but I’m just jittery, texting strangers on Instagram for hours, all the while feeling like I should be doing something else. And the television is on in the background, and I told myself I was going to do so much to day. And I did it. And people on Instagram say “you seem busy.” They’ve always said I seem this and I seem that. I never agreed with any of it, but they probably know me better than I do. How could I see myself? I look for myself through a fog and it’s only a ripple of a shadow. A microcosm a million miles away through a hellscape with no up or down, no east or west. They say I’m social. They say I’m a socialite. Really I just get drunk and unleash all my nervous energy on the party or, nowadays, the Zoom meeting.

Today I drink Modello. Ma and Chuck went to the Seattle waterfront for a picnic or something. I didn’t get the details. But the sun should be going down now, and she’s texting me asking if I want to play a board game when they get back. I say yeah sure I do. My temper when I’m off these amphetamines analogues, though… I worry I’ll flip the Pictionary board. Slam dunk the wine glass onto the wood floor. Now the cliffhanger; will this Modello calm my nerves?

This morning I went with mom to buy plants for the garden. I thought we were going to get seeds but she wanted the already grown ones. She was ready to be angry. Nothing made her happy. We went to three different garden store. I think she got some tomatos. How the hell am I going to get out of this one? Feels like the walls are closing in. I feel like I’m in the freezer in the back of McDonalds. I feel so sad for her, but I also feel so sad for myself. I feel cut off. I feel short of breath. I feel terror. It is Friday, April 17, 2020. Dread, terror, paranoia… I’m sure it’s been felt a million times by a million people, but here’s my version of it. In this McMansion on the side of the mountain, feeling less like I have a mission than ever. Calling nobody. Freezing. Yeah I’m freezing.

My brother and I both have drugs to get through this crisis but I’m planning to get off them. I sold him half of my etizolam and half of another shipment of O-DSMT the other day. He wasn’t at all interested in the 2-FDCK, an analogue of the dissociative Ketamine. I am still not really sure what dissociatives do to consciousness. They can move you into states profound darkness. You feel like your life is a black and white film and it is raining outside. And it drips off the palm trees and you sit in traffic on the way back from the Boy’s and Girl’s Club, where the boys and girls wouldn’t listen, they’d just go off into their own worlds. I wonder how they’re all doing now, tucked into their parents houses in Calabasas.

Anyway, I said to Jon “I’m getting off the stuff.” And I intended to. This journal finds me at a crossroads between fantasy and reality. What is my life going to be for? Where do I cast this fishing pole? Well the pole’s been cast. It’s out there in the middle of the ocean. But at the same time it’s in my hand, in this very moment, and I can chose where to dip it. I’m not trying to catch a fish in this scenario, I just like the serenity of the bay.

The question on everyone’s mind is: “If not drugs, then what!?” That’s a great question and I’d be bullshitting if I said I could answer it. I don’t know what lies on the other side of this life. I want to find out. Do I truly? I have to truly. Love, sex, work, victory… I’ve seen all these things before. And I keep turning to these substances. They fill up my days and my hours and all the music is informed by them. They move my hands to play the guitar and my voice is scratchy when it comes out. I’ve formed an identity around these drugs to a certain extent. That idea of me has to die. It does. I’ll have to mourn it. I’ll have to mourn a lot. I guess I don’t know what to be afraid of. I know a lot of stuff is going to come up through this process. The drugs numb it all out. People say that but it’s really really true. Bad news doesn’t don’t hit you as hard. Most things don’t hit you at all. You’re in your world. You’re off in a cloud. You’re unaware of the world around you. You’re afraid to engage. Why?

It’s easier not to ask why. It’s easier to get the immediate relief of a squirt of etizolam tincture. Or a gross tossing of O-DSMT powder into your mouth and a quick washdown with water. In this way you don’t have to answer any questions. In this way nothing hits you. And guess what else? All your heroes did the same thing.

