13% [chapter 24]

ENTROPY INCREASING


In January of 2013, when all the electricity had blown out and everyone else living at Bleakhaus dealt with this lack of power by running away to their boyfriend's or girlfriend's houses, you were the only resident left cuz you
had nowhere else to go. So you sat frozen in your room with a bike light strapped to your head, watching wisps float off from your cold quickening breaths. For 3 months this continued and it was during this darkened quiet time that a new/old idea came back to you. On March 1st, you woke up and bolted out of bed reciting the words, "BOX TRUCK!"


After a lifetime of paying rent to live in a house where heat hot water and electricity were frequently out, where your only trustworthy companion was in the form of a little brown mouse, it was not a far stretch to visualize living alone with the exact same creature comforts of null and void for a lot lot less. Maybe in that solitary space, you could be at your best -- or at least, just fucking be.


No one else would be in yer face, judging your every move, telling you how to live your life or denigrating all exasperating attempts to uplift this stagnating environment. So you started saving every penny. Pennies that came from unemployment checks, from working under the table, from pumping up the volume of ebay sales, from committing the occassional act of corporate embezzelment without a single post-financial-collapse-but-banks-get-bailed-out moral regret. SCAM presidents.


Isolation and entropy increasing, after nearly 10 good years of loving your home, Bleakhaus became just a coffin filled with clinging memories of happier, more musical times. Only a quiet empty room crowded with the past now greeted you. A comparatively cruel skeletal outline in your current curb kicked loveless state of mind.


Spring, 2015, you knew the time to leave was approaching.The flickering lights in your bedroom said so. After a while,you no longer bothered turning the switch on at all due to the constant twitches and fissures going off above you. Annoying. You didn't want to read too much into it, but it was a bit weird. Then the flies swarmed in like never before, and you knew that this really was The End.


Scouring craigslist for a viable vehicle to live in, everything was too expensive for your lowlife savings. You test drove a mini schoolbus with your friend Erich, but it didn't feel good for the long haul. Dejected on your bike ride home from the 5lowershop warehouse where Erich lived, you rode by a white Isuzu FRR box truck parked on Bayshore Boulevard with a For Sale sign in the window. Exactly what you were looking for, but you couldn't afford it. Still frustrated the following week, Kismet tipped you off as you passed by the same truck again, parked on 24th Street. But for the greatly reduced price of $5000.


As soon as the previous owner turned the ignition key, her engine's rumble sang of freedom and you fell in love instantly, clamouring "YES, I'll take it!" Gladly handing the man the biggest stack of money you've ever had in your hand, there was no turning back.


The piano moved in first, then internal construction on Haustruk began. Everything takes longer than you think it should, but life was already looking brighter from the back of your 7.1 litre turbo diesel's viewpoint. High all day and night with this higher purpose; to work like mad and get the truck homeworthy before you had the chance to sabotage yourself with some lame ass mindfucking shite.


While parked in front of Bleakhaus overnight on Mission Street, there'd be a friendly wave from Albert the garbage man at dawn. And instead of a $65 ticket, a gentle headsup from the traffic wardens to move on at 4 a.m. cuz the street cleaner would be coming soon. After the bars closed, drunken college girls in heels would come clik-clak-stumbling down the street on their weekend quests for male validation. Then they'd see what you were doing and ask themselves, "Wha..? Is this allowed? Really...?" At all hours, every prostitute working Capp Street wholeheartedly approved.


During those 13 weeks of laboring on conversion, you wouldn't allow yourself to do any drugs inside Haustruk. Though the kid who rapidly tagged "SOBER" onto one side of the box climbed into the back with you one night and smoked himself icey while another kid, a clean cut upper middle class student at SFAI slowly tagged the other side with "HOLDIN'". Oh, the hilarious irony. But you didn't want to foul up this spiritually free space with your own acts of drug abuse. So you let your habit happen only in your echoing old room, thinking maybe you'd leave this thing behind, too.

Be like the wind, you said repetitively, as you sobbed onto a decade's worth of belongings getting slotted into boxes.Packing unpacking and repacking. Don't make a big fuss. Cry as much as you like. Just keep packing. And leave when the breeze feels right.


Otherwise it would hurt too much ~ the overwhelming fear of choosing this narrow path. Choosing to leave your big cheap flat, this tinderbox of doom, filled to the brim with triggers, eviction threats and other muddled irritating drug addicts. Choosing to effectively become homeless and live off-grid in a box truck with the only thing that still mattered to you, that beloved red piano. Yeah, scary. Choosing to quit work quit sex quit drinking quit drugs quit everything; after 30 years of running at full speed around every different type of dependency with blind ego-eyes and a tiny desperate heart that was now numb as fuck, all used up.


This mountain of fear might've paralyzed whatever faith you had left that you weren't done living yet. Sincere attempts to have going away parties with old friends were met with a complete lack of attendance anyway, so it was best to let go by slipping away silently, in little pieces, day by day.


At 4:30 a.m on the summer solstice, you were headed over to pick up your regular refill of PTSD meds/meth when that particular breeze came through your newly converted house truck's window and said, "Go. Now." So you stopped at a traffic light and took a left off Townsend onto the freeway heading east.


Chanting loudly helped calm that panic stricken shriek from entering these unknown territories at a rate both so long planned and so suddenly. Eventually, the beauty and stillness of constant change crept back into the driver's seat and nothing mattered except moving another foot forward and breathing.


Coming down, there was no crash landing. It was more like swimming out to sea.


No matter where you were from now on, you'd always be at home. Trying to understand, without grasping too tightly, some momentary smaller sense of peace. Even in the face of each newly discovered gutwrenching difficulty.


Now there was a sweet fragile tenderness to life that was previously hidden beneath society's senseless demands and your mind's own violent self-berating. Now you noticed things outside like how the leaves on trees curve upward when it's about to rain.


Thanks to practicing binaural meditation daily for the last few years, right before doing some more drugs, one ritual would gradually replace the other, and something in you had changed.


I hear it's called bodhichitta ~ the love that never dies. It lives in all of us, down in the most digusting part of ourselves, somewhere gross inside. When all else gets stripped away, you might be bleeding and skinless and invisible to the naked eye, but, hey - don't worry, you too will find it.


*u can call me ph!*

13% [chapter 20]

WHITE ICE


On November 27th, 2009, you were still stuck on that merry-go-round of cyclical depressive low tides, all Eeyore-like. No Tigger, no Piglet, no Winnie-the-Pooh moods in sight.


But you could not quite bring yourself to subscribe to the ever-growing myriad of socially sanctified psychotropic solutions that every doctor tried to religiously prescribe. You couldn't trust these new anti-depressants that kept clogging up the lives of everyone you once liked. Chopin might not have composed anything if he were all hopped up on Zoloft or Xanax back in 1839.


Something seemed very untoward about hallucinating while coming OFF a daily chemical regime. Or the steady loss of all humor while increasing the tendencies this monkey-wrenching medicine was purporting to reduce. Just to feel more confident in group settings where you'd be all cotton-mouthed and farting? Or mindlessly gambling away your hard earned savings on glittery slot machines while internally bleeding? Or succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer's at 50, barely able to remember anything?


At least with regular cheap street drugs, you knew exactly how and why you'd end up in a gutter, forlorn lost and crying.Because of the droning loneliness, the specious doubt, the prickling dread. Crying because of global warming. Because of your unfathomable debts. Because of gentrification's big boot of disdain for the poor, trampling around San Francisco, crunching ever closer to the sitting duck of your dilapidated Mission district victorian flophouse. All of your trenchant attempts to Get Somewhere in life seemed to be Going Nowhere effortlessly. Like a sad dead girl's polyester dress on sale for way too much money at Thrift Town.


Usually, these cycles of depression could be managed by eating more fruits and vegetables and vigorously sweating out the animosity and heartache. But you couldn't seem to shake off this extended sticky bout.


