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.

Juggernaut

I can feel it coming.

It’s kind of like when you are driving on a sunny day, and all of a sudden it gets a bit muggy. You get the feeling it could sprinkle, and then it does. You look up at the sky and you realize that there are clouds in the sky you hadn’t realized were there in the first place. It’s going to rain.

It does.

I am there right now on the street corner smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky. I walk slowly because I have nothing better to do, and I like walks. I lift my hat just a bit and squint through a shaft of light and see that it’s going to rain on me.

I’ve been living in a drought for too long. I’ve grown tired of all the conservation and careful planning for the famine. I want all the careful steps I have been taking to finally take their toll on my life. I want the recklessness to mean something in the long run.

The city is a funny thing. It lives and breathes in colors of grey and brown. On a clear day you can see the mountains, but that doesn’t happen all that often here in Los Angeles. Most of the time you can only describe things as brown, gritty, but so full of life its impossible to escape the joy of it.

Somehow though, I manage to escape it. Its all me really, the thought process of someone who loves to torture himself with introspection and malice. I guess I’m a masochist at heart, and in that I am the perfect candidate for life’s experiments in adversity. Or maybe I’m a joke to the bigger picture.

I was on the cell phone with my buddy while Emma and I were perusing the local grocery store for “Graduates Finger Foods” (Sweet potato puffs and cherry flavor per my baby). We are wondering why we do it to ourselves. We are connecting through our ability to literally blow through brick walls and come out unscathed.

We are the ones who survive the plane crash but would have loved to die. We are the ones who made it out of the fire but would much rather have been left. Not really for any other reason than we seem to lack the understanding in why the hell we manage to keep going. I don’t care one way or the other really, but what I want to know is who, or what, or why do I manage to make it through.

That’s it. Just a question I ask of the world. My friend and I are not lamenting, merely commenting on such an odd thing. Equally odd is why haven’t we given up yet? I mean, I came close on more than one occasion. It didn’t happen obviously and I wonder why.

We are laughing at the time I call him up to tell him he needs to take it easy. I didn’t remember that I did that. The reason is because I called him while I was loaded. Imagine that. You tear yourself away from a bottle of whiskey and call your friend in your drunken state…

“I don’t know what your doing man ::hiccup:: but you gotta take care of yourself”

Call it what you will. A couple of boys being boys, a couple of idiots who don't know when to quit. A couple of of grown men who have come to the realization that for whatever reason they have the emotional endurance of fucking juggernauts.

The blind leading the blind I suppose.

Whatever it is I've built momentum and I just can't stop.

Tin Man

So this amazing person is telling me something that kind of scares me. This person does not know or appreciate the weight in which the words roll off of her tongue. I can’t imagine why, considering I feel that the words chosen are carefully put forth. It’s been while since a number of things in my life were normal. It’s been a while since I looked in the mirror and recognized the person looking back at me.

Some nights I’m outside my new favorite place that The Vamps take me to. Sometimes I am outside looking at cheap artwork and smoking cigarettes. Other times I am just sitting and watching others smoke and talk about things. Nonsensical things or interesting stories or self-degrading jokes that make us laugh.

Other nights I am outside of an apartment watching my friend complain that the person who lives here has not arrived, and she has to use the restroom. Being the good friend that I am I offer a cup, or maybe just to take a picture of her as she goes insane at the prospect of having to hit the nearby bush.

I’m in the parking lot of a nearby bank, which allows us the pleasure of avoiding an overnight ticket. We are about to hit a local bar for whatever the reason is. A birthday, a gathering, the party we were at a while earlier offered nothing in terms of a crowd that we were comfortable with. We took our beers, said our goodbyes, and headed off to the next adventure.

I’m outside the local Taco Stand in some Los Angeles neighborhood eating what resembles a meal for the first time in front of my friends who swear they have never seen me eat more than a few bites. Pictures are taken, video on a cell phone, decisions and promises and smiles.

