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.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, April 14, 2008
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…
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…
Monday, January 21, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Over Breakfast
Emma waves me close and I have to smile at her. I lean in to her little face and ask her what’s up.
Emma and I are at The Diner, in Alhambra grabbing breakfast together. I am having the usual Ham and Egg breakfast; she is eating Pancakes I cut into bite-sized pieces for her. Music is always playing here. It invades my head for a bit reminding me of the car ride to Utah…
I’m skimming my ipod in the passenger seat of Joy’s little Toyota. I see old 90’s tracks and current new wave bands. We are munching on dried Mangos and talking about relationships. My most recent failed relationship, and the bullshit that follows something that ended in children and debt and humiliation. With bags full of clothes, toiletries, video games and computers we head out to pay our respects to Erich.
What I love about the friends that I keep close to me is our strange way of making each other happy. Our ability to be blunt and honest is shocking. Sometimes it scares me that I can say the things that I say. I used to be accused of being an asshole for telling someone they were acting like a heartless prick. The only problem with that is that the person I told that to was in fact acting like a heartless prick.
Go figure.
Not Joy though. I say that someone feels like home, and she agrees to the fact. She warns me of the follies of falling hard and what she thinks may or may not happen. She talks to me about family and religion and politics. She tells me that I am a silly boy, and that I deserve to be, but I am a silly boy nonetheless.
“Eyes?” asks Emma, as she jabs a finger full of pancake painfully into my left eyeball.
I smile and say “Eyes baby”.
Its Christa’s eyes that caught me first, before the scars. I saw her for the first time in person in the hotel lobby. At times her eyes were the only things clear enough in the pictures that I have seen of her for so long. I just got off the phone with someone who was worried about me, and all I can think is that I am the last person anyone needs to worry about. Christa is my only concern at this moment, and I have come to Utah not only to say goodbye but also to be a presence in case she needs it. If she doesn’t, then at the least I want her to know I was here.
Christa is smaller than I thought, and thinner than I figured. I hold her and fight back tears. She has had enough of that I feel, and I am not about to add to what she is already feeling. She cries in my arms and I wish I could live closer just so that I could be a better friend. It’s a long way from L.A. to Connecticut though.
“I’m gonna make you cry aren’t I? I’m sorry.” She is a bit muffled from my shoulder but this is what I hear.
“No I’m okay.” I tell her as I nod to Rick who I am meeting for the first time as well.
We have traveled across the country to see people we consider dear friends. From Oregon and California and Florida. From Colorado and Wisconsin. It is Joe who said it best (and I am sure I am misquoting)
“You can’t really measure friendship by the ability to shake someone’s fucking hand you know?” (as long as the F-bomb is dropped, then you have the most accurate quote of Joe and I)
“Yeah you’re right Dock.” I responded (at least I think. I’ve got a horrible memory).
“Nose?” Emma asks me as she puts pancake syrup as far up my nostril as she can manage.
“Nose Emma that’s right.”
I cannot feel my nose in Utah. Rick (Scooby) and I are walking to the store nearest the hotel. I don’t know what the hell I did with my gloves but I need a pair fast. Smoking a cigarette is the only thing I can think of that will warm me, but I find that it does precisely dick. Scooby is doing a great job of humoring me in all my rambling.
After most of us have arrived we head out to the house Erich used to live in. It over looks Salt Lake at the foot of the most amazing mountains I have ever seen. We say hello to family members who associate us with Erich’s online video gaming/blogging friends. We all watch Christa to make sure she is okay. Joy is next to me and leaves for a while. She was closer to Erich than I was and is handling this with grace. I go outside and smoke.
“Head” says Emma. Though she pronounces it like “HAT”.
Yes Emma that’s Poppa’s head. She smiles at me and goes back to her food. I smile at her because she makes me do that.
All the time.
There is snow on my head. I have never seen the snow fall, but when I woke up this morning it was falling right outside the window of the room that Joy and Baller and I stayed in. Tonight I intend to be drunk, I intend to crack jokes and have a good time.
“What do you folks do for a living?” asks a random hotel guest.
“Play video games” says Christa.
We all laugh at how silly it is and how true. Airme, Cornballer, Dock, JB, George W. Bush, Powder, Scooby, Tiffa and Zombie. We all met online and have spent the better part of the last 3 years visiting and partying and becoming real friends. Hell, I found that of all the stupid bullshit I was trying to avoid after high school, that most of the people I used to know are still stuck worried about their childish drama and silly pipe dreams.
