Dying in America

I’ve come to terms with the fact I'll be dying in America. Everyone I know believes any concerns is alarmism. I’ve been thinking about leaving for several years now because the walls always feel like they’re closing in.

I don’t have it in me to flee my country alone. I keep waiting for someone I know to see what I see so we can leave together. Everyone keeps comforting themselves with lies that things will get better someday. I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ll be dying in America.

Soul on Display

I’m trying to write a zine I genuinely don’t like. I like it in theory, but every time I work on it I think it is a worse idea than the last time and the writing I’m doing to fit the “theme” of the zine is largely not anything I am proud of. I keep wanting to try to put whatever ideas I have bouncing around in my head into the form of absurdist fiction, but I keep trying to write about this idea I have which I don’t think works when every piece of writing is fitting that criteria. But anyway, I decided to expand my nonfiction a little bit for the zine and not have such a specific box so I just wrote something that was closer to an essay on the topic I had in my head about having a probably overly intimate connection to music. I pretty much accepted it was going to be a little bit more straight forward when I was naming an artist and albums at the beginning, but then I got into the milieu (I think that’s the right word) as I went on and I probably should kill that habit of going into every little detail or rambling or however you want to describe it, but I think it’s kind of funny and I think it is a good way to sort of illustrate the way my brain works at times. Anyway, the point is that by the time I was done writing it (actually before I had finished writing it,) I knew this wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to put into my zine (even though I need content) and then I thought “I have a website” so now I’m posting this here even though the writing format really is making it seem like this website is a blog which is an idea I keep trying to not succumb to even though the last post I made on here is a blog post about this website’s existence. Anyway, I am sure part of the way this turned out was a result of knowing I wasn’t putting it in my zine so I really indulged myself with all my bad writing habits, but when I’m trying to get into a better writing habit I really shouldn’t worry about if I want the end result when I have an idea that is actually influencing me to write as opposed to other stuff where I’m sitting for five minutes picking a word. So here’s a brand new piece of writing and if you see it in any of my zines, unless it is changed drastically, you’ll know I was super desperate to fill my zine (which is an absurd idea since I’m making my own zine so it’s whatever length I want it to be, but I have a sort of “template” based on previous zines where I just deleted all the contents that sort of has become what I am trying to fill.) Anyway, without further adieu….

Some songs are meant for headphones. The best songs are meant to be listened to in your room. You can’t share this shit with anyone even though it’s publicly available for all to hear. Their ears don’t work right. Pearls before swine.

I remember being younger. I had some sort of opportunity to request songs for Joey Cape to play at a show, perhaps a MySpace blog in which he asked? It wasn’t spur of the moment, shouting at the man on the stage. I gave it some thought and forget what I came up with, but what I recall is intentionally avoiding songs off Resolve and 12 Small Steps, 1 Giant Disappointment. I didn’t want to ask him to play songs off my two favorite albums because it felt cruel to request him to perform songs that came from so much pain. After some time had passed, I thought back on it and wondered if it was rude to not request those songs. Did Joey feel like I didn’t appreciate those album when he saw them absent from my requests?

Years later, in fact the year I am writing this, I am still trying to be more confident at age 31. Reflecting back, its highly likely that I will determine that I was not acting “confident” or in any positive, improved manner, but that I was actually acting weird and obsessive or potentially creepy. But at the moment I’m trying to be slightly bolder. I think I saw a video of L.A. Witch playing “Heart of Darkness” in Los Angeles and that’s how the idea popped into my head, but I decided that I wanted them to play it when they came to Portland on their upcoming tour. So I tweeted at them and got a “like” which is a little bit unclear as far as responses, but I want to be confident and I also want to be chill and definitely not unhinged so I don’t demand a written tweet reply. I go to the show and feel sort of weird because it’s still a pandemic and literally nobody does exactly what I want which is to definitely not walk within 10 feet of me and also to definitely not drink because it’s a pandemic and you should keep your mask on. I have a little bit of excitement in my gut that they’re going to play the song, but I’m not sure if my request was even actually acknowledged so I’m tampering my expectations. But also I’m thinking in my head about how to react if they do play it. And I wonder if they’re dedicate it to me since I’m the one who asked and I’m kind of shy so I don’t want that, but also I have a big enough ego to think they will dedicate a song to a complete stranger for tweeting at them. But also, why not?

Each time they are going to play another song, I wonder if this is going to be “Heart of Darkness.” But “Heart of Darkness” is not a normal song. Part of why it’s my favorite L.A. Witch song is because it’s unique in their catalog. It’s very stripped down. So I am watching the show, waiting for some sort of transition to maybe an acoustic guitar?

They finish their set, but people wait around for an encounter (as is custom) and it really feels like this is the moment when it might happen. They won’t need some weird mid-set transition. They come out as a three piece and I think this is really the moment. They don't dedicate the song to me, they don’t introduce it at all. But they are definitely playing it: the moment I waited for all night.

I’m really enjoying the song, but it feels like I’ve been stripped naked. It feels far too intimate. Does everyone else in this room appreciate what they are hearing? Does anyone else in this room appreciate what they are hearing? Do they love this song like I love this song? I don’t want to listen to this quiet song with these people. I want to watch the band the way I listen to the albums: alone. Singing along if I feel inclined.

The band follows it up by bringing back their fourth member and playing a louder song which seems like it gets a better response from the crowd. I feel like I may have ruined their set by asking them to play the strange, quiet song that only I understand. I stick around for a few minutes. I’m not sure how long they would want to decompress after their set, probably longer. But I don’t want to stand around awkwardly waiting so I leave. I tweet thank you to them and I receive a “like” and a part of me doesn’t know if they even knew I requested the song or if they have a social media manager just liking any tweet sent to them, but I try not to think about it too longer because I’m trying to remain confident and not become unhinged.

having a website

I thought having a website would motivate me to write more. I have this website that I am paying a little money for and I should use it. And it sort of does. I think, at times, about how I need to put something new on here. But mostly I think I need to put something new on here to push down the other stuff on here that I am not entirely proud of. Because my compulsion to put things on this website results in me writing something relatively quickly and posting it. Its always an unedited first draft. It’s not much different, but somehow writing for this website doesn’t feel quite the same as writing into a word document. So I’ve been writing (a little) into a word document and putting various piece of writing together in an order I think makes sense and I have gone back and changed things around and edited them a little. And those things, somedays, I am proud of. And other days I feel like it’s the most embarrassing shit I have ever come up with. I haven’t put anything out in a while aside from the posts on this website I don’t tell anyone about and either this Christmas or the previous one I did a piece for my buddy Dustin’s annual zine. The precious works well for me doing that the couple times I did. I just have to get one thing written by one deadline and I usually manage to get something I kind of like written and then I edit it until the day its due. This other writing is much more at my own schedule so I often try to write and have nothing to write. So anyway, I posted on twitter I would put out a new zine on my birthday and it was a few months away and felt safe, but I have no idea when I am done with a zine. I don’t want it to be too short. I might have a full zine written, but it would be pretty short. And like I said, depending on the day, it’s really embarrassing writing to me - too sincere and honest. So I kind of want to dilute it with a bunch of crazy fiction, but I don’t know if I will. I think mixing the two together might be a worse product. I’m kind of proud of that weird story I wrote about a time machine on here somewhere, but I kind of got myself going and then I was like I’m sick of writing for the moment so I just wrapped it up and posted it and I probably should have saved it in a Word document and revisited it and written more - but I have a few stories I started in a Word document and I can’t get back in the exact headspace or I get overwhelmed thinking of writing a whole novel or even novella. I don’t know, I just felt like I should post something new on this website even though I don’t want it to be a blog and this is obviously not my typical personal writing pretending to be fiction, its just me blogging or journaling or whatever … thought the fictional character in this story that you have been reading.