I’m leaving my home in 105-degree weather to be taken to my truck. I left it behind knowing I would be in no shape to drive later. I say goodbye, and I jump in the old pick up and head to the park.

I run my ass off. I run until I sweat from my head to shoulders. I run till I perspire from my arms and look at the time and make sure I don’t stop no matter how hot it is. I run slowly, but I run nonetheless until it hurts from every part of me. I hold in my stomach till its sore. I hold out my arms till they are tired. I turn up my music till all I can hear of the world is gone behind dark music, and angry lyrics.

My friend tells me she doesn’t know who I am anymore. She says that I have somehow changed when I didn’t realize it and it hits like a train on the tracks would hit an unsuspecting vehicle running the gates. I appreciate the thought, and I appreciate the observations. She wouldn’t be a friend if she DIDN’T say this to me when she thought it.

I think about it, and I ask others what they think. The answer is varied.

“Be you, who you want to be.” Says another parent that I connect with.

“Fuck Josh, you don’t know who you are. Who was that guy before? Was that you? People like you and I are gonna do things when people say not to do them because we can. We do things because no one else will, and no one gave a fuck enough to keep us from this shit” says another friend as he cuts my hair.

“Where have you been are you mad at me?” she writes to me. I realize that I’ve neglected some people.

So I wonder if the person we were is the person we are. I wonder if the person we are is who we are supposed to be, or some prologue to a shadow we haven’t attached ourselves to.

I wonder these things as I run as hard as I can now. I have gotten my second wind, and this is the second time today that I have gone running. I am about to head in for the night. Its late, and its still hot in this California Heat Wave. My eyes burn, and my ankles are sore. My heart aches and my chest burns because I have been smoking too much.

None of it matters to me. The pain of running, or the complete and total absence of emotion that I have come to realize defines me as the person I am today.

The Tin Man so says my sister.

I’m almost done running. I cant take much more of it but I push as if I was being chased by an angry mob and not regret. I run like a fucking champ to the finish line even though I don’t have anywhere to run to. Not a home or a family or a goal. Nothing but what I have created around me in order to get by.

One night a while back I am messaging a friend because she never sleeps, and hell I am writing this at 5AM after not sleeping all night if that’s an indicator of how much sleep I get. I tell her I like to run, and she says something that I’ve heard before, but coming from her it really makes sense to me for the first time.

“Once you’re done running you are still right back where you started.”

Of Jesters and Harlequins (for my friends)

We sit in the tavern drinking away our misery and allowing it to filter in ways unimaginable. We are the life and the death of the whole room. We are loud and obnoxious and say horrible things to each other and laugh at the pain.

We are all dressed in motley. Make up on our faces we look like clowns to the rest of you. In black and white and red with bells that chime and wicked laughter we look back and remember the past.

I remember.

I remember as I sip wine the time I was left vomiting and he was at the bar. I remember the time I was on the plane alone racing across the country away from the disappointment that was my childhood.

She remembers the drugs and the depression and the void she couldn’t fill.

He remembers the cigar mark his father gave him. Decades later it still hurts.

My brother heart and soul remembers the beating he took and received from a mother who knew he would never fight back. He still doesn’t fight back.

She is lost and wants attention and gets it where she can find it, but it will never ever be enough. She is amazing to us still.

He is addicted and has no way out, and disappears and doesn’t show but we love him because he is our friend.

I talk to life as if it was a person, and not an idea or state of mind.

I say to life and all the people in it.

“Fuck it if I’m week and if the scars on my wrists have not yet healed. Fuck you for thinking less of me and not loving me when I loved you more and more each time you fell. I picked you up and knocked you down and I will live with it forever.”

We live and die by the admission of our imperfection and we revel in it. We use it and support it and mold it to our wills. We look back at life and talk to it expecting it to talk back and give us answers.

