36 posts tagged “alcohol”
Restructured to make a little more sense. Still haven't gone chronological, though. Everything that has been added in this iteration of the compendium has (new) next to it. Six (new)'s under non-fiction and five (new)'s under other. So, eleven entries worth putting on the revised compendium. The last time I did one of these was about this time last year. Not a good sign.
Non-fiction Stories(with no organization whatsoever):
(new)You're Creepy, Hunter - A girl tells me I am creepy. I get even.
(new)Phoenix - I don't think I am supposed to write about something that is supposed to be anonymous. Oh well.
(new)Strange Format - Saturday Show - Seriously the strangest format or lack thereof I have ever used. Almost like a poem. I've bad luck and things get out of hand.
(new)Graham's 21st Birthday - "No, dude, we're walking home. It's like two blocks."
(new)Dead Cicada - A woman is assaulted while holding her child. I intercede.
(new)A Warning - First Friday's in Richmond!
Salvia Gets Too Real - Fourth and worst trip on Salvia.
The Most Puke I Have Ever Seen - Imagine this next scene. Try to visualize it with me. My eyes open to the ceiling, my body shocked out of deep REM sleep. My legs and waist are moist. . .
Drunk People - An interesting twist-- I'm not drunk in this story. For once in my life.
Black and Mild
- I'll miss drinking with friends on top of the roof at my old
apartment. I will miss that Mediterranean market, with its natural
soaps and cheap spices. I will miss all those families who called the
cops on me when I played music too loud on Monday nights. Ahh
Hunter Takes it to the Limit, Throws Up Everywhere - In The Top Five Drunkest Nights
Pissing in Pools I & II - My double standard on people who pee in pools.
A Retelling of the First Time I SmokedA Trip To Walmart - Seriously one of the best destinations while high. Interesting, entertaining, sometimes a little creepy.
To Move My Body - When reality sinks in, when you think you've got nothing, you become psychic, telepathic, and shameless. This story has procession of Segways!
The Things I Remember - I somehow wake up at 2PM in my dorm, still drunk from the night before. A rough bus ride does me in.
Hunter Blacks Out, Goes To Patient First, Blames Free Beer - Pretty self explanatory.
A Tucker Emulation, It Seems - The very first story I wrote.
Handcuffed, Robbed, and 6 O'clock Rush - Pretty self-explanatory. Breakfast club.
Hunter Gets High, Driving Barely Ensues - I get high, and drive. Sort of.
Lebanese: A "Nice Guy" Failure - Nine Guys, One Girl. I get the girl and ride off into the sunset(upstairs), but turn out to be a "nice guy."
JMU, PART I
- The first and, since, only time I have been breathalyzed. There is
no part II. Part II would be better though, as it includes doing
mushrooms, a starving French guy, five plus parties, nearly getting run
over, really drunk chicks with australian accents, and BLOODHOUNDS.
But this story has none of that.
THE WEEKEND - A three day bender, with a decadent interlude of cheating debauchery. All set to the soundtrack of the very trite Garden State.
Perfect Night Ruined by Marriot, Morning -- This story is far too long to hold your attention. Do not read it.
Short(or long) Stories(Fiction):
Saint Dympna - My favorite.
The Sink at Sunset - Guy has mobile home of a heart. This is life at 20.
Shells - My drug induced interpretation of the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly caused this short. Later turned into a short fiction piece (for a class) called Mise en Place or The Writer.
Nine-Tenths is Nothing - Our children are here to replace us. One man attempts to slow this process by proving he is better than them and protecting his wife from kid perverts.
The Last Boat to the Disappearing - A seven vignette fiction piece about flaming zombies. As much as I wish I had written them gay, they are actually on fire.Story Starter Exercise - A brief story about a friend who got kicked up and did a lot of drugs while living in the woods.
Other:
(new)At The Edge of The Neighborhood - Vivid zombie dream.
(new)Shut Down or Reset - Up late? Two options. Special bonus feature: scene from this year's Best Friends Day @ Hadad's
(new)A Haiku - About a day I spent at the river getting drunk with someone I didn't know. She was taken and I fell and cut myself on a rock. Then there is a sexual allegory at the end. There, I ruined it.
(new)My First Near-Ticket on a Bicycle(new)Autumn - The Greatest and Best Time of Year
Can Blood Cells Have Car Accidents? - Thoughts after the fire.
Janus - Girl cheats on me. Girl dies in short story Sink at Sunset.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part I -- I test my voice recorder during a toking session. Heavy on the dialogue.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part II -- The better half of the overall recording experience. A lot of in depth high conversation.
Friend's Mom Finds Out About Hunter's Livejournal, Missiles Fly - Probably one of the more significant events in the history of my online writing.
Under a Hot Chicago Sun - I didn't even know my neighbors name.
H-D-P-E Does Not Spell "Hope" - Recycling is hopeful. I am not.
It Is Only Hubris If I Fail - Childhood with a heavy dose of failure, sprinkled with Sloane Crosley.
Sick Dream D.A.N.C.E. - Dreams are fun. Dreams about partying and religious fanatics that all have the same face... strange. Sick dreams are most disturbing.
Rape, Tacos, and Love - I get raped, noticed for my writing at a party, have sex for the first time high, eat really good tacos, and listen in on a nasty girl shit.Tainted Elephant Oil Prices Dowsed in Sickly-Sweat-Stained Dreams - More sick dreams, musings on family life and relationships.
Metal Shows - Are awesome. Especially when you know the band. Even if it's at a lame venue.
Derelict Father, Are We the Cause of Our Suffering?
Shit's Run Its Course - I inherit a bike from a metal head who stole it from a crack head.
The Bear, The Bee, The Rhino - I connect with mother nature, understand things I never thought possible.
