47 Heroin, Heroin, It's All Gone...

2005-04-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

Watch Russian soldiers burn kilo after kilo of the stuff.

Fuck Shiavo

2005-03-31T17:01:00.000-08:00

But maybe this is the most coherent essay about the whole deal.

Thoughts

2005-03-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

It strikes me that I'm a fairly typical American pseudo-intellectual slacker. There's not much unique here. This doesn't really bother me; but I couldn't tell you why. But for now my own writing is boring me. This blog may become more a link database for all the reading I've been doing - and I've been spending hours a day reading lately. On the web and off.

So yeah. Today's link is Dear Progressive Bloggers. A brief excerpt:

You’re doing it again. You’re not seeing what is really going on. You are missing the bigger picture. You are looking at trees and missing the forest. Do you really, after all this time and all these defeats, think the Right is stupid?

You mock the Republicans for blatantly acting politically, and ignore that they ARE ACTING POLITICALLY. In other words, they’re acting in the way that will in the long term gain them more support for their candidates and issues.

You mock their politicians for flocking to this because of a Republican talking points memo telling them this will gain them a political advantage, yet you do not see that THIS WILL GAIN THEM POLITICAL ADVANTAGE.

Peace is a Target Too

2005-03-20T18:10:00.000-08:00

So I guess I'm writing again. Disregard my last post. Actually, I'm deleting it.

My picture's in the paper today, Racheal and I holding candles and anti-war signs. Yeterday 500 people marched through our little Lancaster downtown, on the second anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Photographers took pictures all day and we ended up in print. Funny, I look stoned and bearded and rather Jewish. Racheal's glowing next to me, singing some peace song I didn't know the words to.

I find myself entirely participating in projects I don't believe in. I'm at a Presbyterian church every Sunday, despite being excommunicated and roundly living in sin. I end up being in the newspaper for a peace protest, despite the fact I really don't side with them. War is fucked up, but it's kind of inevitable. God created it and right now he's just more powerful than us. Holding candles for an hour outside the county courthouse is not going to save anyone in Iraq.

But I do it anyway, actions belying thoughts. What the fuck is this?

Jesus. This girl is right.

Frank Black and the Catholics

2005-01-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

I could not pray
I felt so dog gone
Couldn't get no witness but I did not know
Then a voice in a whisper said you've got to carry it on
And the news is gonna break
The news is gonna break
The news is gonna break that I am here

Talking

2005-01-26T05:05:00.000-08:00

I rambled, slightly drunk, over dinner with my mother last night about life here. I find myself quiet these days, drinking or smoking pot instead of talking about anything bothering me. Maybe this is bad, but damnit I'm sick of sounding so melodramatic and neurotic anytime I speak (or write) my thoughts. I don't even tell any of the stories I have about heroin and Seattle - maybe they never happened. When I talk about them it starts to feel like I'm telling someone else's stories. Why do I feel this way?

Smoke enough weed and you don't need to figure it out. Go to sleep and numb yourself in the morning.

Last night - maybe it was the moonshine my boss brought out after work - but last night anyway was the first time I indulged in speaking about my various worries, fears, discomforts, whatever. I might have freaked her out. At least, she just smiled and kind of shrugged and had nothing to say.

Doctor says I'll be alright, but I'm feeling blue.

Ooh...

2005-01-25T05:13:00.000-08:00

Look what I found.

Strung Out Again

2005-01-25T04:55:00.000-08:00

Drugs, Sex, Rock and Roll; but the greatest of these is rock. (Can music save your mortal soul? Misquote scripture enough and it will.)

After you're broke and hung over, after you can't get anyone to fuck you, there's music always waiting for you. There's music for the morning after, music for copping heroin, music for despair and dancing and every kind of drug you can find in rural Pennsylvania.

Which is a lot, incidently.

And so, strung out again, here's the mix CD for the new year:

1. David Bowie - Is There Life on Mars?
2. Stereo Totale - Ex fan des 60ties
3. Sam Cooke - Twisting the Night Away
4. John Lennon - Cold Turkey
5. The Libertines - What Became of the Likely Lads?
6. The Velvet Underground - Stephanie Says
7. The Stranglers - Golden Brown
8. John Lennon - Stand By Me
9. Lou Reed - Dirty Boulevard
10. The Pixies - La La Love You
11. The 13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me
12. John Lennon - God
13. David Bowie - Queen Bitch
14. The Velvet Underground - Oh! Sweet Nuthin'
15. The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon
16. The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You
17. The Pixies - Hey
18. The Beatles - Happiness is a Warm Gun
19. David Bowie - Rock 'N Roll Suicide

Cooking

2005-01-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

Scribbled yesterday on an order ticket:

I've been at work for three hours and I have six left before I can go home. Tonight I'm working another three hours for a catering job. Working like this is exhausting but somehow I'm having fun.

We're the pirates of the modern world, a tattooed and stoned cook once told me. We work 12 hour shifts, we're profane, we get burned and cut and don't care. He might have thumped his chest here but I was too high to remember. Delusions of grandeur aside, he's almost right. There's something badass about cooking, the masculine combination of art, endurance, and high pain thresholds. Stick my hand in the fryer to get the tongs you dropped? Fuck yeah.

I'm overthinking as always. But at least I don't feel like a pussy, telemarketing for my rent money. Wells Fargo, suck my dick.

That was a personal reference.

When it's slow, like now, I write at work. I haven't posted on my blog in so long because I've been scribbling on scraps of paper, working slowly on my book or just random thoughts, and when I get home I'm too stoned to type them into the computer. I sit and listen to music with Racheal, meet friends for coffee, read the same books again and again. Sorry if you keep visiting expecting some new brilliance. It hasn't been priority for a while.

But hey. At least I'm posting now.

The First: Stoned

2005-01-01T06:57:00.000-08:00

I woke up at eight this morning without a hangover. Last night wasn't too crazy, as last nights go. Mostly I sat and wondered if I was better off this December 31st than I was the last one.

But this morning when I stepped outside to smoke it was green and bright, too warm for anything but the lightest jacket. I walked to a park and sat in a wooden ship in a playground... Three levels up in the air. There was no one around and I smoked until it felt like the ship was rocking.

And just now I walked back home thinking stoner thoughts: I watched Army of Darkness last night - I've been on a Bruce Campbell kick since happening upon Bubba Ho-tep. And I thought about how I could never identify with characters like that. They always wanted to get home no matter what the cost. I'd be the one staying there.

Oscar Wilde:

2004-12-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied.

It's Only Teenage Wasteland

2004-12-26T07:01:00.000-08:00

This morning, Baba O'Reilly is my bloody mary. The song for mornings when you've taken in just a bit too much the night before - heroin or vodka or weed or acid - must be carefully chosen. Before now it was Six Different Ways by the Cure. Before that it was Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again by... you'd better know who. Certain songs just put you back together again. Like a cup of coffee will.

Fuck, I'm even wearing my hangover sweater.

Ouch.

2004-12-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

Drug users are just materialists, the book said. They think that happiness is something they can buy.

Rock Star Josh

2004-12-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

Josh was the guy, shirt too tight and pants too loose, blonde hair anime-perfect, that always had me envious for the sole reason that girls looked at him before they looked at me. And for his guitar playing skills. And marijuana hookups.

We met at the Mercury Cafe and in a week I was in a band with him:

That's Justin on the left, Josh in the middle, and me on the right. We played a few concerts and fell apart when Josh got arrested and I had to sell my bass guitar to pay rent. And buy pot.

We hung out all summer, discovering cough medicine and mushrooms and mescaline, then moved into the same house in the fall. He dated my roommate and I dated the manager of the coffee shop I worked at. We smoked pot and drank PBR together. We did each other's hair and makeup. Yes, really. Traded clothes and drugs and music and walked through the city to pawn whatever we could for food or - drugs. Of course.

I should tell you - Josh is just fucking cool. We called him Rock Star Josh because there were too many Joshes in the circle, and fuck yeah. He didn't even notice all the girls that followed him around. We would sit, tripping maybe, in the park and he would play guitar and I would write... And I'd look up and there would be a small crowd inching closer to where we sat to hear.

I haven't seen him for eight months and tonight I find his new phone number and call him. He's in Coretta Scott now, a band from Spokane that's about to tour up and down the coast for two months. In one of their pictures he's wearing my shoes, a pair I let him borrow once and never got back. It's a little wierd. And makes me a little homesick.