Listening again to the Nick Drake album 'Five Leaves Left', you seriously wanted to leave the black-eyed dogs behind and join him in some imaginary afterlife. What was the point of trying so hard to stay clean when everyone you sought approval from looked at you like they knew an inside joke that you were not clued in to? Like yer some kinda shady junkie. But you weren't robbing anybody at gunpoint. You were working 2 jobs, organizing annual festivals with your own rent money and booking small free live shows in your house for their experimental noise bands monthly. Still, it seemed you'd never be rid of this scarlet letter, clinging to your unapproachable chest, all bitter sore and lumpy.


If this downward spiraling mindset was still happening under the influence of a substance-free existence, then FUCK IT. Might as well be getting high. At least then you could enjoy something. So you got some. And without questioning it, did a big fat fucking line. Take THAT, Feelings! Thus you kept yourself boxed in on meticulous coding designs inside the refreshing blue-green glow of a computer screen. Honed in on the faint comfort of an unconcerned light.


Recreationally, meth modestly recreated many a night after you got laid off from Amoeba the following spring. Once the severance check arrived, you were cloaked in a heavy indifference. Drugs didn't become just a friend or a demanding lover, they were now the holy widowmaker. Yet they kept you sucking at the teat of invigorating devastation. Like Kali-Ma. Bestowing a blistering glorious defeat, steeling you for the celebration of End Times. And you went down burning, almost happily resigned to this predictably hot demise. Victim identified.


For weeks, you sensed it approaching. On your morning bike rides to work, the trees in Panhandle Park kept screaming, "Death is Coming!" So you had already begun grieving the loss of that long held job and all the people there that you really liked. Because trees have no reason to lie. And you'd almost learned well enough to trust these psychic impressions by then, even if they spelled an inconsolable dissolution that would mould you dispirited and dry.


After the boss broke the news to you in the office, she leaned back in her chair, expecting to reach for the tissue box and feign compassion while watching another peon cry. But you just said, "Yeah. Ok. Bye." She was disappointed that you weren't more moved by this deliberate shock. "I knew this was coming," you stated flatly and calmly left the office while her face went all awry. That creeped her out sufficiently.


Back in the good ol' days, when people left this tightly knit job, a going away party of sorts would occur. But not this time. Not for you or any of the other dozen or so laid-off yobs. So, you picked up the intercom, said goodbye to everyone storewide and demanded to know, "Hey! Where's My Fucking Cake?!" Giggles cascaded from behind the counters as you glided by, your middle fingers guiding you out the front door for the last time.


And that was the end of a good long while in your life When Things Were Actually OK.


This led you to looking upon every sweet hell you are going through with some degree of precious delight. A little less obsessively drenched in beleaguered complaints of all things petty and/or trite.


Spending too much time at a local dive bar called Benders, the smoker's back patio started to feel like the Day Room in a mental ward. It takes a special mix of people to show up every weekday afternoon to liquify their unemployment checks, to taunt laugh and brood together. As if this silly drunk social outlet might be a good thing to stick your emotionally detached finger into. Marbles up the arm. Something to do. This was where you ran into Del after not seeing him for 15 years. He looked pretty much the same. Gone were the black leathers and motorcycles, replaced by a sauntering hobble, a cheesy fedora hat and an old man's pipe.


He seemed happy to see you again, but he was so drunk that you turned down his offer to come home with you that night. 8 days later, he was snoring in your bed and had practically moved in. Taking total possession of your space, he referred to it as "his place" when talking to the other drunks in the Day Room. Arrogantly, he graced you with his presence by eating all of your foodstamp rations, drinking all of your booze and fucking you loudly for hours as if he had nothing else better to do. After several years of being single, this seemed like an appropriate distraction; one you had fantasized about since 1997, so you were blissfully happy being Del's semi-girlfriend for a week or two.


Finally, you gushed, love had found you! And from the one and only person you ever felt any sort of nursey feelings for all those long years ago. Was this karmic justice for having been there for him in that hospital room? Or retribution for having gone through so many dysfunctional relationships? Was this not another Boy, but an actual Man that was sticking it to you? With a chipmunky grin, you wished for the frilliest best since you had some pretty massive yearnings for a 40 year old unemployed dope that wanted to feel close to someone else once again.


But nope.


Loneliness and hope had snared you down another dead end. One that broke you off better than all of the rest. With an aplomb and a flair that became almost iconic. And a bit disturbingly entertaining to witness. Ask any one of your former friends.


Del had recently received a court settlement check in the sum of $27,000. More money than you had ever seen in one place at any one time. You asked if he could help you pay the $323 rent since he was now living in your room. He said, "Let's go out and celebrate instead."


So there you were, at a strip club in North Beach. All dolled up with your fabulous new boyfriend. He threw handfuls of dollar bills into the air, raining down more than enough to pay the rent into the stripper's lair. She seemed amused that you were there too, sitting so close to the stage, eyeballing all that cash, feeling dejected and fucked over again. So she took your glasses off, rubbed them along her crotch and put them back on your face. Half a dozen dirty martinis in, it was hard to see anything clearly through the glazed smudge of pussy juice and this sad state of unfair affairs exhibiting themselves so brilliantly.


At one point, Del handed you $20 to go get the next round of drinks from the bar. Another stripper grabbed your arm in the dark. She asked if you wanted to join her in a private
room. But you were too pissed by then. You gave her the twenty bucks and said, "No, i just wanna get away from that asshole i came in here with." So she showed you to the exit. Wobbling around outside, you were so drunk that you knew you could walk all the way home and not remember most of the miles you'd have to hike. But you didn't care. You were finally alone with one of your truest loves, The Cold Night Air.


Coming from behind, Del tackled you, hailed a cab and shoved your ass inside, yelling that you had ruined his whole night. You pleaded with him, since he had all this crazy money, couldn't he at least help you pay the bills?! He responded by punching you in the chest. You caught the cabbie looking at you pathetically in the rear view mirror and turned your head. The rest of the ride home was spent in silence, staring out at the rushing river of blurry streetlights.


Looking down, you felt extraordinarily uncomfortable in how you were dressed. Heels. A revealing dress. Lipstick that made your face go two-dimensional. Ugh. All this to please Del because he hated that you were "too much like a dude" in the way that you looked, acted, spoke out loud, built a fire, trudged around. "DO something about those brows! Yer fingernails are a MESS!" Later he suggested you get fatter, assuming that all the added weight would go straight to your measly A cup breasts.


It didn't take long before you began to feel truly sorry the woman that was his wife. You wondered how the fuck she managed to put up with his greedy selfish bullshit for so many years. One thing you did notice from the photos he showed you was that she'd gained about 100 pounds of extra flesh. Probably to physically please him and to psychologically protect herself.


Del was very proud of having quit speed for a couple years, so he warned you that if you ever did drugs in front of him, he'd leave. Tough Love? Maybe this will help straighten you out. Think again. You WANTED him to leave after the first few weeks but he wouldn't budge. He just started taking your drugs instead. Flicking the tiny bag, he complained observantly, "This ain't even enough for ME!"


You quipped, "Then go buy your own drugs, bitch!"


Comments like that warranted a jarring shove and a chokehold that was in no way romantic or exciting. It just sucked. You soon became a prisoner in the same space that was once your creative sanctuary. Now it was a torture chamber that held in the reek of sweaty tooled sex, stale alcohol, dirty clothes and chain-smoked cigarettes. Those wiped up squirting pools of Unicorn Juice turned into Donkey Town after the good times rolled to a halt. An ionized unprotected miasma of debasing stress descended. And you were the slug writhing under salt.


If sex happened when you weren't in the mood, the quakes of blinding pain it caused would induce dizziness, fainting spells and vomiting. Many whited out moments were spent running water over your hands and head. Curling up wet on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. Closing down with each shallow breath. Apparently, your cervix didn't want company so it never moved out of the way to accomodate Del's invasive kidney-infection-causing big thick filthy dick.


