The Twenty-Eighth Post

Oh Comely – Neutral Milk Hotel

Oh comely, I will be with you when you lose your breath,
Chasing the only meaningful memory you thought you had left.
With some pretty, bright and bubbly terrible scene
That was doing her thing on your chest.

But oh comely,
It isn’t as pretty as you’d like to guess
In your memory, you’re drunk on your autonomy.
It doesn’t mean anything at all.

Oh comely,
All of your friends are all letting you blow,
Bristling and ugly, bursting with fruits falling out from the holes
Of some pretty, bright, and bubbly friend
You could need to say comforting things in your ear

But oh comely,
There isn’t such one friend that you could find here.
Standing next to me,
He’s only my enemy
I’ll crush him with everything I own.

Say what you want to say
Hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out
All your miracles aimed for me.

Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies,
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums,
The music and medicine you needed for comforting.
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving,
And pluck all your silly strings, bend all your notes for me.
Soft silly music is meaningful magical,
The movements were beautiful, all in your ovaries.
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers,
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines.
Smelling of semen all under the garden
Was all you were needing when you still believed in me.

Say what your want to say.
Hang for your hollow ways.
Moving your mouth to pull out
All your miracles aimed for me.

And I know they buried her body with others,
Her sister and mother and five-hundred families.
And will she remember me fifty years later?
I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine.

Know all your enemies.

We know who our enemies are.

Goldaline, my dear,
We will fold and freeze together
Far away from here.
There is sun and spring and green forever.

But now we move to feel for ourselves inside some stranger’s stomach.

Place your body here,
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine.

- Lyrics by Jeff Mangum

It’s an ugly and uncomfortable song, but it’s also beautiful and serpentine. If you have it, and listen to it with the volume up, you hear someone in the studio (an engineer? a producer?) yell, “Holy shit!” at the end. Intentional? Or recorded on the spot? This song, and the album, “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” were said to be inspired by the life and writings of Anne Frank.

The Twenty-Seventh Post

I’ll tell you about the woman I love, then.

We’ve known each other half our lives. I turned 34, two months ago. We met in high school. Actually, no, I saw her on a bus on the way to my high school orientation, she and her best friend, sharing a seat. Later, they turned out to be my classmates. I had a huge crush on her best friend for about a year. But Cheryl I formed a subversive, special bond that happened not in the classroom, but over the phone, at night. And after high school was over.

One night Cheryl made me jerk off on the phone for her. We were sharing sexual fantasies. I think I told her something about wanting to eat a cherry out of a woman’s pussy. She told me she thought it was romantic. I told her my cock was hard. She asked me to touch it. So I did. Made me tell her how I jerked off. So I did. Made me tell her how it felt. And how it felt when I started to cum. So I did. And then I went away to the Army. She went away to another country. Then so did I. And we wrote. And we lost touch for eleven or twelve years. And a year ago we found each other on Facebook.

Two or three weeks ago we were on the phone. My cock was in my hand. I was close.

“You remember how you told me it felt?” She asked. She sounds so very beautiful, so lovely her intonations are. “You said it started from the base, worked its way up your shaft, till it exploded out your tip.”

She’d remembered word for word.

“I love hearing you cum,” she said as I shook, and shook, and shook. “You’ll have to send me a video, or something.”

She and I are biracial. In the same rare combination of ancestry. I don’t know anyone else who’s like us. She doesn’t either, except for her sister. She’s gorgeous. Petite, delicate of bone structure, but strong, athletic, olive-skinned. She makes me ache when I look at her pictures. Looking just like she did, half our lives ago.

We have the same birth month, so we’re the same star sign. And while our birthdays are different, numerology says the 3rd and 21st (2+1) are the same.

We’ve lived similar life paths–her moving out of country to one continent, me to another. Loveless, failed long-term relationships. Emotionally disconnected partners. Experiencing them similarly. We dropped Catholicism for the same reasons. Had the same mother types. Were confused by the same racial epithets.

We have the same sexual desires. Share the same attitudes. Non-jealous, non-monogamy, hard and rough fucking; long, slow, deep fucking. I want to watch her fuck another man, she wants to watch me fuck another woman. I ask her if, say we were in a tangible relationship, would she want me to not fuck anybody else. And she says, no, you’re a sexual person, you mustn’t be caged, you should be allowed to fuck whoever you like, if your heart stays with me.

We make each other feel so, so good. So easily. A message. A text. A word. A song. I know when she’s down, I know why, and I know what makes her feel good. It’s the same thing that would make me feel good. I know how she’s felt, why she’s made her choices, and how, because I’ve done the same.

But, she’s married. And for some reason, though I’d kill a thousand men to be beside her, it stops me to make her leave her man, even if she’s unhappy, or disconnected, or dissatisfied. She has to want to do it herself. And, frankly, there are days I feel broken enough I’m not certain I’m a better alternative.

But I love her, deeply and truly. And she more than arouses me, I can feel my biology when I think of her. And, our rare sameness makes me want to reproduce with her. Propagate our species. The only person I know in the world with whom fucking wouldn’t be interracial. Our children would be the same as us. For some bizarre reason, that somehow seems significant to me. It never, ever has before. Or with anyone else.