Fuck being homesick for Spokane. But tonight I feel like hanging out with him at the Merq again.

Jesus, I'm so melodramatic tonight.

Arizona Again

2004-12-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

The last post was horribly written. I see it now and - fuck. I'm drunker now. I wrote a few letters and got a few things off my mind. I'm listening to Some Velvet Morning. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Let's try this again. Let's get visual.

This is me: stepping out of my van. It's a grey 80s VW. I pull off a battered hat and push my hair back. The hat's on again and I walk a few feet, cowboy boot feet, off of the road. This looks like a good place.

Racheal steps out then, and she's wearing a skirt and tank top. Maybe there's a hat covering her own hair. I think she's still be wearing sandals. (Kind of hippy, but don't let her know I said that.)

The mescaline must be kicking in. There are tracers following my cigarette as I swing my hand out over the desert. "This is just fucking right."

And she'd say Yeah and we'd kiss and start walking. Gemini walks. Never in a straight line even if we were sober and fucking hell we definitely aren't.

Once on mescaline I saw through my hand. This was on Capitol Hill in Seattle. The desert brings more fascinating visions. Right now, I'm playing a flute and she's strumming on her guitar. We're out of tune but it sounds vaguely eastern. Or we're just fucked up. Right now, we're following a man on a horse into a cave. Or maybe that was Jim Morrison. Tracers again. Is that cactus real? Is that a mouth near the top, eyes? Did it turn to watch us?

Forty years of wandering the desert later and my hair is grey and my face craggy like Johnny Cash and we know peyote like shamans and we'll never go to a city again.

I don't know if this is any better. Lee Hazlewood has finished and now Primal Scream is singing the same song. Some velvet morning when I'm straight, I'm gonna open up your gate.

Arizona

2004-12-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

"I want to be old. Right now."

This time, it was Ryan Adams. Whiskeytown actually. We were supposed to leave but I didn't feel like looking for my shirt. Her cheek was on my chest and we were trying to catch our breaths. He sang: "When I see the moon, I hear the sound of the strip just calling my name."

"I want to be old with long grey hair and cowboy boots and a white shirt. Bill in Kill Bill or Johnny Cash or someone in between." This is me speaking. Wishing I weren't just a kid with shaggy hair and a slightly bulging stomach. How does one get a craggy face, anyway?

"I can see it," she said.

I want to live in Arizona next. I want to live in the desert and work in a diner and sleep in a van. Or maybe a trailer. Gain the right to wear cowboy boots. Eat peyote in the desert.

Every once in a while a new state calls my name. It will be a year before I can go, but fuck it I'll go. I've never lived in the desert.

Gargh.

2004-12-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

Read this and then this and then laugh and then kill yourself.

Class? What Class?

2004-12-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe the biggest mistake we made with heroin was: we lost what class we had. "Street freak chic," Jarrott said, "that's what we are. We do any drug that comes along but we do it with class."

But it's hard to be classy while spare changing to buy heroin and crack. While trying to decide which phrase sounds best: "Change for a hungry vegan?" or "Change for a burger and a shake?" While licking up the heroin spilled on the kitchen sink. While sticking a dull needle into your arm again and again to find a vein because you couldn't get to the needle exchange in time.

Class and need just don't go together I guess. And maybe that's my problem with dope - I don't like to need it. I like it to be on my own terms. Like God or Love or anything else in my life. My own terms. Fuck you, world.

Jesus, did I just capitalize Love?

These days I'd rather go without than look like a junkie. I guess I learned that one a little late. These days it's better just to go to bed early. Or write. Or chain smoke on the porch, watching neighbors put up their christmas lights.

Or sit in the dark and listen to the mix CD Racheal made me. Maybe call her up. Maybe talk or get her to run down to my house and listen to it with me.

There's opium in town. And acid, in a couple of days. I'll probably buy them, sure. But fuck needing drugs. Fuck that noise, as the man said. I'm sick of spanging for a high. Let it come to me.

Writing

2004-12-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to write a book, and hell I've tried time and again. My first book - I still have it - I wrote at age 4 and it began: There was a man. He lived in a tent.

There were even illustrations.

For a long time, I've felt burnt out. I used to write for Chasing Hats, Relevant Magazine, Paste Magazine, and random others fairly frequently. For a year I averaged 2-3 articles a week. Now, for a year, I haven't published anything. Maybe this is the heroin and speed and pot. Who knows.

But now, on no particular day, I've started again. This reminds me of Moulin Rouge... One day you just sit down and start to write. There are cigarettes and coffee nearby, maybe, or vodka. There's a typewriter or notebook or keyboard. Imagine there's no blank page. What will it say?

Yesterday I started my book. Maybe this time I'll have the determination to finish it. I'm hopeful. Pennsylvania and family and Racheal and my job - all these things are coming together and I can just let life ride for a little while and not have to worry about my next meal. I can write like I did before.

How long does it take to write a book, I wonder?

Mormon Acid

2004-12-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

I was driving through Utah last night. In my Golf, the red one with the sunroof, the one that I haven't seen since it died last Halloween. I'm assuming it was impounded and sold. But last night, I was driving it alone in the desert.

For some unknown reason, I had to stop at a Home Depot. For some reason, I needed wallpaper with Disney characters on it. Something tells me it was for Emily, for her kid Logan's room maybe, but my memory is blurry now that it's daytime.

Outside the store, there was a cute girl, blonde, working. She didn't notice me, but as I got inside, a black-haired coworker of hers did. My quest for Disney wallpaper was forgotten and we sat in one of the aisles, flirting, side by side, shoulders touching.

The blonde from outside joined us, sipping from a styrofoam cup of tea. I forget what we talked about - why don't I ever remember these conversations? - but soon I was holding the cup of tea and she was saying there was acid in it and I was drinking it...

Everything begins to fall apart here. The acid kicked in. Faces began to distort. We went into the back of the store - let us show you something, they said - and we went into a huge door and down a huge flight of stairs and we were in a warm-colored library with huge bookshelves, full of Mormon records and ancient rare books.

So much reading, I thought, and I would have loved to be there for ages. But something - even in your dreams you have intuition - told me to get out of there. I've gotta hit the road again, I said, and just left.

You know the morning after a trip, after mushrooms or acid? You know that slowness of movement, the mental clarity, the way the morning is just so fucking beautiful and you feel refreshed and refocused? That's the way I've been feeling all day.

Lennon

2004-11-30T06:29:00.000-08:00

God is a concept
By which we can measure
Our pain
I'll say it again
God is a concept
By which we can measure
Our pain

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in bible
I don't believe in tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in yoga
I don't believe in kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles

I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality

The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday
I was dreamweaver
But now I'm reborn
I was the walrus
But now I'm John
And so dear friends
You just have to carry on
The dream is over

The Uptown Cafe

2004-11-29T16:47:00.000-08:00

Walking down the street, smoking, I found a small cafe with a Help Wanted sign - just a few blocks from my house. I walked in and filled out the application, chatted with the manager. I can be charming when I want to; the next day I had the job.

I like this work, cooking breakfast for sundry locals. My omelettes get more and more attractive. My eggs flip more and more easily. My meals at home get more and more elaborate.

Funny, I can't claim to be a helpless batchelor with only Noodle Ramen in his cupboard. These days I'm buying things like basil pesto from the grocery store. These days I'm cooking for my family instead of the other way around.

By next month I'll have enough money for my own apartment again. I've been (sorta) homeless for eight months now. I'd like to live by myself instead of on people's couches. I'd like to have a regular bar to go to.

I'd like to spend an hour or so a night writing instead of attempting to be social. I'd like to take mushrooms alone once in a while and not worry about being disturbed.

Maybe I'll get all fancy and get a phone again. Maybe I'll just listen to John Lennon every night instead. Maybe I'll never see Seattle again. Right now, that sounds nice.

Foiled

2004-11-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

I logged on to blogger planning to post the lyrics to Lou Reed's "Who Am I?" but... but... it just doesn't look as good when he's not singing it. The lyrics actually aren't that impressive by themselves.

But go ahead and listen to it if you can find it. You'll like it.

Camera Obscura

2004-11-24T06:14:00.000-08:00

This is just fucking amazing.

