Sunday 22 August 2010

NYU Admission Essay

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

Over the past 18 years since leaving High School I’ve had numerous jobs. I’ve been a manual laborer, a barista at a coffee shop, a cab driver, a courier, a dispatcher, a barback, a doorman, a cable guy, a stagehand, a delivery driver, a pedi-cabber, a pizza delivery driver, a lighting tech, a security guard and I even had a very short stint as corrections officer (not recommended). They were all jobs, a means to an end, nothing more. They’ve all come and gone leaving me nothing but pain in my body, regrets, strange stories and an assortment of odd skills that don’t lend themselves to the pursuit of my passion or the security of my future. My passion, the only thing that has been a constant in my adult life has been my love of books and my desire to one day be able to call myself a writer.

In the past I was willing to sacrifice my present for a paycheck and the obscure promise of “experience” while mindlessly going through the routines of my various jobs trying, often in vain, to keep my passion for books and writing alive in a compartmentalized area of my life. Work, I’ve found, attempts to insidiously invade every aspect of my life working its way through my very essence like a virus, demanding constant attention and crowding everything else out, leaving me little if any, time or energy to pursue other things.
In thinking about all of this and how I’d like to live my life in the future I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s necessary to have my passion in line with my work, otherwise it’s a daily battle to keep it alive, a battle that too often seems to be lost to an onslaught of obscure periphery demands and obligations related to “keeping afloat”.

So to try and keep my passion from being swept away under a never ending tidal wave of meaningless work I’ve decided to make literature and writing the focus of my life from this point on. The first step to this, I feel, is going back to school where I plan on finishing my BA then obtaining an MFA in writing, after which I’d like to teach to further my understanding of the written word and hopefully build a pension for the day that I won’t even be able to pick up a broom. By doing this I hope to keep literature and writing at the core of my life and not relegated to the distant sidelines as it has been in the past, as well provide some sort of security for the future.

I also understand the difficulty in going back to school as an adult. There are time, monetary and relationship constraints that have to be navigated. This is why I’ve chosen The Paul McGhee School of NYU, as the school is built around the understanding of the unique difficulties that adult students face, and is geared towards helping them succeed.

I’m very excited about the prospect of going back to school and pursuing my passion. I hope that you’ll give me the opportunity.

postscript - I got accepted. I just can't afford that shit.

Love

Listenin' to this:

Ewoks

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I love Ewoks. I’d like to party with them. Although I don’t really party anymore. It’d be great to have one of them with me here in New York City as a personal bodygaurd/friend, as they’re not opposed to using violence, and because they also seem pretty funny too. I’ll bet we could talk a lot of shit on the trains and stuff. I can imagine us getting into all kinds of fun just walkin’ the streets and pokin’ each other in the ribs and pokin’ dickheads with his spear and stuff and laughin’ as he said something funny to them in his gibberish as they stared at us like, What the fuck man? Also, they make amazing tree houses. And I’d love to build an amazing tree house on the roof of my apartment building in Brooklyn so that we could see the skyline of Manhattan across the water and keep an eye on it, like the death star. Also, it’d be a great place to have people over and hold wild Ewok and hipster rumpuses and light big bonfires. That sounds like a lot of fun. I think having Ewoks as friends would improve my life immensely.

LOve

boatloads of shame (dream)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

Thunder clashed with lightning ominously and rain ran out of the sky as the leaves swirled in a chaotic dance, violently attacking one another. I shouldn't have come here, I thought as I sat in the car looking through the streaked windshield at the eerie and darkening woods where a few snakes slithered to safety. It's over between us. I should let it go, I thought. My stomach writhed with tension. For a moment I thought I might be sick. I opened the door and the rain spilled onto me. I grabbed my bag from the back seat and the wind howled and moaned as I ran across the loose wet gravel from the car toward the black imposing door of the house, seeking shelter, seeking her, and a release from the pain. I stepped through into the house without knocking, hurriedly escaping the attacking elements. I could feel her tortured presence. Something was off and everything was wrong. The house was large, monotone modern and vacant feeling. Gloomy lights led down stark hallways to large lifeless windows that stared coldly out at the surrounding woods and lake. A pale sterile museum like house jutted out into the turbulent waves of the water behind the property where Martha Stewart floated serenely in her bikini on a floaty tied to the dock as the storm clouds enclosed.