*

So I’ll tell you more about the woman I’ve been fucking, Lana. I saw her again last night, late. Arriving at her home 10 minutes after she got in from a party. We stood in her kitchen, talking, two glasses of wine between us, till I asked her if we could sit on her couch.

She’s a really good-looking woman. She’s not pretty, or dainty, but she’s sexy, and attractive. Really gorgeous eyes, this long, dark, Sicilian hair. Big, round ass, which is quite different from the girls I’ve slept with, so it’s an interesting and nice departure. Her stomach is smooth, ridged in the middle with that scar. Her breasts aren’t large, but are full and soft. I like her dress sense, and last night she looked hot in a moto jacket, jeans and boots. Later, I got to see her teddy. She’s got good taste in underwear, too.

She’s quite uncomplicated, being that she’s been through what she’s been through. Quite my opposite. She laughs at this, saying the difference is obvious, and owes it to my being an introvert, and her, not. She asks my MBTI score. I give it to her, an introvert type. She gives me hers, an extrovert type. Tells me they both make a good pair. At first, I wince inside, when I think of the things Cheryl and I have in common, but I also chide myself for being reprehensible, out of the moment, and frankly I was starting to get sick of myself, my broken heart, and everything else. Lana was cool, and was being cool. And so I allowed myself to appreciate her.

She’s got a good heart. And does charity work. She’s a type A personality, which I in turn give her shit for, and she laughs. An overachiever. I laugh. She takes a laugh well. That’s something else we have in common. She has 200 people working under her. I don’t. She’s out of bed by 6 in the morning. I’m crawling into it. She’s got her shit together. Me, um…

She asks about my ex. I tell her. She tells me she gets it. She asks about my mother. I tell her. She gets it. I believe her, too. She asks me why the fuck my body’s so sore, and I tell her what I did at the gym prior to our meeting and she laughs and rolls her eyes. “But you’re fit!” she says. Yes, but, results and all that, I explain. She shakes her head. “That’s you being very _______”, she says, ________ being what my late father was, kind of nailing it, though I’d never thought of it that way. I realize she’s probably right.

We fuck easy, like a sharp knife moving slowly in a hot stomach, till she shudders and cums. “Cum all over my ass,” she gasps. I fuck her till I can’t move, then collapse beside her. “Did you cum?” she asks, putting a hand between her legs, feeling for my semen, finding none.

“No, I do this thing, it’s a retrograde ejaculation,” I lie. “It’s very _______,” I say, bringing it back. “We’re all born knowing that trick.”

“Really?”

“No. Hello.”

“I knew you were fucking lying, okay, I just acted like I didn’t.”

We talk. She puts her head in the crook of my arm. I start to tell her about the scene in “True Romance”, Dennis Hopper explaining to Christopher Walken why and how Sicilians came to be the way they are, but she’s snoring before I’m halfway there. I ease myself out from under her. Tuck her in. Leave quietly after groping for my clothes.

In the morning I get a text: “Sorry for falling asleep on you last night!”

“You missed a good story.”

“I heard it. Like listening to you.”

I smile. What a charming liar. Forgiven of course, for the sweetness of intent alone. But still she deserved a little shit.

“What was it about?”

“Um.”

“Busted.”

“I had an almost 24 hour day! I’m serious, I was so tired.”

“I know. But, busted.”

“What was it about?”

“Doesn’t work over text. Save it for when we meet next.”

“Date, time.”

“Relax. I’ll have my peeps call your peeps. We’ll work something out.

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“FINE!”

She’s great fun.

Tonight, I got a message: “Goodnight, Writer.”

“Goodnight, Sicilian.”

She’s growing on me. I could dig being her Friday night (or Monday night, as last night’s case may be) guy for a while.

The Twenty-Sixth Post

“I guess if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine,” says my mother on the VOIP line. I roll my eyes and breathe.

“Look, we spoke 5 hours ago. And I just spent 2 hours at the gym. I’m really, really tired.”

“I know, I know. Okay.” There’s an uncomfortable pause. “Call me tomorrow, then.”

We hang up. I won’t call, of course. Because she’ll have called three times by this time tomorrow, and if I don’t pick up, I’ll get the barrage of text messages, emails, forwarded spam, and the phone will ring till it’s an obscene hour and I finally pick up because it’ll just be easier to talk to her. Even if she’ll ask the same fucking questions, make the same comments, ask me for the same answers, and repeat the same information, the same statements: “I miss you, do you miss me? I haven’t seen you in a long time, will you turn on the webcam? Are you sure you aren’t exercising too much, you’ll hurt yourself?” the way a borderline parent would do it–with no regard or attention to my responses, nor the plain sight to see how absolutely infuriating and frustrating this continual spousification really is.

A self-injury counselor told me several months go, “It’s a miracle you aren’t a serial killer, because you should be. You should be someone who hurts people. A lot. A sociopath, maybe.”

But I was there because I just hurt myself. Or used to. I haven’t in months. But I’m not off the hook. I’m no different from the lifelong alcoholic trying to stay sober. I take it one day at a time.

