The Power of Positive Not Giving a Shit

The upside of living with a sex addict is that when she comes home after getting together with ____ and is in a good-ish mood (for a while) all giddy and happy (for a while) with that glow of post you know what, but then starts to get all cranky and mean and nasty with the kids and the spouse and herself and everyone and everything and every idea and story and song and thought and concept in the universe because she hates herself and hates ____ and hates them and you and it and everything, at least there's no him for you to hate, to despise, no need to plan on ripping his fucking lungs out through his nostrils because there is no him, just a series of faceless nameless _____, a lifeless nothingness floating out in space like the background radiation from a star that exploded long, long ago, long before you were in the picture, before you even arrived at this peculiar part of the galaxy with your busted up ship and your practical wisdom and your big ideas about intergalactic harmony. So there's no one to hate. It's a wasted emotion in any case, but particularly when there's no love lost, none that's gone missing. No matter. Can't spend what you ain't got, so the song goes, can't lose what you never had.

Anyway there's word from Tralfamador that the spare part is on its way. Just have to hang in there a little longer is all.

the word

At night sometimes you lie there and consider how strange it is to feel the same way you did years ago when you were lost and bewildered and felt like you were never going to grow up. That was something other people seemed to do but it didn't seem to be your lot. Because you were so fragile and so full of hope, while everyone else seemed so cynical beyond their years, so sure that it was all a crock of shit, that faith and hope were for weaklings, mama's boys, losers. But you knew that if you lay there long enough the words would come to you, even if only from somewhere inside yourself, but clear enough that you knew they weren't your creation alone.

"It's OK, everything's going to be OK."

And you knew that it would be. And you know that it is.

It's nothing, just a small symbol of our love

Really, it's nothing.

Really.


Happy anniversary darling.

ever

Ever save your favorite part of dinner for last but then be too full to eat and/or enjoy it?

Ever have a great idea for a story but fail to write it down thinking there's NO WAY I'm gonna forget THIS one, but then later you forget?

Ever hold your tongue when someone was behaving like an asshole, but then decide to say something because you'd be angrier later if you didn't say anything, but then the person was not only unapologetic but gleefully belligerent about their part in it, and then you felt even worse because you had no further options except walking away or doing something stupid?

Ever yearn for someone with an ache so deep and awful that you felt like there was maybe something wrong with you, something medically wrong, psychologically wrong, something just seriously not right with you? And then you ignored every shrieking flashing red light proximity alert warning your body mind and soul were blasting you with to get the fuck away from this person as fast and as far as you possibly can? And then spent the rest of your life feeling like some doomed character in a Greek tragedy who sees with blinding hindsight, too late, that he'd stepped in the one unforgivable but inevitable shitpile of hubris, and now you were to pay and pay and pay until you died and the crows ate your useless eyeballs in the merciless morning heat?

Yeah me neither.

Overheard at the gym

“…but they can’t handle the fact that he’s a young black man who’s got his thing together.”

I smiled silently on the other side of the wall. Brother whitey giving it up for the Brother-in-Chief, in this very red part of a blue state (I saw a bumper sticker today that read GIVE ME BACK MY MONEY; YOU CAN KEEP THE “CHANGE”).

“That’s the part I can’t stand. They have no reason to hate him, but they do, just because he’s not what they’re used to. A black man with his thing together, they’re jealous and resentful, so they go after him in the media. It’s cowardly.”

I tied my laces and got up to leave, nodding, feeling a bit better about this place where I live with such frustration, with so many reservations.

“It’s like Jesus Christ, you know?” His lockermate snorted, but I knew what he meant. “Another young guy with his thing totally together who challenged the way things were, but they couldn’t handle it so they went after him.” Still his friend chuckled derisively.

“Hey, I’m not saying Tiger Woods is on the same level with Jesus Christ, that’s not what I’m saying.”

Oh. I thought he was talking about someone else. Someone, you know, with his thing together. Not that Tiger doesn’t have his thing together.

“I just think they should give the guy a break, that’s all.”

Yeah OK. Give him a break. A car accident, is that what it was? Or marital trouble, he’s seeing someone on the side, something like this? M-kay. He’s a golfer. Good player, seems like. One of the best. Now, some personal problems. Uh-huh.

Righto, well that’s about it for the world of sport. Next time I’ll tackle the world of supermarket checkout line hostility. I’ll tackle the subject, not the guy in line behind me. Which I almost did. Actually I almost brained him with a frozen turkey. But that’s another story.

At least locker room guy stood up against the unfairness of bigotry. I still feel a little bit better about living here. Not quite as much but a little. It’s something.

I think they should give that other guy a break too.

No one gets offended by the blues

A low-pressure wave of singed ricotta pushes ahead of the slice. The translucent paper plate pulls the scent down with it in gently swirling vortices that fan out around the tabletop as plate meets formica with a greasy muffled thwack.

Outside a cold erratic wind whips up and down the main drag of the barrier island shore town, summer long gone now, the deep autumn creaking under its own ponderous weight as it prepares to surrender to winter’s biting lockdown.

Phh-TOONK! Phh-TOONK! Phh-TOONK! The carpenters’ nail guns pierce the abandoned neighborhood’s howling silence, the second story deck rough-in almost complete, let’s wrap this shit up for the day and get the hell out of here.

Pizza guy doesn’t belong in his store. He’s too smart, too nice, too well-educated, too normal, to be doing hard time on The Rock. It’s the same with so many here. What unforeseen turn of the wheel tossed these shorefolk onto the sand how many years ago now? And how do you get off after becoming a kinfolked citizen of the Island of Misfit Toys? After riding in on a bent wave in a thick fog, broken board propped in the corner, prop-like, an S. S. Minnow for a landlubbing lungfish? After the realization sinks in that no one there fits in and never will? And what then, indeed, after finding no greater refuge with the Mainland Misfits, Inland Division?

“Is that satellite radio?”

“Yeah, XFM” he says. “I just keep it on blues all day long. No trouble, no complaints, no arguments. Not everyone like the Dead,” and suddenly there it is, the Garcia effect, like a sighting of Christ on a tortilla stone: longish unkempt hair and beard, good buncha extra pounds around the middle, a good-natured but resigned bemusement about the mouth, oversized solid color T-shirt. Jerry’s wearing dark blue today, check it, maybe they’re gonna do Dark Star...

“No one gets offended by the blues.”

Half a wry smile and he turns, half a swipe at the counter, rag dancing in a careless whirl, 100% organic cotton dervish in ecstatic pirouette as the bay window darkens with just a touch, blue turned to grey, kinda suitable anyway, the low rumble pitter-pattering eastward across the bay.

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down
You can't let go and you can't hold on
You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

Then the lightning will.

releef

The Target brand ultra strength antacid/calcium supplement dissolved down his esophagus, a fizzing cascade of assorted-fruit-flavored reprieve. The acidic burn was cooled, the cool spread out from the center of his chest like a sudden downdraft of high pressure punching a hole clear through a thick fog to bestow a clean pocket of sunshine on a lonely child's soggy front yard. The relief brought tears, a physiological reaction.

Lately it happened a lot, like ten times a day. The agita, motherfucker, that shit hurt. But why? Why all of a sudden so much acid, so much stress? The lack of sleep was nothing new. The crappy diet, likewise.

Hang on. Got to put a fire out. Floss, change the typewriter ribbon etc.
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