Category: writing

i just want you to know that i have serious impostor syndrome issues with this relationship. i’m waiting for the moment when you realize i’m a sham. you wake up one morning and see me there snoring loudly with my dumpy body and my stupid face and you’re just like, “damn, holy shit, this guy is a turd,” and you get up and leave. i’m waiting for that. because if there’s one thing that modern day feminism has slowly taught me, it’s that men are expendable. they are! they really are. this is classically the case with males of the species, with a few exceptions. peacocks. i’m thinking of peacocks. but otherwise, men, eaten, die, go off to battle, whatever … we’re all drones. it’s why we all dress the same and don’t care about fashion. we’re drones! we are here to procreate and then die. my point being that when you’re a woman in a field of drones, who do you pick? a drone? or do you find a nice man who rises above that? you’ll probably say the latter, right? but what if, all along, i was pretending to be something special, when in reality i’ve been a drone all along? that’s what i’m worried about. i’m worried that i hyped myself into something but in reality i’m just a dumb drone.

i took the bus out to the new apartment. i’m moving 100 blocks east of where i currently live. everyone around me is surprised, but, i think i want this. the ability to have my own apartment has intrigued me since i could live on my own, but it’s always been a pipe dream, due to finances or lack of transportation or other issues. my own fear of being able to afford to live. there’s something empowering about living in a city where a large chunk of people are living in tents or on the street. it really makes you appreciate what you have and realize what you can get. there are so many people in portland who sleep on sidewalks and have tremendous issues with drugs, people who are careening toward, or have surpassed, a point of no return, between self-reliance and self-destruction. it’s not necessarily that they’ve given up, it’s that they live in a society which, for the most part, ignores them, and as for portland, doesn’t have the resources to help them. and in a way, what’s there to help? what is the point in helping someone who is a late-stage alcoholic? how do you get them better? do they even want to get better? what do these things mean to people, and how do we better their lives? it’s sad to think of a human life as something that’s only important when it benefits society as a whole, but on the other hand, despite our massive brains and our advanced intelligence, we are still animals, and animals are cold, mean creatures, who see defect in their own kind and let those members of the tribe die off or be eaten by predators. in a way, leaving the homeless alone is a society’s secret way of saying, “you are our shield between raw nature. you are the weak and injured, and by letting you go, we can focus on ourselves.”

that’s not the kind of person i want to be. i made sacrifices to keep myself afloat–namely, not doing theatre and entrenching myself in my work. i showed my boss that i was great at my job, so he would give me raises. i worked hard to get to this point, and i don’t want it to slip away. i think this is where conservatism comes from, this idea that for decades you work to keep yourself afloat, and then you see someone your age go get a welfare check or something. it makes sense because that kind of system of thinking (anecdotal, basically) is endemic of conservative people. so i understand it, i get the pride of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. but those less fortunate than you, remember, they are a constant reminder that life is hard, that you’re so close to being a feral beast in the forest, that your higher brain functions literally required a much larger brain in order to, i think, overcome your natural instinctual brain. higher functions and reasoning are important, but you are so close to being an ape running around in the forest. takes a lot of energy to fight that urge, i think.

anyway. i think it’s good. i think it’s progress. i think it’s a continuation of what i consider being an adult looks like. now all i need is a wife and like two kids, and i’ll be set. one-hundred percent adult.

it’s my birthday, and i am being kicked out of my house. not a fault of mine or my other roommates, simply the nature of the rental market in portland lately. not feasible to rent for the price we were getting, in this part of town. we’re on the cusp between portland and “east portland,” aka the boonies or the hundreds, the part of town separated by i-205, sandwiched between the portland everyone wants and gresham, the town nobody wants. (until portland swallows it up, like it swallowed up east portland.)

i am single. i am always single. lately it has been a self-appointed quarantine as my mind mellows out from a couple years of particularly nasty depression, the kind that solidifies you to your seat in dark rooms, that injects your brain with novocaine until the only thing that brings you joy is base vices–sex, food, alcohol. now that my feelings are returning i have surges of desire for love and companionship, coupled with regret at turning away loves in the past, because i was afraid, because i was tired, because i was numb. at various moments i tried to explain it through the internet, but it never was the same, and it felt embarrassing, and i felt broken, damaged goods, a burden to mankind. so i just kept quiet.

i feel better, if you’re wondering. i have a therapist that i finally had the guts to talk about it to, and i started taking vitamin d supplements, which, though i am not convinced work beyond a placebo effect. but sometimes that’s all you need, just the secret mental agreement that you are going to take care of yourself. your body will thank you for it, trust me.