Sage burning started stepping in more frequently to clear the air of his constant oppressive unmitigated BLECH. And it successfully swept him away each time, giving you just enough space to not completely lose your mind. With respect, this taught you to burn it every single day hence.


Slowly, over the next few months Del tried isolating you from your old coworkers slash friends who were falling away at a steady pace on their own anyway. No one wanted to know. And you couldn't blame them for that. The only person you held responsible for opening the door and letting the devil in was you. Subconsciously, you WISHED he'd off you. So sick of all the disillusions you'd discovered by then.


No longer playing your beloved piano daily because Del always occupied that seat in the room, the Beethoven, Satie and Rachmaninoff pieces you'd learned by heart began slipping away. Each day that you did not practice in solace, you lost 1000 hours of muscle memory to his increasing mammoth sized demands and unruly psychotic needs. He wanted to learn how to play, so you tried to teach him Scott Joplin's "Long Slow Drag"; thinking maybe this would help him channel his rage from his own traumatic experiences of child abuse. Maybe it would help him heal that broken part of his soul that was forced to sit in a corner of an old basement. Chained to a pole. With a sign hung around his neck that read in scrawled letters "ASSHOLE".


God only knows what else was done to him as a kid. Or if this story was even true. You could quite easily see how this tale may have been told for the benefit of manipulating you. In the same way he whipped up pity from those around him at every bar or party, enabling him with more free booze. The same way he tried to stop you from giving gas money to your friend who was driving you home from a show you played in Oakland. Holding back the $5 clutched in your fist, he whispered, "No...pretend we're broke so we can get a free ride." But you were well aware of the huge roll of $50's in his pocket at that very moment. A wave of disgust washed over you and left a rancid residue of distrust as you handed the driver your 5 bux.


Whenever Del crossed some crazy line in his head, his eyes would flash brightly and the violent attacks would begin. Even though he acted like a soft cuddly big brown bunny every second of the day up until then. It came out of nowhere, as if he were suddenly possessed. Toward the end, all yellow-eyed and grimacing, he hovered over your piano with a hammer and a can of lighter fluid, threatening to destroy the one thing you love more than him or any other person on the planet. The caterwaul that came soaring outta you scared him half to death. He immediately stopped what he was doing. As if coming to, he begged for forgiveness, pleading that you hit him, give him his deserved punishment.You resolutely refused. And he, at last, left the room. Only to return too soon. From June until February, this ludicrous bullshit continued.


Every day, it was the same routine:


He'd sit up, take a gulp off a bottle and watch straight porn on his fancy new laptop. Jerking off, you'd wake up to the jiggling motion of your bed. Then he'd yell at you to get up and go take a shower so that he could covertly jerk off some more to gay porn. When you came back in dripping wet, he'd shove his cock down your throat. Gagging, tears that were neither happy nor sad sank down your breathless face, reddening.


Some submissive part of you got aroused by his dominating sexual thirst. This was so often missing in other men who always whined for you to be The Top and do all the work. But sex was the one area in which you wanted to NOT be in control. It's really too bad that no man ever seemed to understand that there is a huge difference in how you enjoyed the performance of sex and how you wanted to be treated in all other aspects of life. As if, to him, there was no difference between Sex and Everything Else. This might be why lots of complicated uninhibited women end up with total unsubtle meatheads who treat them like shit in public. He just doesn't Get It. And she has braced herself to Put Up With It. All for the sake of dick. As if it's the holy grail of social prerequisites. Yup, you too, fell for it.


So you'd submit and get aggressively fucked from behind for a good long hair-pulling while. Then shower again, making yourself climax finally. Safe and alone, under the pelting waves of hot water streaming down your neck, in between those once sensible breasts. Afterward, you'd gently suggest that he go somewhere else for the day so that you could work on art or music. And he'd say, "Ok, I will soon..." from about 10AM til 4PM while binge watching something, logged into your account on Netflix.


Just before dusk, he'd suggest you both go to Benders, order greasy food and get drunk again. Cursing yourself for giving him, so quickly, that extra set of your keys, you discovered too easily that if you didn't go with him to the bar, he'd just fuck someone else conspicuously and come crawling back into your bed, repulsive and stinking. So you'd surrender to an eye-rolling listless defeat and murmur, "Yeah, ok." Half expecting that there'd be another unsurprising bourbon fueled fight over nothing substantial that night, especially if you won a game of pool against him. Back home under the spinning ceiling, your throat would turn sore from all the screaming and cocksucking. And you'd lay down, carressing a new invisible wound forming beneath your irascibly thin skin.


You'd stay still until he passed out and started snoring. Almost motionlessly, you'd slip out from under the covers where you were stuck between the wall and the stench of his 6 foot bodily menace. Down and out through the bottom of the bed. Secretly snorting some saviour-shaped lines, you painted little pictures in the small splinters of peace that you could find there on your hardwood floor at 3 AM. Wrapped in a thin blue blanket. Floating in a despicable gloaming sea of decrepit weakness. Bloated with disobedience. Those quiet moments held you close, stroking your disheveled head, shhushing your returning whimpers of wishing you were dead. At dawn, you'd sliver back up through the foot of your bed with your jaw aching from the speed driven grinding of teeth. Looking over at those new cherished paintings, a little less abhorred, you'd eventually fall asleep.


Wake up to the jiggling bed a couple hours later and repeat.


It was going to be difficult, getting Del outta your life. He made sure to remind you then that he owned a gun and was a trained locksmith. "So if you ever try to throw me out, I will break in here and SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKIN FACE!" Later, he proudly announced with a sickening grin, that 9 of his ex-girlfriends were no longer living. But no amount of intimidation was gonna convince you to lie down and become number 10. So you went to the police station and got a restaining order, but when you returned home that afternoon, he stood at the stairway landing, laughing at you. "The cops can't serve me a restraining order because I have no home address, you stupid bitch. HA HA!"


And as any assaulted woman knows, you don't angrily eject a gun-toting psycho from your house because that will injure his ego enough to ensure that he will return and terrorize you worse. Your survival depends on him making
the decision to leave, assuming that he hasn't already strangled your ass. Apparently, this is the same approach the authorities take on domestic violence. "Since he's your boyfriend, and he lives in your house, we can't forcibly remove him unless he actually kills you."


To serve and protect. Yeah. It's no wonder women have to be such sneaky self-defending bitches if they wanna live.


Writing all of this felt like getting repunched in the gut. The jittery nausea from retreading this difficult grueling period, hurled up a fierceness you weirdly missed. Because of your heightened awareness while struggling through that vile crevice. Because of your addiction to crisis. It blows to admit that, but you felt at your best when problem solving your way through chaos. And if there was nothing to grapple with, you'd make a mountain out of a molehill just to feel a little triumphant bliss from overcoming some new form of abusive shit. But there it is. In all of its cataclysmic and overly dramatic rhapsody. It isn't what it is.


Despite this rationality, even though you are now 5 years and 3000 miles away from Del's stomping ground, you still flinch a bit and reach for that straight-razor that hides in your boot whenever you see the shadow of a man wearing a fedora hat. That supposedly solid wall of self-confidence and psychological healing that took so long to construct after all those kiddy hitting and fiddling bricks had been mortared into place, came crumbling down so fast in the wake of this last attempt to intimately converge. In terrific disbelief, here you were again. Back in that fearless gap where you were born. Uncured.


Hating yourself for being so desperate for affection that you'd allow your life to be put on the line, you stuck to doing drugs until that Dumb Girl inside you shut up with her sniveling. Until her simpering needs stopped sabotaging everything you did, there'd be no sleeping, no dreaming, no spending time with anyone. You could barely leave your room at all. Except to go to work.


