Without even trying.

This blog means too much to me, to kill without an explanation. So here goes one, without even trying. I'm over a lot of this stuff I've written, it all seems short sighted and naive. This blog has been a intense source of pride and embarrassment for me. I'm proud of every word but I hate them. Imagine how Macaulay Culkin dad must feel about his son, that's probably the way I feel about this place, this plain black background, odd blue border it all seems like a place I no longer want to be. I'm over it. So with this one last final entry, I'll write about something I'm not quite over yet.No courier font, no bullshit. Enjoy.

This summer I lost my grandmother and my best friend. She was 73 and he was 21. I cried more for my grandmother but I think about Jordan more. I didn’t like the fact that memories of someone I’d known for less than 5 years could trump the memory of my own flesh and blood. I felt guilty, like I was a traitor to her legacy. My Grandmother was the beautiful woman who had given birth to my mother, she had been there for literally all my life with love and a telepathic understanding. Her birthday was 2 days before mine and not to get on a weird astrological trip, but we were both Libras and shared this intense dual nature. Prone to fits of passion and rage, we were shipmates on the U.S.S Bi-polar. And Jordan, my best friend, was a border line sociopath and drug abuser, and not always in a charming way. He was the type of guy who lived on his own accord and had this completely bizarre way of sculpting reality to fit his ideas. He was a megalomaniac and had enough vices to make a Las Vegas priest barf in confessional. If my Grandmother was Bjork then Jordan was 80s hair metal.

It’s easy to romanticize death, but there is nothing poetic about how their hearts stopped. Grams died first, on a morning in July. She had stopped living long before that. Jordan died August 26th in his car outside of his girlfriends house. She had been fighting cancer and dementia and he’d been fighting the future. Time took her and drugs got him. She was probably dreaming, and who’s to say what his final thoughts were. When I heard about Grams I was drunk at my girlfriend’s house, my dad called to tell me and after we hung up I had a cigarette in the bathtub. I thought about her mole, so perfectly place on her right cheek, it would have made Marilyn Monroe and all those ugly girls with piercing jealous. I remember tearing up but not crying, I remember wanting to talk to her but not wanting to be sober, I remember thanking God and wanting to drink myself to sleep. Me and my girlfriend talked about it but not for long, She said that I should call my mom but I told her there would be plenty of words between us later. When Jordan went, I found out through a facebook message, sign of the times I guess. It was kind of like an earthquake, one of those moments when you have an out of body experience. I called a few people and they all confirmed it, Jordan Richardson had died and month after my grandmother and a day before I had to move in to my new apartment. I couldn’t sleep that night and my parents don’t keep booze in the house, besides the absinthe I got my dad for father’s day but that hardly seemed appropriate. So I stood up until 4 A.M and tried to write and looked at facebook pictures and listened to sad songs, I played that one Nickel Back song about looking at photographs and started to tear up. I was crying listening to Nickel Back and could almost hear Jordan and my Grandmother laughing at me.

I’d last seen Jordan in the Mulberry Mountain of Arkansas. It was June and I was working a pretty good job in a gift shop at the number one tourist Attraction in Chicago, Navy Pier. The Pier sees something like 3 million people a week. An overwhelming number of which are tourists. Strangers from all around the world swarm the Pier every day. French bikers and German film makers and Japanese rock stars. All yammering, and yelling and laughing and walking too fast or way too slow. 3 million people all spending vomit inducing amounts of money on food and souvenirs. If Chicago is a 19 year old girl, Navy Pier is the Friday and Saturday nights she works at Pole Cats to pay the bills. For those of you lucky enough to not know what navy pier is, imagine the worst mall you’ve ever been too, and then put it by a lake. A throw in the world’s jankiest Ferris wheel and random dudes dressed as pirates giving fat Texans boat tours. There is a ball room and garden, and in the first week I worked there I’ve seen three proms take place. Navy Pier solidifies that originality died in the 1990s along with Kurt Cobain and the Real Michael Jackson. But despite the cheese ball work setting all in all it was a good and I really liked it there, and what is most important is that it made my parents and Grams happy, and happy parentals are less naggy parentals. Plus it gave me the extra money I needed to live comfortably but far from lavishly. It was a Thursday when Jordan called and said he was coming to visit me at my job. Jordan was the face of a group of people I call my ‘Toxic friends.’. Toxic like the smell of a gas station at night, thick and warm but insanely hazardous. Now imagine that smell personified by in group of people. I met my toxic friends my first year living on campus. It was a pivotal year in my life and the hell we made in that old paper mill turned student residency crafted me into the well adjusted maniac I am now. That Thursday when Jordan called telling me he and Peter Marshall, a friend of ours who recently decided to move back to Chicago after spending the past year and a half back at his parents’ home in Texas were coming to visit me at work. They had come 40 minutes before closing. There wasn’t many people still at the pier that late and thank God for that because when they saw me from half way down the hall from my store they began waving a massive glass dildo around. Massive is no understatement when it comes to the description of that monster. It was a foot and a half long and the tip was about 5 inches around. They saw me and these two shit eating grins spread across their faces as they charge me. I look back to my coworkers who were folding clothes and talking amongst themselves, oblivious to the charge. I didn’t run or make too much noise when Peter, who his around 6 foot 3 and has giant hands with fingers the size of polishes and Jordan who was around my height but literally had about 100 pounds of that solid flab that city dwellers get when they mix their awful diet with an active night life. They held me and threatened me with the dildo, I didn’t think it was that funny but I made sure to smile so when my supervisor saw the scuffle she wouldn’t think there was any real danger. After I calm them down we begin to talk and what I thought would be a short catch up session actually turned into a persuasive speech to get me to come along with them to a music festival called Wakarusa in the mountains of Arkansas. They asked me how much I made working in the store and I told them it averaged to about $600 a month. They laughed and said they had just come from a festival where they had both made out with $1200 each. double what I made in a month in 3 days. They were on a tour of sorts, hitting every summer festival in the United States hearing incredible bands and seeing amazing people all while making a pretty sizable amount of money. Now I knew Jordan and I knew the racket, Jordan was a purveyor of narcotics and a pretty successful one. There was a point in time where if you were buying weed in the loop, there was a good chance it passed through his hands first. But what they did at these festivals was pure business genius. On the first day they would sell fake LSD, usually drops of Visine for ten dollars a hit. With that money they’d buy real drugs and large quantities, set up shop and very literally watch as the money comes in. A risky business and while the prospect of being locked up in a Arkansas jail house wasn’t alluring all that money sure was, not to mention possibility of falling madly in (drug induced) love with a hippie girl. Fast forward to 24 hours later and we are in a van with 4 other friends entering Arkansas state lines . The next three days are worth a book or at least a dirty limerick of their own.There was Porto potties stuffed with dynamite, a beautiful waterfall where hippies would have nightly orgies, an opium den in a cave on a mountain, music thumping long into the night from the forest, and 3 girls from Tuscaloosa whose names I might never remember. While on the second day I realized that Jordans idea was little more than a cutco knife pyramid scheme It didn’t really matter, because it was literally the best 3 days of my life.

