Monthly Archives: September 2009

The Real Deal

“Just promise me, you won’t be too hard on yourself”.

Nursing a post cocaine headache/massive hangover, Patron vapors oozing out of my pores, I stand in the mid-morning east coast autumn as the Atlantic runs adjacently behind me …the morning, I am, incidentally, to head West… forever.

…and this is what I’m given.

I stand facing Peter K. A very very recent ex-boss, around 35 years my senior… with whom I just had sex with… or something, the night before (after feeding me… not unwillingly, line after line of decent to lovely cocaine… this, after pouring ice-cold Patron from his refrigerator slowly down my throat). But that’s another story.

For right now…. my head fuzzy and a bit spin-ny, standing outside of his house… this is what he gives me.

“don’t be too hard on yourself.”

I don’t get what he’s saying… the concept never really permeates my skull, but for some reason, it hits hard. Somewhere. He hits me with such a conceptual brick of IV something that I can really only feel it’s stringency & truth (all blind-sided-like). But, for all of this, I don’t possess the proper skill to think on my feet fast enough to translate it into a language my brain can understand. Plus, I’m fuzzy, at half-capacity, maybe and half-drunk.

…oh, then there’s this whole cross-country drive into a western abyss that has to happen immediately following…

“I’ll try”

“Don’t try, just do.”

…and now, I’m completely distracted and stepped off of topic. “Don’t try, just do” is something my father would say/a slogan for new media companies and athletes. And very indicative of Peter K. ugh. But now, as I know I’m distracted, I don’t agree to “just do” as I can’t agree to something I don’t understand.

Peter K mentored me after the needle. Kind of.

I mean, I guess he was just there.

Mentor, who knows? He was my own version of Jerry Stahl… complete with broken relationships and young daughter. Smarter than his surroundings could indicate, he had stories… and so did I. And like Jerry Stahl, he understands the ugliness of it all. And though he’d gone through recovery a million years ago (unlike me… to this day), like me… still managed to balance the dabble. …as it were.

The real deal.

Unlike this stupid town (Los Angeles) where everyone has their “awesome as fuck, kick-ass drug stories” ….let’s all pull our dicks out and measure them to see which is the biggest-style. Everyone in this town is a bullshit, name-dropping ass-fuck impressed by their own stories and the sounds of their voices.

But I digress.

Literally, PK has really been the only real drug addict I’ve ever known. Like me. It sounds strange. I mean, drug addicts know drug addicts. It seems reasonable enough.

Not me.

I guess I’m defining “the real deal” as where it gets to a point that you become ashamed of the stories. I mean, you do drugs… you’re bound to have fun, funny, awesome stories. It’s just how it goes. But there comes a point, where there are certain stories you don’t tell. …lest it be a warning for the kids. And every “fun” story told is always tinged with a sort of sadness and pathetic-ness that only the teller can really feel. I worshiped Peter K in a strange way. …He was all I had, really.

So, I kind of paid attention to things that he said. And he said things like they were just for me… in this fantasy-world wherein only he, I and Jerry Stahl really understood the sheer pain of living… ha!

And so now…

“promise me, you won’t be too hard on yourself”.

Only now, does any part of this statement even try to permeate my skull cap. I guess, after almost five years, the space between my skull and the internal skin of my scalp gets to become a boring place to exist. What else could there be?

eh…

It’s awesome that it takes my brain five years to even begin processing information, though. …this information, anyway. I may sound very passive about the whole thing, as I “wait for my brain” to do things, blah. I admit, I could have actively tried to figure this thing out. But, it’s not really something to figure out. One fixates on something, one tends to miss the point. …in certain instances.

But here you go… my initial reaction to the request made me years ago as I stood on the sidewalk in the mid-morning east coast autumn as the Atlantic Ocean runs adjacently behind me…

As much as I worship Peter K… as much as it may have been the right thing for him to say to me, in that moment… but mostly…

…as much as it may be, for me, the right thing to do…

It’s not.

Not now.

This is a very lightly thought-out assessment, but, and I guess this all hinges on however one defines “hard on oneself”, but I have to be hard on myself.

I have to be hard on myself to get shit done. I don’t have the tools nor have I yet cultivated the tools to be any other way.

So, it’s easy to say. And it compliments the party to whom its being said in a weird “tell me you care about me”/atleast you believe that my life is worth being examined enough to know that I’d respond to this-way-way…

But as deep as it may run or as enamoured as I could be… this is how I’ve learned to function.

That’s all I’m sayin’

 

Breakfast.

Literally, one breaks the fast. A meal consumed that breaks or is a break of the fast induced by the human circadian rhythm (ie sleep).

It’s like… I’m waking… in a perpetual state of waking. This passive construct of the “-ing”. aluhghahh… passive constructs kill me. As a young writer, negatively reinforced away from the passive construct, I cringe while I read any word anywhere that ends in an “ing”. You know, in a twisted pseudo-Pavlovian mind-fuck.

Hey man, atleast I’m not drooling.

But the thing is, within the passivity of it all… this wake (ing)… this continuous motion, slow and half-conscious and foggy, maybe in all of my sophistication, I’ve rendered myself somewhat useless in detecting the small small slight non-horizontal non-lateral moment that may be currently taking place. Maybe some headway is being made. Ya dig?

Just because I’m still in that “changing states” state of wake (ing) doesn’t mean that the aforementioned concept and general home doesn’t have within it increasing levels.

