Josh Writes a Blog

Author: zornog

  • 083: martha

    there’s a gun, in the cabinet. an old hunting rifle. taylor, don’t look at me like that. you know what i need now. i need to be put down. it’s a bolt action rifle so you just insert the clip below and use the bolt to load the bullet into the chamber. there’s eight rounds so go outside and fire a couple of shots to get the recoil down. it’s gonna kick back hard in your shoulder. don’t lean back expecting the recoil, get your feet down and sturdy and brace yourself forward. go put a can on that picnic table fifty feet out and try to hit it in three shots. if you can do it, come in. if not, shoot two more times. one shot in the head ought to do it, but i need you to be accurate. but if you miss, you’ll need a second shot.

    taylor, go outside and shoot. my vision’s starting to get fuzzy and i don’t know how much longer i’ll last. i don’t know a lot about this world but i do know that i don’t want to be a zombie. i’m not going to wake up one and i don’t care if you have to saw my fucking head off to keep it from happening. i’d rather you do it quick with a bullet in the brain. hell, why do you even need to step away from me? my brain is … acting … fuzzy. just put the barrel against my forehead. what am i thinking. taylor go into the cabinet, load up the gun and blow my brains out. my whole body is on fire right now, am i sweating? just get the gun, taylor, please, get the gun. don’t let me become one of those things, okay? go get the fucking gun, you pacifist piece of shit, you’re not a baby in a crib, you’re in the real world and you’ve seen what those things do to people. i will do that to you if you don’t kill me. so get the gun!

    alright. it’s loaded already. good. just, come here, you’ll have to stand to do it, i’d get up but my legs are tired, they’re … not wanting to work. keeping the butt notched in your shoulder like that means you won’t be able to stick the barrel in my head, you’ll have to be a little distance away but not much. you should be fine. just … there, keep your elbow up, it’ll help. now sight down that little metal tab at the end of the gun. this is stuff they secretly teach you in movies, you know. you remember that movie you liked when you were a kid? three kings? you always loved war movies as a kid, so funny because now you’re a damn pansy. and after all that boyhood aggression left, what remained was three kings. great movie. i used to watch that movie from the reflection in your big eyes, sitting in that rocking chair, just watching you and knitting. i love you taylor. this is a big world now, a big scary world, and in order to survive you’ll have to adapt and be strong. you can’t be a pacifist anymore. you have to take charge. just shoot. just pretend my head is a target and shoot. you’ve got this baby, you’ve got this, just–

  • 082: martin

    i wish i could explain to you why i relapsed. wish there were words in the english language to explain it, or any language. see, you look in an addict’s eyes and see sadness but when i look in them, i recognize it, that, that spark, whatever it is, that little part of our brains that bypasses all reason and is just looking for the drug. we call it addiction, because we can’t find a better reason. but there is one, and all of us junkies are connected like a conduit, and whenever we see one another, we know. we know how bad it’s been since the last time we saw you, we know if you’ve relapsed, we know if you’ve relapsed bad, and we know if you’ve relapsed but haven’t told your sponsor or your family. it’s there, all laid bare, whether you like it or now.

    that’s why you, sally, are such an enigma to me. every time i see you i can’t get over how perfect you are. and it’s not just the makeup, or the perfect fashion sense, it’s … i can’t see anything in your eyes except you, except … a good life? i don’t know, i don’t know what it is, i mean that in a good way, sally. you came from good stock and it shows. but when you see me here like this, pumped full of methadone, and i look at you, i can tell you don’t understand what’s going on. and i can’t explain it to you, no matter how hard i try. i just need it, and sometimes when i don’t have it i’m fine, and other times … i’m not. i wish i could explain it, sally. you’ll just have to trust me when i say: it’s a bitch.