At his advice, I started doing a little volunteer work. I had the choice of doing anything I wanted, so I decided to do something involving children. The first place I attempted to volunteer at was a children’s hospital. I was going to read stories to children in the cancer ward, but part of the application process involved a drug screen, so that went out the window. I joined an organization that assigned volunteer tutors to shelters, halfway homes and motels occupied by displaced or impoverished families.

When I met him that very first time, he was shy, this kid. Beautiful boy, skin so dark, his features so regal. Neither of us knew what to expect from the other so I asked him what his best subjects were: Math, and Science. What his worst were: English, and Writing. How come, I asked. He said he didn’t understand certain words, and had problems spelling, so he couldn’t be a good writer. I frowned inside. I was familiar with grammar school teacher writing standards and those never a good writer made.

“This is what you do. You get your hands on anything you can read, and every time you see a word you don’t know, you write it down, you look it up in your dictionary, and you make a sentence with it.”

In three weeks, the dude was looking up words his junior dictionary didn’t have. He’d grin at me with pride, and I’d raise an eyebrow, impressed. I would come to learn that Silas, 9, learned very, very fast. He had the pattern recognition. He felt things out. And yeah, he needed a little help with his reading because he’d miss certain words, but I told him to guide the lines with a fingertip and that stopped. Two weeks ago he showed me his report card. English and Writing were now his best subjects. Now he’s entering a three-page essay contest to win a laptop. He’s got a good shot.

A couple of days ago, in class, we went over the possible topics for the competition. One of them was, “What are you grateful for?”

“I want to do that one. I already did like a four paragraph thing for school.”

“You wanna expand it so it’s three pages?”

He nods. “I had four things I was grateful about.”

“What are they?”

“My mom, life, family,” he looks at me, “and you.”

“Um.”

I stared at him, with widened eyes. He smiled. I think my jaw might have dropped.

“Really, that is…that is just…that is just really, really sweet of you, Silas. Wow. Thank you,” I manage.

“Yeah so I’m going to write all of that.”

“Yes, and maybe we’ll think of a couple more things, right? Like you dad, maybe?”

“Oh yeah! I want to mention him now.”

“And maybe a black president? Because of all the new opportunities that could exist that didn’t before?”

“Definitely!”

“Alright!”

“Can I draw an idea cloud?”

“You can do it however you want. Do it your favorite way.”

So I watch him, still stunned, as he draws idea clouds. It makes my heart ache, or hurt, in a good way. And, I guess it makes me want to do the opposite of run.

Later, I text it to Lana, who gets no voice signal up in the hills.

“Underneath the facade of your comical perversions,” she texts, “you’re really very sweet.”

“Don’t fall for it. The sweetness is the facade.”

“Party in Hollywood tonight. Come if you’re bored. But you probably have to do writer stuff. Writer.”

“Exactly.”

“Fine. Are you thinking about kissing me?”

“Not really. Kissing happened five minutes ago. I’m up to burying my cock in your cunt.”

“Friday.”

This whole time, the thoughts in my head, my heart, far away and with someone else.

I’m going to vaporize some ganja and then go to bed. I climb in the morning.

The Twenty-Fifth Post

This body, once thin, stiff with pain from a freeway collision, a previous illness, a back injury in the military, is now lean, and strong. And getting stronger. My trainer and I work three days a week, and we indoor climb two days. And now I’m looking at a Pilates Studio for something twice a week. To work out the muscles I don’t hit at the gym with the weights and the resistance. I go now for no other reason that I’m addicted. I’m supposed to go to a screening tonight. But if I do, I’ll miss training. So I cancel the screening.

Michael, my trainer, shows me a large muscle group. Tells me they’re full of endorphins waiting to happen. I laugh. He laughs. He’s my drug dealer now. We both know why we do it. I pull and push. Raise and lower. Breathe. Grunt. Growl. Roar. A trainer at an adjacent station with his client looks over and nods in respect. The weights so heavy sometimes, I think my fingers will break off. But this car needs to be lifted, because someone’s trapped underneath. This wall needs to be pushed, because it’s closing in on us. Each repetition is the first one. 7, for the first time. 8, for the first time. 9, for the first time. When you’re only lifting that weight for the first time, you have loads to spare. It’s a mental game till your body calls your bluff. Then, Michael takes the weights off quickly, silently, and I collapse, and then laugh as I feel the muscles go into shock. He laughs, too. Drug dealer. Junkie.

Have I mentioned that love is hard, sex is easy? I admire you, with your healthy, functional relationships.

My phone buzzes. A text message from Lana. “In SF for work. What are you doing?”

“Tutoring at the shelter. The future of a Negro child rests in my hands.”

“Too much. Thinking about kissing you.”

Relax. She’s just trying to say she wants to fuck you again.

“When do you come back to town?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“What are your plans Friday night?”

“Don’t know.”

“Whatever they are, they can end like last time.”

“Who’s they?”

“Your plans. Keep up.”

“Ha. I like you.”

Panic. Alarm. Eject.

“You know I can read everything you say right?”

“Haha. Funny shit, Writer. See you Friday night.”

I figure I have a climb scheduled Saturday morning, so I can get out of staying again. And a once-per-week past-midnight fuck that ends in me crawling out of her place shouldn’t go anywhere dangerous. I figure.