so, it’s my birthday, and i’m at home alone, the home that i will not live in by the end of the month. things are happening with friends tonight but lately my greatest joy is the ability to spend some time writing, organizing thoughts, getting projects set up. 2016 has been a shit year but i’ve met it with more optimism than i’ve felt since i was going to graduate school. i’m glad to move forward, upward, onward. (and outward, because i’m probably moving to east portland.)

in love, every day, like two gooey piles of love mush. that’s what we were. until she died. cancer, in her ovaries. it’s fine, i’m fine, it happens. now i’m just this old guy in a cabin. just like the prophecies foretold, right? you’d crest a hill and there, in front of the giant waterfall, an old cabin, and inside … me. the fucking tom bombadil of hood river county. well i’m just an old man who ran away from the world after his wife died. that’s it. no big prophecies, no words of wisdom. hell, my pantry is full of ramen and baked beans. you’d think in twenty years i’da figured out how to cook more than that, but you’d be wrong. now, whoever sent you here probably said you were the first to make it. wrong. i’m slightly less touristy than multnomah falls, but still, i get some young star-crossed lovers once every couple of weeks. just come knocking on my door like i’m a four star hotel. since i got nothing better to do i let ’em in, show ’em around. show them this photo. because you’re all looking for love from a guy who hasn’t been in love for twenty years. you think, “well what about his wife?” yeah, what about her? she’s dead. she’s worm feed in the ground. yeah i loved her, i still do, very much, but that feeling is permanent in a world of impermanence. doesn’t matter much anymore, is my point. you’re welcome to stay for a bit, have a ramen, take a shit, whatever you need to do, but if you’re looking for enlightenment, you’ve come to the wrong place.

it’s like i’m cheating. i just glanced. you know. pulled up craigslist, just took a peek. i like where i am but i wanted to see what else was out there. so i peeked. scrolled through the job listings. nothing was like my current job. that’s when it hit me: this job is too specialized. there’s nothing like it out there. how do i get another job when there are no other jobs like this one? i’m trapped, i’m stuck doing this incredibly particular thing. people will say, at job interviews, they’ll say, “do you know how to do x?” and i can only say, “no, i only know how to do y.” so that’s why i’m here. i want you to teach me how to do y. i know you can help me and i’d be happy to pay you for your time. but i need to learn a new skill, something that could benefit me if i ever decide to move on. i’m a one trick pony right now and that scares me. i gotta learn something new. i gotta hustle, or i’ll die sitting in this cubicle, staring at a computer screen. two computer screens. i have dual monitors. but i felt so bad, looking for work, because i like this place, i want to stay here, i like the people and the environment. i like that everyone leaves me alone, that they trust me. i like that. i like helping people. but one of those people is me. help me get out of here. or at least give me an avenue, a branch to hold on to. otherwise i’ll feel stuck forever.

take the photos down. we’re leaving. this is the end of the road, you understand? no more of this, no more of any of it. we’re leaving. get the pictures, get your clothes, and let’s get the fuck out of here. i’m telling you, this is the end, there is no more after this. we have to move or we’ll be killed, we’ll stagnate, we’ll die down here. that’s the end of our lives, do you want that? do you want our lives to end here or do you want them to end out there, in a grassy meadow or at the base of a tall mountain, with the sun in our eyes and the grass between our toes … that’s where we deserve to be. we can’t hide anymore, we can’t hide. we can’t. so get up, get the pictures, whatever you can stuff in your duffel, and let’s go, before they find us. andy, come on, get up. get up goddammit! this is not the time to be morose. the world is out there, just beyond those soldiers and tanks and guns, and if we just, if we try, if we work this out we can be free! don’t you want to be free? don’t you want to smell fresh air and not have to travel through abandoned subways anymore? that life is out there, right now, we just have to move. peter gave me news of the troop movements, they are so far away from this position right now, it would be easy to just slip out right now, it’s dark, it’s empty out there, we can just run and run and run. come on, andy. you know we can do it. just get up. just get up, andy!