  • 081: lori

    i found a thousand nickels on the ground. give or take. maybe a bag fell out of a nickel truck? i dunno. they were in the grass so after i scooped the big mound of ’em off and put them an old radio flyer wagon i’ve had since i was a kid. scooped ’em all in there and then started picking the ones out of the grass, farther away. once i had them all i started counting them but i got bored after 800. i guess there’s a thousand of ’em. then i took the wagon down to the bank by my house and they had a big fancy machine that could count them all. it sounded like a dishwasher when i loaded it up, which was funny. took like ten minutes, everyone at the bank was staring at me. it was weird. then it was done and i only made fifty bucks! i spent all that time hauling a heavy wagon full of nickels to the bank and i only made fifty bucks. the coin machine printed out a ticket and i had to give it to the banker, and he said, “only fifty bucks, huh?” and i said “yeah! that’s stupid.” then he asked if i have a bank account and i said no and then he asked if i wanted one and i said no but then he said that he would have to charge me a fee if i didn’t have an account with them! like five dollars! so i got a bank account. now i have a bank account. it’s a savings account, it saves my money until i really need it. but since it’s only fifty bucks, i don’t think i’ll need it any time soon. long story short: if you see a thousand nickels on the ground, don’t pick it up.

  • 080

    so let me explain this dream to you. you can fold the laundry while i tell you. i know dreams are boring to other people but listen: i was trying to climb out of fidel castro’s beard. like, i was trapped in the hair, and every time i tried to get out he would inhale and i would be jerked back, like i was going to fly into his nose. meanwhile a dog was riding an orca through his hair. i think it’s a metaphor for cuban immigrants entering america? this dog had aviator glasses and a scarf–he looked like snoopy, like a real life snoopy, when he is that world war i flying ace. and he’s just sitting on this orca, uh, uh, killer whale–okay you know what an orca is, just checking, anyway, he’s sitting and the thing’s bobbing up and below the beard hair. the dog is barking but it’s morse code and he’s saying “i’ve got a banana sandwich” in morse code. i mean, i knew he was saying that but i don’t know if the morse code he was barking was that exact sentence. you know what i mean?

    then my grandma shows up, she’s wearing a ballerina outfit with a tutu and she’s like ballet moving on the points of her toes, on the top of the beard. like a jesus-walking-on-water kind of thing. she comes over to me and extends her hand and i’m about to grab it when fidel sneezes. suddenly we’re all thrown from the beard and we’re tumbling through the air and as we’re falling i see the ground is nothing but spikes, and we’re heading toward it so fast. i wake up just when we hit, and i guess i kind of bounce in my bed when i hit because of my muscles tensing or something, because the bounce is so huge that i literally bounce myself off my bed and onto the floor, which, i shit you not, was covered in lego pieces. i know what you’re thinking: what is a grown single man doing with lego pieces on the ground–the answer is that i love legos, fuck you. but i went from falling in my dream to falling in real life, on a pit of lego spikes.

    i still don’t know what it means. do you still have that dream dictionary your aunt gave your for christmas? i wonder if it has anything about fidel castro in it. let’s go check.

  • 079: josh, drunk

    2015 was a good year that turned into a difficult year, but was always kind of a difficult year in a way. i’m still debating if it ended up better or worse than 2014; i think, ultimately, it was better, just more difficult. i continue to be amazed and exasperated at how much i learn about myself, what i want and what i don’t want. you’d think after 32 years i’d know what i want. but i don’t sometimes, and it’s frustrating, and in trying to find what i want, i make sacrifices that might have been mistakes, and watch the sunnier days from the comfort of my bedroom window, as i lament in text on a computer screen. i learned a lot this year and yet was still the same old doofus. i learned that i like video games, like i really like them, and that i shouldn’t beat myself up for liking them. i learned to leave at the right time instead of too late, and to encourage others to do the same. i learned that my downfall in relationships is to always assume there is someone better out there for the other person. i learned that your best friends are the ones who are there even when you’ve been hiding in darkness for months. i also learned, well, i’ve known now for a while, that whatever longing feeling gnawing at my insides refuses to go away, dooming me to continually search for it instead of enjoying what i have right in front of me. i am a sisyphus of emotion sometimes.

    i also learned that i share more when I’m drunk. what can i say, these two scottish ales i drank are strong. the point is, i’ve never been one to settle on a happy ending, because a happy ending implies that everything’s been figured out, when really, nothing is figured out. every year raises more questions than the one before. every year brings its own difficulty. every year wants you to be the best you can be. i don’t even know. here’s to 2016 and to being the best you can be.

