Wait...

And what used to be true still is.... And here I go breaking my rule I just set.


   WAIT


Wait.
Before you go- And I know you will
I need you to know
that the morning always
mocks me.
It makes me slander
all of my intentions.
It makes me weak to the point
that these white walls
scare me
and these women
scare me
because they are not clothed
and they are not my friends.


It is important to know
as you are walking out my door
that I am really not the
bastard you think me to be.
When your mouth runs out of cigarettes
and the joke is no longer funny,
I think
that it's important to know,
I'm not even the bastard that
you need me
to be.


I guess we all
dawdle on the edge
of delirium sometimes.
It makes me realize that the
lunatics
are never quite as crazy as
we want them to be.
I was not right, but
I am sorry.
So you can have that
for all that it is worth.


Stop.
Hold on a second, before
you open the door and
walk out into the certain
sunshine. I....
Need to say that
I'm not too good at anything.
Except for finding wounds,
and when I find them in you,
I tend to push down with both hands.
If I touched you there I'd
do my best to deny it.

I know that you can pick up
my sincerity like lost pennies
from the sidewalk.

I know most people
don't even bother
picking up lost pennies
from the sidewalk.

Don't drink & post.... An object lesson.

New rule for myself, & I have to scribble it out on a Post It note & plaster it to the bottom of my computer monitor with all of the others. "If you are going to write while drinking, don't post until you've read it in the morning!"
There's a newspaper at my school that just started up. I'm currently taking every opportunity I can find to increase my body of work outside of poetry. I was in a class last quarter with almost the whole editorial staff, & while I do not think any of them particularly like me,(persona, you'll see what I mean in a moment) there can't be that many writers at our community college. I figured my chances were pretty good.
 So I inquired about submitting some work. The A&E editor got back to me & said yes I can submit, but they're coming up on their next deadline. I say no problem...I'll write something tonight. I had just got off of work & was looking forward to the chance to drink some beers & watch some movies, a luxury I haven't had much lately.
 I sat down at my desk with my 12 pack. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. Tips for future writers, not the usual "write what you know" stuff, but some witty & pertinent advice. Take it off the beaten... Be creative with it. So I started.
When my 12 pack was done, so was I, sort of... I didn't end it, I just stopped writing because I was about to pass out. I read over it chuckling to myself... I thought the intro sounded condescending which I wanted to write over, & I needed to finish it, but other than that I thought it was good.... Mailed it off right then, proud of myself for working so quickly.    I remember the very first thought I had when I woke up for school a few hours later... I mailed that? Oops.
I got up to re-read it. I honestly don't know who would publish it. But it's certainly not appropriate for a school newspaper. I'm basically telling college kids to cultivate a crack addiction to be authentic, & advising them to be ready to commit suicide if they become successful with their writing.   The wit I had foreshadowed was overlapped by the mean spirit of the piece. 
Needless to say, I need a good relationship with the people at the paper. I'm reworking the piece right now but I'm probably not going to make deadline. 3 1/2 hours sleep after my night of writing it & 4 hours last night after rewriting it... I just need to go to bed.
Because I have an obligation to post new things on here regularly, I'm going to let ya'll read it. Hopefully by Sunday I will have a moment to get back to the band narrative, I miss it.  
Without any further ado...







     So you want to be a writer?
  5 points to master/consider in your new career.



  You're in college. You're idealistic, unique, and a little bit angry. You've read Ham On Rye and Tortilla Flat. You've got things to say. you want to add to the American zeitgeist of popular culture but you suck at playing the guitar.  You want to be a writer. Pull beautiful words out of the soft ceiling of the night, write the quintessential experience, that elusive Great American Novel. Here are a few tips to help you on your way.

1:  Create a Persona.
  More than a mere "nom de plume" or character in your story. You are going to need to create your first person persona. This voice is the narrative vehicle that guides the prose along it's path. Supplies reason and motive to your text. It is your emotional current, a point of entry for the pathos that's so important to every good story.
 A persona is especially necessary if you plan to write non fiction pieces. This is going to essentially be your voice. Airing your dirty laundry so to speak. So unless you are an extremely well adjusted individual that has no problem with always speaking the absolute truth, you are going to need a persona. No extremely well adjusted person would ever choose to be a writer in the first place.
 There is one simple suggestion for creating a persona. Write yourself as you would like to be. Do you have trouble expressing yourself verbally in real life(most writers do)? Then your persona always has the slick retort, the perfect timing.  Many writers have issues being confronted with what they have written when something smacks a little bit too close to real life. This persona is your escape route. You're persona said it, not you. You're persona is your voice.

2: Befriend other writers.

  These are the people who will understand you when you feel no one else can. Writing is a very solitary art. A stark procession of black on white. Where most visual artists have many different colors on their palette of which to choose from, a writer deals in the tones of the absolute. Black. White. The writer is expected to make color appear from this crude cuneiform. only other writers understand that. The lonely nature of the writers craft almost guarantees that there will be times in your career where you feel like you cannot connect to a single other person on the planet. If you manage to convey these moments on the page when they arrive, they will stand as some of your more poignant and transcendental pieces. However, when you're in that moment, you won't be concerned with any of that. You will most likely only be concerned with getting down off of the ledge you find yourself perched on. Only other writers can help you with that. They might be the only people that even understand why you're doing what you are.
 Besides that, writers are going to be broke most of the time. It's the other artists and the patrons of the arts who will pick up the bar tab when you need it most. Valuable contacts.

3: Find a vice.

 Seriously. The importance of this one cannot be overstated. Cocaine, heroin, alcohol, sex, booze, pills. Whatever you prefer. Don't be a tourist about it either. Live there. Take notes. You're probably still young enough to recover from it afterwards, and for some reason, people refuse to take younger writers seriously. Delve deep into the hallowed halls of addiction, not as any means of nepenthe, but for credibility. One of the common currencies of a good writer.
 The trick is to bang around down there in the bilge for about a decade, right when things are about to get seriously real. Like prison or death. Pull yourself out, brush your shoulders off and get your shit together. Reminisce about it when you write. It takes about ten years, but it also saves about ten years in the experience points too. Look at James Frey, the man sniffed glue for Christ's sake, yet he still managed to turn his rehab memoir into a bestseller.
Of course Mr. Frey is probably back on the glue these days. He didn't refer to tip #1, Create a Persona.

4: Succumb to Libel.
 Yet another reason to follow Tip #1. And this is especially true for the writer of non fiction. If you worry about upsetting someone when you sit down to write, chances are you will never write a thing worth reading. People react strangely to how they are written. POV is a tricky thing, you are telling your perspective. What you may see in a particular interaction, may not be what was intended. then there's the convenience of hindsight. These are very real issues to a serious writer. There comes a point where the author has to go ahead and commit to the prose. A writer that doesn't take a chance. That has never submitted something without some little bit of trepidation about how it might be received by peers, is probably not creating lasting literature.
 A writer is a voyeur. Always residing somewhere just outside the moment & peeking in. Like the sweating pervert imagined looking through the one way mirror at a peep show, the best writers live just outside the boundary of good taste. They steal every sacred moment of their life and transcribe it to the page. It's a very heavy responsibility to consider. Yet this is where the good stuff comes from. Real life. Your life.