On the day I left Jordan was walking back from the waterfall that the hippies showered in. He told me the next stop on his tour was Tennessee for Bonnarro I told him I’d booked a cab to the closet town with a grey hound station and that I had to go back to Chicago to see if I still had my job, he put his hand on my shoulder, and asked me If I had a good time. I told him I had the best time and he said good and taped me on the dick, harder than usual. I called him a bastard and watched him walk off. When I got home it was early in the morning. My mom was at work, my dad was asleep. My Grandmother lived with us. I followed her breathing tube back to her room, the machine sound like a robot snoring, I hated that machine for many reasons, it kept her confined to the first floor, she couldn’t even move to the basement to do her own laundry because the tube was too short. The dog would lay on it, and if it wasn’t funny it would be very scary. I walk in to her room and the tv is still on, I inched around to turn it off when she wakes up. She looks at me, not scared but happy. She asks me where the party was. I tell her that she’s looking at it. She looks confused and asks me again. I mentioned earlier that my Grams had stopped living long before she passed away. That’s because in those last weeks she wasn’t the grams I’d known, she was a just body and flaring words, she was suffering dementia. That day my mom told me that since I was gone Grams had taken a turn for the worse. Her health was rapidly decreasing. The weeks that followed were awful. Sometimes she would forget our names, my mom and dad had to change her, help her go to the bathroom. We’d all have to keep watch, sleeping in the guest room next to her bedroom. She’d scream in the middle of the night, and whoever was on duty would have to sit with her. One night things were particularly awful and she tried to escape her bed, I told her she was too weak to walk and that if she fell it would all be over, she told me she didn’t care. The last time I saw her I confessed I had l my job. The owner had played back the surveillance camera footage of the dildo incident and had fired me. I told her that for the last two weeks I was lying to my parents, telling them I was going to work when I was actually going to bars and seeing movies. She told me that I should slow down drinking, I told her I would try. She told me to stop licking her hand, and it wasn’t until several hours later I realized she had confused me with the dog.

Gram’s funeral wasn’t what I wanted it to be. It was at the church attached to my grammar school. The priest wasn’t dynamic and when he misprinted her name ‘Stella’ as ‘Steller’ I considered jumping over the pew and hitting him in the face. I thought about how it would embarrass my mom and dad but still make them proud. I was very close to doing it. Grams was vain in the way that women used to be before beauty became a face book profile picture, she would of wanted a better casket, a better priest and a bigger church. I didn’t like how everyone was touching me and asking me if I was ok. I wanted to stop talking about it and I wanted to go home. At the wake they served cake, and my relatives considered having the casket at the wake. My dead grandmother would have been overlooking a room full of mourning cake eaters. I didn’t make it to Jordan’s funeral, but I went to his house the day after he passed and blasted the whole with a fire extinguisher. I wasn’t even that drunk, his girlfriend told me it was mourning, I’m not sure what it was.

A 60 foot tall flamingo who breathes fire. He wears tap shoes. His name is either Greg or Carlos.