Meanwhile I am living my life watching real friends of mine have children who barely survive pregnancy, or don’t survive at all. They move cross-country for love, and for family. They face bad real estate deals, and crooked lawyers. Crazy family who disappear and come back with anger and pain. They venture out and some of them never come back
Some of us have left to the funeral and others of us are piling into a mini van that Scooby rented. We have all this ability to make each other laugh even though we are all so sad. We smile at each other regardless of the murder that brought us here.
5 grown men who who have been singing Holiday by Madonna.
J.B. says “How about some donuts in this bitch?”
Sounds like a good idea, but Scooby is a seasoned snow driver, and can handle a mini van like Steve McQueen handles stunt cars. Dock reads a eulogy. I listen to my music and smile.
Emma and I are walking out of The Diner now. I’m so proud of her. She smiles and waves to everyone. She makes them smile with her big red beanie and her little Chuck Taylor shoes. Her flared jeans and vintage looking jacket makes her better dressed than I.
You can hear the smile in her voice as she says “Bye bye” to random people.
Its time to say goodbye for the last time.I see the American Flag over his coffin. I see family holding composure. I see Christa talking about the love of her life, and Joy is behind me in silence. I sit with Joe and Christa and Keith as Erich’s best friends tell anecdotes; they read Blogs that he wrote so eloquently. It hurts.
It feels as though moments have passed before I am out in the snow next to Joy. George W. holds Christa’s shoulder. Dock is reading off comments written by dozens of people from across the country and the world. Baller and Airme were Pallbearers. I don’t feel worthy of touching his coffin.
I don’t, and instead leave with Joe to smoke some more.
Dock and Zombie standing in the snow taking the classiness of Upper Crust Salt Lake City down by smoking Parliaments in the snow.
“Erich would have loved this snow Josh.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah man, he would text me when ever it was snowing and ask me to guess what he was gonna be doing in a half an hour. Fucking skiing.” (edit per Joyous)
Emma and I are at home now. Sitting watching the same Sesame Street DVD as usual, I warm her Vanilla Soy Milk and give it to her as she snuggles under her Dora the Explorer blankets. It’s about 9 or so at night, and she’s letting me sit next to her as she falls asleep. She is so warm I intend to fall asleep as soon as I know she is.
I’m drunk in the snow laughing with Dock. The guys are inside along with Joy playing guitar hero. God Bless Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum. We are laughing hysterically at yellow snow on the floor, and our ridiculous imitations of our friends. I am staying awake for Christa, and when she and Scooby walk to the room I take a deep breath.
Christa and I talk until 3 in the morning. We talk about Punk Rock and Love. We talk about pharmaceuticals and suicide and death. We drink tea and coffee and smile and laugh. I look outside from time to time and marvel at the snow. We sit next to each other in this hotel lobby for some time before we decide it would be good to get some rest.
We hug and say goodbye. She’ll be asleep when I leave at 5 in the morning.
I can’t wait to get back home and take Emma out for breakfast.
Emma and I are at The Diner, in Alhambra grabbing breakfast together. I am having the usual Ham and Egg breakfast; she is eating Pancakes I cut into bite-sized pieces for her. Music is always playing here. It invades my head for a bit reminding me of the car ride to Utah…
I’m skimming my ipod in the passenger seat of Joy’s little Toyota. I see old 90’s tracks and current new wave bands. We are munching on dried Mangos and talking about relationships. My most recent failed relationship, and the bullshit that follows something that ended in children and debt and humiliation. With bags full of clothes, toiletries, video games and computers we head out to pay our respects to Erich.
What I love about the friends that I keep close to me is our strange way of making each other happy. Our ability to be blunt and honest is shocking. Sometimes it scares me that I can say the things that I say. I used to be accused of being an asshole for telling someone they were acting like a heartless prick. The only problem with that is that the person I told that to was in fact acting like a heartless prick.
Go figure.
Not Joy though. I say that someone feels like home, and she agrees to the fact. She warns me of the follies of falling hard and what she thinks may or may not happen. She talks to me about family and religion and politics. She tells me that I am a silly boy, and that I deserve to be, but I am a silly boy nonetheless.
“Eyes?” asks Emma, as she jabs a finger full of pancake painfully into my left eyeball.
I smile and say “Eyes baby”.
Its Christa’s eyes that caught me first, before the scars. I saw her for the first time in person in the hotel lobby. At times her eyes were the only things clear enough in the pictures that I have seen of her for so long. I just got off the phone with someone who was worried about me, and all I can think is that I am the last person anyone needs to worry about. Christa is my only concern at this moment, and I have come to Utah not only to say goodbye but also to be a presence in case she needs it. If she doesn’t, then at the least I want her to know I was here.
Christa is smaller than I thought, and thinner than I figured. I hold her and fight back tears. She has had enough of that I feel, and I am not about to add to what she is already feeling. She cries in my arms and I wish I could live closer just so that I could be a better friend. It’s a long way from L.A. to Connecticut though.
