One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

It was a strange thing to realize my solitude. I was confronted with it as if hit by a wave. Decades of hours and minutes ticked around in my head and days gone by re-lived themselves through a window I was looking into. There I was, a man in a black coat saved by his ability to write, yet fully aware of the nascent attitudes of the multitudes who refuse to read. I looked at my face reflecting in the window pane and noticed lines on my ears and hairs on my forehead that I had never recalled knowing. It was ironic to be looking at me when I was someone I had never known. Trepidation creeped up my spine like a lingering waiter and I suppressed two tears that could not wait to come pouring out. I left a time past alone in the window and went to the bathroom which is my favorite place to think. I watched grease form around my tub as if it was trying to tell me something and noticed a horrible ring around the toilet that could only be the result of months of neglect. A beetle made its way and I swore it was Franz Kafka reincarnated in my bathroom sink. I refused to let him live out his rotten life again so I turned the water on and watched the beetle fall away into the void of a bathroom drain.

All is well that ends well is what I often hear expressed behind closed doors and in graveyards where spirits refuse to say anything else. In my bathroom the sounds are rather extinct but as my solitude becomes more material I am willing to listen to the voices which are not there. Now you may think that this is the brink of madness, but I refuse to let a wrongful judgment come between the reader and myself. It is only the realizations of a man well aware of the nature of his malformed appendages that is willing to think of things in this way. Alone, in a bathroom a man is capable of such great feats that even the greatest of Greek gods grow nervous. I have a tendency to come up with my most profound notions while sitting on the pot, but my own solitary reality was never one of them. I was all too forlorn to come up with anything unique so I brushed my teeth, sorted out my hair in the muddied mirror and pretended that I was a holly man who was sound asleep.

In the kitchen I made tea and dealt with the cards that had been given to me. It was not a bad hand but I was disinterested in playing the game. My birds cried for air and so I set aside the card game and released my birds into the darkness of mid-day. Old faithfuls flying free with yellow stripes and furlong sweaters reminded me of my youth- a time when I could run far without fear. Now I sweat at the slightest notion of a jog and wonder away hours exhausted by the thought of my own solitude. There is air to breath but I am to busy worrying about a time when I will no longer have to worry about breathing. My birds elucidate on various themes as they wonder around my house afraid of a flight which has denied them in the form of a cage. One bird imparticular refuses to fly to far and the other does not mind the low ceiling that averts its flight. I suppose all is well that ends well so I put them back into their cage and remove myself to my writing desk.

On my writing desk are a few pens that refuse to speak and a pile of ideas that have not been written. My heart speaks of times that may never come if these ideas are not given ink, but for some reason my laziness refuse a potential that knows not what to do. It is an errant idea but one that I fool with now and then, if anything to keep my mind entertained behind the sheets which are dirty and cold. A mind is like a container in which dreams float. There are boats made out of tissue that carry these dreams around in the bloodstream. Sometimes these dreams touch the heart but most of the time they remain lodged in the head. All of my dreams have collected in my heart and after too many years of solitude, I am finally starting to realize that it is time for me to take this stack of ideas and mold them into form. It may take years, hundreds of years, but it may be that when we no longer know what to do, that we have come to our real work.

The Man Who Loved Stealing.

I love stealing. It almost surpasses my love for food. For a time, while recovering from my theft addiction I would have to keep my hands pasted into my pant or jacket pockets. The urge would overcome me like a desire for sex- and for the longest time there was little I could do to stop the crime. You see, I am a man who was born with strong urges. When I was a child my urges caused me to stay stuck in fits of crying because all I wanted to do was run when I could only crawl. As I grew into a young adult my strong urges forced me into a negative consequence lifestyle filled with plenty of furious nights and sore knuckles. My urges caused me to contemplate murder, suicide and a life filled with plots of revenge. But as I became a young adult I learned how to delineate between urges that worked for me and those that did not. Stealing, lying and sex where all urges that I felt I was best suited to exercise. I was good at these things and since I was helpless against the power of my urges why not make these urges work for me? And thus began my apprenticeship in a life of theft.

I started as a petty thief. Tapes, records, stickers, hair gel, candy bars- items that were simple enough to stick under my pocket. I realized that I had an innate talent for stealing when years passed without getting caught. In college I started a concession stand in my dorm room made up of all stolen items. I was infamous as the man with the connection. I had more money than I had ever had and women were throwing themselves at me for free tampons and a college time supply of make-up. Then I was caught while stealing sunglasses and CD’s from Payless Market. The security guard who apprehended me at the door startled me so much that I punched him in the eye and caused him to fall backwards into a flower stand. I was wrestled to the ground by two other security guards who swore that they would kill me if we were not in public. Only a night was spent in a cell which was less painful than the wrath of my parents who picked me up the following day. I returned to my college with empty pockets and a reputation as a thief- but beauty of youth is its forgiving quality. As soon as the student body learned about my thieving ways- I was receiving advanced request for various items that they wanted me to steal. In no time I was back in business.

After college I stole my way into various jobs by lying about my qualifications and continued to attract women by the dangerous lifestyle that I was living. I found that women were attracted by my stealing ways, lured by the fantasy of a thief dressed like a knight. I took a job working as a youth counselor for inner city kids who had grown up in poverty. When we would venture out on various field trips together I remember teaching them how to steal from stores and they showed me how to steal cars, motorcycles, and unlock a front door without a house key. We served as each others accomplices and mentors and engaged in some crimes that would make even the most hardened moralist fall to their feet with laughter.

But as I turned thirty the laughter turned into something else. I was starting to develop certain health complications due to a mind state that was continually depressed. I was stealing from various stores pathologically- but the irony was that what I had once loved so much had turned into an act that filled me with shame. There was a voice deep within me that kept begging me to cease my stealing ways, to resist the urge because I was growing into a man who was not only breaking the law on a daily basis but compromising his own self esteem for the sake of a commodity. I was loosing faith in myself. Because I was able to steal most things that ordinary people would have to work to purchase, I did not have to work much nor did I have to think about working. My life became a still life portrait of a man in a long black coat with little aspirations and a dying hope.

I was the best thief in town. No matter what I stole- getting caught was impossible. I could walk out of a department store with clothes still on a hanger and a new jacket on and never be suspected. I had learned over time how to turn stealing into a magic trick which the audience never figured out. I stole large plants from garden stores, a leather chair from a furniture store and the lab top I am writing upon from a major distributor. For the longest time I rationalized my crimes by telling myself that these stores and distributors where ripping off the public by tripling the cost that they paid for the product. If you bought the product honestly from them, well they were ripping you off. But if you stole the product from them than you could rip them off. It only seemed fair that in a dog eats dog world that the best man win. For the longest time I prevailed with this rational but then this unexpected scepter crawled into my soul. The ghosts of guilt and shame began to haunt me with a vengeance. The more I stole the guiltier I felt. I was having chest pains and headaches whenever I would go into a store to steal. Then I started to develop panic attacks. I still refused to accept that these physical symptoms were the result of my life as a thief. Habits die hard. How could I give up doing something that I was so good at…..I had found that one thing that I could do better than everyone else, and now I was supposed to believe that I had to give it up?

It took years of struggle and pain to get to a point to that I could acknowledge that stealing was the source of my pain. Prior to getting married I promised my wife that I would retire from a life of shop-lifting and work towards buying the things I wanted to own. I retired my long black coat to a dumpster behind our house and settled in for a long winter of discontent. I salivated and shook when I was in markets. The urge to steal was stronger than my bodies ability to handle. At times I would turn pale from lack of blood flow and tell my wife that I would wait for her in the car (I promised my wife that I would not go into a market or department store without her for the first six months of my withdraw). Then I stopped going out all together and became a recluse who refused to partake in the ways of the world. It has been a few years since I have stolen a single item. I leave my home with a more comfortable feeling that I will resist the urge to steal something when I really feel like I want it. I have started practicing Buddhism which has removed my attachment to things and made me happier with less. I see that everything is impermanent, so why suffer over wanting things that will turn into trash or dust and rust? Why not just live in the tranquility of the now, content with all I have- and wrestle my urges to the ground when they arise with the loving embrace of a man who refuses to steal.

The Liar.

I am a 37 year old prolific liar. Not quite compulsive but certainly prolific. If you ask me something about myself chances are that I will embellish the truth to make myself feel more comfortable. I lie about almost anything pertaining to myself and I am constantly thinking about how to avoid telling the truth about who I really am. I am a disappointment to myself and the lie offers me liberation. This is an epidemic that started as soon as I came out from the womb because I descended from a long lineage of liars. My great grandfathers, grandfathers, father and mother- all liars. I am not trying to make any excuses for my behavior but what I will say is that from a very young age I learned an easy way to cover up feelings of inadequacy. I watched my parents do it all the time and now as a man I have a tendency to repeat these same behaviors- a bit to often.

In high school I read Oscar Wilde who wrote something that came to define my life as a liar. “The liar is one who makes life a little bit more interesting for all of those living within the banality of truth.” I saw how this worked when someone asked me about myself and I said I played professional tennis or I was studying at Princeton rather than the truth which was- I was spending my days smoking weed, attending a junior college, living in fear of death and suffering from a dark depression and a sexual addiction. The lie certainly provided me with a brief moment in time where I felt important, accomplished, liberated from my suffering- less inadequate. Being a liar is trade off, you give yourself up for the lie. What you are left with is a feeling of inadequacy that has grown far beyond what you began with.

I lie about myself at every available opportunity. I would tell people that I was short if it was not so obvious that I was tall. I would tell people that I was David Bowie or Samuel Beckett if it was not so obvious that I am not. I lie when I look into the mirror and I lie when I fall asleep at night. Lying has become a habitual way of thinking, from which I am unable to break free. When my mother, father, sister and I get together for dinner I feel like I am at a convention of liars- all of us weaving this tale about ourselves which deep down evades the truth. We keep one another functional in our rolls as liars because we believe what one another says. At least we pretend to. We enable one another to lie because we would be horrified with who that person really was if the truth got out.

I returned home from a job interview today in which I must of told over twenty lies. I told a panel of people interviewing me that I had attended Stanford, taught at the college level, published many novels, achieved a Ph.D in Physics and attended medical school. I felt special, accomplished and a lot more interesting than what the truth would have revealed. My wife was in the kitchen making a salad and I instantly said to her, “I am a prolific liar.” She said “I know, but what makes you feel this way.” I told her what I had done at the interview and the various lies I had told through out the year. “You told them that!” she kept saying in response to my confession. I quoted Oscar Wilde several times but she could care less about him. What she cared about was my reputation which she felt was in great jeopardy; “You have become the town liar,” she said with a giggle. She also cared about how I thought about myself and when she asked me how it makes me feel when I lie I said, “like a looser and a failure.” “Yes,” she replied,”and you end up living in fear that people will find out the truth.”

It was true. I have lived the great majority of my life in a state of fear and worry. I had never understood the root cause of this constant feeling of impending doom until today. The fear of being discovered and humiliated by my peers- hangs around my head like a halo. I have become a terrified man, a convict on the run living in a state of morbid anxiety. So, what am I to do? This is a question that I am incapable of answering because I am uncertain if it will be the truth. I am not even certain that I know what truth is. I have tasted it for brief moments- but the taste quickly turns stale. My life is like a knot all wound up in little lies. No one knows who I am but everyone thinks I am someone else other than who I am (but who am I?). There is a false perception that clouds the mind whenever you will think of me. I am a story, a fiction….a novel wrapped up in flesh and bones.

Full Catastrophe Living.

All my concern over sex, hookers, guilt, shame, money, health, spirituality, the environment and my car has taken its toll on my mental health. I was once a motivated young man with grand aspirations of fame and fortune. Now I sit at home, day after day with an empty bank account and an obsession for transgressive bliss. I stare at pictures of naked lusty women on my computer as if they could offer me a chance at salvation, but I know full well that I am escaping from the reality of “the job.”

I am not a big fan of “the job.” The only work that I really like to do is paint, write, read, meditate, sleep and look at the Craig’s List Erotic adds. Working to me is a labor which strips me of the time that I could spend doing the things I love and puts me into contact with people that I would normally never want to talk with. Work as a violation of the life I am trying to live. But rent is due in a few days, I have skipped many meals due to lack of funds and my wife is getting fed up with my habitual claim “that I have no money.” “Well you need to get a job,” she always replies. “I really do not want to get a job,” I retort. “What, are you just going to stay at home all day writing your ridiculous blog and expect that checks are going to show up in the mail?” she replies straightening her back bone like she is preparing for battle. I am wounded by her assault on my blog which I spend many hours preparing for distant readers I will never know. “The blog is valuable work, don’t pick on the blog. Pick on me and the fact that I do not want to Teach High school anymore, nor do I want to wait tables. There is nothing else that I am qualified to do and I have no ambition to do much at all,” I sob at her. “Well, this full catastrophe living has got to end. We have rent due in a few days and we need money for the bills. I can’t afford it all and we are going to be out in the streets if you do not get a job!!”

I could not disagree. I needed to find work. I had been applying to various jobs every day online but no one was biting the lines that I sent out. Each day I look at my email hoping that there will be a response but there never is. Just empty space. Sometimes I spend hours writing back to employers who have not taken a moment to respond to me. I write that it is bad karma not to respond to an email but that I understood because it was probably only a reflection of the way in which they treated themselves- with no respect. Sometimes I will get a screw you back or a what would you know about karma, you are out of a job? But every day I put one foot in front of the other and try to maintain faith that every thing will turn out well. It is important to be centered when you are engaged in full catastrophe living.

“You need to get up, take your resume and go around to various restaurants and hand it out. You can not spend the majority of your day writing away on your blog. I will not allow it.” This is how I awoke this morning, my wife standing over me with a stack of unpaid bills in her hand. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest as I made my way out of bed and asked her to heat me up some water for tea. In my office there was a stack of freshly printed up resumes on my desk, with a note “I have complete faith in your ability to find a job.” I thought that after I published my first book of short stories, that the writing life had belonged to me. No longer would there be worries about work and economy. I would be able to write for a living and not have to clear another table or teach a freshman how to read. I was free and I was also wrong. The moment I thought the writing life had begun was the moment that full catastrophe living kicked into first gear.

I dressed in a nice black suit, put gel into my hair and headed out into the rain with a stack of resumes wrapped in plastic under my arm. I went around to three or four restaurants all of which took my resume with a quick glance and sometimes a few questions. One lady asked me what I like about working in a restaurant and all I could do was smile and wish her a good day, as I made my way out the exit. I handed resumes off to a woman at a real estate office, a manager at a record store, the post office and a doctor’s office. Any place where money could be made. When I returned home that day my wife had opened my unemployment check which had come in the mail and said to me, “you are lucky again.” There was enough to cover the rent and bills and a few hundred bucks left over to feed my personal fancies. The rain was coming down, it was dark outside and I retired to my office to start writing this post. As I turned on the computer my wife came up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “what do you want for dinner, it’s my treat.” I looked up at her and said “whatever you would like.” I had not eaten all day and any food sounded nurturing. I gave her a kiss and as I looked at her I said, “see, full catastrophe living isn’t so bad after all.” She made no reply.

The Sex Life Of A Man Without One #13

This morning I awoke with an erection that seemed like it was trying to break free from my body. It climbed higher than I had ever remembered and an uncomfortable pressure caused it to thump back and forth. I felt angered by my inability to control my sexual impulses while asleep. “There is no respite for me!!” I muttered out loud and my wife who was snoring besides said “shhhhhh.” I got out of bed, frustrated by my morning erection which wanted release. It was only 8:20 a.m and I told it that it was much too early for masturbation. While preparing tea I felt a warm vibration pulsating at the tip of my cock (kind of like a knock at the door), but as soon as the water had come to a boil, my erection had gone back to sleep.