Constant Thirst

It’s the way the little discomforts eat away at you. It’s how you'll never quite be safe, never at ease. The race to consume is never run and the world is running out of patience with us.

Your kids are going to spend their lives wanting water. The wild fires will worsen. You know all this, but somehow put it out of your mind. You don’t worry about ten years from now in a gran sense; you’ve determined you'll be okay perpetually and your descendants will enjoy the same lifestyle you have so far. You don’t conceive of radical changes beyond what you recall witnessing in your own life.

I know it’s not the logical direction for things to head and, in fact, it is the opposite of what I expect, but it’s still so heartbreaking to watch humanity destroy itself and continue to cause so much suffering. Some kid is making your clothes for loose change and he'll drown in flooding soon enough. Our ability to help each other went up against our greed and we still have livestock without enough room to turn around their entire short lives getting slaughtered while temperatures become increasingly dead.

FIRE version a

Somewhere between friendly and sober. Somewhere between revolutionary and nihilistic. Still unsure how to be independent, not a clue how I'll get through the next 40 years. And that was before the fires. That was before the heat. I saw it coming because I've learned to always keep one eye on the door.

If I knew what I knew now before… It's a cliche, but it doesn’t remove the sting. Suddenly, the past is so obvious and the present is so confusing and the future is frightening and 20 years from now I'll know I was a fool who made all the wrong moves, but right now, like I said, I haven’t a clue.

Everything seems to be getting worse and I’m trying to not let that make me impulsive. But waiting is killing me. Waiting for the inevitable. Perhaps history would absolve me, but then again who will be writing it? The thought of the end of the record is so freeing. I’m not trying to leave my mark, to be remembered, but it seems like I will be in some capacity so I'm trying to avoid bringing shame on my family.

Part I

The bathroom was empty, perfect for taking a really loud shit. He always a penchant for holding it until he couldn’t any longer and, at that point, one has to accept what they get. He'd found himself waiting for a stall before so a deserted bathroom made him feel like someone was smiling down on him from above. Even if the shit turns out not-so-loud, it’s nice to just relax without being the weirdo in the stall for so long that people wonder what’s going on. Or there’s someone waiting, like he had when he could barely hold it in. So he couldn’t truly relax - listening for people filling the other stalls, watching for feet. But the one downside to an unoccupied bathroom is that with its’ lack of people… the motion sensitive lighting stops to save the company money on electricity.

Suddenly, he was the least relaxed he could be. If he didn’t want to be the guy in the stall so long people think he’s masturbating or something, then he really didn’t want to be the guy shitting in the pitch black dark if someone came in. He wiped his ass in the dark - which actually does feel like it might be less accurate or thorough somehow like the lights being on could help someone see their own ass better - and quickly pulled up his pants and… struggled to open the stall door mere inches away. Perhaps it was the struggle to even open the stall door that flustered him and killed his confidence just as his exit began that set him on the path to failure or maybe he was doomed from the start after years of so heavily relying on his sense of sight. Whatever it was, he managed to get out of the stall and began reaching around to avoid bumping into anything or walking into a wall. In his mind, he pictured it - someone walking in on him was his arms out wide, his fly possibly still down. These thoughts were not helping, but one must be prepared to face extreme humiliation. He knew he had not washed his hands, would they? In his shame, would he rush out and they’d be repulsed he skipped the sink? Would he stick around, face red, to wash his filthy hands? How filthy were they? It was too dark to see. It truly was amazing how pitch black the bathroom was. There was a tiny bit of light from the crack of the door to guide him if he’d somehow lost his sense of direction while in the stall.

I've been writing a tiny bit and fighting the urge to post “content” so I can release a zine, but I didn’t want to boot up the computer so I tried writing on my phone. Don’t know if it’s worse or about the same. Anyway, naturally, I wrote about public restrooms. I’m obsessed with this as the beginning of some horror story ever since it happened to me during the pandemic at work, in fact I think I’ve written this before, but practice makes perfect. The directions the story can go from here are endless.

Grief

I’m having trouble distinguishing

My anti-social proclivities

From the natural response

To death surrounding me

I feel myself decaying

But it’s not fast enough for my liking

And the news

I cannot stomach the details, the headlines overwhelm me

Forgetting, pretending otherwise

Feels sacrilegious

But bitter feelings result in

Counterintuitive treatment to those who remain

As it creeps into my home

How could it not?

It’s in my city, it’s everywhere at once

No one is impervious, untouched

My mother likes to not think

About the ills of the world

But it’s all my head is filled with

As her mind is full of more personal sorrows I cannot bring myself to acknowledge

Reason

With the rope around my neck and the chair moments away from being kicked out from beneath my feet, my neighbor knocks at my door. Naturally, I do not answer. If I were going to be alive tomorrow, it could create awkwardness between us. But I am not. He may ask me where I’d be the previous afternoon. He’d seen my car was still in the driveway so I couldn’t have gone far - as if I don’t have friends who may have picked me up in their car! Of course, when he asked me, I would have my brain working to figure out the unspoken communication. Was he asking me these things out of genuine curiosity or was he asking me these things simply as a way to break the ice and bring up what he had initially come to talk about this afternoon or… was he asking me to see if he could catch me in a lie? Was he asking these things knowing that I had been home and simply hadn’t answered the door when he’d knocked because I am an anti-social asshole? Was he the bigger asshole for passive aggressively confronting me or am I the bigger asshole for forcing him into the position where he would be able to catch me in a lie? But what does catching me in a lie do to benefit him? He gets to feel good about himself because he would never - and he is also smarter than the asshole who would?

There is no reason he should need to know where I was this afternoon, it’s not his business. All he needs to know is that I didn’t answer the door when he knocked thus he did not communicate what he wanted to communicate to me. Was I home or was I out is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not I was in the doorway while he was on my porch and we interacted. Have you ever had your doorbell ring while you are on the toilet? What’s the protocol there? Yes, of course I am home, but I should finish shitting and if I am finished shitting I should properly wipe my ass and wash my hands. I should not rush to the door with a half-wiped ass and filthy hands like a nuclear alert just went off.

