Ok, trumpets blaring, new content.

Well at least new for now. I am hesitant to put this out to the main page, so instead you must dutifully scroll down to read this huge journey of one man who goes great distances in his head. It's only draft 1.5 so I figured by posting this I could further put off the enormity of the whole project and self congratulate myself for yet another black and white post. Enjoy with the caveat that it will get better..


I’m standing there, outside the coffee shop, and this yuppie fuck is lying on the ground, moaning and groaning. He’s reaching for his handkerchief, so I throw him mine. I sit down and feel my feet go numb.. They’ve all gone home now. And all I can remember from that day was a look, there was actually a tone in the look the birds gave me as I watched the guy try to stand up before I finally ran off.


I have finally reached the point where I am completely self-sufficient, the moment achieved over a cup of instant coffee while looking out on my balcony late one night. I realized I won’t have anyone to turn to now; when I experience something from now on, it’ll be alone. Ill be the guy to take all the heat. That’s my role now; I accept responsibility for all the other scared fucks that run behind identity and social groups.

Things move at a slower pace these days. Ive holed up in my apartment, cutting myself off purposely as a sort of experiment. I figure If I stay away long enough, I met reset in my self whatever caused my frantic outburst, I might gain some clarity, and might be able to return stronger, cleansed and Kara would take me back.

I have streamlined my life, taken out the fuzzy niceties and focused on the sharpening: Honing my skills in verbal jousting.. I work out at night when the rest of the lights outside the balcony are l out, and I can make out the faint shapes of birds as I strengthen and tone calves, thighs and buttocks.

Each day I resist the urge to pick up a phone, even if it’s only to ask the operator if life turned out the way she planned it. I hold back on venturing downstairs for food, instead relying on the little parcel of pills underneath my weight bench.

It’s against the American way, this life. It’s going out of your way to not see people or hear ideas, not to pay attention to anyone but the rhythmic tuning of your own brain. I cannot dilute my personality any more. More repetitions, more squats, shaving my sideburns and trimming my nose hairs. This is what takes importance, this is at the top of my to do pile.

I scan the headlines for words that jump out at me and clip them out, and tape them to the walls so I have a word to look at while I’m on the bench press, staring at the words while I steam and sweat and build up lactic acids.

You out age cartoon characters. There’s a rule that exists that says you cant be older than the mean age of the average cartoon character, that says you cant ever let your body or your mind grow old. We do, its inevitable, and so starts the tumbling snowball of denial, which grows until we hit the snow bank at the end of the line.

I don’t pick up the phone but listen to how many times the damn fool on the other end of the phone will let it ring. How desperate for someone I think, to let a phone ring 25, 30 times. The answering machine picks up after 35 rings, so they have to let ring into near infinity before they can even leave a message. I dangle that option out there as a reward for perseverance.

“Gill could you just pick up the phone.”

“This is the last time I’m calling.”

“Mr. Peters, your dry cleaning has been ready for pick up for 3 months now, If you don’t come down to 15th and Fremont to claim it, we will throw it away, thank you.”

I still see Kara. In my head I still see kara. Despite all of my attempts at shutting myself off, I still manage to have her come into my thoughts even though everything has been processed, presorted, handled and organized.

It’s dawn. I’ve been up all night again. I can see the apartment building across the street lights go on as they’re getting ready for work. I can’t look at them anymore; I look at the word FRIGHTENED that was cut from Tuesday’s living section. I can see through the letters F and R and see an advertisement I haven’t noticed before. It’s magnified in my brain, because I’ve avoided advertising for so long, and because I only read the front covers of the newspaper, didn’t want to be a consumer, and wanted to stay in the pure world of methodical symbolism.

Anything beyond simple words and phrases and things would get too complicated. I felt weight in the persistence of words, could physically feel the impetus in the phrases, demanding that I leave my refuge and buy stereo equipment for half the sticker price and I become dizzy and fall down, and vomit all over the floor. And afterwards I wanted words, I yearn for sentences, I want to hear the commentary of a football game in its entirety. I want Perry Mason, a dozen episodes of Perry Mason. I want grandma’s soft voice telling me about the cookies.

