Mechanics Of Coming

In regards to the decline in momentum of sexual exploration: when first meeting each other our games are at their peak levels and we are giving our all in order to get down into those dark areas below. Once we get there we still need to keep on top of our game in order to impress the other and show them how talented we are in the ways of sensual pleasures. Different positions different areas of the room or house, outdoor areas, public areas, underwater... whatever. None-to-soon however, we become accustomed to the other. We learn how to get each other off with minimal effort and then that’s all it takes; all that is needed. No more theatrics no more acrobatics, just the flip flop, bang bang-splooge. People say sex is like pizza even when it is bad its still pretty good. How to make bad pizza better? Dress it up! Throw some fucking pepperoni on there with some sausage and meatballs, peppers, onions and mushrooms olives...etc. Sex is no different. Dress it up. Throw some tools in there. Roll playing, exhibitionism, maybe some S&M... also get back to the raw impulsive ‘I’m gonna fuck you where you stand’ sex and forget about preparations and proper clothing removal. Throw her/him over the nearest object and have at it until you hit the floor!

Long term effects; building boundaries and limitations for your partner without knowing:

I don’t think that the age of couples necessarily has to do with the 'sex no sex' factor. It’s moving in with each other that decreases the appetite for sex in one or the other or both. It becomes more mechanical than impulsive and you need to put extra energy into making it creative which generally you don’t want to do because you already been inside that/on top of that countless times and the lack of motivation often outweighs the desire. Rolling over and pumping one out in the morning becomes as thoughtless as the three S's that follow. No romance and no desire other than the concern of pumping one out becomes boring and then the mind wanders. When not living together there is the 'I miss you, I want to fuck you' factor. You still can have some fun making game tip toeing around trying to finesse your way into each others pants. But, once you get there you can’t stay out. And, if things are going well in the relationship you’ll get to the 'fuck first' period. This is when you meet up and screw several times before doing anything else. e.g. Its been a busy week you and your partner have a date to go out for dinner Thursday evening; get cleaned up/dressed up meet and instead fuck one to four times (amount of fucking and creativity generally correlates to how long you’ve been apart) then wash up and get something to eat probably something easy and quick rather than the nice restaurant you had planned. (Why go through the formal motions when the result has already been attained?) So be comfortable... relax... let your game slide, this person is into you. Finally things begin to plateau and a comfortable stable relationship is formed (and this is usually not just a 'plateau' but more often than not the actual 'peak' of the relationship). Now sooner or later, someone will eventually mention, for one reason or another, "hey we should move in together". This is the exact point of no return for terrible or worse. This is where the relationship becomes 'over the hill'. Yes, you can put off moving in with each other but only for so long. Sooner or later you will have to move in. If you do not, well, then the relationship is doomed because eventually the other will look elsewhere for someone willing to make the deeper or fuller commitment that is 'moving in together'. Once moved in there things become more routine and more gritty and human. You begin to see the person for what they really are in all of their sick ritualistic day to day life. Again, sex will be routine though less and less creative and passion even diminishes. Fuck work eat fuck sleep fuck or work eat fuck, fuck sleep… doesn’t matter. Comfortable relaxed accepting you take each other in strides and eventually for granted. Sex is no longer a goal but something to fit into your schedule. Eventually, a day comes along when you realize that you get more excitement out of your favorite porn site.

Black and Blue

By the time we made it home somewhat safe somewhat sound we were, both of us, utterly inebriated. I hadn’t seen a police cruiser for several blocks and now adjusting my eyes to the dim light of Donn’s apartment I felt certain our evasion had been successful.

His place was more of a hallway. It emptied into two bedrooms at one end and a small living room and kitchen at the other. The whole apartment was plagued with paneling.

We cracked beer.

“Are these the last of ‘em?” I asked. “Pfft, come on man, you know me better than that…” Donn retorted. His enthusiasm emphasized by his thick Long Island accent. “There are still another twelve of cans in the fridge!”