Camel Wides

2004-11-23T17:42:00.000-08:00

There's a cross shape burned on my arm right now, burned on with cigarettes in a Philadelphia bathroom last night.

Have you ever done this? Ever thought about how interesting scars look on human skin?

Ever been entranced by the scar line under Harrison Ford's chin?

I used to tell myself as I pressed a cigarette into my arm, this is pleasure. This is pleasure. Trying to recondition my mind. It never ended up working. These days I like the intensity of the burn, the initial sharpness, the dull ache shortly after.

She wasted vodka by pouring it on my arm as soon as she saw what I was doing.

There are six burns. The first four, running straight down, they're all sunken in, the skin melted. The outer two, the arm of the cross, they're both blistering. I learned not to pop the blisters last time I did this; the infection isn't worth dealing with.

Funny: Dan preferred to scar his arm with a red-hot safety pin or a razorblade, but I always thought burning was more fun.

I'm too sober to write a decent post. I have no cigarettes left.

Praying

2004-11-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

God: Maybe this is innapropriate to write on a blog. But I'm saying the words aloud as I write. And you know, if you're real, that I think best when I write my thoughts down.

I know I said I was an atheist, time and again, even in the last post. But tonight I can't deny you're there. I just came from sitting and meditating in a graveyard, again. Why is it that I feel closest to you there? Why is it that I'm the most peaceful there?

I want the peace you claim to offer. I really fucking want it. I really fucking want a rest.

Tonight I want to give myself over to you, but I'm scared. Scared of the people who follow you, mostly. Scared of their self-righteousness because it's so, so obvious they don't believe how fucked up they are. How fucked up they say they are.

Will someone please tell me the story of sinners ransomed from the fall? I still have never seen you and some days I don't love you at all...

I'm listening to Pedro the Lion right now, and it's my story right here. God: listen.

I could hear the church bells ringing
They pealed aloud your praise
The members faces were smiling
With their hands out stretched to shake
It's true they did not move me
My heart was hard and tired
Their perfect fire annoyed me
I could not find you anywhere

And that's the way I feel when I'm around your people, God. Where are there people who can just be fucked up, and come together for comfort and encouragement? I could never follow all your rules, God, I know that. There are things I can't give up right now and maybe someday you'll help me but right now... I'm fucked up. I'm a wreck.

There are people that seem to have something. People who are humble and speak about you like you're real. God: too many people speak about you like you're a 1950s family value.

Do you remember me praying to you, one night, high on crystal meth, cuddling with an ex-girlfriend, ex-Christian? That was the last time we talked. I told you the same thing then, while we both cried. I don't want to be a Christian. I don't want to be identified with the people I saw tonight.

I just want the rest you keep saying you have. Here it is, I guess: Can I have it?

Vive Christ, Asshole

2004-11-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

This is a night I'm glad I'm not a Christian anymore. When surrounded by the trendy Christian singles in their sexless jeans and Grove City Seminary sweatshirts, you take comfort in the little things. Thank God I didn't turn out this way.

- That's an awesome bumper sticker you have: Vive Bush!
- Yeah, you want one? I got some in my car...

And I just want to stand up and yell Fuck Bush as loud as I can. I'm leaving every ten minutes to smoke a cigarette outside - being the only smoker, being the only atheist - to regain my calm. They're talking about standards of decency on TV and when I try to say something I get a condescending nod, a "well, if you're Christian, God decides the standards," and I just bury my head in my hands.

I'm trying not to say anything inflammatory because these are my sisters' friends, but god do I want to.

My sister, Rachelle, turned 18 today. She came outside the house with me and smoked her first cigarette. Between coughs, she sympathized. Yeah, I can't stand these people for that long either.

I told her, I don't remember Christianity being like this. We would sit in pubs and coffeeshops, my Christian friends and I, vodka slipped into our sodas before we were 21, smoking pipes and playing chess. It wasn't a bunch of aging children with short hair debating whether to play lasertag or go to an amusement park tonight. It wasn't people ranting about Janet Jackson's breasts.

I always thought that I had all the answers when I went to church. Now they're just really far away, and it all seems like a nice but slightly creepy fairy tale. I would love peace like Christ offers, but he simply doesn't deliver.

And I don't want my name associated with these people.

Fuck Windows 98

2004-11-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

There was a post here. A fucking good post, I'll have you know, almost finished. And the computer crashed, and I don't have enough energy to rewrite it. You'll just have to guess as to its content; for now it's lost to posterity.

Don't Let Me Know We're Invisible...

2004-11-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

There's a mix CD that Dan made, rather late in our Seattle/heroin chapter, that is nonetheless the theme for the whole period. It's titled "The Least Interesting Confessions of a Vicodin Addict, In Stereo." Starting with Modest Mouse, it moves through Bright Eyes, The Cure, Nancy Sinatra, Alannis Morissette, Beyond Braille, David Bowie, Van Morrison, Pedro the Lion, and Bare Naked Ladies. I'm listening to it now.

I'm listening to it in Pennsylvania, for that matter. I flew in yesterday, to the darkest merlot red sunrise I've seen, sleeping through the night and waking up on the east coast, and here I am again.

These days I'm tired of being neurotic and addicted. I'd just like to live in a rural area for awhile (maybe my whole life I'll bounce from city to country), and work on my writing. Walk on dirt roads. Listen to Van Morrison. Chew tobacco. Or maybe not. How about a pipe, again?

Laugh at me for singing along to Alannis Morissette this morning. I had no choice but to hear you... you stated your case time and again. Let's hear it for innocent songs. And marijuana. The house is empty and if only I had coffee it would be perfect.

In fact, there's a cafe only a block away.

Vigilantes of Love

2004-11-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

Come in here and have a taste
Yeah what's one more hopeless case
When your short wave dies and there's no one to listen
And the stars going cold in your solar system

Well her lips were red and her hair was brown
Yeah feeling like the luckiest kids in town
She said "I'll follow you boy to the ends of the earth"
Said "I'm not going that far for what it's worth"

And I really love to see you like this
The moonlight dripping off your fingertips
Off your fingertips...
- From Solar System

Difficulties

2004-11-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

It strikes me that most of the stories that happen to me, the stories that are really dramatic and life changing, I can't write about here. Overdosing, do you remember that? I can't write about that night. I've tried and I can't. Maybe it's my own cowardice, maybe I'm just becoming more private.

But there are stories, about scamming, about sex, about copping, spanging, shooting up in grocery store bathrooms, stories abounding that I'll get to sooner or later. Maybe there just needs to be some space before I can tell them. Stories are much better when they happened a long time ago. With a few exceptions, the stories I tell happened at least six months ago. In six months, I'll be telling these stories.

Oregon

2004-11-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

Standing above the Columbia River, she says: "This is God." She brushes off my attempts to define it. "It's just God, right here, I'm seeing him."

Seeing him as I throw my drug box, the one that's held my pipes as a stoner, my razors and straws as a tweaker, my needles as a junkie, into the water. As I empty my backpack of all the needles, cottons, alchohol swabs, bleach, empty bags, and cookers scattered throughout every fucking pocket.

The Columbia River, it touches the ocean here, by the Astoria Bridge. We're on the Washington/Oregon border and our driver is asleep in his Mazda. We're sitting on a bench and chain smoking. We're wiping our noses before we kiss because it's so cold out. It must be only nine o'clock.

How this started: I was kidnapped because I'm fucking sick of heroin. Monday, I spent the night at her house and told her I wanted to go to detox. "Do you really want to stop?" Yeah. "I mean really fucking want to." Yeah. "Then I'm kidnapping you. You're not allowed to go home until you're well."

I should mention I'm sneaking around her house because her roommate has forbidden me to step foot in it. Why? I'm a drug user. She doesn't want to even be reminded that there are drugs in the world.

Three days later, three days of drinking and sneaking around her house, I arrive in Oregon for the first time, spur of the moment, hitting the beach at three in the morning. I'm dosing myself with vodka like it was crack. I'm shivering but she's taking her clothes off and dancing in the sand. I've never been fucked on a beach before and now we do it, in Oregon, in November. Where were you in the summer?

This was the night before the first scene in the post. My mind is fucking with tenses, maybe because I'm drinking even now. Forgive me.

We slept in the car and here we are, not wanting to be back in Seattle, wishing we could just set up camp in Oregon and stay. I'm more peaceful than I've been in a long time. And I haven't stopped drinking in days. The cravings are starting to fade.