But a lot of them died doing it. And you don’t want to die. You really really don’t want to die. You want to live a long life, with kids and grandkids, and see what happens to America and what music turns into. You don’t want to die, but what do you have to live for? You know you can make things up. Everyone’s always making shit up. All of this is made up. The culture, the value of a dollar, the value of a Benz. We just decide on it. And that takes a lot. But you know what takes a lot less? Deciding how you want to react to each moment. This one and this one and this one. Do you know what I mean? They say a lot of stuff about the world. The world’s fucked. They say the world’s burning to the ground. They say we can’t leave our houses. They say America won’t be a super power by the end of all of this. But they’re making shit up. And I’m making shit up too. I’m whipping up like a chef. Throwing dishes out from the kitchen, but the dishes are words and actions and the kitchen is my mind. What kind of food am I throwing out? What kind of food am I serving the world? Let me serve love and hope. But for that to happen, let me cultivate it in myself first. Let me nurture it like a child. Let me see it sober. Let me take the steps in the right direction. It’s simple. It’s simpler than you think it is. What are you going to do right now, after reading this? Or while reading this? How are you going to face the world?

Jon told me he got into Xanax from the Famous Dex song “Japan.”

“Baby girl, what you doing, where your man? I just popped a xan, fifty thousand in Japan”

He told me his friends heard the song and picked up some Xanax because of it. They liked it and reached out to him “You’ve got to try this,” they said. My little brother, in the throes of this batshit demon force that will bury him. It might bury me too. The jury’s still out. Mom, just let me withdraw in peace. She brings down a space heater. I grow to love it. I lay down on the wood floor that the spiders sometimes dash across. The space heater comes close to burning me, but I’m ok. I stand up, dizzy from all I’ve done to try to combat the withdrawls. Way too much etizolam, way to much kratom, getting to the point of way too much weed and alcohol. But hopefully it’ll all be over soon, and I can call my friends in peace and not want to slam down the phone whenever there is the tiny threat of silence, or whenever I speak, or whenever they speak. I can’t any of it sober, that’s what I think. Life is hard sober; it’s a breeze when you’re floating thru it. A good dream. So why get sober? They say it’ll kill me. Well, I said that. In this very same paragraph. And maybe it will. But when you’re withdrawing like this… all you want is a moment of peace.

Oh God, at dinner tonight I started to go off about my own mental state to the family. I should have known it was a big mistaken, but on my way home from Doordashing a rainy Issaquah I stopped at QFC and got a bottle of True Eagle American Spirits, Kentucky manufactured vodka. And, helping myself to serving of kimchi,  I said to them “I think I’m losing it.” And the conversation spiraled until my mother asked me “Are you suicidal?” And “Are you struggling with drugs?” Jon, between us, must have felt betrayed, but I just wanted to feel understood. I feel Chuck does not want to understand. I understand what he’s sacrificed for the life he has, but what value does that life has to him? He has a tumor in his jawbone, and it’s eating away at him, and no one can do anything. And they can’t get out to the specialists on the East Coast, and they won’t do the invasive surgery. He’s too busy. I know, in some capacity, he understands. Because he blows these things off like they don’t matter at all, when anyday he could have a stroke like Grandma had, fall to the floor of the kitchen while dishing up his kimchi, or pulling a slice of pizza out of the carton. I feel the same way. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I know that I am mentally unwell. And I avoid the questions about my drug use and about my suicidality. I miss girls, ma. I miss pussy and parties and not giving a fuck. The way I don’t give a fuck now is in these terrifying sound collages drafted on the latest of nights, in the deep dark depths of quaratine. What was I saying in the last one? Something about how I didn’t wanna kill the crabs on the beach on Whidbey Island as a kid. Holy shit I’m losing my mind. But it’s all fine, isn’t it? As long as the music comes out fine.

What could I possibly do to get healthy? I feel so far off the deep end. You have no idea; I feel like crying. My best friend, living with the girl I thought I could always go back to. We don’t talk. I mix these ketamine analogues in with that cheap cheap vodka (plus etizolam) and cry tears onto this plastic table. It’s pointless to keep up the tinder courtships. I feel like this will never end. And it started with such a bang. I was such a part of history. Now I’m a nobody; I’m a junkie, holding on by the thinnest thread. No energy to pray. I feel like Cobain, and I know so many people do… but I really do. I can only imagine. But I’m only listening to Mingus, Lana Del Rey and Radiohead (Kid A thru Hail to The Thief).

