Another Drink
Pour myself a stronger dose of whiskey, pleased to see there's a lot left in that pint. Of course, on my way back to the bedroom, the door catches on my elbow and I spill some of it. I manage to restrain myself from smashing the glass in my face as "punishment", setting it down and figuring I'll get some aerosol carpet cleaner tomorrow or Friday. I readjust the mattress, which is sticking out, and manage to clunk my head slightly on the sideboard, so I accentuate it by banging my head into the headboard...you know, to "teach myself a lesson" about being clumsy. Every time I do this, I hear laughter...justified laughter from the past. Ha ha...he fucked up again. Even some of my teachers thought that way...I remember one gym teacher who used me as his own little comedy routine, a guy who was probably in his 20s when I was in his class, who would look at the rest of the class and then at me and shake his head with a smile and say something like "You did it again". Everyone laughed...after all, even the TEACHER was getting into the act...even he knew what a fuckup I was.
Last weekend, I joked with John that since I was moving to Kzoo, I'd have the opportunity to murder some of those who were mean to me without having to worry about manufacturing an explanation for why I was there. John is an ex-public defender and assistant D.A. (compare that to me being an executive assistant...John is about a month older than me....now wonder why I feel like an expendable waste of flesh?) and it's kind of fun to drop these scenarios on him. I remember when he used to brag about getting a client off who was "totally guilty" and realizing what a mockery the justice system was. Shit, I remember him prosecuting people on drug charges in court while he himself was stoned.
John can afford to feel confident. Granted, I shouldn't discount the fact that he's in a wheelchair, but he's smart, is now starting his own law firm with financial support from his parents, is fairly good-looking (and has a steady girlfriend anyway), so he has a lot going for him. I, on the other hand, am not smart, not successful, not financially independent, and have little hope for a future. What would I get anyway? A certification as a paralegal, so I can service a bunch of asshole lawyers who'll probably treat me like a peon anyway? And that's several years down the road, after I pay off my debts and so on.
Sometimes I think the only thing that really keeps me from suicide is knowing that if I did myself in, it wouldnt really matter. I'd be seen as a joke anyway. I remember some old Matt Groening "Life In Hell" cartoon where he advised to not kill yourself in high school because "people will make jokes about you", and it's true. When I first talked of suicide, at a bar mitzvah, of all things, one of the attendees told anyone he could find that I tried to cut my wrists with a knife at the dinner table and tried to OD on aspirin in the bathroom (they had some bizarre flower arrangement with aspirin clipped to the stems). Sometimes I regret not finding that bucktoothed fucker and beating him senseless, of smashing his face into a lovely pulp, but, of course, I didn't have the guts, miserable weakling that I am. Heh...that epithet...I remember my mom, drunk and incapicitated, calling me a "weakling" as me and a friend helped her up to bed. The same "friend" later spread it around that my mom was a drunk, yet I never did anything to him, gutless pig that I am.
It's pointless now, I guess...what am I gonna do, massacre people for offenses made more than a decade ago? On one hand, I've found that people rarely really change, but on the other hand, I'm unwilling to sacrifice my remaining years for the pleasure of torturing one or many to death. I remember saying that I'd put out their eyes with the tip of a knife first, blinding them, so that they wouldn't even be able to tell what would come next, but that's just tough talk. While I doubt i would feel sympathetic towards them, I can't help but smile at the fact that while one part of me writes as this avenging angel, this sadistic monster who would take pleasure in slowly disfiguring them so that they wouldn't even get a decent open-casket service, another part of me was typing about taking care of some little girl, of making her feel happy and safe, of not losing my temper at her. "I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man", says Private Joker in Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket", when questioned about the juxtaposition of a peace symbol button and the legend "Born To Kill" on his helmet.