And in two days I'm leaving for the East Coast again. I've already walked out on my job. My last paycheck covers vodka and cigarettes and a plane ticket. And the occasional burrito. I'll be back in a month. Or so.

Sprained Minds

2004-11-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Don't go to this link if you dislike blood. Or needles. But it struck me as beautiful in a very fucked up way...

http://www.deviantart.com/view/5068436/

The Most Incredibly Brilliant Blog in the World

2004-10-31T01:17:00.000-08:00

Ah, the solidarity of finding yet another egomaniac.

Satan

2004-10-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

I just found a pair of pictures I've been looking for all summer, through the fall, pictures I left in Seattle during my Pennsylvania stay. They were between the pages of a terrible book I was given for free on First Street, right after a Death Cab concert. I read the first ten pages that night, and didn't continue. No wonder the pictures were lost.

There's Ashley and me, our black eyeliner strong and evil. My hair is black and spiked down into my face. Hers is blonde and pushed back. We're in dark clothes, blacks and browns, and the effect is of some satanic priestly couple, maybe she's German and I'm from some Eastern European sect long since forgotten. We're smiling devilishly and our eyes are crystal-spun. My arm is around Ashley and also around a cute German foreign exchange student with curly brown hair. Mikey, our dealer and instructer in the occult, watches behind us with black glasses and a hand on his chin.

Me, I'm drunk right now. A toast to romantic nostalgia. It's one o'clock.

I'm switching the song we're listening to, right now, today, and Dan asks, drunk, what I'm doing. I hate that song, I tell him. "I'll kill you," he says, "in the face." You can't, I say, I'm a satanic high priest. "You're a whore," he says.

Ashley, I found my bullet maker today, yet again. It's in my drug box, it's a tool they used centuries ago to make lead bullets for their muskets. It's a killing machine.

Do you remember when we kissed to Something Corporate? When I couldn't stand you but you showed up at my door anyway? When we hugged and we made out, standing up, on the floor? When we pushed apart for a minute, lips with a just-been-kissed loneliness, and I told you about this bullet maker? Remember it on the floor between our bodies, remember pushing it aside so we could cuddle and kiss yet again?

Remember the next morning when we left awkwardly for work together and didn't kiss again till I returned from Pennsylvania?

There's a Pabst on the floor in the picture, maybe yours, probably mine, and I remember the amounts of speed we did in those days. Remember the mirror I kept by my bed, with a hollowed-out pen and a razor blade? Remember the bed on the floor where you and I and Jenna and Sean spent the night to protect me from ghosts?

There's a CD player in the corner and I'm guessing we were listening to Pedro the Lion that night. Sveva, the german girl, we had just met her that day and I remember you and I saying how we would both fuck her. That might have made for a better story. But we were too honest. She was too drunk, she had just tried speed, and of course we couldn't take advantage of her.

Me, I'm too much of a gentleman for my own pleasure. Ashley, I don't know your story.

Last Night

2004-10-25T01:38:00.000-07:00

The cab driver might have seen us walk inside, watched her grab my ass, watched us play as we selected our beer for the night. He was there, I know that much. His seat was pushed back and I thought he was sleeping, but he watched.

The cashiers, they betrayed no thoughts as she paid for the beer with one hand and reached down to me with the other, as she pressed back against me and I kissed her ear. The cashiers, maybe they saw this all the time. I wouldn't know.

The people pumping their gas, the cab driver beside us, they have to have seen as I pushed her against her truck and we kissed, as she unlocked my door and I played over her with my hands, as we sat down but couldn't drive off yet.

"That's not how you wear your pants. Let me teach you." And my buckle was off, and pushed down, and I was in her mouth, and neither of us were paying attention to anyone outside the car, not to the cashiers, not to the cab driver watching us from his spot beside the truck.

She stopped - God, no - and looked around. The cab driver, he looked forward quickly, but we both saw him. He started laughing, the cab driver, and turned his car on. Before he could pull out, she threw the car into reverse, and we were on the road, and I was buckling my belt again.

"I told you, that's not how you wear them." But we kept our hands to ourselves until we had the car parked up the street.

Dreaming

2004-10-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

There's a girl I see when I'm dreaming sometimes; she always looks the same. Short blonde hair and a face you'd kiss to a Dashboard Confessional song. Sweater and jeans. Maybe she used to be a hippy - she's definitely not into heroin. But that's not in the picture. I'm never a user in my dreams.

Her name is Amy. She's not like any Amy I've known, my sister or past friends, but that's her name.

We sit, this girl Amy and I, in front of a brick building. It's a building like a New England college would have, but in my dream I know I'm in Spokane. We sit on the grass and we talk.

Of course I never remember what she says to me. Whatever it is, it's encouraging. Whatever it is, I look forward to the dream coming again. It makes me wish it was summer again, somewhere in the midwest, in love again without drugs or this grey neurotic city.

But hell. Seattle still feels like home.

Infrequency

2004-10-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for inspiration to strike. Right now there are too many stories from this week alone to possibly write, to possibly work out into an intelligible form, at least while I'm working these ten hour days. Just wait.

In the Arms of the Angels

2004-10-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Addiction is on my mind a lot these days. Very intensely on my mind right now, as all my joints are aching and restless, as my legs hurt, as I can't sleep even though I only got a few hours last night.

I'm not an addict, it's cool, I feel alive. I was singing those lyrics to anyone who would listen - not, perhaps, literally - to justify my use of heroin before this. It was only on the weekends. I'm still the same person. I maintain a full time job.

Some of this is true but as it gets more daily, my use, as it gets harder to deal with not having it, my excuses are invalid. I am an addict, and I can't deny it. Drug use has entered a new level. Now it remains to discover how to live this way, discover a new set of ethics.

Of course, this is all junkie whining. Really, my question is: what is so bad about addiction, anyway? Why an instant negative reaction.

I don't understand.

Back Online

2004-10-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

I now have a Macintosh set up, which - excuse my bigotry, but fuck you - annoys me to no end. It's not mine; just my roommate's. But until we isolate and destroy our dastardly Windows virus this will have to do.

There is little news, at least little I can post right now. I just got off work and I work again in five hours. I'm slightly dopesick. No heroin on the horizon. I'm thinking of piercing my cheek when I get my next check; this means I'll have to wear a band-aid on my face at work. I feel like taking a break from girls and dating for several - days, weeks? - while I get a few things straight. Tonight would be a good night for crack.

I just found out I was reviewed on The Weblog Review. He's right, perhaps, about the comments, but I kind of like the small bits of interaction. It was less about hearing people's thoughts, actually, than it was knowing that people visit and listen. They can agree or disagree. I really don't care; I just like fame.

Fuck You, Windows

2004-09-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

So maybe there will be an actual post here if my computer actually decides to boot up one day. Excuse the lack of updates - I haven't had computer access since Friday. And it may be a few more days till I continue my regular posting, till I can find someone to repair the computer.

God damn it. This is why I normally just write on paper.

What's An Addiction, Anyway?

2004-09-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to write about heroin but I'm sick of that being all people see about me. Today I'd like to confess - maybe I'm addicted. Maybe I get a little sick when I go without for a couple days. But I want you to see more than that. I talk about dope, yeah, but it's not all I do. It's not like I'm high every time I write here. I wasn't high for this post, at least. And it's not like I don't hang out with any non-users. Or rather: I would hang out with non-users if I knew any.

This is getting worse. But heroin, it doesn't last me as long as it used to. And I find myself wanting it every day. Or at least a pill, an opiate. It lessens the queasiness, the sober ache. Or this rhythm, this annoying sentence structure.

Would I do heroin if you placed a needle on a platter in front of me? Yeah. Am I fine, still happy despite these aches, when I don't have it? Yeah, actually. Do I daydream at work about finding an eightball stashed behind the toilet? You bet.

And hey, look at my arms and see my track marks but look at me as a whole and I'm healthy. I don't have a junkie's skin or a tweaker's eyes. Maybe I dress like a drug user but fuck you this is Seattle. We're all on drugs and if we're not we try to look like we are.

Grease!

2004-09-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

"Well, you have a tattoo, and you have piercings. And your necklaces are pretty cool. You'll fit right in. Here, the more tattoos and piercings you have, the better cook you'll be. And you're a smoker. That gives you extra points here too."

