Breeze's Malaise

I am so out of sorts today. I feel like I just tripped on the road of life. I’m self-conscious and paranoid and jittery. Somewhere I took a misstep and wound up at this weird place on the side of the road. I think I can get back on track but my mind keeps obsessing  about life in the worst case scenario; the beautiful combustible heap that it would be... to just give up, let it all go to shit, be some obese homeless dude on skid row over ridden with STDs and razor bumps… just fuck it all… throw out my condoms, throw out my Body Shop Honey and Oat exfoliator along with any futile hope of obtaining some semblance of a career or love life… damn it all to hell! I’ll be “that” guy… the urban legend people will tell to their friends who have hopes of making it big when they come to Los Angeles. I’ll be a stop on some hipster bus tour of downtown L.A. as they take pictures with their Androids and iPhones and iPads of me and the other inhabitants of the avenue of broken dreams and feces pillows. We all would know at least one Madonna song by heart. We all would have at least one screenplay under our belt. We all would have been to the House of Blues at least one time.

No… I still have not been sleeping well… or eating well. I actually had every intention of going to Weight Watchers today after work but after eating three fruit pastries and two bagels with cream cheese for lunch I have decided to wait at until some of the swelling in my stomach has gone down. But who knows. Maybe I will go. As long as I’m under 250 I think I can handle it. And the best thing about going this week is… there is a good chance I’ll weigh less next week because I don’t think my eating habits could possibly get any worse at this point. And fuck anything I have ever said about the subject… I AM an emotional eater. I am so blue and dejected and lonely right now… if I could somehow inject pork chops and spaghetti into my veins I think I would go for it.

As usual the culprit for my malaise is not just one succinct factor or culprit… it’s a culmination of things that have just been swirling around for a while now and finally decided to land. Money, weight, career, love… the lack of it all, blah, blah, blah… same song, different key… I bore myself bitching about it all. I remember getting out of my car this morning, coming to work and saying to myself without the slightest bit or sarcasm or mockery, “There has GOT to be a better way to make a fucking living.” My mind automatically goes to the seeder aspects of life, thievery, prostitution, drugs, scams… it so fucked up…. IT’S SO FUCKED UP! That THOSE would be my go to solutions for life! I AM FUCKED UP! Not school, not a second job… but becoming in every consorted sense of the word… a COON.

See I took a wrong turn there somewhere… this is not the road I am usually on. How do I work this? Where is that large automobile? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! Letting the days go by… water flowing underground… same as it ever was…

I think I’m having a heart attack… or at least in line for one. Serves me right. A few of my older friends have been having physical anomalies lately and I have snickered at the them from the back of my mind, secure in the mere 4 decades of rings in the middle of my tree trunk as opposed to their 5, 6 or 8. I guess it’s their turn to smile their sap filled grins at me a sigh unconvincingly, “Oh… it’s ok, we’re all getting older, things happen to the best of us…”

I just know that last night my right arm started to really hurt. It feels more like a muscle thing, from the my pits to my chest. Certain movements make it flare up. Right now it’s cool. Hopefully I’m not having a stroke or something. Hurt like the Dickens this morning. “Like the Dickens”. I am now the guy that uses phrases like “Like the Dickens.” WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ME!

I am also embroiled in one of the more childish fights I have ever been involved with my brother of all fucking people. I don’t know if I mentioned this, and I have a feeling I didn’t, but I walked with about 100 Black LGBT people in the MLK parade last month. The goal was for 1,000 to show up but each one us walked for another 100 that wasn’t there. I arrived at the site around 8:30 a.m. We didn’t start marching until around 1:30 p.m. In between all that time, I danced with all the young people out there. When the parade started they asked if I wanted to be on the float or walk. “I’ll walk!” I said,  gleefully, “I want to walk with the youngin’s”. So I walk and dance and walk and dance and walk some more and dance some more until around 3:00 p.m. suddenly iy occurs to me that… I can’t walk… my legs have completely cramped up. I try to hoist myself up onto the flatbed only to conjure up one of the worse Charlie Horses I have ever felt in BOTH calves. I REALLY cannot walk now. I begin to panic thinking the end of the parade is two miles ahead of us, my car is three miles behind us, the float is about to take off without me. I immediately think that I am going to have to lay spread eagle on someone’s lawn until I get the feeling back in my legs. But by the grace of GOD the truck stops, the driver gets out to dance and I ask him to lower the back gate so he can… CRANE MY FAT ASS UP ONTO THE FLOAT. I ride the rest of the parade route laid out flat on the back of the flat bed truck.

I retold this whole story in much greater detail to my brother with sound effects and such and told him one of the dances I was doing was the “Dougie”. One of the big hits out on the radio right now that all the kids are listening to is called “Teach me how to Dougie”. Ever since I tell him the story, every time I post something on my Facebook page he replies, “Teach me how to Dougie!” He’s done this before… repeated some obnoxious saying over and over and over again until the flavor has run out of it like an old piece of chewing gum. The last time he did and I told him stop and he didn't, I posted pictures of extremely buff men in skimpy latex outfits on his Facebook page. He called me so upset that he was damn in tears saying that it wasn’t funny, his hardcore gangsta friends now think he's gay and that I took things too far.

