When you stop giving a fuck you really have to stop. It’s that moment when you might not be able to feel. That moment? You stop. Somebody who actually doesn’t give a fuck. Someone who stopped giving a fuck when you were sixteen and still learning Spanish. That guy sees the same therapist as you. But he also has a knife. And when you have a break and think you do not care for a moment, he brandishes it. He did not care for a minute longer. Do you want your backpack, or do you want to ask nicely the man with steel at his waist where he went to school? I’ve never been stabbed. I assume it’s not fun. I accidentally cut my wrist once and exsanguinated and hallucinated and thought my ex-wife, the first person I had sex with, my mom, and her twin sister were all ten feet from the foot of my bed and waiting to see me. The police were banging at my door and I kept repeating, “I didnt do anything.” “Your neighbor saw a lot of blood.” He wrapped my arm in the welcome mat and spoke to the walkie-talkie thing on his shoulder, said some numbers, and I fainted. Those plastic wrap, non-handcuff handcuffs are remarkably effective. They won’t let you stand up for 72 hours. Even when, especially when, you think you didn’t do anything. Say that out loud and see what happens.
Ambition kills
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value, and it’s why you wrongfully think I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political to a fault. In that world, I only knew resilience and survival. I ate people I didn’t like or who I thought were unhelpful. I would sabotage your bungee cord and return your smile when you jumped. I’m much, much softer now. There are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.
Letter to someone
It’s weird, all these things I curated to a greatness in my mid-teens have come around to be the defining characteristics in haute couture. You might know the story of how I went to undergraduate Tacoma with nothing but a box of ill-fitting sweaters, two pairs of size-44 Levis 501s (that I squeezed into so I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger pair), and 500 LPs ranging from Kiss to Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden to Nina Simone to Queen to Rocky Horror to Miles Davis to the Escape From New York Soundtrack. I didn’t even pack a turntable and wouldn’t have one for my first three months in school. I carried all of those albums into a future I had no idea what would bring; they were how I defined a pretty big part of myself. And in just 12 months, I would trade all of those albums at the Jelly’s on Pensacola for the promise of about 40 “permanent” compact discs.
The lament I have for that moment is not financial. There are far greater “what—ifs” that would have resulted in far higher values lost or found. At best, those albums might fetch five figures if the collection remained intact, and mostly undamaged (highly unlikely). I lost more selling Apple stock too early (I still made a lot, not life-changing a lot). But that makes for a good story. This one always feels like a blow long lost could-have-been. Those albums were me. And I traded them all in for the illusion of a new permanence. I rebuilt that CD collection even larger, and the mp3 collection larger still. But I’ve never had something in my personal space like those discs.
The salt
This is how you fall when it’s inevitable. Falling when you stumble is so predictable. The shoestring. The inevitable. Falling when you know you’re falling.
Brush off the arms pulling you perpendicular to the ground. “Brush off” has more intent than what happened. Shrug off is a better choice of words. Ignore the whispers. Ignore the screams. Ignore the blood. Blood coagulated. Coagulated. It made the effort to stop. This is not that. This is, I don’t know.
Wake up to a dog licking your knee because it (your knee, not the dog) was still bleeding. He liked the salt. (I type that, and I suddenly find it very funny.) He liked the salt. Not table salt. Not sodium chloride. We iodize it because, by itself, it is not enough. This is all a metaphor.
Now you are her
Heartbreak—no matter how predictable or anticipated—lands as a singularity, a before-and-after point. Once there was warm certainty, now cold distance. Once there was we, now only me. Once there was you, but now you are her.
