Sitges, Spain - 3/1/2015

At one time people looked out over the water
and thought it ended out there,
falling over an edge
into space.

Sometimes I wish it were that way,
and when we were 97
we could lay back in the water
and float out to the edge
looking up at the sky.

After months of floating...

We wouldn't even notice
dropping off the end.

But we'd watch the stars, which were also thought to be part of a flat plane,
get swallowed by the night
as we fell farther from them.
And we'd feel the water
on our face
not drenched but more than a mist
like when we stood under the falls near Lake Superior.

As we opened our eyes
We'd see the underbelly of the Earth
see it bubbling and toiling
with the weight of us homosapiens.

I thought of this as we walked the boardwalk that first night in Sitges
and I saw a light,
I assume from a ship,
blinking out there.

But I wondered if instead it was a family
set sail to plummet over the edge.

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad to drink the kool-aid,
to watch as they put the poison
to their lips.
Throats rise and fall
and you swallow and look around,
The warm feeling that you're surrounded by people that would give up so much for you
that would die
for you...

or at least with you.

Backbones

This post was written under the influence of a whole bottle of £8 Chardonnay, five pieces of Baklava, white cheddar cheese, toast with Irish butter, more toast, some humus I licked off my finger and what my brain told me was the rejection of companionship.

Every instance of excess comes with a warning...

I miss who I was, I miss who we all were in high school... Selfish and narcissistic, lacking in responsibility, which is especially relevant to relationships.

Oh fuck, she's ranting about love and sex again, thinking she's so philosophical and shit. Mmm, tell me how you really feel. Maybe we'll get into a fist fight, ponytails being pulled, bobby pins whizzing by like hay in a tornado.

Just as back then, it wouldn't make a god damn difference even today. My life would carry on and so would yours. But for a split second this scrap would be the only thing that mattered.

People don't give each other that feeling enough any more... once you're "grown."

We were angry and so awfully depressed and excitable and passionate about idiotic things.

When you get older and you watch the news and read philosophical books and visit other countries, you always have an excuse for why people act the way they do. "I guess she's having a bad day." "Who's to say what's better or worse?" "Sure." "I kinda want to text him, but I don't want him to think I'm clingy." You see both sides and generally try not to let one emotion boil out of control.

In Sweden, it's "Lagom." It's not good. It's not bad. It's so so. It's... lagom. But fuck lagom. I want to see something furious and confused and memorable. Make me nervous and uncomfortable. And happy, please... 

This is what I've learned: 

Coddle every emotion, not only the good ones. Every moment of heat behind your eyes, accept each tear whether there's a reason for it or not. Scream when your throat gets dry with anticipation of the sound. Dance and bump into people. Get roughed up. Fuck whoever and whenever you'd like. Take some drugs man. Drink and do so heavily. 

"Moderation in all things, including moderation," eh dear Petronius? I cannot stress enough how important "including moderation" is.
 

Because there are things you won't understand until you have excessed, until you been so promiscuous the gyno comes in an gives you antibiotics for trich, until you've taken that one pill that makes you lay in bed concentrating on how slow your heart is beating hoping it doesn't stop, until you've driven hundreds of miles after two Shakespeare's triple rum and cokes for no other reason than to sleep in a Motel 6, until you've been dropped off by a cab driver who speaks no English near the Hagia Sophia with a dozen lustful men helping you with your bags and maybe your pants, until you've scoured dirty New York streets for change under the shadows of Wall Street to get a subway pass home, until you've tasted blood from lips you've pierced but aren't sure what filthy bacteria swim in it.

That excess is beautiful. But here's the warning...

Once you've excessed, you won't be able to go back to the desk, back to the mainstream. That safety net starts to itch like that tag in your favorite undershirt. And you're picking at it all the god damn time, scratching at your side or the nape of your neck, trying to lay it down flat against your skin or pull it away. You finally decide to just cut it out, but you can't find scissors and the butter knife at the Italian restaurant is just too dull. So all that's left is to pull and you end up ripping a hole right at the seam in that favorite shirt you wear nearly every day... under all the other tops.

Just like that undershirt, as you get older you start adding layers... And the blemish in your personality goes unnoticed.
 

Life demands you fit in, sit up straight, stop vomiting on the platform, stop speaking audibly when you're alone. But you end up crazy even still... You make yourself normal but secretly do things that are fucking insane. You uncross your legs on the train just to touch knees with the middle-aged man sitting beside you. 

"There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep towards me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey;" 

There's this couple sitting across from each other on the Great Northern line on Friday night, their knees slightly touching. That's it for me. Just to touch knees and to look up and see someone smiling because they love you. Not in the "Let's get married" kind of way, but in the "I see you" kind of way... And all those fucked up things... I like those too because it's different and noble and the world is a bit more colorful with you in it.