“I’m gonna make you cry aren’t I? I’m sorry.” She is a bit muffled from my shoulder but this is what I hear.
“No I’m okay.” I tell her as I nod to Rick who I am meeting for the first time as well.
We have traveled across the country to see people we consider dear friends. From Oregon and California and Florida. From Colorado and Wisconsin. It is Joe who said it best (and I am sure I am misquoting)
“You can’t really measure friendship by the ability to shake someone’s fucking hand you know?” (as long as the F-bomb is dropped, then you have the most accurate quote of Joe and I)
“Yeah you’re right Dock.” I responded (at least I think. I’ve got a horrible memory).
“Nose?” Emma asks me as she puts pancake syrup as far up my nostril as she can manage.
“Nose Emma that’s right.”
I cannot feel my nose in Utah. Rick (Scooby) and I are walking to the store nearest the hotel. I don’t know what the hell I did with my gloves but I need a pair fast. Smoking a cigarette is the only thing I can think of that will warm me, but I find that it does precisely dick. Scooby is doing a great job of humoring me in all my rambling.
After most of us have arrived we head out to the house Erich used to live in. It over looks Salt Lake at the foot of the most amazing mountains I have ever seen. We say hello to family members who associate us with Erich’s online video gaming/blogging friends. We all watch Christa to make sure she is okay. Joy is next to me and leaves for a while. She was closer to Erich than I was and is handling this with grace. I go outside and smoke.
“Head” says Emma. Though she pronounces it like “HAT”.
Yes Emma that’s Poppa’s head. She smiles at me and goes back to her food. I smile at her because she makes me do that.
All the time.
There is snow on my head. I have never seen the snow fall, but when I woke up this morning it was falling right outside the window of the room that Joy and Baller and I stayed in. Tonight I intend to be drunk, I intend to crack jokes and have a good time.
“What do you folks do for a living?” asks a random hotel guest.
“Play video games” says Christa.
We all laugh at how silly it is and how true. Airme, Cornballer, Dock, JB, George W. Bush, Powder, Scooby, Tiffa and Zombie. We all met online and have spent the better part of the last 3 years visiting and partying and becoming real friends. Hell, I found that of all the stupid bullshit I was trying to avoid after high school, that most of the people I used to know are still stuck worried about their childish drama and silly pipe dreams.
Meanwhile I am living my life watching real friends of mine have children who barely survive pregnancy, or don’t survive at all. They move cross-country for love, and for family. They face bad real estate deals, and crooked lawyers. Crazy family who disappear and come back with anger and pain. They venture out and some of them never come back
Some of us have left to the funeral and others of us are piling into a mini van that Scooby rented. We have all this ability to make each other laugh even though we are all so sad. We smile at each other regardless of the murder that brought us here.
5 grown men who who have been singing Holiday by Madonna.
J.B. says “How about some donuts in this bitch?”
Sounds like a good idea, but Scooby is a seasoned snow driver, and can handle a mini van like Steve McQueen handles stunt cars. Dock reads a eulogy. I listen to my music and smile.
Emma and I are walking out of The Diner now. I’m so proud of her. She smiles and waves to everyone. She makes them smile with her big red beanie and her little Chuck Taylor shoes. Her flared jeans and vintage looking jacket makes her better dressed than I.
You can hear the smile in her voice as she says “Bye bye” to random people.
Its time to say goodbye for the last time.I see the American Flag over his coffin. I see family holding composure. I see Christa talking about the love of her life, and Joy is behind me in silence. I sit with Joe and Christa and Keith as Erich’s best friends tell anecdotes; they read Blogs that he wrote so eloquently. It hurts.
It feels as though moments have passed before I am out in the snow next to Joy. George W. holds Christa’s shoulder. Dock is reading off comments written by dozens of people from across the country and the world. Baller and Airme were Pallbearers. I don’t feel worthy of touching his coffin.
I don’t, and instead leave with Joe to smoke some more.
Dock and Zombie standing in the snow taking the classiness of Upper Crust Salt Lake City down by smoking Parliaments in the snow.
“Erich would have loved this snow Josh.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah man, he would text me when ever it was snowing and ask me to guess what he was gonna be doing in a half an hour. Fucking skiing.” (edit per Joyous)
Emma and I are at home now. Sitting watching the same Sesame Street DVD as usual, I warm her Vanilla Soy Milk and give it to her as she snuggles under her Dora the Explorer blankets. It’s about 9 or so at night, and she’s letting me sit next to her as she falls asleep. She is so warm I intend to fall asleep as soon as I know she is.