And then there is that drive. Right past rock n’ roll palaces, sharp drops and dangerous curves.

The Twenty-Fourth Post

I’ll call her Lana. And her juices were drying on my sticky fingers like fruit sap, as I drove down the canyon from her home at 4.30am last night/yesterday morning. I was also heartbroken–I’d fallen in love with someone, and it hadn’t worked out very well, and I was recovering, or attempting to recover, and so I drove to fuck Lana in an attempt to fuck this other woman out of my system.

It was easy. Love was hard. Love is impossible for me. Sex, though, very simple. In this case, Lana showed up on Facebook a grand total of about 10 days ago. I’d met her about 8 years ago, at a friend’s housewarming party. She’d a boyfriend, then, whom I learned post-coitus she’d been married to for a month, until she caught him fucking a couple of post-ops in a swingers’ party on the DL. But, coming back to 10 days ago, Lana shows up on FB and I add her as a friend. She posts a message on my wall with “cutie pie” somewhere at the end, which I assumed was friendliness and little more. I’d met Lana years later at another party, and she was engaged to an IT guy with a fat paycheck, while opening a boutique in Downtown.

I wrote her back. Told her I liked her picture. She wrote me back, reciprocated the compliment. I can’t remember what the banter amounted to, but there seemed a fair amount of flirtation, before she took off to NY for Thanksgiving and some dancing with the girlfriends. I asked her number and gave her mine, teasing, inviting her to drunk dial me when she came back late.

Over the course of last week, she’d send me a text message here. I’d send her a text message there. She invites me out for a coffee. I decline, saying I prefer a later arrangement. She invites me out for a drink. I accept but suggest we have drinks at her place instead. She tells me I’m too much. I tell her I am, but she expected that when she decided to talk to a slutty-looking boy on the Internet. She laughed, but agreed. And acquiesced to drinks at her place, late. Something about the way she articulated herself, her phrasing of things, made me ask her in a text message: “So…Type A Alpha Female, right? Yeah, you are.”

Seconds later, her response: “Um, yeah…Bad?”

Mine: “Not at all. It’s just I could smell it a mile away.”

Hers: “You are too much. I’m at work, silly.”

“Wouldn’t want you to feel guilty of a crime.”

And then she sent me something completely refreshing: “I live my life completely guilt-free.”

And so I sent: “You know there was once a group of people who lived their entire lives completely guilt-free, and do you know what they were called? Nazis, Lana. Nazis.”

Seconds later, the phone rings. It’s her. I pick up, she’s screaming with laughter.

“There are no words I can think of to respond to that text, so I just wanted to call and tell you you fucking cracked me up. Bye.” Still laughing, she hangs up.

I smiled. Love was hard. Love is impossible. Sex, though…

At 10pm last night, I sent her a message: “Hey. What are you doing?”

“Birthday Party. Friend’s.”

“It’s time we sunk our teeth into each other. Let’s meet tonight, late, when you’re done with our social obligations.”

A beat later: “Ok.”

At 12.45am, she called to give me directions. At 1.30am, I pulled to a spot slightly up the hill from her house. I walked into her driveway. Heard the radiator in her roadster ticking and put my hand on the rear compartment where this particular car’s engine was located. Warm. Very warm. Didn’t need to feel the brakes to know they were hot and that she’d raced up the hill. I hit the doorbell and stood far enough from the keyhole so she could see. I looked slightly away in feigned obliviousness but she opens the door without looking.

“Hey,” she said, standing there. She looked a little spent from an evening of alcohol and screaming, but she was sexy, like I remembered her.

“Hey,” I replied, and smiled. I noticed the flash light in her hand. “Is that for self-defense?”

“No! I lost the case for my cell phone, and I just got it. It’s so frustrating. I think it’s underneath my car, I got out in a rush and must have dropped it. Do you mind if I try and look?” she asked.

We both go to her car. She peers underneath with the light, then goes over to the passenger side, pulling the seat down and looking in the tiny back. I open the driver’s side door, reach my hand in the darkness under the driver’s seat, and my hand falls immediately on the leather case.

“This it?” I dangle it up in the air with two fingers.

“Yes!”

I toss it to her. “Aren’t I the good luck charm?”

Five minutes later, we were making out in the kitchen of her 50’s designer pad. She was a little drunk, rubbing herself all over me, using her body against mine, pulling me into her.

“I like your lips,” she said. She put her hand in my shirt, rubbing it across my chest and onto my shoulder. “Feels nice.”

I grab her by the hair with one hand, and tilt her head slightly back. She yields, her mouth opening. I kiss her as I close a hand around her throat. I make the kiss last. I let go.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay, what?”

She looked at me. “Well, do you want to stay here in the kitchen…?” She let the question hang.

I grinned. “Ah. I see. Well, Lana, would you like to give me the tour?”

“Yes,” she said, taking my hand and pulling me behind her. “That’s what ‘okay’ meant. See.”

I laughed, as I followed her up the stairs to her bedroom.