So this time when he kept saying the Dougie, I remembered how I hurt his feelings were the first time… and I decided to superimpose his head on top of extremely buff men in skimpy latex outfits. This has been going on for a couple of days now and I have to say the whole thing honestly leaves me a bit worn and bewildered. At this point, it’s a test of will… who’s going to give in first. As we speak there are five gay porn star body shots on his Facebook page with his head on them… each with a warning of… stop doing the Dougie… I’ll stop posting. His response each time, “Teach me how to Dougie”. I literally have over 7,258 separate pictures of naked men (I’m a single middle aged gay man… it’s what I do). I can ride this out until retirement.

However, I feel as if I am corrupting my soul. I think it is why my arm hurts. As my sister once tried to reason with me saying, “He has so little, why not give him the Dougie.” I HATE rational people. Besides, today I found a privacy control on Facebook that will allow me to view and post/comment on my page before it goes public. I wish I would have seem that 3 days and five pornos ago.

Loving Smart Not Hard

I can also tell you that last night, for the first time in a really, REALLY long time, I thought about kissing Dean.  I can honestly tell you that I tried doing that on other occasions but could never bring myself to do it. I fast forwarded past some sort of sitcom worthy scenario that would bring us together and I kissed him. And then we fucked. I imagined him trying to hold onto me when I tried to leave, he wanted me to stay. I imagined that I just broke down crying uncontrollably and sobbing through the tears, “You have no idea exactly how much I love you! You don’t get it! You don’t believe me! After all this time! You have no idea exactly how much I care for you!” In my mind he said something to the effect of, “What do you want me to do Breeze?” and I started saying in singsong, “Love me back” over and over and over again until I woke up, still mouthing those words.

I can also tell you that I’m not holding out for that… a least not consciously. Obviously something is going on down in the depths of the cinnabar juice of my id but up here on sober dry land…yeah… fuck Dean. I can admit a slight curiosity to his whereabouts and if he’s doing okay. But the idea of a conversation in reality makes me ill.

I can also tell you that the most delicious aspect of that whole scenario is the idea of being love. I can’t remember what sparked the train of thought a couple of days ago but I remember getting out of the shower and putting baby oil on my skin and the thought just occurred to me that I haven’t been in love is such a long fucking time. I haven’t had a nose flaring crush or tear inducing shared orgasm in so long. I actually really do miss that. I miss that preoccupation… that obsession… that craziness. I miss making mix tapes for some dude, saving those “Love Is” cartoons from the paper and keeping them in my wallet, that simple, sweet and quick kiss you give when you greet each other from work, calling them in the middle of the day to see how they are doing… I miss that. Now that… I do miss with Dean. That’s the romantic part for me. We were immensely romantic; I don’t think anybody could ever deny that. We had some good times. But those bad times… my God… those reality laden bad times where he insulted me to the very core of my existence, demeaned my humanity, diametrically opposed my existence, put forth immense efforts to emasculate me... consistently… no one could deny that shit either. So… yeah, I dreamt about the good times.

I want to say that I’m just not strong enough to put up with the bad times… that a stronger person would be there no matter what, but I’m not going to claim that, I’m not going to claim “defeat”.  I think it’s one of those situations of “working smart not hard”… it feels like the same scenario. When it comes to love, I want to work smart not hard. I want to love smart not hard. Like… there has got to be a better way to get to the sweet than eating the pound of shit that’s around it… there’s got to be some other sweet out there without so much shit on it… I’m a firm believer that there is. So I honor that sweet that Dean and I had… but my God… no more shit. No more shit.

The Southwest Chief

I write this while taking a train from Chicago back to Los Angeles. It’s cool. I’m alright. I could be convinced to do this again… particularly if I could get another $175 ticket. It’s the not the hell I was expecting. It takes a bit of adjusting and a bit of patience but it’s all good. Right now, however, I am in the observation car and there is a loud, ghetto Black woman speaking in her stadium voice on her cell phone while eating spaghetti out of a Styrofoam container. She looks like she’s in her 50’s, long copper colored weave, tied into a loose ponytail on the back of her head and large gold door knocker earrings. So far what I learned about her is that she did not appreciate having to sit next to a fat Mexican with dirty chinos on this train, her church is located on a hill, Jean don’t need no help, she cool, she good right now, no thanks to Eric, that motherfucker… she got something for that nigga.

When I first boarded the train, we sat in the depot for a good two hours and I was so lucky as to be sitting directly next to one of the most bitter old men I have ever met in my life who started his trip in New York. While I was trying to find my seat I turned around and saw him and happily declared, “Oh! I guess I’m with you!” He looked up for nanosecond, didn’t make one single, solitary sound, then returned to his crossword puzzle. When I sat down I accidentally sat on his raggedy old suit coat which pissed him the fuck off and I’m sure if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m big and black, he would have cursed me out… verbally. Instead, he wisely opted to curse me out in his head and through his eyes. This is when I noticed that he didn’t really pack luggage, what he opted to do instead was hoard all of his shit into piles of grocery bags creating a cave of shit that crumbled into my area. There was literally a pile of pants where my feet should be. Then the cursing started. Every time the conductor apologized for another delay he piped out, “Fuck you motherfuckers!” like he had Tourette’s.