She puts the hot sauce in the refrigerator. You’ve never understood that. It’s a gross parallel to you, cold and spicy. The kind of bizarre inversion that can swallow smaller universes. But it’s her place, although your ass has made a dent on her couch and your stink, barely favorable, is soaked in her pillows like salt water in dog fur.

An hour ago you were passed out on her floor in your underwear, your gut rounded, inflating and deflating as you crawl out of the coma the night before dropped you in. You notice a cover on the body half of your body that you certainly didn’t have the forethought to put on yourself. This is her doing. She’s on the couch, her long legs dangling off the couch and over your head like a chandelier.

Love is intricate, that’s what you say. She says it’s a natural thing. You tell her volcanoes are natural too. She says that the lava from volcanoes harden and formed the continents. You tell her you went to catholic school and that her radical scientific talk will land her in hell. You both laugh then she asks you why you think love is so hard and intricate.

She made omelets with bacon. You ask for hot sauce and she says in in the refrigerator, you cringe. She always looks at you take the first bite. People are always looking at you and it annoys you, it drives you to drink. Eyes are complex, and despite what people say, eyes aren’t windows to the soul but lasers that sear and confuse and annoy and drive men to drink. But when she looks at you its comforts you, it’s one of the complexities that love dulls. Love has honest eyes, maybe love is natural.

“Where did you get the eggs to make these omelets?” You ask.

“Burnham, but don’t change the subject, why is love so intricate?”

“Oh I havn’t this is all part of it.” You grin.

“Ahhh, an egg metaphor about love? Ok, go.”

“Yes a cheesy egg metaphor.” You say motioning with your fork to the cheesing oozing from the omelet. You sense you’re on a role and must strike while the iron is hot.

“Did you walk to Burnham?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t take a cab.” She rolls her eyes and eats her omelet. Burnham is only a block away for her apartment, of course she walked, your roll slows and the iron cools a bit. But that’s the sign of a good women, gracefully checking ego and putting it in the corner like a bad kid with ADD and a sugar rush. But even with that you’re still on a roll and your best words are like a avalanche, a giant snow ball that can still crush her.

“We’ll when you walked out side, you didn’t float into space did you?”

“Obviously.”

“And when you got to Burnham, and bought the eggs, did you think about the chicken they came from? Or where that Chicken came from, or where that Chicken came from?”

“Dinosaurs.” She says, unbeknownst to her, she done goofed.

“Exactly, giant fucking reptiles. What I’m saying is that, we exist in this space where everything is a giant mystery. Bricks and trains and fucking Asian children. All this is infinitely mysterious, we, well not we, but scientists, scientists have theories on how all this shit works but nobody really knows, and we brave this gigantic mystery every time we go out to get eggs, who knows what will happen. Purple smoke can come out of the ground and turn us all into golf balls. And we won’t know what happened until years later some scientists will come up with an some ridicules explanation and we, well not we because we will be golf balls, but everyone else will believe it and that will be one of the many mysteries people don’t even question while they walk out into gravity that can suck water into space as we text on our cell phones and can hold thousands of songs and send verbalized love across the sky and shoes…rubber, how does rubber work.”

“Okay crazy, now what’s love got to do with it.“ She gives you that look that solider come back form war masturbate too.

“What’s love got to do with it? Everything. What is everyone’s ultimate goal at the end of the day, its love. All this shit was created, fuck, gravity was ordained by the gods so that when we kiss we don’t float into space and imploded. If you weren’t hear, I wouldn’t need a cell phone, or rubber soled shoes and that hat that was spun from fabric that comes out of worms asses, to keep my hair in order. All these mysteries are put in place so that we can find love and procreate and take pictures. All this complicated shit, that we consider natural , and love right in the center, imagine how complicated that shit has to be.” You finish while shaking your head and grumbling.

She stays silent for a minute then kisses you. A good woman, you’ve always though, has the ability to turn the valve in your mind, she can open the flood gates. This one does that for you, you look at her. She says something to contest you, it probably made sense, but you were only sort of listening, your omelet got cold, and the hot sauce got warm.

She turns on Ru Paul’s Drag Race on the TV, and you ask her to switch to Cops when the commercial is on.

I don't want it, I'm not worth it. (Part 1) (Super Rough)

