Government, Feminism, Facebook, medical and technological breakthroughs mean shit to those of us in the ghetto. We are unaffected by the outside world, impervious to change.
A Libertine Black Lesbian could be voted president, an airport shuttling folks to Mars can open across the street, Japanese can be declared our national language, it would not matter – there’d still be piss in the elevators, baby brothers and sisters smoking weed or crack in stairwells, ‘mano upstairs would still hit his baby mama, and there’d still be at least one bimonthly murder, cop cars and meat wagon lined up on the sidewalk. Same as it ever was.
The ghetto is Everbleak.
now
Feel lucky, despite all that’s happening – and all that isn’t.
If anyone should happen to be reading this, stop, get off the internet and out of your head and do something. This is your life. Stop pissing it away on Fakebook and porn. I have to be here, you don’t. Go make out, take a shower with someone, create something – Art, a new fuck position, a child – or just tear down the walls around you, get a sledgehammer, use your fists and break everything in sight. But do somefuckinthing. Different than what you’ve already done. And with more fervor. Something that actually matters – this excludes tweeting, corporate takeovers, pill popping, getting into heated ‘discussions’ on threads on forums online and I can go on. Life is precious and if you don’t think yours is then do that – end it. Mine is everything and it’s on a tether.
mirror, search
‘When your first chakra is damaged, then all the ones that follow are going to be skewed’ – I paraphrase Sally’s sentiment to me, sans the matter-of-factness and knowing and affectionate smile.
‘You really are the most beautiful soul you know’. This indecipherable locution from MSS.
‘You make it through this, you’ll have a book, a film and a couple one-man shows’. To myself.
4:50 AM. Look father up online. But ‘JCB’ like ‘John William Smith’ in the Hispanic/Latino community. Plus, he’s probably dead – what I’ve heard all my life. His brother died decades ago from living a shitty life. Sis another battered basket case. Didn’t know of either’s existence until last summer. All three siblings had at least two kids each (haven’t seen my older half sister since I was two), ensuring the cycle continue. I’ve an impressive pedigree of abuse, on both sides.
Counter confusion with three-month-old texts:
‘This is all a result of a lot of trauma that was inflicted upon you, you didn’t create this. You need to forgive yourself, Jason. For being alive. You have every right to be here. Every fucken right. It’s a fucken travesty that you believe otherwise. You’re such a beautiful man Jason, inside and out, and you deserve all that life has to offer so stop punishing yourself. You’ve had enough punishment from yourself and from others. Enough is enough. No more. There’s a real fighter in you and I don’t think you would acknowledge or recognise that but it’s there.’
Instead of crying, I masturbate, then shower, sweep, mop, Windex, launder, masturbate again and scrub my cock of cum the way Lady MacBeth scrubbed her hands of blood. Finally, I relent to mercy and cook myself some cereal. ‘Are your kids getting enough Vitamin D?’ Wilma Flintstone asks me. ‘I don’t know, are your kids getting enough Vitamin D, you hypocritical, self righteous carnivore? Babies sitting around gnawing on raw T-bone all day, every day’ I reply, then feel bad and apologize – so what if she’s a little insensitive, she’s from another time and means well and I shouldn’t have been so defensive.
I take a deep breath and open the book I’m reading. Two words immediately catch my eye: We’ll see.
I hope so.
good
Pausing to eye the Anais Nin volume – I know it might save my life tonight, but I don’t believe I’m worth saving, so I find another road to ruin. Plowing through it, and another, doubling back to try out darker roads I’d heretofore eschewed. Ferocious, dedicated and very sad, I punch through an hour, two hours, ignoring hunger, body pains, exhaustion, conscience, good sense. Ignoring the child inside.
Eventually I end up spent on a cot in a bunker, walls literally crumbling around me. I text her I’m about to fall asleep but the ghosts are tagging me full force, so I get up and take some self portraits. They’re good but it doesn’t matter so I delete them.
Halfway through an episode of Taxi, I relinquish and doze. The dreams are always the same – family. I awake with scratchy throat, as if I had indeed just been screaming at them.
I piss for five minutes, return to the cot and the stuffed monkey AM made for me (‘Something that I think you should have gotten maybe thirty years ago’). I fall out again, images of my skin being flayed by a butcher knife. Try countering them with Marilu Henner’s eyes, but it’s not enough, so I start making connections: Marilu as ‘Three Fingered Annette’ in Bloodbrothers, Richard Price, Clockers, Keitel, Ferrara – six degrees of David Caruso. In time, I drowse (the dream – mother pregnant and I vehemently wanted her to abort it), waking up at dawn for another five minute piss – one more night down. How many left? Don’t think about it, Monkey says and I listen, leaving it at that.
excusable homicide
MRI, three x-rays.
Abdominal sonogram Friday.
Some minor solace and validation in dick doc flinching whilst reviewing last MRI (‘Looks like you’re in some pain’), after which I stabbed him in both eyes, pummeled him to death with my fists, urinated on his corpse and set fire to his office. Score one for the ailing.
go
DO NOT hold back here, no matter what you think the cost.
If this is all you’ve got, make it fuckin count.
There is solace enough in coming clean.