I looked around for her dropping my bag to the floor and wiping the wetness from my hair and face, sensing her just before she appeared out of nowhere looking white trash worn, wearing cutoff shorts with a tight yellow wife beater t-shirt. Her face was ashen. Her eyes fixed coals. Sadness permeated her skin. She was an empty vessel and I longed to touch her, to stop the aching inside of me.

She took me by the hand without saying a word and guided me to a bedroom where she undressed me in silent distanced regard, then took off her clothes under the dead light as the storm thrashed outside the windows. I put her up against the desk like a porno. The tension, the sadness, and the disgust with myself for returning after the things that she'd done filled me, as sweating, and on the verge of crying she made me cum. She turned to look at me, searchingly, her eyes filled with black shame.

I went to the bathroom to shower, looking at myself in the harsh reflection, noticing the wart that had formed on the end of my dick as panic and anxiety filled me. I walked to her in the other room where she stood looking absently out of the window at Martha Stewart who floated languidly in the midst of the choppy waves and insanity. I felt defeated and ashamed for ever caring about her. Why didn't you tell me? I demanded of her. Her eyes were blank as she turned, her expression dull. What did you do while I was gone? I asked, pleading with her. I did what I needed to, she said flatly. I slept with Joy. You should have told me, I said sadly looking down at my deformed self. You gave me something. You should have told me. I still love you, she said and turned away toward the window and Martha Stewart drifting peacefully in the storm.

broken hindu goddess

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

It was 4:30 in the morning after a Saturday night of work. People leaned into one another drunk and passed out or talking softly as the brightly lit train barreled under the East River toward Brooklyn and home. What are you reading, she asked as she touched my book? I looked up to see her standing in front of me holding the center pole. She looked like a broken Hindu goddess, a sorrow betraying her smile and engaging eyes. Women, by Bukowski, I said. Oh, what have you learned, she asked leaning down closer to me? That a woman will put you under the bridge, I said glancing up at her. Oh, that's not true. I'm a woman. I smiled at her gauging her age - 26 at the most. It depends on what you want from a woman, she said as the train rocked. What do you want? A mousey young girl across the way sitting next to her yuppy collegiate boyfriend scanned me curiously then looked at the dark haired, dark skinned broken goddess standing over me. I don't know what I want anymore, I said earnestly. Neither do I, she said staring at me, the painted blue circling her eyes momentarily swirling, transfixingly. How long have you lived here, I asked, not knowing where to take the conversation. Oh, long enough to know that the ship is going down, sinking you know, with us on it, she said. I know, I told her, I'm leaving to Texas tomorrow. Oh, take me with you, she said urgently, I've been so depressed here lately....

Thursday 19 August 2010

review of Tao Lin's RICHARD YATES

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York



Corey's bookshelf: read


Richard Yates

More of Corey's books »
Corey Duncan's  book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists

Friday 13 August 2010

Scott Weiland's gone AWOL

Austin Music Hall, Austin, Texas, 2007

I'd been up for several days on a crystal meth binge. Everything felt surreal yet hyper clear. I was doing security, working in the pit behind the barricade center stage when Velvet Revolver kicked in and Scott Weiland slithered onstage. I had my back to him but I felt his presence and reflexively turned as he approached the screaming crowd. For a brief instance his gaze locked with mine. His eyes were slitted black, and in a flash of transference I could feel his suffering, the depth of his pain and addiction, and what he'd given up in trade for his fame - his soul. He seemed like a prisoner to me. He looked like a concentration camp victim, gaunt and frail, yet vibrating electric. I turned away shaken as he planted his right leg on the monitor above my head glowering over the crowd. He leaned his weight into the speaker as he screamed into the song as the speaker threatened to topple off the front of the stage. I stood below, watching, frozen. My friend – the bass player from the notoriously heavy band Buzzoven - working in front of the right speaker stack immediately came running over to hold the speaker from falling, breaking my trance, grabbing my arm in the process, scolding me to get it together, then looking up at Weiland as though to convey - this guy deserves respect, fucking give it to him.

