“…everyone is interchangeable anyway.”
- bret easton ellis, AMERICAN PSYCHO
Clark, Growls Garden, 2009.
first heard this track off the record TOTEMS FLARE.
the other day, i referred to this as my second favorite track for 2012. i’ve this weird way of making year-end best-of lists based purely on what’s been new to me this year, regardless of how long around each bit of pop ephemera’s been around.
something else that’d been around for a few years is HUNGER, steve mcqueen’s initial feature. but i think my favorite bit of film this year is TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY.
my favorite record is godspeed you! black emperor’s ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND!
my favorite comic by far was FREAKANGELS VOL THREE by warren ellis & paul duffield.
and i only read one book and it was damn good: ryzyard kapuscinski’s THE SHADOW OF THE SUN.
this year i went to a comics shop three times, and one time was to watch a movie. record store trips and book store trips were very minimal. this year, i bought lots of clothes instead. not because i need them but because i want them. strange changing into a person who can honestly say i own shoes and clothes i’ve yet to wear, tags still attached.
it’s been that sort of year.
big clothing discounts via work don’t hurt either!
right now i’m planning on a trip to the northwest because turns out i can’t really afford to go anywhere. this is not meant to be categorized as a problem. last time i went anywhere further than five hundred miles was…2006? it’s time. because when at golden’s for thanks giving, i thought, after i said the words, yeah, maybe more traveling on my own will do me some good instead of not traveling alone and remaining home. i’m selfish this way.
incidentally, my favorite track of the year is ∆aimon’s MAASYM (VS//YOU†HCLUB Remix)
Of course, the most futile thing of all, she says, is life: in the end you die and don’t get to enjoy your legacy, whatever the fuck that means.
Only our first date and already I want to marry her.
“The way you imagine god’s minty fresh breath smells is how good Ryan Gosling looks.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
You know, she says, you don’t really have to be such a dick all the time.
I look at her and wonder what she means. My mother and I don’t really get along.
“Yeah, sometimes I miss you, don’t you? I do that thing where I’m in one of those moods, you know, and I wonder what you’re doing, and I think about what we would be doing if things were different. And I look at my phone and realize how easy I could just pick it up (sometimes I do) and just call and I wonder - you’re going to think it’s so dumb! - if my picture will come up, you know, the one you took of me in, what was it? 2003? Yeah, I wonder, your phone will ring and you’ll see my picture, you know, and you’ll think for a moment whether or not you should answer it. I mean, I would if I saw your name on the caller ID. But you do answer, and I can’t hang up because you’ve seen who’s calling, and all I’ll be able to say is hi and how are you and can we talk…that sort of bullshit. And you’ll be great, and you’ll ask me things that I’ll answer and we’ll laugh - that’s the best! We’ll laugh and we’ll leave off saying things like we ought to get together and we should maybe see a film and get coffee and things we criticize people for saying because they don’t mean it because we don’t mean it, and we’ll each go back to our lives, thinking and feeling good things, but imagining we’re each better off without the other, still glad one of us reached out, and go and forget all about it in a few days or so. Anyway, that’s what I think. And I saw you walking across the Boulevard the other day (my god, I should’ve said something to you that day!). I don’t know where you were going. You had your headset on and you were fiddling around with your ipod. But I didn’t say anything to you and you were just across the way, and now, here I am, telling you I’ve been thinking about you since then and I feel a little dumb. But I guess that’s part of it, isn’t it, feeling dumb and stupid for missing a person? Sort of comes with it, I guess. Did you ever have the same feeling? Jesus, listen to me, going on and on. I’m nervous, what can I do. It’s been a while and you have this way of making me feel like I’m a thirteen year old boy at a dance: awkward and strange.”
He says, “You know, if you untie me, this would be a lot easier.”
It becomes his fault when I come…but that’s later.
I can tell you all the things you want to know - who did what to whom and how - but that’s just math and math is boring. I can tell you how I ‘felt’ and how I still ‘feel’ but that’s bullshit. He sitting off, over there, watching some television show about fixing up hair salons, and I’m here, chain smoking, telling you things I maybe shouldn’t.