There are no crows or cackling birds where I live. Just a few noisy raccoons and squirrels and the neighborhood lost dog who barks at every passing whim. I walked into to my studio which was cold enough to turn my breath into small pieces of ice. With steaming hot tea in my hands I turned on my computer and went directly to my email. What I found caused my erection to flurish with such rapidity that I had no choice but to cum in the bathroom sink.

Scents and images of sex seem to be following me around like a cold I am incapable of getting rid of. Just yesterday a hooker in a tight white skirt tried to break her way into my car while I was waiting at a red light. I could hear her yelling at me “I know you, I know you,” but I had never seen her before in my life. Finding this picture pasted in my email reminded me of just how susceptible I am to the pulls of sex. Beneath the picture the prostitute wrote:

I am looking for a gentlemen interested in a golden shower. Someone who enjoys golden showers just as much as I enjoy giving them. I am a cute petite 18 year old girl of Dutch and Italian mix. I am very friendly and ready to hang out … so give me a call

CALL: 6.5.0.Nine.2.1.7.Six.0ne.Three

!!! CALL FOR MORE PIC !!!

~ A .. N .. H ~

The thought of a golden shower and the picture that I was staring at stimulated such arousal in my sensitive loins that I had no choice but to masturbate (as much as I have been trying not to as of late). I have never experienced the sexual act of watching an attractive woman pee on me, and I spent the rest of my day wondering what this would be like. I tried to distract myself with various honest undertakings, such as meditation and a long walk but by mid noon my curiosity had overtaken me. I dialed the phone number that was posted in my email despite the fact that I was still without money in the bank.

“Hello,” she said in what sounded like a Nordic accent.

“I am wondering about your golden shower,” I asked while looking at her picture on my computer screen.

“Yes, and…” she replied.

“Well, I am wondering how you do it?” I asked hearing a slight shake in my voice which suggested that I might be lacking in confidence.

“Are you the police,” she asked me in a tone that almost sounded threatening.

“I am not,” I said- at which point I tried to repress my excitement so that I would not scare her away.

“Well, I pee on any place you like,” she said in a way that confirmed to me that she was a foreigner.

“Are you naked when you pee,” I asked.

“I am all nude,” she replied with a slight giggle.

“Where are you from,” I asked.

“I am from Norway,” she said. I was so stimulated at this point that my erection was determined to make its way out from my pants.

“Are you American?” she asked.

“I am,”I replied.

“And would you like a golden shower?”

I could feel my heart beating rapidly beneath my t-shirt. I knew that if I asked her how much I would have an orgasm in my pants. I did not want to cum twice in one day (if a man over thirty cums to much he is giving up his vital essence which lowers his immunity and causes him to become more susceptible to all kinds of diseases). So I kindly told her that I would think about it and call her back. “Pee pee,” I thought I heard her say before she hung up the phone.

I quickly deleted her picture from my computer screen and ran into the kitchen to get a glass of water. My wife was doing the dishes and she asked me if I was all right. “Fine, just fine,” I said with a crinkle of sweat coming down from my forehead. I tried to hide my erection by standing sideways (as I get older I find that it takes longer for my erections to dissipate). “I am fine honey, just fine,” I assured her and walked outside into the cold afternoon to get some fresh air. I felt shame rise up in my chest with the thought of my inability to tell my wife what was going on with me. I wanted to tell her that “because we have not had sex in over two years I am becoming obsessed with prostitutes.” Of course the love that I had for her and the fear of loosing her love prevented me from being straight.

For the rest of the day and up until now I have been unable to get the visual image of experiencing a golden shower from the Norwegian prostitute off of my mind. My erection comes and goes with each thought of her naked body opening her legs like she is ready to “pee pee”, but at the moment I feel freed from the spell her picture cast over me. It is almost time for bed and I am determined to be free from thoughts of sex for the next ten hours (estimated sleeping time). Tomorrow I will stay away from my email and spend the day in silent meditation.

“Pee Pee.”

Why I Write?

I gave a reading of a short story I wrote at a small bookstore not far from my home. In a crowd of not more than ten, a young woman raised her hand and asked me why I write. I was stretched to find an answer that aligned itself with truth. I was silent (which was a truer statement than my reply) and said “because it is something that I feel like I have to do.” After the reading I came home with a feeling of uncertainty about my relationship with writing. I sat in my kitchen, drank a glass of red wine and pondered the question, “why do I write?” I took out a note pad and tried to write an answer down but was incapable of bringing forth any letters. I poured myself another glass of wine, and with a feeling of deep defeat I decided to call it a night.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by what sounded like coins being dropped in my bathroom sink. Ever since I was a child I have been afraid of strange sounds in the middle of the night but I put together the courage to go ahead and investigate. My mouth felt dry from dehydration and my eyes were having difficulty adapting to the dark. When I walked into the bathroom I was shocked by what I saw as soon as I turned on the light. I noticed what looked like individual letters jumping around in my bathroom sink. There was a Z and an M hobbling around on my faucet and a G, C and an L spinning around in the base of the terracotta sink. I rubbed my eyes and patted my cheeks to make sure I was not stuck in a dream. I took a deep breath and was certain that I was awake. I walked closer to the sink and looked down upon the words which danced around like some sort of vibration was possessing them.

I then noticed on my toothbrush a W and R. All over the floor were smaller a,e,i,o, and u hobbling around like they had returned from a meal in which they had eaten too much. I was perplexed, dumbfounded by this strange invasion of letters. I heard strange pattering sounds in my bathtub and of course I found more letters slithering around on the tub floor. I lifted up an H and a T and placed them in the palm of my hand. They felt warm to the touch and caused me no fear. I then picked up the W and the R and they quickly ran up my arm and into my hair. I repeated this with the vowels and before I knew it I was covered in words. I fell onto the floor laughing like a mad man…tickled by W and the Vowels which got stuck under my arm pits and in my groin. While rolling on the bathroom floor more letters climbed onto my body. They made their way into my ears and between my fingers. I managed to stand back up on my own two feet even though I was dizzy with laughter. My scalp felt like it was being massaged and my groin felt aroused. In the bathroom mirror I noticed a reflection of myself. “I am covered in the alphabet!!” I shouted out loud with a roaring laugh. They moved all around me like a pack of wild ants. I made my way over towards my bed delighted by the letters which had seduced me without the slightest hint of ill-will or malevolent intention. I laid out on my bed and watched the letters run all upon me. I saw R run around with T and Z jump off of my nose and a,e,i,o and u scramble around on my arm. I was so pleased to be lying on my bed playing with these letters like a child lost in his imagination- that I suddenly realized why exactly it is that I write.

Sole Food.

I never knew what sole food tasted like until I felt the heel of her foot in my mouth. It was an accident that I found myself lying supine and naked upon the ground. She asked me if I wanted to “know enlightenment, straight up no chaser”, and I wanted to learn. “Directly abide by my words and you will realize that you do not exist, you never will exist and you never did exist.” “Is this a philosophy?” I asked her. “It is the truth,” she said as she took off her pantyhose. I was hesitant. I could not stop conceptualizing the scene before me. I knew we were separate identities but she wanted to make us one by sticking her foot in my mouth. This is how she found her identity, she told me- “by sticking my foot in the mouths of men.” With an almost unimaginatively subtle push I found myself opening my mouth and watching the sole of her foot make its way over my nose. My consciousness felt threatened but I held back the fear that wanted to get up and run. I focused on my breath and let her foot wonder where it will. “All sense of I is an illusion, a fabrication….and my foot is an invitation for you to find this truth out for yourself. You have no self until your mind inserts a self into it.” “I am uncomfortable,” I hesitantly spoke. “It is only a biological imperative that gives rise to your sense of discomfort, just focus on the sole of my foot and think of it as food,” she said with the calming tone of a spiritual teacher. She stuck the sole of her foot into my mouth and told me “now take your ego which is a defense against the realization of no I, or death- and lick the sole of my foot while keeping your attention away from your sense of I that may feel humiliated…..all that will be left is that which is.” With hesitation I stuck out my dry tongue and slowly began to lick what she called her “sole food.” “Lick, Lick and stop trying to conceptualizer the direct experience, just lick and soon you will be enlightened.” I licked and licked consuming myself with the sole of her foot for at least an hour and when I was done the conceptual formation of who I was- was gone. There was only an unconceptualized state in which my body felt full from consuming too much sole food.

The Zipper Maker, Part 1

My wife was called in to work so I found myself at a bar drinking my fourth glass of red wine. The night had been filled with rain and coming in from the cold, damp weather felt rejuvenating. My bones rattled and the only place in town than I could think of, which would harbor some warmth, was the local bar. The bartender and I talked of the futility of politics and the ominous events that had taken place in town the past month. He told me of his home which was without heat and causing his wife to slowly loose her mind because of the fragility of her flesh. “For my wife, the cold is like an ill omen,” he told me. We talked of hospitals and Spanish red wine. When I had finished my fourth glass of red wine I felt all the tensions and distresses which hung around in my body like a nest, slip away into some unknown region where they had gone numb. I knew that this feeling of relief was temporary, but some feelings are worth the repercussions.

I wanted to walk. To fully enjoy this wine induced state where I was liberated from anxiety. The rain had transmutated into a slight drizzle and I was willing to become damp in exchange for a brief walk. I smoked a cigarette and harbored no resentments towards the world. I watched my feet follow one another and noticed that my body was traveling in time without the slightest effort from my mind. When I reached a particular point, I decided to have a seat upon a bench and watch the night sky darkened by luminous rain clouds. I felt like muttering a prayer but instead smoked my cigarette until it turned red. I was not alone, nor was I lonely. Rather I was a man fully occupying the space of his body and mind with a contentment so warm that I could hardly feel the cold.

“May I sit by you,” an older gaunt looking man said to me with a cigarette hanging from his lips. “It is not often you meet a fellow smoker in the rain,” he said sitting down besides me before I could echo a response. “My name is Andre,” he said sticking out his languorous looking fingers and waiting for my eyes to meet his. “Randall,” I said with a disposition that was friendly enough. I noticed that Andre was impeccably dressed in a black suit and fine patented leather black shoes. His hair was parted to the side and he smelled like a time when kings were doused with cloves, cardamom and cumin. “My intuition tells me that it will be raining for some time,” he said with what sounded like a Romanian accent-”I believe it will rain until we realize all the ways that we have forgotten to live.” I thought this was a rather ornate statement considering the ordinariness of our situation- two men sitting upon a bench on a rainy night watching the world pass by.

“You are being rather laconic, are you not?” I was uncertain as to what laconic meant, but I turned to him and flashed a smile. Even though I was feeling as if my space had been invaded, I was feeling well enough to leave my negativity alone. “So tell me Randall, what is it that you do with your life?”

If you wanted to ask me one question that would start me talking, it is this. I love talking about myself once I am given the permission to open up. At times I almost feel as if I am the most fascinating subject that there is and my only concern is that the listener is not as entertained by my life as I am. Being that I had four glasses of red wine in my blood I was more than willing to talk, but before I could respond to the question, Andre began to talk about him self.

“I am a Zipper Maker. I construct Zippers for purse, jackets and pants. People all around the world wear my zippers which keep their private things safe. I have been making Zippers for as long as I can remember. Since I was probably your age. I was working as a Waiter in a restaurant and I was desperate to find some way to make a living which I enjoyed. My mind kept coming up empty with ideas and I drank more wine to keep myself from falling into the depths of despair. Then one evening I was introduced to a man who wanted to give me a job at his zipper factory. At first I was hesitant, resistant to change- but then when I heard that a Zipper Maker could change the world, I was inspired to learn the craft. I was taken under this mans wing for thirty days and shown all the different ways to construct a zipper. The ubline contort which is the zipper used for purses, the erexile divide which is the zipper for jeans, and the koobla mobile which is the zipper for jackets. I fell in love with the art form and have been doing it ever since.”

I had never heard of a Zipper Maker before. “I am not boring you with my autobiography, am I?” he asked me with a solemn look in his eye. “Not at all I replied.” “Making zippers is a meditation, an art form that has not only given me life but also improved the world,” he said with a look of pride upon his face. I was struck by the confidence with which he spoke about a craft that I had always considered insignificant. “Would you like to join me for a glass of wine?” he said putting leather gloves upon his hands. My wife would not be home from work for a few hours and the last thing that I felt like doing was being alone with myself in our cold home. “Sounds wonderful. I know just the right place,” I said. “Good,” the Zipper Maker replied rising to his feet lighting another cigarette. We began walking towards the bar like two bodies pulled together by the forces of gravity. There was a warmth that I felt walking besides him. The kind of warmth that one gets from a feeling of familiarity. “So tell me Randall,” the Zipper Maker said, “what is that you do with your life?”

The Big Sleeper.

I have something deeply intimate to share with you. It is not necessarily information that will change your life in any way, shape or form- but I believe it to be important enough to share with the world. I am not necessarily proud of this confession, nor am I ashamed. It is simply a fact of my life that has become real enough to integrate itself into my way of seeing the world. My confession is simple: I am a big sleeper. No knew news to anyone who may know me. I live for sleep. I not only live for sleep, I work and strive for sleep. I am always traveling towards sleep. I am asleep a good part of the day and night. Sleep has become the only activity which makes much sense to me. All else is vanity.

I sleep on average of twelve hours a night and nap two or three hours during the day. There is not a person whom I am close with who does not hound me about the amount of time that I spend asleep. I will have plenty of time to sleep when dead or I am wasting the best and most productive years of my life- they pontificate at me. I listen with an open heart and sympathize. They are unable to understand the joys of elongated periods of sleep. I have never possessed a strong motivation to become one of great stature or to do things with my life that would move mountains. I prefer the slow contemplative life that seeks to absolve itself through reflective activities that negate the importance of action. I spend hours sitting in chairs trying to understand the body that I am sitting in. I focus my gaze on a sky that opens up eternity and I try to weigh my significance against this wide open space. I talk about the futility of action and follow the sun as it makes its course through the day. I often wonder if I am wrong in my conclusions but care not confuse myself more about what may be the correct answer. I eat little and dream about a time when I will live closer to nature and hear less human sounds. I wait patiently for the sun to set so that I can start preparing for my nights sleep.

When I am asleep my mind is at peace. I become a Yogi who is able to stop thought and exist clearly outside of time. My mind becomes so focused that there is no focus at all- I become a thinker without thoughts, a dreamer without dreams. Nothing interferes with the quality of my sleep other than a few noisy footsteps echoing forth from my neighbors upstairs abode. There is no worry coursing its way through my arteries, no fear trying to underestimate the quality of my experience. I am what some Guru’s or spiritual teachers may refer to as existing in a place of bliss, pure awareness of the nothingness of being. Sleep is my meditation, yoga and ashram. It is my temple and retreat center. It is my state of harmony and act of devotion. In sleep I am a fully enlightened being. It is only when I awake that I become the fool.

Many of you may feel as if I am sleeping my life away. I respect this claim but would retort by asking, are we not sleeping our life away anyways? Is life not one big dream? Do you not notice how quickly the future mutates its way into the past? We are all asleep in one form or another even while awake. There is no rhyme or reason to the paths we choose to roam while sleeping or living upon this earth. There is only time and the choices that we make about how we will spend this time. Some philosophers choose to spend their life sitting in a bathtub with books and a bottle of booze. Some choose to live in burrows beneath the ground. I choose to wrap my self up in the comforts of my blankets and sheets and fall away into a state of elongated peace.