I was burying my face in her covered cunt now, she was cooing and moaning, and then I unsnapped the buttons on the crotch of the lace teddy she wore under her skirt and blouse, and my tongue sank in the butter of her wet cunt, and disappeared immediately in her slick void. She tasted great, like citrus, and smelled faintly of sweat, and musk, and piss. I took her lips in my lips. I took her clit between my teeth. I made her cum that way, then I fucked her with two fingers till her body shook.

Later, I had her legs spread, knees pushed towards her ears, with my erect cock sliding in and out of her pussy, and put a hand behind her neck and pulled her head forward.

“Look. You look at that. You see my cock?”

“Oh fuck. Yeah. Yeah I see it. Fuck yeah I see it.”

Afterwards, we laid under her plush sheets. Her leg rubbing against mine, her head in the nook of my shoulder.

“What happened to that IT guy I met that you were engaged to?”

“We broke up a couple years ago.”

“Sorry.”

“No. Don’t be. I had an eighteen inch, thirty pound, cancerous tumor removed from my stomach, which the doctor said would take me a year to recover from. And it left a scar going down my middle, and one day he looked at me and told me I was the biggest loser he’d ever known. I told him it’d be the last shitty thing he ever said to me and left. He’s texted me since then but I don’t give a shit. They’re all fuckers.”

I clenched my jaw. It had too many echoes for me. Echoes of my own illness, years ago, when my body was wracked in pain, when I couldn’t move, when my joints hurt; how it destroyed the relationship I’d had then, and turned my partner against me. I ran my hand down her stomach–I’d missed the scar earlier in the darkness, and had somehow managed to kiss every part of her stomach but the middle. But I felt it now, like a vertical line splitting her evenly down the middle. It felt like the scar from my appendectomy, raised faintly from the skin, and smooth.

“They cut me open like a piece of meat,” she said. “I’ll always have this scar.”

I wanted to tell her I thought scars made people more beautiful. And that hers was absolutely lovely. But I didn’t. These are the words that form the building blocks for someone to fall in love. Instead I said, “Good for you, leaving that trash. He sounds like a real asshole.”

“Can you stay?” she asked, after a while. She was getting sleepy.

“I can’t, I have to wake up early for a climb,” I said, lying–I’d already had my climb the previous morning. It was almost 4.30am and I wanted to sleep in my bed. I kissed her, then her forehead. “You sleep well. I’ll lock the door behind me.” Her eyes were closing.

“I like you. Stay next time okay?”

“Okay.”

I padded down her stairs. Checked myself in her bathroom. Remembered the broken condom wrappers and used rubbers strewn on her floor around her bed and wished I’d remembered to toss them for her so she wouldn’t have to the next morning, but didn’t think it was worth going back up and disturbing her for.

The driver in the Porsche 911 Cabriolet racing up Laurel Canyon well past the witching hour gives me a look of surprise as he sees me blow past him, going downhill in an Infiniti twice the size and weight of his Teutonic open top, and disappear around the turn. I take off the traction control on the wet, winding, two-laner, so it’s just me, the wheel, the slick road, and chance, as I let self-preservation be the sole-guiding instrument that pilots this all-wheel drive, physics-defying piece of Japanese engineering. I break traction doing a sharp left bender but only for a second; the car’s as smart as I’m reckless, and spreads the power evenly between the wheels, so the only thing that happens is I’m doing 60 before I pull out of the turn. I feel everything through the wheel. This car would tell me if I drove over a piece of lint, and under which tire.

Blowing through the green lights, heading back to my side of town, my eyes dart at every intersection, my instincts on high alert, reflexes waiting to hit the brake pedal, flick the wheel, in the presence of an unseen, hypothetical drunk driver coming in from the side who might decide to run a light at this time of the night. I’m not afraid to die from something awful. I’m afraid I’ll barely survive it.

The Twenty-Third Post

An earthquake that ripples underneath a car moving in excess of 70 mph on the freeway feels like a tire explosion. It is a sick, disturbing quickening that happens in your stomach, especially if you’ve lifted off by instinct and realize too late you fucked up, and now the tail end is going to whip around you and face the wrong way. That never happened. Instead, the front end of the Toyota experienced something akin to the vehicular version of having the back of your knee shoved, but there was no familiar “whop whop” sound of a blown tire. I started looking around in alarm, expecting to see a front wheel spin off my axle and started to curse the Peruvian who changed my oil. “He must have loosened the bolts on my wheel because I didn’t want the Silver Special! Cocksucker!” Seconds later, the car rippled again, and I see the Tahoe in front of me swerve a little. Seconds later, Navarro on the FM was all, “Whoa! Did you FEEL THAT!!”

Ah. So that’s how an earthquake feels like when you drive over it. A long-pondered question, now answered.

*

Couple of weeks ago, The Maestro and I handed in our fifth draft of the script to our manager, A. Birnbaum, and The Englishman in the European arm of the production office. The weeks prior to that consisted of 72 hour days, amphetamines, caffeine, copious amounts of herb, creative differences and an inhuman amount of determination and willpower. After we typed the words FADE OUT, I did the same thing myself.

Birnbaum kept in touch through the reading.

“Up to page 40. Hilarious stuff. Only a few line notes. Will keep reading. Good job.” Sent from her Blackberry.

“Up to page 60. Laughing out loud. A few notes. Think I have the flu.” Again from the Blackberry.

