why yes, i did just let a man stick a needle in my eyelid and inject steroids. why, you ask? oh, because i trust him.
now, with a swollen lower right lid, i barely sit up—almost lie—in my bed, watching the curtains blow wild and green over my turntables like big ship sails, listening to the Who belt out covers of blues songs that could pass for hardcore sonic pornography, chewing on week-old pistachios, sipping on plastic water, and typing up a vacuous storm. it’s monday and i’m blogging.
i went to a baseball game last week and saw a pitcher end an inning. innings end about 17 or 18 times per baseball game, and pitchers are often the reason for those endings, seeing as how they throw the balls that cause strikes and home runs. anyway, this particular time, the pitcher walked off the mound with a little cross on his face and a little point to the heavens, as if he were thanking the Greek deities for their graciousness in allowing him to end that very inning. what a crock of shit! i don’t end every single paragraph i write with a prayer to Allah. i don’t even do so after each blog post is published! although, Christ, maybe i should…
what other things have i done lately? what other thoughts have i had? after all, what is a blog post but a description of sights and sounds, as mundane, murky, magical, or obsolescent they may be.
today, i went to a television studio. i don’t really have much more to say about that except that i saw lots of monitors and a pretty girl (or two) and important people.
i’ve had two amazing weekends back to back and—coincidentally—my girlfriend has been sober for two whole weekends. this most recent one was spent doing and eating and feeling many things, but it started with my limbs actually assembling a delicious spinach mushroom pasta for Chelsea and myself, followed by the spectacle of spectacles, ballet:
all the critics seem to love the San Francisco Ballet’s 2012 closing-production of Don Quixote and, this time around, i’m not one to disagree with critics. not only did i take my beautiful girl to a beautiful ballet, but i finally closed the loop on something i should have done almost two years ago: mixed marijuana and high art! yup yup yup, during the intermissions, Chelsea and i slipped to the City Hall-facing balcony—the very same one where i was offered a smoke so long ago—and took a toke from my own magic flute. and, as if the universe wasn’t content with closing a single loop, it sent an old man wandering to our balcony, who awkwardly conversed with us until i killed the awkwardness by offering him a smoke. his response: “far out!” i love ballet, i love San Francisco.
i also love girls.
these are the girls that are the waitresses that are the angels at It’s Tops Coffee Shop that i love that i yes that i love more coffee more smiles more eyes bright wide-opened white cream in my coffee, the girls that i love, the coffee that i love, the ballet spins music into my misty ears. coffee.
the rest of the weekend was spent sleeping in super late, loving friends, drinking beers, eating wings, eating omelettes, eating trout, eating salmon, celebrating Rachel, and hating my disgusting eye. oh well, there are worse things, i suppose.
do you ever read a blog post and think to yourself, “i wonder if this blogger stopped mid-post to take a gigantic shit.” not all who wonder are lost.
the weekend prior was just as—if not more—outstanding. if you assume that thursday and the first seventeen and a half hours of friday are not the weekend, that is. but if you somehow take thursday night to be part of the weekend, well then, good reader, i’ll have you know that just about the only good thing that happened to me that night was a small cup of tomato basil soup, a bit of grilled cheese, and a portion of water. the rest was hell and teeth-grating, dreaming of my sweetness pinned down of her own volition, writhing, unsmiling, drowning. and i knew not of her freedom until friday evening, when i threw all care to the wind and descended into Daly City, the land of beer and music.
everything will be okay in the end. if things aren’t okay, then it’s not the end.
in the morning, he feasted on piggy bits while his woman feasted big old spit. and it was so goddamn good that he thought he was hallucinating. and he was
in a grey car zipping
through a grey weather squinting
on a grey bridge swinging
to San Francisco! where he wore Lily in his hair for fifteen minutes or more while waiting for government workers to bring salvation back in the form of a place to park his swinging gray weather.
there’s nothing to do but do what people do, he said, so he showed a black & white picture here, met a decaffeinated chief executive there, penned secret blog posts pretty much everywhere.
