THAT'S ALL

     I can tell you now it wasn't fair. The way I was running, I could've ran into anyone like that. It really wasn't fair. I'm not saying I didn't believe in us, but the state I was in, I could've believed in anything, in anyone. I needed a place to be, some time to think and not think. I mean, Jesus Christ, I had just been through those murders. Real fuckin' murder! And it was even worse than that because I was pretty sure I knew something, something more than they did. I still do. But there's no sense getting into all of that. It's over now and I will never know what really happened. But to be honest, for a long time, I was pretty angry about it. I couldn't understand how no one in my family tried to help me in any way. I remember visiting my father and we were playing pool and all of a sudden I slid down to floor and started crying, clearly unable to grasp what was happening. All he said was, "Yeah, it's pretty unsettling". We talked a few minutes about it and then I sucked it up and we finished out our game. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I got over it. What the hell did I expect them to do anyway? I mean, that was some pretty fucked up shit. But then all that shit that went down with Lon and his family in Oklahoma. For Christ's sakes, how much can a man endure? They had become my new family, my rock. It destroyed me, watching them go down like that. I'm pretty sure I had gone insane. But who wouldn't have? Of course, I should never have taken that acid. What the hell's wrong with me? I will never know how much that had to do with it all. And before all of that, I had taken that trip up to Canada with Alan where I finally met the spirit woman. I still think about her all the time. You should've seen that woman. You looked at her and it was as if at any moment she could simply disappear. I have never once in my life seen eyes like that. She was over six foot tall and rail thin. Her hair was thick and black and it shot out in all directions like a giant fern. Her hands were huge and heavily callused. She lived alone and chopped all her own wood. I told you she sent me things telepathically, right? I don't care if you believe me or not, it happened. While I was there, she had taken me to the place where she did it from. It was a big circle of rocks in a clearing. It took us hours to canoe there. It was very important to her that she showed it to me. She had two huge wolves as pets, full blooded wolves. They went along with us in the canoes. Those wolves loved me. She said she had never seen anything like it. That was the thing, she said, the way they had taken such a liking to me. That's how she knew. I would catch her looking at me, sizing me up. I thought it was about something else she saw in me, some sort of spirituality thing I had going. But then the whole thing got weird that night when she climbed into bed with me. Her wolves climbed in too. You should've seen it, all of us up there in that strange loft in that cabin way out in those woods in the dead of winter. She took off all her clothes and pull me over to her. But there was no way I could do it. I told her I was sorry but I just couldn't do it. She was twice my age and the whole thing was just way too strange. Then that first night back in Oklahoma at Lon's, I remember being woken up by something and scrambling to find a pen and paper. I spent a good hour or so scribbling down all these equations. Page after page of equations with all the people in my life's names and words like, "air, water, moon, sun, fire, rock," places, colors, times, equal signs, greater and less than signs, etc,. I had no idea what any of it meant. And then the next morning she called. I have no idea how she got Lon's number. I guess Alan had it or something. But she called and asked me how my writing had been the night before. "How do you know I wrote something?" I asked her. She just started laughing. It was the last time I ever spoke to her. I remember Alan saying once that I really hurt her when I responded to a letter she had written me and I told her that I had met you and we were living together. I couldn't understand that either. I mean, what did I do? Why in the world did she ever think I was interested in her in that way? But that day after she called, I got another call. It was Sally. It was the first time I had spoken to her since we split up. She said the trial had gotten postponed. We both said we were sorry about everything. And she begged me to get out of Oklahoma, that Lon was a bad influence. I agreed. We didn't say much more. But it was good to hear her voice. I've always cared for her. We said bye and that was the last time we would ever speak. Everything had just turned so evil at Lon's, I decided to borrow one of his cars and I drove out to visit my mother and my sister in Lubbock. It was the worse thing I could've done. My mother was more fucked up than ever. That first night, my sister invited me over to have some beers with some of their friends. I had just gotten dressed and I opened my mother's door and caught her in her room crying and kicking the wall over and over again with her foot. "Mom, what's the matter?" I asked her.
     "Just leave me alone, Philby. You don't understand. No one understands."
     "What do you mean? What do I not understand?"
     "You don't understand. This is the way it is."
     "This is the way WHAT is?"
     "Just go! Leave me alone. No one understands."
     Anyway, I guess I'm starting to realize that I have never needed much from anyone. I can find almost anyone's good points and can make due with them. I knew I had to get back to New York. It was my only chance. I remember standing in Lon's bathroom after he threw the knife at me. I stood there for a long time, looking at myself in the mirror. I think I was still high on the acid. I started singing that Dylan line: "I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough." A couple days later I WAS back and I had already booked some modeling jobs. Then the next thing I know, there you were, sitting on my lap in that restaurant. Another whirlwind had begun. A new everything. We really had a lot of fun back then, didn't we? How could we have known it would turn as ugly as it did? It was when I started getting the poems published, wasn't it? I know. You couldn't deal with it. You couldn't deal with the cost of it. My divulgence was a mirror to your facade. For it turns out you were running too. Perhaps even harder than I was. I don't blame you anymore for the things you did. Not at all. I don't blame anyone anymore for anything. That's sort of where I'm at. My new thing. Okay, I guess that's all.

AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL

     It was my brother who showed me. We were at home alone after school. All this time it had been in the bottom shelf of my father's gun cabinet, in the very back beneath some papers and boxes, half stuffed into one of those purple Crown Royal bags. I had always taken my father's rifles and shotguns out to play around with, but there was something different about it, something more mysterious, more exciting, more evil. "It's a .357," he told me, tilting it in the light. "Don't you ever touch it! It'll blow your fucking head off!"
     "Is it loaded?"
     "Fuck no. He keeps the bullets somewhere in the garage."
     "Can I hold it?"
     "No! Don't you ever fucking touch it, you hear me?" He slid the nose back in the bag and put it back in the drawer. "I shouldn't have shown you," he said, closing the drawer. "You tell mom or dad and I'm gonna kick your fuckin' ass!"
     The next day after school, I was at home alone. I went over to the drawer and pulled it open. I took out the papers and boxes and looked at it. It looked bigger than I remembered. I ran over to the front window and made sure no one had driven up. I ran back, reached in, and picked it up. It was heavy. My wrist buckled over a bit with the weight. I removed the bag and stared at it. I got nervous and quickly put it back.
     The following day after school, I was alone again. I opened the drawer and took it out. I wasn't as nervous. I held it with more authority. I began pointing it at things. I walked around with it. I went over the sliding glass door and pointed it at our two dogs. I pretended to shoot them, first Molly then Babe. I made the noise and pretended to feel the gun kick back. I smiled. Babe and Molly just starred back at me, wagging their tails as they whimpered through the glass. I heard something and quickly ran over and put it back.
     My mother went back into the hospital with another infection. Darkness crept back into our home. My father would come home from work, miserable, and would be on the phone for hours with doctors and friends and family. I stayed with friends a lot. But whenever I found myself home alone, I would always go and get the gun out. I began to contemplate shooting myself. The thought of it made me happy, the way people would have to think of me and feel sorry for me and how sad and hopeless they would feel, standing around my grave. I figured out how to make the chamber fall out where the bullets went. I began to put it up to my temple. I stuck to the barrel into my mouth. I would imagine the blast and what it would feel like and what it would do to me. I wanted so much to pull the trigger but I never did because I remembered how my father had said it would damage a gun if you ever pulled the trigger without any ammo. I was too afraid to even cock it.
     Then one day I was digging around through my father's desk, looking for his Hustler magazine. I could see the pages curled up at the back of the drawer but I couldn't quite grab it. I kept reaching but then my fingers came to a small heavy box. I grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a green box filled with bullets. On the side it said, "Remington .357". I ran over to the cabinet with the box of bullets and got the gun. I took out a bullet and opened the chamber. I let the bullet drop in and flipped it shut. I felt dizzy. My head felt like it was filled with sand. I sat on my knees, looking at the six sheets of sunlight shooting in through the panes of yellow glass on the front door. Hundreds of tiny dust particles floated around in that golden light. I thought about my mother. I could see her perfectly in my mind, the way she used to be before she had gotten sick. She was cooking dinner in the kitchen, looking at me, smiling. I brought the gun up to my temple. I held it there with my finger on the trigger. I held it there and began to cry.
   