“Page 75 now. I love it! Have the fucking flu here in Budapest. Met Barack O’Bama in the hotel in Germany and shook his hand. He’s the next Kennedy.”

Strangely I don’t care. It’s good, it’s bad. Whatever. I’m too mentally or creatively tired to give a fuck. It’s like a sort of nirvana, and I haven’t beat myself up about it.

The Maestro called. “The Englishman loved it. Had some awesome notes which, if you take a step back, are actually really smart.”

“Awesome. Yeah.”

Don’t fall for the Hollywood jerk off until you cash the check; ‘cos that’s what it is until then – one big jerk off.

I don’t know who said it to me. Or if I read it in some book and it became a voice in my head. I don’t like the advice – it’s cynical. But it somehow always finds a way to manifest itself.

*

I’ve been punishing myself at the gym, three times a week, with a Norse god named Michael, through whom I’m learning a plentitude of physical tortures which end with me laughing as I’m stretched out or bent over in pain. It’s a drug. Our second session we did sets of this demonic crunch he learned from some fucking sports institute in Colorado and, in agony, I low chuckled. “Are you a masochist?” he asked. I looked at him.

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Are you into S&M? I am.”

“I’ve been into it for a while.”

“Cool.”

We continued. He talked a little about his girlfriend. How they did a little porn. Now he’s going to be a physical therapist.

Tonight after the seated row he started the S&M talk again. He’s into it “kinda light”. And thought it was a really good couples thing. I said I thought so, too.

And then he said, “I guess it’s ‘cos I’m pretty Alpha most of the time, so I kind of need to be put in my place.”

And then I started my second set of rows, after he clinked the weights up a notched. But I started to wonder and think.

Like, of fucking his girlfriend while he watched from the foot of the bed. All 6′1 of his 200lbs muscled frame, quivering while he jerked off. Or tried not to. That would sort of “put him in his place.” I mean, he never specified what that place was. What if we cuffed him to a chair and I fucked her standing on the arms of the chair so her cunt was an inch or two from his face? What if I fucked her throat like a jack hammer while he groaned into a gag, because all he’s ever gotten from her was nice blow jobs?

What if, okay? – just what if – I, turn Michael’s girlfriend around so her spread ass and cunt face him while my cum runs a streak down her ass and pussy lips, and put my still-throbbing cock in her mouth so she can suck me till I’m hard again while I reach forward and, using my semen as lube, slip a finger inside her anus and start to finger fuck her, “because I’m going to fuck her ass next, Michael, so just try and relax and enjoy this as much as we will, okay”?

“Awesome,” he said. “Let’s go do some butterflies.” We walked to the station across the floor. I shook it off, wanting to keep my mind on something less deliberately sexual and focus on something that wouldn’t give me a hard on at the gym but keep me in the mindset. I began to imagine Michael’s body as a specimen in an exhibit. Plastinated, drawn, quartered, sliced thinly like meat at the deli – red, translucent, white. A perfect model of a hypermasculine physique, standing next to the one of the horse. And next to Michael, the exhibit, should be a female one. Adam and Eve. What would she look like? She would have to have a ponygirl, though; I don’t care how gauche it would look…

My mind is a terrible thing. Especially when it comes to subs and bottoms.

He stuck me on an elliptical set to an incline to get my heart rate going, and ran to the other side to get some medicine balls. I looked in the mirror at the faces of the people working out around me, the lot of us like mindless slaves bred to power some machine. I saw the porn star Michael pointed out to me last week, who was working out with a girlfriend. I saw the gym rat blonde. And a dark-haired girl I’d never seen till tonight. She was asking her boyfriend how he was feeling as he labored on his machine. He gave her the thumbs up. I watched her as she watched him, and saw from her face that she loved him, but that he also sometimes made her feel tired. I watched another trainer have his client do kicks in the hard court room. I’ll have to down another protein shake when I get home.

*

It’s hot. But the heat’s ripened the fruit from the farmer’s market. I pick up a black plum. My phone beeps. A voicemail. It’s been happening like this the last few weeks; someone calls, the phone doesn’t ring, and I don’t find out till I get the voicemail – sometimes seconds after they’ve left it, sometimes five days after. I pick it up and play the message. It’s the Maestro. I bite into the plum as I listen to his message, and the juice explodes and runs down the inside of my wrist. I like the feeling, so I hold my hand still and let the stickiness run down my arm to my elbow.

“What’s up, face? Call me back when you get this, ‘cos I’m on the phone with Birnbaum about the script and I can patch you in on the conference. She loves it. Call me. Okay.”

Walking past the sink, tossing the stone into the garbage, I hit the keys on my phone for DELETE, END and OFF. I toss it, wipe my arm off, lose the t-shirt and undies and climb into bed. I don’t need the conference call; I hate them, and he can fill me in on the details later. I want to sleep. For a week. And wake up in a slightly better world.

The Twenty-Second Post

We’re heading West on 3rd in The Maestro’s 5, with Tchaikovsky on the stereo, volume turned up to “Jesus”. He hands me the hash joint. Waves his free hand in the air like a conductor, driving with the other.

“Is this The Nutcracker Suite?” I yell over the symphony.