5: Prepare to kill yourself.

 The destiny of your esteemed peers. A suicide writer. The surest way to cement your status onto high school level advanced English reading lists forevermore. It would be almost funny if it wasn't true.
 While doing research for a paper on the suffering of writers(see where I like to dwell?) I found some surprising statistics. While it wasn't alarming for me to find that writers led the way in celebrity suicides, what was shocking was that of all of the other disciplines, artists who killed themselves after they were considered "washed up".
Writers tended to take their own lives not only while they were still producing work, but while they still had critical acclaim. The list is literally hundreds long. Followed by musicians, then actors, then visual artists.



See... I just stopped typing. Not even an ending. While some of the points aren't bad & I do subscribe to some of what I said, I don't know how I thought it was going to fit in the Central Circuit.

Northwest Profile # 138

Okay,

I'm fucking exhausted. I want to get back on the original dialogue track. I can't working these hours, not now.
I still want to give you something new though. Fuck Nora Ephron, how is she considered a good writer of modern dialogue? I've been having fun expanding two characters I created 2 weeks ago. I just start writing them, not knowing where they are going or where they will end up at, but it's fun to write them. I was reading something about "When Harry Met Sally", how that diner scene really cuts into the pathos of men & women. I call bullshit. I made Michael & Veronica have brunch. It's not finished, but here is a new post at least.


Characters:
Michael. Late 20's -early 30's. Handsome, if not a bit brooding.
Veronica. Same age range as Michael. Attractive, yet very agitated here.
Server. Young, bubbly female blonde. Irritatingly effervescent.

Production Notes:
(We find Michael and Veronica, our 2 primaries from the previous act having a late brunch. It's a few weeks after our initial scene, and the two have been seeing each other on the sly.)
Scene 1:
(mimosas and cups of coffee. Plates with egg yolks and hollandaise sauce. Veronica keeps looking over her shoulder, glancing around the room as if she's about to be caught doing something bad. Michael stares out at the sidewalk. A bus goes by.)
Michael: You know those ads on the side of busses? The Northwest profiles?
V: Pelco...Petco? Something like that...Sure.
M: Who are these people? Do you know anyone that fits these profiles? Goat Renter Guy? Roadside Chainsaw Sculptor Dude? Marymoor Park Off the Leash Dog Lady?
V: I know a girl who refuses to run her dog on a leash at Greenlake...She lets that little damned dog of hers run roughshod all over the place.
M: Mmmm, yeah? What they really ought to do is acknowledge their target demographic. How about...Ballard Manic Sexual Orientation Changing Lady!
V: (looking over her shoulder) Very funny asshole.
M: Or Capitol Hill Dirt Bag Black Metal Hipster!
V: Those guys don't buy insurance, wasted ad money.

Crossley-02
M: First Hill Film Blogger Dude That Can't Connect with Ballard Bisexual Lady. I Like that one!
V:(Amused but still not laughing.)You know, you're more funny when you aren't at work. When you're on the line, you're just mean. I never knew you wrote a film-blog, I never knew you did anything besides leer at waitresses and find new taboos to try to shatter. You should really focus more on being you...Not this...I don't know, umm asshole all of the time.
M: It's a persona V. If I didn't pretend I was someone else in that place, I would lose my God damned mind. What am I supposed to do? Internalize that place? Take it seriously? Fuck no! Everyday when I clock in... It's like I'm an actor reading from an internal script. The persona I created is witty, competent, never loses face. All he needs is his ingenue.(Gesturing towards Veronica.)
V: (Looking again behind her back, then leaning in to speak low.) You know what my persona does currently Michael? My persona play acts at not knowing you at work... It acts like this isn't really happening between us. My Persona should get nominated for it's portrayal as a liar as it told it's girlfriend that it was going through some turbulent times and needed to stay with it's sister for a while, to you know...Just figure some things out.  My persona is carrying condoms and is back on birth control. That's pretty rich. Apparently this persona of mine is straight!
M: Cher Chez La Femme... It applies to both of us, that's one of the things I like about you.
V: What?
M: Cher Chez La Femme... an old crime story device, it means "find the girl" it's usually the root of the problem. I believe it was Henry James who...
V: It's too early still for metaphors. Honestly. You want another mimosa?
M:Coffee.


Crossley-03
V:(finding an excuse to again scan the room.) Where the Hell is that waitress?
(The waitress, seeing that she is needed puts her pointer finger up in the air to signify that it will just be one moment as she deals with another table.)
V: Oh my God... You're checking out our server aren't you? You are such a predictable little motherfu...
M:(interrupting abruptly) I was trying to get her attention. It's usually better to give a visual cue than shout "Hey Lady!" You should know that, being a server yourself. Besides it's a natural reaction for me to notice the goings on in other restaurants while I'm there. For instance, our server is fucking that busboy.
V:(intrigued) Which busboy?
M: That Hawaiian looking one over there with the shaved head. (Pointing.) Don't believe me? Watch them together when he walks over.
V: (sucking in through her teeth) Jesus, do you think that we're that obvious?
M: No V. I'm an asshole to you at work.
V: You're an asshole to everybody.
Waitress:(Country accent) Hey... Sorry, I had to get their order in, they've been waiting for awhile. What can I get for you two Lovebirds?
(At the same time)
V: We're not in love!
M: We're not birds!
Waitress: Hmmm...Okay. Well then, sorry I misread that in you. I'm new to the city, having a hard time figuring out how to talk to people. I hope you don't mind, I'm...
M: Nah...We're Restaurant peeps too. You don't need to apologize to us.
Waitress: Well that is SO exciting. I never know what to say to people here, they always get so offended when you address them like they appear.

Crossley-04
It's like people around here don't like being "figured out" or something. I had a table the other day... Two boys in flannel shirts with nose rings, I saw the nose rings and thought they'd be cool guys, I mean, Gosh they had tattoos and everything! (Like this detail is amazing!) I asked them, "What can I get you two dudes to drink?" and do you know what?  They got up and left? It turned out...(She leans in and whispers with an air of conspiracy) That they were lesbians.
(Michael looks Veronica directly in the eye and over acts a guffaw, Veronica just glares at him.)
Waitress: Well, I see you guys are cool... What can I get you? Another round of mimosas?
M:(Forgetting his coffee.) Sure.
(Waitress leaves to go get the order. Michael and Veronica look at each other with confused bemusement.)
V: What the fuck was that?
M: That... Was pure country. I bet she's from Wenatchee.
V: Why?
M: Just ask her when she comes back with our drinks.
V: You were totally checking her out, and that makes you a bigoted lecherous pederast.
M: Whoa! Why for pederast?
V: She can't be more than 18.
M: She doesn't need to be more than 18 to excuse me from pedophilia V.
V: You can be such a pervert sometimes it makes me si...
M:(interrupting.) Wait a minute I want to revisit how I'm a bigot exactly. I heard you throw that one in there too. She's just a little lost bumpkin in the biggish city, She'll be rocking American Apparel and popping her chach at a Mad Rad show in no time, just wait. Besides, She reacted to them reacting to her. That's not bigotry.

