Back Pain

Back pain is whole body pain. Back pain makes me look like I'm having a bowel movement in the middle of sentences. Back pain makes me stand up in class, in the front row, and lean from side to side, switch my balance back and forth and back again, lean back, clutching just barely not my ass, massage myself in front of people I barely know, lift my shirt and reach down the back of my pants to see if it has just been a fucking knot in my muscle these last few weeks. Back pain first made me sad, then made me angry, and now has me tired. The seat in my car is tired of being re-adjusted. My wife is tired of listening to me moan when I move. My 2 year old son just wants to be loved, why, daddy why have you forsaken me? Why are you laying there on the floor like that? Why don't you pick me up? Let's go to the park, daddy...
Fine. If I can't go to the park, I'm just going to climb on you.

Con-Man

We are not victims. We are perpetrators.

On a lonely night last week, I let a man convince me he needed help. He told me his wife and two year old child were in their car. He showed me his cancerous stomach, and this seemed relevant. He wouldn't shut up. He made me smell his breath, and look at the veins on his arms, and told me how relevant this all was. I walked with him to his hotel and paid for his room. He heaved like an obnoxious man having an asthma attack. He told me how amazing I was. I did not feel good. I wished he would shut the fuck up and just let me get back to being lonely.

He asked me for one more favor, and it was the first strike of realization. He asked if I would get him some food, you know, for his family. It took the wind out of me. I told him I had to pass. He apologized. I asked him for a favor- Let me take his picture. He looked suspicious. I thought- fuck you.

I kept my hand on my camera-bag. He asked to see it. I stepped back from him and lifted it out of it's case. I put it back in a very short time. I was still trying to operate as if he were not a lying creep. He told me he was superstitious about having his picture taken. He was speaking more quickly by the second. He told me he didn't know what I would do with the pictures. I thought- how dare you you pathetic, fucking pathetic crook?

I spent the next morning talking with the hotel manager. He said the man had tried to get another night at the hotel on the same credit card. I told the manager that if he could not eject the man by check-out time, I would have the police out there to make sure it happened.

I am not a victim. I walked up to the counter with my feet. I handed the incredulous Indian gentleman my credit card, with my hand. I signed the receipt with my pen. I went home and explained to my wife that I had paid for a criminal to stay the night in a hotel. This did not go over well. I don't imagine there is anything ridiculous about that.

I am a perpetrator. I am an accomplice. I feel guilty about this. I don't want to dupe anybody else out of their hard-earned money. I don't want to take any more money from my children or my wife, only to hand it over to strangers, to have them do with it as they will. I am a con-man in my own house. I am glad that I have at least warned my wife.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

There is a group of workmen just down the hall from my desk, demolishing office walls. Something that they are doing is a thudding, thump, thump, thump. Every time that reverberation hits my body I clench, time stops for an eighth of a second, my heart like a fist.

My daughter has a new bed, with soft nets, and no longer has rails to hit her head against, a thudding, thump... thump... thump; I used to feel it in my feet when I was upstairs with my headphones on, and would realize that I had been clenching, unaware, for some time now. My body knew, had heard through these soft reverberations, and was tightening like a knot. I realize then with my mind and run down, and she is crying in bed, rocking, thudding, her soft head making a hard noise on the railing. I feel like a shit-head for not spending every waking hour sitting here in her room, cradling her head so she can rock in bed, back and forth... it is something that she appears to enjoy.

My daughter has a new bed, and I can sit, peaceful, in the office, as long as my son's feet are not padding, thump thump thump, against his hard-wood floor.

In my office I can feel it, pulsing through my feet, heart like a fist, forcing myself to not stand and run.

Somewhere down the hall, my daughter is assisting work-men, breaking through walls with the back of her head.

Gay Porn

Caution: The following porn is very graphic in nature, and should not be read out loud to humans younger than 18. Instead, show them a violent film in which only very bad people die. This way, our children will grow up with a clear picture about who and who does not deserve to die. This prepares them for future decisions like, should I shoot this person while they are running away from me. A good film example of this would be... say... Bambi. Let your kids go watch Bambi, while you read this Gay porn I have written. Here we go:

I was sitting on the other side of the couch. Calvin was sitting on the other side,
the side I wasn't sitting on. We were very drunk. This story is about to get very sexual.

When Calvin started to undress, I did too. I was happy to see that he was as scrawny
and pale as I, but his nipple hair was, to me, horrifying. It dug in like the terrible legs
of an insect. I wanted to help him, to shave it off, but the thought of Calvin's bleeding
nipples made me feel sick. This story is about to get very sexual. I looked at Calvin's pale,
dry lips and thought about whether they would be rough, if he were to run them, closed,
down my back. Would there be white scratch marks when he scraped my back with those lips?
Would I like it?