I went too far, this started out as an experiment, and now I’m stuck. I can’t leave the apartment, the worlds on it its ear out there. Time and space and depth and meanings have all shifted. Gravity has changed the makeup of reality since I last went outside.

But I do, somehow I open the door, and almost cry at the sight of bright light, almost laugh as I fall down the stairs. I don’t feel my legs when they snap like twigs as I reach the bottom of the staircase, cant hear myself scream as I’m weaving in the street. Having imagined that I broke my legs, they were just so stiff, they cracked and I thought I broke them on the stairs. I wonder into a game of stickball and the ball hits me and I fall, for real this time. There’s sunlight and leaves and branches and its all too much like a Sunday afternoon at an Old Country Buffet restaurant, and I feel full, overwhelmingly full of senses, and I start to cry and don’t know why, and I’m in Kara’s neighborhood, and I cant believe I remembered where it is, where it went, thought I severed all ties. But there’s the porch where I proposed, and there’s the dog sign, and there she is, but I can’t hear anything, and I stumble, but I cant hear her, but she can hear me. And she’s crying now, as I try to put my arm around her, and she’s shaking now, and pushing me away and her lips are moving faster now and I know it’s not good, and I feel faint, I feel like I pushed this whole thing too far, and I wish I never looked beyond the word “frightened”. Wish I hadn’t of cut myself off; I want the simplicity of the cold white tile floor. I want to drink bleach and milk of magnesia to clear me out and I want purity. I want to go back there but I see the big guy coming up behind her, and I feel my insides explode below me and I know its more than a broken heart and when I wake up and there’s nothing but shining light, but I’m not in heaven, it smells like sweet mothballs. And I’m on the floor in a bright green gown, and every time I try to speak I vomit all over the floor. I see the lunch tray that I knocked over, when they tried to feed me and I see them running towards me.

And I don’t know how I got up and ran away from them, but they are gaining on me as I turn the corner of the ward and run right into two larger men, Samoans they’re Samoans as I feel the prick of the needle and feel the cool rush of the medication floating and I’m back to staring at words again, and I have my simple life back, just like I wanted it.

As the hours as days pass, I learn just how far I took it. Beyond all reasonable expectations, I had gone way too far.

It didn’t come back to me all at once; it took days to regain my hearing. Suddenly exploding out at lunchtime, I could suddenly hear silverware on the porcelain of plates in the dining room, could finally hear the sloppy mumbling of the other patients. My speech took longer before I could speak in complete sentences, when I could open my mouth and the desired sounds would come out.

I learned to eat food again, lots of it, eaten alone after supper when the rest of the patients had retreated upstairs, I would sit and have globs of chicken and dumplings slide out of my mouth into a warm piles along the long modular table, the only one set up in the cavernous dining room. I would spend hours staring into the bowl of cold soup an dpry my mouth wide enough to take in the salty gruel.


They told me what happened. All anyone could compare it to be “Repulsion” When Catherine Denevre loses her mind by spending way too much time alone. I was disappointed they didn’t compare me to Raskolnikov, I always wanted to be compared to the Russians, such masters of suffering.

Learning to walk was the most difficult part. My joints had atrophied to the point where taking the short flight of stairs down to the dining hall made me ache all over, each step sending waves of nausea ripping through me and the vomiting would start again.

That became my reaction of choice. Some patients cried, others stared catatonically at the ceiling. I vomited. I loved the feeling, the purging, easier than an enema. A few minutes and you were floating down a warm river of endorphins, returning to where you came from.

And I started writing again, first off as a journal, then everyday, struggling to drag the course pencil across the page, but gradually it began to flow again, and I wrote “FRIGHTENED” then tore it up, and then added another word on top of another word.

