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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lucid white she says right now, I’m dying to email you.

She has no idea what she’s talking about.

She has no idea who you are.

The caffeine pills she popped twenty minutes ago are accelerating her heart rate and she’s confused the feeling with the rush of young love.

Right now, I’m dying to email you, she says.

Her eyes are large brown hazelnuts open wide. Her pupils are sucking light.

Right now.

Right now, she repeats.

Don’t do it, says the email client.

Don’t do it, says the computer.

Hold me, says the phone.

Caffeine makes her ribs feel like they do two clean days from a coke binge.

I know what I’m doing you guys.

Right now, she has no idea who you are.

To Be Face Fucked

Though you passed unseen, in your head sexual organs were magnified a million times over. Multiple cocks, large and hard as apartment blocks and just as cold and sterile. Tits like hackneyed mountain peaks and pussies gaping as the sea. But you can’t live there, then, in your head. It’s too full so let’s just blow it off and start afresh. You can’t give birth, you un-special. Come now. That’s not semen in your belly, darlin’, it’s just the yellow snow.

The funny thing is that you just have to ask. Strangers, in public, just ask me: I’ll give you. Sit at my table uninvited: I’ll marry you. Sleep next to me on the early morning train: I’ll cuddle you. Push me to the back and force me: I’m the best victim. Just tell me what to do, Jack. Tell me what to do.

If you can’t smell me, do I really exist?

I can’t fucking believe / I rubbed one out / to a picture of your insecurity

I want to say something I’ve never heard before, but I keep rehashing the same, tired old themes, it seems. I use too many commas, mostly.

A colon should never be followed by a dash:- Who would do that? And to what end?

Leafing through this moderately heavy, reddish-orange book, my head is full;- my thoughts muddled. I’ve always been passively rebellious (well, I used to be more active, but the years wore on). I’m not being purposefully morose - I’ve got: problems. With commas, with pronouns. With clarity. Thankfully none of that keeps me from communicating with you. I think. In some way.

Back to human suffering, though. I believe everyone suffers equally and everyone has a right to suffer. No burden is more / less heavy than any other. All mules have a back on which a ton is loaded and they must all make it to the: - wherever it is mules go to drop off their load.

So why should it be then, that I’d happily trade my load for yours? Why does another’s load seem so much more attractive? I go out of focus again when I think about it. It screams at something I’d rather not shine a light on.

I seek out avenues to feed my escapism, if not to fully escape. This, what I’m doing here, now, this is a way of not facing reality. Open a blank page on which to wander, turn the music up on high, light a cigarette, make a drink - immerse myself in imaginary worlds, worlds that, curiously, aren’t very imaginative.

And when I’m tired of that I’ll force myself to sleep for 10 hours or more if I can. The very first hint of awareness or consciousness is to be extinguished immediately and without question. Goodnight, curious.

* * *

Update: somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream my memory stored:-

I didn’t realise, I don’t realise often times until it’s too late. I know, I know, I know how trite that sounds, I can’t help it, it can’t be helped, I can’t ask for help, I don’t deserve help, but I need help. A specific type of help, if you’ll hear me out. Yes I did, I did, I did say that I believed that the truth was that the help, this help, this specific assistance wasn’t forthcoming. Mmm, I’m reaching for the slightly longer ones now, now, now that I’m nervous, I’m anxious, I’m scared - am I too revealing? am I not revealing enough? am I fun? am I zany? but in a ‘cool’ way? not too much? too girlie? too butch? too needy? too withdrawn? too self-loving? too self-hating?

Am I bitter? am I clear?

Clarity.

Clarity of thought, of word, escapes me. I see the patterns, I see groups of three, I think in parallels, I feel just there, just behind the hazy yellow mist there’s a real, three-dimensional, unequivocal, undeniably real… something. That you can touch. That you can see. That you can form your mouth around and express. But when I try, and I do try - it’s a glob of mess, of nothing, undefinable pulpy, gloopy, shit. And even I can’t abide that.

When I dare to cast my gaze in that direction for long enough to see, there’s only one thing I want: the one thing that will make it worse. Because what makes it worse, makes it better in the short term. And the advice-givers tell you to ‘live day by day’ and take things ‘one step at a time’, don’t they? Well I need it. To take the next step. I can’t step knowingly. My legs won’t cooperate and my hands are pins and my burden is heavier than all the world and if you don’t believe that, fuck you. It’s mine to carry until I decide otherwise. Until I can decide otherwise.

I am free, they tell me. Free to serve, free to act, but always in my best dress and matching muzzle. I am trapped. In a mass of grey cotton clouds, seeming fluffy yet rough-heavy with water, retaining me, flush to the surface. The inactive captive sways, my captain.

I am tired. Been chained to the radiator for weeks without the promise of a healing wash and dry, heaving fuck at the end of a hard day’s work of waiting and waiting. I can feel the wrinkles around my squinting eyes become permanent, minute by minute by minute and mute. I am queasy with the ghost and green with the promise I can’t fulfill.

I am sick. Of absence and doubt and mindfulness and helpfulness and helplessness and whipstitched seams. Rip. And break apart. And breathe in and cough. No oxygen is forthcoming, no mask enough to veil the unmasking.

I am afraid I need to be bound and gagged and fucked and beaten mercilessly every time I mince our words again, again. Beat to the beat of a beating heart I can’t prove still beats there, in a chest cavity unknown. Write and release. I must do something. Eke out the short-lived high of the quickly exhaled paragraph or the quickly inhaled puff. Whichever makes me come quicker.  Scratch my skin and bleed. And bleed. And be bled.

And admit once and for ever that no one is coming to save me.