Should I throw weed in the mix? Lord knows I have enough of it. It’s my number one priority. I’ve made enough songs now that we could workshop what I’ve come up with years. What else is there to do? Mingus ripped the piano strings out of some pianist’s instrument in front of a live audience, then stormed off the stage. Where the fuck is that in my life? I’m in front of the computer, weeping because America has come to a close. You know they sent jazz to the Soviet Union as a WEAPON? A weapon of freedom and democracy and individualism. What the fuck happened? It all makes me want to cry. It’s all too much; this world. These people I’ve known and loved and lost. This music I’ve made that they promise me will be something, but I don’t know if I believe them. I don’t know if I want anything to do with this life. I can’t engage with my culture anymore… my history. I feel like I’m not a part of it. I feel so disconnected. Who’s rippin the strings out of MY piano? Or who’s piano am I ripping the strings out of? We’ve lost so much… I mean… I’ll do my best to work with what we still have, but we’ve been so fractured. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the end. Of America. Of our culture. Of our music and our hustle and bustle and industry and lover’s lanes and rites of passage. I feel like I’m mourning it now. Mourning my culture. Maybe mourning the illusion that was sold to us. Believe me, I was first in line to buy. That’s why it destroys me so deeply to see it collapse.

I guess we’re all one people. I’m crying writing this. Weeping, weeping, weeping. Grieving. You know what grieving is. I remember what’s-her-name in the pool. We went to every hot tub, each a different temperature, in the Desert Hot Springs Resort. Then Lucy’s friend’s new boyfriend told us Bernie Sanders had stayed there when he had visited DHS. I laughed so hard. Lucy ordered me another drink. She didn’t mind the cost. She liked me to be on her level. And I didn’t mind. I was proud to sip. We went back to the hotel and did god knows what. Feels a million lifetimes away.

This was back when anything could happen. When America was a blank slate and no one could predict anything. When you could go outside and say “What the fuck is up?” and get in adventures. I mourn the loss of that. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe that’s still there. But I’ve emotionally severed my ties to it. And I wish I didn’t. Because I love it. I love it so much. It’s not a myth. I swear to god it’s not a myrh. It was a reality… until all this happened. You have no idea. I mean, if you’re reading this and weren’t around before. You have no idea. I mean… I don’t know what things are going to be like after this. But not the same. There’s no way they could be the same.

You know I hope I get this shit. I hope I contract COVID-19. Lay in this guest bedroom bed with the scabies I may or may not have gotten from Upstart Creative Living… and which wouldn’t die off. I hope I can’t breathe. I hope I’m immune. I want to walk the world. Maybe I should go out, get it, isolate, heal, be immune… if that’s even possible. At this point we don’t even know if immunity is a thing that happens with COVID. But even if I could walk the earth without fear of it… everyone else is cowering, and they pull away from, seeing I’m not wearing a mask or gloves, or even if I am… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would all end this way. I would have done so much more. Focused so much more on each kiss. Even every note. I did my best, I guess. It feels like it’s all coming to an end. It’s Thursday, April 23, but that doesn’t mean anything. You have to understand how little dates mean in this time. It’s like we’re living in one of those time capsules buried beneath the walkway at WWU. Stagnant… yeah we write songs and poems and do our work and keep the economy from faltering completely… but there’s a different angle to look at it all now. The world is over. I mean, aha, to use the words of Rem… “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” Key words: “As we know it.” I had no idea this would happen in my lifetime… I couldn’t even conceive it. If you would have told me this would have happened six months ago I wouldn’t have believed it. America seemed so stable. And now it feels like it’s in shambles. It really did feel stable. You may think I’m insane for saying America in September, 2019 seemed stable… but shit, we were free. And we were headed where we were headed. This throws a wrench in all of this. And it could be the end. And I thought this was the greatest country on earth. Happiness is a buttery, try to catch it like every night.

I’ve been fascinated in American history since I could understand it. Most specifically, I’ve been fascinated about how history is still happening. The closer you get you the current day, the harder it is to get a straight story. FDR did what he did and we won. That’s fact. That’s cement. Nixon? Everyone agrees he was a crook. But what about Reagan? What about Bush Sr? What about Clinton? The closer you get to the modern day, the more difficult it becomes to discern what is real and what is fake.