My neighbor, I see him trying to look in through the window. What’s that about? If he sees me inside, then what? I didn’t answer the door, that’s all he needs to know. Oh, I’m inside? And I’m not answering the door? Great, now what, dickhead? But I can see him trying to look inside with his hands cupped around his eyes to block out light causing reflections to get in the way of him looking through the glass. I don’t think he can see me. But that’s exactly what a person who hopes they aren’t being seen tells themselves. He’s popping his head into a few different window frames, trying to get the right angle I guess. I’m not sure if he intends to view my entire house this way.

Now he’s back at the front door. I hear him banging. Hard. He hasn’t used the doorbell at all. I don’t know why. Maybe he thinks it is broken. Maybe he comes from somewhere or he is of a culture that doesn’t have doorbells. But it is there. He has to have seen one in a movie or something. I don’t know. He’s knocking very loudly. It’s probably louder than the doorbell, but the doorbell is simple and the knocking sounds like it would hurt his knuckles. They’re his knuckles, but it just seems ridiculous to hurt your knuckles when the doorbell is right there.

I hear him shouting something. It’s kind of muffled. I am hearing it through a door. I don’t know what his deal is or why he’s pounding on my door and shouting like that. It’s like his house is on fire or something. Maybe he locked himself out of his house, that would explain why he’s still out there instead of going home. But you would be a little more calm about being locked out. You would accept the person isn’t home and you have to wait. It’s like his family has been murdered or something. Like I said, it’s like his house is on fire. But there are other people. On the street. In the world. If his house is on fire, there has to be someone else’s phone he could use if he is at my door because he wants to use my phone. I can’t help him if his house is on fire. I would wait for the firefighters so all he could come to me for is if he needed to call 911 or have me call 911. I am not going to put out the fire.

“Crow and bird"

“Cowabunga”

“Crowded bar”

“Die in crowded bar”

“Knew rabid crowbar”

What the fuck is he talking about?

Then… it’s like when you ask someone to repeat themselves and as you are asking them, your brain processes their unintelligibility through context clues and you know.

“New David Cronenberg”

I take the rope from around my neck. I pick up my smartphone and go to my Google News Alerts for David Cronenberg. It looks like filming will start in Greece soon. This rope will still be here in a few years.

Participate

I refuse to participate. The world is rigged and you all started this before I could agree to the terms. Once I was born, I was never formally approached and I suppose you all thought that everything should just be grandfathered in. And I suppose that you believed if you stayed in motion, the years would pass before I figured out the scam. But here I am. It may have taken a few decades. Perhaps I should have called your bluff when everything became obvious. I am not sure why I waited. In an odd yin to your yang, I did not formally approach anyone about my decision. I just quit and thought the years might pass and soon you all would have waited too long to notice I wasn’t taking part. But the thing about an unstoppable force and an unmovable object is that if they don’t actually meet the force keeps going and the object being unmovable doesn’t mean much.

Hollow Man

When your Amazon package finally arrives, the thrill of the wait is over. You could check your phone a couple times a day to see if there were updates on the tracking. Maybe it would get ahead of schedule or it might fall behind if an unexpected event came up. They removed a lot of that with their two day shipping option. You can still track the package, but there’s not as much time for it to get delivered faster than expected and there’s a shorter period of time that it’s traveling for you to check for updates on the status. You could check the status after it arrives, but the status doesn’t change and you know it isn’t going to change so it loses its luster. Plus, you have the package which is what you really wanted anyway. You order whatever you ordered because you wanted the item, not to simply track it. But now the package has arrived and you aren’t looking forward to it anymore. It’s here. Maybe it’s a new piece of clothing and you can look forward to wearing it out in public for the first time and then when no one comments on it, you can put it into your closet and sometimes put it on again, but it’s not new clothes anymore. Maybe it’s a CD if you’re one of those people who still buy those or a vinyl record and you can listen to the album and hopefully you haven’t hyped the album up too much in your head so that it lives up to your expectations. But you probably checked it out on Spotify first to make sure you weren’t wasting your money on the physical album. So you already know what it sounds like. So the record arrived and you could listen to it and dive into your inner audiophile and talk about the warm sound of the vinyl itself - but you already heard the album so it has arrived and the thrill of the record coming is over. Or you might have bought something ornamental and you get to hang a piece of art on a wall or you have something to put on the mantel. Hanging art is surprisingly a lot of work, but once its up, you get to look at it. You can only really look at it for so long, but now that’s there. Maybe when someone comes over they’ll comment on it. Hopefully they say more than “new art?” because that kind of sounds like what someone would say to acknowledge art they don’t like. But your package arrived, the wait and anticipation is over and now you have the thing that you felt like you needed when you didn’t have it yet.

Hide the Body

Watching an old video of Henry Rollins telling some television audience that being born in a body that functions is a miracle. Still feel the urge to destroy my own. Referencing myself in the same sentence as Thích Quảng Đức would be an insult to him, but it’s something in that realm. Self-immolation is too frightening, too painful, and also too quick - I need to ease into it. My own views are also a little hard to sort out, but they feel more self-absorbed. The pain of the world weighs heavily on my mind, but when it’s all said and done my concern ends up being largely about the emotional anguish I experience as a result of others’ suffering. I know you’re not supposed to admit these sort of things and it’s even possible I’m being too harsh in my judgement of myself, but there’s nothing more American than an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude toward the rest of the globe.

The destruction I desire toward my own flesh and bone is some sort of primal scream I cannot emit. I’ve never been capable of the wordless shout. It feels immature, ‘use your words.’ But where words are lacking or rather they feel out of reach - no order seems to convey the meaning intended - what’s left? I am not sure if I want to explode or implode; I am not sure if I want any of this to be noticed - if it’s some kind of cry for help and if a ‘cry for help’ is inherently a person falling short of death because they don’t truly desire the end of their life or if that is some misinterpretation of the phrase I picked up in my life.

I feel everything. I feel the callousness of the world and whether it’s a result of my inability to believe what we have allowed to be done to our fellow human beings throughout all of history up to this very moment or if I simply feel that the fucked up societies we’ve decided to create and maintain are an affront to me by forcing me to live within what is clearly an evil place and the toll that following the norms of such a place takes on one’s mental health, the feeling of complete helplessness to fix or improve anything even if it’s entirely so I can feel less bad about myself and what I have grown accustom to accepting makes me want to destroy my body. Or at least I believe that to be the case. I am not clear if I want to destroy my body or if I want to not exist - at least not on this plane. I do not want to be perceived. I want to disappear. I am not sure if destruction of my physical being is my ideal method to reach my end goal or merely the only route I am capable of enacting.