Crossley-05
V: No, that's just plain ignorance. And you were totally checking her ignorant ass out. Why do you like those young stupid girls?
M: I don't like young stupid girls. I like alot of different things about women, their age is the least important factor.
V: Why do you always date young girls then?
M: I don't...Persona again, it's a characteristic people assume about me. I can only date older women.
V: What do you mean by older exactly? I'm your age I think... How old are you anyway? Why have we never talked about this?
M: My face is pretty youngish, my tattoos are faded badly, you do the math.
(The waitress comes back by the table. Two more mimosas.)
Here you two lovebirds go...Oh, Sorry. I mean, (feigning a serious accent) Here you two acquaintances go.
V:(To the waitress) Where are you from?
Waitress: Couer D' Alene, Idaho. And it's a long way back home. (The Hawaiian busboy walks past the table and she follows in pursuit) Let me know if ya'll need anything else!
V: So... You lost that bet. Back to the women issue. How old is the "oldest" girl you've ever dated?
M: Dated?
V: Slept with then... Asshole.
M: Forty two I think. I think older women are far superior in bed than younger women there's just that... Nah, nevermind.
V: There's just that what? Attachment issue? Is that what you were going to say?
M: No. Not at all. I find that to be more prevalent among the younger ones. Older women are better because they know what they want and how to get it.

Crossley-06
They don't hold too many delusions about what's happening exactly. There's just the metric issue.
V: What the fuck is the metric issue?
M:(embarrassed) Well... Bear with me for a minute... Take a girl in her mid-thirties right? That girl was born in the 1970's, sexual mores being what they were then, this girl came of age in the early 90's... How many different partners do you think an average person has in a year?
V: What's an average person? Shit I don't know...In your 20's about 8 to 10. Maybe, but that's not considering...
M: Okay, so a woman is 34 years old right? Lets be lenient and say she started having sex at 18, which in the 90's is not very plausible, but still... That's 18 years of penis.
V: Actually that's 16 years but...
M: 16 years, whatever... Do the math, 16 years multiplied by 8 to 10 dicks per year still comes out to about 150 dicks. That's like a quarter mile of cock if you laid it all out in a straight line...
V: I don't know who's dick you're measuring with...150 of the dicks I've seen wouldn't fill a bath tub.
M: Mathematic impossibility. If the average penis is 9 inches and you add...
V: You're penis isn't 9 inches.
M: This isn't about me. It's about this fleeting thought I had.
V: I think I'm beginning to see the issue here.
You feel a need to overcompensate for something, so you use it as an excuse to downplay others. Judge them. That's pretty weak Michael.
M: It's not a judgement... It was just a fleeting thought I had. It got in my head, & it wouldn't leave.

Crossley-07
so everytime I was with this woman, I couldn't help but think of how many other people were inevitably there before me.
V: And how you stacked up next to them no doubt...
M: If I'm being honest, then yes. I have to tell you that I didn't want to be thinking about that, it really killed the moment for me.
V: So young girls don't stir up the same "fleeting" thoughts huh?
M: I don't even know what that means...
V: Were your thoughts "fleeting" to the methed out farm hands our server has likely served back home in Idaho? Or is that just not an issue to you?
M: Back to the waitress again? Really? Sounds like you have something you're over compensating for now.
V: (again looking around the room, but more to see if the server is out of earshot this time) That whole "We're restaurant peeps...It's cool." thing you said to her was hilarious for its obviousness. I can tell that you want to fuck her.
M: She's fucking the Hawaiian busboy, remember?
V: (Pausing.) Jesus. I'm sorry. Is this what life really is? Is it all about who you're sleeping with? I thought I had it figured out a little better than this. It keeps boiling down to the same few issues over and over again. I really thought I had myself figured out. That this wasn't going to be a repeat of the same mistakes I keep making over & over again. But now here I am in this place with you, my girlfriend is being lied to, you're distant and non-committal. What you and me have Michael is nothing really. We get out of work, meet in a secret place, drink beer and sleep with one another. I wake up the next day hungover and reeling in guilt. We fuck and that is it... That's exactly what it's starting to feel like too. Fucked.


Crossley-08
M: Vern, you have to understand my trepidation. I've never once left a girl in better shape than I had found her. I like you, always have since the first day you walked back in the kitchen with your hair hanging down & I yelled at you to put it up in a ponytail. The whole time you were with Chef I was smitten, cursing him for saying things about you. He never saw what he had. I did. I wanted you badly. I knew you weren't making a conscious decision that night you went home with me at the Redwood. But I had to take what I could get. I had no idea you had a girlfriend... Jesus Christ, I had no idea you liked girls.

Act 1 scene 3 coming soon.

Where were you when this mattered?

So 30 came
but the record deals didn't.
Scrambling for "plan b" frantic before you retire
from the Mtv demographic.

So we assigned ourselves new titles of self importance to get laid.
Rockstar became...Singer/songwriter
Literary sensation became...Quirky cult poet
Downtown 91's next Basqait ended up with a felony criminal damage record.


Plan b didn't quite work out as planned either
because the drugs weren't good enough to overdose on
& you haven't built up enough of an audience yet to be
eligible for profitable eulogies.

The younger, newer artists moved into our old studios
while we worked quietly out of the kitchens of our apartments
& while the new artists cant afford the lack of credibility that ghetto living gives them
we cant afford a credible life outside of the ghetto.

And so on now with the self produced,
the self published.
The independent releases completely independent of
distribution, promotion, & attention.

So we drink liquor in the coffeehouses while the sun is still up,
leering at the girls we know we would have been fucking had they been there then.

"Where were you in 92?"
We form an insular liars club, telling each other how brilliant we all were or still are
"Where were you in 2002?" "Huh?"

Shit....

Where were you when this mattered?

The part about the girl...

God damn I hate my life some nights. I feel stuck in my job, in my life. I figure I just need to start writing this book, get working on something. I'm sorry I've switched focus from the band for the time being. People react oddly when you try to write them, maybe I need to let that part rest for a moment. I need to start the memoir.
Here's a story.

  Even as drunk as I was. I still remember the song that I had playing on the cassette deck in my truck when the red & blue police lights hit my rear view mirror. Turning my slurred vision into some torrid digital projection of the American flag. The song was "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen, & the irony of this being that this was a song that I had always equated with freedom & escape. Now, unless I did some damned convincing talking in the next few minutes, I  would not be escaping the shackles of working class Jersey, Cincinnati, or anywhere else for quite a while.
  The officers approached both my driver & passenger side windows, left hands probing the dark of my truck cab with their flashlights. Right hands rested pensively above their hips by the grips of their service pistols. When the flashlight beams found my face I turned the Boss off & rolled down my window.
 "How you doing tonight Sir? License & registration please... Do you know why we pulled you over?"
  "Because I'm wasted?" I replied, half hoping my honesty would abate this whole scenario & end it all on a hearty guffaw.
  With the typical lack of compassion & humor inherent in most law enforcement agents, the officer informed me that I was pulled over for having a tail light out. My admission to a crime meant that they could forego most of the other formalities in trying to decipher my present state & get straight down to brass tacks. Or straight down to chrome cuffs, which ever you prefer. They shackled me a little too tightly, which is what they often do, & pushed me by the head into the hard plastic panel backseat of their cruiser. As the car departed the side of the road to escort me to the Justice Center, there were no sweet refrains of Bruce Springsteen still in my mind.

