down in me

We are here today because I am acting out my life today.

We are here today for entertainment.

Today we are here because my heart hurts, my heart is in my lungs.

We are here today because that french girl was there and she looked like a french girl.

We are here because it hurts to be somewhere with someone that doesn’t think of you when you’re not looking.

We are here today because I am dulling my senses (<—euphemism) in an effort to be more comical.

Because life’s kind of a joke, right?

We are here today acting out this reality show, sitting attractive but casual on the confessional couch, justifying how we did so poorly during the last challenge, resolving to do at least more comically in the next one.

Because life is a joke that’s actually quite funny but leaves you empty like when you trip over a moccasin and you think ‘who even wears moccasins’ or ‘is that the name for this type of shoe’ and you follow up that thought with something vaguely racist and you do a sad laugh and you keep being alive.

We are here because this is a personal blog and that’s okay being a person is okay and thinking only of yourself is okay and talking about yourself is okay

wanting love and attention is okay

settling for less and thinking you deserve anything and forgiving unforgivable people because you ‘totally understand being human’ and allowing them to use you so you can look at them sometimes because you find so arousing the way their eyes shift about when they are lying which is always is

very much okay.

Because all interpersonal relations are is creative ways of using other bodies to calm your own.

Because skin is so lonely and muscles so tense and nervous systems buzz like bees losing their stingers when injecting your bloodstream with chemicals to make you feel like a kid with nice good parents.

Just trust me on all of this okay I know what I’m saying.

Recommended Reading
I don’t get tired of telling you

Friday, 13 August 2010, 23:39, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 00:01:01. Text Status: Sent.

Where exactly are you? In front of the club?

Saturday, 14 August 2010, 00:01:47. Text Status: Received.

By telephone box

Saturday, 14 August 2010, 00:03, Placed Call, Duration: 1:22.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 00:06, Received Call, Duration: 0:14.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 02:16, Received Call, Duration: 0:09.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 03:00, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 04:08, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 04:09, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 04:09, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 04:10, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 04:10, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 05:16, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 05:18. Voicemail received. Transcript follows.

[Unintelligible.]

hello? where are you man? where are you? where are you man? where are you? where are you man? where are you? where are you man? where are you? can’t hear you man. can’t hear you man. where are you man. are you outside man? where are you man. man, where are you. you know, where are you man. yeah? yeah? where are you man? where are you man?

[Pause. Shuffling. Music.]

send me a text and tell me where you are. send me a text and tell me where you are. send me a text and tell me it’s you. tell me where you are. send me a text and tell me where you are. send me a text and tell me it’s you. send me a text and tell me where you are. send me a text and tell me it’s you.

Saturday, 14 August 2010, 05:22, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 05:23. Voicemail received. Transcript follows.

[Music.]

hello? where are you? where? where? can’t hear you. go to the sofas. go inside and go to the sofas. go inside and go to the sofas. go inside and go to the sofas. go inside. sofas. go inside. sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. go inside. go to the sofas. inside. SOFAS. INSIDE. SOFAS.

Saturday, 14 August 2010, 05:16, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 06:33, Placed Call, Duration: 0:02.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 06:33, Placed Call, Duration: 0:02.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 06:34, Placed Call, Duration: 0:03.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 06:51. Voicemail sent. Partial transcript follows.

[Crying.]

Saturday, 14 August 2010, Total calls placed between 06:51 and 07:49: 19, Longest duration: 0:03.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 15:27, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 15:30, Missed Call, Status Aborted.
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 16:05, Placed Call, Duration: 6:51.

If you wake up, the night will be over, and if you don’t have another drink, the night will be over, if I’m not entertaining, the night will be over, and if there is silence, the night will be over and if you worry, the night will be over and then it is over and you come into view of the children basking in the sun with people walking dogs, freshly fucked, sour-smelling and them, bright-eyed and you, longing for another hit – to speed hearts and close eyes and sharpen tongues and never have to live the rejection of the day of you. Listen, I know I overstate earnestly, but some people deal okay with that. This country’s people are not warm like its weather is not warm and immigrants need to remember to keep hands inside the railing at all times.

100 better words and others even more so at amphibi.us with love

Is it for the Spaniards’ rape of all my grandmothers? Because I’m not pristine, I’m dirty, my creases and holes dark, and yet they want in them. My mouth a torrent of steely breathy truths never spoken by a lady. And yet I want them in them. They fucked my mothers and now I will fuck them. Where there were drawn knees and repulsion there is now submission. You can’t rape an open womb. I’m begging for it and I can’t say I blame them, I don’t; I too want to fuck new, those compelling differences, I want in them.

A horrible distance in the person-wide gulf suddenly between you, like he got sucked backwards in a vortex into which you cannot follow. Like one moment you’re sweet cupcakes and the next you’re days old broccoli, shriveling and yellowed by that vacant look; where just then your body was cream-glazed, sticky and warm, inviting, it is now repellent; where his hands, once feverishly intent on traveling, now rest smugly in his pockets pointing away from you, his chest pulled back, his body sidestepping you, his breath avoiding you, his toes turned out. And you say hey, remember me? the girl you just fucked?