“C’mon get  this fucker going motherfuckers!” he yelled then finally asked, “What’s your name?”

I happily responded, “Breeze!” determined to get some lemonade out these… shit covered limes.

“Belize?” He said.

“Yeah, that’s close enough.”

“C’mon motherfuckers! Get this thing going!”

Other people in that area had to have heard him. At the time the car was relatively empty but even still, they had to have heard him.

Once the train finally took off, he decided to get up and go to the diner car… leaving behind the prominent smell of sour ramen noodles, garlic and despair. While he was gone, the person in the café car made an announcement over the speakers that anyone caught with their own liquor will be removed from the train during the next stop. You know it was that old guy! You know he pulled out a flask! I’m thinking that was the passive aggressive verbal warning to him and the final warning for anyone risking bringing out their own flasks (…and no… I did not bring mine out of fear of vomiting up homemade martini on a 42 hour train trip).
 

Sour Patch came back hussing and fussing, “You know Belize,” he told me, “there are some assholes on this train! Motherfuckers!”

He climbed over me, got into this weird fetal position where he was able to crawl into the cave he made for himself and do his crossword at the same time. I moved to the empty seat directly in front of me and a little later one of the train operators told me that on the next stop everyone is going to have to go to their assigned seats because it’s going to be a full train. We get to said stop, he comes and tells me to move back. A couple does indeed fill the seats right in front of me but another young black guy across from me is peacefully sleeping across BOTH seats.

We got to a point nearly outside of Illinois where they were having problems with a switch and had to wait for another train to pass before we can move. “Cocksuckers! Get this motherfucker going!” I look over at the young cat sleeping… and I am so incredibly jealous. I look him with puppy dog eyes with a look of desperation that pleads… “save me”.

The train moves again and someone from the dining car says that they will be serving dinner in 30 minutes, “Fuck you! Give us free fucking meals for making us wait!” he yells. It is here that I am overcome with an intense feeling of anger. It took this long for my shining optimism to be flushed out and I’m pissed at him for putting in the effort to flush it and I’m even more pissed at myself that I was giving him that power. All I wanted to do was sit in my seat and write. The coach seats are rather spacious and had more than enough room for me to sit comfortable, pull down the dinner tray, place my laptop on it and go for it. There was even an outlet at each seat. Mine, however, was next to Sour Patches and all of his shit. In my mind I imaged that at one point I was going to have to plug in my laptop and he was going to say something about the cords getting in his way and I immediately imagined me screaming at him in the loudest most violent nigger-coon-gangsta voice I could conjure up, hopefully inciting the attention of some train attendant,

“LOOK HERE YOU OLD COOT! YOU HAVE GOT ALL YOUR SHIT PILED UP OVER HERE! IT’S EVEN IN MY AREA! YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT BITCH AND MOAN AND COMPLAIN THIS ENTIRE TRIP AND I HAVEN’T SAID A WORD! NOW I’M GOING TO PLUG MY LAPTOP INTO THAT OUTLET AND YOU’RE GOING TO SIT THERE AND DEAL WITH IT OR SO HELP ME GOD I’M GOING TO GRAB YOU BY YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN COLLAR AND THROUGH YOU OUT THE GODDAMN EMERGENCY WINDOW!”

I imagined him crying. I really did. Or being so intimidated that he would have got an attendant who would totally believe that the big black ape threatened him with bloody murder and kick me off at the next stop. I grabbed a book and just started walking, musing that there HAS to be some sort of lounge area or something for people with coach tickets to go to get away from their seat mates who just happen to be elderly New Yorkers with Tourette’s.

That’s when I came upon this little slice of heaven… the observation car! A train car filled with large windows that curve up and almost meet the center of the roof, plenty of wide open seats that face these windows and several large booths in the back. I got my book, sat down, exhaled and just… thanked God. I stayed here for a long period of time before the freezing air circling my neck was just too distracting to ignore. I went to my luggage and found my sweatshirt. I then grabbed my laptop and my down coat.

“You getting off Belize?” Sour Patches asked, his entire bony body spread across both seats.

“No” I responded coldly before heading back to my beloved observation deck… and have been ever since.

It’s been pretty smooth sailing. I actually slept here last night and plan on sleeping here again tonight actually. I haven’t got as much writing or reading done but that’s cool… I haven’t really been in the mood to write or read. Well, I take that back, last night when I first got here I pretty much read half of “Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters” in one sitting. I popped open my laptop and even began taking notes. Somewhere around 4:00 a.m. I just conked out and I haven’t been in too much of mood to do anything except chill out and watch the scenery go by. Watched a ton of music videos. I have spent an inordinate amount of time deleting the porn from my video playlist out of extreme fear that some hardcore man on man butt-fucking scene is going to accidentally pop up while some kid walks by. 