These wounds heal, but not before being scraped and bruised a second and third time. Just when one thinks they are better and they’ve found something different, a smile and a nod shatter what little peace one thought one had.

Cologne, perfume, a new dress or a freshly pressed shirt makes you remember what you want and how badly you want it. Funny how that works best when you are dismissed like the trash you were always told you were.

The makeup on our faces has run from our tears but we are not giving up these friends of mine and me. We have all locked arms and shoulders at the table. We are stomping our feet and singing our songs in spite of what we all know and all feel. We are one entity of pain and damage in its rawest form.

Go find your friends. They are not there. Go grab the crowd to laugh at us; they are hardly worth the effort. They will take you away from your problems and show you what you missed.

We refuse to do that.

We are weak, and broken says you.

We are disappointing and fallible says you.

We are pathetic to you so you lost faith in us.

You are pathetic because you lost faith at all.

We raise our glasses to the sky and sing.

A Lie, A Lie...

A week ago…

“You mother fucker. You bastard!”

Yells my nameless friend from my bathroom.

“Son of a bitch, why…?”

I can’t stop laughing.

I shove another gulp of beer down the hatch, and relax to the sounds of the Blue Oyster Cult and Johnny Cash. Its midweek and I didn’t want to be alone as usual, and I don’t drink by myself. The incense burn, the fan is on in my unusually warm house.

This friend of mine is the kind of friend who will always be there. In some form or another he’ll be around. He’s the guy people flock to. He’s for some reason got the same destructive habits I do. He’s hilarious but doesn’t really know it. He’s crazy but doesn’t admit it. A friend of mine and I worry about this guy, because there are times we think that he doesn’t realize what he’s got. I know what its like to lose something, and would hate for that to happen to anyone else.

The door opens and I say

“Did an Ant get you?”

He yells “Yeah man, what the fuck? I saw the little bastard too!”

I start laughing again.

“Why the fuck do they never get my legs? Or my arms? No! Not me man they go for either the cock or the balls!”

Beer goes up my nose.

“Right there, look…” He holds his hands in the air, in a display of what male genitalia might look like as if I wasn’t born male and could not understand the concept. His arm is arched like he is trying to shadow puppet a strange bird, fingers cupping nothing.

“Right fucking there where the base you know? Hits the shaft? By the hole!?!”

Its late, and because of his odd hours working for the City of Los Angeles he can stop by for a beer before I go to bed, and he goes home. Friends are funny that way, the way they make you laugh without trying, or the way they do things and say things that make you appreciate them, or the things around you. He’s one of several people who manage to make me laugh by being simply who they are.

Some days later…

“Aaaawe” yells a room full of people.

Some of them are laughing, maybe one is shaking there head, and another is feigning gagging sounds. We are looking at pictures of a trip they took to Mexico. These are the type of people who are close knit, and have formed a bond that you could not easily break, if you can at all.

Digital pictures on a television screen flash the rocks of a Mexican beach. A George W. Bush doll with an M-80 in his mouth, a friend who has fallen off a motorcycle, a group shot, beers in hand, hang-over’s, breakfasts,

“Change it dude, change this shit C’mon…” Says a friend of mine, while laughing.

But the screen doesn’t change. In the middle of all the nostalgia, and all the good times there is a picture of a perfectly formed log of shit.

No one wants to look, but no one is really turning away. My friend of many years is describing the majesty that is his bowel movement, and discussing how amazing it is that it starts in the hole of the toilet, and ends outside of the water at the very top without losing an ounce of girth at any one point.

Friday night

“Hump his leg”

Says my old school mate and very good friend who’s had maybe just a few too many beers. Her husband is passed out on the floor of my daughter’s room. I’m not one to host parties, but I decided to have some friends over to drink. I invited people who might not realize are the few people I can be myself around. I don’t need to talk, or to impress. I just host and offer and hope they have a good time.