When Calvin asked if I wanted to touch penises with him, I said yes. It was weird. Our small,
limp penises kissed like monkeys with no eyes or bones in their faces. I don't know how Calvin
felt about this.

When Calvin asked if I wanted to arm-pit with him, I said "what is that?"

A few minutes later, we were interlocking arm-pits. Calvin's face was really intense.
I think he really liked this. I felt like he was sweating alot more than I was, and hoped it didn't make him feel insecure.

When a pocket of air made a farting noise between us I was done.

I dressed quickly. "Thanks, man. That was really good."
I don't think I should drink with Calvin anymore.

My son's eyeball

I have a consistant history of horrible dreams about my children-- accidentally hurting them, watching myself purposefully hurt them, generally harming them, etc...

In my dream last night, the yoga instructor was super pissed off at me. I was always late to yoga. She closely resembled the demonic succubus cow-head lady from True Blood (great series). She was talking down to me. She wanted me to sit in the corner and recite something embarrassing in front of the whole class. I was pissed off. I screamed at her. It wasn't even my fault I was late this time. I had stopped at the outdoor coffee shop halfway up the hill, on the way up to the ruins where yoga class was held. The clock at the outdoor coffee shop said it was only 6:30. Yoga didn't start until 7:30. I don't know if it was morning or night. It wasn't my fault. Two clocks had said it was 6:30, although I did rush up the hill really early (according to the two clocks) because I had a feeling they were wrong. Why did I think that, I wonder.

I was really pissed off. I don't remember much between me screaming at the yoga instructor and me holding my son. I tripped while holding him and lost him. I was already pissed off for being such a f###-up. I remember being terrified about what people would think about me as I watched my son roll off the cliff. He slid down the mountain side. I dove after him, not sure what the plan was. I slid down the hill, missed him. Somehow, he came to a stop on the steep hill-face. I slid past him, trying to grab him, but missed. I groped at vines about 30 feet below him, stopping myself, saving myself. I clambered up. I couldn't get to him. For some reason, I think he may have gotten to safety (slid down or something), but he had lost an eyeball. I had to get it for him. I was pathetic, slipping and sliding on the muddy face of this cliff. I don't remember how this turned out.

* * *

Somehow I was in a blocked off city. Nobody escaped, nobody got in. Some people had huge guns. We were trying to survive. I shot some people in the face. They laughed at me. How impotent I felt. I think I may have spoken to one of them...

The first few words of a song I may never finish...

I think the title or chorus of this song is:

That which doesn't kill you just might break you down

Verse:

let's just assume that pregnancy and birth are perfect,
That condom-less pill-less sex was worth it,
Nobody has ever been born evil,
And all babies are created equal.

The primary question of the song is: If babies can be born with, oh I don't know, Rett Syndrome, or be born Sociopaths, we all stand a chance of being randomly screwed by chance. But let's pretend this is not the case. It gives us the opportunity to blame people, rather than nature (or God, that stupid bastard): blame the parents. Blame the schools. Blame the priests. Blame video games. Blame voodoo, or whatever happens to have been there for the fourteen years before the parents noticed their sweet boy catching animals on fire. It's a terrifying thought to think that my son (I have one) might just grow up to be what people like to call evil. How dare you judge my two year old, when he has just killed, when he has just raped, when he has just led hundreds of thousands to kill and rape for him; but not for him. No. For God and country of course.

I am vulnerable. I am weak. I am a mere person in the face of this torrential, massive wave of influence. My son is more so. He is fine, dry sand in a hurricane. I am desperately trying to hold on, clutching dry sand to my chest, with the aid of my many fingered wife, but the gaps in my fingers are so big. I can watch specks of him fly away, no longer in my control, no longer in his.

What do you tell a parent who's teenager is in Juvenile hall? When you are not facing them, you say: "Shame on you, you should have beaten them more", or "You should have beaten them less". When you are facing them, you say: "Do not fret, I know another boy who..." or "But he's such a sweet kid..." or "He'll grow out of it". I grew up with absolute surety that parents were responsible, and parents were to blame. Why do absolutist talking heads get to tell us how this is? Why did I grow up thinking that parents were responsible, and yet feel sorry for them that I did not turn out a certain way? Why do I feel like I controlled my own destiny when I was but a wee lad? Just because I'm driving the car does not mean that whatever comes flying through the windshield, killing the passengers, or killing me, or sending us all straight to hell, is my fault. Just because you are older does not mean you can tame this beast: This Chaos.


The funny thing: if my son grows up to be a mass murderer, or a huge prick, I expect to blame nobody but myself, and it will be devastating.