I’m drunk in the snow laughing with Dock. The guys are inside along with Joy playing guitar hero. God Bless Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum. We are laughing hysterically at yellow snow on the floor, and our ridiculous imitations of our friends. I am staying awake for Christa, and when she and Scooby walk to the room I take a deep breath.
Christa and I talk until 3 in the morning. We talk about Punk Rock and Love. We talk about pharmaceuticals and suicide and death. We drink tea and coffee and smile and laugh. I look outside from time to time and marvel at the snow. We sit next to each other in this hotel lobby for some time before we decide it would be good to get some rest.
We hug and say goodbye. She’ll be asleep when I leave at 5 in the morning.
I can’t wait to get back home and take Emma out for breakfast.
Short one.
When you're options have been expended...
When you can actually see everything in your life on the edge of a vacant space, with no end to it in sight...
What do you do?
I face that right now. Am I willing to take a step back from it all for a moment to re correct all the things that have been going on in my life? It would mean losing a lot of myself in the process, but when you have a little girl to think about you'd be willing to do anything.
Anything.
When you can actually see everything in your life on the edge of a vacant space, with no end to it in sight...
What do you do?
I face that right now. Am I willing to take a step back from it all for a moment to re correct all the things that have been going on in my life? It would mean losing a lot of myself in the process, but when you have a little girl to think about you'd be willing to do anything.
Anything.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Allegory
I am sitting in the back off my truck watching airplanes take off from the Burbank Airport. The irony of this is funny to me. I have never been comfortable seeing low flying planes. It makes me un-easy to see thousands of pounds of metal take flight into a sky that was never intended for it. In just a few miscalculations metal and flesh can become a flaming ball of wreckage and there is not a damn thing you can do while you ride it into the ground.
Even more disturbing is the sound of the engines preparing to take off. It is a sound that has come to define me as a person. It is consuming me right now.
I am standing in the kitchen speaking to my friend. I am composing myself because my daughter is sitting in front of me smiling at me. She calls me Poppa with food on her face and milk on her hands. She does not know what I am hearing on the other end of the phone.
“Josh I took him from all of you. Its all my fault.”
Engines roar between my ears. They started at low hum yesterday when I read the bulletin. I saw that there was something wrong and I spoke softly to myself that I hoped everything was okay. As I first heard those propellers powered by jet fuel in my temples I remembered the past six months or so. I remembered all the times that this beast of a sound took over my head. I remember back to the first time it took its hold on me…
“Joshua, I don’t think that you and I should be together anymore”
The engines have been turned on. They are revving up and everything behind me and in front of me fades into a black, tarry mix of night and tears. This is the beginning of a great many things. Those engines are screaming now, and the ground is shaking and the air is filtered and distorted from the heat that the turbines are giving off.
All of this. In my head. In seconds that feel an eternity.
In the following weeks I changed. I learn to roll with the punches and decide that if I can through this I can do anything.
Regardless of that I stumble. I falter in ways I didn’t know I could manage. Apparently I am good at all sorts of Fuck-Uppery. I prove myself the weak pile of flesh that I have been trying to hide for so long. Pathetic. Tiny. Begging for another chance.
I drone along at work and at school. I write and stare at images and videos on the web. I work in an office but I do not shave. I do not tuck in my shirt. I do not cut my hair. I do my job to the extent that Tyler Durden did his. “In Tyler We Trust”.
“Did you or didn’t you?”
Engines ready
“I did”
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please grab your ankles and kiss your sorry asses goodbye.
The engines are at full throttle, and I am tearing pictures and paintings and photos from the wall. I am anger personified. I am what happens when you think your life is going just fine, forgetting just how fallible even the most important people nearest to you are. I am strapped to the wings of the plane as it takes off. It is just that loud in my head.
I am standing in front of my classmates, and pretty much the whole school. I am giving my final portfolio presentation. My clothes hang off me after losing too much weight. My face itches from hair that should be shaved off. I looked forward to this day for so long. I wanted this day to be the start of a new life. My little family in the back of the room smiling and waving to me; what I have built, what I have created, witnessing all that I have worked for come together in the form of cheap photoshopping and commercial art.
Instead of my family there is some Douche Bag asking if he can take his slice of pizza to his class because his 3D animation project is due in a week. I wonder how long it took him to blow dry his Morrissey hair, and how much those dirty looking jeans cost him at Diesel. I wonder if he knows that one of our classmates is fucking his girlfriend. I smile at him as he leaves.
“Josh can you see me in my office please”
I tell Christa I have to go meet my boss. She has been consoling me nearly everyday along with Joe and sometimes Erich and I chat randomly. We are chatting via AIM. She is telling me I should go out, have fun, get laid, be a guy for once in my life. I tell her I’ll give her a call when I can. In spite of a 3 hour time difference she listens to me because we both have children. We both had families once, and we both deal with our exes in our own ways.