A couple weeks after you thought it was over with Del, he DID actually break into your house. You stood frozen behind your bolted bedroom door, your heart throbbing loudly as you held your breath. Waiting. He wandered around in the hall, stole something uselessly stupid and left. After that, every time one of your 5 roommates came or went, the sound of the front door opening or closing jolted you out of any form of rest. On edge, with or without meth. And yet, you were not afraid of death. "Go ahead, Kill Me!" you croaked the last time Del put his hands around your neck. "PLEASE, PUT ME OUTTA MY FUCKIN MISERY!!" But he went limp and ran away instead.


It was some kind of dismal poetic justice to find yourself at SF General again after coming back into contact with Del. You had finally arrived at the end of this little romantic crackdown while involuntarily housed for 13 hours in the Psychiatric Ward. Sitting there, barely able to breathe without the pangs of a possibly fractured rib poking into your right lung, the bent in end of your left ring finger turning pale blue and numb. Going crazy and spun up as fuck, but not enough to say anything incriminating to any guinea pig recruiters for the Pfizer corporation, trying to bank another billion.


"Are you depressed? Or feeling suicidal?" This question only made you laugh. Too much. That's like asking if there's a black hole in the center of the galaxy. You kept insisting that instead of speaking to a therapist, you just wanted to get an x-ray done.


But you never got the results of that lead blanket's internal inspection. While waiting patiently and smoking a butt outside the hospital, a k-holed raver kid came barrelling past you. Stopping suddenly, he tried to bum a cigarette. But you only had one left. So he shrewdly snagged your pack from the stone wall behind you and ran around in circles, teasing you with his successful theft.


"Aww for fuckssake," you sighed wearily, leaning over and gingerly holding your innards, "i can't run...my fuckin boyfriend beat the shit outta me...just gimme my last smoke back, please." But the kid had no empathy. Jeering, "I hope the next time he beats you up HE FUCKING KILLS YOU, BITCH!!" He spat in your face and ran through the parking lot, laughing maniacally. Wiping his saliva off,  you expounded, "So do I!" And that was the last feather.


All the final threads of strength holding you up drained out of your legs and you collapsed right where you stood. Bawling onto the gritty gray cement. A good solid reliable friend. This whole experience reduced you down into the cracks between those concrete slabs, where little black ants were trailing a totally different chemical scent, living by an entirely different set of battle circumstances and social rules, narrowly avoiding the groaning waterfall pouring out of a towering monstrous fool. When that was done, you got up and walked home to go deal with the ache of things broken on your own. Before this sick joke got any funnier or more grotesque or hideously strange. Whereupon, you likely inhaled another round of fat rails to recalibrate your bursting brain into feeling nothing again.


Those injuries morphed into symbols and healed much quicker after they spoke their truth to the now-listening you. That particular finger was never going to have a ring on it. Get used to it. Stop grasping in desperation for something you don't believe would bring you any happiness anyway. To widen your cage and breathe freely again, stay in your own small space. And stop giving yourself away to fucked up people that, instinctively, you knew would never stick around long enough to force you into becomming a soccer mom or be someone you might have to rely upon some day. Autonomy. Give yourself a break.

Doomed relationships were just status quo distractions from the creativity that never betrayed. Every ounce of mainstream media had fed you the syrupy moral that life is only good for people who had other people to belong to. To breed with. To call their own. But this started to feel like an axiom written by a historic stream of lonely guys with womb-envy. Thusfar, the only things sex brought you were suffering and pain. And you were DONE.


So, you took out the new tattoo machine you'd purchased with your last unemployment check, turned it on and started carving oaths into your skin on that night of Del's break-in. Consumed by a destructive seething rage, the wincing agony of tattooing yourself felt great. A needed change of pace from the other self-mutilating activities you usually engaged in when you were this infuriated. It cathartically reshaped those reactive feelings, memorializing a world of wrath into a transcendental mesmerising passage: "Speak To Me Not Of Justice For None Have I Ever Seen." In Old English script, these words redecorated the teenage cutting scars buried in your forearm.


A triple-spiral around your broken ring finger announced the lifelong commitment you then made to marry and live happily ever after with yourself. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. Til death do us part.


You said, "I Do."


And I did, too.




*u can call me ph!*

13% [chapter 15]

ALTAR TO ALTERS


By December 2005, you gave yourself the best and worst xmas present ever: Speed Psychosis.


Christmas was always a hard time. Just like it is for a huge percent of the population that lives in familial denial. Most turn to their friends to get through it with some sense of contentment and fellowship. But if no one really enjoys your company, then drugs will do just fine to kill the time.


You were actually in a great mood. So happy to be left alone with this big frosty snowman made outta meth stacked high in front of you. 12 different half finished projects laid strewn haphazardly about the room. All the roommates had gone away to their respective warm holiday gatherings. Sucks to be them, you thought, with not a shred of envy.


You were so glad that you wouldn't have to get into some pointless political argument with one of those right wing bigots related to you. Or hover over a bowl of green beans and mashed potatos while everyone else ridiculed you for being vegetarian. Or hear, yet again, that forced age old question of, "When are you gonna settle down, get married and have some kids with whichever man is crazy enough to have you?!" Always followed up with, "Aww..whatever happened to that guy Zack? You should've married him when you had the chance." Or laugh about that time when your dad, in a drunken frenzy, carved the turkey with his bare hands. Grabbing, mangling and throwing the much labored-over carcass all over the room. Cursing as each limb smacked up against something and fell to the floor, greasily doomed. Picking up the whole table, he flung it over. Toppling off into broken shards went the glasses, the good plates and all trimmings of that delicately prepared meal. Your poor mother sobbed, numbly clutching a broom. But the dog was happy as fuck that afternoon.


Nope, not this year. You could do whatever the hell you wanted to do in this big empty house. So you joyfully consumed almost that entire huge chunk of meth over a heap of sleepless hours. They blurred together in a revolving shock of night/day/night/day with the unforgiving flux of time lapse photograhy. This extensive holiday would forever alter the internal workings of that person you thought was you and only you.


To understand what birthed this seasonal hatred of Christmas, several attempts were made via dream healing and concentrated meditation to trace it back to it's origin: Germany, 1972. You were 3, your brother was 5. The two of you woke up and excitedly started playing with the new toys you'd received for Christmas the day before, all spread out on the floor of the bedroom at 4 or 5 in the morning. Suddenly, the door burst open. Your infuriated red-faced father screamed that it was too early to be making noise. Your brother chirped, "But Daddy, lookie what Santa gave me!" He held up his bright blue Tonka dumptruck gleefully. Your dad grabbed him by the wrist and flung his entire body across the room. He bounced off the wall and landed head first on the floor in front of you. Through your terrified screams you heard a splitting sound. The pretty porcelain tea set you were playing with was broken. For years that's what you believed shattered at that moment. But it was not the china cracking. It was your brother's bones.


Something else snapped then, too. Willy appeared. Sitting there next to you. This happy little 4 year old boy, tenderhearted and true. His calming presence acted as the gatekeeper to all the other alters who would later join him and you, one by one, over the next several years every time a new trauma broke into you. But you never saw them coming. It was only a sneaking suspicion. Like that weird feeling you get when someone else is watching you.


At 12, you saw that movie about a woman with multiple personalities called 'Sybil'. Your reaction to it was, "I'd never be lucky enough to have that problem." Not good enough to have a mental disorder. Not good enough to have a built-in defense mechanism for dealing with life threatening stresses. The ultimate in self-deprecation.


Not even halfway through those 4 days that you spent spun up as fuck, having an enjoyable White Christmas, all of your busy bodied building projects became just background noise to something else that was conspiring for your attention. People began appearing solidly before you. Saying nothing. Just sitting there. Staring at you. How rude.


It was annoyingly disconcerting to look over and see a young boy with eyes wide as saucers, his entire fist shoved into his mouth. His other hand gently caressed his crying girlfriend's head, laying there limp in his lap. Long hair covered most of her face except where it had matted down in her streaming tears. One wet eye peered straight out at you. No amount of pleading, cajolling or yelling seemed to dislodge their dreamlike presence there on your bed. And when you moved around to different parts of the room, only their eyes followed. Creepishly boring into you. This real life nightmare had only just begun.


