"I don't need a compass or a map, I just need some rollerskates and a jetpack!"
Cheeseburgers and carrots for dinner. I'm beginning to feel a little sick in and around my head. I'm beginning to think I'm just not paranoid for believing I'm seriously allergic to this area. It's only when I'm here that I feel physically ill and my sinuses start acting up. People used to tell me I was allergic to my cats, but I haven't lived with them in about a month now and everything that happens with my nose and throat is persisting. In less than twenty-four hours after I returned home from my trip, my nose started running and I had to start clearing my throat. I constantly have a headache and the fatigue is chronic. A family of birds built a nest in a potted thing if flowers hanging high on my grandmother's porch, dangling in front of the door. The wind here has been ferocious lately and knocked it off its hook yesterday, I guess. So all five little eggs were cracked and the babies died. It makes me sad. I hardly feel able to write this, but with a week of community service coming up, I figure I might as well try to write this while I still have any sort of energy or interest in doing so. It looks nice outside, but I don't know if it actually is, because I haven't gone out there at all today. And I probably won't.
Story from last entry continues...
DAY TEN!
We woke up glazed in sweat and covered in dirt that had blown over onto us from the nearby highway road's traffic. The sun was beating down on us so strongly. It was somewhere around 9:30 or 10 and the parking lot we slept near was filled with vehicles. I was glad no one bothered us. Even though we hadn't gotten much sleep, it was too hot to keep laying there and sizzling, so I suggested we look for Cafe Grindstone, my favorite cafe the last time I visited South Philly. But when we got there, they weren't open. I couldn't really tell if they were closed down or not because they still had an events calendar. I hoped someone was just late to opening it. We walked back onto South Street and found a wall to sit up against in the shade on 5th Street and ate the two sandwiches that were donated to us by the nice girl at Foodswings the day before. Even though were cold, they were great. How the rest of the day went was based on whether or not a show was actually happening in State College the next day. But nothing on their site indicated that there was. So I called and it was cleared up... the tour dates I had been looking at were from 2009. I'm an idiot who never knows what day, month, or year it is, apparently. I felt more stupid than I did disappointed, but got over it and started planning for the day in Philly in hopes of making the most out of being there to begin with. We walked into the South Street Diner and got sodas to justify us sitting there and using my laptop to get directions around. Soda on tap from a diner sucked through a straw is the best taste a soda can have. They didn't offer free refills to people who didn't order a meal of some sort, though, so we left soon after. Kara's series of five-second freak-outs were becoming unbearable. I don't recall the reasons why (because I didn't want to focus too much on them), but she would start being a huge bitch to me for a few minutes for absolutely no reason. I'd calmly tell her that I'm reaching the peak of my ability to deal with it and she'd apologize and stop, only to do it again a little while later. Every time it happened, I wanted to walk far, far away from her. But I didn't and couldn't. We walked to the local anarchist bookstore, The Wooden Shoe, and spent about an hour inside of it looking at things, even though we didn't buy anything in the end. An employee told us what was up with Cafe Grindstone; apparently, it wasn't really open anymore and only held shows sometimes, but the owner had pretty much given up on it after his girlfriend left him. Cool. After that, we went to The Bean, a coffeehouse hot spot for all the local hipsters and scenesters. It's so tiny and the menu sucks, but it had free Wi-Fi, so we walked in and got directions to the Mütter Museum, a museum of medical oddities and bones and body parts in jars.