cellphone’s dead, swinging bridges grey with grey, blunts is blonde with bombs like, what? selling beer is money? like, what? birthdays feel like birthdays.
you think people would take a lesson from The Social Network and just avoid penning new blog posts when they’re bitter upset about their girlfriends or ex-girlfriends or whatever.
but we don’t.
last night, after my second time ever experiencing Explosions in the Sky, i thought i would do a double good deed by 1) giving Cameron a ride back to Berkeley and 2) visiting a (supposedly) invalid Chelsea, pining away all by her sad lonesome in bed, unable to walk except for the help of backbreaking crutches. turns out, she’s at a bar. oh well, i go anyway, at least to give Cameron the ride and maybe a little bit to give Chelsea shit for prancing around Berkeley drinking after spending all day spinning me such a sob story about her “sprained ankle.” i tell her we’ll be at the bar in 20 minutes and she says okay. 20 minutes later, we’re at the bar and she’s a-oh-fucking-kay planted firmly in the lap of some dude she’s showering with kisses. while Cameron and i are at the bar getting drinks, she’s literally doing this five feet away from me, facing my direction, and yet looking everywhere but at me. now, i know the girl gets stupid drunk to the point where her eyes start flying in different directions, but 1) she knew i was coming and 2) still, what the fuck? even if i wasn’t going to be there, what the fuck? do i act that way with friends i haven’t seen in months? maybe?
i have no poker face but laughter and i couldn’t laugh because my heart felt sick, so Cameron tried his best to help me: “just breathe.” that’s a good one. i like that one and i listened and it helped a little, but not enough. he could tell, so he said, “you know, she’s winning.” i already knew that, of course, but i didn’t care. because i couldn’t tell if the girl was serious or not, i just stood and tried my damndest to stare away in disbelief, trying to understand whether i was being played in a game or whether she was just too drunk to notice what was going on. either way, i was disgusted, and my heart grew colder and darker by the second. i could hear the guy singing on stage, the last act of the open mic night, as if he were reaching out to me from the planet formerly known as pluto, and his dead cold vocals matched my dead cold heart. i kept thinking to myself that i shouldn’t care because it’s probably just some friend of hers and it’s not a big deal, but then i realized that it didn’t matter, because i hurt.
but yeah, Explosions in the Sky was cool. Cameron liked them too, though he was a bit down on them later in the evening. says they hide too much behind their pedals, they don’t push themselves to do anything really new. it’s kinda true.
today sucked too. i literally sat in an almost 9-hour meeting with a few of my company’s execs and some ivory tower analysts. and it ended up kind of being a waste of time because one of the two wasn’t even the right fit for us. christ. afterwards we went out to dinner with the better of the two, and it was awkward because we had let him in on our disappointment. i showed up late, plowed through my wine before everyone, and awkwardly waited patiently for my boss to suggest ordering a second bottle. the suggestion never came, so i ate my (way too fancy) food wineless.
nothing i’ve talked about in this blog post is more depressing than these two combined facts: 1) Rich took back his bass and amp from me because he’s starting to play bass in some band and 2) Chelsea and/or aerienne fucked up my 1200 to the point where i can’t make it stable for fucking shit.
oh well. at least i have space disco. Real Life Is No Cool.
no, i can’t take the pussy with me
but the pussy can take me with it.
for the inside of a woman’s flesh is death,
and it’s there i’ll lay my head to rest.
there are times you park on Lily and feel like the luckiest man in the universe for it. but really you know it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
there are times when you’re already buzzed and full in the Mission, but when your old college friend asks you over for dinner, lord knows you never deny a second dinner. everyone works at Google, everyone uses a MacBook Pro. nobody works at a startup, nobody uses a MacBook Air. everybody and nobody, pretty boys and girls alike, sit at the same table, munch on fried fancy cheese with warm flavorful bread with strong pesto pasta, and sip on Fat Tire and Glenlivet. you talk social media, sex, nicknames, and turntables, but more important of all you make really big plans and you confirm for ourselves you will execute.
