The Hubris and The Screed

12:14am: There's a fire in my skull and the words are keeping the flames at bay

  Do you ever feel like that?  Like something is festering inside of you, like an evil gnome always growing stronger, howling in protest at your every action, trying to break free or take control.  If you don't do what you believe you are designed to do, it will win, shedding your charred remains like a bad suit.  Once you're gone or pushed to the background, no longer in control, it will make you get a crap job flipping burgers and run up your credit.  It will go after trashy, stupid girls with your penis, wreck your car, and steal your mom's silverware.  It will make you a carbon copy of everyone else.  No goals, no dreams, just get up, go to work where you've been running the fry machine for eight years with no desire to even try for drive-thru or, God forbid, assistant manager, come home, drink a six pack, watch some meaningless sporting event that you don't have a stake in, rub one out in the shower, go to bed, wake up, vomit, repeat.  Maybe on Friday night, for a little treat, get drunk and stoned and beat the shit out of someone for not being like you.  Former dreams, no matter how trivial or lofty they may have been, utterly forgotten.  You have become the evil adult that you despised in your youth.

  Does anyone else have that feeling?  Does anyone do what they do, not for the money or the girls or the adoration of millions, but because they would not be who they are if they gave up or slacked off, even a little?  It doesn't matter what you want to do.  If you are an artist, would you feel somehow incomplete when you went to bed if you did nothing at all artistic in that day, a painting, a pot, a sketch, a doodle, anything?  Do you say to yourself, "I can't go to sleep yet.  The gnome is ahead, he's winning right now.  I can't let him get stronger while I sleep, then I'll be way behind tomorrow morning."?     

  Is that kind of passion even possible in humans anymore?  Every morning I wake up, I won't say happy, that doesn't happen very often, but a little relieved and ready to go.  That's not to say 'Bright Eyed and Bushy-Tailed,' not the same thing.  First thought, every morning is something along the lines of, "You know what I get to do today?  I get to write another chapter."  I do my best Billy Idol sneer at myself in the mirror, grab a cup of Joe, smoke a cigarette while the computer boots.  Then, I do my best Ash impression.

  "Who wants some?" - Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness    

1:15pm: I'm sorry, I thought it was "White Boy Day"

"You must have thought it was 'White Boy Day.'  Marty, is it 'White Boy Day?'"

"No man, it ain't 'White Boy Day." 

-Gary Oldman and his 'assistant' in True Romance

   First, I'd like to convey my gratitude for the fact that no one has read anything I've written here.  That may not be completely true, but since no one has commented, I'd like to believe no one has read anything.  That relaxes me.  I don't really need anyone asking me silly questions, like "What was it like starring in Free Willy and the sequels?"  That's the silly question I get all the time on the internet.  I wasn't really in a movie with Orca, but I have the misfortune of having a similar name.  So, little girls IM me all the time asking for my autograph.  It took me a long time to figure out what was going on.  It was right when I got my computer actually.  I'd be talking to a woman, she'd be flirting, I'd ask how old she was, she'd say,"I'll be twenty-one in, um, seven years," I'd flip out and block her, then another one would show up.  Point being, it's quiet here, in this little spot of the internet.  This is my secluded cabin in the middle of nowhere.  People can get here, but no one has any desire to at this point. 

   Here's one of my problems (not that you're going to hear Ethel Merman's problems or John Cleese's problems here) women have been coming in threes lately.  I won't just meet a girl that seems a little interested in what I have to offer, I'll meet three in rapid succession, then I get nervous trying to figure out which one.  Whether I actually have a shot with any of them is debatable.  I'm not the type of person to go out one night with this girl, then tomorrow will be that girl, then the day after will be the other girl, I try to stay focused on one at a time.  I won't step out on a girl even if we're just kind of seeing each other, no, she has my complete and undivided attention.

   For example, I had asked three girls out over the span of a month and each said, "Well, not right now, I just got out of this relationship blah blah blah."  Fine, whatever.  Then I hear from mutual friends that they're thinking about it, their friends are trying to talk them into it (yes, I'm that good looking that other people have to talk girls into dating me.  I get told a lot that I look exactly like Brad Pitt except taller and with a different face.)  I'm going to use nicknames for anyone that I talk about.  There's no sense in me incriminating myself further or them.  So, these three girls are the Nurse, the Contortionist, and the Bong Saleswoman.  The first two I actually asked out.  The Bong Saleswoman I had spoken to at length one day, a friend of mine told me later that she thought I was funny.  I told my friend to work her for me.  When I realized there were three, I freaked out a little, ran all the worst case scenarios, tried to decide beforehand what I would do.  Then I relaxed.  Que sera, sera.  Whatever will be, will be.  I kicked three pebbles off the mountaintop and decided to wait and see if an avalanche started.