(If I know you in real-life, sorry.)
The threesome didn’t bother me: I know that’s something he really likes. And it doesn’t bother me it’s a threesome with a woman: he never tells them we’re married and I say little. And we’re both handsome enough, fit enough, charming enough. You know, enough to the point necessary. But this time it’s different and I don’t want to tell him why.
We’re fucking, the three of us. This woman, for a bit, she says she wants to see us fucking and we do and she masturbates to our fucking and she comes and says she wants to come with both of us inside her. Are you surprised to hear this? More women will readily admit this when they’ve seen two men fuck: FACT. So, he pulls out of me and lay her on top of him and slide inside her from behind. They kiss all the while. He sucks on her tits which he knows I hate but, you know, whatever.
Not that I don’t enjoy myself, no. But I’m a tool in the same way a hammer knows it’s a tool: we have a task in this situation and that is what we’re here for. I’m his tool because he wants to fuck some woman with me (and me?) at the same time. If this isn’t devotion, I’m not sure what is. Insecurities, by the way, are for assholes.
Every time we invite a woman over, everything works out the same way. Good looks are an accident, but never underestimate a woman’s filthy mind.
I never come is the thing. Ever. We fuck safely with other people and I never come because I outlast ‘em all every time. I don’t hate orgasms and come but this is nature. I only come when it’s the two of us and he’s on his second load up in me. Nature’s either a cunt or really awfully sweet for me. And we’re fucking this girl who reminds me of some movie actress but if only for that acne scarring on her forehead. She has really nice boobs, and in another situation I might’ve asked her what that color shadow that was and we would’ve had brunch on Sunday. But this is now and my cock’s in her ass and he’s fucking her at the same time, his hands on my thighs and I come.
For what feels like hours, there is fire in my head and my body looses control and I come.
And he comes.
And so does she.
After that, I say something about the shower and retreat to the bathroom and he lights up a cigarette for her while she reaches for her phone and lipstick. In the locked bathroom and I feel weak in the same way a teenager might after his first fist fuck. As if my body’s hollow (what a shit cliche, eh?) and imagine I didn’t just shoot my jism into the already-discarded rubber: I shot my soul out too.
After she leaves, he says that was good, didn’t I think, and I don’t so much want to slap him as tell him to call her back inside. I do neither.
Now, days later, he’s watching television and I can’t stop thinking about that. The feeling hasn’t gone away. I don’t feel physically any different only…a little askew. We’ve fucked since. We’ve not fucked with anyone else. He seems perfectly okay. Did that woman fuck the soul out of me? How stupid does that sound?
[link to visionaria’s photo and story guideline.]
[[goodnight!]]
A threesome with one woman and another man really gets you everything you could ever want.
Never worry, she said, everyone thinks you’re exactly as useless and impotent and pathetic and fat as you think.
Then, she sucked my dick but didn’t swallow.
I was saving up for a new brain but, man, try and get a loan for one of those.
My old brain started failing me. I would forget things. But I’d know I’d forget them. That’s the thing: I’d see a pen and I knew what it was, what I’d used it for before, but I couldn’t get my brain to remember. It was so frustrating.
Out in the street one time, a woman came running up to me and asked me how I was doing, and wasn’t it a long time since we’ve seen each other, things like that, but I couldn’t place her face. I think I remembered her hair color, and when I meandered my way through some nondescript answers, she went away, confused and probably offended. Hope it wasn’t anyone I cared about.
And it wasn’t just my memory, no. I think my brain stopped sending signals to the rest of my body at times. Like a hiccup and suddenly, after peeing, my brain would forget to tell me I was done, and there I’d stand for a while, dick in one hand, strangers thinking me a pervert on the other…figuratively.
Went up a several flights of stairs when my apartment building’s elevator stopped working for a while and at the landing for my floor, my legs stopped. I wanted to get going, I knew where I needed to go, but my brain wouldn’t tell my legs to do anything. It was really annoying.