It’s just that the proverbial breakfast to possibly follow is soooo bright and stringent and complicated that the wrestle out of wake (ing) appears so very simple in comparison. And when something seems simple… one forgets that there is a progression. Especially when the simple seems so difficult to one.

WAKE UUUUUPPPP!!!!

You just fuckin’ wake up. That’s it.

But, no maybe.

I continue to gain an increasing level of consciousness. Like, metaphorically or whatever. Still wake (ing)… yes, and that’s boring. But, maybe that’s just how it is.

The breakfast thing is sooo far away. It seems so far away. None of this is literal, mind you. It’s just that breakfast seems like a different animal… discontinuous… like a dream.

How can I be expected to take on this animal while I’m still not even fully awake?

But maybe we’ve learned something here… that it maybe slow. It is slow for your author here. Right now. I just… it’s like…

I’d like to be on with it already. But, if I can’t even deal with wake, every step of breakfast… all the choices and then dealing with the consequences of these choices.

…I’m like pre-school here. Swinging on the monkey bars in Alphabetland.

…but I was the cutest lil kid in Alphabetland.

 

Oh… soooooo…. dramatic….

Yes. Bananas!

Again, I must re-iterate… I do not condone the mixing of narcotics with benozodiazapines (ie downers and downers).

It’s easiest to die this way. If the past is any indication of the future… or if it isn’t… you can see that everyone dies this way. It’s a lull to sleep, of course. It’s the easiest avenue to accidentally overdose. It’s easiest to become physically addicted to any of these substances without knowing one is addicted… physically, that is.

But, do we really need a speech about this? nah…

I’m boring myself.

 

Roll out…

…the extra strength vikes (thanks, Dr V) and the benzos. your author here will spend her weekend in a severe narco-haze pickling her liver with all the alcohol that can be consumed.

you know, I thought that I’d ease into my future homelessness.

…or die.

Which ever comes first.

you know, because I’m fine with either… or else I will be when my aforementioned cocktail kicks in. :)

wait, no… this is my tribute to the upcoming season premiere of HOUSE.

 

“names have been changed to protect the innocent…” aka drop the fuckin’ filter

08 Sept 2009

Aforementioned title would be appropriate, if I were, in fact, innocent. But this doesn’t mean anything. I mean, I am innocent. Though innocence or guilt presupposes charges and I haven’t been charged with anything, so it really doesn’t apply. In any event, this whole thing… this blaahhh-g… this clackclackclack of the keyboard would be much more interesting if your author here…

dropped
the
fuckin’
filter.

Filtered already (through my own subjectivity) I pass it through yet again… sieve allowing only so much sand with every pass… the xerox copy less detailed, less accurate; more and more a version of the original. or something. Just like this. Metaphors and metaphors and bullshit and theory and…

What I’m saying is that we’re basically left with partially interesting theoretically feasible half-thoughts.

The reasons?

I would lie if I say that I am not practicing discretion when I bring “my friend T’s” and “Car Guy”‘s to the table. Despite discretion being discretion, I want people to read this. In fact, I’d love a following of any sort… underground… above ground… whatever. And the odd acquaintance… friend… collegue that stumbles upon and stays for a second, reads and then does a double-take… I love it! And I would own it. If they find it, then see it…

…as being me. Fuckin’ awesome!

But, why not just, drop the filter all together? (“drop the leash! we are young!”)

Sorry, I digress.

See, it’s become apparent to me that as a reader of autobiographical accounts, reading this blog, might be extremely annoying.

I want specific detail. I want to go to the specific bridge downtown where Anthony Kiedis and Flea and the gang “gave their life away”… never to own the Angeleno moniker, I still appreciate, on second go around, to know exactly where the cop stopped Jerry Stahl on Sunset by Western when the needle rolled out from under the baby seat (with the baby in the seat)… and of course, I was Chelsea, the crack shack, 23rd street, during my period of obsessive inhalation of information on Edie alongside my obsessive inhalation of whatever powder or smoke or… you can dig what I’m saying, right?

So, what to do?

 

Adorably Cute

It was a Friday. And I was feelin’ fine. Strangely fine. Not blissed-out mind you… just fine enough that I could honestly say, “it’s all good” and bring the hearty truth of the statement forth.

My friends have a band. This band has a show. This night. This particular Friday.

“You should come.”

I reckon I will.

Let off of work early, however, I am left to my own devices.

And it’s all time… time… time. I mean, 11:00pm guys? Really?! Any earlier…

But I handle it like a pro. …the time.

Finish reading a script (which was pretty kick ass). Clean a bit. All lovely, slow ‘things to do’. And I do them. And I’m feelin’ fine. Like a normal person that carries out actions… does stuff… within time.

It’s simply simple. And simply incredible.

So… I go to the show. Show’s great. See friends… exquisite. And I continue to exist in the mood of laconic, slow, low-key ‘fine-ness’. Mighty grand.

None of this has anything to do with “adorably cute”, of course. But now is the time to segue like all of the motion that stays in motion until I step abruptly on the brake and stop short… after I remember that I am actually driving.

So, good friend has girlfriend. Much younger than he. Slightly younger than me. I’ve known her in a passing version of theory for a while. I meet her aforementioned Friday. Introduce myself. Hand out, firm handshake and a smile. Good Friend apparently unable to bring me around any girlfriend he may have at any slice of time’s present. And she’s quite pleasant.

Later, I find out, she found me adorably cute.

And, I must say, in anyone’s defense, I am adorably cute… sometimes. And I don’t take offense or anything. It’s just as I’ve gotten older, adorably cute increasingly sounds a bit condescending.

Thank you. Drive Thru.