It’s been a rainy May and the fog that lifts from the pier clouds the tops of buildings, making a thick mist that make it look like the sky is falling. It’s about 11:30 at night and I just got out of work. Luckily the rain is light and the bus is rounding the bend to pick up passengers. Tonight my cousin is turning 20 and she’s having a party at some club in Wicker Park. At first I wasn’t going to go, it was too late and working on my feet for 9 hours straight, answering the most remedial of questions for the most aggravating of tourist has a way of draining motivation. But then I remember its for family and I haven’t taken you out in awhile. This will be a good chance for you to meet the younger half of my family, not to mention the club is giving my cousin a few free bottles for her birthday, although if she is truly my kin those bottles are empty by now. I text you and ask you to get ready, expediently. When I reach your building I call and you tell me to go the bar and take two shots and you’ll meet me in the lobby after. I smile like a fool and agree. I walk to Georges, It’s lit in a way that reflects the deepest part of the human condition, the accidental perfection our words and actions have in apathy. The Bartender is inattentive, and what’s worse she’s inattentive with a smile. That hollow, bobbing, idiot smile that people have when they are oblivious to the needs of other. I repeat my order; ‘Jameson and Coke.’ She fiddles around making the drink, unsure and without any pride. A good bartender is attentive and takes prideful in the drink. She is neither she is a bad bartender, she will get no tip. There is a generosity outside of bars on the weekends. A roar of lifted spirits, I ask a stranger for a cigarette to which he obliges. It’s stopped raining, the post-spring air floats around me and its like that first small laugh after a cry. A sign that things will press on, as they have too.
I wait outside your building for 10 and a half minutes. I peer into the lobby from the outside and watch as the digital monitors track which floor the elevator is currently on. 28,13,5. No 17th floor visits, you aren’t ready yet. Just has the true nature of my impatience begins to manifest you step out of the elevator. The 15 minutes you made me wait is nothing compared to the eons of beauty that rest on your face. All made up and tall. A new curl in your hair, I’m happy you exist, I‘m happy I‘m part of your existence. You tell me a cab would only take 8 minutes. That’s all the info I need to began wildly waving toward traffic hoping a taxi sees my beacon. We wrangle one. I ask him does he know where Geisha Lounge is, I cant understand the words under his accent, but I’m sure whatever series of grunts and coos he muttered meant ‘No’. I scan my phone for the text message my cousin sent me with the address. I find it and I tell the cabby, making sure to emphasize the ’West’ in ’West Milwaukee.’ Any other accidental direction on the axis would prove fatal for my modest budget. He says he’s taking the highway, its bordering on 12:30 and the roads should be clear so I don’t object. If there is one thing I’ve learned from taking cabs in Chicago its not to fall asleep in the backseat. However, if there are two things I’ve learned from taking cabs, its that there are about 4 ways to get to any single destination. The roads of Chicago stretch out and mingle often. Laid out like the flaky rules in a child’s imagined game. One second you could be in a completely new pocket of the city, full of foreign sights and new possibility only to turn the corner and find your favorite McDonalds and that club your friend dragged you to last August. On the ride there I notice a dullness in your smile, the placid one you wear when you’re annoyed by me. I’m not sure what I did, and I’m paying for the cab and probably the majority of the drinks tonight, so I deduce the source of your contention can’t be me and if it is, all will soon be absolved after I open the door for you and cart you into the bar. As we pull up to Geisha Lounge I notice the hand you placed on my knee is a different hand. It’s limp like a dead fish, not the usual warm loving death grip. We get out the cab. You go first and I trail you to the door, the bouncer looks you up and down, as amazed as any man would be, then asks for ID. Everything checks out then he says the cover is 20 bucks. The strings of the violin in my head pluck and you turn around with that pseudo embarrassed face. I’m outraged that Geisha has the outward audacity to charge anything over 7 dollars, I tell the bouncer that I’m there for my cousins party, he says he didn’t have a list but if I could get her out here to talk to him he’d let me in for 10 dollars. Still a steep price, but I agree, as I take out my phone to make the call the bouncer notices my shoes and says I can’t get in with sneakers. I look at him right in his big fat head, the fat rolls on the back of his head resembling hotdogs and a snicker and say ‘Rad.’ sarcastically. My cousin answers and I try to tell her they wont let me in, but its no use. She can’t hear me over the music. It never fails, no matter how loud an event is people will always call and people will always answer their phones. As if the satellites in space that bounce our calls have special noise canceling waves that activate when there’s too much background feedback. We both yell in our phones, but its no use, it’s like trying to tell a secret across the grand canyon. You look at me, that same smile. The one that conveys your beauty and your disdain for me equally and elegantly. You ask; ‘What now?’. We are in the heart of Wicker and if we can’t find a good time in the Heart of Wicker at 1 a.m we aren’t the adventures we think we are. We head to evil olive. You don’t make me hold your hand, I consider grabbing yours but then I get a text from my cousins friend at the party. She asks where I’m at and why couldn’t I get in. The tall pretty one I’ve known all my life. She’s pretty cool and is way over do for a humping. But I love you, way more than a potential hump. I’ve loved before, and it is possible I could love after. But this is the closet I’ve ever got to perfect. If love is art, you and I are a Salvador Dali painting, while the other have been Andy Warhol. Fun but at the end of the day just a can of soup. Uncooked soup. We get to Evil Olive and the bouncer scenario plays out this time my shoes are okay and the cover is only five. You walk in before me and the bouncer tells me I'm with the ‘baddest girl in the club’ I say almost without thought; ‘Yeah, you get over her quick.’ He laughs and asks to search my bag. I open my messenger bag and its just my folded up work clothes. The khakis and the staff shirt remind how much I really ain’t cut out for a 9 to 5. How much working dead in jobs makes me want to do better in school. I think about how in a week it’ll be June 3rd. My paycheck comes in June 3rd. I think about my hard earned money, I think about how I promised we’d get real high and get oriental massages. I’ve never taken a girl to get a massage, I’ve never even taken a girl to the movies. I'm new to this stand up guy routine, but I don't hate it. He’s done checking my bag and I walk in.