Watching Polish TV interviews with Anna Mucha, a young Polish actress I remember from Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Now she's in her mid-twenties and quite attractive and it makes me jealous. I was about 16 when I saw the film, and she was probably 12, and now she's grown up and attractive and it makes me feel like an ugly toadstool by comparison. So she gets to mature and become attractive while I go bald and end up an ugly fucking joke? It makes me rage at life's "unfairness", childish as it might seem. Some get lucky, some don't, and my spin on the genetic roulette wheel turned up snake-eyes. My brother, less than four years younger than me, ended up six feet even, still has all his hair, and is of medium build at most. Meanwhile, I ended up 6'3", broad shouldered, and started losing my hair before I even finished high school. Jesus...is there anything more pathetic? I never even had a motherfucking CHANCE at being attractive...that was taken away when I started using Rogaine as a college sophomore and had my first hair transplant at age 20. I even have body hair, which is totally fucking gross. Not that I see my brother as some kind of ideal, but it makes me angry to see that he has a better chance at life than me. As much of a dork as he is, he gets girls and friends whereas I, deservedly, am an ugly pig lost in my own solitude. Just knowing how I ended up with the shit end of the genetic stick makes me so angry that I clench my fists, crushing my thumbs, so I don't smash this glass in my face and then rub the shards in. That will only make me invent a bunch of stupid reasons for why I'm "wounded".
How the fuck am I supposed to go through life unattractive? Oh, I'm used to hearing well-meaning yet naive people who tell me that looks "don't matter", or only matter to this evil, "shallow" people, but I know better. I hate myself for looking like this, and "compliments" about how i look depress me even more. I don't want praise for being bald, for being big, for being tall...i view it as embarrassing and fucking disgusting, and I could care less that "most guys WANT to be bigger" or that "some girls like a big man". I wouldnt want to date a girl who wants some big man to "protect her"...how fucking melodramatic. Like me being big will deter some mugger or rapist.
Finally starting to buzz...Jesus, what will I do tomorrow when I don't have this? I can always get more alcohol, I guess, but that's a losing battle. Despite my daily intake, I'm still not afraid I'm an alcoholic...the only reason I drink or even get high is because I'm lonely and have nobody to spend time with. If I had someone, preferably a girl, to hang out with, I wouldn't be sitting there wishing I could be drunk or high. I only do this out of sheer boredom. With nobody to talk to, nobody interested in me, my company is getting fucked up. When I'm fucked up, I enjoy things more...granted, they're the same things I like when i'm sober, but more so.
Watching an interview on YouTube with the infamous Ed Kemper, who murdered various coeds, his grandparents, and most famously, his mother, whom he subsequently raped and then used her head as a dartboard. I don't desire to do the same to either of my parents, but since I heard that Ed was a pretty personable guy, it made me interested in finding out a bit more of him. It's not that I think I'd ever go on some nutso killing spree, but I refuse to be lazy and dismiss such people as mindless crazies. We all have our reasons. I grip my wrist, my hand easily overlapping the circumference, as I listen to poor Ed talking about taking a girl to "a John Wayne movie and Denny's". I smile as he puts on an old pair of glasses and says to the interviewer, "Would you get in a car with this man?" The power of humor...it manages to defuse all the horrid things he did, even when he talks about talking to severed heads. It's fascinating to see a guy who seems so normal, who realizes how nuts his behavior was. I go on YouTube and watch a scene from John MacNaughton's film "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", where Henry and his friend Otis murder a rude man fencing stolen TV sets, climaxing when Henry smashes a TV set into the man's head and orders his friend to "plug it in", electrocuting the man. What I find interesting is that the majority of comments are about the fact that the actor in question was overweight, a "fat fuck" who deserved what he got. While the actor, Ray Atherton (whose B-movie credits include producing "Fart: The Movie"), is obviously playing a rude and unsavory character, I find it interesting that the viewers concentrate on the fact that he's overweight and not very attractive, hence more "deserving" of his terrible fate. It's fascinating how cathartic the murder scene seems to be for people, a rude fat man being stabbed with a soldering iron, garrotted with an extension cord, and then electrocuted. The childish smile on the face of actor Tom Towles says it all.
