Death By Stereo

I’m listening to R.E.M.-Losing my religion.

I’ve been sneaky and silly and getting myself into all manner of idiocracy.

I’ve so far, in this life been a loser, and a winner. I’ve been a liar and a cheater and a thief. I’ve been good and upstanding and unimportant. I’ve been a father. I’ve played father to a sister and a daughter and a lover who needed help instead of love but I gave too much of what I didn’t have anyway.

My life hit a strange but familiar lull recently. I suppose one can say that in High School life was full of mixed tapes loaded with Punk Rock, and Metal. Some Industrial and 80’s music for good measure just to shake things up a bit, and bring me out of my self-important all knowing 14 year old mind and make me more like the rest of the kids at some point or another. There was no lull then but a punk beat.

Doot dat do do dat. Doot dat do do dat. Over and over as fast and clean as you can.

You can define me by the tapes that people dubbed for me. Old Punk Rock that can’t be found because the record labels have gone belly up because the scene stopped supporting it, or grew out of it, or maybe it just got stale.

What those tapes remind me of is Miller High Life that my best friends step father used to buy us on Friday and Saturday nights. Bottles of Snake Eyes and Cisco that we drank and sang old Mexican songs and Mid 90’s Rap to. We smelled like skate park and bus rides. We looked like shit with haircuts we gave ourselves and hair dye we bought from friends.

“Dude who the fuck vomited on my Dead Kennedy’s shirt?”

“You did fucker, you don’t remember?”

“Pfft, No.”

We didn’t care. We didn’t know what needed to be cared for and over time my tapes gave way to more CD’s.

After a time less punk and more rock.

Mellow, but edgy. I walked and held my CD player making sure it didn’t skip as I headed over to whatever class I was failing at the local junior college.

The beats gave way to Sonic Youth and The Pixies and guitars that carried and spoke to us rather than screaming with conviction.

Cute girls walked the hallways. I carried a camera and a notepad and drew in my design classes. I took the bus to the local music store that I worked at. I had moved on from bumming booze and bumping coke to being snuck into bars and having drinks bought for me by older gay men who thought I was cute and didn’t mind that I was straight.

I was clean cut, and smelled of the gym or whatever cologne I was wearing to impress my on and off girlfriend. The music I used to listen to was no longer a thing to get me excited but a tool for nostalgia.

Lets trade stories and remember the time that Operation Ivy played in the background and that one dude that no one liked boned his girlfriend in the back of my mothers Plymouth.

Lets get together and realize that at 19 I am working with 30 year olds and 20 something’s and I was thinking “Holy shit you’re 24? What the hell am I gonna be doing at 24?”

Eventually, I didn’t care about music at all. I didn’t care about the scene or the art or my friends. I was working. I was driving on my graveyard shift and I didn’t care what I wore and I was becoming less and more of myself every day.

I gave in, but to this day I can’t say that I know exactly what I gave in to.

I’ve given in to sin. I’ve given in to God. I’ve given in to pressure and to sex and to sadness and to joy. I’ve given in to love and all the things that come from that which if you were to ask me to describe what love is like, I would say that its Sin, and God, and Pressure, and Sex, and Sadness and Happiness all wrapped up into a nice, neat little package (laced with fucking poison).

Then there was no music at all.

I hated it.

I didn’t like that I didn’t stand for anything but making other people happy. I didn’t like that I took love and made it a means to an end and an excuse for complacency.

A funny thing happened when the music went away. So did all the love.

And when that was gone I was listening to whatever was on the radio. I didn’t care that it’s all watered down, and filtered into easy to digest little bits of FCC approved douche baggery.

I didn’t care that it was empty and shallow and meant nothing to me until the day when it all meant something again. It reminded me of something I once had. It gave me hope when I didn’t have any again. The funny thing was it was all the same shitty music that played in the background of a life that I had technically checked out of completely.

I get into conversations with 50 year old men about pop music from the 80’s, and stale tunes from the 90’s, and I talk to an older woman about theme songs from the 70’s. I offer an underground album to a co-worker and at some point I realize that the tapes are all gone. So are the CDs I collected. MP3 files have replaced it all and my life is reduced to a laptop.

Folk singers and their sad songs play in my head a lot more now. That is the rhythm of my life, but only when I think of what I lost. It’s a steady flow of smooth sound that wraps me up and holds me tight till I figure out what the fuck is wrong with me. Long enough for me to deal with loss. Damien Rice plays me to sleep.

And then I go out and get a drink and all of a sudden those New Wave tunes I used to hate have me dancing like a fucking idiot with a pretty friend of mine, or a girl I’m dating or maybe just a buddy I haven’t seen in a while. The smiths start playing and we dance as spastically as possible till we are all smiling and laughing and ordering more drinks.