This evening we went bar hopping on the Island in celebration of nothing in particular. I drank myself into a blackout somewhere along the way and could not for life of me remember what we might have done to draw such attention from the police.

“What the fuck was that all about anyway? What were they casing us for” I wondered out loud.

I came to in mid-pursuit, and can only imagine the circumstances leading up to the point where my mind, flooded with adrenalin, decided that it was necessary to climb out of the apparent black whole it was flushed into and function on a coherent enough level to escape unequivocal incarceration. A moment of clarity from out a vacuum of thought. Something from nothing. The chicken and the egg. Which came first the alcohol or me?

“The last thing I remember was being at Cloud Nine.” I admitted.

This tickled Donn in a familiar way, and his laughter ruptured like a punctured greasy sore and spilt throughout the room. “Is that it? Shit, that was hours ago. You were fucking out of control tonight man! Rare form, rare form I swear.”

“What do’ya mean ‘rare form’? We do this practically every night.”

Suddenly he thrust his entire upper torso through the open window of the living room and began flooding the alley with obscenities, cursing everyone and everything. I’ve witnessed such outbursts before, and have come to realize and appreciate them for their inherent therapeutic quality.

After expunging his ecumenical abhorrence, Donn recovered his composure and started to break down the chain of events that lead up to this evening’s farcical abscondence.

“We started out on the island and worked our way back to the city, remember? Everything was chill until we left Napper’s. After that things started to fall apart.”

Napper’s is a regular local bar in south central Long Island, it has a kind of shady sports bar feel to it; dark and loud and grimy, but occasionally a wide selection of girls can be found there occupying space at the tables around the bar.

Donn rescued a clipped cigarette from out the ashtray. “Napper’s, as it turned out, was a beat sausage fest.” He explained between drags. “So we skipped on over to another bar down the street, I think it was called the Blue Parrot or some shit. We got kicked out of there almost immediately though, after you spit your drink all over the bartender. It was a cough syrup colored beverage that you said tasted like ‘fucking toothpaste.’ So after leaving the bartender with a minty stain on his shirt, we conspired to hit up the Wrong way Inn.”

“This, my friend, is where you began to lose your shit. We took a booth next to these three girls who already had two other guys with them. And actually, for a while there, you were all right. That is, until you overheard one of the girls at the table next to us order another round of shots. Then you began marauding them into sending some drinks our way. It was funny because eventually they actually did buy us drinks though only to shut you the hell up.”

“After our drinks came, you reached over and began patting one of the girls on the head as if she was puppy or some shit. I didn’t know what you were up too; I thought you might have been trying to hit on her or something. She cursed and pushed you away and after that you sat back down. One of the guys she was with made some sort of comment about how he was going to kick your teeth in. I flashed my heater on him and I guess he and the rest decided they were no longer thirsty because they left after that.”

“You had your gun with you?!? Damn I hate that thing!” There is something about the combination of guns and alcohol and Donn that makes me a bit uneasy.

“But, man, when did the cops start chasing us?!?” I asked.

“Hold on a sec, I’m getting to that, just listen… After we left Wrong Way I decided it would be best if we started heading closer to home. You were getting that weird glazed look in your eyes.”

“So, we took the train, but on the way there we walked by this party going on at the VFW. You told me you saw somebody that you recognized so we crashed the party. As it turned out, it was more of a family gathering, but by the time I realized what was going on, you had already mixed up some drinks for us. So, I figured since we had some time before the train arrived, we could stay for at least one drink. Actually some people there thought that I was part of the family! People were asking me how I’d been and what was wrong with my friend and telling me that you needed to be cut off, and this and that. So I filled a couple of plates with food and we bounced out of there before some type of shit hit the fan.”

It was amazing, I thought, how the body could function for so long without the syllogistics of the mind.

“Umm…” He muttered somewhat thoughtfully. “At this point my memory gets kind of foggy. We must have picked up a couple of forties before we got on the train, cause I tossed my empty from the trestle after we got off and I remember it smashing on a car in the parking lot. ”

“What the fuck is going on out here?!? What was all that yelling before?” It was Breanne, Donn’s ex-girlfriend turned roommate.