  I was drunk. There has never been a sentence more true than that etched out in all history. I had been sleeping in my truck for a little over a week at the time. Living in the local bars once work was over for the night. I would park conveniently halfway between the bar & the job, & when the bars closed I would pass out in the cab until I would wake up for work the next afternoon. Always parched & starving, & feeling so damned lost without her that if I didn't rush off straight to work I would be forced to think about my condition. Probably drive my truck into the Ohio River with my seatbelt on. Oh yeah, of course there is a "Her". There has never been a story worth telling without her.
  I had been living with my then fiancee for years, & we had known each other throughout all the awkward teenage days. we had always been lovers, everyone knew we'd get married, be together forever.
I guess they forgot to remind her about all of that.
She changed her mind, the house was in her name, & I was homeless. hence my present situation.

  The night I got evicted & my new home got towed away, there was a poetry reading at my favorite bar. Everyone already knew the story, & those who didn't got to hear about it over the microphone while I was onstage because I thought it was the saddest story ever told. The bartenders kept giving me shots, every time I would go to the bar for a beer, more shots. Girls patted my shoulder, told me it'd get better. Being in this misery was paying off pretty good that evening. When the bar was closing up I was approached by a very cute girl who said I could sleep on her couch. Figuring her couch to be a euphemism for her, I obliged. She explained that she had to leave early for work the next day & that I should probably follow her to her place.

   I remember the bumper of her car in my headlights. As she roared ahead of me, blazing a new trail to Eden.  I remember also when the police lights came on behind me, how I watched the bumper of her car & it's taillights fade off into the night without slowing down a pace. I remember pretty accurately, the transaction with the officers of the law that apprehended me. After being pushed into the cruiser, the rest is pretty much a mystery to me. I simply do not know what I did or said in the meantime. I remember the waking up though, much as I try to forget. I got this one.

  Tongue. Velcroed to the roof of my mouth. I cant quite open my eyes, or wont quite open them yet. Maybe it's fear of what I might find. The scene behind my eyelids, it broadcasts bold bombast. Black, then hues of gray. Maroon. it flashes like heat lightning to my heartbeat. The thud of dull blood through my temples, resonating off of the inside of my skull like a doldrum, like a metronome set so slow that no beat could possibly follow, & what is that fucking echo? The sounds of male voices echoing back through their lineage straight from English to the primordial gulf. It thuds there, it strikes. My heartbeat against the concrete. like flint against stone, prehistoric electric.
  I try to open my eyes, but they shudder against focus like that first blast of water from the shower head in winter. I see the yellow of the walls & it's the first thing that really makes me physically retch so far this morning. Crayola never dared make a color this repelling to the retina, I guessed it Ochre Lite, or Booger Yellow. It's a color I somehow immediately associated with childhood, just not the good parts. It's the color that swaths everything in the 3 walls of the room, & etched away in a lunatic procession here & there through the paint is a succession of swastikas & misspelt profanities. Smears of things that are either human feces or baked beans. Coupled with the smell of stale urine & orange peels.

  I spring to my feet in some sort of haphazard defensive pose. I have no immediate recollection of the previous evening at this point. I have no idea where I am, but I think I might be dead & apparently I was dead wrong about that whole "God" thing.
I notice that one wall of the room I am in is a glass partition, looking out into a slate gray hallway. I'm in the zoo? In Hell? Aww, this aint even cool.
Naw, I'm in jail. But if I'm in jail, why am I in a jumpsuit made out of the same material as paper towels & as pink as boiled shrimp? If I'm incarcerated, why do I have sea foam green rubber slippers on with little smiley faces embossed on the toes & staring back at me in an ultimate mockery of my condition?  This is Hell, it has to be, & as if to confirm this new conclusion I've come to. A Deputy Sheriff walks up to my glass partition.
I raise both my hands & shrug my shoulders as if to say "What the fuck Dude? Not cool."
He smirks at me from behind the window & yells a little louder than he needs to
"YOU are on SUICIDE watch!"  Echoing down the sally port for all of the other inmates to hear.
"I have to piss." I reply to him, knowing he'll have to let me out of this room where there is no toilet, no bunk, no sink, no bench, no hope.
He points to a drain hole in the floor & strolls away.
"Suicide Watch? What could I have possibly done or said in the 7 mile ride to the Justice Center to warrant this?" I ask myself, as the answer to the problem of why it smells like urine & feces in here instantly solves itself.
  My heart sinks slowly with a sour swallow. The alkaline residue of last nights alcohol fuming slowly with my breath as I asses this situation. Across the sally port, the other inmates watch me from their pens. Their jokes resonate along the gray cinder block walls & distort into even more vicious jokes by the time my ears can pick up the vibrations of their

 verbatim, process these mockeries of my masculinity back into coherent thought.
  They know what this tank is that I'm trapped in, of course they do. These men have nothing to do for 23 hours of every day except look in at the poor fish trapped inside this glass tank & crack jokes between boasts, because they have to do something. Try as they might, they can't make time their bitch.
  I was passed out through breakfast. My face glued to the floor from the drool that slipped from my lip. I could only gauge the time that had passed, by the usual meal time rituals that work like clockwork in the clink.  The trustee's filed solemnly towards me down the sally port in a ragged procession. Carts of thick brown plastic food trays thrust before them. A Deputy Sheriff, three shades of brown & polished brass badge saunter's up to my fish tank & sticks a single key from his ring into the lock on my door, slides it open with little fanfare & informs me that I am apparently no longer a danger to myself, & I get to eat some lunch.

  He is taller than me by a foot or more, all perfect posture & business as usual. He escorts me to another holding pen down the hall where other inmates who aren't a danger to themselves are awaiting their court hearings. I'm aware I look like a freak in my pink paper outfit & inquire about my street clothes as we reach the door to the new cell. The deputy explains that I can't have my clothes back yet. Then he tells me curtly.
 "I always knew I'd see you here Crossley."
As he slides the steel door locked, I look into his eyes without a moment of recognition, my eyes searching wildly for some sign of familiarity in this void. I catch his name tag before the latches final catch "Bruser M."
  Mitch Bruser? Oh fate! Metaphors fail to delve these deeps in which you thrust me recently. Mitch Bruser, that I beat up in grade school. The first kid I ever punched