Night Luck - I have only gotten in trouble with the law when sober. Sobriety really takes the spine out of me.
Condom Debacle - A young Hunter hides a partially used condom in duct-tape.
Jesus Freaks - I lament about my hatred for street-preachers. This is a Facebook classic.Bloody Knuckles - It wasn't a game that gave me these.
Diphenhydramine - The first time I ever tripped on a deliriant.
Bulgarians are Hardcore - Intoxicated 5 times the lethal limit, this Bulgarian gets hit by a car and sent to the hospital for minor head trauma.
Sunchips? - Do you know why they call them sunchips?
LIRICKES - The funniest rap "lirickes" you'll read all week.
The Binary Universe and How Choice Works - With diagrams and shit.
Poems - A little too sing-songy.
Soundscape - High times.
The Nature of Souls and Soulmates - Got a decent response for this one.
Scanner Darkly and the Universe as a Vague Set of Prepositions
Demon Play, Demon Out - Your shoes are not an extension of anything that matters to your person.
Clocked Out - A New Year - 2007. Some things get better, other things are mentioned less.
New - I miss writing.
I'm sitting in some uncomfortable chair, a style of which I have never seen before. It has the usual aluminum grey frame, a backrest adjusted to a standard of height, blah blah-blah. But it has these strange pads connecting the seat, pads that shoot up and fill some of the space between the back rest and the ass rest with some sort of. . . spinal rest? The color of the rotund woman's shirt--toothpaste blue-- outlines this extraneous pad.
I stare at her, her lumpy body a pile of toothpaste squeezed directly into the same spot. I play with the bracelet on my right wrist. I wonder if it is really home made. I doubt it.
I gaze around the room. Most of the crowd is young. A guy in the corner looks like a disgruntled underwear model. Not big time, just a locally owned department store maybe. There are many attractive girls my age.
Several people speak out of a small paperback. Everyone seems to have a copy. After introducing ourselves, I get one too. One with numbers. Not the numbers of the many attractive girls. Just numbers with male names next to them following MEN: at the top.
"How are you?" she asked me. No, wait, it was "Are you well?" Or maybe it was neither, but had the tone of both, concern backing the question.
I told her "I'm fine," with little enthusiasm. The tree above would wet us occasionally with drops of dew. She bounced her baby a bit, gently, and a breeze blew his wispy hair. He was concerned with the wind. He stared into the soul of a wavering plant, trying to understand its movement.
"He doesn't really understand object permanence yet," the father, my friend Tyler, said. I didn't want to say Piaget was wrong. I didn't want to say anything. But I said something like, "You mean like peek-a-boo?"
When I introduce myself, I am the only one that simply says my name. This is my first time and I have not yet developed the ability to confess my heart to strangers. A kid younger than me speaks up. Says his life is better now, says he's happy ninety-five percent of the time. I think bullshit, life is a constant of inconsistency. Fuck your 5% estimated blue time. Then I realize he at least thinks he has something worthy of sharing. I cannot begin to imagine a similar image of myself.
I said goodbye to the family after a walk down the street. It was pleasant. The sun was just beginning to tire and the air cool. Leaves tumbled to the earth around us as we all hugged. Phoenix, their child, grabbed hold of my bracelet. His grip was strong and I didn't want to pry his hands off of what he wanted to hold. But they had to visit another friend(a mother) and I had to go home. So Kat pried his demonically possessed fingers from it and we said goodbye.
Ice floats on emulsion, melts, spins clinking.
He tries to fish a cube with his tongue, but ends up gulping the mixture.
His throat burns, but he has the cube. Splinters it with a worn incisor,
crunches it with the rest. The iced warmth travels to the back of his throat,
down, and to his belly. Nothing tastes as good as this, he thinks.
The sting, the texture. The undeniable tinge of regret-- relieved.
The man child's mind cauterizes memorable moments,
forgets the ones he wishes to, remembers none other.
The ice tray with its half frozen surfaces and liquid
guts, he's chewed it all away.
Chipped, his tooth's in pain.
Mustache froth, what is love's directive? On the verge of 'quit,'
he wipes it away, remembers sister, a non brother.
The man's child mind: acorn fights, memorable memories.
He doesn't understand why he attempts this poetry,
but lines don't lie, they tell the only way.
Can you believe that this is my communique?
Maybe I will understand this another day.
to be clear, I have not written poetry in forever, suck at it and am a little drunk thanks to a friend. . . so maybe we'll just put this in the "in progress category"
He swings it, round and round. It forms a ring around his body, like that of Saturn's, but these aren't frozen space particles-- this is fiery hatred! An absolute expression of the life and death of flame. He swings two chains around his body. Flame trails from rods wrapped in lighter-fluid-drenched swaddle, hits and crawls along the uninhabitable asphalt. In fashionable blue.
I can feel the heat
from several feet.
His body must be
hot and sweaty.
The ring secured around his finger snaps and he loses grip on the chain. It hurdles, ball over chain right into my face and my beard bursts into flame! I am now writhing on the cobble in front of Gallery 5 trying to extinguish my face.
Okay, that last traumatic bit does not happen. Just something I envision while spectating.
Tonight is the first night I am able to go to a First Friday event on Broad in over a year. For those of you not from Richmond or for those of you who have been epically lazy, First Fridays are a huge celebration held on Broad from about second or first to about Belvidere. It's like seven block parties, all devoted to art galleries, bars, and live music.
I arrive alone and am drawn to Gull ( you really have to watch the videos of him play to get the idea ) who is playing on the sidewalk. He is a masked musician named Nate who sings and plays guitar and drums all at once. This is riveting but I must meet with my friends, so I do. We watch Poi outside of Gallery 5 for half an hour.
