That Look

Oh, how they love to come up to you, like naked, shitty baby-birds, with their heads turned upwards and that look... that look!... on their faces: an absurd pantomime of pity, and a suggestion that you should just break down and weep right then and there because that is what they expect, that is the custom, I suppose.

And they say all the things: how kind he was, how gentle and how you really must have loved him and miss him so much now, and that if there is anything they can do, they will, even though they never really mean it. And never do they know the true story, the horrifying madness that lay below like a deranged black octopus aways ready to squirm and thrash about it's vile tentacles, and jet out its slimy, foul ink that leaves a stain that stays on your soul for years.

But you play the part, the placating diplomat, and confirm their impressions, even though it turns your stomach in the end. Which is just fine, really, because no one ever actually asks how you feel but instead make endless assumptions. They don't want to know. And, really, you would never want to subject them to the letdown, the fact of what this man really meant to you.

Zack and Craig

(excerpt)

Zack slips expertly off the back of his skateboard and it flies away into the grass. He shoves his chest out and walks right into Craig, bouncing him back in a forceful chest-bump, then grabs him tightly by the arms and pulls him into his face. Opening his mouth like a fish and tilting his head to the side, he lets out a raucous belch, all the air shoved out of his guts right into Craig’s face: French fries, Coke, pizza and that funky unidentifiable odor of a 19 year old.

“You’re so fucking faggoty, Craig!”, he snarls, then pouts his lips out like some emo porn star, his black lanky hair down in his eyes and trailing down the back of his neck in what could only be described as a Goth mullet. 

Craig, in cutoff khakis and sunburst tie-dye T-shirt, smears his hands across his face in feigned disgust. 

“Gross, you asshole!” He shakes his head and his blonde locks bounce around his head like springy antennae. 

“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been waiting for you forever.” 

Retrieving his skateboard, “Who fucking cares? I was at Jay’s trailer smoking pot.”

Craig throws his hands down by his sides. “Great! Thanks for inviting me. Why didn’t he come with you?”

“Karla was coming over to see him, I don’t know.” 

Zack sits down on his skateboard and hangs his jet bangs down in his face, his red lips forming the words. 

“He said we can come over later, if we want.”

“Cool. I guess.” Craig sits down on the pavement, facing Zack and slides the toes of his sneakers under the skateboard. “Did they say they could get some weed?”

“Yeah, fag, they have it already!”

“Stop calling me a fag, you hypocrite.” Craig shoves Zack off the skateboard backwards into the grass. “You look more like a fag than me!” 

He crawls on top of Zack, his blond locks bouncing down over his face. Zack’s jet black bangs have fallen over the top of his head, and his deep, beautiful dilated brown eyes are both enraged and bewildered by loads of pot.

Craig sticks out his tongue and allows a viscous stream of spit to roll down off of it towards Zack’s face, then rapidly sucks it back into his mouth. There is a brief pause and the empty park seems caught in slow motion, even the birds chirp slower.

“What if I kissed you right now, right here?”

“I’d kick your fucking ass.” Zack’s voice rises, but his eyes are still the same, simultaneously languid and energized. His red lips pout even more, but his passive body suggests opportunity.

Craig leans down and puckers his lips, draws closer and closer to Zack’s face, then right as he’s almost to Zack’s lips, stops. Both of their eyes are closed. Craig can smell and feel Zack’s breath on his face. Even he knows better than to do this here… even in this empty park so late in the day, so he bends closer and presses his nose against Zack’s forehead, and inhales long, sensually, taking in every sweaty pheromone.

“Fuck, I hate this place!”

“Yeah…” Zack, utterly calmed now and strangely tender, delicately nuzzles back, then surprisingly gives Craig a quick peck on the mouth. “We’re gonna get our asses kicked,” he whispers, “but I don’t give a fuck. Let’s go back to Fuller.” And flashes a wicked grin. 

“Okay, fag.” Craig mocks.  

But they don’t make it back to the dorm. By the time they start walking, the summer dusk has settled and the light has started to dramatically fade, and as they pass an overgrown azalea bush, Zack pulls Craig… or Craig pulls Zack… the action is so fluid and undefined...and they are suddenly tucked inside it’s boughs like a little cave a foliage and their lips latch onto each other and they are sloppily making out like real lovers.

Zack drops his skateboard and moves his hands up Craig’s back and digs his fingers deep into Craig’s curls and pulls his face in tighter, their lips almost painfully squishing together. Craig hugs Zack’s thin waist against his, their hard dicks pushed against each other, and his heart is pounding. He slides his hands down the back of Zack’s shorts and feels his soft butt muscles and whimpers.

Suddenly, the make-out stops and they stand together in the bushes, holding each other, panting and heaving, eyes still closed, now even more sweaty in the steamy summer heat, coming back to reality. A few fireflies begin flashing in the depths of the bushes. 

“This is so fucked up,” Craig whispers.

“Yeah,” answers Zack. “REALLY fucked up!”

Airport Layover

The Great Ugly Behemoth, in ready-wear clothes without a hint of style, consumes and plods, enormous and vulgar, through airport terminals. The stereotype is confirmed. No wonder we hate ourselves and each other. Nothing of value, nothing of interest. Progeny, as fat as little pigs, tagging alongside vast swells of baggage. Inane conversations over and over. No one is classy. No one is pretty. No one intrigues.