Henry Rollins told the audience not to do heroin and ruin your healthy body. I spent years drinking as much as I could get my hands on. Like much of this, I am not entirely clear on all of the details: was I attempting to drink myself to death? Was I simply trying to put some wear on my body for a slow destruction of what I am trapped in? Was I merely trying to feel something that I thought I could reach at a higher state of intoxication and I am not trying to revise history to make the drinking about destruction of my body? As I continued drinking I occasionally thought about how alcohol was poison. I tried to wrap my head around why we drink it at all. With too much in the system, one vomits it up. I guess the same could be said about all food, but alcohol seemed like different beast; drinking a little bit give an effect of impairment. It was hard to not consider that we were poisoning ourselves regularly while trying not to not go so far as to make it deadly - not that the thought ever crossed my mind while I was drinking that I needed to not poison myself to death. On a few rare occasions, I had the thought that I felt way too drunk way too early - sometimes because the sun was still out or sometimes because the people I was with didn’t appear nearly as intoxicated. Though that judgement was rare and my decisions to cut myself actually resulted in a few of my worst nights which I won’t detail, it was never a matter of concern that I might be about to give myself alcohol poisoning until I had already gotten to the point where I could feel the vomit coming.

I want to destroy my body because I do not want to exist in this world created before I got to decide if this is how anything should be. I do not want to exist because existing feels like a passive approval of famines and genocides and so many other atrocities and unnecessary sufferings and I do not want that on my consciences. But I am too much of a coward for anything obvious, anything anyone would notice. I do not want attention. I do not want to cause a scene. But I am also scared to do anything too drastic even out of sight. I have watched all the PSAs and I have bought into all the generic advice and talks of right and wrong. I am too much of a goody two shoes to do something I know to be “wrong” so I work on the edges. I find things in the grey areas to do.

I want to not exist. But all I have to show for it are shirts that don’t fit like they used to and scares I had somehow convinced myself would go away, abrasions I am too ashamed to let anyone see. The damage I’ve done to my body was done with unclear thoughts about what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. I cannot explain to anyone what they may see because I do not know what happened by accident and what was done with intent and if I still feel that way or if I can still justify these things under a newer ideology.

Broken Record

I’ve been writing the same words in different orders repeatedly for the past few years. I’ve looked in thesauruses and tried finding new perspectives, but the topics aren’t changing. I’m all out of romantic longing and my observations mostly embarrass. The desire to shield myself behind fiction has never been more alluring, but the words come so slowly. Masking what I need to say within a story only adds another dimension to a task I fear I am incapable of handling.

I want to write purely from a place of love without it all coming back to two bodies curled together under sheets. I want to give back, to follow in the foot steps of the creatives who raised me. I want to make someone feel the way I felt listening to Alkaline Trio as a teenager.

The world can be so cruel and I’ve let it make me feel the need to match its energy. I don’t know if I’ve grown to be the way I out of a guardedness or an issue with my brain chemistry. What I know is it’s a challenge to be warm, but it’s a challenge I want to face unlike so many others. To be able to do both is the dream. But for now I just want to create something that means something to somebody and I know I’m not getting there writing what flows naturally from me.

So every time I sit down to write something new, I see the same words laid out before me. The same sentiments and the same missing piece. Writing is easy; writing something I care about is not.

Beast of Burden

Utters hoodie, woods shirt, all black. Obsession will be the end of me, but it’s the only way I’ve made it this far. I think I can crack this code. Emulation. Empathy or mirrored behavior. But a Machiavellian worldview is beyond me. Faking interest strains me. I’m incapable of “til you make it.” Life is as serious as a heart attack. Where do you think my hair went? The only thing keeping the stress at bay is day-by-day. Estate planning is well and good, but there’s no hope on the horizon so I’ll listen to this record for the millionth time.

Hot n Heavy Chat Line

“Yes, I will pay 3.99 per minute. Yes, this is my verbal consent. You have my credit card number. You can bill it. I agree.”

…

“…I would like to… speak to… hmm, you see, I’m very indecisive. I don’t know who exactly… I mean, it kind of seems like fate has already connected me to y-”

…

“Yes, I understand. It’s not your job. I get it. You’re the operator. I get it. I apologize. Yes, my mistake. Wow. That many people a day? They all try to talk to you. I mean, but not the way I did, right? They try to talk to you, right? Like all lewd.”

…

“Yeah, no. I see how this is could be perceived as me attempting to continue to to have a conversation with you. But you see what I am talking about, right? This was just small talk, nothing inappropriate. I wasn’t trying to get hot and heavy with y-”

…

“Yes, ma’am. I get it. I understand you don’t care about the difference. It simply isn’t your job. I get it. I fully sincerely apologize. Now I’ve been talking to you for several minutes, boy I hope this isn’t being billed. haha.”

…

“Oh, it is? Well, that makes sense. You are running a business after all. That was just a joke. I fully consent to the full billing for every second I have been on the line with you. I apologize again. Can you just connected me with someone… trustworthy? Like, they aren’t going to talk about me after the call?”

…

“Yes, okay, I understand that is your privacy policy, but all the same… do you know the women? Are there ones who are kind of big mouths and ones that ‘get it’?”

…

“Okay, yes, I get it. It’s not your job to pick who I talk to either. Jeez, I kind of thought being the first point of contact, you’d be a little bit friendlier. It seems kind of bad for busine-”

…

“I apologize. I should have not said that to you. Yes, I have no idea how to run a chatline business. I don’t know what it takes to stay afloat and I certainly don’t know what you have to deal with as the operator connecting the calls or anything of the sort. It was not my position to criticize you… No, I am not going to berate the woman you connect me to for not responding the way I want her to… although, I am paying for her to be sort of agreeable, right? I mean, I want her to be honest with me, but she is going to be… not an ice queen, not antisocial?”

…

“Okay, okay, I understand other people are trying to get through. Just connect me to someone… um, connect me to a tall woman I guess? Is that how these things go? It’s the phone, I won’t know if it’s even true. A brunette? A Big Beautiful Woman? It’s all the same people probably…”

…

“Okay, please just transfer me to someone you claim is tall. I didn’t mean to offend you by thinking out loud about the absurdity of asking to talk to a person based on their physical features.”

*Bedeedledeedulldulldulldullbadoodoodoodoodoodoodloolooloolooloo*

“Hi, this is Sharice.”

“Hey, have you ever listened to that hold music. It’s pretty avante garde. I mean, it was so short so whatever, but uh, not really ‘easy listening’ if you follow what I’m saying.”

“What’s your name?”

“Oh right, wow, first I talk your operator’s ear off and now I’m starting off on the wrong foot with you too. Jeez, I have to get it together.”

“So. what’s your name?”