there are times when you’ve just had it being the best social media marketing manager you could possibly be, so you drive your head of compliance and one of your designers—two of the loveliest ladies you may ever know—over to the Outer Mission to a place that used to be shadier than the shades but is now called Rock Bar, and you’re all the bar’s first patrons. Negra Modelo one, Negra Modelo two, Negra Modelo three, and suddenly you have everyone on the marketing team thinking you’re a pool shark. put the stick down, and they will never know. pick up a couple chickens to know, some mashed potatoes to suck, some biscuits you better believe taste better than all the love in all the land.
there are times when you can barely handle the task of looking at yourself in the mirror because your face is fucked (again) and you have little faith of short-term healing, no matter your stupid doctor’s stupid confidence. but you apply the stupid fucking cream every stupid night anyway, and you wash it off with warm water every stupid fucking morning anyway, and you wash your stupid fucking lids with baby shampoo anyway. and you maybe sometimes bother with the stupid fucking warm compresses anyway. and you swallow the stupid fucking antibiotics, once at noon and once at midnight, if you can ever remember.
yes, there are times when you can barely handle the task of looking at yourself in the mirror because your face is fucked (again) and you have to go to your nice brightly-lit startup office, situated near the most beautiful baseball park in the world, populated by beautiful faces just out of college and beyond, discombobulated by a demolition derby next door, making way for the next 60 employees. and your boss wants a snack so bad, but not bad enough to sneak past demolition, so the two of you check out of the office for a walk over to Philz, where you order a Tantalizing Turkish and a toasted cheese danish to enjoy while discussing your day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month jobs. basically, you’re explaining why you make over a twentieth of a million dollars every year. you always started concerned, you always end calmed, even at the most intense, even when your boss—your BOSS—specifically asks you, “how’s life?” and you say “good” and she intuitively knows that “good” not to be the same “good” she’s heard you say a billion times before, so she follows up with, “what’s up? i’ve taken off my boss hat. you can talk to me.” and suddenly you’re transported back to college, your boss has transformed into your advisor, she’s a wise middle-aged woman with short hair and she sometimes wears a brace and when she knows you have something to say, she refuses to speak. you are vulnerable. you are wired. the coffee has long since kicked in and you’re about to confess to her that you want to claw your eyelids out (but you swear you’re not superficial) and that your favorite guitarist is about to quit his job (but it’s okay because he’ll make it) and that your favorite blonde bomb from across the pond made some of your very same sexual mistakes (but you’ve made the same) and that your cousin’s depression seems to be spreading around (but not really) and that your roommate hates you (but it’s really just the girlfriend) and that your girlfriend that you broke up with and then proceeded to fuck and love and love and fuck 69 trillion times every 42 seconds following is addicted to everything, not just narcotics—beer, wine, dick, weed, coke, ecst, etc.—but all she really wants are narcotics. and that’s all you really want to say, so you say, “my best friend is very young and she’s making lots of stupid mistakes and i don’t know what to do.” and your advisor says, “all you can do is love.” and so you do.
oh yes, there are times when you speed south down highway 101 to San Mateo, your ol’ stomping grounds—as they say—to pick up your lead gen guy and go out to lunch in Foster City—no kidding—with a pretty-well known figure in the tech marketing startup space. albacore tuna amber ale, tell me stories. Mary Jane Girls on down, Black Sabbath on up.
oh yes, there sure are those times where you literally pull your co-worker friends into a room with no table and no chairs and you say to them, look, i ain’t gonna be doing this blogging thing all by myself, see. and they respect you for it all the more.
there are times when you get home from work and the only thing you know how to do is music.