They say the second time you learn something one really gets a solid grasp of it. I felt like a god when I could stand up straight and walk down a flight of stairs without vomiting. I felt like a man the first time I wrote a letter to my schizophrenic roommate to stop eating the goddamn pillow stuffing.

I rebuilt myself. And all that time I thought I was sharpening. I even learned what I had done, Post Benzodiazepine Withdrawl Syndrome. Those little pills I took each night underneath the bench press. Violence came from nowhere in me. And I lost track of my thoughts.

Everyone in the ward thought I was nuts anyway, so I would play games.
I made them believe I thought I was napoleon, I performed every single mental ward stereotype and hand them eating out my hands, though I could never make it for more than 10 minutes before the nausea kicked in again, and Id be keeled over on the floor, cleansed by the ritual. Afterwards feeling infantile, I’d suck my thumb on the cold floor and appreciate the warmth at the back of my head.

I was getting better. I felt cleaner, my head didn’t feel as heavy as it used to, I began to help others who suffered from similar self infliction That’s what it was, an addiction to Ativan. It was part of my sharpening, anti anxiety. When the pills ran out, I hadn’t eaten anything in days, just vitamins and juice and the Ativan.


Mrs. Moxley that was her name, I felt twelve in the body of a 31 year old. Discovering the world again, like having another childhood. It was the end of my six-month residency. I awoke, fully refreshed and prepared through another long slog through the physical therapy.

I’d have to repress the urge to vomit again, Id recently taken to vomiting several times a day, it helped relieved my anxiety, sneaking off to vomit the way boys sneak off to masturbate.

I met her one day in the dayroom. Brusquely marching through the hallway, clocking in and greeting each patient, she was to be our new one on one counselor, the counselor by whom we’d spend the next few months together. I patiently waited my place in line until I realized I had to be patient. She had a certain natural fire to her, a real desire to help. I saw it in her eyes as my turn was next.

“you are like…”

She stood there for a moment, eyes right on me, examining behind my eyes.

“My son, you remind me of my son, so long ago” she said, busying her self with the stack of papers on her desk.

“I’m here for the therapy.”

“I don’t know, I’ve heard about you.” “They say you don’t get close to anyone”

“Not in a long time”

“I can’t help someone who fundamentally opposes hope”

“I’m not opposed to it, I’ve just resolved to not be let down again.”

“You let yourself down, did you know that? That scene at the café that brought you here, you are aware that it was you, that’s the reason why you hide, you can’t take responsibilities don’t you?” she said, gathering her things from off of the table, getting up to leave “And that is why I can’t help you, I can’t do a thing for you, until you are ready to take response--”

I jump up, somehow this doesn’t make me want to vomit “I can. I did this, It’s my fault. Why is it so hard to say?”. I ask, feeling the swelling in my upper neck. I know it’s coming, I start to break down, legs going numb, I collapse onto the floor, hearing the exaggerated reverb slap of her shoes against the floor. And I see the tail edge of her skirt disappear around the corner as the orderlies grab a bucket and wipe the bile off of my chin.

****************

I devoured books like pretzels. And I started my recovery. Outside of the hospital, I was now free to pursue the closing chapter in my recovery. I remained optimistic despite all the triggers reality presented me to the contrary. I prayed, washed, cleaned and paid bills on time. I wrote regularly to Mrs. Moxley, documenting my recovery. The desire to vomit was replaced by an opposite force; I wished to fill my life, and everything that went along with it, belly, mind, hands, and heart. I wanted it all. I used to read about this sort of living, underneath the radiator at the hospital.

As the months went by, I noticed a distinct change in my temperament. I no longer saw things as extreme. To my surprise, I saw the simple balance in everything. I saw the moves ahead, and simply made them. I saw an ad for an opulent apartment I could afford and I rented it. I saw a job opening that seemed to fit in with my need for humanitarian assistance and I retrieved it and brought the bone back to my immediate surroundings.