Rehab doesn’t work
Generalizations are usually not a good idea. This one holds. This is not a qualitative deconstruction. There is no agenda. Look at the numbers. Crowdsource the answer. You can lie, but 1 billion nods move in the same way. Listen to anecdotes. Ask anyone even tangential to the process. Yes and no questions are rare, but here, the answer, like 1+1 is always 2, is always no. I can point to 200 that died today. In memoriam. Black and white. Slow-motion. That’s heroin and alcohol. Those are easy. It doesn’t matter. Choose something slightly less toxic, at least slower. Tobacco? Sugar? Ask someone to stop. Put a black lung on Instagram, then reply with a cirrhotic liver. Give someone a new lung. A new liver. Say,” Don’t smoke.” “Don’t drink.” Metastasis is far more clever than you are. It’s far more insidious than even me. Just quit. You know better. Try harder. Yes, 12 steps that anyone can choose at any time, and it’s all in this big blue book. Now, choose it. Choose. You’re not trying. It’s your original sin that makes you choose otherwise. It’s a choice. You choose no. You choose to lie where you are. You are choosing. To lie. Lie where you are. Don’t choose. Don’t choose. You. For the overwhelming majority, rehab doesn’t work.
Spleen
I think my spleen hurts. I’m not quite sure where my spleen is, left side, I’m pretty sure, that’s why I’m not 100% on the diagnosis. I fell when I was drunk a few years back; it’s not like my pee is orange or has blood in it.
I used to tell people that my family dies of things they put in their mouth, mostly cigarettes, but sometimes too much food or alcohol (once it was an ice pick through the mouth into the carotid, but I don’t think that counts in the spirit I intended). I don’t smoke. And for a long time now, I don’t drink. Mine would be the first spleen casualty, though I’m pretty sure you can live without your spleen if it’s removed before its rupture causes peritonitis or, more likely, exsanguination. I’m sure there have been times when my liver could have been happier with me. I cross the street carefully.
People want to die fast. While sleeping if possible. There will never be a DNR order on my charts. I want to live forever by any means necessary. Dulce et decorum es pro dignitas morti. Bullshit. I see no nobility in giving up. My personal black eternity happened for at least 13.6 billion years before me, and I’m not looking forward to going back.
On the other hand, even if you believe in all that rah! rah! Christian stuff, living forever seems like it might get boring. I get tired after an hour of sex or seven hours at Disneyland and I love both of those.
Ke kupua
She said, “I think you’re brilliant,” when he knew he would kiss her. And adults who kiss invariably fall into more. He had a hard time discerning a kiss from the words he heard. Things can sound so pretty when you want them to.
Back. On the bed. Alone. Not quite negative. Disturbed. No reason why. There were decades to go, save some disaster, and instead of hope, he felt an involuntary compulsion to ruminate. The chemicals in his brain were so easily manipulated; he manipulated them.
Today was the beginning of forever. Until everything else ended, and for anyone else, this would be impossible to comprehend.
Thatʻs not even close to funny
She keeps secrets. I wish I had a few. I watch her walk with a lilt of flair and admire her confidence. It’s hard to believe how many times I’ve broken her. Looking at her now it’s hard to believe she can be broken. She let me in I guess. It’s easier to break things from the inside.
Now I can’t even get a word inside of her, much less any other part of me. I suppose I deserve her defense.
Today is beyond both of us, like it or not, she has to speak to me. Courts compel things that love has long abandoned.
“Did you sign?”
“Yes. Did you?
“Yes.”
“So, then.”
“So what?”
“I guess. So what?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I still love you?”
“That’s not even close to funny.”
But I’m not joking. And of course, I don’t say it. Every syllable with her must be calculable. I have no calculus for this feeling.
“You know you had everything?”
“I know.”
“You know you fucked it all away?”
“I know.”
“You know I still love you?”
“I know.” (Full disclosure: I didn’t.)
“So what now?”
“This I don’t know.”
“So smart and so stupid.”
Be better
I’m always so certain. Even when I’m wrong. The word perhaps brings this kind of question. All I want to say is a word. But why would I ruin a connection, however tenuous? I’m not crazy. I guess I am sometimes. Or I was. Or I will be. Guarantees are fucking difficult. I saw your name. It made my heart spark in a good way, and, good or bad, I guess for that moment, it was good. I dream about you. Sometimes, in situations we were actually in. And this time, I get to act better. Sometimes it’s a new situation. And then I just get to be better.