  • 078: kalros the warlock (d&d)

    i first heard the whispers when i was young, too young to understand them. i lived with my aunt in the town of whitehaven, in a small house barely bigger than a shack. i slept on a straw-filled mattress on the living room floor while my aunt slept in the kitchen. she never told me what happened to my parents, and i never decided to ask. but as a young boy i remember running through the muddy streets, bypassing carriages and commoners as i searched for the source of these voices, who, over the years, became increasingly more clear. the voices would ask me to do many things, but since there were so many of them, all asking for something different, it became impossible to do anything for any of them. i spent many years as a young adult hiding in my ramshackle home, unable to move, listen, or speak, succumbing to the cacophony of voices pounding in my skull.

    my aunt, worried my affliction was due to devilry in whitehaven, hired a squirrely man to take us and our things to the nearby city of tunstall, an enormous walled city in the middle of the cordellian steppe. in the city we found anonymity the likes of which i had never seen before. i knew no one and no one knew me, and during the day the city was bustling with people. the noise was comforting and often i would wander around in the marketplace to drown out the voices in my head with the voices of real flesh and blood around me. my aunt set up a small patch of farmland right outside the gates and married a particularly well off tailor, and so much of my day was spent selling our excess produce and convincing young noblemen to utilize my step-uncle’s services. this meant parading through the streets wearing the most fashionable clothes. i was, essentially, a pauper in a prince’s clothing, working tirelessly to impress the local nobility by affecting my own.

    eventually it worked, and as the lord of blah blah blah began getting his suits tailored by my step-uncle, the money started pouring in. in two years, from age thirteen to fifteen, i went from eating turnip stew most days of the week to dining nearly every night with another member of the aristocracy. as i mingled with nobility, i found the voices had all but disappeared … except for one. a low, powerful rumbling voice that caught me unawares as i slept, or slowly entered my thoughts as i walked the streets. unlike the other voices, it was commanding, confident, smooth and seductive. and also unlike the other voices, it did not tell me what to do. instead, it told me what i could become if only i gave myself over to it.

    on my sixteenth birthday, after a feast and a long night of drinking and cavorting, i laid in bed, the voice speaking to me, telling me about where it was hidden and how desperately it needed to be free, to fix the world that was rotting from the core outward. all of this was very appealing to me, and still is. i asked it if it had a name. it said it would tell me its name only if i agree to aid it for the rest of my life. i agreed. it said its name was “blargorth,” and upon hearing that word, i felt a shiver go down my spine, and a sensation i can only describe as a cracking open of my mind, allowing so many thoughts, visions, and magical incantations into my head, burned there for eternity. i felt a wholeness i had never felt before, and a calm contentment that i now find myself seeking again and again. for blargorth does not speak to me like he used to. instead, i am a vessel for him. this power is tremendous, but it also has left my mind voiceless save for my own, which has become a troubling thing. i am used to the cacophony, and this new silence has been deafening in its own way.

    because of this i am searching for him, and believe his whereabouts to be deep below god’s eye, in the caverns of the churning depths. thus, i am here on a mission, a criminal of purpose. i … would rather not speak of the crimes i have committed to get here, unless you really want to know, and there is plenty of ale to drink. but that is why i am here.

  • 077

    every trip is the same. it should be distilled into two or three days, really. even five days is more time than i need. because at first it’s cheerful, pleasant, meeting with family and friends, but after a couple of days of this, i am reminded acutely of how little i belong in this city anymore. i have no desire to seek out the old haunts. my friends, no matter how much i love and cherish them, are still generally doing the same things they always do. it’s nice but i’m different, which makes things difficult. i look at myself in the mirror in my parents home and wonder if i really even belong here anymore, or if my new home has taken me over, molding me into a new man. my thirties have started there, and likely will end there. i grew up and learned everything i need to know in southwest idaho, and now i am using those skills in portland, oregon. i am seeking my future there, and with every trip back home i am pushed back into the past. the past is good but the pull is not coming from that direction. i don’t really wish to relive my past, i wish to explore my future. i’ve visited the old house half a dozen times now. i’ve walked through paul’s grocery, i’ve seen the high school, wandered the boise state campus, talked to my old professors. people in boise live there because it’s comfortable, because they have roots there deeper than can be dug up. my roots i ripped out before they grew too deep and thick. now i have new roots. and that’s fine. but now, as i wait in the airport for my flight to arrive, to take me back to the present, i find myself simultaneously happy and sad, filled with love for my family and friends here, and sad and despondent that i can no longer be a part of it. this is why it’s hard to come back. but i do. i always do. and i always will.