   Then, something entirely unexpected happened.  I go to a birthday party at the Nurse's house.  I don't know anyone except the Nurse, but everytime I try to talk to her, this guy that looks like Jet Li's stunt double gets in between us, literally.  He'd shove his shoulder between her and I and just start talking.  I get the hint (the first hint was that he wanted to bag the Nurse and I should lay off) and go outside to smoke a cigarette.  Jet Li follows me out and then I think that he's trying to bag me and keep the Nurse at bay.  We talk for a while and he keeps pointing at women inside.  "She's hot isn't she?  She's single too."  Then I decipher the actual hint.  He's overprotective of the Nurse because she was just released from a horrible relationship and he's worried for her.  He wants me to hook up with someone else, no hard feelings, just move along.  The whole party was a bit surreal, because I had smoked part of a joint before I went to the party and then was drinking wine (which I don't do) when I got there.  Strangers, wine, weed, Jet Li's stunt double, I was real close to freaking out.  I just decided to start talking to anyone that made the mistake of coming within arm's reach of me.  That worked for awhile.  Then, out of nowhere, this girl walks up and starts talking to me.  (This is the girl from the previous two entries.)  We'll call her the Globetrotter.  That night was incredible.  It has been ages since a woman could hold up her end of a conversation with me.  (Read the other entries to find out what happened.)

  So, the Globetrotter is out of the picture.  I'd like to think she isn't, she'll call when she gets back from the trip she's about to embark on, but she won't, she's gone gone.  The Nurse is pretty much unable, unwilling, untouchable. 

   However, the Contortionist is getting worked over at every opportunity by my female friends.  (I believe that I'm not that great of a guy.  You have to have very specific traits to be able to stand me for extended periods.  That's my perception.  All of my female friends, who are the most fabulous women on the planet, are super gung-ho about getting me a girl.  That amuses me.)  The Contortionist is the girl that told me she wanted to go a year without dating.  That year ends in late July, early August, which is when the Globetrotter is returning from her travels.  Anyway, small possibility that the Contortionist will call me back July-ish, maybe sooner, maybe later, maybe never.  The Bong Saleswoman is also a long shot at this point, though she gets hugely excited whenever we speak.  Two anorexic chances combine to form one slim chance.

   Then we have the Bookworm.  She works close to where I work, we bump into each other in the smoking section occasionally.  She's cute, but the fact that she's a genius and reads four or five books a week, makes her hot.  I write a lot and I read a lot.  Finding a girl that is addicted to words and I manufacture her drug of choice is fucking awesome.  In the next couple of days I'm going to, well, I'll do something.

  The newest addition is the Nubian.  I've never dated a black girl, all the black women I've ever met were dating, engaged, or married to my black friends, but I've always wanted to.  This is a huge example of what my tastes are like.  My buddy and I are talking to these two anorexic girls that he knows.  You've probably seen these girls in a Girls Gone Wild video.  Tight shirt, low-rise pants, not particularly curvy, moderately cute, the kind of girl you see hundreds of every day.  I was in the state of "Rare Form."  Rare Form is when people get me talking about sex (usually) or get me worked up about something.  Since being polite to women hasn't been working for me, watching what I say, trying to be a gentleman, I decided to turn off my inner dialogue and just spew out whatever came to my mind.  I was just being rude and nasty to these girls, not calling them names or anything, but talking some serious shit.  I was actually getting tired of talking to them and was trying to run them off because they were stupid and I wanted nothing from them. 

  I look over my shoulder and this black girl looks like she's about to pass out.  I start talking to her instead.  She's leaps and bounds smarter than who I was just talking to.  I'm still in Rare Form, but I'm not trying to insult this girl, because, well, she's smart enough (drunk or not) to notice.  So, Polite Rare Form means that everything I say is gold.  She's laughing, she's rolling her eyes, she's getting the jokes, she's playfully punching me in the shoulder, running her hand down my arm.  Give me twenty minutes with any girl and just let me talk, I can have them eating out of my hand.  The problem is, not a lot of people will give me the twenty minutes, they just dismiss me because of my looks.  Turns out, my buddy, the Nubian, and the male friend of the Nubian are all art students and know each other.  Bar closes, we wind up talking in the parking lot.  My buddy keeps telling me that he doesn't know how to be a wing-man, the guy that helps you get the girl, get the number, whatever.  He's naturally a good wing-man and doesn't realize it.  He's keeping the male friend busy, I'm talking to the girl, working my magic.  Get the number, can do, easy.     

      Now, I have three again.  Okay, two and two possibles.  The Nubian.  The Bookworm.  The Contortionist/Bong Saleswoman Combo. 

   I should explain something before I sign off.  My Looks.  I keep saying that like I was dropped into a vat of acid.  I wasn't.  I'm not wicked good looking, granted, but I'm not hideous.  The problem is I don't look like a Chad-Dude (a frat boy).  I don't look rich.  I don't look like I beat women.  I don't look like the kind of guy that puts date-rape drugs in girls' drinks.  So, basically, I'm not what anyone is looking for right out of the gate.  You have to get to know me. 