By the way… the Amish were on this train today! That was so cool! I always thought they were an urban myth! Nope… the Amish actually exist! Can you imagine if one of them walked passed with their kid and saw a video of 6’ tall Black guy sticking his arm up the butt of some 7’ tall Black guy… whose sitting on the face of some twink White boy with… nipple piercings? I think I would be cause for the Amish to exist for another generation. I would be the urban legend for them, “Yes brothers and sisters! Hedonism does exist! This is why you must stay Amish! The world outside of these borders are filled with chubby middle aged Black men who watch these sinful movies of, of… I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO YOU BROTHERS AND SISTERS! BUT BELIEVE ME! HOLD YOURSELF TIGHT HERE!”

Vignettes

Though I love to write for hours and hours on end I've realized, when it comes to blogs, people's attention spans diminish rather quickly. Usually I have to throw in some random picture of some half naked guy for people to pay attention. Whatever works I suppose. And I do have a tendency to ramble. Oh man... do I ramble. I just go on an on... about nothing... nothing at all... just rambling. Empty space. Yup. Just ramble, ramble, ramble. Me. That's what I do.

I've decided to try and condense some of my extended rantings as of late into little vignettes... little nuggets of rant juiciness. One glorious day, I'm going to get in the hang of having a consistent blog:

1 - PSYCHOANALYSIS
...it’s so easy to spout on and on about the virtues of karma when shit is going great for you. When things start to fuck up, you curse the karma gods, you shoot at the idea of cosmic retribution. Though my brother will NOT be the main talk of conversation here, I have to say he comes into play because he has always been the archetype of being able to climb mountains using positive thinking and positive actions… because he has none and he stays in the valley. I don’t think I’m anywhere near the top of the mountain but I’m scaling it at a fairly steady pace and always contribute my stride to the good I think and the good I do. Then I stumble. And then I want the world to BURN. I think that’s called Bipolar Disorder in certain circles… or maybe Borderline Personality Disorder.  In either case, everything was going pretty good… and now I’m stumbling… and everything should burn. Burn! Okay I’m laughing hearing myself say that in a villainous tone, twirling my imaginary mustache. What psychiatric disorder is that? ODS - Obese Delusional Silliness...

 2 - RETRIBUTION

...watching Bad Girls Club. Why, why, why do I do this to myself! I’ll be in a bad mood and for some reason I’ll flip it on and predictably enough get in the WORST mood!  Okay, just got a little better. The one girl that I hated just got kicked off the show… Erika. I think that’s why I watch all these bullshit reality shows, I get so caught up in the story lines, I get so curious about how things will turn out, where everyone will end up. And it’s also this hope that goodness will prevail, that bad people will be punished, good people will be rewarded. I need some hope that there’s some… morality in this pin prick of an existence. Yeah… if the bitches in Bad Girls Club and Basketball Wives can be reprimanded… then there IS a God… and ducks and chickens can swim in tranquility and harmony and peace can cover the world...

3 - MONEY
...where I can pinpoint the main causes of my stress. Well, what I can tell you is that when I am extremely anxious to the point where instead of sleeping, I’m in my bed arguing with someone in my head, pounding my leg in effort to get my mind to calm down… I think of one and only one thing… and I am extremely ashamed, embarrassed and mortified that it is the one and only thing that has EVER been able to calm me down. Rather it be drugs. Rather it be sex. A sane person would think of their parents or grandparents, puppies maybe, children being fed in Africa, a beach. Nope. None of that does the trick for me. When I am so anxious where I’m pulling my hair out from the root what calms me down every single time… is thinking about… money. Lots of money. The number usually switches from year to year. Right now it’s $25 million… winning the state lottery or Publisher’s Clearing House… or maybe bequeathed to me by some old guy who I help sometime prior (though that thought always brings along residual “haunted money” storylines that always freak me out). I automatically calm down, my heart slows, my pulse steadies, I get cooler, I can breathe. Money. Rolling around naked on sea of hundred dollar bills, laughing hysterically...

4 - FUCK

Right now… I feel absolutely incredible! That one on one contact, that affection, to have someone touch you with such unbridled passion. I wanted to keep my tank top and jock strap on, but he just pulled all that off and felt my completely naked body, looked at every curve, bump and hump and was turned on even more. It just felt so fucking… validating? Is that the word? Empowering? It wasn’t anything even close to love. It’s so weird to even mention that word right now! It’s almost like mentioning Hypo-thermal Nuclear weapons during a kindergarten class. And it never crossed my mind even remotely last night outside of... maybe when there were a couple of times when we were fucking with such intensity that he closed his eyes and I did wonder who he was thinking about. I was thinking about no one but him. I can’t remember the last time I did that. To be in the middle of mind blowing sex and be totally present and think of nothing but the fucking at hand… it’s an incredible experience. But now, in the daylight, talking about love I'm starting to form this idea that… whoever you fall in love with… has to make you feel like that. They have to fuck you. THEY HAVE TO FUCK YOU. In one way or another, in a way that you enjoy, but they have to have you your knees in one way or another… or it’s just never going to work... 