MY 2 CENTS ON THE NEWTOWN SHOOTING

I've lived and have travelled many times all over Europe and let me tell ya, their youth is just as violent, if not more, than ours. They fight like monkeys over there at the drop of a hat. My firm belief is that a lot of this stuff has to do with the overall loss and lack of culture and meaning our modern world has brought us in which troubled, abused, often mentally disturbed children grow up in only to become lost, angry, POWERLESS, adolescents who are drowning in an ever worsening void. To me it is clear that it is this emptiness, this powerlessness, this frustration, that under the right (wrong) circumstances, over time, creates such "evil". Throw in violent video games which they often play all alone for hours at a time, perhaps the only time their minds are allowed to drift into a state of creativity, and add ridicule and mockery of others, as well as a stunted state of puberty. Now toss all of this into a twisted world painted almost entirely through agenda driven media. Oh, and let's not forget that in most instances, there is also that lazy, arrogant, irresponsible layer of pharmaceutical drugs corroding their fragile circuitry. Okay, so you've got all of that... I know, why not go ahead and top the whole thing off with a big bright cherry of powerful, high tech, high capacity, easily accessible weaponry? Basically, in my eyes, technology is outpacing our wiring. Where are the great philosophers to help us through this shit? Where's the reason behind all this bullshit we've allowed to become our reality? In our most mundane day there is hardly a movement we make that isn't profitable to someone. And that is my 2 cents.

THE OK CORRAL

     Whenever I hear people whining about the 2cd Amendment and the right to bear arms, the following story always comes to mind: About 35 years ago back in good old Altus, Oklahoma, my father and his best friend, Larry Meadows, were sitting side by side on the big long bench on our back porch. As usual, a couple dozen cans of Coors original were stacked in a pyramid beside them. I'm sure they were "talkin' pussy and tellin' lies" as my father always put it. At some point the discussion turned to the fact that Larry's office had just been broken into again. Larry owned a real estate company which he ran out of a small wooden house he converted into an office. It was either a Friday or a Saturday night. The sun was going down and they were out of beer. "Hey Fonzie," said Larry. He called my father "Fonzie" or "Fonzerelli" or "the Fonz" because he looked to him like Henry Winkler on Happy Days. "Fonzie," he said, "whadya say we go stake it out?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "Let's get our guns and stake it out."
     "I don't know Meadas."
     "We'll just scare 'em. They're probably just a couple of kids." My father killed the last of his beer and burped. "Let's don't and say we did," he said, placing the last can on top of the stack.
     "Come on, I'll buy the beer."
     Half hour later they had slipped in through the back door of Larry's office. My father decided against bringing a gun but Larry had his 20 gage filled with birdshot. They were sitting on a couple of stools in the dark when Larry leapt up with his gun. He raced to the back door and then to the front. "What the hell are you doin', Larry?" said my father.
     Larry reached up, put a hand on the knob, and slowly turned it. "Larry, you're crazy, what the...." was the last thing my father got out.
     Larry flung the door open and stepped out into the darkness with his shotgun high across his chest, the barrel pointing up to the sky. "HALT OR I'LL BLOW YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING ASS OFF!" are the exact words Larry said. Many guns opened fire. Larry's gun went off just as he was blown back into the doorway. My father hit the deck and began crawling over to Larry who was screaming in pain. Lights came on and the bullets and shot kept flying, tearing through the furniture and walls. My father reached Larry and pulled him by his shoulders over to the desk. Finally, the shooting stopped. "This is the police! Come out with your hands up!" My father left Larry bleeding on the floor and walked out with his hands up. It turned out someone had seen them go in and called the police, thinking they were burglars. Larry was lucky, he only got shot with a 38 in the forearm and then high up on his thigh with a 30 ot. But they charged him with attempting to kill police officers. Larry was on the city council and personally knew the Sheriff and the other officers. But every one of them lied in court and said they had turned on their headlights and identified themselves BEFORE Larry came out like that with the shotgun. It broke his heart. The story made national news. Larry was eventually acquitted partly due to my father's testimony. To me, the moral of the story is FUCK GUNS! But then without guns we wouldn't have this wonderful story now would we?

           



   

A NICE LITTLE NIGHTCAP WITH JIM VERMEULEN

"It's like I just want to let all this shit just spill out of me (holding his belly, shaking it) like FLUMPTHHHH and let it all just fall out onto the floor all steaming and shit. It's all gonna happen, like all this stuff, it's all gonna turn to gush and it's just gonna start falling and it's gonna hang down and it's just gonna keep falling and it's all just gonna be hanging there, all this stuff, it's gonna just be hanging there and your skin's gonna pull away from your bones and your bones are gonna protrude and everything's just gonna drop and all this stuff is gonna start oozin' out of you and then your asshole (Haha), your asshole is gonna start slippin' away (hand gesturing with one hand making an okay sign representing an asshole to help show me how he thinks it will look when a person's asshole pulls away)..."