Glenda has brought her own bottle of Vodka. Mikey has smoked himself a bit silly. Mari and crew are the class and life they always bring to the table. My co workers and I are the raunchy opposite to add balance.

“I dare you to hump Josh’s leg” says Mari who has absolutely no problem being outspoken, and I don’t know a single friend of mine who has met her tonight who doesn’t love her for it.

So, my good friend Robert is humping my leg, and I am not only embarrassed by the whole thing, but also thinking about how badly I’ll need a shower after this.

Ouija boards and truth or dare, as if we are in 8th grade again, and goofing off.

Saturday

Joy has been nice enough to take me out to a movie. I’m all low on funds and haven’t got a thing to do with myself. The night for most people would be seen as dull, but not me. Not in the slightest.

A movie with a friend who has been there for me when I needed a shoulder, or a phone call, or a lunch is just what I wanted right now. We head out to LAX. Driving down the 5 freeway takes us past Dodger Stadium, on our way to long beach and through Los Angeles I look out the window to see buildings and places I’ve passed a million times before.

Her friend needs a ride and a place to stay for the night. Born in London and living in Puerto Vallarta Mexico she has come to the states to purchase a camera. She is interesting and different. She and my friend here have traveled the world together and I am sitting at the coffee table and listening to stories from cruise ships, and a lizard shuffles in his tank behind me. It’s late, and I should head home.

Sunday

I’m watching my daughter lay on the ground hoping to be picked up, but we won’t. She is testing her boundaries and we are testing our wills against her many adorable faces. In a few short moments her grandmother will give in.

I am not used to this. I have been here many times but it’s all different. All wrong. I have spent so much time trying to work on myself, and change who I am, and get used to the life that changed on me that I am now a stranger amongst family.

It’s not the same, this person next to me who I had so much to say to before, and now I have nothing in common with. I’ve not got any words to say to her, though I would love it if I did. I slip and call her babe, when she isn’t my babe anymore. I want to tell what I’ve been doing and who I’ve been with but she doesn’t care, and I don’t want to know anyway.

I pick up my daughter and say goodbye to everyone.

I don’t belong here anymore.

I make the rounds, and I take Emma outside and tell her I will see her on Tuesday when I pick her up and take her to school. I grab her mothers arm and give it a squeeze and tell her it was good to see her. I lie.

Emma thinks she is going with me and wave’s bye to Momma. I give her a big kiss, and a hug, and another kiss.

One more,

Two more,

Emma cries.

I leave.

I’m 17 years old. I’m sitting on a bus with this beautiful friend of mine Vanessa. She doesn’t know I’ve got a crush on her. I ask her a question that is completely random. At 17 I am fond of random questions because I like to think, and be asked the same things. I ask her this…

“What if you woke up one day, and nothing in your life was true? Every one you know is a lie, and you are a lie, and nothing was what you thought it was?”

I didn’t think I would get the reaction that I did.

She cried.

I didn’t think something so weird and silly would get that reaction.

I didn’t think I was capable of such thought, or question.

I didn’t think that one day I would wake up and my life would be the lie.

How Did I Get Here?

"Josh."

"Josh?"

"Josh!"

"Josh."

I can hear, but not see whats going on. There are bright lights and the smell of sulfer is in the air. That gun powdery smell that makes you sniff wafts across the lawn I am sitting on. If I open my eyes the world will spin. If I get up my head might explode. If I say anything remotely close to coherent it will be a feat of will and determination.

"Josh are you okay? Talk to me."

I shake my head.

"Josh can you get up?"

I shut my eyes tighter and finger "no".

I vomit. How did I get here?

Its 9am or so, and I am getting my stuff out of my buddy Nicks place. I'm heading over to see my daughter and talk to her mother about "stuff".

Its about 11am and my baby momma and I are bickering/fighting. I cant stop thinking about how much I love this woman.