5 - Prayer

...at Groundwork Coffee again. A little frazzled. Wanted to get here a little early a.k.a. 9:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. but predictably enough… it’s 12:40 p.m. There were no parking spaces in front of the joint so I had to park a little down the block and across the street… on a meter. So I’ve got about thirty minutes before I grab my laptop, leaving the rest of my crap on the table indicating that someone is sitting here, sprint down the street, and add another buck so I can stay another hour and do the whole thing again. That on top of the fact that my predictable fall season money woes are kicking into high gear all equates to one jittery Breeze.

This, by the way, is a full on mid-life crisis. I think everything before this was youthful ego-driven neurosis. This is a full-fledged, throaty, panicky fear of dying… or running out of time rather. Dying is one thing and that’s scary enough,  what frightens me to the point of turning my hair white is dying “right now” before I do anything substantial or touching someone in some meaningful way. I don’t want to die 323 pounds, underpaid, still pissed off at the House of Blues, bitching about my bosses, having random meaningless sex with random meaningless people. Or at least I don’t want that to be my legacy. Or if it is my legacy I’m trying to find some resonance in it. I could scream right now! I’m just all nerves. I keep praying for God to give me a break and as soon as the intention hits my consciousness... I want to vomit at how futile and thin my pleas are... all things considering. I have all my senses, all my limbs, both my parents, all my siblings, HIV-, fully employed with car, apartment and college degree. I ask God, “Please give me a break” and I instantly hear a full throated, eye rolling reply in the back of my head, “Nigga please…”

The Tao Of Social Networking

Having been born in 1971, I am a card carrying member of an elite group of people affectionately called “Generation-X”. I would like to believe that I’m too young to be considered “old” and too old to be considered “young”, but let’s cut the shit here… I’m fucking old. But I do feel us old Generation-X’ers do have a slight technological advantage over other generations in that, our grasp of life before the internet is just as strong as our obsession with it. In broad terms, my children can’t conceive of a corded rotary phone with no voicemail or call waiting any more so than my parents would want to talk to their girlfriends and drinking buddies using only 140 characters. I on the other hand have fond memories of having to dial 0 for the operator to get directions to a restaurant, digging for change in my pocket to use a payphone, using our UHF/VHF television as monitor for my old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, being in complete awe when we first got AOL and hearing those distinctly technical guttural noises and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the future squeaking at me!” I also remember when I wanted to talk to someone I had to do it the old fashion way… awkwardly, uncomfortably and unknowingly; I knew nothing about them but the basic information I could ascertain from my immediate five senses… they looked good, they smelled decent enough, the pitch of their voice could be lower, but fuck it… proceed and say hello or whatever best line happened to be. There was no profile to look at beforehand, no simple visual assessment of how many mutual friends you have or how many friends they have accumulated, there were no graphic shots of their genitalia on display, there was just you and the other person and you just pressed your luck.

My, how the times have changed; for better and for worse. Having been an admitted and uncontrollable MySpace junkie for years, I have since dumped that drug and have been pumping my veins with healthy doses of the heroin better known as Facebook. As of date I also take healthy daily tokes of Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest and I still freebase Yahoo! Messenger when I get antsy. And while I do enjoy the high of being plugged in and connected to what feels like the pulse of the world, I do have amazingly pleasant memories of being unplugged and all the emotional accoutrements involved with a text-less, screen-less existence.

Along with all of the aforementioned social networking sites I also peruse Second Life, an online virtual world where you create an avatar and meet, greet and socialize with other peoples’ avatars. It is the most seductive, addictive and horrifying manifestation of ontology gone wild whereas who you want to be is interacting with what other people want to be, almost like a little puppet show, only no one ever gets to see who the real puppet masters are… and why would you when your puppet is a 7 foot tall, dark skinned, goateed muscle bound wrestler who wears tight jeans, army boots and a cut off V-neck camouflage baby tee (fuck you, he’s my avatar, he’ll wear what I goddamn tell him to wear). Funny name, Second Life. That’s what we're all doing, living in this second life, trying to deal with (or avoid) the first one. But you can’t blame the puppet can you? You can’t blame the stage either. Why are we playing in the first place? Why aren’t we meeting first then playing second? Why aren’t we first getting coffee and talking and getting to know each other before we pull out our puppets?  Or is this a concept whose clarity is too Sony Walkman muffled Lo-Fi compared to Grindr’s immediate HiFi gratification? Or rather, has social networking replaced being actually social?

