Northward Midget

Tag: fuckitall

  • The Coward’s Price For Sobriety

    Six months.  31.5 times six.   93 days?   I’m not particularly mathematically adept at this time.

    Nevertheless and irregardless– off the wagon.

    First, it was the party for a friend of my lover.   Strong through an hour, maybe two.  Then anxious.  Then was asked to get a drink for her.   Hers were weak.  I nod and smile.  To the bar.  Drop a twenty.   “Double vodka.”

    It was downhill from there.  Down into “Proud Mary in the style of Ike and Tina Turner” at some dive called “Longneckers”.  Down to a $100 cab ride two turns north and west because, apparently, I slurred “Spring St” into “Springville”.  At least I didn’t drive.

    But the next morning, with the special lady’s car an hour’s traffic south in Depew?  The shower handle breaks off.  I’m driving down Transit (the reverse route the cab driver should have taken) in oppressive Sunday morning heat, wondering if the {jury,jerry}-rigged hose was still attached to the drain, or if my apartment was (once again) flooded.

    We made it back.  It was a good day in the end.   I topped off the proverbial, but it was good.  In my philosophy of sobriety, a stumble doesn’t necessarily cripple.

    A rough week later, after kilobytes of text too tawdry to re-late, the lover and I were back on terms of endearment.  We just wanted to *be* together.  We did.

    I picked up a four-pack of Ommegang Rare Vos before “we did”.

    I could barely finish the first.   Half of the second, the rest down the drain.   It’s a pathetic ABV, anyway.

    Next week, things are much worse.   I “dialed” a number with three digits.  Wasn’t pretty.  Swore I’d never do that to someone, but I did.

    Gotta swear off swearing.

    375mL of … New Amsterdam?   I walked for it.  To “Liquor Store” on Main in Williamsville.  Very somber in the shop.  I always play a role.  This was the role of the reluctant reprise of an alcoholic.  (No, not *that* disease-implicative term, but let’s use the word for expedience before I lose interest in this post.)  Took it home.  Maybe three shots in three separate talls of Sodastream tonics.  Just enough for a buzz, and the remainder went down the drain.

    Last night.

    Another 375.  Sobieski.  My old friend.

    Downed half that one.

    It was enough to conjure the breath of the dragon.  It was enough to steer me off and leave me waking to a head full of webs and wisps.  It was enough to make me regret.

    And?   Tonight.

    Six-pack of Commodore Perry.  I’m experimenting, see?  I’m working out what quantity might bring the quality that keeps me from coming home every goddamned night and going straight to bed.  I’m figuring what might be enough to erase the mistakes I’ve forced out of recall’s range and be content with myself for an evening.

    To the credit of the experiment, I have spilt some admirable word combinations this night.

    But.

    But … is it worth it?

    I can’t be a drunk again.  Not a “modern drunkard”.  Not an “alcoholic”.  Not … not what I said I wouldn’t be.

    Am I weak?  Am I paralyzed with a fear of being alone with my self?

    Maybe every chance ticked itself off the availables on Memorial Day in 2011.   Can I only choose one role?  If I fail at it, am I doomed to spiral, grasping, down into nothing?

    What was I before this?

    Will I ever be him again?

    Do I want to be?

    Fuck it.

    TUSK.

     

  • “I’m Married”

    Just a glimpse of her face inside Super Flea, but I was sure I’d seen her before.  I checked the mobile/locals features on my phone’s PoF and OKC apps, but got nothing.  Oh well.  I was leaving, anyway.  I’d sold off this week’s portion of my childhood to pay for the mistakes of my adulthood, and there isn’t much left there I haven’t seen.

    There she is in the parking lot walking ahead of me, so I call out, “Hey, are you on one of the dating sites?”  She either doesn’t hear or is ignoring me, so I grunt/snort and continue toward my car.

    She turns, so I ask again, inoffensively smiling and cordial: “Are you on one of the dating sites, like Plenty of Fish or OK Cupid?”

    With a cringe, and a waggle of the hand with her ring-finger and an aura of absolute disgust, she replies, “I’m married.”

    “I’ll be right back.  Hang out with my cousin here for a while.”

    She’s beautiful.

    But then, most objectively average females are “beautiful” when you’re in high school.  Hell, they’re beautiful when you’re a man.  Maybe because they remind you of all the ones you missed when you were young, or maybe just because they’re soft and unblemished and absent the rusty armor of years.  Our caveman self still wants to fuck anywoman with shiny hair.

    I shift from one foot to another.  She looks around, desperately trying to find someone other than this awkward geek, this creep, this weird little fucker.

    I figure I should talk, right?  Say something.  We’re at the school off-hours.  Picking up yearbooks.

    “So, did you get a yearboo–” is all I get out.  She recognizes someone, and calls out to them with an enthusiastic wave.

    “OH hey!”

    And she’s gone.   Not a word to me, but she might as well have uttered some ancient, horrific curse.