  • 076: ethan

    is anyone in this fucking group going to acknowledge that we’re all lying to ourselves and to each other? every week we come in here with these stories and these promises about how we’re going to change our ways, and every week we come back with sunken eyes, gaunt cheekbones, and track marks. this isn’t an NA meeting, it’s a death cult. it’s twenty people who use this time to escape the inevitable. we’re all dying, we’re all fucking dying, we’re scratching our meth-addled faces, we’re shaking as we wait to be let out so we can get another fix … it’s a waste of time. we might as well just go now. even these fucking cigarettes are killing us. this is a room full of people who know they’re a waste to society and would rather ride the ticking timebomb among their peers than function in the real world. and i’m with you, 100% of the way. last night i got high. the week before i got high. if that 30 day chip was legit currency i would spend it on meth right now, no questions asked. because while we’re a family here, we’re not a family out there, out in the wild, and there’s a million things out there that want us to use, to get high, to die like sick animals in back alleyways while vulture people swoop down and use our death to make themselves look better. i don’t know how to change that. i guess that’s why i’m here, because i’m hoping one of us does.

  • 075: laverne

    fuck you, you grandiose piece of shit. don’t you come into my house spouting your nonsense. i took care of you, i raised you, i gave you a home and food on your plate and you repay me with this? all this … bullshit, this sense of importance, the suit and the sunglasses, the fucking … alligator leather shoes. and yet you come here expecting more, wanting more, from me, from this family. well you can’t leave and then drop by whenever you feel like you need a hug, you got it? you’ve already got your life out there in hollywood or wherever the fuck you live. you’ve got your groupies and your sense of entitlement all wrapped up in a nice pink ribbon, don’t you. think you could kick some of that our way maybe? i work two jobs to provide for this family. i work hard and i worked hard to raise you too. the least you could do is give me some goddamn money. i know you’re worried about me but i’m telling you i need that money for this house and these children, okay? all that stuff in the past … it’s gone. i’m clean, i’ve been clean for six months, i’ll go find the token if you want to see it. call my sponsor, i don’t give a shit. i’m clean and you’re still an asshole, now it’s your turn to turn your life around. the rest of us need it. desperately.

  • 074: goose

    what did i get for christmas? well, i got two spindles, a barometer, twelve paper clips from three different countries, a teddy bear made out of leather (very weird), four wooden dowels, gonorrhea, a basket, metal throwing stars, not sure how many, three empty bags for ice, a driver’s license for an arabian woman named rashid, lingerie clearly not for me, a doctor’s note excusing me for being flatulent in class, a dog bathed in turpentine, oh and the car, i got a car, not a new one but an old 1977 ford pinto, a lemon, some surgical scrubs engraved with a porn studio’s logo on the back and also weirdly enough on the crotch of the pants, a board game called “don’t touch daddy in the shower”–looks homemade–four egg shells impeccably cut in the middle, and i guess the whites and yolks of those eggs in a small mason jar. i think that’s it–no wait i got a bag of coins, like a huge fucking bag of coins, and thirty-six gummy bears, six of each flavor. and a watch. oh two watches, a rolex and a watch whose hands are made out of bacon. not, i mean, real bacon, it’s kind of gross. but i think that’s it, besides the fur cologne and the bearskin toilet seat cover, where the bear head is just the top of the toilet lid, if that makes any sense. it’s kind of impossible to lift the lid at this point. kind of a pointless gift. anyway, that was my christmas, how was yours?