And here you were, so happy to be left alone for Christmas.


Yet the whole house began filling up with strange people staring at you. There was no escape. No matter where you looked or didn't look. Even with your eyes closed. Everything,everywhere was matrixing into another staring accusatory face in some phase of physiological decomposition or distorted with agonizing bliss.


You tried to amuse yourself with silly ideas. As if all of these figures were the trapped souls of people who died from drug overdoses on this holy holiday. And they all came here to Partay! Wooohooo!! But no amount of dark humor could curb the increasingly unfunny haunting invasion flooding your room, filling the hallway, coming up the stairs, walking around outside the window. It began to frighten you, this complete loss of control. And soon you felt a greater empathy for those schizophrenics on the street as they stand there yelling in the bus stop or at a garbage can, toward someone no one else can see. Stuck in the torment of a terrified brain in crisis, hallucinating mercilessly.


After a couple more day/nights of this, you became so scared, so backed up into the corners of fear, all you could do was sit in the lukewarm bathtub. In the dark. Crying. Then you started singing to calm yourself down. It brought a tiny respite. Silver Bells. Noel. Silent Night. Still the unblinking eyes did not subside. They found their way to you through the faucets, the shower curtain, the peeling light blue paint on the walls and on the ceiling of the bathroom.


So you started praying. "And yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i shall fear no evil for thou art with me..." Over and over until the bath water turned ice cold. Hot water on. Swirl around. Repeat for another rough ungodly hour. Never alone. Yet so totally alone in your own private hell.


Joseph Campbell once said, "The path is from dreams to visions to gods. All the tomorrows, all the yesterdays are within you. All the hells, all the heavens are within you. All the gods are in you." So you reached out for someone else.


Evan soon showed up after you finally made a frantic phone call for help. He took you to a large luxurious loft in West Oakland where he was housesitting. A completely muted neutral space. Even he became skittish, nervously laughing at the steady stream of nonsensical descriptions detailing these ornate hallucinations with which you were still carousing. He lead you over to the couch, sat you down and gave you a blanket to cover up your shivering, though not cold, body.


Through a tightly clenched mouth, a certain phrase kept repeating itself in broken consonate sounds, "GT STND! GET STND! GET STONED!" So you followed it's direction and got stoned. But it wasn't you talking. This was someone else.


At last, your panicked heart rate began to slow and the hallucinations eased off a bit, mutating into swirls and patterns instead of crazy judgemental dead toy faces. As you laid down, a high pitched ringing drowned out your ramblings. Then cold beads of sweat trickled down your neck. You wanted to vomit suddenly, but had nothing in your stomach. A dark cloud of bile forcibly ejected itself from so far deep down in your gut, it felt like your intestines were being ripped out. Out shot a hoarse blood curdling primal howl. And then, convulsions. Only one step left til Overdose. Death.


With spit flying through your teeth drilled shut like a vice, you tried to voice the words, "Immm hvinnng e seezure!" Evan replied, "What? You want a ceasar salad? I'm not sure if there's any parmesan in th--" "No! Imm hvinng a seezrr! A SEIZURE!!!" But your stiff electric limbs made this obvious by now. Your eyes rolled up into your head and you dropped off the cliff of muscle coordination like a piece of lead. Evan had enough sense at least to hold your head while the rest of your body spasms did their short circuiting stringless puppet dance. It stopped eventually. Then aftershocked over the next few hours in a fog of exhaustion and kinetic helplessness.


Gently, Willy's little face floated in front of you. All other hallucinations had ceased. His smile was so sweet and kind.You asked him, "Were you the one telling me to get stoned?"


"Yeah...we were scared."


"Who's we?"


Willy calmly asked if it would be ok for you to meet all the other alters.


"All the other alters? But...? I thought I didn't have any?!"


He giggled and said that they'd all decided you were too bossy, so they were just gonna hide until you needed them again. So here they were. One by one. Name. Age. Face. When and why they came to be living inside of you. And what they thought about what you were doing to yourself now. You sighed, "I'm so sorry..."


It felt wonderfully warm and loving, this unexpected intervention. This family reunion of secret selves who helped you cope for so many years. Who cared enough about you that they made sure not to show themselves off too much in front of society for fear of getting you thrown away into an institution. They did actually have your back. Even those who wouldn't acknowledge you since they were
so pissed about shit. Even those who would fuck every stupid dude that got drunk with you back in Boston because they were so into it. You still thanked them, though you weren't sure what good it would do. But they did actually care whether or not you lived or died because then, they would all either live or die too.


So much of the past made sense now. Why you never really felt alone. Why it was so neccessary to write everything down, to take photos, to document events and be sure they did actually happen. To keep a record. To keep track of time. Because you often found things written and recorded that you did not recognize or remember as your own. It was a beautiful, long overdue reception. An accidental healing that greatly improved your outlook on life. And Evan graciously sat there listening to this perplexing conversation you were having with all these imaginary people, watching over you as the discussion grew more peaceful. Until finally, you fell into a heavy comatose sleep.


Yeah, maybe it was just the drugs talking. But similar to feeling the presence of The Angel of Death, this kind of knowing experience was too far beyond questioning. So there was no need to quantify it's validity. It was as real as a dream within a life that is as real as the dream itself feels.


It was what it was.


When you woke up 2 days later, it took huge concentrated efforts to speak. Your mouth did not work right. You couldn't string together words or pronounce an understandable sentence. This was the scariest plight yet. Weeping, you were suddenly struck dumb. What if you had just damaged your brain so severly, you'd given yourself some form of cerebral palsy for the rest of your life?! Inside, behind your disabled tongue, you cried, "My God, What Have I Done?!"


MERRY CHRISTMAS DOOKIE HEAD!! Now, you may fully appreciate the ability To Speak. To Think. To Act Freely. To Write. To Feed Yourself. To Wash. To Pee. To Sit Upright.


The next day, you left Oakland to go start a new job at Amoeba Records on Haight Street. Evan said he was hurt that you spent those completely retarded out-of-your-mind nights quarantined to the couch, not sleeping in bed next to him like a good sane girlfriend should. But he could never understand that you already felt so crowded, the last thing you could deal with was being cuddled or screwed. Though you were grateful he showed up to help you, his emotional reaction to this insane situation said something about the clueless and unabashedly inherent selfishness of men. Maybe he felt you owed it to him since he protected your skull during those violent fits of convulsion? But you were too busy almost dying to think about how much he might need to get some head. Really rather unfortunate. From beginning to end.


Although psychologists are still debating whether or not multiple personality disorder even exists, you later researched the different wide ranging theories on this and wondered if 2 opposing conclusions might both be true. If trauma occurs before the age of 7, it is said, the child's brain is far more likely to fracture into different aspects as their personality has not fully formed yet. Those young brains, that in most other mammals, would still be in utero, are too tender and too vulnerable to withstand violent abuse, so it compartmentalizes itself as a natural coping mechanism. Another camp suspects that early trauma injures the aura's spiritual defenses and thus, opens the child up to being possessed by other entities. Maybe they are both correct? Perhaps those alternate personalities are just lost ghosts looking for another host to crawl into? And what better way to show your appreciation than by paying an emotionally protective rent to the original owner of the body that is now housing you? It's just a thought on a subjective goose that is difficult, if not impossible to prove.


Possible or not, that Psychotic Christmas was quite a gift. You recovered. And for a couple years, you severly cut down on your drug use. Because now, there were other people to whom you could turn to feel true long term love and gratitude.


All the hells, all the heavens, all the gods are within you.



*u can call me ph!*

13% [chapter 14]

FIRESTARTER


And so it was that your love affair with crystal meth was rekindled like a house of cards on fire and smoldered until it was just a carbon fluke. It became a saving grace because you no longer cared. You could be spun up and in league with projects, theories and ideas for days, weeks, always. You never succumbed to bouts of loneliness because you were too busy cleaning, repairing or organizing some minute shit into the tiniest of enclaves. You bonded with meth, paint brushes and power tools instead of most women and men, on and off, for like, the next fucking decade.