$20 for a 12″ single really isn’t that much money. $10 per side. $1 per minute. and that’s just for the first listen. after that, it’s free… forever.
music: it’s so easy. just pick something and stick with it.
i picked up my bass and spun through a few little ditties, but it wasn’t perfection because i stuck with nothing. also, because i was still chatting with people online and checking the social networks. and then returning to the bass. and then back to chat. and researching basses. and bassing and chatting and researching. did you know about the Fender Precision Bass? how about the Fender Jazz Bass? do you fear fretless? fear not, fret not, for i am full of shit, and a fret is what i expect i’ll need before i advance to the lands entranced with spectrum and space.
there are times you aren’t sure what pronoun to use any more.
oh, research will only take you so far, so you’ll dare spend $10 (chipping in a little for Jack Dorsey, no doubt) on a cab ride to Guitar Center, just to hold one, two, maybe five different bass guitars. and, boy, they feel so good. boy, they feel so much better than the one you’re borrowing, and you know what Cameron says about that sentiment? “good.” Cameron always says “good.” you are what you say. you are what you eat.
you wouldn’t dare spend any more to be taxied, so you walk back, hungry and $300, $900, $1100 richer, all because you numbed the motivation to jump on an electric bass that very evening. what’s a $5 gin tonic. what’s a $10 asparagus almond pasta. what’s a pretty bartender. what’s a 21st century civil theistic discussion. what’s a text message messy enough to make you imagine a dead best friend, and all the uncertainties associated with that tragic magic? fuck narcotics. lower than bass, harsher than ash, shittier than mace, rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape.
but this the time where you’re in love, no matter what words you say.
you’re in love with a girl who can convince you that there’s always enough time to do it just one more time. you’re in love with a girl who thinks she can eat a double bigger than her face, right after pho, but she can’t. you’re in love with a girl who can give a good hho (as in, rhymes with pho), and she knos (as in, rhymes with phos [as in, sounds softer than fuss]) jus wha tha means. you’re in love with a girl who can’t control herself. you’re in love with a girl who explodes in anger. you’re in love with a girl who explodes in sadness. you’re in love with a girl who explodes in happiness. you’re in love with a girl who swallows your explosions, no matter which of the three. you’re in love with a girl that gets you going and keeps you going and sees you going and knows you’re going and smiles you’re coming. you’re in love with a girl who writes with appetite and curses her mother’s purse. you’re in love with a girl who is trying to kill herself and doesn’t care, or so she claims when her mind’s not really there. you’re in love with a girl and you don’t know why, but if you think an all black jazz bass fretless is just as satisfying sexually you’ve lost your mind it’s committed a crime you’re living a lie your disco has died.
you might think you’re a quarter Scottish, and you are. but you’re actually just a quarter Arizona, you are. or more. you fly there, you take so long, you take some flight with your brothers and your mom and there’s your dad and your dogs, a burrito and a hotel room, and there you are. a fucked up eye, a blazing sun, a damn good egg, a good cousin. a loser baseball team, this list’s for Jillian, a loser stadium, winning fans, poetry aluminum. no but really, you’re 100% Arizona Scottish and your grandpa is 95 years old, he makes sure to tell you right when you arrive, when he’s brimming with life and right when you’re about to leave, when he’s foreseeing his death.
drive drive drive drive drive for la petit mort awaits, and it’s nothing. it’s a girl who last fuck was a year ago and it was you, and she still doesn’t know the proper way to bend her back during doggystyle. does she even enjoy this, i sometimes wonder? college students blow my mind, their legs go for miles in the Claremont sun.
drive drive drive drive drive my spiritual dregs to the San Francisco sun. the rain drives me sane.
I am not a fool. I am wise. I will run from my fear, I will out distance my fear, then I will hide from my fear, and I will wait for my fear, I will let my fear run past me, then I will follow my fear, I will track my fear until I can approach my fear in complete silence, then I will strike at my fear, I will charge my fear, I will grab hold of my fear, I will sink my fingers into my fear, then I will bite my fear, I will tear the throat of my fear, I will break the neck of my fear, I will drink the blood of my fear, I will gulp the flesh of my fear, I will crush the bones of my fear, and I will savor my fear, I will swallow my fear, all of it, and then I will digest my fear until I can do nothing else but shit out my fear.