If we as humans could get to that place where we might reach out to a stranger and they actually SEE us...

We wouldn't need a god damn mood chair.

While touring Level39, a large fintech accelerator in London's Canary Wharf, I run into the mycoocoon, a white leather lounge with a honeycomb like dome that drops over the sitter. And the dome changes colors. See you pick a card on the table beside the chair depending on how you want to feel, "emotions" (there is no "negativity" here) like balance, clarity, energy, cheerful and love. LOVE!? Really? Are you fucking kidding me?

They're telling me if I sit in this pod under a pink (yes, pink; how very cliche) glow in this tech accelerator where old investors swap millions of dollars with young entrepreneurs building things as revolutionary as a fucking mood chair, above a crowded, high-end shopping center where business people dash to their next meeting around those just moseying to get another pair of $500 shoes or consume some pre-made chicken sandwich from Pret, I'll feel love. Love! Like that thing people are consistently failing to grasp?

I can't even bear to sit in it. I'm not ready to experience love from a chair...

 

No, instead I'd rather experience love from this...

 

There's a peppery smell, or one I associate with pepper because the smell seems as though it's alive, bouncing around. It's the smell of someone that doesn't where the deodorant I've grown accustomed to in the U.S. or just less of it. There was only a moment when I thought I didn't like it.
 

It's a manly smell? No, that's a lie really. I like it because when he speaks philosophy comes rolling out, and then, "Well I could be talking bullshit." There's really very few that turn me on with their intellect so this seems something unique.
 

I tolerate it, but that's too strong a word. My body, brain, whatever this is that gives purpose to the things I do, has decided to embrace it, because that thing tricks you into realizing purpose when there really isn't one.

It's tricked me into observing intently the situation when we're together. The other day, he's on top, twig-like arms holding himself over me, his head drops into my neck and the only part of him I can see are his shoulder blades. And those shoulder blades are only bone, jagged, pointy, they nearly come together in the middle. They aren't these smooth lumps on the back of a guy who cares a whole lot about physical appearance, lifting heavy things to fit some societal idea of what attractive is.

In that moment, it felt more like a bird of prey, a vulture was hovering over me. And I think back about how I've written about vultures before, equating scavenging journalists to the bird. He's one of them. God damn, doesn't that fit nicely.

But these tricks... Then you're stuck writing a blog post trying to tie high school and knees and mood chairs in fintech accelerators and South Africans and birds of prey together coherently.

But you see he allows me to feel like myself, rambling on about decentralization and what other nonsense we don't remember until we're having the same god damn conversation.
 

He's extreme, like I want people to be. In this certain way... He's definitely living under the poverty line. I've always been told the life of a freelancer is hard. But because it's hard, he has priorities, and us laying around naked on the mats that double as a bed on his floor for days on end just doesn't get him by.
 

Taking things slow is really not my M.O. I don't have time for slow. My life is running out. I want my relationships to burn, to flare, exuding immense energy everywhere and to everyone we touch, until they have to look away.
 

And then we'll wake up and look at each other and blush because we have absolutely no idea why we're lying together still. And we'll shake hands and part ways.

But right now I'm still waking up on the floor with some really great music playing that makes you ask over and over "Who is this?" Staring out at a tallboy Red Stripe with a lime green glob of chewed gum on the top. My American flag zippo is beside that and a small jar with the remains of burnt tobacco and gum wrappers.
 

Writers tend to overuse nostalgic, but there's this sense I've woken up like this before, slightly hungover, nearly heaving when I smell the smoke on my hands, with someone I'm just not that familiar with.

It was in high school... So many mornings in high school.

And just as high school was full of excess, there were so many warnings I did not heed.

And I know he likes analyzing every fucking word, every sentence, every statement, asking himself if he agrees with what's being said, if it's true, whether it has meaning. But if you're reading this, I promise there is no meaning here today. Meaning only happens after the fact, when you've had time to look from an outside perspective and make connections out of coincidence.

Right now, I'm just ranting. 

This is my home town. This is where I'm from.

It's a bluesy sound, the music of the Late Rounders, the guys likely all from one of the small towns in the area although they'll all say they're from Cape, have voices like you'd hear on the radio. They cover the Ray Wylie Hubbard song Snake Farm although the way the lead singer whines you'd think he'd been there before.

"I asked Ramona how come she works there.
She says it's got its charms.
Nothing to do in the winter.
Now and then some kid gets bit at the snake farm."

And I'm sure he has... Just in a different city with a different name, maybe right across the bridge which stretches over the great Mississippi River leading drunk college kids and deteriorating rednecks like mosquitoes to the neon lights of the Pink Pony in shit-hole Southern Illinois.