“Josh close the door please”
Engine lights? Check…
“Josh I hate to say this but the company is cutting costs and I am going to have to let you go.”
Louder the engines get, and my face burns. I think about not being at work, and where I will go after this. I wonder if it was my fault and how the hell am I going to make ends meet in the coming days looking for work. I say goodbye to the ones that matter to me, and the others have already been laid off due to the poor real estate market.
I go out and grab some coffee with Muerta and talk.
In months I am freelance. I am broke. I am giving advice to people who are facing the things I am living.
“How are things with you and Rukh?
“Erich is amazing Josh.”
Christa and Erich are falling in love. They speak all the time and when that is not happening they are chatting or messaging. I don’t understand it, because I had love once, and I don’t have the ability to handle something like that again.
I manage odd jobs for odd people. Vanessa struggles to make ends meet in the wake of my recent lay off, and an unwilling job market. I get dressed everyday as if I have a job and I go to interviews, and submit resumes, and present myself in a manner I think suitable. I have nothing to offer the world at this point. No drive, no skills to speak of except for the ones I forced myself too learn for a family that is broken and gone from me. I keep going though for fear of what might happen if I were to stop.
“You should come out here Joe. What the fuck are you gonna do out in Colorado when you want to make films”?
I should listen to my own advice. What the hell do I know?
He will do it in his own time. I want him to know I will badger his ass till he does it though, just so he understands that I care.
Joe Gish is in love. He is building from where I am now. He is so much like me its gay. The day I met him I understood him, and where he was. We are two self-destructive motherfuckers.
Erich and Christa have met and are so deep into each others minds there is no going back. I wish I could have been there for the first time they actually met in person. I wanted to see sparks like that. I wanted to say that I was there to see two of the most hopeless romantics become this ridiculous force of warmth, and smiles.
Both have been ears to me, and words to me that no one will ever know. I have become more secretive of late.
“Erich is moving out here to live with me.”
We talk about this. I hope it works, and I hope they are happy. They both deserve to be happy. All they want in this world is to be in love and it shows.
Time goes by, and I manage all sorts of trouble. All in the name of the single life that I was thrust into unwillingly, here I am and I might be getting the hang of it. I don’t write as much, but I drink a lot more. I smell like Parliament lights and Pabst Blue Ribbon when the budget allows (which is not often). I listen to music I didn’t know I still had, and I get rid of the music that began to define a certain point in my life.
I appear out of nowhere and focus on only a few things. Me. Emma. Me. Emma. Me. Emma Emma Emma Emma. I have never loved anything more than fatherhood in my entire life. It is the only thing I wake in the morning for. It is the one thing I feel I can do well. The only thing that makes me happy is this.
I begin to wonder if I have spread myself too thin. I begin to wonder if I have popped up into old scenes at the risk of people not knowing exactly why or what I am about. Part of me hopes that this is okay. All I know is that it causes more problems.
“I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
Those fucking engines again.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the 747 that just crash landed into my fucking skull”
I pack up my stuff because it’s been a busy day anyway, and this freelance gig is coming to an end. I wonder how Christa is doing, and I wonder when Erich is gonna move out there and make Christa the happiest girl in the whole world.
It’s been months. Anniversaries that used to matter somehow missed my calendar completely. I was never good at them anyway. Birthdays I don’t care to recognize come and go.
I am working a processing gig. On my breaks I listen to my mp3 player and watch the planes take off. They shoot into the smoggy sky and disappear over the Hollywood hills. They come in and circle the San Fernando valley. “The Valley”-Porno capital of the world. I see myself in the windows and don’t recognize who is looking back at me. I walk around and try to remember what I am learning. I am penniless and eager for my first check. I am trying to cut down on my smoking because I don’t want Emma associating nicotine with her daddy. All I think about is me. All I do is try to make me better. I have been doing this for months.
What a selfish fuck.
So much time has passed. So many things have changed. So many perspectives have been skewered. Lives have molded into things I didn’t know they could become and I find myself wondering about Joe. I think about Christa and Eric. Christa knows things about me I didn’t know about myself. She was the first to see it.
Her words were always so soft and always careful but they carried a weight in my head. They always hit their mark and linger in my head like delicate perfume. We correspond she and I, and I wonder when we will talk again about how things are going all the way out on the eastern end of America. I wonder if she and Erich are okay.
“Josh I took him from all of you. Its all my fault.”
Her voice isn’t just soft right now. It is frail. It is weak from effort and the thought of why it is so difficult to speak cuts me to the marrow.
“Christa don’t say that he..”