It was only two or so miles away, but in the crossfire of the heats punches felt like ten. Luckily, the inside of the museum was air conditioned and we were able to leave our bags up front. Kara immediately went to the bathroom and I washed my face with ice-cold water from a fountain. The first floor was pretty interesting. They had a wall of skulls with labels underneath them telling the location and death. They were from all over the world and were the result of illnesses, suicides, wars, and infections. They had a preserved corpse of a woman who had died and rotted into what is basically soap due to all of her body fat, deformed dead babies in jars, molds of faces and body parts with skin lesions and disgusting rashes. It was all really awesome. We wished Tia and Bianca were with us, because Tia would have loved it and the one time Bianca's family was going to take her there, her cunt mother canceled because, "it was going to rain." An hour or so later, we left and sat outside in the shade of the front of the building, as a large group of large protesters across the street screamed and marched about something I didn't understand. We walked back the way we came and stopped in at a place called Sweet Freedom, a vegan, soy-, wheat-, gluten-, peanut-, and refined sugar-free baked goods place. The woman who owned it was really nice and smiley, though I was somewhat disappointed when I found out she wasn't vegan or even vegetarian. We both got a cupcakes and a cookie icing sandwich. I was amazed at how good my chocolate mocha cupcake was, considering there was close to nothing in the ingredients. It was seriously one of the most chocolatey things I'd ever had. We sat there for a bit and used the laptop, then left in hopes of getting a good dinner at Gianna's. But when we got there, a sign on their closed door informed us they were closed for renovations until the day after we were set to leave. Totally sucked. So we went to Johnny Rocket's and had dinner there. They didn't have all you can eat fries at this one, but dinner was still filling and I'll pretty much never get sick of seeing their employees do choreographed dances to songs like "Stayin' Alive". A man sitting behind our table had a ton of nickels, so he was monopolizing the entire evening's soundtrack from the tiny jukeboxes that sit on your booth's table. The weather was calming down outside to the type of summer you want to spend exclusively in a park, laying on grass and staring at the sky. But we were walking to a small but classy independent movie theater called the Ritz, a theater I had been to before, actually, and saw the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. It was so good. Banksy's hardly in it, other than a few times to speak, with his voice morphed and his identity blacked out, but it was created by him, using another man's footage, and turns a documentary about street artists by a man obsessed with Banksy into a documentary about the man obsessed with Banksy, in classic Banksy-brand irony. It was so weird, because at the end, the subject of the film turned out to be an artist I sort of respected who goes by the name Mr. Brainwash. Glad I know what an idiotic hack and poser he really is now.
The sun was setting and everything around was a smooth whisper. It was so serene out. We walked back to South Street. As I was joking around about how I had concluded with Erin the last time I was there that everyone in South Philly finished their pizza, we saw a pizza box sitting on the brick arm of a small set of stairs to an apartment. I opened it for fun and there was a pizza in it with only a piece missing. Not just a pizza, either... a cheeseless pizza with garlic on it. We waited by it for five minutes to see if anyone would come back and claim it, but they never did, so we took it, walked down by the water and ate it as we admired the reflection of lights from the bridge and docked ships shining in the dark water below them. The pizza was really good, probably because it was free. The Pizza Gods were good to us. Across the street from us, a hyper bum paced back and forth by traffic stuck at the red light with a sign asking for work or money. I went up to him and asked him why he doesn't just sit on the sidewalk up on South Street, since I had done it before and made some good money, but he cockily said, "I've been doing this for years!" and returned to chasing cars whose drivers were probably scared of him. It obviously wasn't working out too well for him, but whatever, I tried to help. When we walked back up onto South Street, we found an outlet by a tree covered in Christmas lights and hijacked electricity from it so I could sit on my laptop for a little while and map out an entire day in New York City, going from place to place all within less than a mile from each other. Every couple of minutes, a pack of wild drunks would pass by. One bro jumped over us, after which one of the whores he was with apologized to us like an embarrassed mother. Two different people asked if we were doing okay. We went to the diner again for sodas and fries until 1:30 and then went back to our spot to sleep. We passed right out that night. I woke up once to the sunrise, working up just enough energy to take a picture of it, then went back to sleep.
DAY ELEVEN!
The next time I woke up, Kara was gone, parked underneath a nearby tree to evade the beating of the sun. So I moved over to her and joined her. Two men, one with a serious limp, were across at another tree, also sleeping. We kept waking up and moving, chasing the shade of the pine tree as it moved with the location of the sun. Kara got sunburn on the back of one of her legs and my face was left a little red as well. We woke up finally at 1 and gave up trying to stay out of the sun's direction, since the shade was disappearing and we were almost right up against the tree itself. I had pissed on it the night before, too, which made it even more unappealing. It was another really hot day. I showed Kara a funny little sex shop called Condom Kingdom and then we ate lunch at Johnny Rocket's. That place is great. One of the managers saw us and said, "Two days in a row?! Nice!" After that, we walked toward the Chinatown Bus station, through the smoggy, miserable, corporate part of the area over-populated by suits-and-ties and homeless people. We got our tickets back to New York City and then waited. A dirty man my age came in and asked if I did shrooms. A Puerto Rican man on his cellphone asked me how to spell the word 'behave'. They had a big fish tank and inside were two bright orange fluorescent fish who seriously looked like they were so happy to be alive.