Finally buzzing after more than half a pint of Canadian Club, but not yet incoherent. Just means my typing is slower and I wonder what I can eat besides cottage cheese, which I hate probably an hour ago. Look up my former "friend" from childhood, now a newspaper editor probably somewhere in Battle Creek. The bearded face I see looks like a stranger to me, although I've known him since probably 1982. Even back home in Kalamazoo, I wouldn't contact him....partially because I'm ashamed that he has made a career with his writing whereas I'm a worthless piece of shit relegated to executive assistant positions, and partially because my writing is AT LEAST as good as his is. His prose isn't embarrassing, but it's nothing special, nothing I couldn't churn out myself. "You fucking LOSER....bet you'd love to be in his position, bet you'd love to be able to make your living based on your writing...but awwwww....too bad you were too fucking STUPID to even attempt it. Worthless pig! You deserve to look him up, to be humiliated by his success... If you had any guts, you'd kill yourself for how low you are compared to him, even if you know you're at least equal the writer he is! Like it matters....he has a reputation, and all you have is a history of "executive assistant" work, which at best makes you an ambitionless loser and at best makes you a competent functionary. You rotten motherfucker...THIS is the best you can do?!?" My head starts to spin a bit from the whiskey, and that plus knowing what an ineffectual loser I am sends me back to where I started. An ugly pig, with no use to anyone. You fucking loser....you proud of the life you've carved out for yourself?"
Quarter to one here in Illinois and once again, I childishly imagine sticking a gun in my mouth for being such a waste of flesh, such a complete loser. "Awwww.....if you had any fucking talent, maybe someone would have noticed it, you hog, you pig, you disgusting worthless pile of shit! You're thirty years old! All around you, people are having careers, families, relationships, histories....while you languish. Fucking lazy loser....if you had any fucking talent, it would have been discovered long ago. Why prolong it? Why not get the guts to do yourself in, to kill yourself, to punish yourself for the fucking wreck you made of your life, you rotten pig, you worthless scumbag, you human offal, you pile of shit.... Whaaat, you think people will care about you, will care when you die? You're just another statistic, another failure, another typical case. They'll shrug their shoulders while they bury you and nobody will even notice except maybe your boohooing family, who'll secretly figure this shoulda happened long ago. You rotten piece of shit....why don't you have the guts to kill yourself? You KNOW you're nothing....you've been told that since fucking first grade. You're shit...why would you expect anything more? You've known this since you were six years old. Nothing but a rotten failure.
Last weekend, I joked with John that since I was moving to Kzoo, I'd have the opportunity to murder some of those who were mean to me without having to worry about manufacturing an explanation for why I was there. John is an ex-public defender and assistant D.A. (compare that to me being an executive assistant...John is about a month older than me....now wonder why I feel like an expendable waste of flesh?) and it's kind of fun to drop these scenarios on him. I remember when he used to brag about getting a client off who was "totally guilty" and realizing what a mockery the justice system was. Shit, I remember him prosecuting people on drug charges in court while he himself was stoned.
John can afford to feel confident. Granted, I shouldn't discount the fact that he's in a wheelchair, but he's smart, is now starting his own law firm with financial support from his parents, is fairly good-looking (and has a steady girlfriend anyway), so he has a lot going for him. I, on the other hand, am not smart, not successful, not financially independent, and have little hope for a future. What would I get anyway? A certification as a paralegal, so I can service a bunch of asshole lawyers who'll probably treat me like a peon anyway? And that's several years down the road, after I pay off my debts and so on.
Sometimes I think the only thing that really keeps me from suicide is knowing that if I did myself in, it wouldnt really matter. I'd be seen as a joke anyway. I remember some old Matt Groening "Life In Hell" cartoon where he advised to not kill yourself in high school because "people will make jokes about you", and it's true. When I first talked of suicide, at a bar mitzvah, of all things, one of the attendees told anyone he could find that I tried to cut my wrists with a knife at the dinner table and tried to OD on aspirin in the bathroom (they had some bizarre flower arrangement with aspirin clipped to the stems). Sometimes I regret not finding that bucktoothed fucker and beating him senseless, of smashing his face into a lovely pulp, but, of course, I didn't have the guts, miserable weakling that I am. Heh...that epithet...I remember my mom, drunk and incapicitated, calling me a "weakling" as me and a friend helped her up to bed. The same "friend" later spread it around that my mom was a drunk, yet I never did anything to him, gutless pig that I am.