"(Haha) I know! And all that shit's gonna turn to goo and then it's gonna harden and shit. It's all gonna be this hardened goo!"

"Oooh, hardened goo (Haha)!"

"It's like you just want to get it over with, right?"

"Yeah (haha)!

"Dude, I totally understand that. Like fuck it, it's gonna happen anyway."

 "Exactly! Hey, you want anymore of this?"

"Sure."

AN ENVISIONING OF DOUG (MY BROTHER) AND I AT THE BAR IF HE MAKES IT HERE NEXT WEEKEND LIKE HE SAYS AND I AM ABLE TO TAKE OFF WORK

"Dude, I can't believe you wrote that shit in a poem! Mom never tried to cut off one of her titties."

"Yeah she did!"

"No she didn't. I'm telling you. I don't know where you got that from."

"Hmmm, really? I coulda sworn she did. Let's call her when we get home."

"(Haha) Alright."

"Man, everything's just so fuckin' fucked up. I don't know. I mean, how the hell does anyone do this shit anymore? I can't fucking do anything. Really, I can't believe things work as well as they do. Look at these fucking idiots over there by the jukebox. Watch, I guarantee you it's going to be something like Radiohead or Tool or some shit."

"I thought you liked Radiohead?"

"No, I do, sort of, but I would never like play that shit in here."

"Dude, that bartender's pregnant."

"Yeah."

"Man, that's fuckin' sad."

"Yeah, I guess. I don't know, everything's sad..."

"So you're just done modeling?"

"Yeah, it looks that way."

"But you could go back if you wanted?"

"Probably, but it would be a fuckin' feat... Hey, remember when I had that big ring around my penis?"

"(Haha) Yeah. What the fuck WAS that?"

"I don't know. Dad didn't even take me to the doctor."

"No, he called Dr. Holman. He said it was something common."

"Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

"(Haha) No."

"Yeah, you guys just stood there, looking at me in the tub. You pointed at my penis and you went: "Is it always that small?"

"(Haha) I DID?"

"Yeah, and then Dad laughed too. Dude, I was like 7 or 8 years old. Mom was like dying in some hospital somewhere."

"She wasn't dying."

"Yeah she was! That's when she had that infection. They were gonna cut off her leg."

"No, dude, that happened later. She was just depressed then."

"Really?"

"Yeah. (Haha) But that is some funny fuckin' shit. It looked like you had a donut stuck around your penis."

"I know (Haha). Hey, you know, I Googled rectal slough the other day. Isn't that what Dad said it was called when he shat his asshole out."

"(Haha) I don't know. Man, I can't believe that fucker shat his asshole out!"

"I KNOW! But there's no term, rectal slough."

"There isn't?"

"No."

"(Haha) Didn't he drive himself to the emergency room?"

"(Haha) Yeah."

"(Haha) Oh, man, fuck."

"Dude, look at these fuckin' people in here. I mean, what the fuck, man? I got this new problem these days."

"What?"

"It's like whenever I'm talking to someone, I just start thinking about all these things. Like say I'm talking to some dude I know at the grocery store or something, just normal shit, ya know. I'll start envisioning him jacking off or wiping his ass you know, bringing it up and smelling it..."

"(Haha) What? You're fucked up!"

"No, man, it's like fucking debilitating. I mean I literally can't be around people without constantly trying to envision what their dicks and pussies look like. I mean you gotta like talk to people about all this fuckin' bullshit but then we're all so fucked up. I mean people piss on each other and lick each other's assholes and shit. Women drink cum and then they kiss their children. Think about what men do when they're left alone. They get on some porn site and they whimper and moan. They finger their own assholes and jack off into the sink or into a dirty sock they found on the floor. I mean people must cry like little fucking babies when they're left alone. We're not fit for this world. But then everyone holds down these stupid fucking jobs and they pay their mortgage and file their goddamn taxes and shit. You gotta go the dentist and get your eyes checked and shit. Like I had to go reregister the fucking car the other day. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. You gotta go stand in line with all these goddamn creatures. It's a fuckin' hell on earth. I just don't get it. You'd think people would lose it more. You'd think people would be blowin' their goddamn heads off left and right. I don't get it. We should be stepping over bodies every time we walk down the fucking street."

