eep! a dying blog
eep! a dying blog
it was a busy night. busier than it's been in a while, and we were unprepared. a busy night for me is not the amount of drinks or food served. it is not standing on my feet for ten or eleven hours. it is not the waves of customers, some who are friends or associates or clients or lovers or enemies. it is the aggregate, the sum total of these things that exhaust and also satisfy me.
i had a lover for a moment. one i liked. there have been plenty who tugged at my emotions more, plenty who meant more to me. but i liked her. we are both busy people, and she, like many have a lot going on. some of which precluded her from calling me back a month or so ago. which is okay. i won't act like i wasn't hurt by it but i also don't want to make anyone do anything, and i am only your lover if you want me to be. she came into the bar tonight, after a manic, tiresome dinner rush. and it was good. it was sad and tender, too. but good. she misses me, though i don't really know what to do with that.
i've been trying to spend less money, i walked home tonight. i also did it so i would have time to pore over my powerful and somehow lonely night. there are train tracks i must cross to get home, and sometimes a train. tonight a train was stopped on the tracks as i approached. occasionally i like to climb over the massive steel joints connecting the cars on my way home. i like to fantasize that the train will start moving and pick up such speed that i won't be able to get off and i'll be forced to ride it until it stops.
it began moving right as i got to the tracks. there are ladders on either end of each train car. as it tumbled past me i grabbed hold of a rail and climbed up. i had about four blocks to go until the train crossed my street. i decided to climb over the connecting piece as it moved and over the the other side. i looked down as i did and thought about dying on the train tracks. i made it to the other side and hooked my arm through a rung on one of the ladders and sang sad songs to myself for a moment until it reached my street. i hit the gravel and almost fell before i finished my walk home.
i'm a rollin' a rock up a steep-steep hill
when I reach the top it comes right back down
i meet sisyphus when i hit the top
and we stroll back down together slowly
-hot chip
i recently had a good long day, drunk almost the whole way through, covered in other people. it was new and loud and ended with an old heartbreak.
i shared an almost overwhelmingly tender and difficult moment with an old lover. i shared a secret with a new one. i withdrew from a dear friend and continue to wall myself off while everyone around me seems to punch right through it all.
a man comes into the bar where i work. he's schizophrenic, big and sometimes frightening. he's worrisome at times and may someday get booted for good, but he's been a fixture there for a long time. i do my best to shuffle him out when he gets out of hand but i don't make fun of him any more than i would anyone else. eric peterson is a part of my life. he worries incessantly about the money he doesn't make and watches himself repel the world around him. he stacks numbers in his head and has been known to interrupt conversations with a new one about his two-inch penis. he's hard to deal with, but i have a rapport with him, and i enjoy that strange and difficult relationship. he mumbles a lot and sometimes yells about numerology.
he looked at me over his beer the other day and told me that he comes in to see me. then he said, "i like you, david", in his wary, vulnerable way. i felt the itch to make fun of him as he left. to make fun of his direct and earnest attempt to connect with me. but this is as real a connection as any i know. i realize i can't separate my lives at this job, or that i don't want to. my moments at work are valid, rich pieces of my life, filled with people i love. and this was just one more. one more minute that i spend a thousand thinking about.
malabar coast
juice of one lemon
one tablespoon of cardamom simple syrup
one ounce of peach vodka
1/4-1/2 ounce of pepper vodka
shaken, up, lime twist
i find myself reaching out, straining. and i feel like to others it just sounds like more bullshit. when i say, "i value your company and i would love to hang out", it sounds like all the other noise that floats past people every day. but i'm drowning here, and i have no tools for finding solid ground. i have tools for all the financial transactions and the drunks(important!). i have tools to deal with all the people who are different than me. i have tools for so many interactions, but i have a really hard time finding ways to deal with those i love and wish to be close to.
it was a slow night at the bar. so slow i did half the inventory and still had plenty of time to dick around. tomorrow i will finish the inventory and be happy to work at an establishment that isn't in danger of closing in the next two weeks
i'm a wreck. tonight i'm drunk and relatively satisfied, but my time is spent screaming into the night and hoping someone answers. which is no kind of plan at all. i have barricaded myself off from almost any and all physical involvement with others, and it's taking its toll. i miss lovers and friends, i miss adventures and i miss the mystery. because i have removed myself from all of it. i have successfully avoided almost all outside contact in the past couple months. and while i love it and need it at times, it's hurting me. and i don't know what to do about it.
tonight, after i cut a guy off for being wasted, after probably two solid minutes of silence with only him and me at the bar, he said to me,
"you should go riding with us. mmm . .. mt. bachelor, we go riding, you should go with us"
and as friendly and civil a response to getting cut off as that was, i just wanted to punch that guy in the dick. i work hard on providing good service, even to people i don't like. but sometimes i just want to punch 'em in the dick.
it's the end of the night. i'm hammered and sated, empty and grounded. bah, bring me wednesday, this tuesday is exhausted.