It's pointless now, I guess...what am I gonna do, massacre people for offenses made more than a decade ago? On one hand, I've found that people rarely really change, but on the other hand, I'm unwilling to sacrifice my remaining years for the pleasure of torturing one or many to death. I remember saying that I'd put out their eyes with the tip of a knife first, blinding them, so that they wouldn't even be able to tell what would come next, but that's just tough talk. While I doubt i would feel sympathetic towards them, I can't help but smile at the fact that while one part of me writes as this avenging angel, this sadistic monster who would take pleasure in slowly disfiguring them so that they wouldn't even get a decent open-casket service, another part of me was typing about taking care of some little girl, of making her feel happy and safe, of not losing my temper at her. "I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man", says Private Joker in Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket", when questioned about the juxtaposition of a peace symbol button and the legend "Born To Kill" on his helmet.
Watching Polish TV interviews with Anna Mucha, a young Polish actress I remember from Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Now she's in her mid-twenties and quite attractive and it makes me jealous. I was about 16 when I saw the film, and she was probably 12, and now she's grown up and attractive and it makes me feel like an ugly toadstool by comparison. So she gets to mature and become attractive while I go bald and end up an ugly fucking joke? It makes me rage at life's "unfairness", childish as it might seem. Some get lucky, some don't, and my spin on the genetic roulette wheel turned up snake-eyes. My brother, less than four years younger than me, ended up six feet even, still has all his hair, and is of medium build at most. Meanwhile, I ended up 6'3", broad shouldered, and started losing my hair before I even finished high school. Jesus...is there anything more pathetic? I never even had a motherfucking CHANCE at being attractive...that was taken away when I started using Rogaine as a college sophomore and had my first hair transplant at age 20. I even have body hair, which is totally fucking gross. Not that I see my brother as some kind of ideal, but it makes me angry to see that he has a better chance at life than me. As much of a dork as he is, he gets girls and friends whereas I, deservedly, am an ugly pig lost in my own solitude. Just knowing how I ended up with the shit end of the genetic stick makes me so angry that I clench my fists, crushing my thumbs, so I don't smash this glass in my face and then rub the shards in. That will only make me invent a bunch of stupid reasons for why I'm "wounded".
How the fuck am I supposed to go through life unattractive? Oh, I'm used to hearing well-meaning yet naive people who tell me that looks "don't matter", or only matter to this evil, "shallow" people, but I know better. I hate myself for looking like this, and "compliments" about how i look depress me even more. I don't want praise for being bald, for being big, for being tall...i view it as embarrassing and fucking disgusting, and I could care less that "most guys WANT to be bigger" or that "some girls like a big man". I wouldnt want to date a girl who wants some big man to "protect her"...how fucking melodramatic. Like me being big will deter some mugger or rapist.
Finally starting to buzz...Jesus, what will I do tomorrow when I don't have this? I can always get more alcohol, I guess, but that's a losing battle. Despite my daily intake, I'm still not afraid I'm an alcoholic...the only reason I drink or even get high is because I'm lonely and have nobody to spend time with. If I had someone, preferably a girl, to hang out with, I wouldn't be sitting there wishing I could be drunk or high. I only do this out of sheer boredom. With nobody to talk to, nobody interested in me, my company is getting fucked up. When I'm fucked up, I enjoy things more...granted, they're the same things I like when i'm sober, but more so.