So today was my first day at one of those greasy all-night diners, first day as a cook, first full-time job in Seattle. I'm learning to make pancakes, omelettes, learning to flip eggs in the pan. Taking off all my bracelets and shaving my facial hair. The piercings and tattoos, though, are fine.

"There are three ways to flip bacon. The spatula, your bare hands, or the gloves."

I'm fine with burns, I tell him, and show him the many cigarette burns I have on my wrists. I'm fine with pain like that. "I like you already," he says. I could have showed him my other arm, the one with scars from a girlfriend's sharpened nails. I decided that was too much.

After eight hours I have a number of new grease burns. I've decided I need better shoes. And I'm going through a hell of a lot of cigarettes. But hey - at least I get free food. No more wondering about my next meal.

Hungry

2004-09-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

And now I think I'm beginning to understand heroin. It's harder than the other drugs to grasp, to write about - I have nothing written about it yet. Nothing besides a few stories: this happened then this.

But today, as I'm sick to my stomach, as the comedown gets worse each time I get high, it's becoming clearer. Last night I was maybe as high as I've ever been, high enough that I couldn't read my email on the computer, high enough to nod out even as I was flipping through the channels on TV. My eyes couldn't stay open but I couldn't sleep either. Oh, it felt good, nothing felt wrong, but I can't remember my reality being that altered ever before.

And the hunger - Burroughs talks about this constantly. How hungry heroin is, and it's a crazy hunger like you've never felt before.

Emily, my roommate, came up to me just now and offered me a Hydro. That will make it better, until tomorrow anyway. We'll see what happens then.

The Band Plan

2004-09-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

If I could write like Adam Green, I would. The idea of becoming famous, at least among drug-influenced twenty-somethings on Capitol Hill or the Village or similar places... The idea of seeing my name on some hipster's pin collection on his too-tight jacket appeals to me strongly, especially if I could do it without expressing any sort of talent whatsoever. Strange stories of fucking legless girls or coming on crackers or spiders reincarnated as horses - that's Of Montreal but the point remains - stories like these with sparse, psychadelic, or rhythmless accompaniment, this I'd like to do.

Because - and this would be the whole point - all you need to do is write your lyrics on crack or coricidin, with enough nonsense and drug or sex references, perform it with badly played guitar and tuba and recorder, wearing polyester capes and animal hats, and everyone lauds you as artistic and avant garde. Girls in mismatched old lady clothes want to fuck you on their mama's bed. Guys in women's pants stoicly compliment you or go to your shows simply to be seen and, in a surprising plot twist, try to get said girls to their their cocks by dismissing you as far too trendy. Of course they have all your lyrics memorized anyway.

The point being, enough wierdness badly performed and you have the hipster community by the short hairs. And the joke's on them. It would be insanely amusing - this from my stereotypically hipster sense of humor.

It's just funny, because I can put together each part of it.

Find a girl with a fucked up sense of humor and (at least) limited guitar skills. Myself - piano sometimes. Mostly singing straightfaced. Stoned or spun. Maybe heroin, shot up with her, she, the female above, right before the show coupled with mutual masturbation.

(The gossip of our sexual relationship would be a wonderful side-show, though of course we'd be seeing other people and never actually having intercourse, just everything but. All visually represented in the performance, with innapropriate animal sounds. Cows mooing, maybe cows attempting to imitate cat's meows. I don't know how that would sound. Probbly any sound would do, because honestly who's ever heard such a thing?)

Back to whatever. The drummer would be a girl with a faux mullet. And would wear superhero outfits. The tuba/trumpet/trombone/flute/misc player would wear flattering skirts and lipstick, though of course wouldn't be gay. That would be too obvious and not nearly ironic enough for a hipster crowd. Obviously taboo.

We'd have long song names with liberal use of 19th century frosting. "Ode too," "In Which," "Of Crack and Hobbyhorses," that kind of thing. Liberal confusion between modern, retro, and Victorian imagery.

Can you tell I'm writing this high? Can you guess what was pushed into my veins this time? Hint: it starts with 'M' and ends with 'ethemphetamine'. Bet ya five you're not alive if you don't know its name.

Speed. Corrupts your sense of humor permanently, perhaps because you have to talk on and on, and conventional humor won't last that long. But no, bad idea. Something in my mind cracked the first time I really, really binged on meth. Like a piece of my mind got stuck somewhere else, and while not actually present communicates with admirable intensity. Even when not high, even when sober for weeks, it fucks with me. My humor can be incomprehensible to drug virgins, but stoners eat it up. Tweakers laugh until the second night or so, but little amuses any tweaker that long. Take their annoyance in stride and you'll be fine. Just make the jokes in your head. They'll be amused by your random laughter. Or at least you will, and with tweak it's all about you, no?

But I digress. (A worthy hipster phrase. Sends most into spontaneous orgasm territory - ooh.) The band. Yes. This isn't a study of the mental affects of crystal, it's a fucking band plan.

But my mind has moved on. Too fucking high to stay in the band thread. I've said all I need to say, though, haven't I?

And this, writing about it, satisfies my urge to get up and do something about starting it, playing piano, writing crackhead lyrics.

That waitress is cute.

Up for Too Long

2004-09-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

"Don't worry. We're each in our own little worlds now. Mine just involves talking and yours doesn't really involve listening."

Fifty-Seven Cents

2004-09-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'd laugh at you normally, like my tagline above suggests, because you look like a college student in her day-off uniform. You wouldn't think we'd get along because I'm in my drug addict on his day-off uniform, the look I used to cultivate but now just happens without my trying because I simply have no normal clothes anymore. But you're too good natured for that, for me to resent your social status - I'm a sucker for good natured girls. And the way you giggle as we meet eyes, do that little dance in the soup aisle as we try to figure out which way to pass each other, warms me instantly.

Or maybe it's the way we're both getting noodle ramen on a cold grey Seattle afternoon: this I notice as you step behind me in line. "Three meals for fifty-seven cents," I comment to her with a grin. "You can't beat that."

"I know," she says, and displays her own choices. She picked out beef flavor. I picked out shrimp.

"And it's my last dollar, too."

"Consider it well spent!"

And then I smile at her on the way out, wishing polite society allowed me to talk to her further. Or - your place or mine? - spend the afternoon cooking our meals together and watching Star Trek reruns on a run-down couch. Bridging the gap behind her social group and mine, even if our friends would hate each other and look down on each other for their seperate reasons, because today we're simply good natured and poor and there is our solidarity.

Feelin' Groovy

2004-09-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

Usually I can't go out without being fascinated with a girl, some girl, some older girl in worn cargo pants reading a book on the bus, some rich liberal's daughter in a white cotton skirt and teal off-shoulder top, some bike messenger with pant legs rolled up and tattoos running down her arms. I don't go quite so far, I'm not quite so creepy, as to imagine the rest of my life with that girl or even to wonder what her name is. (Usually.) I just watch her discretely and hope I catch her attention with my easygoing effiminate masculinity, with my brand new tattoo and my scuffed Converse All-Stars. Sometimes they do. Usually they don't.

But today, exploring Fremont for the first time, I didn't see her. I didn't actually see anyone that fascinated me, and it was relaxing. Fremont felt wistful, I think, and maybe it was the light rain and the cloudy skies and the Simon and Garfunkel I was listening to but maybe Fremont is my new favorite spot here. I loved the small fashion boutiques. The coffee shops and expensive bars. The empty beauty of a Tuesday afternoon away from the richer-than-thou students of the U District and the hipper-than-thou flunkies of Capitol Hill.

Maybe I was the only junky there, maybe people looked at me thinking I didn't belong there, but whatever. I enjoyed it. Hopefully I'll get a job there. Fingers crossed.

Friends

2004-09-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

I happened across this post just now, flipping through blogs with the "next blog" button to your upper right. It made me incredibly sad, and illustrated the point I've been trying to make about drugs for a long time.