  I did it dirty too. He was new in our school, showed up one day in Converse All Stars, he didn't have any friends, maybe he thought he'd fit in with us misfits. Maybe he even begged his mother to buy him a pair so he might make a friend, or maybe he just owned them anyway.
  Whatever the case, somehow I was elected by our little wicked 12 year old gang to go over to his house after school, make nice, act like we were playing. I was supposed to lead him into the woods on my bicycle down to the pond. My friends, the jury, they were supposed to meet us there, jump from the bushes as we rode down, beat him up. Teach him a lesson he'd never forget. Unlace those shoes & throw them in the pond. Even at 12, I knew I was S.E. Hinton to the hooligans, so I went along with it, simply because I hadn't been in a fight yet, & I was the only one. Who knew, it might be romantic. It might be fun.
  I remember Mitch that day. When I wheeled up to his house he was in the front yard, trying to skateboard, a vice that my friends & I had already given up for faster modes of transportation, though still respected for it's sheer utility as weapon, shield , & get away vehicle. Mitch looked surprised to see me on a bike, he'd obviously seen me carrying skateboards around town. That he was happy to see me was not lost on me, nor was it any less gut wrenching when his mother came out to meet me. She seemed so delighted in the simple fact that a local boy had stopped to see her son. My gut told me to flee. "He wasn't that bad of a guy actually. "
 "Just pedal your ass down to the pond, tell the guys that Mitch wasn't around..."
  I couldn't. So I had to invent ways to hate him. I said we should go for a bike ride, he had a bike didn't he?  My heart sunk even lower in my chest when I saw he had a brand new GT Pro Performer, hot pink like mine. Even if it was flattery, I turned it into hate. When we went into his room, I saw his toys...He was 12, I deemed it too old for toys, I turned it into
 
  hate. His mother seemed ecstatic that we were going on a ride. The woods were right off of the end of his street. That was convenient, those woods were where the bad kids hung. Had his family not been new to the neighborhood, they might have known.
  I almost had to physically restrain his little sister from riding along with us. Pity the poor parent that doesn't know what mischief 12 year old boys are apt to get up to. Marijuana is almost a god send.
  I pedaled fast in front of him, half hoping he might get lost or call it quits before we got down to the clearing. Mitch, damn him, was right on my tail, just like I was on the tail lights of that girl. The night that brought Mitch Bruser back into my life.

  We got to the pond & there was no grand beat in. My friends they were there, but they weren't jumping in. This one was for me, to test my mettle & to prove my allegiance. It wasn't enough anymore that I made the good graffiti slogans. I had to prove I wasn't a pussy. To prove this fact, I had to lead this lonely boy to a clearing by a sewage backup  that we called a pond in the middle of the woods. They circled us like hyenas & poked & pushed us at one another. To me it felt like a long time, but knowing myself a bit better these days, I know I don't hesitate too long. I reached out with a 5th grade fist & laid one right on Mitch's nose, at the bridge of his glasses. I shot another to the side of his nose where the snot was running from his crying. I felt like an asshole, so I used his tears as a reason to hate him, & I hit him again. Then another, all in the face. The look of disbelief through his broken glasses enough to make me cry... That not being an option, I punched him again.  He never tried to block a single punch, as the tears streamed out from behind his broken frames, playing connect the dots with the freckles on his face. He just stared back at me with a look of betrayal I never understood until much later in my life

  Until he was slamming that iron door shut on me. Locking me in with all the rapists, & killers, & thieves. Exactly where he thought I belonged.
  As the door was slamming, I wanted to shout.
"Hey, Mitch...C'mon, it's only a DUI...It aint like you think."
 I wanted mercy. I wanted to have a human bond, here, lifetimes later. Where he has become a cop instead of one of the "bad kids", & me, probably the bad kid that stoked this desire in him to begin with.
 I looked around the new holding cell I was in. The walls were gray instead of yellow. No more swastikas, thank God, & at least there was a toilet. The inmates where all staring at me. I had been their entertainment for unknown hours. I was just locked up by the kid I beat up years ago. I was already homeless & now my truck was gone. Whenever I got out of this place, my job was sure to be gone also...
I sat down on the bench as all of my fellow inmates scooted over to give my skinny frame a wide berth.
 I sunk my head into my hands & I thought about her.

Cleaner bathroom floors.

 Scene 1, Act 1

 (Production notes) We open upon a cluttered bedroom, there are clothes and shoes flung haphazardly around the room. The afternoon sunlight glares in through the Venetian blinds and catches the amber reflection of several bottles of beer in various states of consumption, some have cigarette butts floating in them. We focus in on a boy and a girl both undressed under a sheet on the bed. The boy is sitting up and smoking a cigarette, the girl begins to stir and opens her eyes, seeing the beer bottles and a few condom wrappers on the bedside table.

Michael: Hey. You're awake. You want some water? A cigarette?
Veronica: ...I don't smoke.
Narrator: Michael eyes all of the lip stick ringed cigarette butts overflowing from the ashtray before giving a slight shrug. Veronica is still eyeing the condom wrappers.
Veronica: Did we?
Michael: The way I remember it, yes. Quite a bit.
Veronica: Oh shit! I don't remember a thing. How?
Michael: The usual ways Veronica, you started by pulling my..."
Veronica: That's not what I meant asshole, I mean how did it happen? I remember we were all at the Redwood, did we leave together?
Michael: Of course we left together.
Veronica: Obviously, what I mean is...Did everyone see us leave together?
Michael: V. You've really got to start saying what you mean the first time around. We all left at the same time baby doll. Yes they saw us leave together. They also all saw us kissing outside when we were smoking. You were a smoker last night.
Veronica: Damn, damn, damn....I was hoping that part didn't really happen.
Michael: Nope, you definitely were smoking all of my cigarettes.

Crossley-02

Veronica: The kissing asshole. You know exactly what I meant that time.
Michael: Ahh, so you do remember then... I knew it!
Narrator: Michael does a little victory wiggle under the sheets. Veronica glares at him and it takes all of the strength she can muster. How this asshole has so much energy while she's here feeling so hungover is beyond her. It only makes her more furious. If only she had the energy to smack him in that smug little smile...
Veronica: You're sitting there doing a little victory dance like you've won something. For the life of me I don't see how taking advantage of an intoxicated girl is anything to be so damned elated about. You're like a little..."
Michael: I didn't take advantage of you....You..."
Veronica: I know, I know....But all of our coworkers saw us Michael. This complicates things a bit here.
Michael: We're in the service industry V; Restaurant workers are expected to drink too much and sleep with each other, it's the only perk of the profession."
Narrator: Veronica fluffs a pillow and props herself up next to Michael. She leans her head on his shoulder more out of a physical need to be held up rather than tenderness, and takes the cigarette from his hand to inhale some herself.
Veronica: You know this raises some problems, I'm gonna have to quit. There is absolutely no way I can show my face in there again. What time is it anyway? Jesus Christ I have to be there in an hour!"
Michael: What? Because of Chef? Everyone knew that wasn't gonna last, this aint no reason to be quitting a job, especially in this economy."
Veronica: Jesus, I hate it when people say that "in this economy" bullshit."