Watching an interview on YouTube with the infamous Ed Kemper, who murdered various coeds, his grandparents, and most famously, his mother, whom he subsequently raped and then used her head as a dartboard. I don't desire to do the same to either of my parents, but since I heard that Ed was a pretty personable guy, it made me interested in finding out a bit more of him. It's not that I think I'd ever go on some nutso killing spree, but I refuse to be lazy and dismiss such people as mindless crazies. We all have our reasons. I grip my wrist, my hand easily overlapping the circumference, as I listen to poor Ed talking about taking a girl to "a John Wayne movie and Denny's". I smile as he puts on an old pair of glasses and says to the interviewer, "Would you get in a car with this man?" The power of humor...it manages to defuse all the horrid things he did, even when he talks about talking to severed heads. It's fascinating to see a guy who seems so normal, who realizes how nuts his behavior was. I go on YouTube and watch a scene from John MacNaughton's film "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", where Henry and his friend Otis murder a rude man fencing stolen TV sets, climaxing when Henry smashes a TV set into the man's head and orders his friend to "plug it in", electrocuting the man. What I find interesting is that the majority of comments are about the fact that the actor in question was overweight, a "fat fuck" who deserved what he got. While the actor, Ray Atherton (whose B-movie credits include producing "Fart: The Movie"), is obviously playing a rude and unsavory character, I find it interesting that the viewers concentrate on the fact that he's overweight and not very attractive, hence more "deserving" of his terrible fate. It's fascinating how cathartic the murder scene seems to be for people, a rude fat man being stabbed with a soldering iron, garrotted with an extension cord, and then electrocuted. The childish smile on the face of actor Tom Towles says it all.
Finally buzzing after more than half a pint of Canadian Club, but not yet incoherent. Just means my typing is slower and I wonder what I can eat besides cottage cheese, which I hate probably an hour ago. Look up my former "friend" from childhood, now a newspaper editor probably somewhere in Battle Creek. The bearded face I see looks like a stranger to me, although I've known him since probably 1982. Even back home in Kalamazoo, I wouldn't contact him....partially because I'm ashamed that he has made a career with his writing whereas I'm a worthless piece of shit relegated to executive assistant positions, and partially because my writing is AT LEAST as good as his is. His prose isn't embarrassing, but it's nothing special, nothing I couldn't churn out myself. "You fucking LOSER....bet you'd love to be in his position, bet you'd love to be able to make your living based on your writing...but awwwww....too bad you were too fucking STUPID to even attempt it. Worthless pig! You deserve to look him up, to be humiliated by his success... If you had any guts, you'd kill yourself for how low you are compared to him, even if you know you're at least equal the writer he is! Like it matters....he has a reputation, and all you have is a history of "executive assistant" work, which at best makes you an ambitionless loser and at best makes you a competent functionary. You rotten motherfucker...THIS is the best you can do?!?" My head starts to spin a bit from the whiskey, and that plus knowing what an ineffectual loser I am sends me back to where I started. An ugly pig, with no use to anyone. You fucking loser....you proud of the life you've carved out for yourself?"
Quarter to one here in Illinois and once again, I childishly imagine sticking a gun in my mouth for being such a waste of flesh, such a complete loser. "Awwww.....if you had any fucking talent, maybe someone would have noticed it, you hog, you pig, you disgusting worthless pile of shit! You're thirty years old! All around you, people are having careers, families, relationships, histories....while you languish. Fucking lazy loser....if you had any fucking talent, it would have been discovered long ago. Why prolong it? Why not get the guts to do yourself in, to kill yourself, to punish yourself for the fucking wreck you made of your life, you rotten pig, you worthless scumbag, you human offal, you pile of shit.... Whaaat, you think people will care about you, will care when you die? You're just another statistic, another failure, another typical case. They'll shrug their shoulders while they bury you and nobody will even notice except maybe your boohooing family, who'll secretly figure this shoulda happened long ago. You rotten piece of shit....why don't you have the guts to kill yourself? You KNOW you're nothing....you've been told that since fucking first grade. You're shit...why would you expect anything more? You've known this since you were six years old. Nothing but a rotten failure.