But you don't demonize the drug for being there when you weren't there for yourself. It filled in a space. It occupied a time when you felt empty and heavy and gross and lost. Like good ideas unrealized. Like decent jobs laid off. Like old people crying because they can't remember their children's names. Like analog synths and tube amps trending on ebay. Original movies that need not be remade. Black mayonnaise. Kodachrome color. Super 8. Gone off. Long gone. Then insultingly regurgitated. Retro. Chic. Limp. Stripmined. Razed. It sucked to see history being co-opted by those who could afford to jack up your rent and take take take with an air of careless ease and entitlement. But nowhere near as painful as it was for more than 50 million Native Americans.


Ever so conveniently, your drug supply was now showing up in the form of giant fist sized boulders via your new boyfriend, Evan. Again, you were so low you would have done anyone that night you met him while getting drunk at Zeitgeist. Well, that is to say, you would have done anyone that Actually Managed To Turn You On, which was a complete rarity. Certainly, you never would have guessed that he'd still be hanging out with you the next day. But you also don't blame him for finding such melodramatic humor in watching the sharp arc of your orbit toward this fiendishly pathological habit you both shared over the next few years in close proximity.


Not the healthiest relationship ever, but at least you did feel some flashes of gushy love and deep compassion for him on more than one occassion. So much so, it still surprises you to think on all those amber impacted memories. Which is why you prefer To Not Think About Them. It's easier to concentrate on, and not cry about, what went wrong.


Evan was quirky and pretty fucking hot in his own weird way. Politically aware and musically inclined, he had a curious enthusiasm that was inspiring. Shaved blond head. Bright blue eyes. Hairless bulldog chest. Could keep it up for as long as it was required. Not afraid to go down on a woman. And not totally clueless once he arrived. Which must be honorably mentioned, for that rare oral sex equality that his willingness never belied.
Think: Giovanni Ribisi, tweaked. Uhhhmmgrrrr...right?


Initially, Evan said he loved that you made comix, music and art. But the second he had to take a back seat to the pencil and the Sharpie marker or the Korg Monotribe and the mixing board for a full afternoon or two, he felt neglected sexually. Only 6 weeks into your relationship, he cheated on you. Good to get that outta the way so quick, your favorite dog trick. But you saw it coming BEFORE it happened this time.


The moment you laid eyes on his sunglassed face that morning at your door, your head clearly said knowingly, "the next time you see him, everything is going to be different." He didn't show up that night like he said he would. Hours stewed slowly by. You sat at your drawing board but drew nothing. Just sat there. Randomly, you dug out an old copy of Nirvana's acoustic Lead Belly cover "In the Pines" and listened to it. Over and over and over. Doing line after line after line. Getting progressively angrier, more depressed and crying onto the sketchbook pages that remained mockingly unmarked and white. He finally showed up the next day all teary-eyed, telling you he got really drunk, fucked another woman, and spent the night. Yup. You already knew that. Then you turned around and started drawing again finally.


Sloppily, he offered to bring you some more drugs. He only spoke to your shrugging back. Yeah, ok. You thought this is the best kind of crack whore you could ever hope to be. "Alright, bitch. Bring it!" you snapped as he departed sheepishly. The truer gift was this voice of warning in your head because it was, once again, correct. And you had to celebrate the fact that you could still hear it under so much drug addled sleepless duress.


You soon forgave Evan for fucking someone else. So he cheated on you some more over the years. You knew it every time, yet let it go unconfronted as you had ceased caring what he did with his own dick by then. At least he was still talking to you like a human being, and that was of the utmost importance. You could accept all kinds of sexual deviance up the yin yang, so long as you weren't being spoken to like a dumbass.


He once said, "Every man has a stable. Every Single One."


How can any one woman believe that she means anything substantial to a man, when she's up against the bottomless sexual questing of one entire objectified and furthermore, self-objectifying gender? Unless he sees her as an equal human being, treats her the way he treats his best bro friends and not as a conquest or a trophy to make other men jealous, then it is impossible to ever be anything other than eventual sworn enemies. And Evan agreed. He was understanding, thoughtful and decent. Yet his dick still wandered from one "willing slit" (his definition) to his ex's address constantly. It didn't seem to matter how honest or in love or open you were with him. You would never be enough. So yes, caring became a commodity. Every year, you had a little less and less trust in love's truthfulness left.


Evan called himself a writer but the only writing of his that you ever read were the letters he prolifically wrote to you during those years. Then you read all the letters from his former girlfriends that he wanted to share with you for some strange tweaked out reason. This only made you realize the total futility of your presence in his life. Here were their similar reactions to all the same stories he told them just as he had told you. All the same songs on a mix tape sent to someone else. You saw yourself as simply another name that would be said to the next woman down the line. Erased was any sense of being different from any other interesting cunt he had loved fucking previously. It lost all it's uniqueness, the biological him combined with you; as if on some molecular level, the mixture of 2 specific people could create a sort of atom bomb of social change that found its genesis inside an explosive relationship, affecting all else around it. Like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, like Yoko Ono and John Lennon, like Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, like Mileva Maric and Alfred Einstein. That looks great written on paper to you for Valentine's Day in his blood, but loses all it's meaning when repeated like spam to every woman who ever bared her breasts to him.


Yes, you were a sucker for that soulmate myth. What woman isn't during a large portion of her child bearing years? It feeds into the operatic fantasies while trapped in that ongoing battle with your own hormonal body; that fight to the death between the womb's attempt to breed and the brain's raging need for independence, respect and liberty.


So how the hell would you know How To Have a Good Healthy Relationship? Your success to failure ratio is a solid 0:100%! Good job! By Jove! But you do know that being in a relationship IS A Job. So get yer head outta the stove and go make me some turkey pot pie, Ho!


Oh, and let's not forget to mention that ravenous animal living between your legs whose impetus to eat fuck and kill only increases exponentially when on amphetamines. Isn't it nice to think that a soulmate would still be there after the 8 ball is all done? Not leave you to wipe up the mess of those liquidy communal expressions of lust that are stuck and crusting over as you come down on your own? Better not come down then. Perhaps the destruction of monogymy's soulmate myth really was for the level best.


It is what it is.


Adopted as a toddler, Evan had managed to locate his biological mother after years of searching for her. You felt it neccessary to warn him that she might not be happy to hear from him. But he waved your pragmatic suggestion aside, and beamed with excitement. Their relationship was initially rebuked by his mother who had never informed her husband
or children of Evan's existence. Evan was crushed. His mother eventually came around, but their relationship remained tentative and strained. He probably felt it was easier to place that disappointment on you, instead of facing the truth of this difficult situation that fell so horrifically short of his long held fantasy filled expectations. You didn't blame him for being upset, but many pointless arguments ensued. You stuck to your guns, saying he was lucky to be raised by people that did love him instead of being treated like shit by his own flesh and blood.


You know someone is not listening to a single word you say when they tell you, "I am so sick of listening to you." No longer could you stand the feel of his skin against you in bed; all gropey, moist, disconnected, overfriendly and available to so many other women and men --yet so unjustifiably mad at you for fucking someone other than him once. Once.


You wanted to take a breather from "the stuff", as Evan so deftly called it. But he just kept bringing it over anyway and chopping that shit up right in front of your face. And when that voice in your head came back and said, "don't ever have children with this man because he will molest them," you were pretty much done. What a horribly cruel joke your life might have become -- it's likely you would've ended up in prison because if anyone, including your husband, ever raped your daughter or son, you would have castrated them.


Evan professed so strongly to be against the antiquated idea of marriage, yet he so quickly married the last woman he was cheating on you with. His opinion must have been as solid as catsick. Oh well. To each his own bowl of hell.