Breanne and Donn recently broke out of a five-year relationship, though they still live together; and while she has moved on and found a replacement boyfriend; Donn attempts to alleviate his poor heart through more alcoholic methods.

“Hey, sweety”. She smiled a greeting at me, and I melted while watching her sweatpants hug her ass the way that I wanted to.

“I’m sorry Breezy, I don’t know what the fuck is going on out here.” Donn responded. “Did we wake you and your boy?” Sardonicism dripped in soupy mucilage from the latter portion of his question.

“Yes, you did you asshole. I’ve got to work tomorrow morning and you guys do this every night; take it someplace else!”

“Hold on a sec Breeze, we gotta chill here for a minute, the police are looking for us… so, we can’t leave just yet.”

“The police?” Breanne’s disposition became somewhat motherly. “You asshole!”

“Wait a sec Breezy, listen to this shit.” I told her. “Come on Donn; get to the part about what happened with the cops.”

“Alright listen, we got off the train in Jamaica and started to make our way home, when fucking Jason here tries to hail a cab by throwing his empty forty bottle at it. The fucking thing tries to swerve out of the way and crashes into another car in the intersection. I could not believe it!”

Breanne just shook her head. “You guys have to get out of here Donn, its three thirty and if this shit keeps up, I’m moving out.”

“Alright Breezy, we’re leaving… calm down… relax… its okay… we’re outta here… come on dude.”

“Did that really happen man?” I asked.

“What, the cab incident? Hell yeah that shit happened, but that’s not why the police were after us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? What else happened?

“Come on, I’ll tell you on the way”

Good Morning Hilo

It's been five days since I’ve felt this way. Only now it’s not the same. Residue from previous over-indulgences leaving me bloated sweating and nervous. Thoughts worry my mind in rapid succession. It is a breeding ground for anxiety.

This room stinks. It smells as if sour milk were lit on fire. I am aware of this odor's source. It could be from the mold encrusted dishes that have been rotting in the kitchen sink. It might have something to do with the piss smell that surrounds the toilet in the bathroom; months of drunken men dribbling or simply missing the toilet has left its mark soaked into the fibers of the wooden floor. What remains is a poignant and now permanent stench. Sadly though, I know that the rancid smell is coming from me. It seeps from my pores in greasy beads of sweat. I don’t get out of bed. I hardly move, but still I sweat.

Trying to distract my mind from its alcohol depression I ponder my current situation. The unconscious yet overwhelming desire to see everything fall into ruin. The self-destructive nature of man. It is adherently destructive though not intentionally, the destruction is but a byproduct a symptom of something else entirely. In fact it is the desire to live, the desire to attain more than is possible that drives this fervor. Kerouac explained away his alcoholism as a love for "ecstasy of the mind". In a clever lyric I recently encountered the artist proclaims "I would rather have more life in my years than years in my life." It is a worthwhile venture, but this search, this groping for more life, for excitement, for ecstasy, like many things, is ultimately corrupted.

I am feeling like I should light a cigarette. Unfortunately I left the pack out on the front porch and I am in bed. What is the greater effort: getting out of bed and walking all the way to the front door and all the way across the deck for that first smoke of the day or not getting out of bed and resisting the body’s addiction to nicotine? The correct answer inevitably presents itself.

I need a purpose to live. People fall into addictions by a shear lack of vocation, or as a means of occupation... simply to keep themselves occupied so that they won’t have to sit around philosophizing and wondering about things they will never completely comprehend. William S. Burroughs wrote that "You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default." We become addicts because of an intrinsic need for purpose. Addictions overtake us by taking the place of this purpose or by merely distracting us from it.

Today I have no purpose save one. I stated that it has been five days since I have felt this way. The feeling I refer to is sobriety and it is a feeling that, for now, I would like to maintain.