“Right, right, right. Am I supposed to give an alias for this sort of thing? Like Sharice sounds like a fake name to me. Uh, my name… what if I just said I’m like Paul Bunyan or something? Then you’d call me Paul Bunyan the whole call. Do people do that, but like they expect you to talk to them like they’re the fiction character - asking how their Blue Ox is and stuff?”

“You seem nervous. Is this your first time calling one of these?”

“Well, yes, who calls a phone sex line in 2020? There’s a bunch of porn illegally distributed all around the internet - more than you could jack off to in a life time.”

”Well, you. You called a phone sex line in 2020.”

“That, that’s true. But I’m not calling for phone sex. And it feels more and more like the government is spying on you these days. And the internet, there’s just like your browser history. And I know you can delete it, but I bet the company you pay for the internet keep a secret back up to give to the government, those bastards. And I am sure they listen to my phone calls too, but I think I saw in a movie they have to hang up after like 30 seconds if they realize the call isn’t about a crime. But that might have been from the 70s. Anyway, it seems slightly harder for them to analyze a verbally spoken phone call rather than feeding a bunch of text and data into a robot.”

“Are you going to like break the law on this call or something? Talk about murders you committed?”

“No, I’m just saying that I’m a very private person and I want to talk to someone because I’m lonely, but I don’t want some government agent knowing everything I said.”

“But you’re going to talk to a complete stranger? I know I should be selling our service, but you’re a private person talking to a complete stranger about things you don’t want a different stranger to know?”

“Yes. You think you have outwitted me, but that’s how it always is, isn’t it? You’re fine with this person knowing, not that person. You’re fine with one person knowing not two. I might be open to talking to one specific government agent instead of you, but I don’t know how to contact them so it wouldn’t be conversational like this. Plus, their job is to then tell others about that information whereas your operator made it very clear that you are going to keep all of this private. I mean, I saw Punch Drunk Love, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. That wasn’t based on a true story was it? I know that part about the yogurt with the frequent flyer miles was something that really happened, but not calling a sex chat line and then getting blackmailed, that part was totally fictional, right?”

“I don’t know what Punch Drunk Love is.”

“Oh my god! You were probably born after 9/11. I am going to shit myself! I don’t feel old yet, but that kind of shit... when I realize some new actress I find attractive was born like… even if she was born like 2 years after me, that fucks me up. The weird thing is that it’s barely even like a thing where I think about how much more successful they are than me even though they are young, but it’s like some kind of hang up from being in school where it would be weird for a senior to date a sophomore I think. Like it’s not that weird to find someone who is maybe 3 years young than you attractive. It’s not even weird to find someone 10 years younger than you attractive although it’s a little weird to date them, but some young millionaire new movie star isn’t someone I’m going to have the chance to date anything so-”

“Did you ever tell me your name? Are you going to go buy Paul Bunyan?”

“No because then I am going to just keep having an urge to talk about my Blue Ox as a part of a character and the truth is I called this line not for sex - I am sure you hear that all the time - but I called it for some sort of genuine human contact. We’re obviously on the phone and you’ve probably given me a fake name and you’re only talking to me because I am paying the company that hired you to talk to me, but even the people I see through the day in which I occupy the same physical spaces as them, those are not people where I have any real connection to them because everyone is putting on this fake persona like they have it all together and to make a genuine connection people would need to open up about their vulnerability, but then someone could use that to steal their job or their wife or whatever, they could use that against them so we’ve created a society in which everyone is intentionally cutting themselves off from each other even people who don’t live in a cutthroat part of society, they still do it just at the off chance like how people who aren’t rich vote against taxes in case they someday become rich, it’s completely ass backwa-”

“So what name are you going to go by for this call?”

“First I have to figure out who I want to talk to. Now I have to come up with a fake name. I’m not a stupid person I swear, but this is not my strong suite. Decision-making. It stresses me out. Even these small kinds of things that ultimately don’t matter. I really called to have a pleasant time and now I’m being asked on the spot to pick stuff and I’m not even being given some options to bring from, I have to choose a name out of the ether. Any name that has ever existed or an entirely new one. And then I’m trapped with that. If I want to call again then I have to keep using that name or start over completely when we could be getting somewhere, but then I have this stupid name I regret picking like if I had said yes I want to be called Paul Bunyan. I could be talking about how my dead dog is why I can never have a romantic relationship that lasts longer than a month and you keep calling me Paul Bunyan and I want to say dead Blue Ox instead of dead dog.”

“Well, I guess I can call you honey or baby or…”

“That would work for one of your standard calls, but once more this is not a call of a sexual nature so I don’t want to be called those sort of pet names. That’s something else I would like to talk about at some point. I realize many men have done all sorts of awful things and some of them who aren’t awful are still incredibly horny and our society has sort of shamed horniness so you end up with men lying about wanting sex when they do want sex, but I really wish people who trust me if I say I am trying to make an honest emotional connection and then if I start acting horny, then you can call me out for lying, but give me a chance.”

“What should I call you then?”

“Actually, I’ve got a lot off my chest tonight. I think I’m going to end the call.”

Lyric

I’m listening to these records like they contain the Da Vinci code. Like if I hear the lyrics for the fiftieth time, everything will finally click. There’s no cure for the kind of loneliness that comes from feeling like you aren’t on your home planet so I listen and listen and listen and just maybe, the record will create a portal. I need to reach out to those closest to me who have been singing these melodies for a decade plus. I treat these records like precious commodities and I treat the people in my life the same. Not that I respect them or am loving toward them, but the obsession. A stream of questions until they don’t have the answers. They will never satiate my thirst because I don’t know what I am taste I am longing for myself.

While I wait for these songs to make everything else make sense, I try to emulate these strangers I have welcomed into my home and head and heart. I write and rewrite, trying to find the balance between earnestness and safety. I am trying to do what has been done for me, but I am not sure I am capable. Every few years I decide I desire vulnerability but then I remember my fear. I used to be sincere and kind, but the only way I knew how to survive here was to grow cold. The idea of shedding this shell I’ve spent three decades building is absurd. It is all I have to show for my time on Earth.

So I keep listening to these albums over and over until I get bored of them and then I set them aside for a few months. The people find themselves in similar situations. But these songs don’t perceive me. These songs don’t ever know more than I’m comfortable with them knowing.

This is not a Blog, but...