“No, it’s Swan Lake!” he yells back.

“I always get the two confused when I hear them!”

“Same composer, that’s why!”

“Other things I confuse with the other: Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis–”

“All the time, you’re not the only one!”

“Ann Frank and Helen Keller–”

“They both had diaries!”

A Korean chick in an Acura pulls up beside us. It’s the middle of the night, and her headlights are off. We try to get her attention by waving. Your lights are off, we try to mouth, gesturing to the front of her car, operating the imaginary light stalk by twisting our fingers in the air.

All she sees are two strange guys in the next car, trying to harass her. She pointedly ignores us, casting her eyes down.

“Dude, all this air twisting… I think she thinks we wanna play with her tits,” I tell him.

We laugh and give up.

We pull up outside my building. He turns down the volume.

“We got a lot of work done today. The end is near,” he says.

“We just have to be surgeons right now. Something has to go, it’s gone. Something needs to be fixed, it gets fixed.”

“Exactly.”

I get in. Toss my jacket. Sink in the sofa. Check my cell phone for the time–just shy of midnight. But where I’m calling next, it’s the middle of the afternoon tomorrow. I grab my PSP from the coffee table and put on the headset. Moments later, I’m on Skype with a producer in Asia.

He’s an interesting man; European, spent well over two decades in the financial sector and now he has a story. An old girlfriend I keep in touch with introduced us. Through his connections, he’s managed to find the backing of a local production studio, but he has no script, having had a creative parting of ways with the original writer, a prominent figure in the local scene. He mentioned a name, and I’d no idea, and honestly didn’t give a fuck. A few days later I mentioned it to a friend who looked it up, and told me the guy seemed like a big deal. I Googled him and realized I’d read a couple of things he’d written, a long time ago. Life’s funny like that.

I’ve had experience dealing with producers of this sort–individuals with ideas in their head they want to realize, but haven’t the talent or skill to do it themselves. I say this without contempt, for honestly this has to be an awful position to be in with as far as I can see, never as much creative satisfaction as they could ever hope to have. The best thing a writer can do in any of these situations if they agree to take the gig, is help the producer realize that yes, indeed, they have a wonderful story on their hands, and help them tell it. It also helps tremendously if you believe it on at least some level.

And so we talk, as I pace, walking first in a clockwise direction around my apartment, and then when we shift gears and go from structure to the elements of drama, counter-clockwise. He’s happy and relieved I get it. He says he wants the movie to say ten things, and I say, no, you say one thing, you say it very well, and that’s more than what most films dream of doing on a really good day. He’s glad to hear this. Glad someone knows what the fuck is going on.

But it’s an illusion–I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Nobody does. We are all of us winging it. I can’t tell you why I know what I know. Sometimes, I can’t even say why I think something works. It’s a sort of aesthetic, a form of pattern recognition, kind of the same thing that makes you say, “Right there,” when someone’s placing an object and asking you where it would look good. You just know.

It’s 2 am by the time we click off. I halve the brightness of the lights with the dimmer switch. I should sleep but I’m too wound up. I set my service on the coffee table, a wood tray with wicker handles on which I keep the peripherals and the bud, and peel off a sticky clump of something sweet and toxic, and shred it in my grinder. I pack the glass bowl. Light it. The dense, sweet smoke fills my chest. Hangs in the air, swirling, heavy. I stare at the ceiling through the haze. All the spare time I have to myself these days is spent staring at the ceiling, catching up on sleep, feeding myself properly when I remember to, and trying to exhaust myself at the downtown all-night fitness. And I’d go tonight, but all I want to do at this moment is sink, sink, sink into my sofa and disappear. Or in my bed. I want to switch off the brain like I turn out the lights.

I can’t.

The Twenty-First Post

Sleepless again. It’s been like this the last 2 weeks. This is the week we finish the script, but The Maestro and I didn’t write all of last, as if we wanted to delay the end. Inertia. Coupled with the fact that as soon as we sign off, it’s pretty much out of our hands, and subject to market forces, the realities of which have very little to do with logic, and reason. Six months. No, seven months. We’ve spent the better part of a year on this. And it’s such a house of cards. I realized I was tearing my hair last week. Afraid of the consequences, I grabbed a buzzer, ran to the bathroom and buzzed most of it off, leaving around an inch of carpet. I stared at the dark curls in my sink and on the tiles. There were sprays of salt everywhere—I’m prematurely graying at 33—a souvenir from something I had to beat some time ago.

We are the true whores; those of us who, with alacrity, subject the children of our imagination to the eaters of souls who, with sharpened fangs, decide in 15 minutes if they’ll simply trash all 120 of your finely-formatted, twelve-point sized, Courier New filled pages, or write you a check that will blow your mind to Jesus and have you believing you’ve struck the big time until you see the check they write the actor who’ll be forgetting your lines. And those of us who hate it but do it anyway… well, we’re probably worse.

But it turns out trips to the Lexus, Jaguar and Mercedes Benz websites help a lot with that sort of pain. Even if it’s just window-shopping. Even if I’ll probably just end up getting a Toyota, or a Nissan, or something less than 30 thou when I finally retire my coupe with over 100k on the clock. Shopping’s obviously an effective anti-depressant for men as well; we just buy different shit. As for the rest of it, trying to figure or find out what counts for a few savvy investments in this economic climate is probably good for me.