i was walking home from some errand downtown. the town was sparse and i was by myself on the streets.
i am in my head so much sometimes. i am so surprised at how good i have become at not giving anything away. nothing slips out and little comes in. i'm drifting, i was walking down the street.
and someone had gone to town with sidewalk chalk the night before. most of the drawings and scrawl was uninteresting: a spiral, a face, a penis. as i walked i saw that someone had drawn a large heart in the sidewalk, with an "i" above it and my name beneath. i was just walking down the street and someone had written "i love david" in the sidewalk.
and i burst out crying and didn't pull myself together for over a block.
i dreamed it was you in some inconceivable drunken blackout spree. that it came from some dark and safe corner where no one would ever remember it but it would still be true.
which is just the stupidest thing when i think about it.
it doesn't make it any less important or significant to me, though.
at the edge of this diabolical street artist's work were large letters capping it all off. they read, "all hail cthulu". which i have to say was a nice touch. leave it to a lovecraft reference in sidewalk chalk to lend me the perspective i was looking for.
the message read:
i really regret ever dating you
it was from someone i don't have that many emotions tied to and i'm happy i'm not dating anymore, mostly due to the fact that this person says hurtful shit when she feels like she's entitled to it. we didn't date for long and i hadn't seen her in a month or more. she was leaving town the day after i spoke with her, i'm pretty sure the spite was unnecessary.
though, to be fair, i had just told her she should go get checked for chlamydia.
which sucks for anyone who's ever received or needed to make that phone call. and i can sympathize with feelings of anger, of feeling like someone else fucked with your world with their irresponsible behavior. and anger at oneself when you realize you may have fulfilled that very role for someone else. though i have to say, it feels sort of grownup and funny now that it's all said and done.
i'm glad i don't date this person anymore and i'm glad she left town. and i'm pretty sure the only reason for someone to send a message like that would be to hurt someone.
but goddamn, that one stuck with me. and in the past couple days, along with an accompaniment of related noise, that message bounced around my head quite a bit. it's severe and petty and i realize it's been a long time since i elicited such vitriol from someone. sigh.
oh, and just so it's been said, i no longer have crawlies in my jollies.
(that's my story about the clap)
whooboy.
lots of work, lots of play, lots of hiding.
and tonight i think i'm going for a second shot of everclear. one is really all you need. the second one is almost always superfluous and unnecessary and will likely translate into unpleasant in the morning. okay, here we go.
goddamn. i was right, that was a bad idea
it's hot as shit here lately, temperatures over a hundred during the day and a lot of drinks poured at night. i am exhausted and wounded and excited and insignificant and elated and powerful. i am overwhelmed at my lot but i know i'm not special. every one of you lunatics has any number of ridiculous and impossible tasks you're dealing with at any given time. i'm just caught up in mine. which includes squeezing out what i can from these unlikely minutes. i've half a mind to delete this but for tonight at least i think it stays.
i don't know why, but i've taken to consuming energy drinks occasionally. as an offshoot of that, i have begun looking for the foulest energy drink/malt beverage available at convenience stores. today i outdid myself. i found a 23.5 oz. can of dragon joose, a vile purple drink formed when a small welch's grape juice plant in indiana contracted the worst yeast infection ever recorded in modern-day juice history. it tastes like purple but with bubbles and a yeasty, malty marble running through it. 9.9% alcohol but it goes down like soda. i drank the thing in probably forty minutes and realized i was moderately hammered and passing out for a nap. i woke up on the couch with sticky purple in my mouth and a light headache. it was like sesame street all over again.
i feel better, less mopey. i think i hit my annual quota for feeling sorry for myself in the past couple months, but who knows, there's a lot of year left.
i saw a friend today and it was great. i had an online conversation in the early morning that made me laugh out loud. i have fair in less than two days and the weather has been nothing if not perfect lately. tomorrow is work and then thursday i'm off for the weekend. and good riddance to me, that's what i say.
there's been a song running through my head and it goes like this:
i am drowning
there is no sign of land
you are coming down with me
hand in unlovable hand
and i hope you die
i hope we both die
it's by some group called the mountain goats. i don't know anything about them.
i wouldn't say the lyrics exemplify my feelings, but i hurt, and it's good to vicariously get a little bit out through music. i don't know what the hell is wrong with me. the days have been getting harder to slog through and the nights evaporate like dreamstuff in the morning. i know i am still sad about my former lover. but she is happy and i care for her and i love seeing her happy. and besides, this is kind of what i asked for. it's frightening to think about, but i always get what i ask for. so i have a bruise marked with a little heartbreak. it's really not that central to my life right now, i just can't think of what else might have me spiraling out like this. this is the heavy part of the day.
the other parts are good. i have made a new friend, i have a well-paying job where i'm respected and only have to work three days a week and the summer is upon us with all it's blossoms and short shorts. i need to flush the rest outta me with juxtaposed memes and the company of others. wish me luck

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