Stubb’s Bbq, Austin, Texas, one year later

I was doing security backstage at the outdoor music venue Stubb’s. Velvet Revolver had just started playing inside, minus Scott Weiland, as the sun started to fade over the amphitheater. Tour management, house management and security were all frantic on their radios trying find out where he was. I was standing on the sidewalk on 8th St at the entrance to the loading dock and outdoor backstage area where the band gear and road cases are stored. The tour buses were parked nearby. I scanned the area spotting a scraggly looking guy across the street coming toward me from the direction of the downtown and bars. He looked like one of the homeless guys that frequent the creek that runs along Stubb's and under the bridge where the buses park, and I thought that I'd have to steer him away. Just then as he ambled across the street with his head down management and security surrounded him yelling into their radios that they had him. It was Weiland. He was directed past me to the small backstage area as his tiny assistant / stylist carrying boas and things rushed to get him some clothes. Weiland began yelling that he wanted a fucking mirror. The assistant darted off as the band continued to loop the same riff building a chaotic tension as the crowd screamed. The assistant returned planting a dressing room mirror in front of Weiland against the back of the backstage wall. "I need my fucking gel!" he yelled as the sun fell. The assistant raced for it as tour management and house staff stood by talking into their radios saying "He's here!" as Weiland slicked back his hair curling his lip into a sneer revealing a gap in his teeth. "I need my fucking tooth!" he yelled and the assistant rushed around maniacally as Weiland glared into the mirror at himself and the black space where one of his front teeth was missing. The riffs of the band rose and fell and the assistant procured a tooth that Weiland shoved in his mouth then stepped through the backstage door and walked onstage into the lights picking up the lines to the song as I heard the microphone drop with a thud as the band tore off and the crowd roared. The bus driver walked over to me after the pandemonium had subsided and said, "This kind of stuff happens almost every night. Sometimes he doesn't even show."

I heard someone say that Weiland had walked from the hotel to the venue and stopped along the way for a drink at a bar where he'd pissed someone off and they'd knocked his front tooth (that was a cap) out. I don't know. But it was incredible spectacle and very Rock n' Roll.

A few hours later as the lights onstage cut and the fans still screamed I got a call on my radio saying that Weiland was leaving the stage and to meet him at the backstage door. His energy hit me like a shove to the chest as he walked through the door with towels draping his head. His energy was insane. He vibrated rock star like no other performer I'd ever been around as I walked him to his bus under the sliver of a moon... Whatever IT is, he had it.

After he climbed on the bus I held the crowd of people trying to get to him. A desperate woman and her husband kept trying to push past me telling me that they were Weiland's ex-wife's parents. I held them there as the rest of the band exited, the woman grabbing Duff's arm as he passed. He told me they were alright and to let them go. Exasperated they raced to Weiland's bus where his assistant let them in. They stayed for half and hour to an hour. When they got off they looked defeated.

A month later I heard that Weiland went back into rehab.

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Idol

Seattle, 1993

I was there when I heard the news that he'd killed himself. I couldn't believe it as I lay on the futon on the floor of my empty studio apartment staring up at the stark white ceiling listening to the news on the radio. Time stood still briefly, like the first time that I'd seen their video on MTV my senior year of high school a few years before. The news that I was hearing then didn't seem real, in the same way that my life had stopped feeling real, like a bad joke. I walked around the block under the cover of gray, an eerie silence of mourning filling the air of the entire city, feeling something dying inside of me too. Hope maybe? I'm not sure what it was, but it left me feeling emptier, a little colder than I had before. He had represented to the world the pain and the disillusionment that I felt. He'd bared it. He'd made the world stop and look, now they'd look me over again.

I'd moved there because of him only a few months before, seeking refuge from the growing storm in my mind. I'd pictured myself meeting him in a dive bar, a random encounter, where he'd take me into his confidence, confide in me, allowing me to return the favor of acceptance. We'd become friends over beers, nodding hello to each other silently when we saw the other come in from then on, sitting and smiling over drinks at the absurdity of our common understandings. Now he'd extinguished his life, to ease his pain, but I still felt mine. What was I supposed to do with it, I wondered? I had too much to carry on my own.

I went to the store and bought some beer with the fake id that I had from a friend who'd killed himself the same way a few years earlier - heroin, then a shotgun blast to the head. I went back to the apartment in a fog where I sat alone and drank with the pictures of my dead friends lined up next to beer cans opposite of me on the small built in the table against the wall under the bare light bulb and I toasted to life. The sadness of it all overwhelmed me and I began to cry for the first time in a long while. I had to get out. I had to get away, but I had nowhere to run. It was dark out. I walked down to the water carrying the rest of my beer. The air was chill and charged with an omnipresent grief. Music poured out of people's windows, but I heard nothing. Candles lined the streets. There were vigils around town, but I didn't feel like being with anyone. People didn't understand. He had.