The Shameful Life Of Salvador Dali.

The hooker in a tree called me this morning. I asked her how she got my phone number and she told me that it was copied to her cell phone from the last time I called her. “Would you like to cum up in the tree today,” Dawn asked. Strangely I was a far distance from feeling horny since my back still ached from my previous days fall. Last night my deep sleep was interrupted by hot flashes of pain triggered by every movement of my restless body. I had planed on simply staying in bed today but when she asked me if I would just come by and keep her company, I had difficulty resisting. “I enjoyed your company the last time,”she said “and today I am needing it.” I was still trying to resist when she told me that she would be naked and promised to swing from a few branches.

The first thing that I noticed after I slowly managed to climb up to the wooden platform (the hooker’s home in the tree), was not that my back and arms were throbbing with a metallic pain that made it difficult for me to breath, but that she had shaved her pubic hair (this has always been a particular turn on of mine). The hooker was pleased to see me and sat on the side of her bed smoking a cigar. “I know it is a bad habit, but my father turned me onto the pleasures of smoking a cigar when I was young,” Dawn said holding the cigar in my direction. “Oh no, thank you,” I replied as I sat down besides her. “You know not what you are missing. There is nothing like a cigar in a redwood.” I told her about my accident yesterday (see Sitting On The Buddha’s Head) and the difficulty I was having breathing. She was flattered that despite my pain I had decided to come visit the hooker in the tree. “Would it make you happier to touch my breast,” she asked me in a maternal tone. I declined not feeling much in the mood for anything but sitting still(even though I had an erection).

We drank mint tea and watched the squirrels and birds leap from branch to branch (Dawn threw a penny at a bird!). I felt a rumbling in my stomach that spoke to me about the discomfort I was feeling. Being with a hooker without desire was like sitting in a library without a desire to read. I was confused by what I was doing there as we both silently drank our tea. “Want to see a new movement I learned the other day?” she asked with an adolescent excitement. “Sure,” I said with a hint of apathy in my tired voice. On her oval butt I noticed a tattoo of Salvador Dali (his face). I had not noticed this before and asked her if it was new. It had been there for years she told me. She hooked both her legs to a branch and hung upside down so that her long brown hair swayed in the afternoon breeze. Beneath her was at least a hundred and fifty feet of empty space. She slowly began to do a movement that caused her naked body to move backwards, slowly. So slowly in fact that it almost seemed as if she was practicing Tai Chi. Before I could register what was taking place her body was rotating quickly in circles around the branch. She looked like a windmill with tits, moving so fast that her face took on the features of a Francis Bacon painting.

I clapped at the end of her performance, for which she took a bow. “See, these are the things I learn in my loneliness,” Dawn said making her way over towards me. She asked me to kiss both of her breasts for good luck, which I did with little hesitation (her breasts smelled like cloves). She dried the sweat from her body with a green towel and lay down on her bed placing the heels of her feet on my aching legs. “That was very good,” I told her. “Are you sure that you do not want to masturbate,” Dawn asked me. When I told her that I was sure she said, “how about a slow and gentle hand job to calm your pain, or I could lick your flute with my tender lips?” she said smiling at me with a look of seduction. A small pigeon landed above the bed and sat looking down at the two of us. The hooker immediately chased it away “because they shit all over the place.” “So why do you have a tattoo of Salvador Dali on your butt?” I asked her trying to change the subject. She stood up, walked to the other side of the platform and laughed. It was at the point that I believe she resigned herself to the fact that she was going to get no money from me that day. I had no money to give.

Dawn put on tight shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of Doctor Freud’s face on it. It was obvious to me then that Dawn was well-read and cultured in a self taught kind of way. She sat back down beside me on the bed. “Because he lived a shameful life,”Dawn replied to my question. I was surprised by her response and asked her to explain why this warranted tattooing Dali’s face on her butt. “He was a deviant, he lived like one not concerned with convention, he ate black grapes from the ass holes of young girls and claimed to masturbate and orgasm into a fig twice a day.” I was still confused as to why these biographical details would inspire Dawn to put a tattoo of Dali’s face on her butt. “Are not we shameful as well?” she then asked me. “What do you mean?” I replied. “Well I spend most of my time fucking or sucking off men in my tree fort and you, you like to watch naked girls get off while you get hand jobs or play with your pecker…..and your married!!” “I do not see this as shameful,” I replied trying hard to deny my true feelings. “Well, in America, this is not normal behavior and I would say that we are both leading the shameful life of Salvador Dali.”

Surprisingly I was not bothered by this assertion. In some strange way it felt good to be compared to Salvador Dali. I felt a respite from my pain and a comfortable sense of satisfaction that I was living a lifestyle that was shared by men such as Dali. This thought seemed to make me proud of the lifestyle I was living. I was walking in the footsteps of giants, icons and some how this thought eased my pain. For years I had known that greatness required certain sacrifices. The creative genius has to go beyond the conventional, the moral- in order to gain a unique experience that they can then create from. I had always known this- but somehow the comparison to Dali set it in stone. I suddenly felt myself fill up with a lust that must be the same lust that drives all creative expression. I looked at Dawn who was staring at the sky and smoking her cigar. I asked her if she would not mind undressing, letting me play with her breasts and giving me a gracious hand job. I told her that I was feeling shameful about my request but the shame made me want it even more. Sitting up like an excited nymph she told me that it would cost me $40.00 (which she claimed to so badly need) and I asked her if I could give her an IOU.

Search Engine Madness

I have always been highly entertained by the SEARCH ENGINE TERMS that direct a person to this blog. I thought I would share this strange form of poetry:

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Eddie Vedder still lives in Seattle	2
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eddie vedder singing lesson

Sitting On Buddhas Head.

The palest ink is better than the best memory. This quote was written upon a small paper tab that was attached to my tea bag. I had awoken in a fog unable to remember where I had eaten dinner the night before. I remembered my wife waking in the middle of the night in a slight panic but other than this my past was as illusive to me as notions of god. While lying in bed I tried to recall a few things from my past. I was able to remember the faces of a few women I had slept with many years ago. I remembered the first car that I received upon turning the driving age (but I was unable to recall the color) and I also was able to remember a small park in Berkeley that I enjoy sitting in. Other than these few superficial details of my life I was having difficulty recalling the events of the previous day. I arose from bed, made some tea and found that relevant quote dangling from the tip of my tea cup. I am always startled by the way forces collude to create coincidences.

After eating an egg I was somehow able to recall a very large steel Buddha that a local artist constructed in a park around the corner from my home. I dressed quickly, feeling a strong inclination to go visit the Buddha. I had no understandable motive- other than seeking out a wisdom that may shed some light upon my lethargic situation. I put on mittens, a heavy jacket, and a cotton cap and walked the block or two to where the steel Buddha sat still upon the grass. A few dog owners were out throwing disturbing objects to salivating fur balls to chase after. I admired the contentment from which these dog owners watched their dogs run. I could not remember how long it had been since I felt that kind of contentment.

I stood beside the Buddha and looked up at it’s over-sized features. It’s height was no more than twenty feet. The artist created the Buddha sitting in the lotus posture, with hands coming together in the center- I assume to portray a state of nirvana. The Buddha’s eyes were shut and there was an expression of quiet rectitude upon his face. I stood in front of him and observed a very slight inhalation and exhalation coming from the statues belly. This did not surprise me since I was well aware of the scientific finding that within all inert matter there is moving energy. While breathing in the damp morning air I felt a strange desire to climb to the top of the Buddha. Like all my desires which I am seldomly able to control, I began my ascent.

After stepping on the hands, pulling at the nipple, hanging onto the nose and dragging my way up onto the crown of the Buddha’s head I had reached the summit with a rapidly beating heart and a feeling of being short of breath. I sat so that my long legs fell over the Buddha’s face and I looked straight out into a pasture of green grass. The sun had fully risen to its place in the sky and my mind was slowly becoming more relaxed. I breathed deeply and tried to find a place in me that spiritual aspirants refer to as a center. I slowed the erratic quality of my thoughts by listening to the squirrels chew walnuts in the trees. I could feel an intense vibrating energy coming from the Buddha’s face. It was such a strong energy that my legs and butt were quickly warmed up. The dog owners noticed this strange apparition sitting on the Buddha’s head and glanced at me with suspicious eyes. All I could do was smile and enjoy the morning sun.

Gradually I remembered various images that I had taken in the day before. I remembered the salad, orange and chicken that I had eaten for dinner with a few glasses of red wine. I remembered the bike ride that I had taken all around Berkeley and Oakland the day before. Fragments of my life started to come back to me the more I relaxed and quited my mind. Slowly I was re-introduced to a self I had forgotten. I was inspired to stand up tall on the Buddhas head and reach out towards the heavens. I was filled with an exhilarating feeling that wanted to touch the sun, the stars, all things divine. As soon as I stood up, I noticed my left foot loosing connection with the Buddha’s head. Soon after that my right foot lost its connection and before I knew it any sense of mindfulness that I had achieved was gone. I was falling twenty feet towards the dewy grass and all I could think on my descent down was this is going to hurt.

I was awoken by a feeling of wet sandpaper sliding its way along my face. When I opened my eyes I noticed two dogs gathering above me. They were licking the remnants of enlightenment from my face as their owners asked me if I needed them to call an ambulance. One owner told me not to move because I may have broken my neck. I felt bruised and battered but not in enough pain to feel as if I had been badly damaged. I landed in soft grass upon my back. I took the liberty to ask one of the dog owners to help me up, and then I dusted my self off. I was sore and my back felt like shards of broken glass. I will be okay, I told them as they watched me with carefully eyes. I am just going to slowly walk home and makes some tea. I slowly limped back towards my home- which I was having some difficulty finding. After a few moments it occurred to me that I was lost. I decided to sit down on the side of the road. My back refused to sit straight so I lied down on the ground. Looking up at the morning sun I decided- I would wait for as long as it took for the past to return to me so that I could slowly find my way back home.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #12.

Lately, I have a tendency to write and watch pornography in my sleep. I sleep walk as well, but writing and watching pornography, all while I am sleeping is new to me. Last night I composed my latest blog entry,Dream Time- while asleep. Reading it today I was a bit confused as to how it got on my site- but then I recalled that when I awoke this morning I found my computer on, and my WordPress blog on my computer screen. This allowed me to conclude that I must have been writing in my sleep. Dream Time is not the kind of entry that I would normally write and it does indeed reflect the dreaming mind of a man who is asleep.

I am no stranger to doing things in my sleep. Those of you who have read my earlier blog entries are aware that while sleeping I have rang my neighbors doorbell early in the morning while in the nude, driven my car in the nude, taken showers and tried to have sex with my wife. The other evening she found me asleep and naked with an unmistakable erection- watching pornography on my computer. I was unaware of the fact that I was aroused but remember dreaming about the sexual interactions that were taking place on my computer screen. It was like a wet dream but I did not have the opportunity to cum. My wife woke me up with a pronounced “hey!!!” and a forceful nudge to my left shoulder. I was stupefied to find myself in the nude stretched out on my desk chair watching a women with a pony tail, wearing pantyhose- spitting recently swallowed semen out of her mouth on my computer screen. “What is this?” my wife asked mortified by the grotesque sight before her. “I was sleeping,” was all I could say in my state of utter confusion. “This is absurd!!” she said twice while turning off my computer. I felt shame, despair and humiliation all rolled up into a small package and stuffed into my mouth.

And now the blog entry written in my sleep. This is a strange occurrence. I am not normally concerned by the things that I do while sleeping, but I would like to keep writing to my waking hours. When I am sleeping I do not consider myself to be as good of a writer as I have the potential of being while awake. I may write things that should not be mentioned or incriminate myself in ways that only come out while unconscious. This is all very concerning. I have read Dream Time a dozen times today and am startled by the clarity of images and the strength of the narrators voice, who is a man asleep!! So starting this evening, I will take my computer and put it someplace that would be difficult for a sleep walker to find. I am also going to install a combination lock on my bedroom door because it is impossible for a sleep walker to remember numbers. My wife will not approve, she will say that it is a fire hazard- but how much longer can this madness continue?

Dream Time.

Understanding the laws of nature is easy when you do not believe in them. Law is another word for man/woman-made. Anything man/woman-made can not possibly comprehend the incomprehensible ways of nature. This is why when I am on a walk and it starts to rain yellow and red daisies, or when I come across an insect with long wings that repeats the word “fear,” I am not surprised. I take it all in without critical judgment because I know that there is little that my human mind can comprehend when it comes to what is really taking place in the natural world. When a book begins to turn its own pages, blades of grass begin to play violin sounding solos or a stream is filled with dark chocolate- how can I argue that something unordinary is taking place. My daily ruminations speak to me of hidden worlds and I am the least surprised when rationalism breaks down. This is why when I was sitting today in a warm sulfur spring and an indigenous looking man appeared on the ledge- I was unafraid.

There are all kinds of characters that hang out by the sulfur springs. Junkies, johns, bums, hobo’s, prostitutes and car salesmen on their lunch break. At the time I was alone and certain that this was no ordinary mortal. I could see the trees through his gaunt chest. He told me that I must challenge myself to think in dream time. “I do not know what you are talking about,” I replied. “I know…. this is why I tell you,” the apparition said with a triangular smile on his transparent face. “You see me, only because you can now see in dream time, if you are always seeing this way- your heart will not be as tormented by the whims of your mind,” he said moving his elongated fingers over my head. Everything inside of my skin went numb. When I came through I was floating in the stream while chunky pieces of sulphur floated past me like scraps of plastic. I tried to stand on my two feet but the water was too deep. I clamored my way to the shore where I found my clothes and a towel. I sat on a tree stump and listened to the deep sounds of wilderness that reminded me of the plucked strings of an oud. I looked around for any kind of shape that would resemble the indigenous spirit that I may have seen and was happy to see what looked like a yellow squirrel flying across the tree tops. Clouds gathered over head hiding the shape of the sun and I smelled the damp scent of approaching rain. As I began to make my way back toward civilization I was surprised by nothing that had just happened. I was only given hope that rationality was possibly a fools tool used to comprehend the incomprehensible phenomena we know as life.

Absurdistry Reconsidered.

LET THE IMMORALITY PLAY ROAR ONWARDS!! BASED UPON THE QUALITY OF A FEW OF THE COMMENTS THAT I HAVE RECEIVED, MY ARM HAS BEEN TWISTED AND I HAVE DECIDED TO REMAIN ON THE AIR PERPETUATING DEGENERATE AND PERVERTED TALES OF SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION/ADVENTURE AND ANIMATED PERSPECTIVES ON TIME AND SPACE WHICH SEEKS TO SLOW DOWN THE RAMBLING VOICE IN MY HEAD. I KNOW MANY MAY HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO SEE THE IMMORALIST GO AWAY BUT ONWARDS I GO, ONE FOOTSTEP AT A TIME….WITHOUT A CONCERN ABOUT WHERE I AM HEADING. THANK YOU TO THOSE FEW, WHO RE-KINDLED THE LIGHT IN AN ALMOST DARK ROOM.

The End Of Absurdistry

I just wanted to let my readers know that this site will be taken off the air in a day or so. Thank you for all of you comments and support. The good times were memorable. I hope I unhinged a few inhibitions, or what Therapists call “repressions.” If by chance you think it is or is not a good idea to take Absurdsitry off air, please feel free to leave a comment.

The End.

P.s…..

I tend to suffer from confusion which causes my mind to sway back and forth like a pendulum that is out of balance. So, today I have decided against the end of Absurdistry….and will carry on.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #11.