We left at 3:30 and slept most of the two-hour ride there. The bus smelled like a toilet that had been converted into a fish tank. When we got off, we began to follow my messy little directions jotted down on a small piece of lined paper crumpled up in my pocket. Our first place of interest was an anarchist bookstore run by women called Bluestockings. It was really cool inside and their selection of books, zines, and anarchist periodicals was incredible. All the girls hanging out there and working there were some of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life and I felt like a piece of shit pig for thinking that inside of a women-run anarchist collective. Just goes to show how 'male' I still am. We looked around for a half hour and grabbed a buncha free stickers. I thought about buying some things, but they were all too expensive for my tastes and the 'Sodomy Not Bombs' shirt wasn't available in my fat-ass size anymore. Kara got a bandana with the outline of her girl parts on it. From there, we walked to ABC No Rio on Rivington to check it out. I'd never been there, despite its history in the New York City DIY punk and art scene. When we got there, some skinny hipsters in sombreros and on bikes were hanging out outside. Inside where we entered was some lame art exhibit with alcohol being served. The art on the walls was most just splattered paint on some paper. What was really artistic was the building itself. Everywhere we turned was something cool. The walls are completely covered in creativity through paintings, graffiti, and other physical creations.
We were mostly interested in checking out their notorious zine library, which is composed of over 10,000 alphabetized titles. It's a small room and there were already three people there who worked there. The first thing I did was ask the guy at the computer if they had the original zine format of Evasion. They did! I looked through their letter E and found the folder with it inside, all photocopies and sloppily put together. It was like staring down at the original scrolls the Bible was written on for me. Kara was hesitant, but began to look around. And then we left, passing by the stench of beer on the way out. From there, we found our way to a place called Lula's, an all-vegan ice cream parlor on East 6th Street. Kara was excited like a little girl in a toy store about finally being able to eat soft-serve vegan ice cream. That was the first thing we got, after being fed two little samples on a tiny sugar spoon of some of their flavors. We got spiral on cones covered in sprinkles. It tasted just like, if not better, than the 'real' thing. And since this was probably the last time we'd be able to order like we were in a Friendly's as vegans, we then split a sundae; one scoop strawberry, one scoop drumstick, covered in hot caramel, sprinkles, gummy bears, and coconut whipped cream, of course topped with a cherry. The man and woman working there were super nice and friendly. The guy actually said he started MerchNow, which is located in Albany. After that, we walked to a place called Cafe Viva which has one of the most vegan-friendly menus I've ever seen at a pizza place. They had vegan slices right up front, so we got two, partly to make up for Gianna's being closed the day before in Philly, along with some garlic knots. Because I'm an idiot, I then took us on an hour-long walk to nowhere up 7th, accidentally winding up in Times Square, which at this point I totally despise, on our hunt for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater to see a stand-up comedian perform for a Comedy Central album recording. It was really stressing me out being there, because I hate tourists and I hate the way everyone acts fascinated by a part of the city that is really just one big perpetual commercial and pollution. We saw two cops taking turns getting a picture taken with some homeless guy holding a sign saying, "Can I have a beer?" with their cellphones. It wasn't until we stopped in a Cafe Metro that we were able to find out where we were and where we had to go. We eventually got to the UCB Theater in time to catch their midnight open mic, which is free. It really cheered us up. They had some stand-up and some improv groups, all of which were hilarious. Though at the end, they had an improv group who spoke entirely Spanish, for Cinco de Mayo or whatever, and so I was clueless about what was happening the whole five minutes they were on. One comedian said that when he was a kid in school, they asked the kids what animal they'd be and he answered, "I'd be a jelly fish because if you don't have a central nervous system, you can't have feelings." It was hilariously emo. We walked to Union Square. I wasn't looking forward to trying to find a place to sleep, since the city is so hard to sleep peacefully in. We sat on some benches and people-watched. Kara was more tired than I was.
Union Square is one of the most diverse places I've ever seen, other than the Food Stamp line in my own city. Everyone is there of every clique, race, and pseudo-subculture, and they're there all night long, playing soccer, doing BMX tricks, skating, getting drunk, sleeping, making out. I suggested we lay down on the ground by an empty space by a water fountain. As we laid there, I heard a loud explosion, then watched two guys get arrested. Sitting right across from us was a ripped crackhead with a fat Mexican whose gender I was unsure of. He or she was rubbing up on this crackhead's abs and biceps, biting his nipples, and eventually began trying to suck him off even though cops were arresting people only a hundred or so feet away. It was weird. Before the sun set, we gave up on Union Square and returned to the Williamsburg Bridge, where we laid down covered by a sleeping bag on the grater behind the concrete barrier, right above the loud sound of passing subway trains and traffic of the early morning commute on both sides of us. It wasn't very good sleep. It was only a few hours later that I woke us up and suggested we get going. We sat around a Dunkin' Donuts for a bit, then walked to Allen Street to take a bus home. When left unoccupied for too long, I begin remembering all I'm running away from. So the night before, I had plenty of time to remember I had eighty-six hours of community service left to do and a court date on the 27th, as well as the annoying fight with Social Services required to get my Food Stamps back. I also started thinking about the girl I love, whose name is still unknown to all of you, and how she had promised to keep in contact with me during my trip and then just didn't. There was a lot of confusion about which bus to take and where it was. The Chinese people who run the buses can barely speak English, so they couldn't help very much, even though they acted frustrated that we couldn't understand them. We got the bus early in the day. We slept almost the entire ride and Kara's dad was waiting for us on Central Avenue when we got there. He dropped me off at home and she went back to hers. We had an amazing trip. And it was time to return to my reality in the city I hate.