I sat on a bench looking out over the lights reflected off of the slick black surface of the lake toward the downtown and drank alone, like I'd been doing a lot of recently, and I talked to my dead friends and to him as the tears ran down my cheeks and I laughed to myself, at myself, and at the world. Nothing made sense anymore.

I woke up, hungover, sick, cold and shivering in the dull, diffused morning light, disoriented, searching for my life in mist coming off of the lake, knowing that I was lost.

Monday 2 August 2010

Leaving Austin

Before I met her I’d been playing with the idea of moving. I’d lived in Austin ten years and felt that my time there was coming to an end. I felt as though there was part of me that I’d let die there, chasing paychecks, trying to survive. I’d wanted to write when I was younger. I’d written a small book when I was 21, after my life had fallen apart around me. Nothing ever happened with the book, and the grind of work and making ends meet eventually took over - life. I’d recently started writing again after my second divorce at the age of 34, a year earlier, and had begun thinking about leaving town, re-inventing myself, worried that I’d end up a clichéd bitter old tattooed bartender in a punk bar in Austin, drinking away the days.

Sunday 21 February 2010

New York City

Pointless life day 13,150

I'm burned out on this tomb of a town full of the soulless walking dead. You have to be numb to survive here. I've had enough. I can't go through the motions anymore. I drag myself out of bed. I eat. I drag myself to work through the stone faced crowds. I daydream through work each day detaching myself from the crushing banality of it all. I drag my tired self back home through the wretched cold and the half dead masses, hunger gnawing at my stomach. She has food for me. I am safe and warm and crawl back into bed to do it all over again. Again. And again. And again. I feel a helpless rage building in me. When will it change? Something has to change. But what? The book has to sell. I stay up at nights working on it. There is something there... a light, a fire at the end of the tunnel... I feed the flame nightly... One day it will burn brightly... She cries when she comes home from work... The hours, the stress, the constant worry of money. I make grand pronouncements and declarations of the future. I see her face fill with hope. I worry. I secretly worry. I feel less than able. I feel less than a man. The old Fears and insecurities haunt me. I put on a face. I go to work. I hold it all in, until finally, one day it gets the better of me. And it all comes pouring out sitting in bed on a day off drinking coffee and reading the paper. It all spills out on her. The Fears. The Insecurities. I am not enough. She will cheat. She will tire of me. And I will fail her just like I did the other women. She can't stand the constant need for reassurance. She dismisses me. I am a child. I am boy. I lash out at her in rage. I say terrible things. I leave and walk the streets through the snow and the freezing wind, smoking, my fingers numb. I am coming undone. I have no where else to go. I have no one else. My face is frozen in shame. The shame tears at me. I can't forgive myself for not being able to provide, for not being secure with myself, with her, with us. For not being man enough. I call her. She's quick to pick up the phone, "where are you? Are you okay?" I tell her that I'm sorry. I'll be home in a little while. I just need a moment. The apartment is sad and uneasy when I get there out of the cold. We are tense together. Unsure. There is silence. And in the silence we make love. We will be okay. We reassure each other. But things must change. And we decide that we must leave for a while. We are going to Paris.

Journal

Pointless life day 13,148 (or thereabouts)

I sit and wait, lurching in dark alleyways of the mind, forever hoping to catch a glimpse of the illusive shadow - Inspiration.

I don't know when exactly I lost it. But it is gone. I don't know what series of events transpired that I lost its sight. But is gone. The first soul crushing job? Perhaps. The first heart break? Maybe. The first time I sold myself for money? A possibility. Or the first time I slit my wrist?

No.

That was the first time that I realized how much I actually wanted to live.

Then, perhaps the second time?

Possibly as well, as there was a sad resignation and the thought that for all that I may have wanted and required of life I was perhaps simply ill equipped to grapple it away from the silent and unfeeling forces.

Then perhaps it was the slew of manual labor jobs for moronic and petty tyrants that never quite paid enough, that always exacted more than they gave, that always left me with a sickening feeling of foul rot in my stomach at the end of each day. A simple peasant eeking out a tiny existence on crumbs, reduced to pandering, begging and borrowing for rent at the end of each month. A failure to myself and the women I loved, turning to the drugs, the pills, the cigarettes and the alcohol to kill the pain and the endless Fear. Yes, I think that was it.