We make a B-Line to the bar and immediately I notice a girl with half her head shaved. The other half is the sort of auburn blonde color. She has nice lips and her make up is right. She’s sexy, like a catfish fillet to a homeless man. She’s no you, by any stretch, but still worthy of a hump down. She walks up a stair case to what I assume is a VIP section. I kiss you on the cheek and give it that extra second of contact, my way of writing you a poem without all the hassle of rhyming and sounding cliché. Transferring Shakespeare through kisses is hard but I think sometimes I nail it with you. I order us two shots, then two more, then you get two more, then I slap down my last 20 and get us two more. Four shots in under 10 minutes, hardly a record but still impressive. We share a dance, the goofy bouncing kind, not the booty grinding kind. It’s close to comfortable, and that’s a incredible. It may have been the first time I’ve ever had fun dancing in public. A good dance should be all knowing but never judging. We got close that night.


We have a cigarette outside and the generosity of the night and the club is alive in the air. We strike up a conversation with some Greek guys, he says I’m lucky to have you. I say I know, you look at me but I can’t look back, its awkward and embarrassing and too much mushiness makes me tired. He says he likes my hair and that you’re lucky to have me, you say that I’m ‘Pretty great.’ The Greek guys say they’ll buy us drinks but what they really mean is they’ll buy you drinks and begrudgingly get me some. Perks of not being outwardly possessive, besides I’m not threatened by these guys, they haven’t what it might take to pull you away from me, not like anyone could if I didn’t let them. My cousins tall, busty friend texts me. Telling me she’s waiting outside at Geisha, I say I’ll be there in a minute. I have no intention of bringing you. I’ll devise a plan to slink away. I good at that.

One Better

She flings her arms around my neck, and grabs a handful of my hair pulling it just hard enough that it hurts. She pants when we kiss, trying to catch the breath I’m sucking out of her. We do the dance of the intoxicated lovers, are arms tangled around each other in a volcanic warmth that is ready to explode, but this is the one of the best parts and I want to make it last a little longer. Her legs are getting weak, I’m pulling her all around the room, usually the rush kicks in and I try to pull the trigger before she realizes that I’m short and desperate for love. But tonight there is something in Paulette’s voice telling me that tonight she’s all mine. She’s got a boyfriend, but I’m the ghost in her sheets and I’d be damned if I don’t haunt tonight. This is a test, Paulette’s got a boyfriend she says she loves. Now she’s shaking and moaning with me in a bathroom while he’s probably writing shitty poems. It’s always the poets, that take my girls. They are braver and do less brooding, but no poet can fuck as good as good as I can, no poet knows the dark truths of the night like I do. She’s wearing tights, and as my hands creep down her back I peel them off, I feel them ride around the curve of her ass. She’s losing the test, the test to see if she’s the good girl I want her to be, the test of her loyalty to her boyfriend, she’s failing the test and its bitter sweet to both of us. I want her to push me away, I want her to pull up her tights and rush out of here, but as my hands and explore her and I feel her wetness I gather in my mind how this is going to end. Before long I bend her over my bathroom sink, she’s got a great ass, it aint the biggest one out there but it suits her body and its soft, like angel skin. She takes dick like a dream, you never have to slow down with Paulette, and if your legs, or abs or arms start to burn she’ll happily take over. She screams ever time, like a grunt, like shes pulling splinters out. She moves her hips so it goes all the way in every time. I’ve got a angel bent over.

NOTE:
I'm blushing. I'm over it. Off too porno.

My threesome with Bernice and Gertrude

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Oscar was a ripped umbrella.