In fact, all of your former boyfriends got married almost immediately after the disaster of you occurred in their lives. Is that a compliment or an insult? Who gives a fuck. Probably had absolutely nothing to do with your narcissistic butt. But, like clockwork, they all contacted you down the road, having contracted that 7 year itch, post wife and kids. They wanted to relive the sexual exploits of their younger days with that crazy bitch that was into sucking dick, anal sex, other women, yadda yadda yadda, it was all ok, except putting them in diapers and playing with their poo. There was a reason you didn't want children. And you certainly did not get off on a man who fantasized about being a baby. More often than not, you'd end up being the man in every situation anyway and you hated that. But hearing from your ex-boyfriends again under this topic of discussion did nothing except depress the fuck outta you. These existential trainwrecks are neither here nor there, ultimately. So why go there? It was for these kinds of thoughts, specifically, that you turned to drugs to annihilate. Into ridiculousness. Black and white. Hard shorts cuts. Like a French movie. Absurd. The choices you made in life were yours to make. No regrets. Only pinched off torpid turds.


You still wanted to be good for something other than just sex. Other than just a jerk.


Long after the end of Evan, you kept his letters bound by a string. A more definitive fate would later bind them together forever better. Along with all the other remnants of all the men, all the women, all the leftover shrouds of hope, of fear, of failed careers, of love rage sex and dope -- Fire.


Disappearred. Up in smoke.


All those years of us being close for nothing but a ghost.




*u can call me ph!*

13% [chapter 12]

PINK ICE


As soon as you arrived in San Francisco, you didn't like it.


You were lonely. People were fake. They never did the things they said they would do. "No" was a word that had been removed from the Californian vocabulary. Instead, the red
herring "yes" would repeatedly waste an unprecedented amount of your time. "Flake" was a new word that took you only a week to learn, but much longer to assimilate. And everyone was so afraid of confrontation, you found yourself angrily walking straight through busy intersections, wishing someone would just have the moxie filled balls to yell "Fuck You!" instead of whimpering, "I'm sorry," when they were clearly not at fault.


Socially, this place confused you to no end, turning you into a tediously befuddled dingleberry. At every party you went to, you'd open your mouth and succeed in clearing the room. Dejected, the rest of the evening would be spent on the stairs or at the outer edges, smoking, being lurid and uncool.


However, alone at night, when the jasmine bloomed and the eucalyptis trees near the sea breezed through, it was a beautiful refuge for someone who not only loves, but needs lots of unpopulated solitude. It was a gift in disguise that no one was ever there for you.


People said, "Don't go to the Lower Haight because it's dangerous." So you went straight there, only to discover this neighborhood was not filled with danger, just non-white folks. Obviously, that river of racism that runs underground throughout America, even this far away from the other regions in which you had already witnessed it's ignorant shame was still firmly held in place. But what did you expect?Equality? Justice? Such fabulous notions that have yet to actually surface. Seems it would be easier to raise the dead. Or see white cops getting convicted for killing black kids. Or experience corporations being held accountable for crimes against humanity. Or accept generally that the protection of bees, coral reefs, forests, oceans, rivers and streams is more neccessary for long term survival than money. Or even just receive equal pay without having your body parts felt up every other fucking day.


Isn't it obvious why you cleared every party?
So anyway...


Renting the cheapest room you could find for $230 a month in an old run down but rent controlled victorian at 2429 Mission and 20th Street, you discovered you had become broke ass, so it was too late to bail. You got a minimum wage job at the Lumiere Theater on Polk Street. Now all you had to do was deal. Deal with every mistake you had already made, and look forward to all the bigger and better mistakes in which you would soon wholeheartedly engage. Whoopee!


The first friend you met was a guy from D.C. named Josh. He was beautifully gaunt, like an Egon Schiele drawing. Also into industrial and goth. Having sex with him was like admiring exotic tropical fish in an aquarium -- always just out of reach emotionally as if he didn't need to breathe the same air. But he did share with you what he was breathing, and you leapt right into that enticing pool without holding your breath.


Crystal meth was an entirely new drug to you. Nothing like the white cross kinds of pre-teen speed you did back in New Jersey. These virginal pink batches were particularly pure, if you can call battery acid, paint thinner, anti-freeze and psuedoephadrine pure. But one thing was for sure - it made vapid people a lot easier to deal with.


You were quite content to see life through planet sized eyes. Greeting strangers on the street, your head focused on what was in front of you, not cast down beneath everyone's feet. This action itself was formerly utterly foreign to you. Released from oppressive self-doubt, speed punched you in the face repeatedly. Like doing shots of whiskey or absinthe
or everclear - it's a good painful kiss. Like a natural disaster forcing you to face your own insignificant mortality. Every line that pummeled your crusty nasal causeway seemed to balance out your downer brain. Everyone said it would make you go all paranoid but you became Less Paranoid. This drug made you feel like A Normal Person somehow. As if your life was not a series of Total Shits. But it is still a drug. Not authentic joy. Meh...who fucking cares? It was the best you could do back in '93 thru '94.


At one particularly memorable all night party in a sparsely furnished living room overlooking the corner of Haight and Fillmore, every glistening skinned, green and purple haired tweaker was there. All talking nonstop simultaneously about their childhood traumas. But no one was listening. No one.


Uncomfortably fidgeting in the corner of the room, fighting off nausea and the taste of tin foil on your tongue, you began to wonder if there was some kind of connection between addiction and child abuse. All of them barely older than you. All of them fucked since day one. All of them hating life since day two.


In addition to that non-shocking theory: On a road trip to a book convention with the SF Homeless Coalition some years later, the passengers that filled the 12 seat van all shared their own stories of being unloved before they became unsheltered. Fueled by a steady stream of brown bagged beers, it became apparent on that 6 hour drive that every single person in that vehicle -- the homeless men and women, the coalition volunteers, the legal advocates and the driver of the van -- had all been abused as children. Coincidence? You wish.


But back at that tweaker party on Haight Street, you left the loud chaotic chatter behind and sat alone on the stairway, as usual, feeling doomed. That was the first time you decided to quit your infatuation with crystal meth. Even though it felt so good, not being constantly filled with the dreaded depression of fear. It felt so good to have the energy to Do Shit instead of just lying in bed, crying for no good goddamn reason, feeling sorry for yourself, wasting another year. This drug got you to Work On Time! Your customer service skills went through the roof! But meth's effects were socially futile if they only resulted in verbal avalanches onto those who would never listen or come through for you in tense real life situations. The shit Real Friends do. Even though, in truth, drugs were better friends than people were to you.


There was also that hope you were still holding onto. Hope that there was Someone Out There For You. Still young and stargazing across that superfluous indoctrinated bromantic notion that obscures the reality of most women's lives; lives that are actually filled with fateful losses, repeated betrayals and discriminated subversions. But it's all roses and sunshine after finding That Man That's Right For You. Sure it is.


Before quitting meth, however, you managed to bust your new boyfriend's cherry with it. Josh didn't love you so you fucked Zack. You thought it was only going to be a one night stand. But Zack kept coming back. He did love you. And you hated him for that. Doing speed with him only once, you became even more annoyed with his clinging and wished you could be less of a mouse trap.


So you quit meth. Just like that. No severe aftermath. No zombie fried brain damage, at least not more than you already had. You forgot all about it. And instead, returned to drinking booze regularly and smoking chronic amounts of weed daily. That seemed to hold the reality, nihilism and psychic visions at bay for a full foggy decade.


You couldn't afford the colossal tuition at the Art Institute, so you took lots of $13 classes at City College and spent all of your free time falling into the colorful spreads of Sandman and Tank Girl instead. Art was not dead.


Eventually, you were offered a painting scholarship that partially paid your way into the Art Institute regardless of your pennilessness and general negativity. Student loans that grew like gall stones covered the rest. After 3 years of taking a range of interdisciplinary courses while holding down 2 part time jobs, you graduated with honors and awards. This was your one true success. Memorably short. Still unpaid for.