My friends and I seem to be on the diametrically opposite ends on the matter, particularly when it comes to Facebook. While I will admit that I am a Facebook junkie, I would also have to say that I don’t take it too seriously in the sense that I don’t give a lot of emotional weight to the information I give or receive from the site. I check in, I post something gratuitously offensive and/or see other people’s gratuitously offensive posts, I get a laugh, I get back to doing whatever I was doing. I don’t mind “friending” complete strangers. If you’re remotely cute and we have mutual friends (as of date I’ve got over 1,700 friends so there’s a good chance somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody… that I’ve given head to and decided to friend me on Facebook) I’ll friend you. I don’t take it that seriously in the sense that I only friend my “real” friends. That never made sense to me. If you are indeed my “real” friend, we’re going to be talking long before I log on and long after I log off, I almost don’t need you as a Facebook friend because more than likely I’m going to be sitting down and talking with you in the flesh in an hour or so and besides… you know you’re my friend… you don’t need to fertilize my crops in Farmville to prove that dude… we’re good…

Now my “First Life” friends and acquaintances have almost the opposite paradigm whereas they would consider themselves to be “casual” Facebook users but have fairly strict rules when I comes to Facebook relationships and interactions. Recently a “First Life” friend of mind very proudly proclaimed that he is not a “Friend Collector” on Facebook in the sense of just randomly accepting friendships from any schmuck that comes along. There has to be some sort of commonality, some sort of connection, some sort of kinship, he just doesn’t accept people just to accept them. I have heard this from several of my “First Life” friends and some of them have even went so far as to post on their profiles that they are eliminating the majority of their Second Life friends and only keeping the real First Life friends. Now I don’t want to be cynical, and maybe it’s because I might have a different definition of the word “friend” or maybe I just simply don’t have that many, but think about it… if you just, for example… discovered a lump… on your breast, on your testicle… how many people (outside of family) would you immediately tell? To me… those first responders are friends, and for me, that number is on one hand. And those single digit First Life friends of mine… again… don’t need to fertilize my crops in Farmville, they know I love them. And Facebook, well… that’s just where I play, it’s the place where I claim my occupation to be a pimp and fluffer, where my religious views are “Suck it Jesus, THIS is my God now!” and post articles with headlines like, “MAN DIES AFTER EATING COCAINE FROM BROTHER’S BUTT.” It’s entertainment. It’s fun. And yes, I collect friends. I would be the aforementioned “Friend Collector” with the thought that if I can make you laugh and you can make me laugh, under the right circumstances, this Second Life friendship could indeed turn into a pretty decent First Life friendship one day, but if not… fuck it… I’ll be in L.A. laughing at your cat videos and you’ll be North Carolina looking up Mysophilia because I mentioned it in a post and all will still be right with the world. (Mine at least, can’t speak for those damn mysophiliacs.)

But I think that should be the goal for all of these social networking sites, to crossover to the other side and get to the human you’re networking with. I recently got a position in marketing at my job and one of the golden rules of social marketing I keep hearing over and over again is the idea that social networking and social marketing are only options you should be using to support the traditional marketing schemes you already have in place. In other words, if you were handing out fliers to promote your business before, don’t stop handing them out and get on Facebook, continue to hand them out and post them on Facebook also. Basically, online social networking isn’t a substitute for networking, just an option. And that’s true all around. I don’t think it’s foolhardy to get on Facebook in hopes of expanding your circle of friends, I do think it is foolhardy, however, to think that’s all you got to do. Remember, it’s just an option. Whatever you were doing before, you just use it to spread the word.

My experiences with all these social media platforms have been hit and miss. Every blue moon I’ll actually meet face to face with a Second Life friend and have a pleasant experience but more often than not I’m usually met with a boatload of Generation-Y, ADHD, Eli Roth cum Robert Rodriquez horror fantasy fused trepidation whereas they think the one and only reason why I want to meet them at Starbucks at 1:00 p.m. is so I can have them naked and chained in a hostel with my other victims by 10:00 p.m., “No dude, I’ve only got 30 minutes for lunch and it’s across the street from my job, you really need to stop watching ‘Saw’ on repeat man.”

Then there is also the unfortunate experience of people who “just don’t get you” which is fine, but makes you question why would they friend you in the first place. This might go against my “Friend Collector” theory of accepting the majority of people who ask for a friendship but if your profile is of a baby tattooed with a swastika… I’m probably going to take a pass on that one. Currently profile proudly exhibits the controversial 2007 Folsom Street poster that depicts various leather clad Folsom attendees displayed in an imitation of Leonardo da Vinci‘s famed "Last Supper". Some random “friend” who I collected who we’ll call Jake but whose real name is Dezon Jones got super offended by it and began berating me, on my public wall and in private messages, about how offensive the picture was and how shocked he was at me and my behavior… keeping in mind, I have never met this dude. He went on to seriously ask me if I was actually a pimp. To wit I replied, “So this is the deal... usually I would have deleted/blocked u by now, but I'm gonna try something a little different. We don't know each other at all, but I assume U HAVE to know that I consistently post GROSSLY offensive stuff ALL THE TIME... because I'm grossly offensive. Can you handle that? Because it sounds like you're trying to make a judgment call on my "pimpdom" and if u are... then I'm probably the worst aspects of who you think I am... and maybe my Facebook page is too much for you...” To wit he deleted his friendship from my page and blocked me (LOL!) but not before replying, “So this is the deal... usually I would ignore such assumptive remarks from those like you by now…” it goes on for another really long paragraph but I never got past that sentence, I just deleted the whole conversation thinking that if he can’t bother to come up with something original I’m not going to bother reading the rest of his bullshit. And he lives up north in Oakland near San Francisco if you can believe that… where Folsom takes place! Well slap my back and call me a pimp!