way to butcher the scene, man. way to go. really. i would applaud you if i didn’t need my hands to be pristine for the modelling shoot tomorrow. but really, strindberg’s hard and you really fucked it up. you and harriet brought absolutely nothing to the table and made a mockery of a legendary playwright, who also happened to have syphilis. i would give you notes, but my notes would have to be “how to act,” which would mean you would be taking a class from me, on how to act, and how to deconstruct a scene so it makes sense in front of anyone, and you’re already taking a class where we expected you to know all of that already. i hope when you go home tonight you really think about how terrible that scene was. i hope you call harriet and the two of you talk it over, because … what are you even doing here, you know what i’m saying? why are you taking an acting class at this level? i’m not kidding when i say an actual orangutan could perform that scene better than you, man. it’s a mockery of everything acting. thespius’s bones are rattling, shakespeare just laughed at your futile attempt so hard he farted a little bit. i can’t believe it. you spend a thousand dollars on this class! one thousand dollars! why would you do that? you could’ve bought, i don’t know, an ipad or something. it’s just, it’s embarrassing, man. you were embarrassing. all the other students were cringing so hard, ladies’ picked their feet up off the ground they were cringing so hard. we were all in fetal positions in our chairs. please re-read the play and talk to harriet and in two weeks you’re going to do it again, and if you’re that bad next time, i’m going to have to drop you from the class and move you into the remedial acting course. which i don’t want to do, because that class is the worst. don’t make me do that, man. don’t make me do that.

your heart is like a gondola that i ride in, that slowly pushes me through the crowded canals of venice. everyone is looking at the architecture and nobody thinks about the fact that the city is sinking into the water that makes it famous. the gondolier sings a sweet italian melody, something we’ve never heard before but is so classic that it immediately sounds familiar. and each heartbeat is a little push down the canals of your bloodstream. from far away everything looks like something distinct but the closer you get, the more it’s the same. it’s all the same, just tightly packed atoms and a weak electromagnetic repelling force that keeps your fingers from becoming part of the desk. that force is prevalent throughout the universe, it is a fundamental force that you would never think about, that mankind never thought about for thousands of years. no other creature thinks about it. only us.

your heart’s atoms repel the atoms around it, to keep it from literally beating out of your chest. your hands repel the desk. your body repels the atoms in the air. these atoms coalesce around large gravitational bodies like the earth, otherwise, in space, they are few and far between. but they exist, always repelling until they find what they want to bond to. that’s the tough part. finding what fits.

i’m never at home anymore. it’s a symptom of the job. you understand. i’m constantly jaunting abroad, to and fro, never a chance to sit on the expensive couch i bought. i watch netflix on my phone as we fly over the atlantic. thought i would miss it, and maybe i do, occasionally, in that moment when i step into my hotel room, brush my teeth, shower, that little time alone before i sleep. sometimes i lay in bed and just stare at the ceiling, to get my bearings, my emotional bearings, my mental bearings. i should read a book or watch TV or call you, but instead i just stare at the ceiling. i don’t think about anything, or anyone, i just … stare, until i fall asleep or until a creeping self-aware melancholy seeps into me, until i feel guilty for doing nothing. those nights, i tend to cry myself to sleep.

darling, i don’t say this to make you upset. it’s just my job. it’s what i do, it’s my life. you are my life, and it is my life. please don’t make me choose. i am hollow sometimes in dark hotel rooms whose minibars i’ve raided, but at least i have an endpoint, a goal, a place to be, people to talk to. without work i have only you and please, please understand, you mean everything to me, but that hollowness … it is not filled with love. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. it’s not filled with love.

brennan, come here, honey. light the candles, i want to get a look at this wound. it feels bad. oh, god, it’s all pus and it looks infected. does it look infected to you brennan? christ almighty. i feel weak, my life is being drained by this wound. no, no, stay there, don’t you move. the last thing you need is to die out there trying to save my life. not going to happen. just stay here, let me talk to you. let me be with another human being before i die. we’re among the last, brennan. the last human beings on earth. when i’m gone it’ll be you and … who knows. someone else has to be out there, right? i’m sure you’ll find people. i’m sorry you’ll have to go alone. you know you can’t carry me anymore and besides, i don’t want to be carried. i want to die with dignity, die next to my husband in the warmth of this cabin, not out there with those things, or frozen in the cold. i want to see your face flush with warmth, next to the fireplace, and feel your warm, rough hands against me. that’s all i’ve ever wanted. and then, then i can die in peace and you can just leave me here, seated in the armchair, staring at the dying embers of a dying fire. sounds morbid, i know, but it’s the most beautiful way i can think to die. i love you, brennan. i know you know that, but … i do. i couldn’t have picked a better man to spend my life with. and … when you find … our children. tell them i miss them, so, so much. oh god.