During that entire time, you kept trying to get rid of Zack. But if Zack was so irritating, one might ask, why did you stay with him for so long? Because nobody else was calling you. Yup. It was as shallow and pathetic as that. That one-sided relationship in which you became the domineering dickhead tyrant. A horrible example of how not to behave toward someone who did nothing to deserve such abusive treatment, except put up with it year after year.


Constantly, Zack was trying to thaw your frozen disposition. You were repulsed by how joyous he always was. Like a puppy. It made you sad that you couldn't get Psyched or Stoked about stupid things like sitting in hammocks or flying kites. He'd have to rouse up your downer ass to go skydiving or go for motorcycle rides at night. You did feel all of the awesomeness in all of these awesome things eventually, but your happiness never seemed to last quite as long as his. And this was the "healthiest" relationship you ever thought you had. HA HA! It turned out to all be bullcrap. Many years later, you found out that Zack was slamming meth the whole time you were together. He kept his shit well concealed under his chess set from the self-obsessed mess that was his wacko art school girlfriend. Not actually a difficult task.


For some reason though, finding out about his hidden addiction made you like him slightly more than you ever did before. All sorts of things made sense in this new context. But you still would have treated him like doggy doo doo, doing whatever was necessary to stop his spazzy ass from putting you on a pedestal. You hated that he allowed you treat him like crap, wishing he'd get some self-respect and give up on you so that you could appreciate his kindness after it had been removed. But no. Meth or no meth, this nice boy was never going to Deliver You. And that's what you were really looking for. Although this unconscious drive went unrealized until after reaching the age of 42.


Except for that one night in the summer of '95 when you got shit faced drunk in front of all of Zack's high school buddies in Bend, Oregon. You did a terribly awkward stripperish performance at his friend's bachelor party. It made some of the guys in the room leave for the tranquility of the back porch, perhaps out of pity for your sorry unskilled act. Zack, however, couldn't be happier that his girlfriend was getting naked in front of all of his friends as they hollered obnoxious platitudes at your ass. Looking over at him, shining the spotlight on all of your exposed damage, he just sat there smiling. You started to feel weird, but kept on stripping. Nothing was sexy. Becomming more and more freaked out at this bizarre scene that you had entered into voluntarily, the only thing you could do to stop from either laughing or crying hysterically, was to turn around and focus on me. I took you away instantly. An insulin reaction whited you out, and you fell into a petit seizure. Show's over, choads.


Afterward, in the middle of a sleepy provincial street, at the top of your lungs, you shrieked, "Why Can't You Just Fucking Kill Me!?" Zack cried, "cuz I love you...why would I want to kill you?" This embarrassing little onslaught had slipped your mind until recently when it came back to haunt you like a spiteful giggling wraith.


Courtney Love life stinks. Fuck that donkey headed sociopathic attention seeking bray that jealously punched Kathleen Hanna in the face. It killed Kurt Cobain whose death you celebrated because he was lucky to have escaped the corporate commoditizing music machine before more of his sexually abused yet self-realizing spirit could be winnowed away.


There should be some remorse for having turned out Zack to a life of drug abuse, but there isn't. Perhaps because no blame was ever placed on those who brought it to you. The choice to snort that shit rests firmly on your own slouching shoulders, so you don't see the point of feeling guilt over the choices other people are capable of making for themselves. Or if they choose to squarely place that blame on someone else. But if you must blame anyone, blame Del. And by Blame, I mean, Feel Undying Gratitude Toward.


Sometimes when an experience begins to happen that will later become a much revisited memory, a subtle but noticeable shift occurs. It's as if regular life turns into a cheesy sci fi movie and you are witnessing a portal in time being unearthed. A thick silence echoes at the start. Then colors saturate as if all the things you see are layers upon layers of the same image on a transparency. Sounds knell like you're at the bottom of a well. It feels as if all of your future selves are psychically crowding around, one for each time you will remember this particular hell that you are about to enter into. Remember to breathe and pay close
attention to everything, for here comes a memory forming that you may or may not live to tell. One such event occured at a party in the spring of '96 on the corner of Oak and Fell.


Wandering around outside the house since you were too stoned to deal with people, you gazed up at the sullen moon and took a photo. The scent of something dreadful about to happen wouldn't quit stalking you. The air held a trace of blood. Iron. Water and rust. Death.


Inside the party, Del had arrived to a loud round of approving yells. He was a local fixture. Always drunk. Always fucked up. Always decked out in leathers and a frayed Einsturzende Neubauten tshirt. Black hair greased back. Reeking of sexuality and a healthy portion of isolated emotional torment. Hung like a centaur, he could charm the pants off both women and men, in numbers that would rival a rebel army. And everyone loved him. Despite all the fucked up shit he pulled, all the wobblies he threw. Crazy only looks good on someone beautiful.


Staggering outside to his motorcycle, clearly beyond being able to ride in a straight line, you jumped in front of his bike. Straddling the front tire, you yelled that he could not leave yet because if he did, he would get into a horrible accident. You felt so strongly compelled to help him avoid this awful thing that was about to befall him that it wasn't even You being compelled. No part of your own ego or personality was involved. You had long since gotten out of the way. This pulsating wave of words came barrelling down through the top of your skull and out your mouth with such determined ferocity, all you could do was let it ride. It was uncontrollable, like vomiting profusely. Del practically ran you over, vehemently bellowing, "Outta my way, you crazy bitch!" And sped off, up the hill.


People had come outside from the party because of the commotion. You started to walk home down the hill. 7 seconds later came the squeal thump crash and crunch that was Del getting hit by a car that ran the red light. It ruptured his spleen, fractured an arm and a leg, broke his ribs and collarbone, collapsed a lung and concussioned his head. His favorite tshirt was torn for good as the paramedics cut through his clothes. Shivering straight up through the middle, they revived his blood soaked body in the bright strobing ambulance, then went screeching and wailing away.


He spent 3 weeks in and out of the Intensive Care Unit at SF General. You went there nearly every day to make sure he was going to be ok. You told the hospital staff you were family, but everyone knew Del didn't have any. This wasn't his first, nor his last visit to SF General. Each time he came to, he'd angrily yank out all of his tubes. When his eyes focused, he was fucking pissed. "Death was so beautiful...I don't wanna still be alive," he cried. The nurses told you his lung had collapsed again during the night. You wiped off his sweaty forehead as they routinely reinserted his tubes. He fell back asleep and did some more healing while also detoxing from the massive amounts of amphetamines that flooded his veins for most of his high velocity life. Despite his best efforts, Del survived.


As you stood over his bed with that sweaty cloth in your hand, it came as a complete surprise to realize that you DO have a single nurturing bone in your body. It was not broken.


This attention you were spending on Del infuriated Zack to no end. He accused you of having feelings for his drug dealer and likely secretly gay lover. And maybe you did, who can tell? You thought yourself lucky to feel anything at all, no matter upon whom the target of your affections fell. But Zack had no clue as to all the spookiness that had precluded this accident. And that trying to grasp the meaning behind all of this weirdness was really what was propelling you. Yet nothing was discovered.


Some years after that, Zack left SF for Canada and got married to someone else. After being discharged from the hospital, Del got engaged and moved to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge with his new fiancee. You would not run into him again for another 15 years. He was still not dead.


It snidely besotted you on the odd occassion, however, that if you hadn't tried to stop Del from riding off that night, if you hadn't caused all those moments of obstruction with your Kiss of Death Premonition, he might not have gotten into that accident at all.


"Everything's my fault."


Being a control-freak to the Nth degree, years of failed attempts to formulate trusting friendships with people forced you to gradually calm that compulsion to hound others unneccessarily. It focused you on controlling only those things you Actually Have any loose cannon control over: You yourself, that dissociative low self esteeming twat of yours, and that black cloud following you around that had, by now, begun turning blue.




*u can call me ph!*