Its roughly 12pm and my daughter and I are at the local Ihop. I dig into a low carb grease-fest while my daughter Emma does the same with 4 of her specially made pancakes that she loves so much. I watch as her chubby hands move their way over to the pile of torn pancakes I made for her. She finds the right one and puts it in he mouth, only to discover that I slipped in a scrambled egg. She then spits the egg onto the table and I cant help but laugh. Emma 1, Dad 0.

I enjoy these times with my 14 month old. I like just her and I in a diner. She will talk about gibberish, and I will ask her if she is being good with Momma, and if she is behaving with Grandma. She of course responds to it all with random nonsense that only a child can spit out. Though, her facial espressions as she does this carry so much weight. Its amazing.

1pm, I am at my place with my daughter. She is stomping about my house in her little walking shoes that resonate throughout my linoleum palace. She has toys but plays with my stereo, or my shoes, or opens drawers and checks cardboard boxes. I have a chair for her to sit in that will entertain her for ages.

Her mother is with me, and the solace that comes with that is amazing and terrifying at the same time. When they leave they each take a peice of my heart with them for good measure. I decide that I will go to my friends house and do the only thing a red blooded Mexican American man of my age should be doing on this 4th of July.

Time to buy a bottle of whiskey.

So here I am wondering if I should stick with the old classic (Jack Daniels) or should I venture out into other realms of flavor that only a slight case of Alcoholism can appreciate? Makers Mark it is. Bourbon. I take my bottle and run into some pals. It feels good to see them again. Its them I'll be hanging out with tonight. I caught them on a beer run.

At 530pm or so I smoke a cigarette by myself with a bottle of Alchohol at my feet, and an energy drink in hand. I havent seen or hung out with these old friends in years. Its funny what time does to you, and what it doesnt.

I say hello to Casey again, give everyone I remember hugs. I say hello to my daughters play pal Mikaila Rose. I sit and chat and laugh at the smart ass remarks they make at eachother. These cutting japes are always well timed, and come with friendships that have lasted years. Its nice to be around this. Its been a long time. Too long.

Adam and I talk real estate and loans where we used to talk about Ska and record labels. Mikey knows of my current exploits through blogs and doesnt have words to convey whats going on. Its good to see him. Gabriel walks in and offers his hand. Its been too long since he and I last partied. Steven is angry because no on is eating his burgers. Mia and I know eachother from high school, but were never friends. Vivian just happened to be in cheer with my ex. I wonder if Johnny will come by. Glenda and I talk about my daughter Emma and her daughter Mikaila.

I open my bottle.

No one else really wanted to do any heavy drinking which is fine by me. By about 7 the bottle is nearly gone. Pictures have been taken, food has bee eaten. Its almost time for fireworks. I kill the last of the bottle and forgot that I told myself just 10 minutes prior to this moment that as long as I dont stand up and move a bunch I will be fine.

So I stand up...

"Josh where are you?"

"I dont know"

"Josh".

Its that salt n peppery phone voice I fell in love with back in high school. Its over the phone. I must have drunk dialed several people, left several others random text messages. Some of them recieved the same one twice. Thrice even.

At some point I called Glenda over to me and handed her my phone. She hears the worried voice of my ex on the other line. I have never been wasted in front of my ex. Ever.

In what seems like seconds Vanessa is standing over me. Talking to me.

How did I get here?

Oh yeah. The bottle.

4am. I wake up on the floor next to my daughters crib. She is not there. I look up and see Vanessa.

How did I get here?

We talk for a while. We can always talk for a while when our problems are not getting in the way.

I smell of alcohol and stale party.

7am and I am in the car with the two loves of my life Emma and Vanessa and we are at the coffee bean. I dont have a hangover because I am still buzzing. My ex picked me up from a party because dispite the fact that I dont want to be her friend anymore, and that the pain runs too deep between us (we've said so much, and done so much damage to eachother), she still loves me. Its funny how that works. I am glad that somehow it does, and maybe it will again. Who knows.