The crescendo of these engines blast louder in my head than they have ever before.
“Josh he didn’t make it.”
I want to sit down in my seat. I want to grab the arms of the nearest chair and dig my fingers into the fabric so deep that my nails snap backwards one by one. I want the tips of my fingers to be bloody stumps. I want to let my eyes tear up and I grit my teeth and shake and quiver and yell. I want for one moment to look like a man in the Electric Chair shaking and writhing from the anguis of what I am hearing.
“He didn’t make it?”
Emma smiles at me between bites again, and it is the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen her give me.
“No Josh.”
I am vapor. I am mist. I am shallow and low. I couldn’t hold anything close to me for longer than it took for me to fuck it all up. I have been spending all my time trying to find myself, and cautiously soul searching while others watched me decline into a state of near insanity.
For what?
My brain for so long has been working without a soul behind it.
When you have put your brain on autopilot, your body becomes the Yes Man to the Corporate Assholes of your mind. I have allowed that to happen. I have forgotten what it was to love. I have forgotten what it is to feel with reckless abandon.
Not Erich and Christa. They met, corresponded, fell in love and he went out to live with her and be happy. They found each other at a time when none of us knew what to do with ourselves. Among failure, and weddings, and babies being born and jobs being lost there was Rukh and Tiffa falling head over heals for each other.
The plane is leaving the tarmac this time.
Christa has another visitor and she must go. She asks me to call her back. She makes me promise to call her back. I am crying and hiding it from Emma. I am shocked but I don’t want Christa to know, because if she gets excited the nurses will not let her receive calls.
“Promise me Josh”
“I promise Christa I’ll call you in 15 minutes.”
Flames and anger, metal and turbines, rubber and sky meet in my mind.
“I love you Josh.”
This is the moment that shatters me. I have not thought of Love in any way for a long time. I have not been able to say it to anyone at all, in any real honest capacity be it friend or otherwise. My dearest friend Christa says this and I realize that I might not get a chance to say it to her again. None of us can take something like that for granted.
Erich didn’t take it for granted. He went out and grabbed love and held on and now he is gone. I think of Erich. I think of his smiling face from pictures and his voice online and his messages to me of encouragement. I think of how he just went with his gut.
It takes my heart less than a moment to start beating again for the first time in months.
“I love you Christa, I’ll call you. I promise.”
It was easy to say because for the first time in this new life of mine I am able to mean it. I feel it, and it feels as if I am not just hearing the airliner take off, but I am standing on the runway waiting for the landing gear to tear me to bloody shreds.
Men like Joe and I (he and I have since agreed) are the ones who should have been taken. We are the ones who should be gone. We are the ones who were so low we took life for granted. Erich should be here. Not me.
My heart is done pounding out of my chest, and I have composed myself. All I can think of is Erich. All I can think of is Christa in the hospital and the awful details she gave me.
These engines are fading away into the distance. They came with static and they came with lights that blinded me. They are the sound of breaking. They are so loud in my head that I wince at the sight of the phone as I push “End”. The engines are the allegory for change on a scale I am not yet ready to handle and they are burning so hot it feels like the world is on fire.
Emma is done eating. I pick her up and hold her and tell her that I love her till she falls asleep in my arms.
Even more disturbing is the sound of the engines preparing to take off. It is a sound that has come to define me as a person. It is consuming me right now.
I am standing in the kitchen speaking to my friend. I am composing myself because my daughter is sitting in front of me smiling at me. She calls me Poppa with food on her face and milk on her hands. She does not know what I am hearing on the other end of the phone.
“Josh I took him from all of you. Its all my fault.”
Engines roar between my ears. They started at low hum yesterday when I read the bulletin. I saw that there was something wrong and I spoke softly to myself that I hoped everything was okay. As I first heard those propellers powered by jet fuel in my temples I remembered the past six months or so. I remembered all the times that this beast of a sound took over my head. I remember back to the first time it took its hold on me…
“Joshua, I don’t think that you and I should be together anymore”
The engines have been turned on. They are revving up and everything behind me and in front of me fades into a black, tarry mix of night and tears. This is the beginning of a great many things. Those engines are screaming now, and the ground is shaking and the air is filtered and distorted from the heat that the turbines are giving off.
All of this. In my head. In seconds that feel an eternity.
In the following weeks I changed. I learn to roll with the punches and decide that if I can through this I can do anything.
Regardless of that I stumble. I falter in ways I didn’t know I could manage. Apparently I am good at all sorts of Fuck-Uppery. I prove myself the weak pile of flesh that I have been trying to hide for so long. Pathetic. Tiny. Begging for another chance.