Gina slams the door so hard the momentum causes it to swing back open giving Oscar one last brief view of the inside of her apartment. The scratched hard wood floor where they would dance in their socks, the blue walls he had helped her paint last November and Buttons the diabetic black cat, who was sitting on a stool watching the as the doors floated back open. Buttons let out a gentle meow, Gina looked at the cat then followed its gaze to the door to where Oscar stood on the outside. Her eyes, glassy with the tears that she planed to cry after kicking Oscar out. She grunted furiously and stormed back to the door. “Wait..” Oscar yelped. But the door closed, stern and heavy this time. He could hear the locks clicking from the other side. Oscar Young had just broken up with his girlfriend Gina Sowell. It was his idea, though beautiful Gina had a monkey on her back. She was a terrible drunk. Stumbling, mumbling, vindictive, devoid of lucidity and absent of sanity. Not that Oscar was without his chemical flaws, he became a moody insecure high school girl when he drank too much. But relationship became volatile and the fog that veils a new lovers ugly bits was dissipating. The night Gina had a very important art exhibition at a gallery in Wicker Park. She was a wonderful painter. She often took pictures of her friends and loved ones, studied the photographs, and painting pictures of the ‘little secrets inside the persons heart‘. For Oscar, she painted an umbrella with rips and tears in the fabric. He was a little hurt by this but choice not to say anything until after the exhibition, after all Gina was already very nervous. It normal for people, with a daunting stressful task, to want a drink or two to soothe the nerves and steady the heart. If two glasses of wine can steady a shaking hand than an entire bottle and 2 Klonopin can melt the skin off that hand and scar the bone. Gina showed up drunk, the straps of her dress hung off her shoulder and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bounced around, staggering like wounded animals. Flirting with all the strange artsy men who wore odd facial hair and indoor scarves. At first she didn’t notice Oscar, his new yellow shirt tucked in nicely to his pants, holding a glass of wine of his own which he quickly poured the bathroom sink after seeing the lush state Gina had gluged her way into. He purchased a water bottle and took Gina by the hand to the lobby where he sat her down. She was sour, making fun of Oscar new yellow shirt he had bought just for the event, just for her. After the exhibitions Oscar drove her home, she screamed about how she wanted stop at Chicago Classic Hotdogs, Oscar told her it was closed but he promised to take her in the morning, in a fit she grabbed the wheel of the car and jerk it, throwing the Volkswagen onto a curb. “What the hell is your problem?” Oscar yelled as he got of the car to check the damage. “Hahhah, it’s okay no body died. Come on get back in the car and lets go home.” She laughed from in the car with the window rolled down. She said that the apartment was too hot to cuddle and that night she made him sleep in the bathtub. Oscar, feeling the sting of loss but the pride in the assurance that he’d made the right decision to end things with Gina headed down the stairs. He thought about Gina crying in her bed, this sadden him, no one had ever cried for him before. That was usually his job, and while the idea of inflicting heartache did not make him happy he was confident that Gina would get over it. She was a unique sprit, and when she was sober and happy, Oscar swore that heaven moved in her heart and behind her eyes. About half way down the stairs Oscar realized he had forgotten his car keys in the heat of the argument (Oscar didn’t want to argue, he simply wanted to discuss the possibility of a break, Gina’s hangover and conformational disposition played catalyst to yelling, Oscar hated yelling.) He sighed, knowing that when he knocked on Gina’s door, she would answering it, spilling tears, it would be awkward but Oscar needed his keys. “Oh man.” Were Oscar Young’s last words. He began to sprint up the stairs. Taking tow steps at a time. The first leap a success, the second went as expected. But on that third, in his haste he over shot a step, lost his footing and fell back down the stairs. Bumping and bouncing down the narrow case of 32 steps. His legs swung over his head and Oscar thought about how the tumbling reminded him of a dryer, which reminded him of his new yellow shirt that he wanted to wash. He’d slept in it and it desperately needed to scrub the funk out of it. Like a rag doll, Oscar's head bounded and settled at the bottom of the stairs. His falling body left scrapes and scuffs on the white paint of the corridor. As his vision resored from the fuzziness of confusion he felt multiple pains surge through out his body, the worst being the feeling on his ribs cracked and splintered in his side. He could taste blood.
Before Oscar’s grandma passed last summer, he often visited her in the hospital. One day she told him that he didn’t have to visit her any longer, she said it hurt knowing that she didn’t have much time and too see her family as often as she did just made it worse. She said instead, to write her letters. She explained that letters were better than actual conversation, that an honesty is lost in conversation, we worry to much about the other person. People are forced to share time and opinion in real conversation. Sometimes spoken words lag and lull, sometimes we over think and over thinking destroys what we mean. But in letter we are free to vent, we can bleed emotion. Oscar decided that he was dying, and that maybe letters from loved ones would be too hard to handle. That maybe dying alone at the bottom of a stairwell of your ex-girlfriends apartment is the best way to die. You don’t have the time to miss family or TV or diabetic cats. All you need to do is focus on the punctured lung and drift to sleep.

Ivan J.

NOTE: For a good friend of mine. A unique spirit.

It was about 1 am, me and Travis had been boozing since 7pm. The weekend before that one we learned a valuable lesson about pacing yourself when it comes to chemicals, 7pm shots are a bad idea but 7:30 mixed drinks are suitable and sustainable. Travis is form a town in Texas right outside Dallas. He doesn’t have a accent but if you listen right, you can hear a drawl. That slow southern melody that creeps into the last syllable of every word. His short blonde hair is greased back, he’s trying a new look. He wears and open collared button down black shirt that’s a size to small, his shaved chest hair pokes out the top, defying you not to look in an uneasy wonderment. Like a gorilla in disguise. We step outside of his dorm building for cigarettes and fresh air. Standing outside the UC at 1 am is like a circus, or a church. Roaring with emotion and ignorance and honesty. Everybody is lit and smiling and making eyes at one another. Occasionally you’ll see a girl (or even more tragic, a guy.) crying on the phone. But in the terrible but human way that persons sadness propels more jovial spirits amongst the mass. We walk out the revolving to door to see a group of girls. Simultaneously, as if some mutual toxin is released the brain to signify new blood, they look back to us. I wear shit eating grin of a lush and Travis lights two cigarettes in his mouth and hands me one. They begin to shake their asses. Their hips sway and jerk, but their eyes remain dancing around everyone but us. There’s no music playing, but the mating dance needs no tune.