Logic & Geometry

Syracuse NY, 238 Euclid avenue; third floor, apartment 4. I lived there on and off for the better part of a year. Then again, to say that what I was doing there could be considered living, in the traditional sense, seems a bit presumptuous now.

I can remember the smell; it smelt like geranium and bad hot sauce, incense and cat shit. Originally I came to Syracuse for lack of anywhere else to go. A girl whom I was seeing at the time had a brother who was supposed to set us up with a friend who needed a roommate. The plan fell through and about a week and a half later we were out on the street.

Nevertheless, we were confident in our confusion. I slept in the park during the day in an old outdoor theatre, while she went about town looking for something to eat. One afternoon she woke me and told me we were going home. “I am home!” I said with tongue in cheek, but she wasn’t listening. She was to busy gathering our gear or just decidedly not listening. I shook myself, then joined in on the collecting process. Some College students were doing tai chi underneath a willow tree and a lone tulip hung its head in my direction.

On the way “home” she explained in the condescending tone she loved, that while i had been sleeping She had secured us a place not far from the University; some obscure apartment on a third floor with a balcony.

We settled in soon enough and as the weeks started to pass she began work in an oversized restaurant on top of a hill near the other end of town. Surviving on rice and hot sauce, we settled into our surroundings and I started writing poetry at the request of my ever-patient, ever-beautiful benefactress.

In those days I had a healthy relationship with the bottle so all I wanted to do was drink, and while she was away that was all I did. We had a full-sized bathtub beside a window where I would spend my days reading and drinking, drinking and reading - more drinking than reading, as was more likely the case. When the sun set it left a warm amber glow inside the bathroom and a strange sensation in me alluding to a long lost childhood memory: me 7 years old looking through my bedroom window as the sun set upon the cherry tree. At night she would come home and we would have immense fights over my intoxicated worthlessness, and then make up sensually on the balcony over the streetlight; under the moon.

Two bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, living room and porch all for $425 a month. It was perfect for a while. We even took in a cat that someone gave us downtown. Our neighbors were friendly or mostly tolerable. She was meeting new people at her job, I was writing like mad. We had a “home”, we were almost a family, and yet something felt vacant; still missing.

One day the landlord came by to inquire about the lateness of our rent. I attempted to assure him that he would get his money and that all monetary nuisances would be settled come next month, but he cut me off by asking what I did for a living. “I don’t exactly work for a living” I told him, and after some good old fashioned, caustic ribbing about how my girlfriend worked while I stayed home all day, he asked me if I would like to come and work for him. I started to feel agitated. Why wont this guy fuck off and leave me to my bathtub, I thought. He told me I would be painting houses and that I would start with this one, the one I was living in. I agreed to do it if only to get him to leave me alone. So it was that the very next day he came by with the paint and supplies.

This was a drag. This was an enormous Victorian style house that I was to paint all by myself. I remember my younger days on long island and how some friends and I would climb the water towers with bottles of whisky. Water towers and whisky don’t mix. So, I decided that to paint this house I was going to have to be sober or at least severely caffeinated to function on the ladder four stories up. Soon enough I fell into a routine and the landlord came by on the weekends to deliver my pay, and again things seemed to be changing and for the better.

Things seemed good but it wasn’t meant to be. There was still something missing, that untouchable, unseeable, unnamable something looming over the horizon, like a heavy mist slowly starting to envelope and overwhelm me. As the months scrolled by I saw that she must have felt it too. Too much pressure maybe; too much misinterpretation and a lack of fulfillment or satisfaction of what we thought we were accomplishing. Eventually even the painting job started to give, and the apartment became my cave. I became more reclusive than ever.

Finally she came home one day and violence came with her. It entered our home. Violence kicked in the door and exploded in our faces. It left us hurt and bereaved and we each crawled to our separate corners where we licked our wounds in solace. After that we slept in separate rooms. For two weeks we retreated to our own individual spaces in dreadful silence. Until one night I woke to her naked soul climbing into my bed. We embraced all the way into our dreams though by the next morning she was gone.