Crossley-03

Michael: I know, so do I... Can't believe I just uttered it myself. Look, I can handle Chef, he aint gonna be mad at me. Shit, do you know how many girls at that place that he has..."
Veronica: Fuck Chef!
Michael: You did!
Veronica: I'm not worried about Chef, I'm worried about my girlfriend.
Michael: V, your friends hook up with dudes all of the time, they're not gonna judge you over sleeping with me. Shit, they all wish they could sleep with me.
Veronica: Do you really not know? Are you seriously that aloof? I'm gay Michael.
Michael: Yeah you are.
Veronica: I'm serious. After that whole Chef thing fell apart I was kind of a wreck. The whole deal about not being able to separate my work life from my private life like all you fucking cooks like brag about all of the time. It was too much for me to go into work everyday, see him there joking with all of you assholes behind the line. Talking about all of the other waitresses he wanted to fuck. It broke my fucking heart Michael... Wrenched it! And it's my job, I have to deal with him. I have to see him in his element. He's a walking sexual harassment suit, that mother fu..."
Michael: Yo, we don't joke about that. The kitchen is no place for hurt feelings, there's a different code of ethics. You don't threaten lawsuits on..."
Veronica: Save me that shit alright? You guys are a bunch of pussies, trying to overcompensate for your lack of balls to join the real military, so you created a proxy one to cock strut back and forth around in like it was a parade grounds. Gimme a cigarette will ya?"



Crossley-04

Narrator: To grab his pack of cigarettes, Michael has to reach over Veronicas shoulder to the bedside table. As he is reaching, he accidentally knocks the sheet that was draped over her right breast off. Noticing this slight faux paux, he starts to get an erection in spite of himself. Veronica notices this also as it sticks up from underneath the thin sheet at such an obscene angle.
Veronica: As I was saying, I'm gay.
Michael: Or bi.
Veronica: Whatever. Sexuality is such a confusing thing. It's really hard to articulate with my head reeling in hangover like this. When I was growing up throughout my adolescence whatever...I was always with girls, I didn't even technically lose my virginity until I was 20. I saw a movie, fell in love with John Cusack, started dating boys.
Michael: Wait a minute, you mean  Joan Cusack?
Veronica: JOHN Cusack asshole. Or, Lloyd Dobbler anyway. That movie Say Anything. Even the title alone, to this day....Say... anything... It brings to mind this romantic ideal of love. This true romance...
Michael: Now that was a bad ass movie, True Romance! I love Gary Oldmans white pimp Drexel with that whole "white boy day" thing.
Veronica: Will you just listen? I wasn't having love affairs like the ones I saw in movies with the girls I was dating. My whole life I always fought to be so different, yet in some of these movies, the romance, which is such a banal thing really, seemed so tangible. I figured I chose the wrong path, started seeing boys. It was equally as disappointing, but it wasn't as taboo to come out and complain that you can't meet a Lloyd Dobbler when you're talking to other girls about boys. If I had said that about the girls I was dating....Well, straight girls would probably just point out the obvious. But there's something so re-affirming about about straight girls, 

Crossley-05
that

whole "just get out & go find him" attitude that made it seem like it was possible. So I tried it. I tried it for years. I was "re-affirmed" by the best straight girl posse I could ever align myself with. But it didn't work. Ultimately it led to Chef, Chef left, and I started dating girls again. I can't believe you haven't heard about it in our little rumor mill restaurant.
Michael: When you waitresses want a secret kept, that's where it usually stays.
Veronica: Look, I don't black out. I remember everything about last night. Alright?
Michael: Everything?
Veronica: There was this point last night, when we were at the Redwood, and everyone was laughing and talking and drinking. You were talking to Johnny and R.J. about guns with the same passion that Lloyd Dobbler had for kickboxing when he was with his friends drinking behind the 7-11. You had this vulnerable look on your face, I never get to see that. I started remembering what I liked about boys. One thing led to another....
Michael: And now I'm expected to stand with a ghetto blaster above my head outside of your window blasting a Peter Cetera song?"
Veronica: Motherfucker, you'd better not come anywhere near my window with any kind of blaster!"
Michael: Ah, I hate Peter Cetera.
Veronica: I know...I'm safe with you.
Narrator: Michael, realizing that Veronica is definitely not in the mood for any morning "loving" goes into the bathroom to attempt taking a leak with an erection. Veronica, realizing that she is indeed safe, begins to collect her scattered clothing from the floor.

Reunion

The French Letters have the opulent opportunity to be the most hated band in Seattle. We might all be too smart for our own good sometimes. Maybe it's the melding of actual writers & real musicians, but something happens.
It might be a need to overcompensate, but the truth is I don't care what is is, as long as it is.

I know I'm jumping ahead here, but it's my diary so I can do what the fuck I want here, thats the appeal.

  Luke has been out of town for the past couple of weeks, we haven't had a real practice & our big debutante ball is coming up quick. We walk in the studio doing our usual shit-talk, commenting on people ad's that they place in the hallways, mocking the sounds of other bands that we hear practicing through their thin doors. To an outsider, it might sound like we're all a bunch of intolerant bastards, but we know that when we meet these bands outside on their cigarette breaks we can't sum up what we do in a cute little sentence like their band can. Hell, we can't even agree on what our influences are. In a way, we have to overcompensate, not for lack of talent, but for lack of definition.
 There's a new band in the studio across the hall. They emulate Pearl Jam, and not the good parts(by which I mean Green River, Mother Love Bone) We hear the singers drone; we write better lyrics for their song on the fly, sing them over the PA until we know they hear us.
There's a girl offering to give vocal lessons to untrained lyricists hanging in the hallway. She put her picture on the flyer, and she's actually pretty attractive. Puglisi tears off all of the numbers in a hording rage so noone else can call her, confusing this ad with a dating service.
The last sentence isn't entirely correct. I pulled 1 number so he pulled another. I ending up yanking off 5 more just so I wouldn't lose the current pissing contest.
 Over teriyaki we discuss how we can make an impact at a benefit show for Haiti. Our ideas are legion, all bad.

We also had Miko back tonight,
working as a full unit, we wrote some new songs to finish after our debutante ball. It felt good. It felt like family. The freedom to say anything I feel without upsetting someone in the room is rare for me, I hope the rest of the band feels the same way. Whatever happens in the long run, I hope we can always come back to these Monday nights in our hearts. I hope we can all recognize that we have something cognizant and ethereal. We have a place where we all belong, where we do what feels good and anything outside of the door doesn't really relate to it.
 If the band breaks up, if the band becomes successful... Not the point, these Monday nights are.

Of course I had a few PBR's this evening. Did I mention that they make me speak in a cage behind bars?


Double post on the end of a long day, back to format tomorrow.

My dialogue is as clean as my bathroom floor.