Its in all of this that my life is unsure and feeble and I teeter on the edge of something I can’t put my finger on. It matters to me less though, and as time goes by its gone. After the next morning, after the alcohol I realize that just before passing out I’ve brought a bottle of water to bed, and I’ve made it a habit to avoid a hangover.

It works.

And I get up and I go for a run.

After the 2nd mile or so I am listening to my music as loud as I can and sometimes It’s the old stuff. Sometimes it’s the new stuff. Sometimes it reminds me of cruising the streets with my daughter in the back seat and she is nodding her head back and forth to something I passed by on the dial.

Shoe loves Modest Mouse and pronounces it “Moss Moush”.

“Moss Moush Papa!”

Or was it an import of “The Kooks”?

Or was it an old Tupac tune I have buried on a playlist?

Eclectic now. At 26 I’ve started collecting again and now I wonder if I’ll ever make a tape again. Or hell if I even have the balls to make a CD or a playlist for someone.

I’ve gotten to the point where there is so much I’ve listened to. There is so much that I have given in to that if I were to sit, and really map myself out by the silly beats and the parties and the music I’d simply stop existing because in that moment I have been defined by a soundtrack.

Fuck I’ve come so far.

I have written myself into a corner. I have played myself into oblivion. I have listened to so much that I begin to wonder how the fuck I’ve managed to make a life of listening to music when what I should have been doing is listening to myself. I need to make my own soundtrack and make it the best that I can.

I need to add to it continuously till the day I die.

I wonder if anyone will listen to it.

A Little Something for the Ladies

This is a different night than one I am used to. Its dark in this living room, and I look out the window at palm trees that are black, and a sky that is a deep and dark purple. I have pulsing music playing on this little laptop, and a tiny child sits on the sofa.

I’m baby-sitting Elise, while my sister and her boyfriend celebrate his birthday. Tomorrow is Mothers Day. I never bothered with it before, and I don’t care for it now. The first Mothers day I ever cared to remember began with Pancakes and Emma by my side, and ended with the demise of my relationship. My family began to fall apart on Mothers day.

Funny.

I grew up with women. My mother, single and crazy and constantly looking for something better. My older sister growing and stumbling through life discovering that her father was a lie, her family was something strange and foreign. My little sister being raised by an 8-year-old boy who knew nothing of the world except that as long as his sister had food, and was in bed when Mom got home everything would be okay, even if I knew it wasn’t.

Latch Key Kids for the win.

On we went, moving constantly and all the time my mother surrounding us with crazy bible thumping older women who raised us on stories of The Lord and how men never treated them right. I was raised on these stories, and smooth jazz, and taught at an early age that a gentleman…

1Walks on the outside of the sidewalk.
2Opens doors.
3Nods, smiles, and acknowledges conversation.
4Leads a good dance.
5Doesn’t really exist, so try not to be too much of a dick when you’re old enough to fuck.

4 out of 5 ain’t bad huh?

I’m not 8 anymore. I act like I am most of the time but times are vastly different than I remember. I like Scotch, I like Red Wine, I hate crowds and I like a good smoke now and then (a pack a day is now and then right?). I’m still surrounded and defined by the women around me.

I even made one once.

And my big sister did too.

So did my little sis.

It’s different when you’re surrounded by women who care about you like a brother, a son, a father. It’s different when you never spent your summers under the hood of a car, but at the business end of a mood swing.

How do I say thank you? How do I apologize? How do I say that I am trying to become the standard you all set for me, but I have no idea how to do it? How do I admit I am not the man you want, but the one you got and now I’ve got to make up the difference?

Tonight is different because when I leave this apartment, after Leslie and Jeremy have come home to their child sleeping soundly in her bed I won’t know where to go. I could go home but why? I could go out but for what? I don’t know if I will sit at this computer writing nonsensical things, or uploading photos, or if I am going out to see if a friend or to feels like drinking themselves silly.

I woke up this morning with someone next to me. I looked at the ceiling and out my dirty windows while music played in my speakers. I lost myself in thought for a moment. I remembered things.

Somber, pulsing music from across the pond played me into a daze as I remembered where I was when we first picked up the album and talked about its simple but honest guitars, and soulful voice.

My companion asked me what was wrong, and nothing was but I was in thought.

I remembered the beginning of my adult life.

Leaving home angry.

Sitting with my sister and some friends for an evening drinking a bottle of Tequila into oblivion.

Driving up the 5 freeway to San Francisco while Emma grew in Vanessa’s belly.

This is the album I began to grow up to. It wasn’t punk and it wasn’t unusual but it meant something to me, and it played me to San Francisco. It played me to Erich’s Funeral and back home. It played Emma to sleep more nights than she will ever remember.

It played this morning and it didn’t stop until I got here to carry Elise to her bed. I put it on and began to write.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the end for me. It marks the beginning of a new person that was born of me on that day.

