Today
I’m back in this old room and I need to write. I don’t know what to say or how to say it. It seems I don’t remember how to write about what I am really feeling.
I am scared. Fear seems to be a big part of all of this. I cant get my mind off all of the wrong I have done. I even invent some. Actually most..
Guilt is there. I don’t know why because I have done nothing. Nothing is what got me to the point.
My arms are twitching. The smoke from my parliament drifts across the keyboard from the square glass ashtray, embezzled from the old Dunes Casino- sitting to the left of me next to my Zippo, cell phone and pack. I don’t use much else then these items. Barely do I know how to use them.
I twitch and strain. My arms don’t seem to know what they are doing anymore. My face is angry and splinters are beginning to become wedged in my forearms from the plywood surface this keyboard rests on. I press down hard trying to only hit the right key. I don’t want to go back. If I do it takes me down the wrong track. I can’t afford that anymore.
My blood boils, trying to get me into action. The cigarette burns down; acrid stale scent of filter burning begins to float around the room. I am almost back again.
My cheek itches from the beard and small hairs lodged in it from my newly cut hair. I wipe away the mop of brown and pause. I don’t know where to go next. I seem to have choices and don’t know which one I am ready to take.
The capitalization of “I” is something I really want to do more when I am typing. I hate seeing people never capitalize their “I.”
I got lost again and have to start over. My fingers are typing and my arms are slowly wearing into the plywood table from the pressure of me resting on them as I type this. I need to loosen up. I need to just relax for a second and catch whatever breath I have and try and see if I can keep it steady.
I also need to stop starting so many thoughts that become sentences with “I.” One word. One Syllable. One letter. That is to many. It stalls me and makes me feel as if I am writing in some haughty toughty fashion, pish posh and high falutin you could say. My vocabulary feels funny not using it so much. Dancing in my seat, squirming and wriggling it makes me figure out new words to try on for size. My brain needs to think in a different direction and damn if I didn’t just screw It up. It is so hard not to say I.
My arms itch so bad. This table isn’t even really plywood. On close inspection is seems to be particle board – and rough at that. Pulling down my sleeves I try to forget about the pest and practice some more.
This can only become easier over time again, hopefully it will be like riding a bike or another such euphemism such as; climbing a tree, falling down a hole or a three dollar whore. These can all work to describe how I am hoping this works out. Can I still even find what I was trying to do before?
It feels so juvenile to write. Why? I don’t know why I have this correlation between writing and being a child. Because that is when I wrote? I gave up childish things and this writing habit was one of them? That doesn’t make sense, all of my favorite writers wrote for years…maybe it is because of dreamers.
I feel like such a dreamer when I try to write. Fraudulent as well. Something seems fake whenever I try to craft my words. When I try to dig out the pieces it feels like I am making it up. Like what I think I really feel I just say I feel because it is what I think others want me to say.
Am I fine? No, not really – but I say I am quite often.
This could go one for lifetimes but unfortunately I only have one. Slower then most others is how I feel about my life. I feel behind now.
Everyone seems to have passed me by. I hate asking questions because I really am scared of any answer I hear in return. Outcome and decision frighten me more then any evil of man.
There is a ball of rubble in front of me. I fit it between my ears with 1/8 inch rubber bands and – I pause. My back begins to ache from the chair cushion being 35 years old. Padding that is older then the ass that sits on it.
Music doesn’t make sense to me anymore. The people involved are what do it. Music disappeared so long ago and now there is just this empty box of t-shirts and stickers. This husk dried out and now a small band of rats call it home. Commercialization is to weak to compare to what music has become. The point is lost. Running. Like the spaceman running in circles on the spaceship in 2001 A Space Odyssey. I don’t even remember what I am running from.
Sometimes I thing I just need to keep running. Keep on going and you don’t have to stop for any trouble. I can’t take the trouble. How do these people cope with smiles?
It is not that it is hard to smile but with nothing but speed on their side and no substance what do they hope to gather besides washups and washouts. We are created of it and it has become our greatest creature comfort.
I don’t want to be a prattler or rambler. I don’t want to run on with words that clog up your – what? Exactly.
Slowing down, trying to catch where that thought was going. I wonder if I can switch into 3rd person? Frank sits embarrassed but with kind of a mischievous thought floating around his head. 300 thoughts just exploded into his head and disappeared in the last .004 milliseconds. His fingers are starting to find their way around again but now he is just thinking off into nowhere about girls and summertime. Thinking in third person, and writing it down are odd and he keeps wanting to switch back into 1st person. I will feel like I am an idiot – I did it! I switched back and didn’t even realize it. My head wants to think that way so bad.
Conceited? Self centered? No. I’m not, I am just scared to death. I am scared of people not liking me. I am scared people think I am this persona of hip and cool because I run a record – ran a record store- and not talking to me for who I am. I threw away so many good friends. All was given up to try and change, fix, mend, I don’t know, help someone who I couldn’t help and unfortunately now I must help myself again. I don’t know how to fix this except to pound and to write down the pounding. I will now attempt to write a story. Something short. I am not going to be greedy so I will set a goal for myself of 4 pages.