“MIND-Bl(o)wing}*playmate SuPper Cute,” sent me an instant message this morning. I had no idea how this could of ended up in my private space. I have always been careful not to leave a trace in my tireless acts of exploitation. What carelessness, on my part had caused this to happen? My wife had just left for work and I could not help but yell out what is this!! as I read the message.

“Hooker in a tree says your really nice man who may be into super kinky time without the sex. I know your married, but we can work around it. Instant message me back and we can meet today. I am currently doing in-calls in my car.” Beneath her message was a picture of a naked brunette beauty sitting on top of a lump of hay. Her breasts and thigh all gave me an erection- the degree to which made me consider masturbation. But this would be pathetic- it is not even noon yet and I am already consumed with lustful thoughts.

A persons sexual appetite grows the more attention they pay to it. This is the hook at the end of the string. We believe that we will just indulge our erotic fantasies one last time and then we shall abstain for an eternity. This is how it all began a few months back for me. I would just peruse the Craig’s List Erotic adds for an hour each day and think that it would satisfy my sexual need for a transgressive sexual experience. I presumed that I was under control and that the one harmless pleasure that brought me satisfaction could never dominate my life. But soon the hour turned into two hours and the fidelity that I had sworn to my wife had turned into weekly hand jobs by strange prostitutes dressed in nothing but their bare skin. Now I can not stop. Each experience I want to replicate itself over and over- and after yesterdays experience with the teasing hooker who would not take off her pantyhose, I am ready for an erotic release. Only the further into this polluted pond I dive, I know the closer I am to having to reveal my obsession to my wife. It is the only way a married man can live- with hopes of morality and purity at some point in the future, just not now.

I instantly emailed the naked brunette sitting on a lump of hay back. “Would you be interested in seeing me at noon for a hand job while you are in the nude? Oh, would you mind If I cumm upon your stomach?” I wrote without any moral conscience. I received a reply that said, “you can cumm where ever you like as long as it is not in my ass or mouth. I would be happy to jack you off in the privacy of my car so meet me at….,” and she left me the directions to her car and a good time to meet with her. I took a warm shower and thought over my impending experience with yet another whore, while the warm water melted the guilt away from my dirty hair. What is a man to do when his sexual fantasies rule the day? Maybe soon I will journey to Tibet but in that moment the only journey that I wanted to undertake was towards her car.

I had a Therapy appointment which I decided to miss. I am more concerned about my sexual health than I am about my mental health (as you dear reader can probably tell). I called the Therapist and left a message saying that I was sorry but had a sudden foot ache flare up which I needed to seek out a Podiatrist to help me with. I wanted to tell her that I was being controlled and dominated by my lustful fantasies and was unable to control myself. I wanted to shout out for help and beg her to come over and stop me from doing what I was about to do, but I did not. I allowed my lust to direct the actions of my mind.

I drove to Washington Mutual in which I have a Checking Account. I went up to the ATM to take out cash but was shocked to find out that I had no more money. I was overdrawn and without a way to fill my account up. I stood there in the light of late morning in a kind of stupefaction that happens to one when they are 36, without a job and find out that they are broke. I had twenty minutes until I was to meet the prostitute at her car and no money to pay her for services rendered. I was stuck in a quagmire.

Desperate situations create desperate actions. I decided to go to her car anyhow. I would see if I could not somehow pay her back another time. I would use my skills to bargain with her. I figured that I was a good enough looking man to possibly make her want to forgo her fee. How could she refuse me? She did refuse. She swore at me for having the nerve to think that she would render her sexual services for an IOU. She asked me to step away from her old Cadillac as she climbed out of her car in a skirt that was so tight I could see the contours of her cunt. “If my friend had not highly recommended you to me I would currently be shouting at you so loud that your eardrums would pop,” she said. I tried to rationalize with her and tell her that I was coming into a good lump sum of money within the week. “I do not believe you she said. I stood there by the side of the road which was vacant and lined with used condoms and liquor bottles. “You need to go, before I spray your pretty face with mace,” she said.

Again, my efforts to find sexual release were futile. I left the prostitute before she turned violent. She had been looking forward to our arrangement and was seriously disappointed that I was without cash. I returned to my cold home with a lingering smell of her on my jacket. She was beautiful, a little worn down by the lifestyle, but she would have been a dream to respectfully cumm upon. I sat in a chair in my back yard and thought about all the different ways that I could acquire cash so that I could get enough money together to continue my immorality play on the following day.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #10.

She refused to take off her pantyhose. She looked like Paris Hilton so I did not mind. It was a difficult decision. Should I go through with this or should I abstain? I am seeking out therapeutic help for my problem tomorrow, so why not indulge today. This is the way my mind works. Seize the day! So I did because I felt as if I had no reason not to. Lunch with my Father was an abomination. He called me a thief, a liar and a man who is constantly mis-representing himself and I sat there trying to remain as calm as one can under such duress. He is going in for serious intestinal surgery in a few days so I wanted to let him drink his wine and foam at the mouth all he wanted. Who was I to know the horror that he must be feeling?

I am lying. I was angry and I told him that he was a miserable son of a bitch, I almost threw my water on his lap and I dismissed myself from the lunch table. I had drank three beers with my lunch and was feeling unhinged by the booze that was running through my blood. We were having lunch in a hotel so I decided to run off towards the closest bathroom. In the bathroom I wet my face with cold water, thought about calling my wife, but then decided to leave the rest of the day behind. I would run away from the world and pretend like nothing existed. It would be a self induced mini death in which I would check out from the world for the afternoon.

For $75.00 I rented a corner room in the hotel for the day. There were all the familiar trimmings of a hotel room including soap and shampoo in the shower and a mini bar. My room had a view of San Fransisco and a television with unlimited cable stations. I took off all of my clothes and laid out supine upon the freshly laundered bed in the nude. I skipped through the television channels like a lunatic on speed unable to focus on anything but the beating of his heart. I did a few push ups and after an hour of self induced alienation from the world I found myself bored and without speed. So, what is a man to do in this predicament…….call a hooker.

The yellow pages are a wonderful resource for prostitutes who disguise themselves as escorts or masseuse’s. Surprisingly the anger that I was feeling removed any guilt that I would normally feel when engaged in such degenerate pastimes. My perverted tendency was causing strange sensations to radiate between my thighs and I did not know at the time that it was a sign. I called a number that I found interesting “Pantyhose Escorts” and within twenty minutes a Paris Hilton look alike was standing by my door.

Dressed in a white towel I opened up the hotel room door with an apprehensive smile upon my face. I was startled by the innocent beauty that covered the call girls face and body. She sat down on a chair beside the window and introduced herself as Margarett. We shook hands and then she immediately asked me to disrobe so that she could look through my pubic hair and along my penis for any strange extraterrestrial afflictions, which she called STD’s. Once I passed the inspection she began to undress with the carelessness of a drunken clown. It all happened so fast and I asked her to slow down but she insisted time was money. When she came to sit with me on the bed I said, “what about the pantyhose.” Her petite breasts rubbed up against my hairy chest and I was stimulated by the aromatic perfume that she was wearing. It smelled like a mixture of cloves and honey as she rubbed her silky tongue along my unshaven neck. “The pantyhose stay on,” she said with a flirtatious tone in her voice that hinted that better things were to come.

She turned me over and started to massage my rugged back. “But what about the pantyhose!” I kept asking. “They stay on, I said,” she would reply with a sternness that was growing by the minute. “What do you mean they stay on,” I said only to be met with a shush and just enjoy the massage. She stuck her warm fingers in my ears and cleaned out any wax that may be lingering inside. She stretched my rubber toes and pulled my lanky arms behind my back. Giving up all apprehension I let her take my stiff neck in her hands and crack my cemented spine with a twist and a pull. I was dizzy and humid from all the toxic and tense release that seemed to come out of what she called my “poor stressed out body.”

When she asked me to turn over she told me, that was all. I tried to protest but she told me with a stern stomp of her foot against the ground that “that is ALL!!” I let my protests go limp and handed her some cash for her time. She dressed as quickly as she undressed and told me that I should start doing Yoga and find ways to relieve the insane amount of tension that had built up in my body that were more conducive to a healthy marriage (she had noticed the wedding ring on my finger). I opened the door for her and with a perky movement of her chin she thanked me for using Pantyhose Escorts and gave me a disapproving look that expressed consternation. I shut the door and climbed back on the bed which was now unkept and disheveled. I concentrated on my unappeased erection but then cast it aside with a disappointment that I could feel in my gut. I went into the bathroom and took a long hot shower and then decided to return to the world that I had so badly wanted to leave behind.

Growing Pains

      The string that holds my soul to my body aches. The joints in my feet are constantly perturbing my mood. My spirit is inside out and there is an ominous worry that makes its way into my mind. My Doctor, who is also my mother and financial guardian- tells me that these are only growing pains. She is a Jungian Psychoanalyst, and she tells me that she sees many cases such as this from men and women in their mid-thirties. They are people who have a tendency to long for more than they have and feel much more accomplished than their reality might demonstrate, my mother tells me. They are individuals who are dreamers, and so far their dreams have not come to fruition so they must start to think of other ways to support themselves, she also told me. So far this sounded like me.

My growing pains began when I realized I may have to go back to school. I have always considered myself an artist but this imagination has not turned a profit. I have earned less than a $1,000 from my art and am now faced with a mid-life crisis. What am I going to do now? I am signed up and ready to attend a graduate program which will miraculously turn me into a psychotherapist. But it hurts. My eyes are heavy and my arms feel longer than normal. I have been stricken with constant headaches and a chronic cough will not leave me alone. I have never imagined myself a professional, let alone a Therapist- but there needs to be money in the bank and I am weary of my art being able to provide for my future family.

Madness is a disease that will keep your families stomach full and a warm roof over your head, the admissions counselor to the Psychology program told me. There is no shortage of psychological ailments to treat, you will be a rich man in no time. I can see it in your eyes, he said as we shook hands and I left his office. I returned home with palpitations and a pain in my side. What could he see in my eyes, I kept thinking. I was angry and decided to sit down and write this entry with the hopes that it might make some sense to a stranger out there who can relate to my pain. I am overcome by the world and the way I had imagined myself in it (writer, artist) seems to be changing into something else. It hurts.

I took a shower this morning and felt a painful knot in my stomach. I have been burping a lot lately which makes me think that I may be suffering from an ulcer. My worst fear other than death, is being ordinary. I have done every thing that I can to avoid the trappings of the ordinary. Now that I may be becoming a Therapist and a family man the trappings of ordinarinesses are seeming closer. I feel anxious and have to remind myself to stay present. I am currently enrolled in a stress reduction mindfulness course that is helping me to just this. Stay with the breath, when the mind starts chattering away, just bring your attention back to the inhalation and exhalation.

This morning I went for psychoanalysis with my mom. She has a nice leather couch that I lay down upon and the smell of redwood trees fills her small office in the Berkeley hills. I talked about my deepest fears- one being my inability to make money doing something that I love. I talked about how unhappy the prospect that I may never be successful at my chosen craft makes me. I shivered and felt my heart beating from my stomach. My mother told me that Apocalypse means to reveal what is hidden. It is a kind of renewal. She made me aware of the personal Apocalypse that I was going through and how the growing pains that I was feeling were symptoms of this Apocalypse. Be patient, allow the renewal to take place and stop judging, she said. Humans are supposed to be joyful.

I returned home this afternoon with a perpetual burp. The string that holds my soul to my body still aches. Today I will sit in meditation for a few hours and try not to worry about rent, what I am going to do for money, or my health. I will just sit still and inhale and exhale. This is it. All of my attention will go into being present in the moment. This usually relieves the headaches, palpitations, chest pain, back ache, ulcer, and feet aches. I have no idea how long these growing pains are going to last but I am getting close to forty and it is my hope that they are resolved by then.

How A Man Takes A Shower.

Once naked, I imagine myself to be some place else in time. Far away from the cold confines of my home and the dysfunctional harangues of my marriage. The warm steam fills the cold air with a sweaty mist and I am ready to leave my problems on the floor. When the temperature reaches a degree that would probably be to hot for most, I step into the claw foot tub without any thought for what I am leaving behind. In the nude, I am a threat to no one, innocent again. I am vulnerable to the whims of the world but alone in the privacy of a hot shower.

The first thing I do is warm my body and head (because I do believe the two are separate) with the hot water that is pouring against my fragile body. I think for a moment about death, but then comfort myself with humid deep breaths that open my lungs. I turn from back to front and front to back allowing the hot water to open all of my clogged up pores. I then lather my lanky body with a cinnamon soap that is carved in the shape of the Buddha. I suck in deeply the aromatic sweet and sour smell of the soap as I cover myself with its salve. The soap sizzles on my sensitive skin creating red spots that I sometimes confuse for boils. There are no sounds other than that of running water and the voices in my head. I clean my feet, thighs, buttocks, penis, chest, underarms and face- with a consistency that leaves me feeling untarnished by dirt or dust. Once this ritual cleansing has ended I then proceed to wash my hair with shampoo.

I use a natural shampoo that is made in Oregon and leaves my hair without dandruff or soot. It prevents my head from aching and it also limits the amount of negative thoughts that I think up. A lot has been going on in my mind as of late, and this shampoo lathers my thoughts with a preventative measure. My brain ceases to think about my impending separation from my wife or my fear of small, closed in spaces (like the shower). I am no longer feeling accents of anxiety or over heating pulsations of my heart. I am tranquil for as long as the herbal shampoo sits on my head and I can breath with a calm that evades me the rest of the day.

While the shampoo is still in my hair I take that time to clean out my ears and brush my degenerating gums and teeth. The toothbrush I use is long and cotton bristled and it has a particular knack for getting food out from small spaces. The toothpaste I use is a salt solution that claims to kill the bacteria which swim around in our mouths without any regard for human life. They spend their days eating away our gums so that in the end we are left with painful abrasions and aching molars. I brush my teeth, without the sensitivity that I have been told to use- but rather I brush with the determination of a man who has declared war upon an invading army. Once I am done with my frontal attack, I wash out my mouth with shower water and then proceed to empty the shampoo from my mind, head and hair.

The heat at this point begins to agitate my heart. I can feel its irregular gyrations that are usually the result of too much heat. I reduce the temperature of the water slightly and continue with my daily ablutions. I clean my face with a seaweed solution that my wife brought back from Spain. She yells at me whenever I use it, but I have learned to only abduct trace amounts of the solution so that she can not detect anything missing. I let this coral solution sit upon my face for five minutes and during this time I will normally apply a conditioner to my hair. At this point in my shower I normally used to masturbate. My reasoning is that it not only relaxes me, but after I orgasm in the shower I am able to wash down all of the remaining sperm with the conditioner in my hair and the coral solution on my face. This will guarantee that not a trace of my sperm will be left for my wife to detect on the tub floor. I like to leave the shower as I found it.

I have been abstaining from masturbation as much as possible lately. My hopes is to break free from any kind of sexual addiction I may have developed over the past 36 years of my life. I do believe that it is unhealthy to repress our sexual inclinations (this leads toward the individual becoming aggressive and irrational) but I have masturbated so much in my life that I can afford to abstain for a few months. Without masturbation, my showering ritual does feel incomplete, but I am learning to adjust to where I am at. I wash the remaining seaweed solution from my face and conditioner from my hair with a sadness that seems to come forth towards any ending. I turn off the hot water that has turned my entire body a velvety red color and I step onto the bah mat cleansed and a little less corrupted than I was when I first stepped into the shower. I dry my fragile body off with a 100% cotton towel and take a few deep breaths of the remaining warm steam. Because of my masturbatory habits the past few weeks when I get out from the shower I am left with an erection. I assume this is a result of my physiology which has been conditioned to associate showers with orgasm. Now that I am “attempting” to abstain from masturbation I have to wait a full five minutes for my erection to dissipate. I use q-tips  to clean out my ears, apply deodorant to my underarms and between my butt and then open the bathroom door where I walk into the world that for ten minutes or so, I was glad to leave behind.