I’m uglier on the inside. Angrier. I’m something else that wasn’t what was surgically removed from my mother’s womb. I am not the little ball of fat that my mothers friends used to dance with. I am not the exceptional young man with good manners and a gift for art.

I am not what I want to be.

I am nothing like I think I should be.

Today when Leslie kissed and told me she loves me and misses me and she’s so happy her bother is here it struck me that it doesn’t matter to me what I am. As long as the women in my life know how much I love them.

The little girls, the nieces and daughters and mothers.

If it weren’t for you I would be nothing.

I love you.

And then...

And then…

And then there I was standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean with the warm sun facing Emma and I as I held her little hands to avoid the rip tide. She has never been old enough to play in the water with all the other children and families running to and fro. Today she is, and she loves it, and I love this more than anything.

I take her away from the water, and change her behind a towel and get as much sand off of her as possible before putting her into a comfy dress and a comfy Umbrella Stroller and walk the Promenade with her. I am nervous and stressed but she is content and sleeping as we pass by beggars, and vagabonds. Street vendors and street musicians lull us into a tired trance that I don’t care to snap out of.

And then I am passing out on the floor while my friends from all over the country play video games and laugh and eat and joke with each other. They came to visit as we do on an almost bi annual basis. We who were here from the beginning play funny games and drink alcohol. Its in this that I realize that feeling alone in your own skin might be a permanent thing for me no matter the company, or the level at which such company and I can relate to each other.

Still. I wouldn’t be anywhere else at this moment, because Joy has made me a Penis cake.

And then I leave my job for something better. It’s the smart move. It’s the safe move. It’s a stroke of genius on my part. Or so I feel. I dive headfirst like I do from time to time only to hit a wall.

It’s the same wall that there always is.

“He quit you see, and because of that we have to let you go. We just don’t have the bandwidth to train someone new right now.”

But you wanted me, and you asked for me to come and interview.

“Yes I’m sorry. Really I am but please feel free to use us as a reference.”

And then I call Vanessa. Because when times get tough its my habit. She knows that this has happened to me time and time again. She knows that no matter how bad its gotten, even if she’s the reason its been bad. I make it out somehow.

And then I was almost in love again. I turned my back on it though.

And then we broke up.

And then I gave in.

And then I was a father.

And then…

Zombie Writes...

I’ve accumulated several journals in which to write.

Don’t expect my pen to ever see the last page of any of them. Such is a habit of mine with any journal or sketchpad I’ve ever owned.

Fresh like a new pack of Crayons to a child. New like a pack of cigarettes for the night out on the town. Crisp like the package of food stamps my mother used to feed our hungry Mexican mouths. Journals that I won’t complete but will most likely keep for years.

In them are not entries, but notes and quotes that are said by random people I run into. Lyrics to a song I hear while working, or driving.

Something Emma did to make me smile.

Unfinished blogs written to ring in the new year and rather than put them together like I usually do I thought I’d try something different.

I’ll just type them for you exactly as they are written in any one of my three journals.

12/25/07 Zombie writes...

South on Fremont to Monterey Pass Road from Muerta’s warm bed…

Industry becoming…

Past Cesar Chavez Blvd. I see Andy’s Porn Shop off of Whittier Blvd.

Turn left to visit my daughter on Christmas Morning.

Tamales. Red Beef. Green w/Cheese. Dulce Brown w/ Rasins and Pineapple.

I want to decline a gift from hands that tore me apart.

I hold my composure.

12/26/07 Zombie writes…

Futility. Fight yourself for Christ’s sake motherfucker.

He got let go because of his drug addiction. Why didn’t he listen to us?

12/27/07 Zombie writes…

I see dead people.

Emma keeps pointing at nothing and talking to something we can’t see.

Mia takes pictures of it all.

Someone moved all the chairs from under the table but we were all in the front of the house.

I aint fraid a no ghost!

1/4/2008 Zombie writes…

J- I love you so much.

V-I love you too Joshua

J- But I’m not in love with you.

V- Good, neither am I.

We smile.

1/13/2008

Softer and sweeter than…

Was it a lie from the beginning?

Thats a very long time to lie.

1-14-2008 Zombie writes…

The morning’s tint gives the break room a light blue glow to contrast the cookie cutter corporate design of the tables and chairs. Another Airplane takes off and the sound of it rattles the window as I sip my coffee.

Happy Aniversary?

1/21/2008 Zombie writes…

They’re moving in.

How did that happen?

A fire?

If I had known I would have done something to help the situation. Honestly.

No, I don’t mind if you bump coke in the parking lot. Why the fuck would I mind?

Today Zombie writes…

Someone once told me our chapter ended. But the thing is I was still fucking writing the novel when the book was shut on me.

I should make this into some sort of blog, might be fun.