Bluestockings.
Dick Chicken.
ABC No Rio.
Yes, it was important enough for me to take a picture of.
VEGAN SUNDAE!
UCB Theater.
Union Square Park. The prettiest place for the sketchiest of happenings you can find.
I had a couple dreams about killing people during the trip. One night, I dreamed I was choking someone to death. I put a washcloth over their face and then squeezed against their Adam's apple as hard as I could. I even had my brother step on the back of my hands while I did this to intensify the pressure against their throat. Another dream I had one night, I watched a man cut someone's head off and set it on fire. They were really graphic and vivid and I wasn't sure how to feel about having them when I woke up.
Shortly after I came home, I got a phone call from a girl I met over Facebook and had already seen around a few times over the years named Amy Counter. The first time I saw her, I thought she was really pretty, but that was years ago. The last time I remembered seeing her was at a school art exhibition I went to with Tara. I couldn't stop checking out her legs. I didn't know much about her other than that, but when I added her to look at her pictures on Facebook, she actually responded and said we should meet sometime and have conversations. So one night, I rode my bike to Scotia at 10 at night and met up with her at Dunkin' Donuts to sit and get to know each other or whatever. It turned into three hours of some of the best conversation I've had in a long time. We are different in so many ways and both of us admittedly would usually write each other off in advance, but for some reason we didn't and get along fantastically. She believes in God and is all spiritual and stuff, which is incredibly sad, but she's not like any theist I've ever met before. She's specifically opposed to condemnation, admits to not knowing anything, is indecisive instead of 100% sure about what she's read and believes in, and doesn't shove it down people's throats. So as of right now, it's excusable, until she surprised me with a line like, "I'll pray for you." She's a virgin, but is still sexual. And even though she comes off as such an innocent, middle class white girl, she has done nothing since I've started talking to her but betray my low expectations. She's a really interesting and honest person and one of the only people I've met who's been able to match my willingness to discuss anything and everything so bluntly and openly. She listens to really brutal tech-metalcore, which surprised me. She also doesn't wear underwear. She's confident, but not stuck-up; just strong, like so many females I know aren't. She's so jam-packed with adorable habits and idiosyncrasies and I'm really enjoying getting to know her. The other night, I rode my bike to Expresso Therapy, a small local cafe in Scotia, and we sat there for a little while. A kid named Jared I met through Tara came in and the three of us played a game of Scrabble. Amy somehow won, but not before asking me if she could use words like 'eBay' and 'farty'. We met up with an ex of hers, Terry, who I had met maybe once a few years back when he was still straightedge, and spent the night walking around. We swung on the swing sets in Collins Park and then, after we got told to leave by a scumbag cop, relocated to a picnic table in complete darkness by the Mohawk off of some desolate road. Hanging out with them was awesome. Terry was an alright guy. He had some good stories to tell. We all talked about sex a lot. It was weird having that conversation with two people who used to date. I find myself so often knowing exactly where someone's sentences are headed, to the point that I even usually have a prepared retort that I came up with months in advance. But not with Amy. Apparently, the only thing I can expect of her is to never live down to my expectations. Not only that, but she has one of the greatest, most abundant smiles I've ever seen. She has beautifully imperfect teeth. I enjoy Amy's company a lot and I hope we keep hanging out.
Total cutie.
