Present:

Have you ever just wanted to disappear? Not die…just vanish.

Go somewhere and start all over again.

LA. Mexico. Hawaii. Egypt. Into the wild of Alaska.

I’ve gotten so **** up and I’ve prayed to any God that cared to listen and I willed myself to turn Black. Willed myself to become a Jew. Willed myself to Science.

Any race with a cause. Any race with a purpose. Any cause with a positive outlook.

I’m white middle class American. Italian and Irish ancestry…so far back it no longer matters.

To anyone looking, I’m just **** white. I’m the man. I’m standard. Dull. Plain.

Vanilla. 

Have you ever just wanted to:     

Change names. Change occupation. Change your desires and your ambitions and your style. Change your likes and dislikes, pros and cons, political views. Eat different foods. Listen to different music. Prefer a different genre of movie.

Completely reinvent yourself.

Or are there certain characteristics or preferences you posses that you enjoy too much to ever leave behind?

Your craving for Blueberry pie. Your fondness for tall women with tiny breasts. Your affinity for wearing sweater vests. Your Abbey Road CD. Cats over dogs. **** over cocks. 

Would it be easier for you to change your sex or your religion?

Just curious which meant more to you. 

Faith is an overcooked piece of meat. You gotta chew it for a long time before you can swallow it.

At least for me it is.

And even then I gotta chase it down with a glass of strong Shiraz…or it will remain lodged in my throat, effectively choking the life out of me.

I die again and again. With each concept. Each debate. Each religion. Each suicide bomber. Each baby stuffed in a microwave. Each tortured animal. 

I’m not a great man. But I care.

Intelligent design. Survival of the fittest. No pictures of Muhammad. LDS Church. Dianetics.

****.

Molesting priests and the subsequent cover-ups. Dog wagging politicians. Subliminal advertisements. Half off Christmas sales in July.

I die each Valentines Day when I reluctantly go into a Hallmark store and buy three cards and get the fourth one for free.  

Flash back Memory #3

High School senior year. Dads gone away for the weekend. Doesn’t necessarily trust me enough to leave me home alone. But the alternative is taking me with him so…

So, I invite some friends over. 

Alcohol and drugs and rock and roll videos.

Car-bombs and mescaline and RHCP ‘Give it away.’

Throwing up, tripping, and singing til’ your **** throat hurts.  

It was another classic party. I was known for these.

But then someone brought up religion.

It was this cute little fake blond I nicknamed Simi. We met at the pool hall the week before. I let her beat me in a game and then charmed her into the back seat of my dads Cadillac. Then, somehow, I drunkenly invited her over for a party the next weekend. Even accidentally gave her my number.

So here she was. And I couldn’t believe she brought up religion.

This was her well thought out, in the corner of my fathers bedroom, standing on the shattered glass picture frame of my Grandmother that she knocked off the wall because she thought it was Lucifer, while peaking on the fourth hour of a microdot trip statement:

“I’m going to start going to church again. I swear to God I am. Just let me get through this night and I swear I’ll start going every Sunday!”

This was my on acid response:

“God…GOD you say? The same mother **** that allowed one of the most uniquely talented and creative visionaries that ever lived to lose his mind and in a selfish rage, leave his wife and son by putting a shotgun to his head and PULLING THE **** TRIGGER? Is that the GOD you are referring to?”

Why do people have to bring up religion.

Simi wound up coming down enough to join us at the kitchen table an hour or so later as we sat around playing cards and listening to, ‘Polly’ and ‘Rape me’ over and over and over and over again. Do I have to spell it out for you?

The conversation ultimately became more intimate, as it always does when good friends do drugs together…and we all decided to become blood brothers.

A pocketknife was passed around the table and each person was to poke a tiny hole on their body and open a blood wound.

Jami poked his thumb.

Trista poked the palm of her hand.

Cimeron stabbed his chin.

I guess we saw it in some movie.

When it came to my cute blond, back seat buddy Simi, she struggled with the insertion.

The incision. The cut. The stab. The breaking of the skin to produce blood.

For Gods sake…she just couldn’t do it.

“It huuuurts…” she whined.  

Becoming frustrated I slammed the rest of my beer, shattered the bottle on the table and using the jagged edge of what remained in my hand, proceeded to rip a seven inch long gash in my right forearm. The blood instantly flowed. Guests started to leave. 

“Now that’s how the **** it’s done y’all.”

Simi cleaned up the blood before she left the next day.

I never called her again.   

Present: 

Here I sit, a head full of seemingly meaningless memories, a brain full of seemingly meaningless data, an insatiable need to masturbate, a full TO DO list to write…and I’m staring down at the old scar on my forearm. I became blood brothers with myself that long ago night. Pretending I was one of Rice’s Vampires, I sucked the life liquid out of my own wound.  

Do you remember the name of Lestat’s rock band?

I always imagined them to be Tool. Only better.  

Did I mention it was my Birthday?

And I’m excited baseball season is finally here.

I’m excited that Megan QT has a new update on her webpage.

I’m excited that the world is not coming to an end, because then I’d have to endure some serious praying.

I’ve always tried to live by one simple philosophy: 

“Id rather laugh with the sinners than die with saints…”

Billy Joel is an alcoholic isn’t he? Who cares? Not Americans. We love the Piano Man.  

I once had a brunette girlfriend with smooth dark polished skin who when I pressed to justify her beliefs in her faith explained it this way:

“What does it hurt to believe? If it’s true, then you have reserved a place for yourself in Heaven. And if it isn’t…well, then you’ll just be dead and gone and it wont much matter anyway. But at least you’ll be able to live your life not spending each and every day worrying about death. And you won’t go to Hell!”