If my brother were still alive, he’d lend me the money for the new brain. I know he would, even if I can’t remember his face right now. But my whole family’s gone. My mother also needed a new brain but died with her old original one in her head. We never knew our father, my brother and me, and I think he’s the reason why our bodies are falling apart. My brother, he died when his off brand legs broke and he fell onto the subway tracks. His legs made him heavier than people thought and he died when the train ran him over. His wife got all of his money and she doesn’t speak to me.
Whoever our father was, he was a cheapskate. That’s obvious by just looking at my mother and brother and me: we should’ve lasted a thousand years. We’re not robots or anything, but whoever married my mother, he was supposed to make sure our parts were maintained, and our original bodies were replaced as necessary. You hear about guys like him more and more: they literally build a family and then leave it when they figure out how to build a newer model.
Been saving up for years and I think by this time next month I’ll have enough for additional brain memory and a back up. But that isn’t the same as a new brain. A new brain means full functionality. A back up is just that because you’re anticipating the end. But at least I’m a wi-fi hotspot and it’ll take me a little while, but if we run into each other in the street, I’ll remember your face.
The only thing I knew I could change beside me was her.
Then, I finally fell in love.
[lcd soundsystem, I CAN CHANGE]
I am her mother’s age. But she isn’t her mother.
Going to the movies alone is the best thing about being married.
[quick note: man, today tumblr sucks. fucking everything is about your terrible sexual politics, and what you don’t like, and the people you’d fuck, and the bad shitty cartoons you still watch as an adult, and how much you hate your job but won’t quit, and how fat you are, and pictures of cats, and how everyone who isn’t about you is racist/homophobic/misogynistic/etc., and how pathetic you really are but think you are clever. lighten the fuck up. jesus.]
I thought it was an ingrown hair just next to my scrotum. I’d feel it, a little tender, just right there where sometimes I like to scratch just because if feels more than fine. It didn’t hurt at first so I figured it would eventually pop on its own. But as time went by, I’d forget all about it until I was in the shower, until I jerked off. And it was growing, but I didn’t pay it any mind soon after I noticed it … again.
Eventually, it was the diameter of a quarter and the bump felt hard. So I worried. Or began to worry. Whatever.
It didn’t hurt but I wondered if this was cancer. Should I take a needle soaked in alcohol and pop it? “Doctor visit?” I wondered once aloud while in line at the grocery store. I looked at it with a mirror, I’d lean in while sitting to see it, feeling around the edges of it - tender but no pain. It wasn’t red nor was it like a giant zit. Imagine a ping pong ball underneath your skin. Imagine those weirdos on the internet with implants.
And then I’d forget about it once more.
It became large enough for me to notice it when walking, and I decided, fuck it, time to see a doctor. Called my insurance to find a decent doctor, took the day off work, cancelled a date I’d made with someone whose name I couldn’t remember. I was readying myself for the worse, and the worse was cancer. I don’t know why, but that’s where my brain landed.
In the shower the day of my doctor’s visit, I was so nervous. I wanted to just take a knife and take care of it myself. The bump between my leg and nutsack still grew hair and still didn’t hurt and still didn’t just go away. I toweled off, and sat on the toilet naked, with a mirror to see how bad it must look. So strange, looking at myself this way, thinking that I don’t want a doctor to think this growth on me is strange looking. Fuck, right? So, I’m looking at myself in the mirror, at the cancer I think I have, and I can feel it more and pulsate with my heartbeat.
That’s when I dropped the mirror because I couldn’t take this feeling, and I couldn’t take the fact that as I’m looking at myself - lifting my nuts off to the side to get a better look - this bump that’s been growing painlessly on me opens up slowly but just natural enough, like an eyelid lifting open, and reveals a mouth with black teeth smiling at me.
She said if I looked in her eyes I’d see how they’re speckled with tiny bits of gold.
I leaned in so close our noses touched. She opened her eyes as wide as she could.
I looked in her eyes.
I said her eyes were brown.
She slapped me and said I was an asshole. She stormed off.
We married two days later.