I drone along at work and at school. I write and stare at images and videos on the web. I work in an office but I do not shave. I do not tuck in my shirt. I do not cut my hair. I do my job to the extent that Tyler Durden did his. “In Tyler We Trust”.
“Did you or didn’t you?”
Engines ready
“I did”
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please grab your ankles and kiss your sorry asses goodbye.
The engines are at full throttle, and I am tearing pictures and paintings and photos from the wall. I am anger personified. I am what happens when you think your life is going just fine, forgetting just how fallible even the most important people nearest to you are. I am strapped to the wings of the plane as it takes off. It is just that loud in my head.
I am standing in front of my classmates, and pretty much the whole school. I am giving my final portfolio presentation. My clothes hang off me after losing too much weight. My face itches from hair that should be shaved off. I looked forward to this day for so long. I wanted this day to be the start of a new life. My little family in the back of the room smiling and waving to me; what I have built, what I have created, witnessing all that I have worked for come together in the form of cheap photoshopping and commercial art.
Instead of my family there is some Douche Bag asking if he can take his slice of pizza to his class because his 3D animation project is due in a week. I wonder how long it took him to blow dry his Morrissey hair, and how much those dirty looking jeans cost him at Diesel. I wonder if he knows that one of our classmates is fucking his girlfriend. I smile at him as he leaves.
“Josh can you see me in my office please”
I tell Christa I have to go meet my boss. She has been consoling me nearly everyday along with Joe and sometimes Erich and I chat randomly. We are chatting via AIM. She is telling me I should go out, have fun, get laid, be a guy for once in my life. I tell her I’ll give her a call when I can. In spite of a 3 hour time difference she listens to me because we both have children. We both had families once, and we both deal with our exes in our own ways.
“Josh close the door please”
Engine lights? Check…
“Josh I hate to say this but the company is cutting costs and I am going to have to let you go.”
Louder the engines get, and my face burns. I think about not being at work, and where I will go after this. I wonder if it was my fault and how the hell am I going to make ends meet in the coming days looking for work. I say goodbye to the ones that matter to me, and the others have already been laid off due to the poor real estate market.
I go out and grab some coffee with Muerta and talk.
In months I am freelance. I am broke. I am giving advice to people who are facing the things I am living.
“How are things with you and Rukh?
“Erich is amazing Josh.”
Christa and Erich are falling in love. They speak all the time and when that is not happening they are chatting or messaging. I don’t understand it, because I had love once, and I don’t have the ability to handle something like that again.
I manage odd jobs for odd people. Vanessa struggles to make ends meet in the wake of my recent lay off, and an unwilling job market. I get dressed everyday as if I have a job and I go to interviews, and submit resumes, and present myself in a manner I think suitable. I have nothing to offer the world at this point. No drive, no skills to speak of except for the ones I forced myself too learn for a family that is broken and gone from me. I keep going though for fear of what might happen if I were to stop.
“You should come out here Joe. What the fuck are you gonna do out in Colorado when you want to make films”?
I should listen to my own advice. What the hell do I know?
He will do it in his own time. I want him to know I will badger his ass till he does it though, just so he understands that I care.
Joe Gish is in love. He is building from where I am now. He is so much like me its gay. The day I met him I understood him, and where he was. We are two self-destructive motherfuckers.
Erich and Christa have met and are so deep into each others minds there is no going back. I wish I could have been there for the first time they actually met in person. I wanted to see sparks like that. I wanted to say that I was there to see two of the most hopeless romantics become this ridiculous force of warmth, and smiles.
Both have been ears to me, and words to me that no one will ever know. I have become more secretive of late.
“Erich is moving out here to live with me.”
We talk about this. I hope it works, and I hope they are happy. They both deserve to be happy. All they want in this world is to be in love and it shows.
Time goes by, and I manage all sorts of trouble. All in the name of the single life that I was thrust into unwillingly, here I am and I might be getting the hang of it. I don’t write as much, but I drink a lot more. I smell like Parliament lights and Pabst Blue Ribbon when the budget allows (which is not often). I listen to music I didn’t know I still had, and I get rid of the music that began to define a certain point in my life.
I appear out of nowhere and focus on only a few things. Me. Emma. Me. Emma. Me. Emma Emma Emma Emma. I have never loved anything more than fatherhood in my entire life. It is the only thing I wake in the morning for. It is the one thing I feel I can do well. The only thing that makes me happy is this.
I begin to wonder if I have spread myself too thin. I begin to wonder if I have popped up into old scenes at the risk of people not knowing exactly why or what I am about. Part of me hopes that this is okay. All I know is that it causes more problems.
“I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
Those fucking engines again.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the 747 that just crash landed into my fucking skull”
I pack up my stuff because it’s been a busy day anyway, and this freelance gig is coming to an end. I wonder how Christa is doing, and I wonder when Erich is gonna move out there and make Christa the happiest girl in the whole world.