Yet.

I have awaken once again.

And I need you to feel my pain.

Inspiration...

Honking Mad

The worst drivers in the country this year are here in New York City, according to GMAC Insurance's annual National Driver Test. And as a recently transplanted Texan, who drives a variation of box trucks and sometimes a Honda Element for work, I concur. The drivers here are God awful. They stop in the intersection. They stop in the middle of the road. They stop when they're supposed to go and they go when they're supposed to stop. They cut people off. They slam on their brakes. Then they speed off. They don't use their blinkers when they're supposed to, then they leave them on and they never turn. They move to the right lane, then back to the left lane, then back to the right, then back to the left lane again, all in a futile attempt to gain one car length in a never ending traffic jam. And they honk. They honk, and they honk, and they honk! And still, they don't get anywhere.
The traffic I can handle – most days – if I simply pretend that I don't care if I ever get where I'm going. The honking, on the other hand, becomes nerve rattling, especially when I'm sleeping at three o' clock in the morning and some frustrated drivers blaring horn wakes me up from the street below. Bleary eyed and confused as to why I'm being honked at in my bed I fall back to sleep dreaming that the City of New York has put me in charge of enforcing the no honking law. The rest of the night I weave through streets in my little traffic scooter slapping tickets on the windshields of transgressors. And I am happy. I am very happy.
I try to refrain from using my horn as much as possible when I'm driving. But sometimes I just can't help it, like at the end of a long day when a mini van dragging a felafel cart behind it swerves across three lanes of traffic to cut me off. That's usually when I lose it and blast the guy with my horn, then tailgate him for a good block or so while flipping him the bird. That exact scenario usually happens daily.
But I'm getting used to it all and gradually settling in as a New Yorker in the process. I read a quote in New York magazine not to long ago in my therapists waiting area (yeah I need therapy after driving in this City) by the comedian Dennis Leary about what makes someone a real New Yorker. He said something to the effect that if the pope mobile cut a real New Yorker off in traffic he'd flip him the bird. I've recently mastered a technique of honking and flipping the bird at the same that I'd use on the pope in a heartbeat if he tried to pull that on me.
Yeah, I'm settling in.

Review of discontinued TV show

I wrote this at the last minute for a writing class. It's for a sitcom called DO OVER. I missed the class where the teacher showed it and gave us the parameters for the assignment. But I found it on YouTube and winged. I didn't follow standards, protocol, formula... nothin'. Nobody liked but me. I thought it was fine. I'm the only one. Teacher deemed it inappropriate. Girlfriend said my opinion doesn't need to be heard.

If you're an adult male over 30 who wishes you could go back to the beginning of puberty knowing what you do now about life, then Do Over is the perfect show for you. It's the story of a 34 yr old guy whose life and hair are in free fall, who gets knocked unconscious and sent back in time 20 years. All the current shows aimed at men in a state of mid–mid life crisis go the opposite way: men over 30 acting like eternally pubescent boys. And being an eternally pubescent adult male I get the joke in that approach. But being semi retarded in the maturation process isn't nearly as fun as these shows make out it to be. But to go back to being a sex crazed 14yr old again with all of hard earned knowledge that I have about substance abuse and the female species sounds like a lot more fun than being a developmentally challenged adult. And Do Over is the fantasy show come true for any red blooded adult male with a pulse and a libido left in their slowly dying carcass, like me. I can relate to the creators of this show. In fact I had the exact pair of black and white checkered Vans, parachute pants and Members Only jacket (though mine was gray, not blue) that the main character wears on his first day back to High School – Jesus I was cool. To be able to go back to High School wearing my collar up like a Yale graduate and have a second shot to get in all the girls pants that were out of my league is a semi – grown adult males wet dream. But, like the main character, Joel, I'm sure I'd regress back into fumbling cave man grunts when trying to talk to the girls that wouldn't screw me the first time around, break out in fits of anxiety at having to take Algebra tests again, and cry when sent to the principals office just like I did the first time around. And therein lies the comedy of the show that the current crop of emotionally stunted adult male shows play off of as well: that boys don't really grow up. God I hate Algebra.