I feel like this guy created it. Or at least brought it to the forefront in Richmond. Or at least was a main contributor to those who did.
His name is Evan Moses and this is an old ass picture of him that I creepily stole from facebook. He introduces me to poi three years ago, so I have seen poi a million times(maybe exaggerated). It is only when this older chick dressed in all black comes to the center of the crowd with a hula hoop and some fire am I impressed. She looks like Leslie Mann and becomes one with the hoop, which is on fire. It is sort of like this but set to trance, not porno groove. And there is only one hula hoop. But it's on fire!
I miss Andrea's lantern workshop, which sucks because I see like twenty people around 10:30(which is half an hour after the event is supposed to wind down/cease to exist) and they're totally awesome, albeit really cheap lanterns!
My group wanders back to Broad where Brandon and I end up singing with Gull. This is his last song and he encourages people to join in. He even repeats the seven syllable chanting part like ten times, just so we get it straight. He looks to Brandon and I, the only two really participating and, through his skull-like mask with his totally distorted microphone, tells us to do it louder. He raises his free hand(for the moment) at us. We sing louder and he begins the drum part to accompany the pre-existing guitar. More people join in. Eventually, at least half of the 30-40 people there are involved. The tune is stuck in my head for the rest of the night. It is stuck now.
I eventually leave and ride home. I blow through a stop sign and am stopped by the cops for the second time. I mean, I see the car, looking all innocent in its idle darkness and say to myself, "Shit, I'm gonna get pulled." Of course they let me off with a warning, it is two cute, younger rookie female cops. I win. Though one of them writes something on a pad of paper after ID-ing me. Guess I better take this warning. Be careful, right?
"You got lights?"
"Yeah, I just turned them off to save batteries." I stammer, "when you pulled me."
7/14/09
I unlock my bike and ride across the street from Cafe Diem to Seven Eleven, doubtlessly bound for cigarettes despite my effort to quit. I have had several drinks and I need a smoke. I exit convenience, pounding my pack, and ignite. I unlock my bike again. I look up as I do this and some girl on a phone, holding her bike, smiles at me. I smile back and mount the tatterdemalion frame. I feel good about this smile, like my night could only end in happiness.
I get several blocks down Park Ave. before I hear WOOP WOOP and see those familiar blue lights. The blue to the shield as the yellow to the stinger. A warning I heed as I look back, pull over. The high-and-mighty pig pulls up next to me, initiating his lecture: YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE TO OBEY THE SAME RULES AS CARS.
I studder, buzzed from firefly, bourbon, and PBR, tell him I'm sorry.
"You just ran two stop signs," he says, and I nod, bobbing my head up and down, acknowledging the fact that they were four-ways and it shouldn't matter because no one was around but him, not that he was "right" in stopping me. Whatever will make him happy will make me free, I figure.
"I'm sorry," I concede.
"You don't even have a front light," he tells me, as if I didn't know. "Where is it?"
"I have one, it's at home. It just ran out of batteries." A week ago.
"I could pin you for three counts of wreckless cycling," he says.
I want to emphasize the WOW I respond.
"WOW," I say. "I'm sorry, sir," I stroke his ego. I shake my head at myself. I am about to get a ticket. And then. . .
"Just go," he frees me.
"Thank you, sir," I continue stroking his ego. The kind of courtesy stroke you give after your forearm is killing you, but it has paid off, so you do it anyway.
I ride off but he is behind me so I wait at the next red light on Robinson. The pig pulls up, parks next to me, persuades my illusions of safety. He leans to shotgun.
"You see those bikes up there?"
I squint and see a faint white light. "Um," I hesitate, thinking he's making shit up, "not really. My vision isn't so good." I lie, "I have glasses at home," which should be true, but since I destroyed them back in twenty-oh-five it isn't.
"Well, if you don't have a front light and I hit you, it's your fault."
Thanks Mom, I think.
"Yeah. I've seen a few friends hit," I tell him, "and it isn't pretty. I'm just trying to get home." The bikes he is not lying about roll up across the street and he activates the blue, the siren. His car ironically runs the red and then he begins speaking with the cyclists. I wait at the red-- I heed his warning-- for as long as it eternally takes to turn green while NO ONE rides through the intersection.
As soon as I lose the cop, I flick my friction shifters to their heighest gear ratio and safely ride home, where I am now, stopped only by my name yelled into the street where I explain the story to near-strangers, writing this.
Fuck you, bacon bits, I know it will be my fault if I get hit.
But I won't.
Right?
6/28/09
Ladies Night Last Night.
Ride home, exploding tire(not bridge),
have to walk with sore,
swollen,
on-my-toe,
spider bite.
I call Graham, "Is anyone there," I foolishly pause and resume, "that ca-"
"There are a few people.
Not many yet."
It's 8:50, and I say this:
"No. Is anyone there
that can me a ride?"
"No man."
"Who is there?"
"Kim(who breaks her elbow and gets hydrocodone), Ben(the bouncer and unnecessay regreter). Ladies Night is here!"
he says, barks the last line.
"Well my wheel just exploded on the Nickle Bridge like ten seconds ago."
"Shit"
"Yeah it was really loud. All the air just evacuated at once in a single note-- Boohch!
Are you there? Hello? Goddamnit"
My
Phone
Is
Dead.
I march
from the
bridge and
someone, and
I don't know who,
but someone, with a
huge fucking [SUV], they
slow down, and throw a full,
super-sized McDonald's cup
at me, and say, "FUCK YOU!"
This is Richmond, and I didn't
get hit. But my fortune was off.
Way off.
I hope for a rescue team that I don't believe will arrive. I get to the intersection of Boulevard and Cary, see a silhouette and squint.