First day of Spring quarter today. Creative writing professor assigned us 2 pages of dialogue on the first day, due tomorrow. I feel like it's a way for her to separate the chaff.  I suck at writing dialogues, i always like to set mise-en scene too much, regardless; here it be

Michael Crossley
English 152-Jeffries
Opening dialogue
04/05/10



"I find it hard to write when I'm not inspired." The boy seated  next to the pretty girl at the bar said. He was a stranger, she noticed him walk in the door of the saloon alone around the time happy hour started. She was seated alone at the bar herself, now it looked as if he sat next to her on purpose. Great, she thought, here comes the line...
 Instead of some awkward pickup, he just sat there in his stool stoically, picking at the little pieces of paper around the edges of his beer label. After a few moments, she started to feel like an asshole for being so presumptuous. Something about the way he sat there made her want to ask him follow up questions to his opening, was he a writer? Like a paid one? The idea stimulated her and she found herself inventing back stories for the boy, before ultimately feeling silly in spite of herself.
 "What do you usually write?" She asked " And what usually inspires you?"
"Obituaries." He replied, not looking up from amber glow of his beer bottle in the fading sunlight. "That's what I usually write."
"Well, I would imagine that's not something that requires an awful lot of inspiration, you just look at the facts and condense them right?"
"I don't want to come across like an obituary will ever be seen as a glowing piece of true literature. But there is a vast difference between a good eulogy and a mere death notice." His hand raising from the bar top, gesturing for another beer, he continued "Sometimes it's the case where you want to leave a fitting tribute, the problem is that I'm writing them for strangers."
 She scanned the boys profile, looking at him truly for the first time since he walked in the door. Well dressed, clean shaven, nice, yet not expensive watch around his left wrist, he wore a sterling silver band on the middle finger of his right hand, the ring finger of his left hand was bare.

Crossley-02

She tried to use these details to fill in the void of questions she had about his character. She was hoping for a James Baldwin or Jerzi Kosinski, not a newspaper man. She had always had a thing for writers, and secretly fantasized about showing up in someones novel someday, thinly disguised with an altered name.
  "So you never did say what usually inspires you to write the obituaries."
 "Oh? I don't need inspiration for the obituaries, I just compile the facts, condense them, like you said."
"But you said..." She started, before he interrupted her to finish
"You asked what I usually write, Obituaries are what I usually write, for money, as a job. What I write for me, as in what my discipline is... Well, that's the short story, non-fiction. That's what I need inspiration to do correctly."
"I see." She said, scolding herself for again coming to judgement so suddenly. "And what do you usually do for inspiration on the stories?"
"I go to a bar, order some drinks, find a strange girl, tell her I write obituaries and see where we end up." He replied, obviously pleased with himself to finally get to his line.
She wanted to scream in frustration, or smack him across his smug little smile. "This works for you? This line where you just lay out all of the cards on the table like that?"
 She felt duped, like it would have been better for him to just walk in and say his line up front, without beating around the bush and laying down all of this back story, just because she was having drinks in the early evening didn't mean that she had all of this time to while away to be wasted like this. "These girls ever go home with you, after a little act like that?" She asked, trying not to sound vehement.
 "Not usually," he said "And that's not the point. The point is when I can't write, I have to get out of my house, out of my head.

Crossley-03

Starting a spontaneous conversation with a stranger gets me back in the mode where I can remember how people actually speak, interact. You performed admirably and I thank you." He placed a twenty dollar bill on the bar top as he rose up out of his stool.
 "For your drinks." He said, brushing past her to the door and into the ever deepening evening. It was almost full dark now, and the neons under the bottles began casting their glow up through all of the multiple colors of glass. A poor mans prism of opulent carnival colors.
 The girl used the twenty to buy another drink as she sat there wondering what the Hell had just happened, and not knowing if she should even be upset or not.

In the Bastard Lounge

I was 19 years old.
I had been travelling around the country for a few years, my friends & I would kind of do a yearly migration all moving in large flocks from one city to another. We'd stay in one place for a couple of months, drink beer & do drugs, collect food stamps, government assistance, spare change. Then we'd move on to the next closest city where we knew someone, or knew where someone might be. We were alot like the lice that lived on us back then, just in it for the free ride and the fresh blood.  It was early summer & we were in Cincinnati; this was unusual because summer mostly meant New York or Minneapolis, cities too cold for the houseless during the colder months. We had descended on the one lonely girl with a job & an apartment that found us charming, which was our usual M.O. and spent our days panhandling & drinking cheap 40's of malt liquor. Writing on walls with fat black magic markers, the angry slogans which kept us fueled as much as the booze.
  The weather was nice and the kids were out, seeing our crew and figuring on a good time, our party always turned into a larger party until all of the bars on Vine St. would be nearly empty as everyone in the city it seemed was drinking at this girls house. The girls name was Darci, and while it was nice to have visitors and feel all popular, Darci was beginning to feel betrayed. I forget who it was that we sent to sleep with her, but that's how we usually did it. Get one of the cool guys to fuck the girl, so his friends could have a place to stay.
 All I know is that it wasn't me, I was from Cincinnati & knew Darci from grade school, I feigned standards.
Her apartment was directly behind a club called Top Cats, there was a metal fire escape that led up to the roof, because there was so much commotion in the club, they never heard us climb up there drunk every night to share hidden 40's or to discreetly make out with some young punker chick.
  Darci threw all of us out one evening, Hell, I can't blame her, she had to have figured out the scam by now. And all of the dreadlocked figures reeking of beer sweats and body odor sleeping on pizza box beds around her tiny apartment had to piss her off, she had a job after all.

 Having nowhere to go, but it being a nice night and all, we started hauling lumber and loose boards up to the roof of the club behind Darci's place. We had pallets, cardboard boxes, milk crates, pizza box mattresses, street signs, someone even came up with a door from somewhere.  We spent a few hours fashioning all of this refuse into some sort of haphazard refuge on the roof of the bar. The sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat blared from the club below our feet, they never heard us. When we were finished we stepped back to look at our creation, a vision of modern architecture, a Frank Lloyd Wright fever dream, a Palace Flophouse someone instantly dubbed "The Bastard Lounge".

 It stood as our home and our symbol of solidarity for about 2 weeks, until some asshole (Big Jim I think) got kicked out of the bar at Top Cats below and said "Well Hell, I'll just go to the bar on the roof! Much more fun up there anyway!"

So it was Johnny Naffah & I; Royal Brougham I still think we were calling the project. We had Luke Steitz interested in playing the drums, and he brought in his friend Mike Puglisi who we initially slated for bass. I had been kicking around using the name Bastard Lounge for a project for a while. I had flyers made up for the first show of a band that had self destructed before their debut performance using that name, and I was still partial to it. A kind of reverence to my nostalgia of that era, yet still descriptive of the spoken word thing. When we all met up at the University St. train station to take the bus down to the studio, it was obvious we were a bunch of bastards, so it fit.
 Puglisi, guitar god that he is, was not happy to be playing the bass. Johnny, nice guy that he is, attempted to over compensate, opting out of his solos on a few tracks so the rhythm could take over the sound. We mostly worked on a piece in cadence to Mickey & Sylvia's 1960 hit "Love is Strange". It didn't get nailed down that evening, listening to the session now, there's something missing from the cohesiveness of our sound.
What does come through is the raw, the visceral, I'm not about to say it's bad, but it sounds like a garage punk poem band doing do-wop covers. And mister, that don't really fly at my age. I aint punk.