So there it is. Whatever. I did it in like an hour. I'm not fuckin' Leonard Maltin.

NY Die

The realization that I can’t do another day in New York City hit me like an electric cattle prod to the gut today.
At 7:45 something is incessantly beeping at me trying to get my attention. Why is my alarm going off? I’m not working today. Oh yeah. My girlfriend brought a van home from work last night and asked if I could move it this morning before eight so that it didn’t get ticketed.
Fuck.
I get up, throw my clothes on and drive around the neighborhood for a half an hour bargaining with Christ to help find a parking place. I spot something. A little close to the fire hydrant. But it’ll work.
Back home and back in bed for minute.
Not long enough.
The girlfriend’s alarm is going off. Gotta get up get going. Gotta drop the girlfriend off at an appointment, then drop the van off at the rental place. We throw our clothes on. Coffee. Out the door.
Van’s got a ticket. Too close to the fire hydrant. Fuck. Ticket says that vehicle must be five feet away from hydrant. I’m four feet eleven and three quarter inches. I spout a turrets syndrome style rant at Jesus and the New York City meter maids.
Girlfriend tells me it’s okay.
Woman in car in front of us at the intersection is talking on her phone. Light turns green. I blow my horn. “Come on!” Girlfriend tells me to chill out. I tell her I’m fine. An van on the bridge nearly blows us into the river.
I let it go.
I’m a perfect little Buddha as we creep through bumper to bumper Manhattan traffic until the old man in front of us sits through an entire green light, then blows through the red. I hold my tongue and horn. I start cussin’ under my breath. I am the calm inside the storm. I drop girlfriend off at therapists office. I can cut loose with my verbal abuse. In the fifteen minutes that it takes me to get to the rental place these exact phrases come out of my mouth: “Are you a fucking moron?!”; “Jesus, you’re fucking retarded!”; “You stupid dildo bitch!”; “Are you fucking shitting me?”; “Sure come on. Just stop traffic while your fat ass walks across the street.”; “I will fucking kill all of you! I will run you down!”
I feel a little better.
Drop the van off.
Need some fresh air.
Walking…
Crossing street cab driver cuts me off then stops. Control self and don’t kick in windshield like Bruce Lee. Think I need a drink. Too early in the morning. Not a good idea. Guy walking down the street in front of me moving slowly, oblivious to the rest of the world. Make my move on the left to pass him up. He swerves, cuts me off. I swerve to the right. He cuts me off. Fucking asshole! I move to the left. He cuts me off again. God!
I surrender…
Meet girlfriend. She asks me what’s wrong. Nothin’. I’m fine. She presses and I go into a rant about how people who cross the street when they have a red hand signal fuck up the whole flow of foot traffic for the mass of people who are crossing going the other way, thus causing a cluster fuck on the corner of the sidewalk, creating pandemonium and chaos. My girlfriend looks into my eyes searching for remnants of sanity as a red hand crossing guy’s backpack smacks my shoulder. I’m gonna fuckin’ go postal on someone… My girlfriend starts laughing. I tell her that I can’t take another fucking day in this town. Which works out perfect, because we’re goin’ to home to Texas for the holidays tomorrow.

LISTROPHY - 10 Things Not To Tell Your Girlfriend (cuz you don't want Gonorrhea)

Submitted to LISTROPHY.com but never accepted - bastards!

1- Never ever tell your girlfriend the truth...
2- Never tell your girlfriend that you don't know if you trust her. Because in her crazy little reptilian mind, that's a reason to cheat.
3- And never ever tell your girlfriend that you watch porn as you have just unwittingly given her damaged little psyche all the excuse it needs to go full blown psycho slut on your dumb ass.
4- And never ever ever tell your girlfriend that you sometimes think about other girls as you might as well have just signed her up for a membership to AdultFriendFinder - because she will be banging, it just won't be with you much anymore brother.
5- And never ask your girlfriend where's she's going on a Friday night dressed like a whore, as she will simply accuse you of being controlling, scream, storm out of the house, get shitfaced at the bar then blow some guy in the back of your car.
6- And never ever tell your girlfriend that you think she might have a drinking problem the day after she comes home at ten in the morning after drinking all night and blowing some dude in the back of your car, as she will simply accuse you of being controlling, scream, then storm out of the house, get shitfaced at the bar and blow some guy in the back of your car, again...
7- Also, never tell your girlfriend that you think it might be a good idea that you take a little time off from each other to sort some things out unless you're sure that you never ever want to see her again. As while you're taking some time off from the relationship to sort things out she will be wildly and drunkenly banging as many people as possible to spite your existence. And you don't want Gonorrhea...
8- And never ever ever tell your girlfriend that while you were taking some time off from each other to sort some things out you drunkenly kissed some girl one night, as that will immediately send her out on a drunken pill induced fucking spree! And you don't want Gonorrhea...
9- And come to think of it, it's not a good idea to tell your girlfriend that you think her idea of having a threesome with a black guy is a good one as she'll probably forget to tell you about the time and place. And you don't want that image in your head for the rest of your life.
10- And lastly, never ever ever ever ever in a moment of weakness ask your girlfriend if she wants to get married. As you're just askin' for trouble. And you don't want Gonorrhea...