Dare Mighty Things

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” 

--Theodore Roosevelt

The Gears and Grinds

The mind is a great liberator, but it is also a cage.

In meditation, the skull opens up and beams of intellectual light pour out as if in an ad infinitum planetarium. No geography or architecture is too grand, seemingly.

But in the lower realms of psychology, life-doing and life-planning as it were, the gears and grinds of the whole bloody machine--the clamor and claustrophobia of the cranium--are as crude and temperamental as an antique car.

When one's mind is at synch with outer nature, things open up and are seemingly limitless in scope. If only there were more power, more current, then the knowing of all things could be achieved!

But when one's mind is shoved down by indecision and doubt, into the lower confines of worry and fixation, then one's activity becomes no more profound or able than a beaten tiger limping to and fro inside a barred cage with an insane wax glazing its eyes.

You can feel the pinch, the tight bind: a head-ache that isn't physiological but becomes so by default. Stress winds its way around the mind like a constricting hot metal coil, tightening until surrender emits in the most unseemly and undignified ways. Total impotence and madness rule the moment.

Dead Things

As the bus pulls to the curb, we huddle near the front.

First in line, a freckled giantess woman, whom I've seen for years, pushes a small wired grocery cart. Once strong and capable, she now shakes pitifully and regards her surroundings with an unsteady look in her eyes.

Next is a young boy with strawberry-blonde hair, a cigarette behind his ear and a black plastic garbage bag thrown over his shoulder. I cannot stop looking at the exquisite downy hair on the back of his neck. He has a delicate, almost-feminine prettiness that he seems to be fighting against with an assumed haughty machoism.

Each goes their separate way as we exit the bus and I head on past the park, the dark storm clouds spilling over the west hills and a light spring rain humidifying the air, neither warm nor cold. It is early afternoon, and I have gotten off work earlier than usual.

As I turn onto my street, a sudden wind lifts the delicate white blossoms out of the cherry trees and scatters them across my view like snowflakes.

Everything natural is a surreal green, and the loamy dank funk of botanical birth permeates the air.

A postman works the houses on one side of the street. His solitary presence seems strangely choreographed.

And on my iPod 'The Hours' soundtrack plays. Phillip Glass's phrases churn and repeat, rise and fall, like a stream of smoke caught in an undulating current of air. It fits perfectly the scene, the smell, the nuances around me.

Melancholy yet lush, hopeful yet crushing, the music recalls the tone of the film and implants itself like a soundtrack on the neighborhood scene around me; yet, similarly intimates the cozy envelopments of literature, times of yore when my face was bowed to the open books of romantics and dejected dreamers.

Like polio or scarlet fever, I carry this antiquated chronic condition with me still: taking in the world in terms of acts, themes and scenarios; characters and settings. Everything has a cinematic quality, even my own solitary foibles, and I think this mode of perception must be dead or nearly so.

Who thinks like this anymore? Who sees?

Everything has become so literal and meaningless. Nuance is lost, or exists in vain. Expressions has been stripped down to a neutered simplicity:

A plus B equals C.

And this shift in contemporary thinking has engendered a kind of hopelessness within literature and the arts, and has mostly driven me away.

I think, what hope is there? This mode of nuanced perception is surely lost.

But then I consider the utter ego in this: surely I am not the only one. As a minority, I suppose it is my duty to keep this mindset alive, despite how isolated and freakish it makes me feel.

Decades of Record

What leads you there is a mystery, but suddenly you've found yourself late one evening lifting the lid off a crate of old journals and falling into the seductive rabbit-hole of miasmic nostalgia.

Intrigue mingles with horror as you dare to open each crinkled page and decipher old handwriting styles and bygone syntaxes. It's like reading someone else's journals, especially the older ones. But a certain guilt forms in the pit of your stomach because you cannot deny they are your words, your pathetic clingings, your outlandish aspirations, your perverted admissions, your melodramatic love affairs.

You wish you'd never even started. All these orphaned, half-formed diatribes that reveal more than they should are best kept forever! in this storage crate or better yet buried in some unmarked vault on a deserted island. You think to yourself, one day I'm going to die and someone is going to find these and I will be spinning in my grave as my dirtiest of laundry is brought into the light of day. You shiver with shame as you imagine your own mother or sister finding these and pouring over their sordid contents.

Someone long ago told you to start keeping these diaries. And, in fact, you remember exactly who it was: a high school English teacher, who said sagely that if you recorded your own life you could return to the old missives and take stock of your growth and progress (or lack thereof). You could observe your own life via these recordings much as your own anthropologist, observing significant or errant patterns and evolutions. You considered the wisdom in this and started scribbling the years away.

But it barely works in this way. Much like old photographs, once you've gotten into your 40s and have taken snapshots of every birthday, every gathering, every vacation, every boyfriend or girlfriend, they just become this obscene albatross of nostalgia that you cannot bring yourself to discard, yet really don't want ever to linger upon too intently.

Decades of record takes up space, in photo albums, spiral notebooks, fancy yellowed journals, drawing pads, and are in the end so much dead space taking up your apartment, filling some corner of a room or closet, and represent more than anything a significant heavy layer upon the carapace of your aging being: one more possession that has no use other than representing fragments of your identity, something you keep simply because you cannot throw away.