“Attention starved sluts.” Travis shakes his head and turns around. I laugh. He’s only two years younger than me but 19 and 20 are important years. It’s when true patience begins to sprout. A few moments pass as we survey the area. Then I take a gulp from the Gatorade bottle we had very covertly poured a piss colored pint of tequila in. I hand it to Travis and he takes a bigger gulp, as if to challenge me. He’s a writer, like me and we get along on a writerly level, we both are (at times, cripplingly.) sympathetic yet generally disinterested. I smack him on the back and ask;
“So you’ll be back in Texas next week?” Liquor has this divine ability to flood out all the most important words. This isn’t a conversation easily started sober, Travis just got out of a mental institution for an attempted suicide. He says it’s because of stress and a history of undiagnosed depression. I respect his word, after all its his body, but If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because his girlfriend and too many drugs. A broken heart and a chemical assault can do a number on the nerves. Epidemic apathy can flip to self harm faster than a shotgun can turn a human body into soup. He often jokes about ending his life, but I don’t think he was joking all the time.
“Yeah, my parents figure it’s the best place for me to be right now, I disagree but hey,” He looks down, shrugs’ then continues “They pay the bills.”
“Home will settle you, dude.” I take another pull for the Mexican witches brew and give a hardy spit. The conversation is getting heavier and once someone allows you in their life like that it can get stressful. Travis is hardly a candid thou person, once he screamed at the top of his lungs he had just eaten acid and pissed out the window of his 10th floor dorm room wear nothing but top hat he bought for St. Patties day. As true as that statement was, and believe me, that mother fucker really was naked, no when needed to know. I don’t want to say he lacked poise, but I wouldn’t bring him to any fancy dinner parties, not like I get invited to any. “Maybe, I don’t know.” He looks at me and nods.
“My favorite thing about home is my mothers laugh. It’s this infectious...thing man. It’s great. Cures everything.” I smile and he does too.
“That’s awesome man. Yeah, if anything I miss my mom too.”
“Yeah. What about her.” A take a deep breath and feel the night air. “She listens to me.”
We start walking down the block and we talk. Travis a crazy guy, sporadic and wild with an energy that hard to place. He’s prone to conniption fits and panic attacks. A real, ‘heart on his sleeve’ type guy. He’s a rare human, always seeking adventure and perverse conversation.
“I just hate Texas. It’s a fucking void dude. And for the most part everyone there is a idiot hick.” From the day we met a mutual friends party he’s told me he hated Texas. Said he was asexual up until his senior year of high school because the girls in Texas were so sickeningly unattractive. Which is up for debate because there is a adult film star named Alexis Texas, and if her moniker is derivative of her geography, I wouldn’t mind taking a visit to Austin myself.
“It’s the shit times that make us really appreciate the good, think of it as rehab. Detox. Does the soul good.” I used to be good at giving advice. Back in the days when I had my shit proverbial shit together, now I just sound like someone’s semi-disinterested uncle. But Travis gets the sentiment, even if the words aren’t polished.
“I hope you mad at me about cock blocking you back there. It’s just that Judy isn’t that hot.” Travis half apologizes.
“See that’s debatable, I think she’s really hot but we got different taste. For instance I wouldn’t touch Kelly with a ten foot pole, but to each his own.” I say harshly, Kelly is his exgirlfriend who, truth be told, I didn’t attractive at all. I would of coddled my words but he really did cock block me, Judy was a girl I occasionally facebook stalked. We met her and a few of her friends in the hallway, the night progresses and so does and me a Judy become fast company. We end up in her room and I get a little up the shirt action then Travis comes in raving about how her roomates a bitch and fat. Judy defends her, but no one defends me and my junk. She kicks us out and I don’t talk to Travis for about 10 minutes, we just go back to his room to drink and listen to Tom Waits.

Travis is back home in Texas now, he works at a T-Mobile factory boxing phones. Healthier, or so he says. He’s be back in june for summer classes. The world won't be ready.

Gears of sunset

I’ve only been in love twice. Once with a girl and another with a ghost. Both ended the same way; with me feeling like the toilet paper used on the ass of a man who ate chili and chased it with milk. Come to think of it, I felt worse then the feces stained toilet paper, because at least that man appreciated what the toilet paper had done for him. Regardless, the girl found a man, and the ghost got a new haunting ground. They both still call, but our conversations seem less charming and more of a hassle now. Like a day old hicky on a job interview. I’m debating whether or not I care about them anymore, in the intimate sense of ex-lovers. I used to be a romantic, but now I think love is outdated and overused. Love in the sense of meeting someone for lunch, holding their hand on top the table while waiting for food, and knowing that when the food does come, you won’t need to ask to share, the two entrees, your bacon burger, her fish tacos, will be one big meal, then returning home to a comfortable and unassuming sit on the couch for television and sporadic kissing.
The girl I loved was gorgeous. The perfect pair of legs leading up to a cooter that made me forget my fathers birthday, ignore the phone calls of friends, and spend what little money I had on her vices. That later became my vices, that later became the reason I got mugged in the hallway of the Hilton hotel.
The ghost, well see, I’ve never met her. She’s from new york and I’m never going back to that city. Much to dirty and cigarettes are priced too high. She’s gorgeous too, but in a more grungy, punk rock sort of way. When we first started talking 3 years back she swore she’d never touch drugs, but she just got out of rehab and got her stomach pumped. I guess losing that kid and her fiancé must of done a number on her. She swears I’ve always been the one, but I’ve changed.