It’s been months. Anniversaries that used to matter somehow missed my calendar completely. I was never good at them anyway. Birthdays I don’t care to recognize come and go.
I am working a processing gig. On my breaks I listen to my mp3 player and watch the planes take off. They shoot into the smoggy sky and disappear over the Hollywood hills. They come in and circle the San Fernando valley. “The Valley”-Porno capital of the world. I see myself in the windows and don’t recognize who is looking back at me. I walk around and try to remember what I am learning. I am penniless and eager for my first check. I am trying to cut down on my smoking because I don’t want Emma associating nicotine with her daddy. All I think about is me. All I do is try to make me better. I have been doing this for months.
What a selfish fuck.
So much time has passed. So many things have changed. So many perspectives have been skewered. Lives have molded into things I didn’t know they could become and I find myself wondering about Joe. I think about Christa and Eric. Christa knows things about me I didn’t know about myself. She was the first to see it.
Her words were always so soft and always careful but they carried a weight in my head. They always hit their mark and linger in my head like delicate perfume. We correspond she and I, and I wonder when we will talk again about how things are going all the way out on the eastern end of America. I wonder if she and Erich are okay.
“Josh I took him from all of you. Its all my fault.”
Her voice isn’t just soft right now. It is frail. It is weak from effort and the thought of why it is so difficult to speak cuts me to the marrow.
“Christa don’t say that he..”
The crescendo of these engines blast louder in my head than they have ever before.
“Josh he didn’t make it.”
I want to sit down in my seat. I want to grab the arms of the nearest chair and dig my fingers into the fabric so deep that my nails snap backwards one by one. I want the tips of my fingers to be bloody stumps. I want to let my eyes tear up and I grit my teeth and shake and quiver and yell. I want for one moment to look like a man in the Electric Chair shaking and writhing from the anguis of what I am hearing.
“He didn’t make it?”
Emma smiles at me between bites again, and it is the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen her give me.
“No Josh.”
I am vapor. I am mist. I am shallow and low. I couldn’t hold anything close to me for longer than it took for me to fuck it all up. I have been spending all my time trying to find myself, and cautiously soul searching while others watched me decline into a state of near insanity.
For what?
My brain for so long has been working without a soul behind it.
When you have put your brain on autopilot, your body becomes the Yes Man to the Corporate Assholes of your mind. I have allowed that to happen. I have forgotten what it was to love. I have forgotten what it is to feel with reckless abandon.
Not Erich and Christa. They met, corresponded, fell in love and he went out to live with her and be happy. They found each other at a time when none of us knew what to do with ourselves. Among failure, and weddings, and babies being born and jobs being lost there was Rukh and Tiffa falling head over heals for each other.
The plane is leaving the tarmac this time.
Christa has another visitor and she must go. She asks me to call her back. She makes me promise to call her back. I am crying and hiding it from Emma. I am shocked but I don’t want Christa to know, because if she gets excited the nurses will not let her receive calls.
“Promise me Josh”
“I promise Christa I’ll call you in 15 minutes.”
Flames and anger, metal and turbines, rubber and sky meet in my mind.
“I love you Josh.”
This is the moment that shatters me. I have not thought of Love in any way for a long time. I have not been able to say it to anyone at all, in any real honest capacity be it friend or otherwise. My dearest friend Christa says this and I realize that I might not get a chance to say it to her again. None of us can take something like that for granted.
Erich didn’t take it for granted. He went out and grabbed love and held on and now he is gone. I think of Erich. I think of his smiling face from pictures and his voice online and his messages to me of encouragement. I think of how he just went with his gut.
It takes my heart less than a moment to start beating again for the first time in months.
“I love you Christa, I’ll call you. I promise.”
It was easy to say because for the first time in this new life of mine I am able to mean it. I feel it, and it feels as if I am not just hearing the airliner take off, but I am standing on the runway waiting for the landing gear to tear me to bloody shreds.
Men like Joe and I (he and I have since agreed) are the ones who should have been taken. We are the ones who should be gone. We are the ones who were so low we took life for granted. Erich should be here. Not me.
My heart is done pounding out of my chest, and I have composed myself. All I can think of is Erich. All I can think of is Christa in the hospital and the awful details she gave me.
These engines are fading away into the distance. They came with static and they came with lights that blinded me. They are the sound of breaking. They are so loud in my head that I wince at the sight of the phone as I push “End”. The engines are the allegory for change on a scale I am not yet ready to handle and they are burning so hot it feels like the world is on fire.
Emma is done eating. I pick her up and hold her and tell her that I love her till she falls asleep in my arms.
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