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Underwear

Underwear underpinning my existence working my scene unseen the fashionable cornerstone of my being unique and always oh so fucking styling as I hit the stoop and then the streets secure and at psychic peace with my briefs providing me the security that I need as I tear through the mad energy of New York City doing my thing always absolutely certain that if in doing my thing my clothes are torn from me the person standing there will say goddamn where'd you get those bad ass briefs?

Sunday 14 February 2010

Quasimodo

My mind is on fire again! My feet are cold as the thoughts chase me like demons down the passageways, walking quickly through the narrow, cobbled twisting streets of The Latin Quarter past the barkers in foreign tongues tempting me to their gastrinomical fares. They are grotesque annoying creatures and if I had the strength I would shut their holes forever. I would clap their ears like symbols, then steal their damn food as my belly screams at me to do so! But not now... I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO TEND TO: I am on my way to Shakespeare & Co. to raid their store! steal their goods! ransack and pillage! then seek refuge forever in the sanctuary of Notre Dame across the Seine. I NEED THOSE BOOKS! I NEED ALL THOSE FUCKING WORDS! I need all those glorious, glorious fucking words! I want them all! I need them! I will have them! I need all those goddamned cursed words that fill all those tiny little candy like sumptuous books with magnificently, neatly, brilliantly, beautifully ordered and structured sentences creating, creating, creating... always creating, commentaries, explanations, diatribes, elucidations, definitions, clarifications, renunciations, commiserations, accusations, attacks, denouncements, proclamations and eviscerations!... I need them... I NEED THEM ALL!... Pacing the alleyway next to the store, an insatiable hunger for words gnawing at my screaming soul!... I will bust down the fucking door of Shakespeare & Co. and I will elbow to the floor everyone of those damn foreign tourists and smash their annoying gawking cameras underfoot as I fill my tent sized hobo sack with book after book after glorious fucking book. Then I will grab the typewriter that sits waiting for me upstairs like a forlorn and horny love and I will jump from the second story window like the crazed methhead and I will run shrieking mad as I dash across the bridge over the Seine to the safety and seclusion of Notre Dame where I will read and write forever in glorious peace and deliciously quiet solitude rearranging all those magnificent motherfucking words into my beautiful forms, ringing the bell and yelling at God above whenever I come upon or put down a particularly stunning, wondrous, astonishing verse, then throw the finished copy down at the waiting slovenly mobs below...

Saturday 2 January 2010

Journal

I have been exercising prodigiously in order calm mounting anxiety as well as for comic relief. Soon the thoughts will be flowing out of me like mystic bullshit from an uneducated yogi.

Journal

her soul is threadbare she couldn't believe I cared.

Journal

I have been blessed by the capacity to see but frustrated disappointed crushed by my inability to unmask the truth of what Ive seen and experienced. I have loved and been betrayed mocked and discarded. I have been looked over stepped upon and used. Yet I am still here. I have not given up. I am alive. You will hear me. YOU will feel me. Tremble...