The writer disagrees with taking pills and drinking. Well and good. It is dangerous, yes, and it's his right to make a decision about it. For that matter I agree with him there - I won't combine drugs and alchohol. But he goes on to talk about a friend who has a different view, who has her own morals and her own way of feeling good. Apparently they've been close friends for a long time. But he doesn't agree with her pill use, and events unfold:

So the next weekend I went to a party, she had already been there, and I was getting phone calls from people there that I needed to come and get her. I got to the party, and she was passed out on the floor. I asked her what she was drinking and taking, she replied with she was just laying on the floor trying to sleep the alcohol off. Another person told me that she and two other girls, who were hugging the other toilets in the house, had been taking Xanax. After I knew that I didn't feel sorry for her and I sure as heck wasn't going to take care of her becuase I don't agree with that kind of behavior.

And, I'm sorry, but this is just deplorable. If you're my friend and I don't agree with what you're doing, I may talk to you, especially if it's dangerous. But I'm going to take care of you when things go badly and you need it.

Maybe you need to have some distance between you - sometimes that just has to happen, even if it sucks. Maybe she's wrong and you're right, maybe you're wrong and she's right. But show some fucking compassion. Drugheads are people too.

If you were a Christian and a Muslim needed your help, would you do it? Or would you cross to the other side of the road and walk on?

Five minutes later, I'm noticing the difference in my writing styles when I'm on speed, which you'll find below, versus when I'm on opiates, like right now. And I'm thinking I prefer the speed version.

Pictures...

2004-09-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

Right here... from when my friend Kaitlin visited Seattle last weekend. Plus a few old Spokane faces. I'm in the second picture from the top.

And Sean: that's a fucking great jacket.

Mercury

2004-09-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

This is me, not having slept yet, spun and dry-mouthed, staring at my first tattoo. Let's hear it for the black market economy in Seattle. You and I, we're both new to town. I give you drugs, you give me a tattoo.

It's on my left arm and I'm loving it, a stylized rendition of the symbol for Mercury. I'm very impressed by the way it looks and I think I'm addicted to the feeling of the needle. It hurts almost, like being cut, but relax and savor it, savor the vibrations and the sharp feeling. There's a point where pain feels good and getting a tattoo will bring you there.

Watching my Rhode Island friend, with his heroin-pinned eyes, go to work on my arm makes me wish I could draw, wish I could learn to do this. I'd set up shop in my loft somewhere and people could bring me... anything. In exchange for my work. Food. Drugs. Clothes. Let's go back to the barter economy. It's everywhere in this city.

Less Than Pure Crystal

2004-09-11T01:35:00.000-07:00

The speed in my veins now is cut too strongly, and it feels like the third day of being up, not the first, not the euphoria of that initial bang, but: I can't sleep and I desperately want to. My head hurts and I think I missed a little bit of the shot. There's a lump on my arm and I should put a warm cloth on it. My eyes won't close and I can't pay attention to anything.

Dan must be doing better, judging by his blog. But right now I wish I had the money to run to Capitol Hill and find some actual shards, not this shitty U-District powder, bought in a hurry when my boss wasn't looking. Give me a spoon full of glass, and I'll be happy. Or even heroin, I'll settle for that. Fuck, just give me a joint and send me to bed with a bowl of chips. I want to sleep.

Dick Cheney and Dr. Stranglove

2004-09-10T14:16:00.000-07:00

The guts of this article, "The Gospel According to Dubya," impresses me. Or the guts of the author, Steve Almond. Or something. Agree or not, his criticism of Bush and, later, Christ, is fun to read.

Interviewed

2004-09-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I randomly came across this interview the other day, and it's a disturbing snapshot of me as a hardcore Christian writer, quite confident and satisfied that I was God's gift to the church. The magazine it talks about, Chasing Hats, is no longer online, but for a year and a half Josh and I ran it, a Christian literary journal publishing stories, essays, music and movie reviews, interviews... It was minorly successful in Reformed Christian circles, but now its gone and only a few traces remain on the internet.

Even more disturbing then the interview is this post I found randomly the other day. I'm a dead man. Believe it.

Living Space

2004-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

It may take a little while, but I heard of a possible living space for this winter. A friend from work is thinking of renting a floor in an old brothel - it's not a brothel anymore, of course - in southern Seattle. This is cool enough, but it gets better: it's haunted. I guess a child died there, and a man murdered his wife and then promptly committed suicide. You lock the doors, she tells me, and go to sleep, and in the morning everything is open and unlocked. Shadows move in the shapes of people that aren't there.

Maybe I'm crazy but this sounds like the best place yet to hole myself into with copious amounts of speed, whiskey, and cigarettes and work on my novel. With a small community of writers and artists. With a ghost as a muse.

Exaggeration.

2004-09-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

People like drugs to be stark black and stark white, but, hey, nothing is. People like to dramatize drugs and turn them into a Pan-god, tempting and devious. They like stories of junkies and losing yourself to a needle. They like to use what they got from DARE as dogma.

And largely I like to give it to them because largely I'm dying for the attention. Largely I'll give you a story you want to hear because I have a flair for the dramatic. I'll tell you the horror stories and how hard it was to quit taking crystal meth.

But here's a secret. Nothing is black and white. Drugs aren't nearly such a big deal. Shhh. Don't tell anyone I told you.

OK, so the rush from your first needle is fucking intense but so is your first good blowjob. And the withdrawals are painful and depressing but chicken pox was worse and I made it through that alright.

And the fact that I'm on heroin right now has nothing to do with any of this, really. Maybe you'll read this blog and think I do it all the time, think I'm a junky, but heroin doesn't define me. Objectify me as an addict and you're falling into the hole of anti-drug propoganda.

We learned our lesson with alchohol prohibition. How long will it take us with drugs?

NYC Strip Club Waitress

2004-09-02T03:32:00.000-07:00

This is interesting mostly because my best friend (and roommate) works at a strip club now, and I have a whole new perspective on the inner workings of the business: Hot Girls, Frisky Delegates: RNC Diary of a Strip-Club Waitress.

Friday Never Hesitates

2004-08-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Monday, you can fall apart. Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart. Thursday doesn't even start. It's Friday I'm in love.

Do you honestly listen to the Cure?

Um... Yes. Don't you?

Nobody listens to the Cure. Like, my high school math teacher did. That's it. Turn it off, this is just silly.

Fuck you. We're listening to the Cure.

That's Not a Drug...

2004-08-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of drugs, they say, and I say Oh, what kinds? Oh, I smoke pot, they say. But that's like telling me you ride a bike all the time and then I find out it has training wheels.

Aldous Huxley

2004-08-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

Because It Makes Me Feel Like I'm a Man...

2004-08-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

I'll try to post soon but I really don't feel like it. It's a Saturday but it feels like a Sunday. We're laying around today because last night was another night of hard drug-induced wandering, of needles in public restrooms, of copping on the street. (Long gone are those days when we'd call a friend for drugs and have him meet us at the local coffee shop. Now, we walk down Broadway and look for the street dealers, people with names like Devious, Dirty, Kat, and Pockets. We hope they're fucked up enough to break off a overly large piece of black tar for us but not fucked up enough to rip us off. Gambling, fifteen dollars at a time.)

While I waited outside the coffeeshop for Dan to cook up needlefuls for each of us, the group next to me talked about crystal meth. Two of the black-clad guys took turns impressing a rather innocent looking hipster blonde with tales of speed-induced depravity. They described the way food tastes after 3 days of no sleep, how it turns into a hard clump in your mouth and there's no way you can chew it. They talked about their dealer staying up for 32 days once and she didn't believe them. I tried not to look like I was listening and thought:

Can I escape drugs? Is there any area where drugs don't touch? My boss tells me, first day on the job, that I can smoke pot in the back room if I want to. In Pennsylvania, if I were gay I'd be beaten up but I could do any type of drug without being looked down upon. Everyone, every age, does drugs. Every workplace has them. Every school has them. Look at the people walking by you downtown: most of them are high. Or were last night. Or will be tonight. Pills or heroin or alchohol or ganja. Or look through history: intoxication is very much a part of us and it's sure as hell not leaving anytime soon.

As The Man Said...

2004-08-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

"Street freak chic. That's our style. We do just about any drug that comes along, but we do it with class."

Whoo?

2004-08-23T17:35:00.000-07:00

Cue the music now, let's say Elliott Smith. The scene is a lonely but sunny day in downtown Spokane and here I am waking up from a nap in Riverfront Park and here I am starting the walk home. It must have been a Sunday - always my day to be alone.