[yeswritingsandwritings]

[yeswritingsandwritings]

A Good Drive To LA

Kendra was impressed when I told how much cocaine I’d taken en route to her apartment. Arcata, CA. Some bumfuck hippie town far too similar to where I’d come from. I was itching to get out. Still far too far from Los Angeles. I wanted the soullessness. Fuck if I ever took a hallucinogen again. Never thought too much about why I was going. Just wanted the high of leaving everything behind me. I’d stormed down the coast, gripping corners of the 101 so tightly I got hard. “Yes, the new life, yes!” I said to myself. And now here I was with these girls, ripping the bong getting a different type of faded, and the girls were laughing at everything I said. Good shit. Shit every man deserves. Don’t you think?

I had to think quick on my feet as the girls got tired and decided to go off to their rooms. Another bump in the bathroom and the impossible calculation: How to get in this girl’s room? How to get her to bring me along? I mean, it wasn’t too long of a shot; she’d already sucked my dick once, on one of those stupid trips I’d taken to LA with the Xanax and the rented Mercedes and the strip clubs and the tired thumbs from swiping right on Tinder. Say yes to life!

But Kendra had a boyfriend now. I said “I’m not tired, would you care to watch a movie?” Fuckin’ easy. Classic and easy. Another bump in the bathroom and stifled maniacal laughter. Of course! How could I ever have doubted myself?! I was in.

We moved into the bedroom like some stoned sex robots. Nervous little whispers falling from our mouths, vanishing into eternity before God got a chance to look at them. Neither of our memories would function. Too strung out from years of this weed and these goddamn little benzodiazepine tablets. I stuck it in her soft and holy. She whimpered like a beautiful dog, lost in the night. Our foreplay was all of our lives leading up to this point. And a single touch collapsed the entire foundation. So we fucked quick, and automatically it was morning and the sun spewed ugly light thru the blinds, and Kendra rose to go to class. Gnawing down a granola bar I packed up my bag and got back to the car, finally wiping the heaving sweat from my forehead. Below me lay Los Angeles, all glitter and glam from where I was standing. Behind me all green and brilliant, a life squandered. Too precious to look at, so I dove southward to the dry desert, where everything is simple and you can pretend your soul isn’t there at all. A dream come true.

The next night I spent with my cousin in La Honda, a quiet backwoods town in the dense forest beyond San Francisco. La Honda, California, where everyone stays high and crashes at each other’s houses. Coming into the place from the outside world is like entering Disneyland. A little independent state within America, with a language and a currency in common, but something far different afoot, which would take years to uncover, and which I had no interest in fully knowing. I guess you have to have a certain level of enlightenment to maintain composure in this place, because I got shaky eyed in a matter of minutes and trembled to my car to retrieve the etizolam solution. Ah sweet relief among the Redwoods.

And my cousin showed me Paradise PD as his roommates, the owners of the town’s only general store, went into Frisco to dig the weed convention, and came back holding huge bundles of paraphernalia. I slept on the couch, passionately sedated, and awoke to say goodbye as quickly as possible. Our grandmother had recently died. We were both hurting, but what could we say to each other? I myself had called my mother in the middle of the night, weeping, and then, in a moment of desperate clarity, had taken up stronghold with a local girl, ostensibly bent on building something meaningful. It fell through, and I had my savings and I kept going south.

That evening I arrived in Los Angeles. The road rage sunset had left a flurry of red and yellow pastels on my face. My cousin Megan saw my road-weariness and guided me to the shower. “Fuck a shower!” I protested. “I’m in Los Angeles!”

And I was. My new home, I suppose, if I wanted it to be. I had enough money that if I were bored in a month I could dip off to some other American city, chugging my Svedka and imagining peace. It helped that I knew someone living in this city though, so I crashed on Megan’s floor with the rats. And in the daytime I went out with the pickup artists, until I was entwined enough in their group that I sought housing with two of its junior members. Josh, a portly Philipino from the Valley, and Aaron… a portly Philipino from the Valley.