   So, hopefully, in the not so distant future, it's going to be White Boy Day, and I'll get what I'm looking for.

7:29am: The High-Powered Mutant

  "[He] was one of God's own prototypes - a high-powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production.  He was too weird to live and too rare to die..."

- Hunter S. Thompson eulogizing Oscar Zeta Acosta

   I have problems.  I don't function like other people.  I have to write, first of all.  Not to meet a deadline, not to satisfy a publisher that does not exist, not even because I feel I have something of the utmost importance to say, I physically have to write.  If I don't grind out a thousand words everyday or every other day, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't focus on the task at hand.  I can do anything and everything to distract myself, drink, drugs, porno, cleaning, vehicle maintenance, but nothing is a substitute for writing.  If I try to sleep without writing, my heart races, my mind reels in the darkness, I'll stare at the ceiling for hours.  If, somehow, I do get to sleep, characters from my stories assault me, complain about my neglect.  I'll grind my teeth the entire night and wake up after only a couple hours with my eyes closed.  My body will feel beaten, twice as tired as when I laid down, my jaw, along with the rest of my joints sore. 

   The solution, is to write, right?  That doesn't even work sometimes.  If I rush through something, just so I can sleep, same problems.  If I'm not thrilled about what I completed, no rest.  If I have to make a decision in a story, if there are two paths and I have to pick one and I pick wrong, just staring at the ceiling all night is my reward for choosing poorly.

   Next problem, I feel nearly incapable of happiness.  Granted, when I was around the girl (see previous entry), I was happy when I was in her presence.  When we were apart, I was full of doubt, paranoia, anxiety.  The reason is that I felt she was much more than I deserved, too pretty, too smart, too funny, too much of everything.  You gotta punch your weight, right?  It seems, now that I'm thinking about it, that every woman I meet is either beneath my contempt or out of my league, there doesn't appear to be a middle ground any longer.  That's not natural, is it? 

  It's disheartening when everyone else appears happy.   Everyone that I know, anyway.  I'm not so delusional to think the entire planet is happy and I'm not.  All of my friends are in fabulous relationships.  Everyone's getting married or getting engaged or moving in together.  Everyone can't shut up about how terrific their boyfriend or girlfriend is.  And then there's me.  I go to parties and I'm always the odd man.  Everyone else gets introduced in pairs. "This is Dave and his girlfriend, The Professor."  "This is Tom and Staci."  "This is Damon and Jody."  This is Jason.  Even friends of mine that seemed asexual, not interested at all in the opposite sex, incapable of even speaking to a member of the opposite sex, are married now, in long term relationships, living with someone, expecting a baby.  I'm sure this sounds like melodramatic exaggeration, but I really cannot think of a single friend of mine not happily involved at the moment.

     A story comes to mind.  Someone was rambling about something and used the analogy that it (whatever they were talking about) was like being born the greatest downhill skier of all time, but also being born in the Sahara and never seeing snow during their entire life.  I feel like that most of the time.  I have a lot of knowledge about sex, more specifically, about the female anatomy, even more specific than that, the female orgasm.  It's pretty much useless knowledge at this point.  Sure, I'm good for a story, maybe some advice, but practice is out of the question.  (Quick version of an old joke:  There's a living museum of the old west, people wandering around acting like cowboys for the tourists.  They have one actual Indian in the town, but he confuses the tourists because he says "Chance" instead of "How."  Finally the curator asks him what his problem is, why doesn't he say 'How'?  "I know how.  I'm looking for a chance to prove it.")

   I'm reminded of something else, a myth or a fable or a Sunday Afternoon Kung-Fu Matinee.  A man wants to be the greatest warrior on the planet.  He sets out to beat every fighter he can find.  He wins thousands of battles, becoming more powerful with each victory.  Then, suddenly, he stops fighting.  He realizes that fighting isn't the answer, seeking conflict and winning, isn't really a victory.  Thus enlightened, he begins teaching people what he had learned.  

   I used to be on a similar quest (not really, but play along, humor me).  I thought the answer was orgasms.  Orgasms for world peace, racial equality, and feeding the third world.  Here's the actual theory that I had.  If I make one person happy today (with an orgasm), like the butterfly effect, tomorrow two people will be happy, then four, then eight, then, yadda-yadda, end of the month the whole world's happy.  Every orgasm I doled out made me a little smarter.  Take "a little smarter" and multiply it by several thousand orgasms donated, that equals "a lot smarter."  I have forgotten more about giving pleasure than most people will ever learn.  The two skills I still lack are the ability to make a woman orgasm by simply pointing in her general direction and the ability to make a woman's heart explode due to the magnitude of her orgasm.  But now, I no longer believe orgasms are the answer.  It is such a fleeting sensation, even if it lasts for an hour or two.  (And frankly, I don't care if you're reading this and saying 'Bullshit.'  I stopped trying to convince people of my abilities long ago.) 