And on the sidewalk, there's a book, missing a cover, with penciled writing all over it. Whoo? is the title, some pulp detective novel by one Richard Hoyt. I sat against the building, across from the AMC, to read what its last owner wrote over the printed pages:

See, the only place I can have sex not like other people is in the woods or desert, or away from a lot of wiring. My sister doesn't care cause she didn't work for the state or Federal people...

She goes on to complain about invasion of privacy, about people she thought were friends calling the police on her and then saying they didn't, about how life is about laughter and having fun. (And kinky sex, apparently.)

I lost the book until yesterday I came across it on my roommate's desk. I must have left it there the last time I was in Seattle. I want to meet this girl, who would write something like this at a Starbucks (so it says) in Spokane and leave it on the sidewalk for someone to find. If it had a phone number I would call it.

But more it reminds me of the journal I left at a payphone in Seattle, with six months' worth of ramblings concerning my own sex life and the drugs I've fooled around with and the people I've encountered. It makes me wonder whose desk it's sitting on now.

English Girls Approximately

2004-08-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

Listen to heartbreaker music alone in your house on a grey Sunday evening. Your first Sunday alone, your first quiet Sunday, because when you live with eight brothers and two sisters all summer you simply don't get a quiet Sunday. But now you're listening to Ryan Adams and Pete Yorn and Howie Day and you'd be singing along if you weren't so congested. Doomed to repeat the past 'cause nothing is gonna last. I burned all your photographs... That's what you'd be singing, or this: I don't need a better thing; I'd settle for less. It's another thing for me, I just have to wander through this world alone.

Because maybe everything's been working out for you and maybe it hasn't. Maybe you're in a relationship or maybe you don't know. Maybe you have an interview on Monday but maybe it won't work out and you'll be job hunting again. Maybe you're out of cigarettes and down to your last five dollars. Maybe you're sick of maybes and you'd like a certainly.

But maybe you're just going to enjoy the feeling while it lasts and roll a cigarette with the last crumbs in your Topps bag and sit in this Ryan Adams-induced haze and wait for your friends to come home when you'll cuddle and sleep it off. And wake up in time for that Monday interview.

Crystal

2004-08-21T00:41:00.000-07:00

So you do speed once. Then again, again, learn to love it, snort it, smoke it, slam it. At first on the weekends, then while you're working, soon every dayish. Stay up three days. Sleep a night. Stay up four days. Sleep for two. Stay up ten days. Go insane watching through the peephole of your apartment and seeing crazed apes and old women with knives and sunglasses. Walk down the street and see men following you jumping from roof to roof just out of your vision.

Decide one day it's too much. Take a break. Move to the country. Work on a farm. Go insane again because you have no needle, no lightbulb, no razor and mirror. Wake up every morning from dreams about your veins.

Watch the craziness and the dreams fade. Still feel it occasionally. Tell yourself you'll do it, moderately, when you get back to the city, which you plan to do.

And then you do. You do, and the needle's waiting. You buy some more. But is it what you remember? Is it nearly as good? Sure, it's a high, but did you spend all summer waiting for this?

Hail Fellow Blogger...

2004-08-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

Not to mention current roommate. Go read Daniel LeVon:

I'm in downtown Seattle, bouncing off people's impenetrable auras of collection, reeking of marijuana and trying to bum a cigarette. What I really want is to grab someone, some tourist, some suburb girl in tight stonewash jeans and a white tanktop, some little preppie girl from Centralia or Salem or God Forbid Spokane, yank her into an alley, read her tarot cards, recite pensive song lyrics, draw her a picture, slip her acid, have unprotected sex up against a dumpster -- anything to punch through the bubble of self-ness that surrounds each of these people.

That Night

2004-08-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

I didn't know there were dirt roads in Seattle, he said as he crawled into bed next to her. "What?" Yeah, somewhere in the University District. I don't even know how I found my way out. "I'm sorry." I'm suprised I even made it home.

She pulls him closer. And these dreams, he said. I'm awake and I'm seeing them. Right now they're each patches of flowers and between them is pain...

"Try to sleep now." I can't, do you think I need more? "Do you want more? I'll fix you some."

Yes but no. Maybe I should just sleep.

Now, he said moments later, there's a kid sitting in his car. I don't know where his parents are but the front seat is empty. And there's a cop pulling up, takes the kid somewhere because he's abandoned. The kid sits in the passenger seat next to the cop and looks outside, looks at perfect green grass and perfect sky, looks at an old couple walking by. He wonders why the couple isn't in the back of the cop car, in the cage...

"How much did you take?" I don't know. A lot. "Try to sleep." I'm trying.

Seattle... Mmm...

2004-08-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Because I feel so much more at home here. Seattle, Washington, where I'm living with other writers and we stay up at night high and reading from our journals to each other, or looking at our tarot cards, or wandering the streets, knowing we're not even close to the wierdest people out there.

So I haven't posted in a while but I've been too excited and busy and high and sick from something I caught on the plane. I promise I won't be gone that long again.

I'm home!

Scotch and Soda in the Morning

2004-08-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

J. G. Ballard on Inspiration:

For most of my working life as a professional, which began over 40 years ago, what kick-started the day was a large scotch and soda. After my wife died, I was bringing up my children on my own much of the time: getting them up and to school and finding their satchels, all that sort of thing, and I needed a sort of change of climate. I used to find that a couple of large scotches did the trick - it created a different microclimate inside my head.

Thrift Store Dressing Room

2004-08-12T07:17:00.000-07:00

"I'm not a transexual," he said to no one in particular. "Or even a cross dresser." He continued mentally: it's just that I'm curious to try it out.

He had picked out the perfect skirt, long, grey, some sort of plastic-canvassy material. What kind of girl would wear it? A snowboarder, perhaps, his mind pictured. A snowboarding twenty something who might have decided to look feminine that day while maintaining the sporty look she cultivated. Maybe she wore it once, with blue and white sneakers and a white turtleneck, a snowboarding jacket over it and hair pulled back - maybe she had tried it that once and hated it.

He tried it in the dressing room, slipped it over his pants first - damn, looks stupid - then pulled his pants off and wore the skirt alone. Alright, that shirt doesn't work, but he kind of liked the way it sat on his hips. With boots, maybe, it would look masculine enough. Maybe.

Tingly Lips

2004-08-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

Sarah Hatter's tale of Lip Venom (on her part) and allergic reactions (on his part) is just too funny not to link. I keep reading it and laughing harder each time - this is great stuff.

Three Conversations About Sex

2004-08-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

(From the archives of my journal, because I had nothing interesting to write today.)

I. After quoting the Nicene Creed...
- There's something oddly sexy about a reformed reformed Christian quoting scripture.
- Nicene Creed.
- That too.
- You should hear me do it when I'm chained to a wall.
- Should I be disturbed by that turning me on?

II.
- I still have a sense of guilt when checking you out - momentarily and it's supressed, but I guess it's my upbringing.
- See, it's disturbing, but I'm aroused by that.
- What if I said the Lord's Prayer during sex?
- I'd tie you up and go take a bath. You'd be: "Oh, this is good, she's going to molest me. Wait, where are you going? Is that water running? Hey. Hey!"
- What would it take to get you to tie me up and molest me?
- Not much. Try saying "Tie me up and molest me."
- OK.

III. As for the third conversation, all my journal says is "I don't want to write the other one. My hand hurts." And I have no recollection of what I even intended to write. Alas.

Six Days!

2004-08-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

Six of em', till I'm back in Seattle. It's been two and a half months here in the country hills of Pennsylvania, and I'm ready for the city life again. Ready to lose my farmer's tan and get Seattle-pale. You know how it is.

Dorothy

2004-08-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

When she, teal striped polo and grey skirt, asked me for a cigarette and a light outside the needle exchange on Second, it was obvious she wanted more than the cigarette, had to make a connection, and I don't know how exactly but soon we were talking.

When she, eyes curiously intense, fairy-tale eyes, watched me as we sat down against a building smoking, it wasn't the fascination of lust but merely fascination. She wanted to know my sign and my past and my plans. She had her own and they differed from mine as pisces differ from gemini, she changing the world or at least her sector and me with my simply personal revolution.

Dorothy, she said, brown hair and tall as I am, when I asked her name and she, innocent as a lady by the road in that fairy-tale, the one or many where the youngest son travels and seeks advice from those he meets, where he gets the advice because he is kind-hearted, she told my future. She told me the universe favored me, she could tell, and as absurd as it sounds to my agnostic ears I half believed her. The intensity of a pisces girl.