"George?" I question to myself out loud. "George!"
I yell.
He rolls down the pedestrian acclivity on his Nishiki.
A car flies past him as he falters,
screams,
"FUCKIN' RED-
LIGHT!" punctuated with an index to the stop light.
Mr. Ramsey, it's good to see you.
Are you the rescue team?
Heh, the one man unit.
I walk across the street with him, his working bike and my malfunction, as a car begins to turn, stops, accelerates.
We halt to look past the reflective windshield but continue walking.
I tell George I am walking because
the electronic, 2D-white-man said it was okay.
We get to George's room on Floyd and he asks me "Do you want the road bike, or the girly bike?" The girly bike? I ask.
The Mongoose, he says.
I ask him if it is the one that survived Graham's usage at Slaughterama, the one with the awesome breaks. He confirms this and I stand in defense of this glorious piece of man-operated machinery, proclaming,
"That is not a girly bike. That is God's bike"
I keep up with George, who rides as fast as he can on his very light, well maintained roadbike because, clearly, God's bike can keep up with anything if it wants to. And it wants to. So we stop at the Subway a block away from my house, where the show could be going on as George watches the bikes.
As I order,
with the stomach rot(the kind accompanied by the taste of metal, priming for blood) from a poor, one meal in the morning / nibbling during work diet
(I fall asleep many nights with a hunger knot), I catch my breath.
The lanky slavic girl is mopping the floor. I look at her in a way, with a feeling I am unfamiliar with. I cannot place pity or regret in any of my storage. I remember my one attempt to talk to her. Swaying, chuckling, I ask her where she's from. I noticed the accent, I tell her.
"Uh-Russia," she says, leaving it at that.
But I won't leave it.
I am fed but disapointed,
many of my friends did
not
show up. (This is not to
say
that many people did
not
show. There were
many.)
I am disapointed.
No stomach
rot, but disapointed.
Disapointed
until Ladies
Night plays.
They do a sound check, and we reinforce pre-existing sound-proofing.
I hammer nails through soft pillows. My skin bleeds salt water,
I breathe heavily,
and decide that I need a shower.
Especially "if".
But "if" never happens.
Cole Sulivan, the lead singer from Ladies Night, does his accoustic bit. Most of the 35 to 50 people are outside on the sidewalk or stoop. Or street. Most of the 35 to 50 people inside are on the opposite side of the room. Loudly talking over the music! After a song, I look at Cole and ask him,
"Hey man, do you want me to tell these people to shut the fuck up?"
He sighs, shakes his head, and says,
"If they're not into it, I'm not going to force them to listen."
I understand him and nod,
Alright.
He eventuallys says,
Let us
just go
ahead and
move on.
The band sets up while I drink a beer outside with Ben, the doorman, who I will pay for being so. Some day.
I go inside and announce, my dirty beater shoes atop a recently cleaned coffee table, "Hey, whoa whoa, eey, alright!" Loud and tall, I silence the crowd, continue, "Ladies Night is going to play now, if you want to see them, go to the basement. If not, that SUCKS!"
I step down and a meager few laugh.
Ladies Night plays.
I am no longer disapointed with my
night/
week/
year career/
life.
I dance and sweat.
I sing along and drink someone else's beer. A contribution to me, the host. And thank [insert univeral source] for the guy who gives it to me. I cannot even remember his name, or the label on the bottle. The bottle under pressure-- my lighter turned bottle opener
"pops the cork."
The cap hits the band's friend.
In the head.
The majority of people dancing live
@ 1100:
Adrian,
Graham,
myself.
Tyler and Kim dance. Two girls dance in the corner.
Tyler takes video with his blackberry-style Nokia. I tell him to record the crowd singing with the band. He doesn't and later tells me, "Yeah, it's almost like they're playing by themselves."
They play with a crowd, however. Pales in comparison to the night I saw them for the first time, but it doesn't matter.
The band quits, despite cheers and "encores," whistling and claps.
Everyone is outside as the next band(Sweet Jesus and the Good God Almighties) sets up. Kim and Ben are talking.
Kim tilts, says something loud and indistinct through the sultry summer airspace. I turn to Cole, who is on the neighbor, Moreese's wider stoop.
"Hey man, sorry about earlier"
He says it's cool and that there is a show the next night at the Camel. I tell him I am working.
Oh well,
"What's your last name?" I ask, "I'm gonna add you on Facebook so I can keep up with you guys' shows."
Before he finishes "Sullivan," we briefly glance to Ben, who is now carrying Kim on his shoulders. Kim, drunk and stoned, loses
balance under a tree branch.
Leaning forward, she falls,
Smack! Into uneven brick.
She lays there for minutes as
Ben crouches. Others gather.
She lays flat,
quiet she lays.
This is a collection of things I have written that I think are at least half worth putting back up. Since last I did one of these, I have added two short stories and maybe ten other forms of writing. With 19 solid "Stories," 7 short fiction pieces, and over 25 others, I would like to think that what I do for enjoyment is steadily becoming something I could do for money. Years down the road, that is. Enjoy.
STORIES(with no organization whatsoever):
Salvia Gets Too Real - Fourth and worst trip on Salvia.
The Most Puke I Have Ever Seen - Imagine this next scene. Try to visualize it with me. My eyes open to
the ceiling, my body shocked out of deep REM sleep. My legs and waist
are moist. . .
Perfect Night Ruined by Marriot, Morning
-- It turns out that drinking in the dorms is a bad plan. But, for me,
I have a great night, only to have it ruined by a morning hangover and
the loss of my license.
Hunter Takes it to the Limit, Throws Up Everywhere - In The Top Five Drunkest Nights
JMU, PART I
- The first and, since, only time I have been breathalyzed. There is
no part II. Part II would be better though, as it includes doing
mushrooms, a starving French guy, five plus parties, nearly getting run
over, really drunk chicks with australian accents, and BLOODHOUNDS.