   I still enjoy teaching people.  There are a select few of my male friends that still ask me questions.  I take them to the side and tell them a trick or two.  Their girlfriends think they're geniuses.  I used to get thank you cards from girls because of something I taught their boyfriends.  Now, I'm not concerned with getting credit. 

   One thing I enjoy seeing in a girl is a touch of naivete.  I like taking a straight missionary girl and turning her into an Olympic caliber athlete in bed.  Nothing makes me happier than seeing a stone sober girl stumble and slur after a few orgasms.  (Think about the next sentence before you dismiss it out of hand.)  Seeing a woman in the throes of ecstasy, moaning, wailing, muttering, clawing at the walls and the sheets, is like looking into the eyes of God.  There is something so fundamentally perfect about a woman's orgasm, even if it's not pretty, actually the uglier the better.  There is nothing on this earth that I can compare it to.  The closest thing, and it's still a long way off, is watching a time-lapse video of a rose opening to the sun.  It just seems at that moment, everything on that bed, that spot on the earth double arm's length wide and triple arm's length deep is functioning perfectly, as planned, in accordance to all nature's laws.

  We were talking about me being a mutant.  There was no vote, this is not a democracy, I just decided and it became law.  I'm not designed like other people.  I'm not currently supposed to be happy.  Either I used up what little happiness I was allotted or I have not yet found happiness.  Finish this book, that's my mission.  Maybe then happiness will find me, maybe not.  Whether I am completely unenlightened or fully enlightened is open to debate.  Happiness, love, relationships, I have lost my desire for all three.  This is all a design flaw.  I should probably be medicated or lobotomized, but then I couldn't write how I write, couldn't think how I think.  I couldn't see the absurdity around me.  I would just be another sucker on Prozac, tranquil like Hindu cows.  "...the sort of general malaise the genius possess and the insane lament..."  So which am I, the genius or the crazy man?             

1:48pm: Fictional depression
I'm trying to make my main character suicidally depressed. I can say that he's depressed and that he wants to kill himself, but is it believable? I don't recall ever being legitimately suicidal, maybe a little depressed now and then, but never suicidal.
They say that everything is autobiographical in fiction. That's partly true. I met a girl recently, she was fabulous. Smart, funny, beautiful. Probably the hottest girl that has ever given me a second look. And now she wants nothing to do with me. I'm not the marrying kind, never have been, never thought about it. This girl was so great, I actually thought to myself, "Hey, this keeps up for six months, you could be investing in a ring." That was during the period when she returned my phone calls and answered my emails and went out in public with me. I didn't mention the marriage thing, topic never came up. I wasn't all over her, I was laid back, just trying to have a good time, not trying to talk her into moving in with me. Nothing of the sort.
One night she asks if I'm looking for a girlfriend. I say, Why, is that a bad thing? Yeah, it is, she says. So, we were hanging out a couple times a week, dinner, movies, etc. I'd spent the night at her house a few times. We'd seen each other naked. That's pretty much my definition of a girlfriend. Sing along if you know the words, "I just got out of a long term relationship and I'm not looking for a boyfriend right now."
I'm thinking of having "Raincheck" tattooed in huge block letters across my shoulders. That's all I get nowadays, rainchecks. "I'm not looking for a boyfriend right now, maybe in a couple months." Here's a good one. "I'm trying to go a year without sex." And I say okay, because, who am I kidding, I could do a year without sex standing on my head at this point. "Well, a year without dating, er, men, actually, a year without returning phone calls. A year without whatever so you'll stop calling me." Then I find out a week later she's engaged or moving in together or moving away together with some guy she just met.
"What happened to waiting a couple months or a year?"
"Oh, we're soul mates."
Now, I believe in the existence of soul mates, don't get me wrong, but, come on, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. There's an inordinate amount of women that I know suddenly stumbling upon their soul mates. And it generally happens right after I ask them out, for drinks, a movie, a snow cone, dinner, whatever. Once they realize at their next meeting (I sometimes believe that women are conspiring against me at weekly meetings. Not really, but it would explain a lot of things.) that I'm wise to the soul mate schtick, they'll have to come up with a new blow off line.
Here's my recommendations:
"I'm sorry, I'm a lesbian." Or "I'm sorry, I'm actually a man waiting for my last operation." Or "My reproductive system was blown off by a land mine in Viet Nam."
Something along those lines, something more believable than the soul mate crap.
So, I've got all this anger and frustration and depression and I'm funneling it into my character. Hopefully, he'll appear fucked up psychologically, that's what I'm aiming for, that's how I feel.
Questions?