But what was lost was the passion by which I had retreated into my surroundings in the first place. Things slowly became predictable. I was sober, so very sober. I became entuned and entertwined with the rhythmic movements of the world. I adjusted my body clock to National Public Radio. Informed at breakfast, work at day, sustenance for the evening meal. Dull, classical pieces that lulled me to sleep with sickening regularity late at night and a bowel movement in the morning.



And that's when it hit me. Life, by definition and practice isn't supposed to be so pre planned and stoic. It is, at least my knowledge from the torn out pages of my literary anthologies from high school and college that littered my apartment floors, supposed to be about the stunning irregularity about it. That all the best thinkers, poets and philosophers were insane rabid lunatics made perfect sense to me that morning on the pot. And with that came the clarity, achieved on a toilet bowel at 8:30 in the morning. What I had been striving for was a mundane, predictable life that would inevitably lead me down the path I had been trying to prevent all along. I had to get sane before I realized how much I needed insanity, had to cling at it as an identity blanket.

I found the first bar I could find outside my brownstone and had the first drink I'd had in 5 years. It was a gorgeous summer morning. It felt grand to have melancholy back as the star attraction at my dinner party. I sat at the bar, feeling glum and loved the way it permeated all of my thoughts, the way it instructed me on where to go next, when to order my next drink, (Immediately, I waved down at the bartender.)

It was then that I saw him, staring at me while trying to maintain his distance, trying to reach out without actually reaching out. I saw him for the first time in years. I sullenly looked down at my shoes and waited for him to pass.



“If you took everything that was ever said” He said, pausing to recollect his thoughts. “That had any sense of love, and pull it out, turn it into what I could say to you now, breathe every word of it, until I was dry and devoid of love, would you feel it? Would you even know its there?”

“I don’t think that’s something we could ever know.”

“But Imagine if it was, imagine if all there was left to say was what was left over from the remnants, what then?”

“Is that how you feel?”

“That is exactly how I feel.”

“I cant see how this is relevant at 1:30 in the morning, I cant see how this relates to you and I, unless you are trying to explain your perspective, which is entirely valid, but at 1:30, when I am half asleep you cant just say what you want and expect me to feel the same way, you just cant. We’ve moved on, were not the same people, not after what happened, we cant have it, no matter what you say. What’s happened has happened. I have Jim now and that’s all that will be, despite your hardships, despite everything you have to say. You can’t undo this, cant live it again.”

“Well, that’s all I have to say”

“Well I guess that’s all there is between us, a million conversations like these, that wont end but have to end.”

“You know—“

“I know what you’ve been through, but that doesn’t change anything.”

“Despite all that work—“

“Despite all that work. I’m sorry. It’s over. And Im sorry you just realized that now, I have to go, Jim’s waking up.”

“Kara. I still love you. I never really cared until now, wasn’t human until now, truly human as I know it.”

Dial Tone.

I’m talking to Mrs. Moxley. It’s 2AM and Im talking to my former therapist about the conversation, the scraping of self I just went through.

“After all that work she does that. After everything, now this. Months of therapy, months of self-improvement, all for her, all so I could show her my potential, my abilities. And she stops right there after knowing all of this. She thinks about it for a second, I can hear the static and snoring on the other line. She rationally thought this through and realized it still didn’t manner.”

“What troubles me is how you think you’ve done all this work for her.”

“I told her that to make myself more of a victim I guess, I don’t know why I said that.”


She tells me how important it is for me to have a satisfying level of self-esteem. I go on to tell her it was all strategy, the case I made for Kara on that evening, morning, fuck what time was it. 3Am, and I have to be at the bookstore in the morning, because I got a job.

Yeah, I got a job at this great little bookstore in an up and coming partially-gentrified neighborhood. My recovery was almost complete, but I didn’t get the prize. I spent grueling hours on a ward floor holding back the vomit and I end up crawling on the floor months later trying to get Kara back. Had I learned nothing?