But this story has none of that.
Pissing in Pools I & II - My double standard on people who pee in pools.
To Move My Body - When reality sinks in, when you think you've got nothing, you become psychic, telepathic, and shameless. This story has procession of Segways!
Hunter Blacks Out, Goes To Patient First, Blames Free Beer - Pretty self explanatory.
Drunk People - An interesting twist-- I'm not drunk in this story. For once in my life.
A Tucker Emulation, It Seems - The very first story I wrote.
The Things I Remember - I somehow wake up at 2PM in my dorm, still drunk from the night before. A rough bus ride does me in.
Handcuffed, Robbed, and 6 O'clock Rush - Pretty self-explanatory. Breakfast club.
Hunter Gets High, Driving Barely Ensues - I get high, and drive. Sort of.
Lebanese: A "Nice Guy" Failure - Nine Guys, One Girl. I get the girl and ride off into the sunset(upstairs), but turn out to be a "nice guy."
A Trip To Walmart - Seriously one of the best destinations while high. Interesting, entertaining, sometimes a little creepy.
A Retelling of the First Time I Smoked
THE WEEKEND - A three day bender, with a decadent interlude of cheating debauchery. All set to the soundtrack of the very trite Garden State.
Bloody in '08 - A New Year story, complete with someone who attempts to smash a full, unopened champagne bottle over his head.
Short(or long) Stories(Fiction):
Nine-Tenths is Nothing
- Our children are here to replace us. One man attempts to slow this
process by proving he is better than them and protecting his wife from
kid perverts.
Saint Dympna - My favorite.
The Sink at Sunset - Guy has mobile home of a heart. This is life at 20.
Shells - My drug induced interpretation of the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly caused this short. Later turned into a short fiction piece (for a class) called Mise en Place or The Writer.
The Last Boat to the Disappearing - A seven vignette fiction piece about flaming zombies. As much as I wish I had written them gay, they are actually on fire.
Solipsism - A creation story. A story with Robots and Gods and space battles. A story with a twist. A story that kind of sucks, but has novelty.
Story Starter Exercise - A brief story about a friend who got kicked up and did a lot of drugs while living in the woods.
Some others:
Can Blood Cells Have Car Accidents? - Thoughts after the fire.
Janus - Girl cheats on me. Girl dies in short story Sink at Sunset.
Black and Mild - I'll miss drinking with friends on top of the roof at my old apartment. I will miss that Mediterranean market, with its natural soaps and cheap spices. I will miss all those families who called the cops on me when I played music too loud on Monday nights. Ahh
Under a Hot Chicago Sun - I didn't even know my neighbors name.
H-D-P-E Does Not Spell "Hope" - Recycling is hopeful. I am not.
It Is Only Hubris If I Fail - Childhood with a heavy dose of failure, sprinkled with Sloane Crosley.
Sick Dream D.A.N.C.E. - Dreams are fun. Dreams about partying and religious fanatics that all have the same face... strange. Sick dreams are most disturbing.
Tainted Elephant Oil Prices Dowsed in Sickly-Sweat-Stained Dreams - More sick dreams, musings on family life and relationships.
Metal Shows - Are awesome. Especially when you know the band. Even if it's at a lame venue.
Derelict Father, Are We the Cause of Our Suffering?
Shit's Run Its Course - I inherit a bike from a metal head who stole it from a crack head.
The Bear, The Bee, The Rhino - I connect with mother nature, understand things I never thought possible.
Night Luck - I have only gotten in trouble with the law when sober. Sobriety really takes the spine out of me.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part I -- I test my voice recorder during a toking session. Heavy on the dialogue.
Transcribing the Knowledge of The Smoke, Part II -- The better half of the overall recording experience. A lot of in depth high conversation.
Friend's Mom Finds Out About Hunter's Livejournal, Missiles Fly - Probably one of the more significant events in the history of my online writing.
Jesus Freaks - I lament about my hatred for street-preachers. This is a Facebook classic.
Bloody Knuckles - It wasn't a game that gave me these.
Diphenhydramine - The first time I ever tripped on a deliriant.
Bulgarians are Hardcore - Intoxicated 5 times the lethal limit, this Bulgarian gets hit by a car and sent to the hospital for minor head trauma.
Sunchips? - Do you know why they call them sunchips?
LIRICKES - The funniest rap "lirickes" you'll read all week.
The Binary Universe and How Choice Works - With diagrams and shit.
Poems - A little too sing-songy.
Soundscape - High times.
The Nature of Souls and Soulmates - Got a decent response for this one.
Condom Debacle - A young Hunter hides a partially used condom in duct-tape.
Scanner Darkly and the Universe as a Vague Set of Prepositions
Demon Play, Demon Out - Your shoes are not an extension of anything that matters to your person.
Clocked Out - A New Year - 2007. Some things get better, other things are mentioned less.
New - I miss writing.
There's this party last night that gets busted three or four doors down. Clumps of drunk movie and comic book characters, celebrity and political icons, crowd the uneven brick sidewalk. My roommate comes inside, drunk himself, telling me, "There's good stuff goin' on out here." He bends down to pick up his inside-beer. This guy has two possession charges, 50 hours of community service to do in his remaining three weeks on probation, and three tickets for reckless cycling. Who knew not having reflectors was such a big deal. Bike cocks cops.
After hearing about a scuffle between Poison Ivy and Jake(maybe?), Graham convinces me to step outside, sans-beer, to overhear the interrogation. Some hippie with long golden hair and a viking beard(real), his name is Travis, and he sits crouched on our stoop. Apparently, with his hands up, hands off, he tells us his friend hit a girl. It's not his responsibility, he's going home now. We wish him a good night.