The Disappearing Tennis Ball.

Why she wore a g-string, I will never know. I did not ask. She did not tell. Rachael is a good friend of my wife and she had a longing to play tennis. The weather was cold enough to freeze the cat’s water, but she did not care. A shot of whiskey and I’d be roaring to go. We played on the only grass court in town. I could feel the frozen grass beneath my feet. The day was ominous and Rachael seemed to be wearing the shortest tennis skirt made in America. I do not even think the skirt was for tennis. Her legs were long and brown in mid-winter. I found myself longing for the platitudes that Rachael’s bare legs and g-string aroused in me. I wanted her in the same way that I wanted food after a ten day fast. Her nipples were hardened by the cold and my eye had a hardened time staying away from them. The yellow tennis ball was the least of my interest- and her soft, silky voice gave birth to a lust in me that not even lying down in frozen grass could quell.

Rachael hit me a backhand and ran to the net. Her white skirt pirouetted in the slight breeze as I watched her brown long legs rumble toward the net. I mustered enough attention to follow the yellow tennis ball and return to her a lob so high that it would take years for it to return to the ground. My eyes immediately returned to her nipples as she stood prepared to return the lob with the full force of her nature. Her head was cocked back toward the starry heavens, as she waited with a racket slung back over her left shoulder. She waited and waited, and after a minute our so she looked directly at me and said “hey where did the tennis ball go?” I had been distracted away from time and space until that moment when I realized something very strange was taking place. I looked up into the heavens, searched around for a little yellow tennis ball and then looked back at Rachael who was standing beside the net, dumbfounded. “I have no idea,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. We looked around the perimeter of the tennis court to see if the tennis ball may have landed some place else, but saw no sign of a yellow ball. “That is the strangest thing I have ever seen,” Rachael said as we sat down on a bench on the side of the tennis court. “That tennis ball vanished in mid-air,” she said with a bewildered and slightly scared look upon her face. I could think of nothing more clever to say than, “I guess God needed a tennis ball.” She looked at me and giggled and it was then that we decided it would be a good time to return home. My wife was making sandwiches for dinner.

Fascist Families.

The family unit as a form of Fascism. Someone said this to me yesterday, and I have been thinking about it ever since. I have spent an hour this morning standing on my head and twenty minutes jumping up and down on one foot. During that time my mother has called me twice, “why do you not return my phone call?” My sister has called me wondering when I am going to come and visit and my Father has called me three times in the past two days. He wants me to figure out what I am doing with my life. He has also been trying to get me to quit the writing business and go into real estate. All of these encroaches upon my 36 year old personal psychic space are like thick thorns in my side. They are forms of tyranny that prevent me from developing in ways that are necessary for my health. They keep me standing on my head so that I do not see the world straight.

Is not Fascism a system that is emotionally unequipped to deal with the needs of the individual? If it is- than all of us Americans are living in an unannounced Fascistic system (as opposed to a Democracy) and our families are smaller yet more pronounced forms of Fascism. They keep us wrapped up in a ball of conformity unable to grow into our own- until they become very old our start to die out. Our families give us love and they nurture us but at the same time they prevent our will for freedom to grow into a successful action. We remain martyrs as the family unit keeps us confined in a nucleus which determines our every action? While writing this short passage my sister has called me twice, my mothers voice is scrambling in my head and I am trying to figure out ways to avoid talking to my father. I am confined by a Jewish family, the severity of which makes me want to stand on my head for days. My feet are heavy and I am wondering how today, I can spend a few hours cultivating my own garden without them in it.

When I was younger I used to want to burn down my parents mansion. I conspired all kinds of ways to seek revenge for the soul that I felt like they where stealing from me. If I had known then that I was being subjected to the tyranny of Fascism maybe I would not have taken the whole thing so seriously. Things would have made more sense. If I would have known that the conditions for Fascism arise when there is an emotional disconnect between an individual and his/her family or society- I could have understood that my parents were emotionally “un-evolved.” Maybe this would have given me more sympathy and prevented me from setting my fathers BMW on fire. Who knows? Now that I am older- understanding these things helps me to prevent myself from becoming angry or resentful. It gives me the personal peace to understand that Fascism is a system that robs the spirit from the body, leaving the individual in a state of affliction. So I realize that we are all afflicted with a negative feeling that keeps us from loving, which after all simply means “letting go.”

The Disembodied Voice.

“She lives in a dark closet. All the world knows of her is her voice,” Gregory said to me over the phone. I didn’t have much to say in response to this. I was curious. “All you need to do is bring her the box of food and leave it by her closet door.” Gregory was sick and he offered me twenty dollars to do his job for him. He worked delivering meals to people who are not capable of leaving their homes. It is a government run program that is dedicated to seeing that individuals with chronic psychological disorders do not starve to death. “So what do you think, will you do it?” Gregory asked me with the sound of sickness in his voice.

I needed what ever money I could get. None of my paintings sold at the last gallery show and I recently quit a job working at a mortuary. I was not in a position to turn down tax free cash. I drove over to Gregory’s apartment, picked up the key and made sure that he gave me the directions correctly. “Here is twenty bucks,” Gregory said. “now make sure when you go to her home that you understand that she is a disembodied voice. She will try to talk to you for hours if you are not careful. Just leave the food in front of her closet door and say have a nice evening. That is all. She is very enigmatic and will suck you in if you are not very careful,” Gregory said to me from the confines of his sick bed.

I drove to the facility where the food is made and packaged. I picked up a box of food and then drove my car to the outskirts of the city where the lady lived. Her house was in a rural part of town where chickens roamed around on the streets beside wild and ravenous dogs. I found the address and walked up to the front door which was painted yellow and hanging off its hinges. Once in the house I shouted “is any one home….I am delivering your food,” and was instantly met with a female voice that said “Back here, in the bedroom.” I searched around a few corners and then found the closet door which had a photograph on it of a womans face. It was in a bedroom that lacked any furniture other than an old mattress and a green carpet. I noticed that all the windows were broken, and the house smelled like cedar and mud.

“I am just going to put the food in front of the door for you,” I said as kindly as I could. “You are not Gregory, who are you?” the female voice asked. “Gregory is sick so I am delivering your food.” “That is not what I asked you, I asked who are you?” the voice said with a tone of rigidity. “My name is Randall,” I responded not knowing what else to say. “I did not ask you your name, I asked who are you?” What did she mean who am I? How was I to answer this question. “Let me help you, because I can tell that you are confused” the voice said. “I am a middle aged woman who lives in the dark. I do not come out of this closet because I am afraid of everything in this world. My purpose in life is to keep my voice as long as I can. I am a Painter who paints portraits in my head. They are pictures that no one will ever see, which is fine because I do my art for myself. This is who I am. Now who are you?”

I felt a subtle wave of anxiety overcome me. I remembered what Gregory had told me about not engaging with the voice. I wanted to be quick and precise with my reply so that I could get out from there. “I am an Artist,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “An Artist, how nice. We both have something in common,” the voice said in a high pitched tone of pleasure. “Do you enjoy being an Artist?” the voice asked me. I looked around at the vacant room. I saw a rat run across the green carpet. “It is a struggle, but yes I do enjoy it,” I replied. Then the voice quickly responded to me by saying, “the world is so filled with hypocrisy and compromise. As an artist you pave your own way in the world. You create your own reality in all that you do. It is a blessing and a curse…but it is more of a blessing than a curse.” The she laughed.

“Do you realize that we live in a world that is always seeking to steal our voice?” the voice asked me. Before I could respond she continued speaking. “If your voice is not contributing to the creation of profit for a corporation or the government than it is a voice which must be silenced. The irony is that your inner voice must be silenced so that you can create profit. The soul and the pursuit of money never go together. It is one or the other. You see. This is why I remain in a dark closet. This is why I choose to be a disembodied voice. Even though I get lonely and cry a lot, I still have my voice. I get to keep my own voice. I do not have to give it away so that I can make money or hold down a job. You see Freud said…..” she continued on and on. I was interested in what she was saying so I decided to listen.

And listen. And listen. She asked me many questions like:

“What do I believe?”

“What is my purpose in life?”

“What do I live for?”

“Do I feel successful?”

The questions continued on and on and by the time she told me that she was getting tired and needed to eat, I was lying on the vacant mattress and it was close to three in the morning. I stood up and realized that I had become completely unaware of the passing of time. The voice had sucked me in. As I drove my car back to my home, I felt like a minor revolution was going on in my mind. The disembodied voice had caused me to think about things I had never thought about before. I felt like I was awoken from a long sleep. I lied awake all that night unable to think about anything other than the questions that she had asked me. They sat like a brick upon my chest. Some thing in me had changed.

Today when I returned to Gregory’s house to drop off the keys, I asked him if I could have the job of bringing the disembodied voice her food. He smirked at me with a fierce look and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Working With The Dead, Part 1

The first dead body I picked up was a fat man lying on the floor in his underwear in a motel room, in which he seemed to be living. A few days ago I received a phone call from a friend of a friend. “Hey, this is Fransisco, I hear you need a job.” “I do,” I said. “Well I own a mortuary and I need someone to pick up stiffs.” I had never seen a dead body before and thought, why not…it would be an interesting experience. I started later that day. Fransisco gave me the keys to a blue mini van without rear windows and a solid handshake welcoming me aboard.

“The first thing I want you to do in the morning is come into the refrigerator and mop up all the goo,” Fransisco said. He took me into the refrigerator where the dead bodies were stored until they were buried or cremated. I saw stacks of bodies under white sheets with feet sticking out. Most of the feet were black. “Overnight they ooze and the stuff is stinky, so we got to get it up first thing in the morning.” “What do they ooze?” I asked. “They are roting, so their fat slowly falls off. It is usually the ones who ate a lot of meat and drank a lot of liquor that ooze the most,” Fransisco replied. He then showed me where the boxes were kept to put the “stiffs” in after I picked them up. He showed me how to label the boxes and where to place them in the fridge. “You okay with all this?” Fransisco asked me.

When I walked into the mortuary on my first day, there was a handsome man in his mid thirties lying nude on a stretcher. He had long hair and a woven hemp bracelet around his ankle. He looked as if he was in perfect physical condition, a hippie in the prime of his youth. The only disturbing thing was that he was dead. “What did he die of?” I asked Fransisco. “AIDS,” Fransisco replied while lighting some incense which was always burning in the mortuary. I had never imagined that someone could die of AIDS yet look so healthy. While I was staring at the body I was introduced to a lady with long black hair and a face that reminded me of Aphrodite. She wore a short mini skirt, and when she bent over to collect ash from the cremation machine- I noticed she was wearing a garter belt. Fransisco told me that she was finishing Mortician’s college, working as his assistant and that he was fucking her on a regular basis. It was more information than I needed, but Fransisco was an ego maniac and a sex addict who liked to brag about his conquests.

Bruce, who was training me that day, did not know how we could get the fat man onto the gurney. I had no clue either. This was the first dead person I had ever laid hands upon and I was hesitant. “Just grab the ankles,” Bruce said as a police officer who was on the scene helped us to lift the fat man up. The lady across the hall was crying and kept repeating that “he was such a nice man.” I could not help but notice that his motel room was filled with picture of Bob Dylan and Samuel Beckett. Once Bruce and myself finally got the fat man into the mini van we drove to Summit Hospital to pick up a second body. On the way to the hospital Bruce talked about his love for cocaine and prostitutes. He was a certified Mortician who was in his mid forties and lived with his mother due to financial problems. “There is a street near here where on a break, if the van is empty, you can pick up a prostitute and have a quicky,” Bruce said with a look that showed he meant what he was saying.

On the way to the hospital we got a call from Fransisco that we had to first go pick up a body on the corner of Claremont and College Ave that had been run over by a cement roller. “A cement roller?” I said. “Just your luck man, on your first day you get to see blood,” Bruce said with a giggle. I was apprehensive. Deep down I did not know if this was going to be the job for me. Seeing death so up close instilled a fear in my bones that I knew I would never be able to set free.

The scene at the accident was not as gruesome as we expected. The woman who was run over by a cement roller was not flattened out as one would imagine. She was badly bruised and battered but otherwise- everything on her body was in its right place. We were told that she was a local Architect who was walking to get into her car when the cement roller came around a corner too quickly and ran her over as she was getting into the drivers seat. We stuck the body which was nicely dressed in a modern black suit- into a white body bag, lifted her up onto the gurney and then placed her in the mini van besides the fat man. I also took her black leather suitcase which I found beside the trunk of her car.

With two dead bodies in the back of the van, Bruce decided that we should stop and have lunch. I was not feeling hungry but I had a beer while he ate a burrito. We talked about the job and he let me know that it got easier as the days went by. He also told me that Fransisco was the craziest man I would ever come across. When we arrived back at the mortuary Fransisco was waiting for us besides the back door through which we took the dead bodies. While smoking a joint, Fransisco showed me how to stick the bodies in cardboard boxes and then load them into the refrigerator. I wrote both their names on the side of the boxes and then we stacked the Architect and the fat man together in the fridge. Fransisco then handed me a mop and said “Here kid…it’s starting to stink in here.” It was only 12:30 p.m.

The Looser.

“You are such a looser,” my wife said. It was a truthful judgment. I am a looser. I could argue with her no more than I could argue with my mother about my birth date. “I am getting so tired of it,” she said with a defeated look on her face. “I just don’t know what to do about it, in fact I do not think that there is anything I can do about it.” I stood there solemnly listening to all of her contentions. It is true that in the past week I have lost my house keys, my wallet, our cat, my job, my hair and a very sentimental guitar pick that my great-great- grandfather left for me. Ever since I was young I have had a particular tendency to loose things. As I have aged this tendency has grown into a full blown psychological disorder. It is true- I am a looser. I loose everything.

“The cat, your wallet, the house keys, all in the past three days!” my wife puffed at me. “It has got to end, you can’t keep being a looser. What is it going to take for me to feel like I can trust you with my things? What if we have a child and you loose it??” The week before I had borrowed her car and forgotten where I parked it. It took me hours to find it. “I really think that the problem is a chemical imbalance in my brain. I am simply forgetful,” I said. “Well get both of your feet back on the ground because I need a husband who can be accountable for our things!” I did not disagree with her even though I was angered with her for the way in which she was registering her complaints. And then the thought occurred to me….I could loose my wife. I pictured my self as a lonely man waiting for no one to come home in a desolate apartment without any love. My bones shivered and my eye lids went cold. I could not allow this to happen. I could loose everything but I did not want to loose my wife. I looked at my wife with an unmistakable look of seriousness and said, “I will try my best not to be a looser. I’m just so used to loosing things.” “I understand baby,” she said “but I know you can do better in life than being absent minded looser.” “Where there is a will there is a way,” I said with a determined look that hinted at my ability to change. We hugged and exchanged a sweet marital kiss and then I decided to head off into the evening and look for our lost cat. As I was walking away my wife yelled, “now that I think of it- you are actually a winner.” “Oh yeah, why?” I asked. “Because you have me.” I smiled and continue to walk on into the night.

High School Teachers Don’t Get Offices!