This distance, he says, I want to put it between us right now; I don’t even want to think about our link. The invisible dotted line that connects us is a hindrance to my state and I want to put some things in the way, to cloud your line of sight—I don’t even want to think about the couch and the books and the architecture that now stand—I just want them there between us, widening the space from when I first laid eyes on you to when I didn’t. I was happy to put my dick in you just then, but now it’s different: my dick retreats, my arms retract, my everything to be away from you, to whiteout even the trace of a memory of your hole.

Listen, I’m not the marrying kind, but if you don’t leave a tip on the nightstand at least endeavor to be kind as you go.

I love this. I love you. Marry me. What have I got to say that’s of interest to you, future husband? The song swirls in our heads, you pull me closer, we sway, the wind rolls around us as our steps turn quicker, and in the distance? A distant cackle. Someone is drunk. Smack my bottom, grip my neck and flash your smile, I’m caught.

The little big head knows that his head is small so he flaunts it. S’what happens when a pecker’s dick is sharper than his peck; when a soft May breeze caresses the asshole of July; when ancient new testifies to the sin of open eyes.

and this one she can lately only write at night, with the lights and the ghosts flicking in and out of the frame like moths in the dark dying, hungry. i see the lights and i think my god, that sounds nothing like me, what is this voice they call sweetly. me i don’t know about you, but me, i’m fucking petrified, i see things at night, i talk to people who don’t understand, i hear noises, i hear the whirring of my own machinery and i freak the fuck out man, because i don’t fucking know what’s out there you know. but fuck it, sometimes i’m like dead outside, like a coiled snake not poised just sitting waiting and i hear that voice and i think goddamn girl, who bade you speak that way. i don’ fucking know but i promise you once i find that fucker i’ll fucking kill him.

Once me and daddy were outside in the dust by the pack of trees (you know the one that sat huddled like cigarettes in a packet in the middle of a quiet expanse of dirt) and i said daddy listen. Can you hear ‘em? And daddy said no youngin’, I ain’t heard a thing out here in this motherfuckin’ pitch dark and I’m like daddy what are you talking about it’s fucking daytime. Daddy hand me that flashlight, cain’t you see. Daddy was always very suspicious in those days, he thought me and you and mama had been sent by god knows who to do god knows what to him.

Eventually I felt as though the voice that got inside me, i.e. me, my own voice, would swell then dissipate and be subsumed by the rest of the voices and form one coherent chorus, but no. wherever i looked, i saw - whenever i typed, there it was. it was him, he’d come for me, i was sure of it. i typed now blindly, listening to the clicking of my nails on the keyboard i used to type a lot faster than this a lot faster i’m feeling sleepy now but this is the first time in such a long time that i’ve typed so much an dit just seems like a waste to stop right in the middle of this paragraph it’s obscene. i never took no writing advice from nobody, least of all my daddy.

i was a fine if shaky girl, i ate my meals and listened to what my mother said and did it, mostly. i was quiet and calm and had the patience of a million gods. it took a lot to make me angry and even though my blood was always at a low simmer, you could never really tell. You wouldn’t really tell until it was time for the pot to boil over. i think touch typing blindly and not proofreading is better for everyone involved.

i think a lot about things that will never be. i think a lot about a boy for example, a white boy from atlanta or mississisisissippi. he lsitens to southern rock and he has a big dumb name like bob or jim and i think about his calloused hand often gripping my throat until i stop laughing because that shit ain’t funny anymore. But jim he don’t listen because he’s a big strong guy and he’s used to getting his way and jim, he kinda wants to fuck me and well i don’t mean just fuck me i mean fuck me up. because jim he hates the way i all the time sound like i sort of know what i’m talking about and jim he can’t stand for that. jim knows he’s bigger, i mean he knows he can take me, that much is obvious but jim knows i’m going to put up one hell of a fight and he loves that as much as he hates it because it spurs him to be just who he is, a cruel sadistic little fucker who likes hurting women. i mean yes, somewhere in that big ole head of jim’s there’s the voice telling him beating the women folk is wrong, even jim knows that. but how can jim fight his baser instincts? he can’t. and i’m there to make sure he doesn’t.

See what you have to do to write a story in someone else’s voice is to hate yourself deeply. first you work a shitty job all day then you come home and eat something terrible and drink a few beers. then you watch porn and masturbate and the mix of endorphins and shame will put you in the right mood to release. and then you guiltily do. you sit down in the most uncomfortable position and you take the low level pain maybe in your back or your wrists like you know you deserve it. you look around you in a way that suggests you are looking to ensure no one’s looking but of course no one’s fucking looking, you’re home alone. any tortured soul worth its salt knows you live alone. you can’t have communion with communion, that’s like eating the wafers, drinking the wine and ass-fucking the priest. you just don’t do it. well, i don’t.