I want to go on and say more, but it’s 5.20 am, and I think I might finally be able to sleep now.

The Twentieth Post

Everywhere, the picture looks like I’m watching life through a broken television. A tube worn out, colors faded, the sound in mono. It feels like real-time nostalgia. When the present moment feels so very far away.

Sometimes it’s a carousel of feelings and memories, jumbled together with no context. It’s a Christmas morning that never happened but should have; it’s my first time alone in a new country, and every new street corner I explore feels like the world unfolding; the halo halo I had in a Filipino restaurant; my dog when I was a teenager.

I also caught pneumonia. That wasn’t easy. I’m better now but a little tired from time to time. I’m still on antibiotics and a blend of vitamins and supplements, and will be for a while. I haven’t shaved in a couple of weeks. Alan, friend from college who visited and stayed with me a little bit, who just left about half an hour ago, got me a trimmer today it is so bad. It’s charging in my bathroom wall; I’ve a wine-tasting party to attend tomorrow.

The Maestro and I are close to finishing the script. A project we’d planned to complete in six weeks has stretched out almost six months, but the incomplete working draft has already gotten such a positive response from our manager and the producer, they want us to finish it as is so they can take it out and get it made. We’ve actually had to strenuously argue that it isn’t ready or as good as we’d like, to buy ourselves a little more time for a rewrite/edit/polish. Rarely does this happen. We’ve been informed that if it goes well, the next thing we do together, we might get to direct. That would be brilliant.

So I guess I shouldn’t be melancholic but I am. It feels like a long, thorned tail of the holiday depression that kept me from wanting to write (when I opened my blog to post this, I came upon a draft of a New Year’s post I started but never finished). I’ve been avoiding contact with all but the closest people. It’s a thing I do during times like these when the skies seem streaked with agony—retreat.

I can barely keep my eyes open.

The Nineteenth Post

“Oh these moments in time, my friends. They make us remember how we’ll always feel. Hours, minutes, seconds captured, embellished, sung about. We can make you think or feel anything we want.”

- Long lost Morrissey quote that never existed.

The state of my industry is as dismal as the weather at the moment. Everywhere I turn, I see cutbacks. Expense accounts shriveling. Development money dried up. The ubiquitous Amex business card slowly disappearing in favor of split checks, personal debit cards and cash.

I too, have done my part. I haven’t asked an assistant to deliver me marijuana and t-shirts in a while. And when asked if I needed my business cards messengered, I said, no, please go ahead and overnight them, instead—we need to cut corners where we can.

Because I’m amiable. It’s all about People Helping People™ here in Gentleman Whore World®. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no purveyor of Good Karma—I’m just its Agent.

So perhaps that’s why I’ve been recently bestowed upon, a great gift. A gift so rare, it’s most often been listed as an unusual side effect some women experience when taking an anti-depressant.

The gift of the spontaneous orgasm.

The first time it happened, I had just gotten out of bed. I walked to the bathroom and ended up leaning heavily against the wall, with my knees almost buckling. I was involuntarily spasming, my cock was pulsating wildly, and it was intense. There was no ejaculation. I was actually worried, afraid I had some kind of condition. I looked at WebMD, Google and Wikipedia. But I didn’t look too hard—I mean, this was a gift horse, right?

It happened again last week. I was on my couch, working on the laptop with my legs crossed. I was a little tense—I’ve been trying to push an international project forward and the logistical support I requested wasn’t happening fast. So I sent email, put the laptop beside me and stretched out my legs. I ended up grabbing the sofa cushions instead, hips buckling upwards as I felt simultaneously penetrated, and penetrating. I came hard. Then sat in bewilderment, wondering what the fuck just happened.

Two days ago, I bent down to pull the clothes out of my washer stack, and transferred them up to the dryer. I shut the door, turned the dial, and then it happened. I slammed my hands against the stack, almost falling on my knees, gasping. I looked up spontaneous orgasms. And found indications that suggested some women who take Prozac and Zoloft can have it just by yawning, but this was rare. A young woman wrote an agony aunt complaining of the distress it caused her to suddenly come when she was at the supermarket, or the office. And yet there were others who described it as myth, as something some people claimed to have experienced, but with no real evidence to indicate it actually did. But then again, didn’t they say the same thing about the G-spot orgasm, and female ejaculation?

One day it’s going to happen when I’m at a lunch meeting. Or an informal greet. When everyone’s sitting around a table, or in The Maestro’s place. I’m going to kick out and spasm and start groaning and writhing. And every one is going to want to know what the fuck is wrong with me. And I’m going to have to recover fast and say, “The fucking double metaphor of whatever the fuck we happened to be bloody talking about just formed a cross current in my head that made my cosmic twin have an orgasm and he was psychically relaying the experience to me.”

Then every one is going to crack up and go, “Ha ha ha, man, you’re fucking CRAZY! I fucking love it!” And, “Dude, that’s some Gary Busey shit!”

Spontaneous orgasms. Potential public humiliation. Hail Mary saves. I just don’t know what to do with myself.