Some Ethiopian bike cop explains the situation to Poison Ivy and Fran Drecer from the Nanny. That irritating laugh, she has it down. Anyway, Poison Ivy claims her friend got hit in the face by Hippie Travis' friend, Jake or something. Jake Or Something tells the cops, get this, Poison Ivy swung at him. Not the other way around. Now, if this were a Batman comic/movie and not a costume party, and you were stomping blades of grass or cutting up plant life, maybe. Maybe. But, really, dude? Really?
It's like when this girl I'm seeing, and we won't name names, constantly puts herself in compromising positions and gets surprised when something bad happens. Waking up naked with a dude that isn't me. All I can say is, I'm not your fucking baby sitter, so stop relying on me like a child does a parent. Also, get tested.
It's funny how people can turn it around. I remember this girl in highschool. A guy I know dates her. One day she goes over to this guy's house-- Fish, they call him. Tag football quickly turns into rape. Rape quickly turns into, "It never happened, [Boyfriend's Name]." It Never Happened quickly turns into, "It was just in the butt." So, who knows what happened but the two of them. That girl goes on to be a born again virgin.
This girl I was seeing, she will undoubtedly continue to binge drink and rely on other people to take care of her hobbled legs, open mouth, and gaping heart. At least I killed off her character in my story. Call it foresight. Call it hopeful thinking. Once trust is broken like that. . .
It is unfortunate for me, I have the same stain on my soul.
Okay, so I haven't written anything substantial here in awhile. Boo hoo. I was assigned to write a piece of fiction for a class I am taking, and honestly, I don't much like it. I use Mark Twain's philosophy of writing uncontrollable characters into wells. Except, this time, with no desire or time left to flesh out characters, I use the opposite of water.
The Sink at Sunset
Hunter Caldwell
Tonight is the end. Tonight I am drinking 151, stumbling around into girls telling them I am emotionally vacant, swigging and instructing people to keep lit cigarettes outside a two foot radius of me—I am a gas pump.
After pulling out of the one girl who actually does burn me with a cigarette, I stumble through my room looking for clothes. My brain rattles in its cage. The room is dimly lit by a draped door of light. A light rope hung on pre-existing nails from the guys before us. I spot my dad’s boxers and shamble toward them. I have them because of a mix up in laundry. Mix-ups never happen anymore. Not now. Not with my mobile home of a heart.
The girl in my bed, Tamra, sleeps heavily now. Whistling with her “sivalent ‘s,’” she tosses, undisturbed by my steps. Through the darkness, I see a faint mark on her face. Earlier, I describe her boyfriend as Voldemorte and her, Harry Potter. This cheers her up and she sleeps with me.
One line, one phrase can disarm someone. People think of themselves as separate from the equations, the numbers and variables that envelope them, but it just takes the right phrase. An abstract input for a specific output. Tamra’s red lace panties dangle from my bed-post and I begin to think highly of myself: how many girls have I disarmed with one single phrase or action?
There is this girl who always speaks of her dead brother, who laughs at all her own jokes, who strives for loud. Who irritates the shit out of me. Who, if you listen to for long enough and pretend is funny, she will like you. Oh, and a reluctant sympathy for her family’s loss—the golden key to her heart. But to get her to stop talking, there is only one key that fits. The only strategy I have for shutting her up becomes sex.
There is this girl who rides bikes everywhere. I make the mistake of letting her ride me one night. I wake up the next day, groggy and unable to see clearly. I look at my hands. Red viscous gunk covers both the palms and backs of my hands. Is this blood? Did she fucking bleed all over me? It is more applied to me and less bled on me. I notice black on my arms. I think for a moment of chain-grease. Perhaps it is make-up, and perhaps this is her way of marking me. Claiming me. This disturbs me. I scramble for my clothes and, not seeing her anywhere make my exit as quickly as possible.
Second thought mentality settles. These are not proud memories. Especially not with Nel. She always said, “I love you.” I always said, “You know how I feel.” I know Nel for six years before she gives me this check to cover my rent. I figure I deserve some help, all those nights I sat next to her crumpled body of tears. A repetition of, “Everything is plastic, the world is plastic.” The world is plastic.
I walk down my stairs, guided by my railing, my wall. I am exhausted, dehydrated from a night of excess in all faculties. My preference: burn out rather than rust out. Parched, I know I must reach liquid-refreshment. The refrigerated Thirst-Rockers, flavor blue that my roommate Tom purchases, seems a good solution. That childish corn-syrup. I swing the paned-window-door to the kitchen wide open and flip the switch. On the refrigerator door, there are two of four checks needed for rent due three days ago. Raiford’s check is absent. My (borrowed)check—absent. We can do it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
Before I reach the syrupy blue nectar, I hear someone yelling. The yelling continues for a moment and ceases. The voices come from the street next to my yard. My shitty yard, surrounded by flimsy chicken wire and filled with a series of empty paint cans, a slouching bench, a heap of branches and timber, and a broken skateboard.
I insert my index and middle fingers through a crack in the blinds and separate them. Three figures stand staggered, yelling at the window. Or the person behind it—me. I step outside, half naked with people yelling, “GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!”
I open the door and struggle with an orange alley cat. Raiford is constantly badgering us about adopting it. I sweep the cat with the side of my foot and hiss at it.
Hsss!
“Meeeow,” it pleas.
“No, goddamnit.”
I close the door behind me and look to the street.
“What’s the deal?” I ask. One of the guys is especially pissed. The other two stand and shake their heads.
“You called us fags, man.”
“No I didn’t, what are you talking about?”