The Pink Pony. You wouldn't think it's turn up noses similar to a name like Snake Farm, but across the 50 states I've been to plenty of Pink Pony's and they're far from toy stores relying on little girl's love of My Little Pony. No sir-e. They're places that rely on some little girls growing up without much of innocence to fall back on. They've all smelled of smoke and molding liquor. The majority of the clientele is male and also smell of molding liquor. And 100% of the performers are female and aren't afraid, or maybe there is fear and that's part of the rush, to show a lotta skin.
(I want to intrude here... I'm sure not all strippers come from broken homes and struggle. I think it could be a very empowering thing to do in some cases. In others, possibly the majority, not so much.)

It's 10 o'clock in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a burgeoning (Ben Affleck and David Fincher were recently in town filming Gone Girl) small college town in the Southeast of the state. It's one of the more liberal areas in Missouri although no one that lives there and most that witness the townspeople's idiotic, ineffectually smartass, Facebook posts would agree. But there's a tired youth connected to other, “better” places through the internet, so the town's population, even the young adults that basically vomit exactly what their parents think about politics and economics and society and racism, hears other sides to the story and that's the first step towards acceptance.

So it's 10 o'clock and the music is loud and the atmosphere is just what I like. I'm sure it's because I grew up here, but us Southeast Missourians know how to party. We're educated, we know what class is, we just choose not to partake.

A 20-something blonde is being spun around by a gray-haired man. She's laughing, and while his smile is unassuming, I'm sure he's still got one toe in the gutter. This isn't abnormal, for the young adults to hang out with the old hippies, to stroll around town together, to share a Budweiser and a bowl together, to sleep together.

And no one stares unless their smiling along with, feeling their toes start to tap until it bounces them right out of the chair and onto the dance floor in front of the pool table. That beer-splattered green cloth sleeps under the various knick-knacks that have been collected and attached to the walls and ceilings--a license plates, sports memorabilia, anything and everything. Isn't it cliché? A dirty dive bar full of junk, but I'd put a bet on everyone else copying us.

The couple keeps dancing, the gentleman pulling her away from the girls walking in like they own the place, in rhinestone-assed jeans and pointed-toe high heels. And while I'm proud of where I came from, I can't help but roll my eyes at these small town “big deals.” And since I've been removed I can actually smile at these patrons, but maybe it's a bit patronizing, but it's not the fake smile and gossipy pleasantries everyone else here uses.

Seven dollars for a vodka/cranberry in a pint glass, light on the cranberry. Four dollars for a pack of Marlboro Lights that you can smoke anywhere.

Warning, there's a tangent afoot: At the beginning of 2011, a vote was brought to the citizens of Cape Girardeau, what was called a “controversial” bill to ban smoking in bars and restaurants in the town. On April 5 Missouri voters struck down the bill by a 52% margin—a slimmer margin than I honestly would have expected, but at that time I was a serving bar flies extra strawberry butter and BBQ plates, watching over my tables from the end of the bar where I smoked like a chimney on the clock at a restaurant owned by one of the opposition leaders of the bill, grumbling about the strangling of our freedoms and the loss of revenue the downtown area would feel if those regulars had to walk outside. Shit they might have even realized it was a god damned beautiful night and go for a walk by the river, which is literally three feet away, behind the river wall, painted with notable people who “were born in the state or achieved fame while living there,” like Yogi Berra, Calamity Jane, George Washington Carver, T. S. Eliot, Joseph Pulitzer and Rush fucking Limbaugh.

But if you do venture outside for some fresh air, it'll be tainted with a puff of skunk-y smoke. And harder drugs, you shouldn't have a problem finding anything you need.

Just ask the people sitting at the bar already clearly fucked up. Like that middle-aged man that was a dish washer at that staple Bar-B-Que restaurant I worked at and played at for a couple years. He's laughing hysterically, spinning on his bar stool. “You look good,” he repeats and then laughs again, spinning away from me. He isn't saying it because he hasn't seen me in forever. No, instead the drugs are blocking his recollection and demanding over and over, “Find pussy.”

But you gotta ask early. Drugs get smoked, snorted and injected quick...

A friend of mine bought coke for my arrival. I'm not sure why, maybe for old time's sake. 

The night before this night at the bar, he microwaved the gram on probably an everyday, ordinary plate in his mother's kitchen because it was wet, tested it, decided it wasn't very good coke, so snorted it all by himself at 3 a.m. watching an Umphrey's McGee concert.  

“Why would you snort it all?”

“It wasn't good so it wouldn't even be worth it for you to do.”

I laugh; he gets upset and tells me not to judge. I'm not.

It's just ridiculous. It could easily be a scene in a movie adapted from a Hunter S. Thompson novel. And everyone would laugh at that man's unbridled “don't give a fuck.” 

I think it's harder for him to think it's comical, since he's far too smart to be struggling with drug addiction. Maybe I laugh because I am an asshole; I'm removed from the pestilence so what the hell do I care; it is like watching a movie.

Maybe I am judging...