When we talked of drugs she was three years clean and me only a week. She said she admired me for working at it and would think about me, if we never met again, but within a week I was back on crystal. I called her once but she never returned the call - do the characters in a fairy tale disappear when they've said their piece? Is the name Dorothy significant? Is she still in Seattle? Does she live happily ever after?

Don't you wish you knew how the story ends for every person you met?

Anne Marlowe on Dope

2004-08-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

From How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z (excerpt found here)

All writing about dope, like all taking of dope, harks back to the mythological, the glorious First Time. This is the truth behind the calumny "to write about it is to glamorize it." But to be silent about it is also to glamorize it by making it secret and forbidden. The charge of glamorization comes from those who don't consciously understand why writing about dope makes it seem appealing; it comes from the same impulse that powers all censorship: if your truth isn't ours, shut up.

When I published a cover story on heroin in The Village Voice in 1994, I got lots of nasty letters that all agreed on one thing: because I emerged from years of heroin use without noticeable health, career or financial effects, I wasn't qualified to write about dope. I didn't really have the experience, because the sign of really having the experience is ruining your life. This is a circular argument of course--"we will only trust accounts of dope use that end in ruin, because dope use always ends in ruin." But who said Americans are rational about drugs?

Writing about heroin will ALWAYS be perceived as "glamorizing," the drug, no matter what you say. No, I don't think taking heroin is a good idea. Period. But given that I did it already, I might as well write about why and what I learned from those years. And one of those things is that doing heroin isn't as scandalous as writing about it, and this is a very interesting wrinkle in the social drama of addiction.

[...]

We distrust writing about heroin (and sex) almost more than heroin (or sex) itself. The structure of addiction is maintained by this taboo about writing about it. The more heroin is hyped as ultimately powerful and irresistible--to the point that merely reading about heroin is thought to cause heroin use--the more people are going to addict themselves to it. The biggest, darkest secret about heroin is that it isn't that wonderful: it's a substance some of us agree to pursue as though it were wonderful, because it's easier to do that than to figure out what is worth pursuing. Heroin is a stand-in, a stopgap, a mask, for what we believe is missing. Like the "objects" seen by Plato's man in a cave, dope is the shadow cast by cultural movements we can't see directly.

24 Hours? That's All?

2004-08-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

I sat in Westlake Square in Seattle a lot, reading, writing, just watching, and more than once people came up to talk to me. Sometimes the tourists, sometimes the homeless, and once an old man stopped as he walked by me. Long grey hair, long grey beard, long belt around an impressive stomach, with a cane and glasses. Santa Claus would look this way after he lost his job and met Jack Daniels. "What are you reading about?" he asked and "Love" I said and he sighed. "There are maybe only 24 hours total in your life that you'll spend completely in love with someone who's in love with you." I thought and replied, "But isn't it worth it?" And he smiled at me, smiled large, wished me good day, and walked on.

Comments Now Enabled

2004-08-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

For no other reason than I like the interaction. If I get pissed off, they'll be disabled again. Don't want another December 11th fiasco.

Sean on Sex

2004-08-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

"Oddly, Porn seems to be part of my Karma. It kinda follows me around wherever I go. Somehow, without consciously trying (or conceivably being able to know in advance most of the time) I tend to date or make friends with people who have some unusual connection to the production or distribution of pornography. I can draw two plausible hypotheses from this. Either there are certain personality traits that easily lend themselves to work in porn that I share with others, allowing us to recognize some synchronicity at a profound level and form friendships or relationships, OR, it’s a distinct possibility that porn has so thoroughly saturated our modern culture that virtually no one goes through life without some connection to this industry at some level." [Read all of it!]

A Brief Political Interlude

2004-07-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

While it's never been my policy to write or even talk about politics, I heard this quote from soon-to-be senator Barack Obama this morning on Howard Stern:

"Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things."

Intrigued by this and agreeing whole-heartedly, I looked up the rest of the speach. He seems a bit idealistic, but on the whole I like what he says, especially about community. "It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper - that makes this country work." Maybe I'll actually vote this election. And I wish I had a senator like that for my state.

Amphetamine Dreams

2004-07-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

My friend (and roommate to be) Ashley on our crystal-induced past; she wrote it in my journal and I don't think I could say it better:

We lived in those little white lines for months, talking circles in whirlwinds until the sun had risen and set once more on that lake of glass, of cutting white waves and inhaling deeply. The world passed us by as we sat watching, isolated from it, not even realizing as it faded around us and we no longer knew it as our world. And time; time became meaningless in this haze that settles over a past life.

Have You Ever...

2004-07-24T06:55:00.000-07:00

Thought about bugs so much you suddenly felt one crawling up your leg? Only, upon inspection, to find there was nothing there? Ever tried thinking about it again, wondering if you could manifest a phantom bug consciously? Did it work? Ever tried holding a cigarette to your arm as long as you could, trying to reprogram your pain into pleasure? Do you think about things like this? Do you ever make them work? How do you play with your mind?

Northern Lights

2004-07-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

There's a decadence to some pot-smokers that rubs me the wrong way. (Could we call them teaheads again? The way Burroughs did? Tea sounds classier than pot or herb. A better sense of history, which is a large part of the attraction of drugs. Just a side note.)

There are the smokers that dip in occaisionally, smoking a small joint with a bit of tobacco for flavor, a bong now and then, and there are the smokers that need a blunt of the best ganja around to get the experience. They'll spend insane amounts of money and wax nostalgic about the whole eighth they smoked in one sitting last weekend, the blunt their dealer rolled while they played poker the weekend before. That blunt was the shit, dude.

And talking to one at work: You gotta hear this story, dude. So I went to my house. Wait, I went to Nick's house. Wait, we went to another friend's house. Yeah, that was it. And I had six grams of Papaya and a few of that fluffy shit. We were only out of the car for ten minutes, just long enough to smoke a cigarette. And when we got back into the car, it fucking stank of pot. Like the most dank smell you've ever seen. I wish my room smelled like that all the time. Seriously, dude, it was like the car glowed, like a heavenly choir just went "ooooooooohhh" when I opened the door. And on and on and on.

And I just end up feeling a bit of self-righteousness, a bit of disgust, a bit of "try living alone, outside your parent's house, with a minimum wage job, fighting to pay the bills, and see if you can smoke so much, see if it's still so important to you, see if you can be so decadent." But is that just resentment on my part?

A Seattle Story I Felt Like Telling

2004-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

"Thanks," she said over burritos the next morning, "for being the second non-psycho guy I've ever slept with."

"Heh. Thanks, I guess," I mumbled and took another bite. Not meeting her eyes. Not even having kissed her yet, because sometimes sex is just something to do on the weekends. Because sometimes you meet someone on Broadway, someone you may have met in passing before, and you get coffee and talk about your first time - the first time you did it and, much later, the first time you really enjoyed it.

And over a walk and bookstore browsing, with quiet touches, the suggestions, the polite lies: would you like to go to my place to watch a movie? Yeah, sounds good. When you both just want sex and you'd never date each other, you're bolder.

But we finished the movie before any clothes came off. I don't think I've ever gotten through a whole movie with a girl before - the list of half-finished movies just grows with time. We fucked slowly but our hearts weren't in it. It was just something to do, satisfying our mild curiosity about each other, and she didn't look into my eyes.

I saw her once more, a week later, and we sat on her porch, chain smoking, bodies touching side by side. Seattle wasn't the place for her, she said, and she was going to LA. She listened to my dissatisfaction with my drug use and offered what advice she could; but these days she didn't even smoke pot. She gave me Life After God and told me to read it and give it to the next person I met like this.

Reading it later, finishing it on a plane to Pennsylvania, I thought it was the perfect book for her and I. I haven't given it away yet.

Starting Over

2004-07-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

My old blogs, two years of online journalling, have all disappeared. Some I took down. Others I couldn't pay to keep up and lost the domain names. There is very little of my writing left on the internet, but that seems fitting.

This is me reinventing my online persona, audience, everything, across the country from where I wrote my last entry. No comments because I don't like that being the reason to write an entry, or the reason not to write an entry. No pictures because I'm growing sick of the design world and simply want to write.

And that's it - this is just me writing again on a semi-daily basis. 'Cause it's fun. Read it if you like.