We took up lodgings in a three bedroom apartment in Culver City, a stone’s throw from Santa Monica or Koreatown, or Hollywood if we wanted to go. Fuckin’ A, I’d tricked the landlord into thinking I was a big business entrepreneur, but now I needed a real source of income. Falling back on music, which was ostensibly what I’d come here to do, I took work as the head music director for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Conejo Valley. But the goddamn band only rehearsed once a week, for a fabled performance months and months in the future. “I need more work,” I said to the upper management. So they put me with Henry at a school in Calabasas, where the tap water runs gold and Drake and Kanye plot their next revolution.

“Calabasas is the new Abu Dhabi.” The neon words illuminated Kanye at his show.

I’ll tell you the truth. The tap water in Calabasas was far from gold, but it was useful in swallowed the massive amounts of Clonazolam and DXM I had decided was needed to get through the day. An ordinary day as an ordinary Boys and Girls Club worker, watching the kids play Super Smash Bros, stacking the chairs up and down and dissociating. In the bathroom I would snort cocaine straight from the bag and watch myself in the mirror. That crazy motherfucker with all the talent in the world, come to rot in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, a classic story.

At this time I was still going out like mad, approaching and wooing girls with a surgical ambivalence best witnessed, but still a thrill to be told about. On this particular night we were in Hollywood, wandering around Davey Wayne’s after spending the day tripping acid at the Getty Museum, then weaving eternal circles on the freezing Santa Monica beach. I saw a blond girl, approached her like a brilliant robot, smiling dazzling euphorias through my teeth. The blond girl’s name was Ezmerelda. Of fucking course it was. A creature so exotic she couldn’t exist as a Sarah or a fuckin’ Emma. She was active in the conversation, and she spun me to a fuckin’ thread when she stared in my pupils. She was the embers of the ghost of some girl I once knew, who I thought I knew well, but who was now a shadow presence to me, vaguely haunting my every decision and filling the background of life with nonsense. The crew went to Denny’s and we spoke of universes unseen and unfathomed. Pure life poured forth from her eyes, but when I went to lap it up the devil clamoured and hollered. “Fall back,” he said. “You’re not worthy.”

And maybe he was right. I awoke the next morning dazed as ever, alone, having nothing to do but take a walk and think of the night before. Gently ripping my blunt I sauntered off to Vons, down the street, and I gazed into the eyes of the checkout clerk, who was very tied up in the hustle and bustle of it all as she scanned my wine. Outside, the February sunshine penetrated all, and I thought of past wonders. The glories and the humiliating defeats. And I thought of what was to come. And a strange smile cracked over my face. It would be a long life, labyrinthine and impossible, but I wanted all of it. “Thank you,” I said to the clerk, clear as I’ve ever said anything. And, in the intangible euphoria of day, headed southward, to the apartment, out of which branched irreconcilable potential. And I lay and slept.

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Sad Casey Atwood

The familiar bleakness of the Issaquah afternoon; Casey Atwood leaking towards me on the bed, asking with wet eyes “what have I done wrong?” and making impossible promises to repair what had splintered between us. A miraculous juxtaposition of worlds. To her I suppose there was something to repair, and beyond that work lye a lifetime of togetherness, the likes of which I could not comprehend and wouldn’t want to.

I saw her as a fly buzzing frantically around the room. But there was far more vitriol in my gaze towards her, for she knew my name, and billowed it incessantly. She was a grievance, a reason for long sighs and quick trips to the bathroom to chug hushed doses of etizolam. Her beauty was dragged through the dirt by the impossibility of her needs. She wanted me to… what? Stick around, build a home? It was a hilarious image. But it was no good form to laugh about it now, with her erupting in front of me. I could laugh about it when I was on the road, hurdling southward at a hundred miles an hour, screaming around the sharp corners past Crescent City, forcing the car to such stupid speeds I must have believed I was protected by some divine force. Either that or I was just mental, with no value for my own life.

I was saving Casey by leaving. I was saving everyone. I was the absentee Christ, tossing a casual torch behind me, which would catch, spread wide and obliterate the way home. Yes, yes, yes. No use laughing about this insanity of all of it now. What could I say it to this girl in front of me, huddled in a shuttering mass like a coiled Rollie Pollie. We’d been through this a million times before. Yes, she’d have a fine life without me.