I can not find a job teaching. They fear me. They abhor me- I have a reputation. For four years I have taught high school English in an inner city school with all poor black students. It was the hardest job I ever loved but my disappointment grew to epic proportions when The Department Of Education shut the high school down. They did not want to spend the money on poor black kids getting an education (they rather put them in jail). They also wanted to stop dangerous Teachers such as myself from teaching.

The department Of Education knew that I was teaching my students about exploitation and oppression in our society. They knew I taught about racism and white male supremacy. They could not understand why I taught the things I did when I should be teaching The Great Gatsby. The school received several notices from The Department Of Education about my teaching style and as a result the school administration started to monitor my classroom closely. One afternoon I was caught by a school administrator observing the black breasts of one of my students. I was also caught once dancing in a bathroom with a bunch of my students. The final break was when I was caught with a black princess on my lap while in the middle of teaching a class.

I loved my students and they loved me. It was not my fault that one of my female students was always insisting upon showing me her breasts, without my permission. It was not my fault that a black princess enjoyed sitting in my lap every so often. She even once told me that she “enjoyed feeling me harden up beneath her black buttocks.” I agree that I was passive about what was going on. I knew that these students faced every hardship that a student could face. They were poor, black and the educational system barely cared five cents about their future. I repeatedly taught them about the importance of them asserting themselves and getting the best possible education that they could- or else they would end up victims of a racist society. The sexual play, the dancing…these where all deeply ingrained ways of connecting with my class.

When one of the administrators caught me looking at one of my students breasts she immediately called me into her office. I was told to sit in front of the administration and answer various questions. I told them that the student enjoyed showing me her breasts and there was little I could do about it. They asked me if she had ever touched my penis and I told them never. They wanted to know about the black princess who always sat on my lap, and I told them that nothing was going on between us. I then asked why high school Teachers never get offices? and they looked at me with blank stares. “A lot of this could be avoided if I had my own office. But instead my office is in the classroom and students have more access to me this way,” I tried to explain. What I wanted to really say was that I would have more privacy to do wanted I wanted to do if I had my own space to do it in. One of the administrators knew that I meant this, looked at me and said, “high school Teachers don’t get offices…they get classrooms.”

The black princess asked me one day if she could get an A in exchange for giving me a blow job. I did have to think about it for a minute but was able to refrain. She sat on my lap until I agreed to give her an A anyways. Another student with long red braids started coming up to my desk and sticking her tongue in my ear. She would whisper things like “you so fine Mr S,” or “My tongue in your ear feels so good.” I would let her rummage around in my eardrum for a bit and then begin lecturing on Malcolm X or Aristotle’s notion of tragedy. The students enjoyed the comedy of our classroom, because it was a break from the misery of their impoverished lives.

I believe that one of the reasons that the school was shut down was because of me. Word got back to The Department Of Education about what was going on in my classroom, and overtime they decided that the school administration was not doing enough to “change my ways.” I spoke in front of the Department Of Education at one of the hearings and told them that standardized education creates mediocre students who are trained to be workers in the corporate work force. I am not interested in creating workers, I want to facilitate conversations that will allow my students to receive a quality education. One of the members of The Department Of Education asked me “Do these conversations entail conversations about sex?” The only answer I could think of was an affirmational “of course!”

I miss the African princess, the breast flasher and the tongue licker- but I don’t miss the administration. Administrators are like parasites, they suck the blood from those who are trying to grow. Because of my reputation in the education community finding a job has been more difficult than finding gold. My Resume is turned down as quickly as it is seen and I never receive phone calls back. The students in all the high school’s know about me as “Mr S, the Teacher who tells it like it is…and tries to get some booty while he is at it.” In reality I am just trying to have a good time in a world that has become so series. And besides, maybe I will retire from the Teaching business for good. High school Teachers don’t even get their own offices, are underpaid and under appreciated. Why go back? Today I have an interview as a Waiter at a local restaurant. Who knows, maybe it would be good to start a new career.

The Sniffling Whore.

 As I grow older my memory seems to constantly be letting me down.  Just today I had an experience which I am already starting to forget. Strange how this happens- all while we are awake. Slowly time just seems to disappear. I guess this is why I write. To remember. I want to have stories to tell my children when they are salivating in their cribs. If I don’t write it will all vanish like a cloud of dust.

Again this morning, I found myself out of work and bored. I just received an unemployment check so I had a few bucks to blow. I went and studied with my meditation teacher for an hour or so and then returned home. As I was driving my car which is like an old man with one leg, I saw out of the corner of my eye a very attractive prostitute walking down the street. I was not feeling particularly horny, but something deep in my gut told me that I should pull over and see if she was in her hour of need. On my radio I was listening to Some Kind Of Blue. The rain was coming down in puddles and I thought that picking her up was the least that I could do to compensate for all my sins.

I did quick u-turn and drove past her at a slow pace. I waved and directed with my aging hand that she should meet me around the corner. I was still a distance away from her, but from what I could see she looked untethered by the life of a whore. She was wearing a short black skirt and a tight t-shirt that said Oakland, California on it. I guess she would never get lost.

I pulled my car into a tight spot on a small tree lined street. I unlocked my passenger side door so she could climb in. The moment she did so- I noticed her nose was bright red and her nostrils were flooded with mucous. I know it is all part of being human but I was instantly turned off. “How are you doin baby?” she said with a glib look upon her face and used tissues in the palm of her hands. Her voice sounded like chirping birds and I could smell the cinnamon in her mouth. “I am fine,” I said looking at her legs which showed some restraint when it came to eating lots of fatty foods. “What you looking for,” she said leaving out the are. For a moment I considered maybe asking for a quick hand job, but my degeneracy was not showing up. She kept sniffling and blowing her nose, and frankly it was taking the lust out of prostitution. She looked at me with a guilty face and said, “I know, I am the sniffling whore.”

I could not help but let out a deep laugh. I appreciated her humor and felt that she was intelligent enough to satirize herself. She laughed as well and then asked me if she could smoke in my car. We both understood that nothing kinky was going to take place at that point. “Can I give you a ride some place?” I asked. “It’s freezing cold outside you know?” she said while lighting her cigarette. “I do,” I replied. “Well if you would not mind giving me a ride downtown to the bus station, I would appreciate that.” The bus station was only a few miles away and I asked her if she was leaving town. “No,” she said, “it is just a place I can sit and get warm and let the sniffling in my nose dry out. You know having a sniffling nose ain’t good for my business.” I laughed again and told her that I thought its got to be rough having a cold and being a whore. “It could be worse,” she said. I asked her if I could bum a cigarette and I turned the heat up for her. We drove toward the bus station and on the way she said “you sure I can’t give you a blow job while you drive?” I was sure.

This is why I write. It is moments like these that I never want to forget. I want to tell these stories to my children and have them in my mind for days when I am stuck in bed. Even though my memory seems to be fading away with each passing day, the experiences of my life can be preserved by the immortality of words. The one thing that time can not defy, is the power words.

The Man Who Wanted To Stop Time.

I needed to find a way to stop time. The constant passing succession of calendar days was making me dizzy. By the time I bought a calendar for the new year it was already the next year. The years keep passing like wind. As I get older the months pass so quickly that I am all of a sudden balding and going gray. I seem to have less time as I grow older in time and I am afraid that before I know it everything I love will be demolished by time .

In an attempt to stop time I have tried perpetual masturbation, week long meditation, month long episodes of fasting and drinking binges that went on for years. I have tried to become a Buddhist and accept the inherent emptiness in all things, but the thought made me sad and anxious. My meditation teacher worked with me to be more accepting of time rather than trying to do away with it all together. “Courage,” he said “is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” He kept trying to get me to have the courage to accept time but all I wanted was to find a way to stop it, dead in its tracks.

Our society is made up of little excerpts of being on time. “Rapid Service,” “Overnight Shipping,” “The World On Time.” It is almost as if we think that we are lengthening our lives by speeding time up. A stranger who I happened into an interesting conversation with at a cafe said, “Time is a man made construct to express time as an illusion. You see, time is a concept that we use to express birth, growth, degeneration and death.” Interesting I thought. Maybe I could stop time if I can learn to forget about the past, loose all my memories and forget about yesterday. Then the thought came to me, “If I do not have a job, friends, wife or places to be- then I would never have to worry about being on time. I could live outside of time!!”

I thought about this for a few days and realized it would never work. If I forgot about my past and gave up my responsibilities I would end up lonely and poor. I do live in a society that is addicted to time. We use time up quicker than we can appreciate its passing- this is why I always hear people lamenting the passing of time. We exist in a psychological state that feels the absence of time. We live with a loss so great that the only thing we can do to medicate our pain is move quicker or drink and eat more.

I suppose that it is impossible to stop time. Time is a movement forward and no matter how much I try to sit still or walk backwards..time still seems to pass me by. I grow older without even having the time to experience being young. The more I look in the mirror the less I can see an image of myself reflected back at me. Time seems to be erasing all things that I felt to be familiar. My aquarium remains unwashed, my clothes stay dirty and my heart seems to grow more weary with the passing of each day.

I woke up this morning realizing that time is apart of being human. I could stop it no more than I could stop rain. If I concentrate hard enough during my meditation, I can forget about time- but still my hair turns gray and wrinkles appear on my skin. I returned to my meditation teacher this morning who quoted T.S. Elliot. He said, “Time past and time future are all contained in time present.” Then he handed me a pen and asked me to write a few Haikus. This is what I wrote:

Look at the dust/this is me,/tomorrow.

Inquire mind,/tell me,/nothing.

Not knowing/My days pass/I am free.

Stuff becomes/Nothing./So unstuff.

The Confusion Of Empty Paintings.

I drew a window upon the wall and tried to look through it. All I saw was a reflection of my face stuck some place in time. I drew another window on another wall and all I could see was a sea which was a lexicon of blueness. On the floor I drew another window through which all I saw was a multiplication of lips all reaching out to me for a kiss. I sat on the side of my bed and watched my feet turn into roots which stretched themselves all the way beneath the earths crust. I have been confused, not knowing who or what I am. My confusion seems to be ink and the world is paper upon which I write poems which remain unread. The world is at war in a culture not my own and I am stuck in my room drawing windows on walls and floors through which I see dreams about places that I will never be. My motivation is empty of any steam and the only goal I uphold is to live another day. What will become of me when the lips, the sea, the ink and the reflections of my face all start to become a city in which no one inhabits and no sounds are heard? I must sleep now because my head is becoming heavy and there is still much work to do.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #9

A naked prostitute in a tree!! This was too much. Yesterday I had seen a ghost for the first time in my life and now this! The days are just getting more interesting as I go on. What will tomorrow bring? For today was one of the stranger days in my life.

My wife and I have been fighting a lot lately. It is not a malicious fighting with raised voices, but rather a silent frustration which is expressed through various passive aggressive maneuvers. When we fight I do things like ignore her, sleep on the couch and seek out sexual deviations. This morning as soon as my wife left for work I decided to seek retribution for all the stress our clashes have cost me. I went straight to the Craig’s List Erotic adds and almost immediately happened upon an add that said “In calls In A Tree.” I was curious so I pushed on the link and saw a spicy picture of a beautiful blonde swinging from a tree branch in the nude. Her breasts were small and shapely and she had shaved off all her pubic hair. Below the picture was a caption the read Today I am doing in calls in my tree house, come on over and swing me from a branch. I am offering lunch time specials.

I could not contain myself. I had never heard of a prostitute doing in calls in a tree. I had nothing going on for the day other than a willingness to have an unusual experience. I called her number and scheduled a time for us to meet in her tree. When I asked her how to find the tree she said, “It’s easy baby, it’s the tallest redwood across the street from the Shell station on Hinterland Ave. Just park your car and you will see a sign that says pussy and an arrow pointing up. Just climb the wood blocks that are nailed to the tree.” “Okay,” I said “I will see you in an hour.”

I took a shower and dressed hurriedly. My stomach was fizzing with butterflies, all the result of my great anticipation. It always amazes me how quickly life alters its course. One moment you are experiencing joy and contentment and the next minute everything is turned upside down and you are standing in tears beside the death bed of a friend. Or in my case you are filled with anger and despair and the next moment you are as excited as a kid and filled with the most tantalizing anticipation you have ever felt. There is no such thing as security in this life. Everything is in flux, always changing. This makes human beings afraid, and so out of this fear we have created the illusory notion of security.

I stopped at the bank and withdrew $60.00 from the ATM. I could not help but notice that my balance was less than $300.00. I stopped myself from worrying about my financial future and just stayed focused upon the naked blonde waiting for me in a tree. The redwood tree was easy to find. I saw the sign that said pussy with an arrow pointing upwards. I climbed up ate least 150 wooden steps until I could hear the prostitute saying “you are almost here.” I was out of breath when I arrived to the platform which she called her home. There was a futon covered in red blankets and a green carpet all along the floor. I noticed a rack which had a bundle of clothes dangling from it and a shelf upon which was food and books. She offered me some water and asked me to have a seat. I was having a difficult time catching my breath and slowing down the rapid beating of my heart.

She was gorgeous and had a perpetual smile upon her face. She told me her name was Dawn and then asked me what I do. “I am an unemployed Blogger and Teacher,” I told her and she laughed. “What is a Blogger?,” she asked. “Someone who wastes a lot of time in front of a computer writing things for people that he or she will never meet,” I cynically replied. “So then why do you do it?” she asked. “Because I don’t have anything better to do, and besides it’s a good way to connect with strangers.” She looked at me curiously and then I decided to change the subject. “So you live in this tree?” “Only part-time,” she replied. “I come up here when I work and when I want to be alone. It is a good place to work because the police will never catch me and it’s a good place to be alone because I am above it all.” I looked around. There was a beautiful 360 degree view of the entire bay area. “I found this tree fort one day a few years back when I decide to climb this tree for fun.” “You mean you just happened upon it?” I asked. “Yes, I guess you could say that…although I think it was a gift from the gods.”

Dawn began to undress. “So you want to fuck?” she asked me. I was nervous and unsure what I wanted to do. She could detect this. “You don’t want to fuck, do you?” she said with sad gloating eyes. “No, I am a married man and can not fuck another woman, but I am wondering if I could see you in the nude and maybe get a hand job?” I said feeling ridiculous about my question. “A hand job, that is all,” she said surprised. “I am yet to meet a man who has climbed all the way up here for just a hand job.” “Well today’s a special day,” I said with a slightly twisted smile upon my awkward face.

She took off all of her clothes, and I took off all of mine. I lied back on her red blankets and felt the afternoon wind crawl around on my bare chest. Squirrels rummaged through the branches and quails sat on tree branches and watched the entire show for free. Dawn did a little erotic dance for me and then started to swing from a tree branch. She wanted me to masturbate as I watched her show, but I felt a bit awkward doing so. I was worried that the tree branch would snap and she would fall hundreds of feet to her death. She did flips and twirled around like a gymnast on that tree branch. “She kept yelling “rub your cock for me,” but I was hesitant. She then came over to where I lied naked on the futon and lay down next to me. I could feel the silk sweat on her petite body. She kissed my nipples and rubbed her long blonde hair along my bare chest. I looked up into the blue sky, and as I saw a large airplane make its way overhead I felt her warm comforting hand begin to caress my cock.