I want this to be a space for ‘creative writing’ whatever form that may take, but as you might noticed, there are long lulls between me having anything I want to post. And I have posted stuff I am not particularly proud of because I don’t like having nothing posted on here for months. Given that, I thought I’d do a ‘blog” sort of post. As you might notice if you follow the link in the last post, my attempt to write 31 short stories in 31 days in the month of December did not go as planned. Phrasing it that way makes it sound like some act of God happened, but it was entirely my fault. I could have done it and I didn’t. As you can notice in some of those posts, as they became meta, there were many times I really did not want to write. And I forced myself to on some of those days as evidenced by the posts. But when it made me miserable and when the end result was genuinely terrible (like the times when I just wrote a short poem so I could be done), it really made it hard to justify forcing myself to do it just to have kept it up. I probably should try to get better at writing poetry, but those weren’t really attempts to improve my poetry skills, they were just whatever I was capable of coming out. I don’t remember if I posted it or not and I am not revisiting any of the writing before writing this, but there was one poem - I think the last one I wrote - where I actually tried to do something and realized writing poems was hard. That’s not to say I wasn’t aware, but it was the only time writing a poem instead of something else for a post that I actually was going back in and trying to change lines to get a rhythm or whatever and going “holy shit, this is difficult.” It also wasn’t a time I tried to write a poem to avoiding writing something time-consuming. I was just genuinely trying to write a poem.

The main other thing than laziness or whatever you want to call it that happened is that my friend reached out to me on short notice to write something for his zine. There wasn’t enough space for a short story so I reverted back to more of the short form non-fiction stuff I had previously been writing and actually managed to be able to get back into that writing space and style that I thought I had mostly lost from not writing much the past few years so that was nice to find out. But I am hoping to improve my story writing so it was a bit of a distraction. But as you can see from the bursts of activity, it sort of inspired me. I wrote a few posts in quick succession per day. That also gave me an “out” to skip days in my mind. Which really is where things fell apart. As I wrote at some point, I hate to give credit to capitalism, but I had several days off work in December and I quickly realized how much harder it was to force myself to write on those days and weekends than hyped up on caffeinated tea and full of daydreams from my bullshit job. Yes, it is hard to come home from an entire day wasted working at a job that doesn’t matter and having a limited window of free time and choosing to spend it “working” on writing. But it was much harder to pry myself away from watching TV after sleeping into the afternoon. But trying to write something for my friend’s zine, got me both inspired and off track and then after a few days off I kind of just figured ‘fuck it.’ I’m not one of those “I have 3 months” sober types of people, I haven’t had a drink since shortly before everything shutdown because of the pandemic, but I don’t remember when that was exactly. I actually called out sick two days in a row - a Friday and a Monday - because I felt myself getting a tiny bit sick in February and I had a shitload of concerts I wanted to go to the upcoming week and then the week or two after that I wanted to go to a film festival so I was not about to go down hard sick. I went and saw Sudan Archives that weekend, then called out Monday after going out on I think Saturday night. I could look up when that show was. I drank a little at it, but I was also kind of sick so not much. But then there were the upcoming shows. I don’t remember who all I saw. I went and saw Tove Lo and it was one of the best times I’ve had a show. I drank a decent amount pregaming I think. I know it was a pain in the ass to get a drink at the show itself. I don’t know if that was the last drink I had. I think there might have been another show the day after. Then the following week I think was the start of the film festival. And I tried to go to as much as I could while going to work when I wasn’t watching movies. And the last few days of the second week (?) got cancelled. I think that it got cancelled on a Wednesday and I remember feeling lucky I wasn’t going to anything that day because I didn’t have a smart phone at the time and I was going straight to the theaters from work so I wouldn’t have known. But anyway, with the film festival cancelled because things were getting serious with the pandemic, I went to that shitty ass movie The Hunt because Ike Barinholtz was in the trailer and I had let bad reviews convince me to not go see the Oath which I liked when I finally saw it on home video so I decided fuck the bad reviews and went and saw that terrible movie in theaters during a pandemic. And then maybe the week after, my job started sending people to work from home and stuff. But when I came back from calling out sick those two days, a co-worker jokingly asked me if I had the Coronavirus so it was on people’s minds at that point, but not something taken super seriously. And back to the point, whenever that Tove Lo show was might have been my last drink or maybe the day after or two days later depending on what all shows I went to see. I saw Frances from Hop Along’s solo show. She referenced how we were risking our lives to see her. Nobody in the audience really took her that seriously. Once more a bit of a disconnect of the pandemic being on people’s minds, but also not something some people were worrying about yet. But this isn’t actually literally about my sobriety - which I am still not sure whether or not is an actual sobriety or just what I have been doing for several years which is just not drinking alone - it’s about how I am not concerned with the sort of mentality where you are keeping track of that sort of thing. I don’t know when I became vegan exactly. I have slipped up at times and I don’t care. I am not trying to steal valor and will happily never call myself vegan again if people prefer I don’t. I use the term so people don’t give me stuff I don’t want to eat. I try to buy shoes that aren’t vegan too which isn’t something some people do because they are vegan for “health” reasons. So I don’t know if I am more or less vegan than health vegans. But I don’t “break vedge” as I like to refer to it in my head. I had this job with a lot of people from suburbs who were pretty conservative and they brought in cake or pizza once or twice and I got them to get pizza without meat on it. And I think once or twice I just didn’t go get anything, but on occasions I figured fuck it and ate some. I sort of believe in the whole “freegan” thing. It makes the most sense to me. If the animal is dead or sexually abused or whatever, then throwing meat in the garbage isn’t better than a “vegan” just eating the animal byproduct. But I have an easier time staying vegan by abstaining entirely so I am not “freegan.” If I were I think I would genuinely start making excuses to get other people to buy non-vegan food so I could eat some under that mentality. This probably sounds psychotic. Maybe it is. But anyway I also accidentally grabbed some gluten-free Oreos at Trader Joe’’s (so…not Oreos, but you know…) and when I looked at the package when I got home they had egg in them. But I am not going back to the store during a fucking pandemic to get my money back especially over something where i am the dumbass. If I bought moldy bread or something, then I would want them to give me my money back for selling me garbage. But this was my mistake for buying something I didn’t want. So I wasn’t going to go back to the store to return them during a pandemic. So I ate them. And out of shame, I ate them extremely fast like an entire box in one night to get rid of them so they would be out-of-sight and nobody would see and know. It hurt my stomach. But anyway, that’s the most recent time I knowingly “broke vedge.” But I am not starting the count over. But also I don’t know when the count started. So this is all an extremely long way to explain to you the the mentality that I missed a day of writing doesn’t matter to me much. If I miss a day then I just move on. But I guess in a weird way I gave myself permission not to write every day of December by giving myself permission to skip a day. And, in part, this was a trial run for my plan to write every day of 2021. I mean, the actual plan was literally just write every day of December because i came up with the plan right before December, knew I had several days off work and thought that would be good, and thought that would be a fun little way to frame it. But then given the idea that it was going to then be immediately followed by a new year when people typically have resolutions, it naturally turned into the entire of writing every day in the new year. So the plan was legitimately write every day of December. It wasn’t really a trial run.