“We saw your eyes!” he spits, feeling he has me nailed me with a reference to my peering through blinds. Now I take offense.
“Did you see my eyes call you a fag? Because it wasn’t me, so calm down. Why would I do that? I’m with a girl and I’m getting booze, I don’t care about you. I don’t even know you.” I feel entitled to boast half truths and show them some blunt sincerity. After all, an imposing chicken-wire fence stands between the street and my yard, protecting me from the stupid things my drunk, sex driven mind conjures. The group’s majority turns to the alleged “fag” and convinces him to leave.
I suddenly hear my name. I look around for the caller. And once again, someone loudly whispers my name. I look up and my roommate’s head pops out of the window above me. It is Raiford.
“Hey man, I called those guys fags!” flashing a Cheshire grin.
I shake my head and enter the house.
I drink the rest of the blue swill and crawl into bed next to Tamra. I look at her sleeping face, its scarred eye-brow, and think I am a decent person. Even Raiford will not hit a girl, much less break a guitar over her face. I drift with thoughts of fidelity and begin a descent into ethereal.
The corporeal behind me, affecting me, my mind turns to Raiford’s girls- Tina and Heather. Tina and Heather have never met, though they share the same man. Raiford wanders from one to the other, taking advantage of free meals, cheap love, and cigarettes. Without trying to hide his behind-the-back, under-the-table, stab-you-between-the-eyes-and-leave-you-to-bleed-all-so-I-can-prosper attitude, he manages to avoid detection. “Monogamy isn’t in my genes,” he tells me. Raiford, that prairie vole. Prairie voles are monogamous—sort of. When other vole people aren't looking, they're fucking whoever they want. Only in a social setting are those little vole fathers raising their kids with their lovely stay at home vole mothers.
For caste when eyes present.
For pleasure when eyes absent.
And here I am, doing the opposite, wanting that private life back. I remember Raiford screaming at his phone one night, telling a mutual friend that we are at some huge party. I arrogantly shake my head, lay an open palm on his shoulder and say, "Stick with me, and this is every night,” so proud of my provincial party planet. My ears pulse, pressure building. My cracked rib from another drunken night, it's there, wrapped tightly and bound with a bourbon/Budweiser cocktail. Muted from notice, like my connection to Nel. What she could say now. She could scoff at me for getting sick, for being this thin, this unhealthy.
A trip to Patient-First really nails this sentiment. Hacking up hard chunks of mucus with red streaks, throwing up bile or coagulated blood in the sink at sunset. The summer sound-- the cicada--crescendos with the dimming. I decide I should go to the doctor. His office is closed, so I must endure Patient-First. I do the insurance bullshit and step onto a scale. Beep, beep, beep. Three digital lines do 'the wave' where I expect numbers. One final beep. Electronic scales don't lie. A year ago, I weighed 185. Now, with my current lifestyle, I weigh a mere one-hundred sixty-three pounds.
The sun stains my bay windows. My eyes squint and filter the distant blaze. A jackhammer goes off somewhere in my brain and I rise.
I walk downstairs to the living room. It is a mess. “I’m sorry, dude,” a voice sags from the couch. Tom leans with his head floating somewhere between his neck and his lap, swaying. The broken LCD on his phone illuminates his crotch. He stares downward into its splintered lightning bolt. Little dots of light like stars scatter across his screen, his little galaxy. A red dot, maybe Betelgeuse, blinks in the northern hemisphere of Tom’s hand-held constellation. This informs him of a missed call.
“I tried calling you last night after you ran off with the bottle,” I tell him.
“Man, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. No it’s not,” he gargles.
Last night, Tom pummels the right side of my head with his fist, screaming,
“You can’t just go through everything like a fucking bowling ball, you cock!”
As I carry Tamra’s beach cruiser up the stoop in the front of our corner house, I plow Tom’s face with the front wheel as he sits sipping his beer. His hand drops his phone in pursuit of becoming a weapon to use against my face. This is why he is sorry.
“It’s not a big deal, it just hurts when I yawn. Or move my head too fast. Or when I cough, or speak too loudly. I guess it’s kind of a big deal.”
“I just had a really bad week, a lot of things happened at work to piss me off the other day. My brother got suspended from high school. Those things aren’t your fault. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I breathe. “You didn’t hit my face. My beautiful face.”
He laughs and stands, saunters over, and hugs me.
All things broken, mend. Though shaky for a few hours last night, our friendship remains, not ruined by tire treads or slight abrasions. It stands above the matted living room carpet and piles of cheap beer. It stands above the broken glass and the cardboard boxes in the corner from when we moved in and shattered a lamp. The corner of the room that promises to, even after four months of mess, one day become a dining room. The compacted, inch-thick dog hair from previous owners sticks in the cracks against the walls. This wasted house still stands, undivided. Undestroyed.
“Do you smell that?” I ask Tom, looking over my shoulder to the front door. I see droves of people pass through grimy windows, drawn by magnificent force. I head to the door and exit. I pass an impassioned phone-bound neighbor down the brick stoop. Several cop cars swerve down the street to my left, squealing. I walk, staged in front of several dozen, shirtless. Though a player in the act, I am no main attraction. Two groups of younger adults pass without notice or mention of my no shoes, no shirt policy.
Cinders and ruin swim through the air. I fall in line with everyone else, bunched and huddled, seeking excitement. Seeking something beyond the monitor, the speaker, and the bottle.
My pilgrimage ends halfway down the block. Police swarm. Little spiders spinning yellow silk. “Caution,” they warn, is advised in this area. Beyond the heap of timber and puddles of shattered glass, the alley leads to an abandoned warehouse. Where all eyes lie, an inferno lords over the towering trees. The fucking warehouse is on fire three houses from mine.