Somehow or another I’d gone heartless. I couldn’t say where or when it began, but I clung to her desperation like a vampire to the neck of some pale virgin. It was my own miraculous fable, and she played her part excellently. A classic American hero’s journey. Out into the depths of the unknown, past nightfall, gliding my poisoned body from nowhere to somewhere, from agony to ecstasy. In the past they went west, but I’d grown up gazing wistfully across the Puget Sound, from its gaping eternity in Vancouver to its final sputtering puddles in Tumwater. And between the two, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Victoria, soft and noble, like its sole purpose was to provide a vantage point to map the foggy mess of it all.

Yes, I’d ride with a ribbon of flame behind me, ending the 5, ending the 199, finally ending the legendary 101, with its steep corners I would narrowly survive.

I got up from the bed, from the cries and the heaviness of her lowness. I brushed the teeth to get the taste of pussy out of it. Maybe someday I’d miss that taste, but I doubted it. My barriers were up. Far higher than I’d intended to build them, but no going back now. Los Angeles was my final destination. I only hoped I’d learned enough about how to not waste a life, so that once I got there I could live well, and be in touch. It was a pipe dream, for I still fingered my vial of etizolam like a bible in the front pocket of my Levi’s.

Etizolam, my partner in crime. Novocaine for the soul; the reason I could laugh a silent maniacal laugh in the face of Casey’s truer-than-God tears. Yes, yes. I was out for me and mine, and I suppose she left soon after that. Everything was winding down. My hands itched to grab my few treasured possessions and toss them carelessly into the trunk of my car. Tick tick tick went the clock. At work the kids were giving me handwritten goodbye letters and gift cards to Red Robin and Starbucks and all my favorite chain restaurants. Soon they’d be lonely ideas to me, and I to them.

Goodbye, cruel world, I’m leaving you today. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, cruel world. There’s nothing you can say, to make me change my mind, my mind, goodbye.

[yeswritingsandwritings]

Sea Lice, Bathtub Sex

Don’t you think it’s strange that our parents were the first generation to grow up with no faith in America. I heard that before Vietnam, the population overwhelmingly believed the federal government. When it began, under Eisenhower, it was a noble cause. We were still the good guys. By the end I don’t think anyone knew what was what, and maybe we never will again.

They say the 60’s changed everything, but it's hard to tell from where I’m standing, some Doomer millennial, born in a sweltering summer, 1993, raised on Slime Time Live and not-yet-dismantled Captain Crunch. And those relentless kids at school. The first neighborhood in Washington State everyone knew each other. It was a wonderful thing. The kids formed their social hierarchies, rocketed their Razor scooters down those steep steep hills, and the adults competed about whose families spring vacation would be the ritziest. “We’re going to Cancun.” some of them said. “We’re going to Cocomo,” the Poppens chimed in.

My family went to Florida. I “swam” with the dolphins. A good trip, erased mostly, but here and there a fragment of sparkling memory. Sea-lice swarming me in the tiny lagoon, itching terribly; and my mother making a scene, furious at whoever was responsible for inflicting this woe upon her kid. And, at night, in the hotel room, watching Powerpuff Girls, my favorite show, feeling that all was good and that my family was solid, and that all those kids with divorced parents were strange and the outliers, and us normal kids wondered what the hell divorce meant. Yes, Powerpuff Girls… Mojo Jojo and the Professor warring into infinity.

In my childhood I had a pension for television and movies that were intended for girls. I insisted my seventh birthday be themed around The Little Mermaid, cartoon crustaceans atop the cake; God help them hold their ground against my enthusiast spit splatter extinguishing of the candles.

My father was not enthusiastic about this theme. “Maybe we theme it ‘Go 49ers!’” he suggested. Hilarious.

He and I were both children of this wretched country, which would and will devour you and make you rich if you aren’t careful. Lucky me, I made it out, and now I live broke and hungry in Los Angeles, the great western metropolis. You couldn’t blame my dad then. He was swept up in everything. It’s easy to get swept up in everything. He’s a great dad. Coming down from an acid trip in the back of someone’s car a few months back I texted him a gooey love letter thanking him for his support of my insane life choices. He trusts me. I respect him. And when I visit his home in Seattle it is warm. Love radiates from the lighting, from his golden-souled girlfriend Jen, and from their dog, who frantically wags his tag and begs and begs for any attention he can get. There is a warmth.