 Writing ones life, you come up with an odd problem. You are only telling what you remember from the story, and things change within the confines of personal perception. How I remember something is not necessarily how it happened. There are moments, phrases, a lilting breeze, a certain song playing, a scent, or how someone pronounces a word that become bookmarks to that moment. When you recall them you recall them from your perspective. Something might have been deciphered differently than it was meant, you reacted in a different way than you would with the clarity of hindsight.  It makes the personal narrative exactly that. There is a redundancy in always saying "this is how I saw it" or "it seemed to me", so you just say it. If a writer worries about getting every detail correct from every perspective, or not upsetting anyone at all, he will never write a word. The responsibility is too large.
 David Carr wrote an interesting memoir. he is a journalist and an ex-coke addict, he went over his past like an investigative journalist, interviewing everyone he knew from his using days. The way he remembered things were never the way they were relayed to him. the book is called "Night of the Gun", and who ends up holding said gun on the night in question ends up as much a surprise to the reader as it is to the author.


Next up.
Introduction to Johnny Naffah, & "we suddenly aint all bastards anymore"

Sex & drugs is what sells books...

        *** The bland disclaimer*** 
                                                                                                                                                                            I wrote the first entry late last night. I awoke today to find that I had 2 subscribers & some 17 people had read the post already. I walked off to work recharged, going over ideas for topics and coming up with concepts. After about an hour of thinking about it, I realized that while this is certainly a viable means to get your work out there, it is also instant & available to anyone at anytime. This speed in publication raises some issues.
  "Where's the sex?" a reader rightly asked. It's certainly been the topic of 95% of my work, and it's not wrong of an audience to expect that from me. There's usually a delay of a year or more between the time a poem is written to the time of it's publication for me. In that year, wounds have had time to heal & the topic seems to become somewhat of a cathartic vehicle at that point. Or a fond reminder.
I would be a fool to relay my current sexual adventures here in real time, she would never sleep with me again.
That being said, this is my dry run at writing some sort of mid-life crisis memoir, and there is no reason I can't pull the poor ladies from my past out from their comfortable resting places to hold them up to the light, contrast & compare, fondle & contextualize.
  I know what sells books dear reader.  Don't worry, it's coming.

3 a.m. on a Thursday night, drinking.

I am not the apologetic sort.
It doesn't seem odd or ostentatious for me to do something like this. Write a blog about writing, or rather the process of writing. The only thing I'm going to apologize in advance for, is the amount of times the letter "I" will undoubtedly show up in these texts. This being a somewhat personal narrative in the "TMI" generation, I think it's probably part & parcel.
Let me get you up to speed. I want to write a book. A "memoir"; whatever that is when your life isn't over yet.
I need some kind of structure to keep me writing, I'm poor with discipline. I also need some place to brainstorm, start seeding some new ideas. I'm in school, taking writing classes to better my technique, but I still need more structure. I need to learn how to write like I used to before video games & On Demand, before there was always a constant flurry of entertainment available to me. If I can get used to this format, it might be the kind of instant gratification that I'm prone to enjoying. And the practice can't hurt either.
I'm bad with grammar and mechanics. I was kicked out of a high school I paid no attention in anyway. I still read most of the time, I wrote also. I've published a few chapbooks of poetry and used to be a somewhat established "spoken word performer". Over the years, I have let alot of that stuff go.

There are reasons, of which I will surely get into here, just not yet.
Right now this is a bit overwhelming.
How to introduce yourself to yourself, and through that try to figure out which pieces of which history to tell and when.
And then there are the anecdotal issues. When these are relevant and when they should remain unsaid.

I think I'll start with an anecdote, just because this aint for real yet.
 Five months ago, I started a "spoken word band"-whatever that is. A guy I worked with, but didn't know at all had agreed to do a spoken word set with me at a friends art opening ( there is so much more to this story, but I need to learn to stay on point). His name was Johnny and he played guitar,  I had written some prose in the past. We got together over beers during the hottest week a Seattle summer could offer. Sitting on stools in his cool concrete apartment, so shyly we both went over our separate parts. Him playing some chords on his acoustic guitar. Me trying to find some old words to fit a new mood. Six beers in we had hit a groove and let it reverberate throughout his cavernous empty flat, strumming and chanting along loud enough now so the neighbors could hear. I hadn't read poetry aloud in quite some time, I had given it up in fact, yet after two hours of our first rehearsal, we hit Fifteenth Street on the prowl for drinks and girls. We were happy with our results to say the least, and we wanted the whole goddamned world to know.
Bravado aside, we had only rehearsed once and our debut show was the next week. I think we both wanted a more lasting memento of the event. I called my friend Luke who is a well known lyricist in the underground circuit; I mean, the guy had a reality show filmed around him battling strangers under the duress of constant chronic impingement. He had a studio he called the Stupid Factory in the old Rainier brewery. I asked him if he would record Johnny & I, you know, just for posterity. Again after six or so beers this groove started kicking in. When Luke asked to sit in behind the drums I initially thought he was just being polite(or drunk)
but it was such a good time it was undeniable to everyone present.
 There is audio evidence of the magic of that evening. Of course the drums weren't mic'd and not everything comes through, but the spark of an idea still remains.  Yeah, Johnny & I's show went off well even though he got laid and I didn't. But it left an indelible mark on all of us, and I think we wanted to see what we could do.

 How do you write a book about your life when your life isn't over?
Where do you begin if you're trying to be economic with words? What is the turn and where should you end?
I always figured a memoir should be like The Rosy Crucifixion, or Tropic of Cancer. the problem is, unlike Henry Miller I have had no great single love affair that I haven't already written out of me. Besides, I'm so damned careful with my heart these days I'm likely to never let myself fall in love again.
So it's obviously not a girl I choose as a catalyst. At least not one that I've met yet. I can't wait around to fall in love when I won't even allow myself the deceit of trust. That being the backbone of any love worth having.
I do trust every single member of my band though, we're a makeshift gang. a pirate crew of different styles and influences and that comes through in almost every single note we play.
So I will trust this and use them as a catalyst for right now.

So, back to the band
(I was saying how I need to stay on topic, now you see what I mean)


Michael Puglisi hates almost everything he can't hold in his hand to test it's tangibility. He seems to have no use for abstracts or quaintness. This made him a no-brainer for the band. The fact that he plays some of the best guitar I've ever heard doesn't even move him.
When you are a poet that doesn't like poetry, having a guy like this in your band is a must. If my head is like a helium filled balloon, then Puglisi is the hand holding onto the end of the string and yanking said balloon down to sidewalk level where he can kick it around. I have respect for this role, even when I know he doesn't mean it. Poets have a tendency to come off like pansies. it's good to have Puglisi around to keep everyone grounded. He can read and write music for any instrument, but he's not going to walk up to you and tell you that, he's just going to come in and do it when it's needs to be done.
Johnny & I were at the bar earlier tonight, someone asked who the "band leader" was, we both said "Puglisi".
Mike knows that he writes poems also, he just writes them on his fretboards instead of paper.

 We brought Mike in on bass the next time we got together. It was about a month after Johnny & I's debut show as Royal Brougham, or Bastard Lounge, don't remember which we settled on.