    She walks to her car.  Mine is right there, so I get inside.

    Maybe she thought I was following her.

    Maybe she thought I was dangerous.

    There are a lot of maybes here that would mitigate her being such a goddamned mother-fucking cunt to me.

    Anyway, fuck ’em all.  Fuck ’em all to fucking Hell.

     

  • An Olio Of Miscellany

    Some fat fuck entitled his periodic article in The Times-West Virginian as such.  No matter.

    There is so much I cannot say, for it would be printed out and delivered unto “Justice” to keep me from the children who so desperately need my guidance — a firm hand leading them toward some happiness their father could never achieve and their mother cannot deliver.

    That is enough to be said of Herl.  You are familiar with the history, I take it?

    Behind me now is a flag purchased for ten, perhaps owned by a believed patriot.  Rather than burn the symbol in solitude, I’ve pasted a series of letters in a quasi-revolutionary font upont, forming a phrase in a “dead” language:

    Sic.  (Thus)

    Semper. (Forever)

    Tyrannis.  (Tyrants)

    This conglomeration of individuals pasted likewise such through the force of Law under the guise of Justice, we sit and we type and we hammer and we money-change through our days and we go to bed tired rather than angry as the Will of the Land intends.

    Sprinkled throughout will be such aphorisms of dubious import and unlikely provocative of any sort of meaningful introspection by the likes of the public at large.

    APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

    The flabby wine-skin of his brain
    Yields to some pathologic strain,
    And voids from its unstored abysm
    The driblet of an aphorism.
    “The Mad Philosopher,” 1697

    How am I?  I’m drinking less.  I de-activated my Facebook account, then re-activated it ostensibly to spark the contacts I have connected through its medium.  Without the drunken ranting on Facebook, I am but a pathetic old fool in his man-cave drinking alone.

    Perhaps I am that, regardless.

    To rewind a moment: “She” did indeed bring a stack of papers (easily forged, you indeed know) which kept Justice from re-uniting me with my daughters without the state-sanctioned supervision for which I pay $50 per two hours per week.  Thus, I refrain.

    “Asylum” in its truest etymological sense means a place of refuge.  Sanctuary.   However, as you descend through the synonyms, you encounter more sinister (left-handed) connotations.  Cover.  Covert.  Den.  Dugout.  “Funk hole.” (I like that one.)  “Safehold.”  “Snug harbor.”  (How cute.)  Psychopathic hospital.  Sanatorium.  Padded cell.  Nuthouse.

    Bedlam.

    She sent me there first.  Not directly, of course, but it was her volition that instigated my commission.

    Then the flowers.  Fifteen thousand dollars bond from the cunt of Amherst.  Mark Farrell or Geoffrey Klein.  I don’t recall.  He didn’t look at me.  I’ll never call a judge “your honor” again.  There is no honor in a position.  Honor is earned, not bought or elected.

    Am I in contempt of court?  Indeed.  I hold it in contempt.  I hold every judge in contempt.  I grab the flag on its staff and drive it through the black heart of …

    Sorry.  Getting purple there.

    I’m fine.

    Visited a strip club for the first time in forty years.  For a dollar, a beautiful woman will rub her breasts against your face, and hover with athletic thighs her most sacred temple of wrinkled folds centimeters from your lips.  When she is done, when the music is finished, she will kneel to the lit floor tiles and scoop up those single dollar bills and walk off stage.

    It is sad, for certain, but then, so are the men with dollars clenched in their teeth.

    We are all sad.

    Some are more brazenly mercenary than others, but they are all whores.

    We are all whores.

    I’m running out of steam at 10 o’ the clock.  Pink Floyd’s “Animals.”   “Rage” in the 360.  Blast the fuck out of mutants.

    Me?  I’m fine.

    Near broke.   $150 in the bank account on the Monday after paycheck.   I couldn’t afford to pay the pimp-mother to see my daughters a few weeks ago.  I think this stretch will forego the double overdraft of the previous fortnight and boost my reserves summat.  Credit is night depleted.  FSA health debit card is suspended until I pay for the involuntary committal to Erie County Medical Center.  I don’t have the $333 for that.  Buying co-pays with what little credit remains, redeeming that the old-fashioned way with mailed receipts, and then get the card activated again.  If mommy has to co-pay, she should keep the receipts, and feel the sting of consequence of putting the father of her children into Bedlam.

    But, again, I do not wish to speak of She.

    This is just an update.

    I’m not a rocket scientist.

    I rock the house.

    And sign the tits.

    And that’s it.

    My apartment resembles a dorm room now.   The inverted flag with that Wilkes-Booth screed.  A rotating disco light.  Lava lamp.  Posters and self-made beaded door-curtain.  Hanged guitars.  Ironic blonde Jesus affixed with a blasphemous Post-It.

    I’m leaving now.   That’s the state of the disunion.

    Just thought you’d like to know.