I spent one last despondent week waiting even though I knew she wouldn’t return. She was gone and I couldn’t remain there alone; the nostalgia was so thick it suffocated. But today I remember the nights spent in that dreary Syracuse apartment with bold sentimentality, where love to me had always manifested in fierce explosions of vehemence. Something’s are so tender they can never be explained through violent ardor and altercation, but may be understood beneath open, night firmaments where tears and fears fall further from hearts unhinged.

A Stranger Encounter

There is a house in Burlington, VT that is an underground hotspot for local drug addicts and your basic townie burnouts. The place is an old Victorian style building that is dilapidated in a used rustic sort of way. There are always people coming and going and on any given day there will be someone new crashing on one the couches.

To my knowledge, there are at least two drugs present at all times: pot and low-grade coke. I’ve been brought here several times by certain disreputable people I occasionally associate with, evidently enough times for the kid who legitimately lives there to recognize my face and feel accustomed to my presence.

One evening a friend and I stopped by this place to see about getting high before heading over to a predictably lame kegger going on across town. Turned out, the place was dried out but we just happened to have entered the room at precisely the right moment, as some heady shit was being fired up. We were invited to partake, which we graciously did.

I sat down on the bed next to a small futon that this obscure character, whom I recognized from previous visits, was perched upon. Making myself comfortable I proceeded to strike up a conversation with this strange looking man, if for nothing more than a lack of anything better to do.

He was middle aged, and wore thick glasses on his egg shaped head with strange locks of hair that weren’t exactly dreads. He reminded me of a familiar cartoon character; something out of futurama.

At first, conversation was bland and I could hardly care enough about it to keep it going. Then I mentioned something about the lighting, which set him off on a soliloquy of the most abstract, contemporary, scientific theories; the type that are written about in the backs of alternative science journals.

He explained how “Objective reality does not exist, and that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.”

I was actually startled by this unexpected outburst and searched the rest of the room to see if anyone else had noticed. The others were too absorbed in their own confabulations to have noticed or cared.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked.

“Well…” he said. “The apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is…”

He continued in this manner and as I watched his eyes bug in and out of his bobbing head I felt a strange sensation that I had somehow entered a scene out of the animated film “Waking Life”.

“…in addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.”

He took a deep pull from what was left of the joint, and I examined the smoke as it began to spiral upward into a more visual explanation of what I thought he might have been saying.

“Even time and space can no longer be viewed as fundamentals.” He continued. “Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space would have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level, reality is a sort of super-hologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the super-holographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Who the hell is this person? Where did he come from? He began to look more and more alien to me, until I finally asked him where it was that he came from.

He said that he was from Connecticut but that he is always in and out of town.

“Where in town is it that you stay?” I asked.

Then, somewhat reluctantly he admitted to me that he stays “…here and there” though usually, he said, he sleeps here on one of the couches.

The whole time we spoke the image of this person in my head had been forming and reforming until finally it was completely shattered and I was left confused and with an empty feeling somewhat resembling sadness. I started to wonder where people like him come from; Connecticut apparently. Thinking this over, I looked around and wondered what the other people there were like. Were they from Connecticut too? They all seemed to be relating to each other on the same level. I began to feel more and more like I was the alien. Eventually I was forced to leave, whether from paranoia or melancholy I’m still not certain.

Marks On The Bus

On a bus ride downtown, I take a few too many coricidin cough pills and I’m starting to feel cold inside. It’s only a dollar to get to pike place from where I live, and the bus stop is conveniently located just across the street.

It’s good to get out of the house; give my roommates some space. I’ve made today an unofficial holiday and am on my way to find somewhere to enjoy it. I wonder who will miss me. Work continues with or with out you, but there is someone there though who loves me, and will soon be wondering where I am.

I’m on the bus, and heading downtown.

There are so many people out today. Pretty girls; the ones I consider pretty I fall in love with if given even the slightest chance. All I need is a look, a slight gesture, less even. I can’t explain what it is. But even given the slightest chance I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. More likely than not, I’d pick up and duck into the shadows somewhere and wonder why I can’t better cope with people around me.