My semen sprayed all over the place. I was embarrassed and quickly dressed. I helped her to clean it up and was very apologetic. She smiled at me and maternally said, “you have not had sex in along time, have you?” “It has been awhile,” I replied as I rubbed the wet towel over the semen stains on her red blanket. “Does not your wife pleasure you,” she asked as she put on her red lace underwear and bra. “In ways that are not sexual,” I replied. “You have got to fix that baby or this may not be the right marriage for you.” I knew that what she was saying was true, but I did not want to get into it. Two squirrels chased each other quickly over a branch above my head as I handed Dawn the $60.00 that I owed her. I kissed her cheeks and thanked her for the wild experience. “I loved the way that you twirled from that branch,” I said and we both laughed. “I do that all day for exercise. Takes my mind of all the stress,” she replied. “On your way down make sure you step slowly and hold on tight to the wood spikes,” she said as I began my descent. Once I had made it down to the ground the feeling of anticipation I had earlier felt had turned into guilt. As I got into my old car I knew that it was now time to return to my real life. However, I could not deny the slight smile upon my face as I thought about Dawn- the prostitute who lived in a tree.

The End.

The Haunted House.

Today I saw a ghost for the first time. It scared the shit out of me. It appeared more like a shadow than a person, and went away as quickly as it appeared. I have always been apprehensive about ghosts, but after today I am convinced that there is more going on than meets the eye. I was so startled out of my mindless stupefaction, that I jumped out of my chair and ran out of the house. I urinated on my leg and kept yelling out “what the fuck was that!!” I was home alone so there was no way that I was going to return before the police arrived (I managed to calm myself enough to call on my neighbors phone). Once they arrived, I told them that I saw a life sized shadow slowly make its way across the wall. The officer asked me if I thought it was a person and I said no, it was a ghost. “How do you know?” the officer asked. “Because I felt the air go ice cold, and felt the presence of something abnormal.. something really frightening.” Both officers went into the house with their guns out, and when they returned fifteen minutes later one of the officers said to me with a shivering voice, “there is definitely no person in there, but son..that is one hunted house.” They too, left as quickly as they came, and I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon at a cafe.

The Fashion Police.

    I have not been leaving the house much lately. Without a job there is little need, and besides I have figured out that each time I step out my front door I will spend at least $10.00. Going out into the world is not cheap….in fact it is downright expensive. So I elect to stay in. I paint, write, meditate and sit around doing less than nothing. I have accomplished Pascal’s maxim which says “If man could be content sitting in a chair, alone- all the ills of human kind could have been avoided.” Perfectly put. Not only am I content sitting alone in a room doing nothing, but I am quite preoccupied. I think about things and go through the film strip which is my life. Part by part.

Just today while I was sitting in a chair in my backyard observing the various kinds of birds that were dangling around in the trees, my wife asked me if I ever had any plans of changing. “What do you mean changing?” I asked. “Your clothes,” she said very directly. “What do I need to change my clothes for?” I asked unaware that I have been wearing the same thing for the past week. “You are starting to stink,” my wife said. “What?” I was shocked. “Yes, you are starting to stink and I am finding it bothersome. I understand that you have no place that you need to be, and I have nothing against you being comfortable…but I am concerned about your hygiene,” my wife said with real concern in her voice. “You think I stink?” I asked again to make sure that what I was hearing was true. “You have been wearing those same droopy brown sweat pants for a week and that t-shirt has been on your body for as long as I can remember. What has happened, you used to be one of the nicer dressed men that I had ever met?” “What happened?” I rhetorically asked. “What happened is that I am comfortable and have no need to change.”

My wife began to squirm in front of me. She looked restless and uncomfortable. Her hands where struggling to remain still. After a moment of silence I asked, “what is it?” She stared at the ground as I continued to look at the birds in the trees. I stuck my hands under my armpits and smelled them. I checked in between my testicles to see what that smelled like. “I’ll make you a deal,” my wife said. “I will buy you dinner at any place you want tonight if you just shower and shave.” I thought about this for a moment. I have not had a lot of loose change the past few weeks and this has meant eating lots of canned foods. A good fresh meal tempted me to appease her even though I felt like she was behaving like the fashion police. “Okay… deal,” I said as my wife shook my hand and bent over and gave me a kiss. “I love you,” she said. As she was walking away I said “Do you know that Pascal said……” She turned around, gave me an awkward look and said, “I don’t want to hear about Pascal….just take a shower, so we can get something to eat.”

The Glamorous Life.

I woke up later than I should have. Lately I have been trying to get out of bed earlier than 9 a.m- but I have yet to do so. There is something very enjoyable about being asleep. I had my head beneath my pillow (to keep out the light) when I heard my wife say “It’s almost noon. You have got to get out of bed.” I stupidly asked her “why?” She left the room and then came back with a frown on her face. “You need to get out of bed! You are so irresponsible!!” Nothing perturbs me more than being called irresponsible. I pay my rent, keep food in the fridge and have money left over for superfluous things (even though I lack a job and have a handful of bills collecting dust on my desk). “What do you mean I am irresponsible?” “Oh common honey, irresponsibility is your middle name.” I could not believe she was attacking me when I was defenseless and still in bed.

I got out from bed and kept asking “how do you think I am irresponsible?” My wife would not reply until I sat down and stopped being malicious. “Okay, I am fine,” I said waiting for her response. “You are irresponsible in everything. I ask you to do this and that and you don’t do it. I asked you to pay the parking tickett which you did not and now it is double the price. The list goes on and on and I am sick and tired of it. You’re gaining weight, becoming cynical and spending your time writing some ridiculous blog, for what?” She started to pick up her things to leave, and I let her since I was terribly offended to be called “irresponsible.” I heard my wife walk out the front door and I got back into bed. Ten years ago today I was in Medical School and quickly moving toward a successful career as a Doctor. I had published a book of short stories and was being advertised as a young Writer who is in Medical School (which I never finished). I had potential. Now its past noon and I am unemployed and still in bed.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #8

What a strange life we are all stuck inside of. Some may be better at disguising the strangeness of life behind the normalcy of convention, but no one can escape from the mysteries of change and the passing of time. I am always amazed by the ways in which change and time impact my life. Just when I think that everything is becoming manageable everything falls apart. Just when I think that I am fully present in the moment- I seem to become stuck in the past. Maybe this is why people become so heavily addicted to sex. It is the one activity that defies change and time. There is a safety in sex- the safety of familiarity. In this ever changing odd world, familiarity is like raft or a life preserver. It keeps us afloat.

This morning I found myself back on Craig’s List looking at the erotic personals. My wife has gone out for the day and once again I am using my alone time to pursue sexual fantasies. I am terribly tempted by adds such as “How Many Licks Does It Take,” “Smother Your Face In A Catwax,” or “Super Sexy and DEELUSHIZ.” I am entertained by all of the possibilities that lay behind each of these adds. They are like little erotic stories waiting to be experienced. All I have to do is pick up the phone and dial. I could of never imagined that sex could be so easy.

The only problem is that I rarely ever call. I may dial quickly and then hang up when I hear a voice. Or I will ask a few questions like “so what do you do?” or “how much would it cost to get an erotic massage?” The girls are always nice and hungry for business- so conversation is never difficult. What is difficult is doing away with my guilt or shame and pretending that nothing is wrong. I have no desire to be unfaithful to my wife, and even the simplest thought that I may be betraying or deceiving her makes me feel like dirt. An object of scorn. A failure. But then again, I know that these feelings go way back before my recent obsession with the Craig’s List Erotic adds.

One of my earliest memories is of waking up in the middle of the night one summer and looking in my backyard where I could see over two dozen naked adults around a large wood hot tub, having sex in various primal positions. Steam from the hot water covered their bodies in a strange mystique and I was fascinated from the moment I saw this. My mother and father were swingers and would always host the most “active” of sex parties. They always started long after I would go to bed, but I was never quite fully asleep between the moving/gyrating floor boards above my head and the strange, languorous sex sounds that emanated from the bellies of participants in the throes of pleasure. I was always curious about these sounds because they seemed to express something about adults that I never heard expressed in words. It was almost as if all the clues about the meaning of life were hidden in these primal pleasure sounds.

As I grew older it seemed as if my parents became less interested in promiscuous sex. They had been hassled by police and even humiliated by a write up in the local press. I remember the headline read “Is Your Psychiatrist Hosting Sex Parties?” They wanted to become a normal suburban Jewish family and forget their infamous past. Occasionally they would have some friends over from the Temple and watch pornography behind closed doors but for the most part as the mid-eighties approached my home was free from the Debby-Does-Dallas clamourings of sex crazed adults. The only problem was that as my parents interest in promiscuous sex faded away mine grew stronger. By the age of thirteen I was masturbating like a mad man to my fathers dirty magazines and calling various phone sex services on a daily basis. I would stay up late at night and for hours try to unscramble a sex show on television. Often times I would manage to get a clear picture after hours of desperate unscrambling- with which I would proceed to watch with my penis in my hand until the picture scrambled out. I would make the strangest sex sounds from deep in my belly and somehow feel like I was finally acting like an adult.

My parents had no clue what was happening to their son. At my Bar Mitzvah I convinced a friend of mine to perform oral sex on me in the country club bathroom stall. When I was fifteen I remember taking the liver that my mom brought home from the butcher shop and having sex with it in the bathroom ( a friend at Sunday school told me that doing this felt like a vagina). By the time I was sixteen I had various sex crazed girlfriends (and a life sized blow up doll) and I was sneaking into strip clubs where the dancers knew me by my first name. I was so young and cute and they wanted to be the first to initiate me into a life of degeneracy. At that time in San Fransisco the strip clubs still had a seedy personality and smelled like sex and sleaze. They had a strange kind of animal luster in them that was decorated with red lights, candles and lots of hidden rooms. The strip clubs were dens of iniquity where no fantasy was too much and everything was legal. It was what I imaged the red light district in Paris at the turn of the century must of been like. Any time I could find a way out from my home and into the mire that was San Fransisco- I would do so without resistance. I would stay in the clubs until closing and at times, very special times…leave with a stripper and return to her residence. I was a young man out of control. By the age of twenty one I was unstoppable, broke and in weekly sessions with a sex therapist.

Now I have little interest in getting my penis licked by a stranger in a red lit room for sixty dollars. The Strip clubs in San Fransisco have all lost their charm. So, my final vice is these Craig’s List Erotic adds. Adds like “Suck You All Night Long,” or “Sex Kitten Wants To Purrrrr On You,” all make me feel young again. I realize that it is kind of pathetic to be spending my days caught up in the transgressive print of a seedy add. I also understand that behind the sexual lingo are broken dreams and desperate measures that are being taken to earn a buck. I am a married man, who should be spending his time learning about investments and savings accounts. Adult matters. Instead my head is still rapped around the pleasure or obsessions of my youth. It is familiar. A habit that keeps me from feeling the gravity of what my life has become. Rather it keeps me distracted- so I can not notice all the change that is happening around me, all the time that is passing away.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #7

I have decided to make a long pilgrimage to Tibet. This week has been a road paved with all kinds of sharp hurtles and treacherous turns. I made the best decisions that I seem to know how to make but still the lines have been blurred. I am baffled by my life and unclear about the directions that I am heading in. I am a married man with little to show for my successes other than a book shelf filled with half read books. My sex life has turned clinically dysfunctional and I see no end in site. The love I have for my wife is greater than all the water in the world, yet my simple ability to make love to her is as remote from my mind as mechanics. Deep down in my bones, I am feeling an immense urge to find a way to get to Tibet.

I don’t know when or where I will get the money to go on this pilgrimage…but fear and worry are not the point of a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a coming home to the land of your dreams- and dreams are more real than the plans of our brain, provided they are dreams that mirror the deepest yearnings of our soul, the very center of our being.

I want to travel to the land of turquoise lakes and golden hills under flowering shrubs in an unknown oasis- and sit by a campfire with a little wise man who is the mere image of the Buddha and hear him say to me:

“Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom a dream.”

I will sit in silent meditation far away from the temptations of sexual activity or the negative influence of the Craig’s List erotic adds. The harmony of my mind will return to me uncontaminated by lust and guilt. For the first time in years I will feel holly because I would have freed myself from the bondage of perversion. No more blonds licking their breasts and offering me their tongues, or brunettes with their legs spread wide open enticing my genitalia to grow so stimulated that I can barely contain my self. I will be a free man!

In my minds eye I have the whole pilgrimage planned out. It is all quite simple and I plan to spend six months away. I will journey from the upper Nyang Valley down to Nyang-to-Kyi-Phug where there is a place called Kyi-phug, “the happy cave.” One can make a reservation to stay in the cave for up to ten years. The cave is sectioned off into various living quarters where meditators spend the entire day and night in meditation. Each cave dwelling is locked from the outside and there is only a small shelf in the bottom of the door where food is slipped in. The food is all high quality vegan food and the rates are decent. For $220 American dollars I can choose to be confined to a cave for a period of six months with two meals a day and a weekly maid.

My wife is terribly unhappy with my decision. She does not understand the strength of purpose that is buried behind my intention. I need to do this. Not only for my own spiritual enlightenment but also for the well being of our marriage and future family. “But what will you do for six months pent up in a cave?” she asked me. I wanted to tell her that I would not be out searching the Tenderloin at 3 a.m. for sexual interactions or spending my day surfing the Craig’s List erotic adds but instead I told her that I would work on becoming a holly man. Not only would I be celibate but I would also be committed to cultivating the highest virtue through the practice Vipassana meditation and renunciation. My health would return and I could create self- confidence, something I have been missing for a long time. As I told my wife all of this she seemed very apprehensive.

I am uncertain exactly when this pilgrimage will commence. I think the summer would be a good time, but I am hesitant because in summer where I live women are scantily dressed and I enjoy watching from the the sidelines as these women make their way around. I know that there is always sacrifice involved in great transformations- but I am rather unwilling to sacrifice my summer. Maybe I will leave in August. This way I can have a partial summer before taking off to become holly. Whatever the case may be I am committed to the process of my enlightenment. It is time for me to turn inward and try to understand the deeper reasons and behaviors behind the sex life of a man without one.

Xenodochium?

The rain. The rain. It has been coming down relentlessly for days. Their is also a strong wind that blows over plants and creates a haunting sound in the trees. I sit on my bed watching nature play out its stormy dance in my back yard. I have not worked for months and am at a loss when I try to figure out what to do with my day. Normally, I come up empty and return to the thick blankets of my bed and beckon sleep to come upon me one more time.

This morning I got out of bed late. Last night I could not sleep. I ate eggs for breakfast and sat in front of the rain filled window watching wind blow violently against the ground. This latest storm has been like no storm I have seen in California for some time. I took a long shower and washed away my worries with cinnamon soap. My home is freezing cold and wind chimes refused to be silenced by the storm.

There was a knock at my door. “Excuse me sir but I have a favor to ask you.” Before me was a middle aged man with gray hair who was dressed in a black suit that was soaking wet. He had no umbrella nor did he seem to mind his current condition. “What is it?” I asked wanting to be of help. I noticed that his eyes were excessively blinking and he was having some difficulty getting his left check to relax. “I need to ask if you have ever heard of a cure for Xenodochium?” I was confused and asked him to repeat himself. “Xenodochium?” I had never heard of this, I told him. “We’ll, let me tell you, it is my cross to bear my constant affliction. It is with me at all times. never goes away.” “I am sorry to hear this,” I said and asked him if there was anything else I could do for him. The wind was getting hostile and the rain was blowing onto me and getting the inside of my home wet. I tried to shut the door.