Religious agnosticism. She **** one of my best friends while I was passed out on whiskey.

Hypocrite. Repent!

I hate that argument. Mainly because I have no debate for it other than the fact that my brain is not capable of blind faith. That’s the way I’m wired.

Besides, would you rather spend eternity floating around with a bunch of angels signing bloated hymns and playing harps…or being sexually molested and tortured by demons?

No brainer for me.

S&M over American Idol any day.   

Flash back Memory #4

I overdosed on alcohol when I was fifteen. Slammed an entire fifth of Christian Brothers Brandy and wound up in the hospital getting my stomach pumped.

I don’t remember any of the events of that evening however I envy those that were there to witness it.

There were a dozen other kids there that night. I’m sure they will never forget it. Never forget me!

Excellent memories.

Snapshot postcards they can call upon for the rest of their lives. Landscape images for nightmares. Examples of why not to drink too much.

Stories I heard later included:

I punched the glass out of a second story window and tried to jump out.

I attempted to hang myself by wrapping a clothesline around my neck and dropping to my knees.

I bellowed incoherent poems about a girl named Jules.

I pissed and **** all over myself.

I bled all over myself.

I puked all over everyone.

I do remember the next morning. Waking up with an attractive older woman dressed in white hovering above me. (An angel that reappears every so often in my erotic heaven fantasies.)  

She leaned in close and whispered in a sympathetic voice:

“You’re going to feel a slight burning sensation sweetie. Then you’re going to feel like you have to take a pee. It will just be a sensation though. You won’t really have to go. Okay…ready…here goes...”

I was like, “Waaaa…”

Then the slight burning sensation…right…as if someone was holding a blowtorch to my cock.

I watched in horror as a long tube was removed from inside me.

“Um…oh ****…I really have to pee!”  

And all of this over a woman. A woman who was eight years older than me. A woman whose kindness I misunderstood as love.

I was a busboy. She was a waitress.

I was a kid. She was becoming a woman. 

She paid me a compliment and tipped me an extra five.

It was the first time I thought I was in love. And it was my first grand mistake. 

The second time I thought I was in love was when I was nineteen. The woman was twenty-four.

I chased her for nearly a year. Sent her flowers. Wrote her poetry. Waited in a brutal Chicago snowstorm for three hours…   

She finally agreed to go out with me. Spent the night with me. Told me she loved me.

Let me make her breakfast. Let me buy her a necklace.

Then never called me again.

I didn’t take a woman seriously again for five years.

Then I could have sworn I fell in love with a waitress, in a bar in Dallas.

We dated. We moved in together. She cheated on me. I left.

At that point I had sworn off religion, money and love.  

Then a few years ago, I met this woman named Bethany at a grocery store.

Scene:

“Excuse me ****, but I think you just stole my cart.”

I looked down and sure enough, the items were not the ones I had picked out. I scanned the immediate area and quickly spotted mine.

“Oops. Sorry. I always get over excited in the cereal aisle.”

Her eyes touched me.

“Is it the sugar content or the prizes in the box?”

“Definitely the prizes.” 

For the next three weeks we ate cereal together every morning.

We played with Frankenberry spinning tops. And Fruity Pebbles Flintstones racing cars. And Lucky Charms stick on tattoos.

After two months she told me she loved me. Told me that no one had ever made her feel so warm and happy and secure. In my arms she finally felt like she understood the meaning of life.    

One rainy night, candles pinching the air with their sweet sickening aroma…she got down on her knees and proposed to me.

I accepted. 

The next night I went out to a club and picked up a drunk blond who called herself Dandy. We spent the night in a cheap motel, exploring the deeper meanings of the Gideon’s bible.   

At home, I left the receipt, with Dandys phone number on it, sitting on my dresser for three days before Bethany finally found it and confronted me one morning.

Through a mouthful of Captain Crunchberry I said:

“Yea, sorry about that. **** happens.”

She left the house crying and I haven’t had a serious relationship since.

Present:

Okay, I’m sufficiently intoxicated now. I’ve switched off Goose and now I’m swirling around a deep red, cheap wine. Merlot…I think.

It’s time to put together my annual TO DO list.

Every year on my birthday, since I’ve been capable of translating my thoughts to paper, I’ve compiled a list of the ten things that I most want or need to accomplish in my life. It’s entertaining and moderately enlightening to go back each year and see how my perspective has changed.

A diary of sorts.

Some items have been the same since I was in grade school.  Some have exited the list, only to reappear years later.

Each year I make a conscious effort to knock as many out as I can. My record was five. That was when I was 22. My goals were short sighted then. Not that lofty.

In recent years it’s been a real struggle…I’m getting older. 

Last year, for example…I only accomplished one.

My life long goal of becoming a millionaire.

Although I did it the ‘New’ American way. I didn’t work for it.

I captured the ‘New’ American Dream. I won the lottery.

This year I plan to give it all away. Two point seven million.

You probably won’t believe that, but it’s complete honesty. I **** hate money. Almost as much as religion.

However, giving the money away didn’t make my TO DO list this year…at least not as a primary objective.

It will serve a purpose though. As long as ‘she’ is willing to go through with it.

(See number 4 on the TO DO list)

I have to rest now…smoke some cigarettes…relax my weary mind.

Maybe masturbate a time or two.

Because that’s what I do.

Insert CD:

Waking the Fallen

TO DO list.

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