I’ve been writing for an hour, ran through a bottle of wine and just got a text from a girl who is probably be the new albatross. She’s hot, perfect breasts, I like her voice. Fuck I sound like a some lower case Hank Moody. I’m not. The bottle is almost done and my attention turns to face book. This was suppose to be me making peace with love. This was suppose to be me saying goodbye to writing about girls. A man can only write about girls for so long, he’s got to mature. He’s got to write about adult stuff. Like…politics?

This is a nice progression thou. With the right type of eyes, you can see where I got drunk. Right around the part where I say cooter, it took me 15 minutes to decide how to say pussy, without saying pussy.
Cunt sounded harsh
Vagina sounded sterile
I’ll text the girl back now, I miss her. I hope she hasn’t let anyone touch her.
Love is full of broken glass.

Tulips

I haven’t found you yet, but I’ve safely lost you. I think about you both. At the same time. Get bent. Get rich. Just stay hot. And never lose that smile. Oyster with no pearl. The clerical office of the netherworld has made a mistake. I should be dead. This type of weather does something to me. I cant wait for spring, and shorts and tulips.

He's a lazy river

Driving down the Dan Ryan at about 60 mph. Peripheral catches a smashed animal. We’re going to fast to figure out what it was, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a dog. Doesn’t matter what it was thou, because what it is now is a hunk of blood soak fur, a few feet away from the body were wads of reddish meat. Maybe what his head used to be. ‘Roadkill.’ My dad huffs from under his salt and pepper beard that’s more salt than pepper these days. He’s been growing that beard every since mom passed away, she would of hated it. At her funeral in June, he was a wreck, the red wine stuck to his beard like paint on thin stalks hay. For most of it he wasn’t even in the church, either in the bathroom or on the chapel steps. Looking like a universe that lost its sun. He only came in when I read the eulogy and when the choir sung.

In the back seat there is a printer we are returning to Staples. It has a photo scanner, wireless capabilities, a monitor on the machine that helps edit pictures, and I’m sure tons of other bells and whistle that, unfortunately are piece of shit computer cant operate properly. Trying to install any new hardware to our computer is like giving a blind man a rubix cube, futile and borderline insulting. Mom never did mind thou, as long as the internet wasn’t too slow, as long as see could play her favorite CDs, as long as she could play bejeweled. I miss her so much its gross, I know my dad does too. Although these last few months he’s been alright. In fact, save for the funeral and New Years Blow out where he slipped down the last 4 steps to our rec room, he handles her not being with us very well. Better than I’ve handled some breakups.
We get to the Staples and I carry the box, as we walk to the automatic doors he asks me did I think we should try to find a new printer, I tell him no and that we can keep using the library, after all with the influx of library closings, it would be nice to support ours, even if it is with 2 dollars in change a week so that I can print bad short stories and receipt from my budding online shopping addiction. ‘Welcome to Staples.’ A girl with a named tag label Maria greets us. Shes enthusiastic, she beckons us in like I imagine they would do in Narnia. Except Staples is not Narnia, we are not saving the land from a tyrannical ice witch, we are returning a faulty printer, she needs to calm the fuck down.

NOTE: My mom is not dead. She's probably watching TV. I wanted to tap into a foreign feeling. And in the words of a man much wiser than I; 'Sympathy is easily converted into fellatio'.
And yes, that is a picture of me and my mother.
:3

Extraneous

*NOTE: I wrote this on a napkin a few months ago. Seemed topical.

I can feel snot rolling down my nose. So I wipe it with my sleeve, give a hearty snort and pick up my third taco of the night. I bite into it, and its steak. I ordered 6 beef tacos and so far I've ate 3 steak tacos. Incompetence pisses me off. I run a scenario in my head in which I pretend to be allergic to steak and cause a scene. I imagine myself collapsing on the tile floor of the restaurant. I choke and scratch violently at my throat. I roll around frantically, my eyes bulging and desperate, I'm coughing and wheezing. I'll scream the most awful screams. Then I realize steak and beef are both made from cow. I'm drunk and stupid. My girlfriend sits across from me, eyes glazed and drooping. She is grinning as she watches me gorge. I can almost see tangible love oozing out or her pores. It freaks me out a little, but I don't mind.We have tacos and more tequila. And there is still sex to be had. Thats comforting Love is comforting. People like comfort. Thats why they buy snuggies.