But even still, even after all of that, I would still have to say that as a whole, I enjoy this brave new world. I do truly appreciate the Second Life friendships I’ve made. I look at them with a sense of guarded optimism, but I still very much consider them something to forward to. And with the love I have in my life and the work that I do… that’s all I really need.

My Second Life avatar, by the way, has an Ohm tattoo on his right bicep. I, in this First Life, have Shiva tattooed on my left bicep. My puppet and I aren’t too different from each other. I mean, I’m not seven feet tall and muscle bound, but we both like to socialize, with all the bumps along the way. You’ll even hear him sing a Tori Amos tune every once in a while. He’s not real. He’s a puppet. But if you listen, you’ll hear me. And if you decide to talk, I listen to you. And you ever want to get a cup coffee afterwards, I’ll promise to leave the hardware at home.

It's Gonna Be Alright It's Gonna Be Ok

So I haven’t written a journal entry in ages. I haven’t really written anything proper at all for quite some time now. Earlier this year I tried to supplement my artistic anorexia by reading other people’s works at open mics. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it fell completely flat. I think there is actual video of me completely mutilating, “Self Evident” by Ani DiFranco. Half way through it I was boring myself so I can only imagine what the audience felt.

I work at a nonprofit that helps under-served families in South Los Angeles and recently we commissioned a spoken word artist to speak to some of our counselors about the benefits of  incorporating poetry and spoken word into some of their therapeutic measures for young adults. Hearing him speak and hearing some of the young people spit brought back a lot of memories and maybe just a tad bit of anxiety. The one thing I find common with a lot of well-known spoken words artists… they’re all fucking angry! There are a few that come from a consistent place of love or humor or healing, usually those are the ones that I dig but they don’t really get a lot of exposure, particularly in African American circles. We like that hard sassy, street shit. Which is cool I guess. I can only take it in certain doses. It’s only so many times I can hear some young cat spit as fast and as angry as they can about life on the streets before my inner republican just wants to scream, “Maybe if you get off your mother’s couch and get a job and tell all your boys to get a job maybe shit wouldn’t be so fucked up!” It’s horrible. I’m officially turning into my father.

You might think that I haven’t written in so long because either not too much has happened in my life or I have been so painfully uninspired that I’ve been walking around like Edward Scissorhands with limbs weighing heavily at my sides, eager for them to be put to use to cut something. Or maybe I just abandoned the whole thing. None of that is true. In honesty, I never really stopped writing journal entries but, you know… you have your journal… and you have your JOURNAL. Some shit you just keep to yourself. Usually I’m pretty open and I’ll just talk about whatever but I think a few friends would be surprised to know there are few cards that I hold close to my chest. You would think that the dude who talks about being gang banged on a city bus would have no problem divulging all other parts of his life but I guess Shug Avery was right… sinners do have soul. And some shit… just ain’t for publication.

And unfortunately, I’ve been swimming in that shit for a little while. I don’t know if I’ve beached onto a shore or if a greater shit wave is coming to sweep me away but, at least right now… I’m enjoying dry land. Now if only I can get the smell off…

For the most part, everything’s cool. I have shed an immense about of tears for certain people in my family who shall remain nameless but, they’re hanging in there for now. When I’m not crying for them I’ve been annihilating my soul with a big ole sharp midlife crisis. It’s the grey hair. The grey is bugging me. And the heart shape George Jefferson bald spot on top of my head. And the weight that's been creeping back. And the paycheck that refuses to get larger. And the seemingly fewer amount of orgasms available. Remember when we used to get gang banged on the back of a city bus? Yeah… not so much when an you’re obese, grey haired middle-aged guy with a heart shaped George Jefferson bald spot on the top of your head.

But as my mom used to tell me all the time when I was kid, “I used to cry that I had no shoes until I met the man that had no feet.” So in that… all is good. And George Jefferson, after all… was fucking HOT back in the day! (I’ll never know what he was doing fucking around with that Drag Queen Weezy when that big ole bear Tom Willis was upstairs…)

One of my more recent gripes, however, and well… I’ve been complaining about it for a while know… is my lack of heart to heart level friends. Just today I had quite the arduous day dealing with a coworker and I had this compulsion to unburden myself of the day’s misfortunes. I called a friend who predictably enough did not want to take sides. It kind of disappointed me. No. It really disappointed me. I think certain people believe that being the noncommittal innocent gives them a heightened level of objectivity. To me… it just kind of makes you a pussy with no loyalty. Or… I’ve probably been watching too many episodes of Mob Wives.

Then I called my sister and as always… she spoke to my heart and made me laugh. She made me see how ludicrous I was being in certain areas and agreed with me in certain areas. And the one thing that she keeps saying that never seems to lose its flavor no matter how many times she chews it… I’ve got to start hanging out with remotely sane people in which I have more in common with.