What became of my mom? Visiting her house is a bit stranger. She lives on a tall hill with a beautiful view of Tiger Mountain and the I-90 freeway (which goes all the way to Boston) and all of Issaquah. Her husband is a ghost. I remember their wedding, chugging the champagne the clueless waiters served to every table, even the ones packed with only kids. His college friends gave gregarious speeches that all said the same thing. “I never thought it would happen to Chuck!” This was back when I was barely eighteen. Now they have that spot on the hill. It’s a big house with a balcony. I wonder if they ever look out and absorb the distance. Many good times dipping low with girlfriends in my mother’s master bathtub with the jets, when everyone was out of town. Forgetting I’d set up every candle in the house around the tub and jetting off for southern California on another one of our impromptu road trips. Who knows what she thought happened in there? Couldn’t have been worse than what we did.

I guess it all couldn’t have happened without Vietnam. We stand on the shoulders of history. Everything has to be aligned just right. And blooming from the entirety of it I see that sex; those abandoned candles around the bath; and their soft extinguishing, same closed eyed expression as I had blowing out the candles on the Little Mermaid cake. It is a relief to blow out a candle and see the smoke whisp solemnly skyward. Now here I am in LA, knowing none of my neighbors, not reading the news or voting. Just working this job with these kids, popping these untested, questionably regulated stimulants. And I guess it’s a good life. I just wish I could get some sleep every once in awhile.

[yeswritingsandwritings]

You Leave The Girl

What force is it that turns our most sacred sources of inspiration into projection screens for all the hatred we’ve ever harbored? “How is this the same person?” You ask yourself. And she asks herself the same of you. And so you sit in her apartment putting together a jigsaw puzzle, not talking. And the tension is palpable.

Suddenly you rise and say “I’m out.” It’s a brave move, and you follow thru. You walk out the door, and down the long stairs of the apartment complex, not sure if you’ll ever smell that breed of musk again. (you won’t) And then and there you’re thinking “good riddance.” You’re good at leaving the past behind. You’re always darting off somewhere, across some state line or just across the city into some other girl’s arms. Yeah, yeah, you. They know you. You’ve got a reputation.

You talk to your guy friends and they’re all for the exodus. Shit, most of them probably want to move in on her anyway. Whatever; so be it. Friends fuck each other in this town. It’s tiny, word gets around. I was already making plans to leave anyway, gliding on the 5 for every type of job interview in Seattle. Eventually I’d take the one as a guitar teacher, because, you know, I love music. Though I’d never worked with kids before.

It was all set. I’d start February first, and I was moving into the big blue house with Rob and Twon and the rest of the gang, who are sacred and I cherish still.

No sentimentality leaving Bellingham. I’d thoroughly explored the place, I’d been exhausted by it for awhile now, just fucking my roommate, a beautiful creature who knew how to light up a bedroom proper. And the light shown on crazy animal skulls and homemade jewelry. I loved it up there. I kissed her goodbye and got in the car. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Onto Seattle, where community ruled above all! And it rained and rained.

My first week I felt lost. I called desperately upon my old lovers, swaying back and forth holding the bottle of wine, telling them to come down here. And one did, and I loved her and love her still. That doesn’t mean anything, though. I treated her terribly. Not like a friend treats a friend.

Eventually I adapted to the city. Who knows what happened next. Some pregnancy scare paired with the death of my grandmother send me wheeling back into the arms of some assured love. But I was driving 100 miles to see her, and secretly pouring etizolam solution into my mouth everytime she went into the bathroom to piss out a potential yeast infection. Ah, the sex, though.

She knew I was going to Los Angeles. I was already building the plans. My band was falling apart. Political shit. I could never be a politician, so I wiped out. Was it God giving me another chance to get out of the rain?

I don’t know, but it was only on the day before I was to leave that I realized how tremendously I would miss everyone. I had kind words with all of them, knowing that I may not see many of them again. And then out into the October wind I fled, southwards, always southwards.