Friday 1 January 2010

Courier

I get to work by eight to start another mind numbing day of driving deliriously through the streets Austin for another ten hours without resting, speeding, screaming, honking, eating on the fly, picking up and delivering packages in precise and frenzied time windows with the dispatcher calling constantly on the cell phone / walkie talkie (provided by the company) to ask where I’m at, check, change and rearrange the status of my deliveries in an ongoing free flowing kinetic jigsaw puzzle of capitalism where hopefully by days end all of the pieces have been fitted into place in the allotted windows of time– time always being of the essence, as each package is worth a different amount to company, and by correlation, to the me the driver based on the time that we promise delivery: the packages that have that biggest time delivery window, the all dayers (as they’re called in our courier industry lingo) which are eight hour deliveries are the cheapest; then there are the half dayers (courier lingo) which have a six hour delivery window; then the four hours (actually what they’re called); then the 2 hours (also what they’re really called); and then, the most important ones of all, as they’re the real money makers for the company, the delivery that all the other deliveries, literally and figuratively, take a backseat to - the one hour time window delivery (or the hotshot as they’re known to us). Each delivery window has a different price attached to it, going up in price in converse correlation to the time window going down, i.e. the larger the delivery time window the cheaper; the smaller the delivery time window the more expensive. And I, as the driver get a percentage of each delivery I make. And if a delivery is promised within an hour time frame – a hotshot - and the package isn’t delivered in that time window and falls into the two hour time window, then the client gets charged less for the delivery and we lose money, and the time wasted by me scrambling my ass deliver the package in the one hour time frame that we’re no longer getting paid for. Then the company who didn’t get their package in their desired time frame usually ends up calling and bitching to our boss about us not meeting the promised deadline and they whine about all the inconvenience it’s cost them and blah blah blah. And then the boss bitches to the dispatcher (as shit apparently rolls down hill) who then calls me asking what the fuck the problem is! as we’re all making less money because of our failure to deliver the package by the promised time in the process ruining our reputation with the client and our ability to get further work and therefore we’re all going to starve. And what’s going through my mind while I’m being bitched at over the company provided cell phone / walkie talkie while weaving through traffic is that there was fucking traffic everywhere, and there was goddamned construction going on, and I got stuck behind a goddamned garbage truck, and then I had to detour out of the way from that delivery - that I was perfectly timed to drop - in order to pick up another delivery that came blasting through on my company provided beeper with the urgent note attached to it saying PICK UP ASAP EN ROUTE TO CURRENT DELIVERY so I had to back track a little to then find that place all the while looking through my road atlas on the passenger seat of the car while trying not to kill anyone driving 65 mph through traffic in 45 mph designated zones! And when I finally got there the girl at the front desk didn’t know what in the hell I was talking about, and it turned out that I had to go around back to shipping and receiving and when I got there no one was to be found anywhere – it was like they’d all gone home - and the guy who finally showed up out of the depths of the warehouse after I kept calling HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! wanted to talk my goddamn ear off about his fucking co-worker who doesn’t pull his weight and is still on his lunch break, while he still hasn’t eaten anything all day long. And when I got the package and got back in the car I realized I was almost out of gas and if didn’t stop I was going to run out on the side of the road and when I pulled over to get gas I realized that I had to use the bathroom or else I was going to shit myself, and some old man beat me to the bathroom and wouldn’t come out. And when I got to the street that the hotshot one hour delivery needed to be dropped off on I couldn’t see the goddamned street numbers and I was all hopped up on coffee and cigarettes and starving to death and getting fucking crankier and angrier with passing second that there wasn’t food in my stomach and I had to double back down the street to try and figure out which building was the one I needed and I didn’t see the numbers on the buildings again and I had to turn the block because I couldn’t flip a u-turn and I finally found the place and delivered the goddamned package. But all I say over the fucking walkie talkie / company provided (not to be used for personal use, otherwise the bill for any minutes that go over the company plan will be taken out of your next paycheck) cell phone to the dispatcher who is bitching me out is that I only dropped the package two fucking minutes late and those people could shove the fucking hotshot package up their ass for all I cared! And after that I hang up on the dispatcher because I really don’t give a shit anymore and then the boss (who’s four fucking years younger than me!) calls me on the company provided cell phone / walkie talkie (that’s not to be used for personal use, but it’s the only phone I’ve got, and my wife is calling me on the other line) to bitch me out not only for dropping the package late, but also for hanging on the dispatcher and I hang up on him to answer my personal call that turns out be a complaint from the goddamned woman. All this while driving to the next delivery, catching a glimpse of the back seat in the rear view mirror as I blow through a red light because I’m cursing out my woman about another money problem that we’re having while I’m staring at a pile of overflowing fucking packages that still need to be delivered that seem to be screaming at me like needy disrespectful little kids that I just want to get rid of.