Emma is dropped off at day care. Vanessa drives me to my truck. I kiss her cheek and say thank you. She grabs my face and tells me to be more careful. I smile and shake my head no.

Sometimes I have to stop and wonder what happened to life, when did it start and when did it begin to end? Where was the party that we were supposed to have letting me know I am an adult? Where were the trumpets letting me know the race was on? Where were the advisors and the counsilers at when I needed them to tell me to shut the fuck up, or to speak for myself?

Sometimes I have to stop and say "How did I get here?".

I dont think I will ever figure that out.

What If?

I just left my best friend Nicks place. I’ve got a little wooden table and chairs set in the back of my truck ready to be placed in the area behind my house. With any luck in the future it will be used for card games, BBQs, and drunken arguments about religion, politics, and who has the biggest Wang.

Its dark now and I want to get my daughter home to bed, snug in her blankets.

I have a habit of thinking too much. I have this thing that doesn’t allow me to enjoy company when things aren’t going well because there is this light in the back of my head that is always turned on. Was it a shitty day? Why? Who? When? Why? Why? WHY?

I am driving an old Toyota truck down the freeway thinking about where I am going to throw this table. I am thinking about the conversation that Nick and I had while Emma slept soundly on his bed. I am thinking about the weekend, and hoping that Emma doesn’t freak out when she wakes up and realizes that she is in my new place and not with Momma in her crib/bed combo.

I wonder about life, and how I got here. I wonder what I’m going to wear tomorrow. I wonder when I will be able to eat a meal again, as I have been living off of maybe a meal every couple of days and Cigarettes are the only thing keeping me from hunger pains. I have lost my appetite. I don’t care to eat or sleep well. I don’t really care how shitty I feel, or think about why I have been bruising so easily. I don’t bother with why it’s getting harder for me to walk up the stares or that I’ve lost nearly 25 lbs.

When I am with Emma it all goes away, and I am a super hero. Ready and able to do anything she needs me to do.

I think about these things while driving down the 10 freeway. I am leaving the city of Rosemead, and am passing through San Gabriel. After that it’s on to Alhambra, and then I am in The City of Los Angeles. I have driven this freeway all my life, and all my memories are the same.

I think of the car rides to and from my father’s who had me on the weekends. I think about when it all ended with him, and how much I loved those car-rides. I think about all the times he let me rent Highlander II and Big Trouble in Little China (Jack Burton is God in my eyes). I sat listening to his rock music while he had the windows down, it was cold but I didn’t complain because he didn’t complain. Now I don’t mind the cold.

All this goes through my brain in a matter of seconds. I am paying attention to the road and notice that there is a large Semi in my lane in front of me. It’s the slow lane, second from the first lane that allows you to jump on and off the freeway. Seeing as how I am just a bit faster than him, but not that much faster I decide to pass him on the left. You don’t think about why you think something. Your brain just reacts. “I think I will go left”.

But I don’t got left, for whatever reason I go to the right, on the slow lane. Maybe it’s because there would have bee another vehicle in my lane trying to pass him too. Maybe it was the SUV one lane over to the left of that vehicle. I don’t know. I passed on the right when I meant to go left.

So I do. Just as I pass the Semi truck I hear screeching tires behind me. I do not slow down or move I just glance into my rear view mirror and relax. I mentally prepare myself for what I am going to see. I make ready the clutch in case I need to shift, move, brake, or dart anywhere. The vehicle on the left side of the Semi truck is spinning out of control in what I can only describe as a Ballet. In order to avoid hitting him, the vehicle further left is swerving, and has begun spinning as well. Two SUV’s who have not hit anything (at least, I haven’t heard a collision) but I see smoke from burning tires, and the Semi has not been touched. They are moving at full speed all while spinning 360 degrees.

Traffic stopped and I am alone still driving. I look at the back seat to see my daughter stretch. Music is playing but I cant hear it.

Had I not gone to the right when I did, I would have heard a collision.