I like to say that I’m “friendless” or have a pity party about how lonely I am but the truth of the matter is that in all honesty I do know a lot of people… I just don’t like them all. That’s horrible! That’s a horrible thing to say! And I cannot stop laughing! But it’s a little true. I don’t know too many people who hold the things that I hold dear. Be it pop culture affects or emotional paradigms  or life goals… everybody I know is diametrically opposed to me on their life journey… and it kinda sucks.

I would like just maybe two or three self-deprecating people who like liquor, reading, independent movies and alternative music with questionable family members and not afraid to belly laugh just to hang out with. But you know… I really do think I am asking for too much. I think I should just settle for the best sister in the world and a full time job that pays for my Netflix.

The Fam

I don’t know where I want to be any more. There have been times when I had a crystal clear picture of exactly where I want to be. A lot of the time it involved some beach in Hawaii. Other times a nightclub in Manhattan. 

I remember when Charles moved back to New York he stayed with his mom for a little while until he got his own place. He mused, “Don’t you ever just want to go back home and just sleep in the house you grew up in? Just to see everything and hug your mom and sit on those same chairs?” I actually wanted to cry a little; mainly because, honestly, I have never thought about it. But for a second there, I did. For a second there I thought of the possibility of going back to the Ida B. Wells projects or to our house in Park Forest South and just… walking around, hugging Breeze or our other dog… Dice. I remembered Momma’s Mickey Mouse pancakes and tying up the Christmas tree against the bars on the windows to make sure it didn’t tip over. I remember there was never a question about it; momma always let me make the angel on top of the tree. I remember Breeze drinking the water from the tree stand. When that stuff left, I never really looked back. I never really imagined a reunion or the possibility of going back. 

I remember that last day at Ida B. Wells. I remember my last image being of our cat, Kenny, and her babies, sitting in a bright beam of sunlight on top of this standalone cabinet thing that had paint splatters on it from the last time I decided to paint the walls. She was just glowing, sitting there, looking at me. She seemed happy and content. I wasn’t. I was more worried and remorseful... for her, for me. And I had to leave her there. Everything was packed up. We couldn’t take her with us. My brother said he would “take care of it.” I never did ask what that meant. I never wanted to know. When Charles asked, “Have you ever just wanted to go home” for a second there… I mourned the home I can never go back to. And even now, so thirsty for a “home”, someplace familiar, warm and all compromising… the thought of it doesn’t bring me a lot of… peace. If anything I just get angry that it’s gone and it’s no way I can get it back. Ida B Wells has since been demolished. And whoever is living in our old house in Park Forest South I'm sure are light years away from thinking it’s remotely cute that some strange fat middle aged Black man is sleeping on their front porch for “nostalgia”.

I get jumpy at wanting that “home” feeling. I even want that feeling in people that I meet. I think that definitely had something to do with my obsession with/addiction to Dean all those years. I think my drinking has something to do with it too. I am most comfortable when I’m drinking. I’m also most comfortable those seconds/minutes after a really good orgasm. Not necessarily during the sex part, but most certainly after it’s over. I got to remember to mention that to a therapist one day.

I’m watching the movie “Crooklyn” and crying like a faucet… like I always do. I think the first time I saw it I was with my husband in his hospice room a decade or so ago. I kept thinking about when momma was in the hospital and almost died. And I was thinking about Daddy and how much I missed him. I remember my husband seeing me leak uncontrollably like a little faucet and he kept asking me again and again what was wrong and I just couldn’t tell him. He got so pissed off at me. 

For the most part I don’t like talking about my family or my past. Every once in a while I’ll run down the “Story of Breeze” to people and it feels so odd. I never thought my story or my family’s story was ever that dramatic or... noteworthy really. Not in the big scheme of things I guess. I think I have always prided myself on the fact that we ride the middle, we don’t have any Olympic champions, but we don’t have any mass murders either. We’re just a bunch of remotely upwardly mobile Negroes trying to make it like everybody else. But every time I retell our story, or watch a movie like “Crooklyn” that allows me to silently reminisce over it, something in me just begins to ring like a huge bell, right from my core. I miss my momma. I really miss my grandma. And I would give anything to be with my great grandmother.

My family, my story, my life, was never simple, not really. I naturally want to downplay it and say that it wasn’t noteworthy or something as dramatic as say… Tina Turner having the crap beaten out of her or a friend of mine whose father plunged a knife in his neck or another friend who almost drowned in a capsized passenger train… but our stories, my story, what I felt, what I went through… there’s some weight to it, some validity. The love I have for my family, as well as the pain they have caused me is palatable, it’s real. I miss them something awful... ALL of them. I really do. It’s definitely one of those cards that I hold close to my chest. No one needs to know about my family. You can toss around stories of me and my ménage a twenty at bathhouses, drunkenly kissing strangers at some bear bar, riding the bus home from said bear bar on underwear night and completely forgetting to put my pants back on… just don’t fuck with my family. Don’t ever fuck with my family.