But look they will say, this automatic shit this isn’t writing and everyone knows it and everyone in the schools they talked about it years ago and you, you don’t know nothing. we know you like to feel loved and we know you like to pretend. don’t laugh, we know how you like to escape into other people’s stories and become them. you’re a vampire and we know how that flatters your teenage goth kid sensibilities, but listen. this is stupid. and will never amount to a pile of shit. We told you not to laugh. You think this is funny you thinking this is a game is that what you think this is? should we have you strapped down and removed from the fantasy and shown how to show a little courtesy?

Because it would be jim’s pleasure to fuck you in your tight little ass and by god if we don’t bet you’d love it.

I killed Jesus Christ and he laughed at me. His virginal robes billowed beneath him angelically as you might expect. His sandals glued to the floor, he bent double slowly backwards like a warming Twizzler. I smacked Jesus Christ repeatedly in the face with a white kitchen towel and his face beamed backlit with large Tom Cruise teeth. I continued to smack Jesus’s laughing face and when I couldn’t reach it any more - I didn’t want to get too close in case he bit me - I began to shoo him away from me by waving the towel in the air and hissing. Jesus died slow and painfully comical like a melting witch. I stayed living and laundered the kitchen towel and clipped it up to line dry.

Girls with rib-grazing dark hair over their right eye glare at you from their left, shifting their weight from one side to the other, wearing ankle boots again after a long ankle boot-less spell though they’ve often never flattered. Thin lanky types but everything about them feels heavy like even the ground is attracted to them, like the weight of sheer beauty calls their bones to the floor, like earth itself attempts to slow and forcefully drag off their clothes. What should we do with them? We can attempt a conversation, they do like to go hunting for fun. We can buy them shiny jewelled boxes to fill with various items of interest to skinny bitches. We can bang their empty heads together like chalkboard erasers and watch the eye shadow dust clouds form and dissipate around us. But what am I saying, really? They know we want to get our lipstick hands dirty full of their luscious lips and paste large drooping black eyelashes on their glittery dead eyes. Their eyelids heavy when I pout, they pout, we pout together. Turned into Jane clones from 1965 with a not-so versatile symmetrical haircut, bangs in our eyes we strut the streets of Chiswick with confidence.

The man and the woman showered together and the woman felt naked and she tried to describe how the man felt but the man was not naked.

The man and the woman showered together and the woman hoped the man would ‘take her from behind’ but the man lathered himself with regular smelling soap.

The man and the woman showered together but the woman was really a girl and she was afraid of the man’s average sized penis.

The man and the woman showered together but the woman had been thinking about another man too much and her writing was no longer her own.

Also she had been reading a lot of books.

Also she had been thinking of making notes in the margins.

Also she had been thinking about lists.

Also she felt improbably unoriginal.

The man and the woman showered together in a large shower room in the largest house they’d yet been in. The man offered to shampoo the woman’s hair and put too much shampoo in it and brusquely ‘massaged’ it until it was tangled and it took the woman a long time to untangle it and she wanted to cry and tell the man what a metaphor for their relationship this was but she stayed quiet because she was afraid that he was ‘just not that into her’.

The man and the woman showered together and the woman grabbed the back of the man’s head and smashed his stupid face against the bloody tiles.

The man and the woman showered together and the man kissed the woman and they tasted her shampoo and they laughed and looked happy.

The man and the woman showered together and they were made clean.

The man and the woman showered together and the woman wanted to die.

The man and the woman showered together because they both smelled like marijuana instead of store brand shower gel.

The man and the woman showered together to save time.

And to be naked in close proximity.

And because they had seen it in movies.

And that the woman’s parents used to shower together.

And the woman showered with her sister until puberty when their mom made them stop.

And because cleanliness is something.

The man and the horse calcified a wrought-iron tree with a monkey wrench.

The man and the woman showered together because that was completely contrived.

The man and the woman showered together because the woman likes the sound of keystrokes.

And exacerbating pre-existing conditions.

And going along with the man’s stupid ideas.

And dropping the soap.

Which basically dumps reports into sweet potatoes, and then we can use the benchmarks of the white light follow up flag to determine whether your face looks like an astral firecracker as seen through the periscope of an alien aircraft. And it’s not just us, we’re trying to create solutions that can be integrated for everyone, anything can be installed, I want to run my banana pieces, I want to run my golden pieces, you can define that fuck flow.

Wow, that’s incredible, very nice.

Because by the end of this year, we will have an incredible reach, rich virtual sugar cake in Dubai – we’ve got a team, we’ve got a team of plastic water bottles. The relationship has stabilised, the worker ants have mobilised. I mean, I haven’t met them, I haven’t met them but the orchid is in place and we are navigating the building into the seabed. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be after April, unofficially, we’ve been told. We’ve been told support is going to be mushy. We’ve been told, we’ve been told unofficially - you know the man-years, the man-years it’s going to take when I go to Thailand? I mean, I don’t know about you but I’m interested. We have new ideas. We have new ideas about the orchard, we’re ready to give you a demo of the orchard.

I would love that. I would love that. Monkeys are going to burst out of my ass mid-July. I know you’re going to do everything in your power, hire some people, be ready. Be ready on the technical side, be ready to lick my cocoa packet. And I mean that.