Lulu walked into parchments a ‘plenty and scanned the front for a pink afro. Two checkout counters down, just past Norma the lesbian checker and three old ladies just finished with canasta and now in need of a quick gin and tonic fix – finding themselves in parchments a’ plenty buying two bottles of Jim dandy might fine Gin and 7 limes, stood the bag boy throwing breads and meats and condiments into a large brown grocery sack with bright red letters stating, “There aren’t many, like Parchments a ‘plenty!” over the smiling face of Zack, owner, operator and only known surviving member of the papas fritas brothers from San Antonio.
Two things mattered right now to the bag boy at 12:42 in the PM inside Parchments a’ plenty, on Third and Gilford, in the wee small town of Dunkirk – How to get two free Donuts at lunch when he hit up Jimmy Flapjacks at Donut-villa and why the store was named Parchments a ‘plenty when it was a grocery store? It was obvious he was not thining about his job because he was not paying much attention to what went into each grocery bag and in what logical order to place them in there. Eggs were vertical next to a loaf of whole wheat Juju’s moist bread and a 2 pound cantaloupe. Five bananas were slowly beginning to ooze Banana guts from the weight of the gallon of milk and pound of coffee resting on top of them.
Glazed with apple filling and coffee was $1.78 and if Jimmy was there The bag boy might be able to sweet talk him into throwing in two sprinkles. Jimmy wanted to fuck the bag boy like the two drama queens who worked at lucky 7 cinema did, and the bag boy appreciated this fact very much. Giving was nice when you really wanted two extra donuts. The bag boy wasn’t gay of course and would never receive in that way, but allowing these gay boys their stupid childish flirts, their playful word play, earned The bag boy donuts and movies, free, and the nice young gay boys eye candy.
Pink afro was a big plus. Pink afro was sculpted back in 2004 by Missy Martinez at the saloon on Jefferson and 3rd. It was called The Salon. Dunkirk only had one and Luc, the owner of The Salon and Dunkirk’s expert on duck’s asses and pomp’s – and the little gay boys, would have it no other way. 27 year resident and founding father of the amendment to install the freeway and open the old gypsy copper minds as a theme park with chutes and ladders and only 1 fatality in it’s 14 year history.
The Pink Afro was only touched by Missy Martinez and Luc. The bag boy spent so much time in The Salon you would think he worked there. For a short time he did. Reception and cashier. Lasted 2 months before Luc had to fire the bag boy because the bag boy didn’t like talking on the phone or handling money. In fact, he had a phobia of germs and saw money as another dead cockroach leg and telephones as lice nests.
Clothing was a problem for the bag boy as well. It could hide disease, fungus, bug eggs and larvae. Washing wasn’t good enough for a time and the bag boy was forced to stay in his room for 7 weeks because he wouldn’t get dressed. Flat out refused. His skin, ashen and stretched over bone would not touch a piece of cotton wool blend or polyester blended with rayon. Nothing was touched and no garment or piece of fabric was allowed in his bedroom.
His clothes lay strewn across the backyard for 2 weeks before one night they just disappeared. The new diseased wardrobe of some poor homeless fella.
"Dennis!" Lulu spit words in the direction of the bsg boy. Startled to here his name yelled, so loud, midday, made the bag boy drop an half-pound of bonono brand deli chops on the floor next to one of the old canasta ladies.
"Dennis!" Lulu shouted again, just to watch the faces of the canasta ladies turn up in disapproval of this girl with a big mouth and tattoos splotched across her skin - like blemishes of shame.
"Quite a specticle!"
"Absurb!"
"oh Lord!"
Like a trio of harpies, canasta ladies WILL let it be known when disapproval is warrented.
"I'm saying a prayer for her at mass!"
"Such clothes!"
"OH LORD!"
Reaching down, Dennis scopped up the ruined meat and with the look of a child caught with his hand down his pants, sheepishly put the ruined animal flesh in a garbage bin and slowly walked over to Lulu. Strong willed, brazen, broken and beautiful, Lulu was the big prize if ever there was one. Dating wasn't the word, neither was going steady or seeing each other, it was more of addicted - Dennis was addicted to Lulu and Lulu, well she was addicted to her own split personalites.
Two years in L.A. and anoth 5 in New Yrok city, Lulu felt the big town was better suited to her modes operendi. Where she was at now was small ande slightly sterile with only about 7 or 8 people she could actually discuss the pleasures of self realization with while the rest of the town was just one giant sleeping geriatrric patient. All blue hair and Bengay. Old, stuck in button down holy roller mode. The citizens of Dunkirk were predominatly of the age to remember watching Soupy Sales on television asking children to send him money. A differant hemisphere then what she was accustomed to.
The slow death of Dunkirk was why Lulu came to put settle in at the old Benson place on Mill and 3rd. Writing for high class glossy publications filled with perfume asds and gay men in sweaters selling $80.00 gold banded underwear and wax complextions was what she wanted to escape from; Dunkirk was about as far of an escape as possible without leaving your physical body and traveling over into the astrial plane of eternity and Lulu was not ready to take such a drastic step - not yet at least.
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