“Xenodochium, is caused by a fear of sleep. Why do I fear sleep? I used to love sleep, but over time I have become terrified to fall asleep,” he said holding out his hand to prevent me from shutting the door. “It is an unpleasant disorder that causes my eyes to constantly blink- with my eyes always blinking I can never get to sleep. It keeps me in the dark- condemns me to a fate of lonely sleeplessness. You are looking at a man in hell.” He said wiping away water from his face. “I am very sorry sir, but I am trying to understand what you need from me?” I said a little frustrated by this sudden invasion of my space. “I need for you to understand sir,” he then said. “I need you and all your neighbors to understand how alone I am.” HOW WAS I TO RESPOND TO THIS? What could I do but offer him proof that I understood so that he would go away.

He finally did go away, but under quit unpleasant pretexts. “You will never understand because you care only for what is yours. You don’t know what it means to live in a constant state of wakefulness because you have never had to. I will see to it that one day you all understand,” he said with a tone of indignation and then walked off into the storm. Later this afternoon I saw him making his way through the trees and rain in my back yard. He was now wearing a long black coat and smoking a cigarette. He is probably sitting someplace down by the river behind my home. I have called the police to come investigate further.

On Radiohead.

I normally abstain from doing any kind of review on this blog. I mean who am I to give out my opinions on other peoples creations. But today has been filled with guilt and rain and the beautifully experimental sounds of Radiohead’s new album IN/RAINBOWS- got me through the lugubrious day. I listen to all sorts of music, but within this album are some of the most sublime and intelligently erotic/sensual sounds I have ever heard. It is an epic record that accentuates everything the band has ever done together into a cohesive album that is not only mature but also highly skilled. It is a record of complex music weaved together into what I would call a conceptual work of art. Only the concept is difficult to decipher (it may not even exist) but someplace deep down after a few listens to the album you feel it, right under your soul.

I began my painting career a few years back while listening to Kid A. The sounds brought forth images that I never had dreamed of creating. Radiohead has always been able to unleash my introverted imagination with the orchestration of particular sounds that act as a catalyst for creative explosions. Each time my imagination seems to thaw I listen to Radiohead and am amazed by the work I produce by the end of a day. With IN/RAINBOWS the degree of creativity that is able to flow forth from listening to this amazingly beautiful album is just as strong as when I first listened to Kid A. The new album is multi layered and built as a collage with so many heterogeneous sound images that one is intellectually, emotionally and physically in a state close to rapture while listening to this masterpiece. IN/RAINBOWS is reminiscent of some of Brian Eno’s Ambiet work combined with the experimental sounds of Faust or Can’s more melodic/bucolic sounds. I am terribly grateful for this new album and I recommend it to anyone who is need of a soul revival to plug into IN/RAINBOWS. You can also watch a new film that the band has released at, You Tube . Enjoy.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #6

Boredom has been tugging at me like a strange ache which refuses to let go. The days have been filled with a sharp cold and my will has dissolved into a kind of lazy melancholy. If you would of asked me a year ago- I would have told you that there was no way I could suffer from boredom. I would have told you that people who are bored lack true wonder for life and that I am fully occupied in my life just sitting by a window and watching the clouds drift by. Boredom had no grasp upon me then, but now a year later it is threatening to put its nappy little hands around my neck- and cut off the air supply.

It is my belief that boredom causes men and woman to do certain things that normally we may not do. We want to feel alive again, and are desperate for anything that will make us feel this way. So I did what I do best, I called a very attractive escort and told her to meet me at my parents house. It was time for me to take a small vacation.

My parents were out of town for a few more days and they lived in a rather decadent home not to far from where I am struggling to live. The add that I responded to on the Internet said “XXX Erotic Massage By Young Nympho….p.s. no full service.” This was perfect for me since I was uninterested in the sex part but wanted some small element of a sexual encounter. I was basically horny and wanted to see a young beautiful woman in the nude. If I could get her to take a shower and let me watch, even better. I had been stuck in a world lately that was heavy in disappointment and failure. After getting sick I was plagued by the what am I doing with my life? syndrome. This ridiculous blog that I keep repelled me like blue cheese and I was in need of an erotic holiday.

I arrived at my parents home with enough time to get the place comfortable and looking like it belonged to me. I took down a lot of the pictures and changed into my fathers silk bathrobe. Then directly at ten p.m. she promptly rang the doorbell. I was shaking a bit because of the anxiety that always seems to overpower me when I am about to do something that maybe I should not be doing. What life is worth living if you are not constantly breaking the boundaries that you have set up around yourself? I opened the door and before me was one of the most beautiful women I had ever beheld with my eyes.

“Wow, what a beautiful home!!” she said with her hands over her mouth, making her way through the marble and mirror filled entry way. I took her long blue coat from her, under which she was wearing a one piece very tight fitted blue dress that stopped right beneath her butt. She took off her heels and allowed her long brown hair to fall down by her shoulders. “So this is your house,” she asked. I nodded my head in the affirmative. “Wow, you must make a lot of money?” “I have my days,” I said knowing full well that I only had less than a thousand dollars left in my bank account. I showed her into the sitting room where I had lit a fire and had a glass of vintage port waiting for her. “Oh thank you but I do not drink, I am allergic.” I could relate I told her because it seems like lately whenever I drink I get palpitations and chest pains for the entire night. “Ouch,” she said.

“So what do you got on your mind?” she asked me curiously. “What do you mean,” I said surprised by her question.” “You know, what do you want me to do for you?” she said crossing her legs and letting me notice that she was not wearing underwear. I always felt uncomfortable about this question because I was afraid that my reply may make the women feel as if I could be a pervert. You see, most men want to have sex- but I just like seeing the girls naked and maybe orgasming by my own hand. When I tried to explain this to the escort, whose name was Rain, she could not of been more willing. And she suggested that I take a shower with her to get comfortable.

The hour we spent together could not have gone away quicker. We showered together and then I watched her petite yet substantive body dance around my parents bedroom and mimic acts of orgasmic bliss upon their bed. She at one point even did a head stand while playing with herself, followed by a back flip right into my lap. I was like a kid in a candy store and there was no trace of my boredom to be found.

A few days later my parents returned. This morning I received a phone call from my mother who was in a very frantic state. “I think your father is having an affair. After all I have done for him, the ungrateful son of a bitch is having his way with younger slutty girls!!” I tried to interject. “Mom…mom, what happened….calm down and tell me what happened?” Once she was able to calm her fury she told me that some strange women by the name of Rain had just come to the house and told her that she was here the other night and left a very valuable earing in the bathroom. My stomach dropped. “She was not older than twenty five and I know your father likes them petite brunettes with poppy personalities, and all this after we took that wonderful vacation together in India and shared so much love together.” My mother was now in tears.

I did what I could. I told my mother not to worry, that my father would never do anything to intentionally hurt her. “Oh I know he would that son of a bitch,” she kept responding. I was unable to confess my crime for sheer embarrassment of telling my mother that I had called a prostitute over to their home. The guilt of admitting this to my mom is too great. So now my father is sleeping in a motel, furious about the false accusations that are being leveled against him, and I am sitting here at home, uncertain what to do next.

There Goes My Karma.

I awoke this morning, and it was freezing cold in my bedroom- in my bones. I looked over at my wife, still asleep, pale as a ghost and almost frozen. I could see small particles of air coming from her mouth, via small puffs of steam. I heard a few cracks as I moved my heavy legs upon the ice laden hardwood floor and then allowed my upper body to follow despite its unwillingness. This morning I had planned on awakening before nine. I was going to do some early morning writing and possibly go for a walk. I have had ideas about the advantages of waking early but seemed incapable of bringing these intagible ideas into an active form. The cold withdrew all determination from my motivation. It was now almost noon, and I was still unwilling to rise.

I immediately walked into the kitchen which was colder than the inside of an ice cube. I turned all the gas burners on high and the oven on to 450 degrees. This always heated the kitchen up in no time but left my wife aggravated at my wastefulness. “Who cares about the cost, we are going to die of frost bite!” I would rage as she would complain about the technique I was employing to heat our home. “Why don’t you use the heater,” she always asks me frustrated by my unwillingness to adhere to her way of doing things. “That heater is over fifty years of age. Every time I use it I not only feel ill but it damages the air quality in our home and gives of all kinds of toxins like formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, PCP’s and who knows what else. The landlord has not cleaned the heater…ever.” My wife would always sigh at what she called my hypochondriacal fits and say “why worry so much, the heat is fine and not going to hurt you.” “That’s not true, it’s dangerous!!” but she could never understand.

So the battle in our home has not only become a battle to stay warm but it has also become a constant struggle to find efficient and healthy ways to stay warm. This struggle has resulted in long stretches of my wife and I not talking to one another and freezing cold temperatures in our “California” home.

“This cold is not only going to slow our circulation to various vital organs in our body but it will effect our immune systems and make us much more susceptible to respiratory infections and various viruses,” I said to my wife in a fit of desperation last evening. She was sitting on the couch dressed in a parka and a heavy wool coat with a hood over her head. On her feet were thick wool boots and on her hands were sheep’s skin and leather gloves. If one didn’t know better you would think we where living in the North Pole. She looked up at me with a sardonic smile and said, “come on honey, this is fun…it’s like having a real winter and you are always complaining about how we never get real winters in California” I could not take it anymore, my wifes apathy or the freezing cold, “This is fucking ridiculous no one seems to care that we are fucking freezing to death!!”

Today in my mail I found a gas bill- $325.00. On my mailbox someone put a sticker that said KARMA. I knew not what to feel, so I screamed out “This is fucking ridiculous. You either freeze to death or you go broke in America!!” A few people across the street looked at me and before I stopped my public pontifications I said “It’s fucking freezing out!!” I peeled the sticker off the mailbox and stomped back into my house suddenly filled with fury. I turned on all the gas burners on the stove and put the oven on full blast. My wife returned back into the kitchen looking at me as if I could possibly be a threat to her safety. “Why are you turning this all back on?” she asked me. “We just received a gas bill for $325.00 from the gas company. No breaks for freezing cold weather just an opportunity for them to make money off of our suffering. I will not have it. I will not pay their bill and I will use the gas…this is the American way!!” I felt like I was making no sense at all.

“Go sit in the front room and turn on the heater!!” my wife said frustrated but not yet in a state of rage. I stood my ground holding my hands out over the gas burners. Then she yelled “get your skinny ass out of the kitchen!!!!” When a man is cold, the will to fight is absent in his bones. I took the KARMA sticker out of my pocket and stuck it in the flame. With KARMA on fire I threw it in the sink and said “there goes my KARMA……” I then walked into the front room which was colder than our refrigerator. I turned on the fifty year old heater and sat on the couch. I thought about having a shot of whiskey but it was only 2 p.m. I heard my wife shutting everything off in the kitchen and all I could think was it was going to be a long winter. It was only January 1st.

A New Years Scare.

This year for New Years Eve I sat at home sucking on cherry flavored cough drops, sipping red wine and keeping my feet raise above my head so that the hardened mucos in my sinus passages would run. I lit a fire which would only remain alive for under an hour because of a strange unwillingness to go into the new year with all its heat (I later learned that the wood was soggy). Some time during the evening I took a bath which turned cold quicker than I had remebered it doing so before and I watched the stars in the sky mutate into shapes and images that seemed to be revealing themselves to me in code.

How long can a grown man rest with his long legs raised above his head with a glass of red wine in his hands? Where there is a will there is a way. I was determined to loosen-up the up-tight mucus lodged deep in my head. I had a need for clarity before the old year became the new one.

I took off my socks and took many deep breaths. I swallowed various Golden Gan Ling Formula Chinese herbs and continued to suck on cherry cough drops. I ate a few Fig Newmans and decided to cut my finger nials which seemed to grow quicker than mold. My imagination was restless and I decided to dress my restlessness with mental pictures of optimistic revelations. I worried myself into drinking too much.

The wine bottle was empty and my feet still raised high above my head. I was unwilling to sleep but with the cough drop still in my mouth, and a wine glass with a pinch of red wine still fermenting- I was having difficulty maintaining open eyes. The new year was still a few hours yet away, and I seemed to be already at the end of my day. Sleep had the upper hand. I chased the cat from the room, took a deep breath filled with the smoke smoldering limp log and released my feet to the ground as my consciousness went away until this year.

The End.

$For What It Is Worth$

For what it is worth, is it all worth anything at all? This is a thought that kept recurring in my feverish mind as I spent the past three days lying supine on a mattress dampened by perspiration, sick with the worst flu I am yet to encounter in my thirty six- years of life. I was incapable of walking five feet without feeling as if I had run six laps around a track and food was as unwilling to be digested by my stomach as George Bush is willing to let the world live in peace.

The sickness overcame me like a wave overcomes a surfer. Only this wave did not release me for three days. I was shopping at Whole Foods for some organic produce and other health giving nutrients. I noticed a healing tea that advertised itself as Immune Building. My wife had been coughing for the past week like a cat with a ball of dust stuck in its throat. I was feeling good but decided to purchase the tea, not only to build upon my already healthy immunity- but to share with my wife and hurry her recovery.

My wife was lying upon the couch when I arrived home. I could feel the house shaking from her whooping cough which refused to halt day or night. I put the grocery bags down and immediately made us a pot of the healing tea with the hope that it would bring forth not only what was advertised on the package (longevity, freedom from seasonal sickness, increased vitality and calm) but also- silence my wife’s cough.

I woke up in the middle of the night stricken with something that I knew would not let go of me without a fierce fight. In fact as the weighty hand of the clock moved forward in time leaving behind the decent health that I had previously enjoyed, I realized that this was going to be a fight I could not win. I could only surrender my ego’s need to survive and hope that my will to live would provide my physical body with the needed sustenance to prevail through the fierce waves of the coming storm.

It was Thoreau who said, the cost of something is the amount of life that you are willing to exchange in order to have that thing. While confined to a small bed the following day I was coherent enough to contemplate the deeper aspects of various superficial preoccupations that had been concerning me in my life- prior to becoming ill. I had concern for various material items that dominated such a large part of my consciousness. My car, finding a nicer apartment, getting a new laptop, buying newer pants, and making more money so that I could some how be free from the fear of not having money. All of these things were in my mind at any moment during the day. But what is interesting is that as soon as I became ill they all lost ANY value and ALL importance to me. They were no more important than the trash in my kitchen. The one thing that had any value was life.

We live in a society that is set up to rob us of life by convincing us that these things we need will give us life. But for what it is worth, are these things worth anything at all? They are a fiction, tomorrows trash, illusions of a life partially lived. They are symbols of a life that has been exchanged- in order to have “that thing $$$$$” which eventually is no thing at all. Sick and close to death upon my small bed, isolated from the quiet sanctity of wellness that I had felt just the day before all I could think about was whether or not I was able to leave all the relationships that I had in my life in good faith. Was I able to make people happy and did I allow others to feel as if they had contributed to my well being? This was the only thing that mattered to me.

I remember my grandfather telling me on his death bed that the only thing that matters in life is dying with the feeling that you have loved the best you can. Man needs time, he needs time, my grandpa would always say. I never understood until a few days ago when I was lying in my small bed with 1o3.6 fever. We need the time to learn how to value the time which is our life. The precious moments which are weaved together and create our day to day reality. I was spending my time over valuing my worries, my lusts and and all the other material things that I am made to believe I think I need. In return what I lose- is the time to value the people that I love.

I was not ready to die. I still needed to be able to tell my sister that I loved her with confidence. I needed to be able to share the deep love that I have for my wife with her. And on and on….My relationships were not at the level of a legacy that I wanted to leave behind. I still had work to do. On the second day of my illness I slowly said to my wife with winded breath, it is amazing to me how unimportant all of my regular preoccupations are to me right now. They are not even unimportant, they are meaningless. I just want to focus upon what really matters- relationships (how you are remembered). I then slept for the next day and a half.