“EVERYONE GET BACK,” a cop yelp-yelp-yelp, yelp, yelps. His hands, open and forward, grasp at an invisible wall which hobbles us backward. Backward against brick, the encroaching flame in front of us.
Minutes pass and my house is inaccessible, taped off by the yellow ward. I hop the single-beamed “fence” and bolt inside. I need clothes if I am about to lose everything else.
In a rush, I yell and scream for everyone to get out, to leave, to hustle. To hurry up and make their peace. Abandon all objects and vain pursuits of material happiness. Save yourselves! A quaking belch rocks the house. I hear cries of desperation from shattered windows. A gas line has erupted. I grab a shirt and sandals from the living room floor. These sandals I once lost in the river. Somehow they wash up on shore and I find them.
I run outside and a cop yells at me. My roommates scream my name. I am escorted over the yellow line like a wrestler out of a ring.
“Is everyone out of the building,” a cop inquires.
Yes, I say, everyone is out. Everything that matters is right here.
Hours later, our house remains skeletal. Wooden doors to ash, glass windows to solid goo. The news interviews Tom and edits the profanity. The news speculates. It is arson they say. Maybe. It was a group of teenagers, drunk and wily. Maybe. We call our friends, establishing new places to stay. I call Nel, the only person I can rely on. She lets me stay at her apartment the first night. This first night away from my new home I get a call from Raiford.
“Dude,” he stops before I say hello. “Dude, the cops just called. They found a body in our apartment.”
They find Tamra’s charred corpse trapped underneath roof beams. And I am responsible. No annoying dead brother, viscous red gunk on my hands, no debt. No reason to deserve this. I am a Bacardi 151 gas pump. Tom’s bowling ball. Tamra is dead, and, I, responsible. An object in my bed, a toy for my penis. Yesterday, nothing more. Yesterday’s today, nothing more. Today’s now, I tremble.
“Are you there?”
No.
“Hello? Dude, did you hear me? You left her behind. The girl in your bed. The cops said you’re not in trouble for forgetting her. They want to know why she had contusions, though. They need to talk with you.”
And I have not remembered a single one of them, for romantic or logical reasons, since I lost my battle against the world of plastic.
She stands in the kitchen, washing dishes. Her back, wide from years of besting swimming peers. She has a boyfriend, reserves her emotions. I have no one and spill.
“Nel,” I whimper. The phone slides from my hand and crashes to the floor. It bounces, lays down. An uneasy voice trails to the floor with the phone. Nel turns her head and her careful hands halt, suds sliding off of flesh. Accumulating. Amassing in metal. Her frame faces me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, a concern in her voice, like a mother addressing a wounded offspring. My scraped elbows and knees, over the years, I think she realizes, are nothing more than cries for something I miss. Not now, with the merciless, irreverent moon, spinning madly on in the panes behind her. Not now.
“I love you.” I plead, longing for reciprocation. My last sensible sniffle of the night.
“You know how I feel.”
Some douchebag in a polo shirt gets out of his car while I'm on my roof with Leah and Kabelo. I squint, saying, "I wish I had better vision. This light," I raise my hand to cover the light, "that distance," I watch the dude stumble up to the curb. He sees me basically heiling, and turns away.
An employee from the Mediterranean Market is handing out menus on my side of the street. It is ten o'clock at night, and a steady procession of cars glide over the faux-cobblestone. I love Saturday.
The employee draws our attention. He is very dark, with a middle-eastern fro, and he is wearing an apron. Like a line-cook, dishwasher, or grocery clerk. I ask him what's up. He says hold on, and kneels with his stack of menus, folding one. What's that for? I ask him, wondering where he's coming from. I think I know, and he just says wait, you'll see. He crafts a paper airplane and tosses it. It loops back around and hits the ground. Several times. I talk to him for awhile and tell him the menu is in my head, I've been there enough times. His name is Mo, and he stocks things.
Kabelo shows me a book on zen and I think maybe I'll get my tao book back from Jordan. So I call him. This is what I write on his facebook wall the following day: So, I called you last night and some dude answered the phone angrily. I asked who he was and, being stoned and drunk, I immediately forgot his name. He then proceeds to badger me, "WHO ARE YOU, WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH JORDAN?" Uh, Hunter, my name's Hunter, and I'm trying to get a book back from him. "WELL YOU CALLED AT THE WRONG FUUUUUCKING TIME." Click. Anyway, you done reading Watercourse Way? Hope you're not dead.
Maybe he and his boyfriend were having a tiff. Boyfriends can be so jealous and mean. I know I was.
I tell them what happened. What the fuck. We sit outside, music blasting through every brick, taking us elsewhere. Kabelo is almost entirely gone. Leah has finished only half of her 40. Kabelo says, stonedly(stOn-ED-lee), "So. . . jaazzz."
I tell him we started the night a little late for this concert in Byrd Park. That was hours ago. But there's Jake's party. The seventh installment of showing shit-- Shitshow VII. And the rest is just another one of those nights where the details cannot exist.
My clearest memory is speaking with Windy and Cynthia, two Chinese girls, up against brick. I was teaching one of them to say "Fuck you" more clearly, and they were teaching me a lot of things that I don't remember. I kept saying Shi shi ni, which is thank you. They kept going back and forth about a lot of things I'm sure I thought I knew about at the time. It's strange to understand so little, to be so provincial, and Cynthia had only been here six months. I understood her perfectly.
Inside, Leah is harassed multiple times for looking familiar.
"Hey, do I know you..."
". . . because you look really familiar."
"Your name is Leah? I've only known one other Leah. I LOVE THAT NAME."
"Are you Mexican?" This is a good one, considering she is Chinese and Russian. Which, when combined, looks totally Mexican.