"(Haha) Fuck, dude."

"I mean it, man."

"(Haha) I know you do! That's what's so fucking funny!"

"Do you think I'm that far off? People think I'm fuckin' crazy. I mean they just dismiss me like that."

"No, I don't. It IS that fucked up. It's just that you say it."

"Oh, fuck."

"What?"

"It's Dylan. Those fuckers played Dylan."

"Oh yeah."
  

HOW 'BOUT TACOS?

"Look, man, I've been right where you're at. You know, you can do one of two things. Either surrender to it completely, finally, you know, all that crossroads shit, or you can do what I did and just say fuck it, and turn your back on it and everything else. But you have to take some sort of stand against it."

"Against what, existence?"

"Yeah. I mean look around you. Can you name one person that you are in any way envious of?"

"No, not at all."

"Exactly. That's really where it begins. And yet you yourself are a fuckin miserable wreck. I mean you're fucking worthless. How long do you think you can go on like this? But here's the fucking shit of it, man. It only gets worse. I'm serious, all those anxieties you have, you think they're crippling you now? Wait until you really take a stand. Trust me, man, I know. The truth is, all the evil you could ever imagine is alive and well inside of all of us. It moves around like the weather. I really don't like to call it evil but there's really no other word. Look, you know all of this shit. Under the right circumstances, anything is possible, right? It really doesn't take much of an imagination to conceive of your own mother murdering you."

"Yeah, no."

"But your deal is you like to write. It brings you something. I never really had that. You know, I liked to paint, and I used to make a good living off my paintings, but I could easily live without it. You'd think it would be such a simple thing. You just like to sit and be left alone so you can see what happens. But it's not that easy, is it? To write, to really fuckin' write, man, I don't know. I don't know if it's ever really worth it."

"Yeah, ya know, it's funny, I meet all sorts of writers around here. I read some of their shit and I don't know, I just couldn't imagine anything worse for them to be doing. It's just, it's, I don't know... And some of them are really pretty good but it's like, it just couldn't be more pointless. They're like little moths fluttering around the light."

"Yeah, well, it's a new time, it's a new world. It happens every so often but I don't think it's ever happened like this, not at this level. All those things that used to work, they'll never come close to ever working again. It's over for almost everything, for nearly everyone. Who knows what it's going to be now? But it's gonna have to be something, some sort of energy's gonna have to move in. And never have we had so little to go on. It's hysterical, really, I mean, watching all these people still trying, still thinking what they're doing has a chance. Especially around here, right? But, you know, either way, it's gonna have to be a total surrender. Either way you're gonna have to be braver than you've ever been. There's no gettin' around it, you're gonna have to jump off the bridge. I really think you can do it, brother. I think you might be the one. It's pretty cool to see. It's like the Gods have been grooming you for it all this time. But then I think, you know, you're just too nice of a guy."

"Yeah, I don't know, man... Hey, so where do you wanna go? What about the Thai place?"

"I ate there yesterday."

"The Hop?"

"Yeah, I don't know, I don't really wanna drink."

"How 'bout tacos?"

PAINTING THE NURSERY

"You think it needs another coat?"

"I think it looks good. But what about those white parts over there?"

"No, I was just gonna leave it like that. Hey, when we get on that new insurance, I think I need to talk to somebody."

"We already are."

"No, I mean just me. Now that I'm sober, I'm getting these equations again in my head. Like time and energy. They're sort of like graphs or charts. Like Oklahoma is a graph, like a line on a page."

"You're sober but you got high last night?"

"No, I'm serious."

"Hmmm, don't you think those beams would look amazing painted white?"

"I'm not painting the beams! I'll paint the brick but I'm not painting those beams!"

"Maybe this should be our room? I can't believe I didn't think of that. Don't you think it should be our room?"

"It's too small, the bed would barely fit."

"Really?"

"Hey, if you found a video tape of your parents fucking, wouldn't you watch it?"

"I'm not talking to you anymore."

"I mean, from way back in the day, like maybe 20 or 30 years ago. You wouldn't watch it? Come on, you'd watch it."

"Don't talk to me."