I have gotten to the point, if I am being honest, where I know that I am completely rambling and going overly long and the slim possibility of anyone ever reading this has now decreased to zero chance because even if someone was interested, they would not read it given the length AND nature so now it had changed the way I am writing where I am being intentionally obtuse and such. Just letting it be known. Anyway, the point is the idea of writing every day of the new year was a second plan, not the main plan. But the reality is that I knew writing something every day of December wasn’t going to do much for me. I was kind of hoping it would force me to create a bunch of stories I might be able to fix later before I realized how hard it was to write an entire story that went anywhere in the time I wanted to put into writing each night. So I did create the base of a few stories that maybe I can revisit. But if I had written every day of December and not then continued on to writing at least semi-regularly in the future, it would not have gotten me anywhere, not that writing every day of 2021 will get me somewhere. But I think you understand. So the plan will be to write every day of 2021. I still don’t have a better plan - I am subscribed to a patreon where it was explained how to make a more detailed plan so one can follow through better, but as of this writing, I haven’t gone back and done that so I don’t know when I will do that given that it is technically already 2021. But it is possible I won’t post writing every day because I have realized it would benefit me more to write every day for a greater overall end result (i.e. write a short story across, for instance, 3 days). Maybe I’ll just post each portion as I write it (for accountability). And this is probably not the way to head into it, but I am fully aware there is no way I will write something every day as much I would like to think I would. That is an entire year. Even if I am dedicated, I am bound to have a genuine reason to miss at least one day. So I am not going to be too hard on myself. Although like I said, I don’t know if I should admit that to myself already or wait until it happens and then forgive myself at that time. I also don’t want this entire main page to be shitty writing so I will probably create a secondary page like I did for the December writing (although I have purchased a smart phone since the film festival was canceled and tried to see if I could write on my phone during my breaks at work and couldn’t access the subsection so that might not be worth it if it hinders my ability to access it on the go - all things I should have figured out prior to the new year in the time I wasn’t even bothering to write.)

I was thinking a couple days ago (or maybe a day ago… it was Wednesday on the bus, riding to go rent some movies listening to Chuck) about writing some sort of essay-ish type of thing about the albums I think really fucked me up and ruined my live by giving me politics contrary to the mainstream. And then I thought that’s good, I should save it until the new year in case I need content. So that’s how these sort of things make things worse. I should just write when I am inspired. But I wanted to note it down so I could maybe find this reference again if I happen to forget about that idea (not that I am ever going to re-read this and find this part.) The other thing, and the actual inspiration to write all of this is that I came across this list of slow burning movies that included this Korean movie called the Wailing like a month ago and I rented it (because I forgot to check if I could get it for free from the library) and it kicked a lot of ass. Not so much ass that I instantly felt that I had to consume the entire rest of the director’s filmography, but it was definitely a very fantastic movie so I went and rented the entire rest of the director’s filmography (only two movies - and, yes, neither of them was available from the library) and I decided to watch his first film Chaser because I assumed he has gotten better at filmmaking so I thought it would be better to watch his first film and then his second film instead of watching his third film, then his second film, then his first film and ending on a sour note by watching something where you can see the beginning of him becoming a great filmmaker, but the movie isn’t ultimately that good. But Chaser kicked so much ass. I’m not superstitious, but starting the new year by watching such a kickass movie and discovering my new favorite director seems like a good sign. So wanted to put those good vibes out into the world and it also got me thinking about all the movies I have been watching during the pandemic - which is weird because I haven’t lost my job and can’t even work remotely so my life hasn’t even changed that much, but I have suddenly been watching all these random movies that hold some weird cultural significance in my head. Like I just watched that movie The Number 23. I knew it was going to be stupid, but I’ve been thinking about that movie for like a decade. I haven’t brought myself to watch Swimfan yet because I can’t get it for free from the library. I haven’t watched Osmosis Jones yet either. They aren’t all stupid movies either. I’ve been going back and watching a lot of Scorsese’s films. I watched a couple De Palma movies I haven’t seen - and I have been watching a lot of Nic Cage movies so I think mostly I just watched Snake Eyes. I watched some Albert Brooks movies. I watched some William Friedkin movies though I still haven’t seen The Exorcist or the French Connection. Sorcerer kicks ass though. I watched the Godfather. trilogy. I am sort of watching some Jonathan Demme movies. And Michael Mann movies. I had already seen Silence of the Lambs. I think the only Demme movie I watched was Something Wild. But I loved it. But I saw Manhunter and just watched Collateral. I watched Red Dragon, but just because it was on Netflix ‘cause I am definitely not going through Brett Ratner’s filmography. So I don’t know if all of this is worth some sort of essay type of thing and I also have the issue that some movies I watched just go right out of my head the second they are over and some stick around so I don’t know if I would be able to reference exactly what I watched, but I was thinking about writing about watching these movies from all these great directors (and actors like Albert Brooks and Nic Cage). The truth is I was going to write about these movies in a Facebook status, but I am trying to stop using it and I didn’t want to post this manic shit about how great the movie Chaser was at 1 AM on New Years Eve like a weirdo.

In conclusion, I am going to try to write every day of 2021, but I don’t know if anyone following me online will be able to tell or not and I also don’t know if I will manage to actually write most days. Starting things off with a holiday away from work means the first official day of doing it is going to require me to stop my vacation day of watching movies and eating garbage to write so it should be a great test. Although given the fact it’s the very first day, I will probably succeed in guilting myself into it. But then needing to do that two more day of weekend is really going to be a struggle. Then it’s back to the grind at work and just thinking about stupid shit all day so I don’t think about what I am doing and hopefully that makes it easier for those five days, but then I struggle to get myself to write on the weekend and we repeat that over and over until it’s 2022 and then I stop writing entirely because my New Year’s resolution is done, right?

31 in 31

I am going to do some form of writing each night (presumably night) for ever day of December to get in a better habit of writing and I will post them even though they will most likely be gibberish and stuff only I think is funny (or profound). It will not be journaling, that much I can tell you, it will be creative.

I have not been writing as much as I would like to for… quite a while now. I did a little bit of writing on this website as you can see. When I didn’t write for a while, I felt compelled to put something else out even though it wasn’t necessarily good. I just wrote it to have a new thing. And that’s fine. I don’t know if anyone wants to read it and having no quality standards probably doesn’t encourage people to read what I post. There are definitely things I don’t post just so you know there is a little bit of a standard. As you can see from the last few posts, I’ve written some short stories directly onto this website just to try to get back into the habit of writing. Are they good? You be the judge.