But it’s fine. I’m on my way downtown and with the help of a healthy dosage of dextromethorphan in my blood stream I feel that everything is just fine. This bus is almost twice the length of the one I’m used to riding, and folds in the middle like a giant accordion around every turn. Some teenagers sitting in the back are playing they’re radio louder than they should and I get some sort of curious pleasure out of the discomfort on the faces of those around them.

Sometimes I think that I learned how to feel or express emotions in a backwards kind of way. Unable to participate within normal social parameters, I find myself most comfortable around those with more debased or criminal tendencies. Someone once told me that I have anti-charisma. They did not offer up this information with the intention of being hurtful, but simply as a diagnosis of my crippled social condition.

Passing through lower Freemont now, I can look up and see the bridge of Aurora Avenue reaching over the expanse of the sound. When I first moved here I heard about a hijacking that took place upon a bus some months back while crossing that very bridge. Some shots were fired and the bus flew head first over the edge. Fortunately it had already crossed the greater portion of the bridge, so that from the height of the precipice it had fallen from, the sheer drop had only been several yards to the ground.

I’m feeling kind of tired; it’s the antihistamines. I’ve got that Beastie Boys song floating through my head. What’s it called? Mark on the Bus? “…won’t you take me away, and take away me…”

I can feel chills running down my spine as I notice the approach of the city skyline. And there’s that strange pillar with its vagina shaped beacon you can see flashing its blue light phosphorescence over the industrial surroundings here at night.

For some reason the energy in this city is different than that of any other place I’ve been before. There’s something, for a lack of a better word, magical about it. I feel sad and excited, and inspired and detached, all at the same time. This is the first place I have ever been where you can see snow capped mountains on the horizon, while you yourself stand amongst skyscrapers.

I can sit and scribble poems here all day. I’ve taken up writing poetry on dollar bills, now these fucks are really earning something. It’s a federal offense, I know. But I’m willing to take the risk. I do it for the people. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Where am I going? Where is this bus taking me? I thought I wanted to hang out by the docks but now I feel like going over to Gas Works. Gas Works has the best view of the downtown nighttime skyline. There, you can see its mirror image reflecting off the sound. It isn’t that late, it isn’t even dark yet, but by the time my trip starts it’ll be almost sunset.

But no, I cannot digress; must head forward. What am I doing? I’m downtown sitting on an empty bus parked next to a Starbucks waiting for the driver to expel me. I guess I should get off. But to where do I go? Capital Hill? The U-district? For what? I want to be outdoors, but I can’t decide on what to do. Maybe that’s why I took the bus to begin with because the bus doesn’t get confused, or anxious, or sad. It just goes. It’s a constant, it is always going somewhere; and it’s not that I am trying to assign malapropos, affectuous metaphysical properties to this public transpiratory vessel. It’s just that I feel comfort in the cradle of its apathetic bosom.

I believe in the ever present battle between what you want and what you should do. The dichotomy adherent in this existential war against what is seen as good and productive, and that which is bad and unproductive and in some cases damaging to…

Hmm… no, this is all wrong. It’s more simplistic than that.

Like these scratches carved into the seat next to me. “Suck my dick.” Is it a love poem? Or just a random image of inspiration scraped into reality by some unknown troubadour.

Maybe life is less complex than we make it out to be; like marks on a bus.

A Fool In His Folly Shall Remain

Addictive personalities must replace their previous addictions with new ones.
When it has reached a highlight or an exceptional experience, this experience is eventually overshadowed by the possibility of something better. Often when no greater experience comes along the personality resorts to an old experience in hopes of gaining the original sense of gratification. Unfortunately once experienced, the same event relived can no longer give the same satisfaction it once did. The addictive personality can never be content or happy as it is because it is always chasing after something else, either something bigger, or something once achieved that it wants to regain. Thereby, contentness always remains without grasp.