When I was a Freshman in college, I had this Philosophy professor that didn’t believe in homework, but needed something to grade us on so he had us write short stories so at least the thing we wrote could be potentially entertaining. At least that’s how I remember it. I remember him saying he used to only ask for one, but people would get so stressed out (even though he would give everyone who turned one in an A) so he made it 3. I kind of marvel that I was able to come up with these stories out of thin-air back that. I did it kind of under pressure. It doesn’t really matter, but to get back into that sort of area again, I am going to try to write 31 short stories in 31 days since it happened to be December 1st when I thought of this idea. I started writing something last night, but then felt like I had done enough writing because I am lazy so there’s that unpublished unfinished thing in my drafts. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, these are going to be pretty stream-of-conscious and almost certainly unedited. And if you happened to read that short story about the billboards, you can probably tell that I have a bad habit of writing myself into whatever the opposite of a corner is. I just start writing and essentially getting further and further from an ending. And then I think to myself “how long is this going to go on for?” If I had published the thing I started writing yesterday, you would see that I am very much writing really stupid stuff that I think is funny. So spending several hours on a short story that is really stupid is kind of not a great use of time especially when I want to just finish so I can watch a movie. But I want to get back in the habit of writing again so I can be a little bit decent again and then maybe put something polished out. But like I was saying about “Billboards,” I get going and it’s been like 45 minutes and I just want to watch a movie and there’s no end in sight so I just suddenly try to figure out how to wrap it up. I have a feeling that is going to be a pattern. Maybe I’ll revisit some of these stories in the future and take them to better conclusions, but this first one for December 1st is definitely one where I just wanted to be done since I don’t anticipate many (any?) people reading it anyway. I’ve got some days off this month so maybe those days I’ll be less tired.

Anyway, I realized that putting a bunch of half-assed ideas on the front page of this website is not going to be a great look if people do visit it to read quality content so this is my post saying that you can visit this sub-section for what I have decided to call 31 in 31. I am a night owl and stuff so a lot of stuff is going to get posted technically the next day. I have no interest in getting it done before midnight or even making sure I start before midnight, if I write it before I go to sleep, it counts. And also “counts” doesn’t mean anything since I am just doing this for myself and nobody will probably read these. But here is where you will hopefully be able to find 31 short stories - or poems or some form of writing - by the end of the month.

ghoulish.me/december-2020-short-stories

Lame Duck (rough)

The days are counting down. The election was over. Soon there will be a new president. I knew this was coming. I signed up for this. I wielded the power of the most powerful country on the planet for four god damn years. It was a good run. I accomplished a lot. I served the people and they are grateful.

I will try to get a few more things passed and I will have my team reach out to the new administration to help them with the transition. I guess my last act will be helping explain the job to my successor. And then he’ll watch me die. With everyone else. He’ll watch me hang and then he’ll place his hand on the Bible and be sworn in.

He seems like a good man. I think he’ll continue some of the things I got the ball rolling on, but one can only get so far on these projects in four years. So I should count myself lucky to know that the next president will not put a halt on what I began. I can go out knowing that my life will not be taken in vain. I did not spend four years working my ass off for this country only to be hanged right before everything I did is undone.

I realize the threat of my work being dismantled wasn’t that high. Neither candidate was out to destroy the goodwill I’ve been building. Since implementing a death penalty for being the president, a lot less power-hungry candidates run. It skews toward people who want to sacrifice for their country. That’s not the official reason given of course.

It would be nice if we were honest and told the citizens that making the presidency the ultimate sacrifice has removed the majority of the worst candidates from running. Instead we’ve got some Wicker Man bullshit. But that’s what it took to sell the Christian right on the concept. So now I have to die for what the pain this country inflicts on the rest of the world. I tried to reduce the harm, but the only way this country can be this country is if we rape and maim the rest of the world. And a person who kills thousands must die in this country. Ironically enough, the federal death penalty was abolished by the third president to serve under these conditions. But still, this country says that we must sacrifice me for the sins I committed while in office.

As much as things have improved, there is still a collective delusion. This country can do no wrong. The citizens who benefit from the horrors inflicted by their government have no blood on their hands. The government and all the people it takes to run it bear no responsibility for what is done. No, it is my fault. I must be sacrificed for what I did. Solely.

And for some, it is about fairness. The punishment fits the crime. For others, there is more superstition. They remember 9/11. But the right finally lost its stranglehold on the memory. Thus it became understood not as a lesson about being hyper vigilant about anyone who doesn’t love this country, but as what happens in response to what we do to people in other countries. But, this is still the United States and we do still have our bizarre beliefs we won’t let go no matter overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So sacrificing one man, me, is said to ward off any repercussions.

If the general public was more concerned about where their freedom comes from, they might see how much money we spend on national security, they might look at our military budget - and they could put two and two together and realize there may be another reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks. But they’ve been sold on my execution and there’s nothing they love more than tradition.

Mask Off America

The streets aren’t paved with gold

They’re lined with rubber-coated lead

Mask off, America

The tears of George Stinney weren’t enough to quench our thirst

Everything we own is dripping with blood

Everything we’ve earned was pried from another’s grip

And now we spend the rest of our waking life

Fending off those who might try to take it

Is freedom supposed to feel like choking

On the stress of hoarding the most objects?

And the pain in my gut when I start to wonder if this is all there really is won’t go away

But this empty feeling is still better than the despair of those who still dream that someday, if they work very hard, they too will have countless unsatisfying things

Fatalist

Look at the egoist, writing about his woes while the world burns. If he stays up until 3 watching the police assault people on Twitter will it absolve him of his sins? If he stays up until his eyes are heavy, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, will that be sufficient support? Someone must witness the atrocities or it is all for naught. And if he oversleeps from exhaustion and loses his job mid-pandemic, then surely no one could claim he does not care about the plight of his fellow countrymen.

But no one cares. Facebook shares aren’t sufficient activism and he’s beyond serotonin bursts from “likes'“ (though, notifications in the midst of an internet squabble fill him with perfect combination of dread and giddiness that keeps him absolutely glued to an unhealthy extent, but I digress) yet it still makes him feel hopeless when an article about the impending police state mere miles away can’t garner a single reaction. And the limited amount of in-person interactions mostly with family just reinforce…whatever it may be, it can’t be a class divide, but something of the sort.

And to write? Against the hopelessness. It’s not more difficult than it previously was. It’s mostly laziness. But he is not smart enough to tackle what must be tackled. And the facts are the facts. And if we as a people cannot even agree on them then what hope is there? So he writes in feelings and half-formed thoughts, but he hasn’t tasted the teargas. And it truly is just pessimism, pure and simple, and perhaps he cried wolf one too many times - though is it truly crying wolf if one warns about a real wolf too early?

While the country waits for the nationalists to arrive at their doorstep and haul them away, the painful truth is how many will remain comfortable, even after they’ve realized it is too late. Every World War II movie made Nazi Germany look like a living hell and here we are, just going about our days. Some of us doing our best to counter atrocities, but most of us - including him - doing a minimal amount and many doing nothing at all. Waiting for the right time to rebel. Waiting for things to get bad. But they won’t. Or they will when it is far far far far too late. When there’s no one left to witness what happens when one waits for fascism to announce itself by name.