I hung out with Trevor one night. He told me he's planning on killing himself. I told him it would probably be a good idea. We spent the night at his place, just catching up on each other's lives and watching graphic gore and prank videos on his laptop. I almost always enjoy my time hanging out with Trevor. I'm glad he can know my opinion of him and his actions/choices and still consider me a friend. He's also pretty funny sometimes. I wasn't really taking his plans of committing suicide very seriously. I was serious when I told him he probably should kill himself, because he should, but after hanging out that night, I found myself thinking constantly about reasons that maybe he shouldn't. Truth is, I couldn't come up with much. He's made many small, stupid decisions that don't effect his life in the long run, but he's also made some very huge decisions that have royally fucked him over. I admire that he made those risky decisions, because I myself do not have the guts to make certain decisions that require me to gamble my life in the long-term. He's not even twenty and has already attempted moving to the opposite side of the country to pursue his dream of being a full-time musician, then went and opened his own business... only to have both fail and blow up in his face. And now he's stuck with a debt and loneliness that most men don't encounter until their mid-life. I feel bad for him, which is why I fully support his suicide. But I also started thinking he should take advantage of hitting bottom and start to really live life without compromise. That's what I did when I hit bottom and I haven't been happier and more content and free than I have been these last two years. The other night, I hung out with him until sunrise in his kitchen, on the floor, just talking and watching stupid videos on his laptop. Gemma was passed out on his bed.
He brought out his loaded shotgun and asked me to hold it. I'm terrified of guns; they're one of my biggest fears, actually. And until then, I had never touched a gun before. He took the slug out and put the safety on. Holding it, I felt ugly. I felt like I was smoking a cigar or holding a dead baby; there was just this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness loaded into this empty shotgun that was cold at my fingertips. I cocked it back and pulled the trigger. There wasn't much force. We talked about it for a few minutes and I tried to help him figure out a good position to hold it in so he didn't fuck up blowing his head off. And then I spent the rest of the night talking to him about why he shouldn't kill himself. He says he's not interested in anything, which is true and I've known that about him for a few years now, and that all he wants to do is sit at home, watch movies on Netflix and play video games. So I told him to fucking do that and not to let anything stop him. He stuttered a lot and said, "That's true," to a lot of what I was saying. He also kept bringing up how he couldn't find the nerve to actually do it yet anyway. To which I told him, sincerely, "If it weren't illegal, I'd blow your head off for you." There's no reason for any of us to be alive. The computers in our brains that store years upon years of data, memories, photographs, and preferences will shut down in an instant when we die and no one will ever be aware of what was going on in there for the most part, unless we leave behind tangible evidence that speaks only a fraction of what we were really thinking. Nothing we do today will have much of an effect on tomorrow. But the fact that we're even here, let alone the fact that we live on a planet that miraculously is in the perfect position in relation to the sun to maintain life, is nothing short of a miracle. So we might as well take advantage of our moments of consciousness here, right? We won't be able to reflect on it when we die, because there's no afterlife, but we can reflect on it today. And since we are here and have managed the capacity to feel, we might as well make the best of it. And maybe even strive to make the world better for the generations that come after us (if there are any).
I put it off for the first couple of days being home, but I eventually started getting up early just to make phone calls to people in government- or state-run organizations that ignore me. After a couple of days of being ignored, I was able to finally get everything settled with community service and Food Stamps. I'll be starting community service tomorrow morning at 7:30AM at the Hamilton Hills Art Center, a place for kids to be dropped off after school by their shitty parents to fingerpaint or whatever in the worst part of my city. I had actually done community service there before a few years ago. I'm hoping they cut me a break and maybe write me off for more hours than I actually do, but I plan on being there every day this week from 7:30AM-6:00PM when they close. I'll be able to get in over fifty hours that way. I'll still have thirty or so left after that, but I'm not worrying about it until it comes to my next court date. Speaking of which, I called my public defender, too, and left him a message telling him I wouldn't be showing up for court on the 27th. I'm leaving on the 24th to go to Kentucky with Kara for Crucial Fun Fest, four days of some of my favorite bands and fun far away from home in a state I've never been to. There's no way I'm missing that and am fully prepared for a bench warrant being put out for my arrest while I'm gone. Hopefully, that doesn't happen, but if it happens, it'll be worth it. I also got Food Stamps all figured out. I got a thing in the mail with my name on it and I could feel a card inside when I bent it, but when we opened it, the card had my father's face on it. They got us mixed up. Even though we have different case numbers, Social Security numbers, and birth dates, they got us mixed up down there. Fucking ridiculous. So we had to go down to Social Services and let them know about their fuck-up. After a lot of apologizing, they decided to just reopen my old account so I could use my old card and they reimbursed me for the month I went without anything, giving me $370 in Food Stamps. I totally went out tonight and spent $200 of it on food. The rest will be reserved for survival on the road!
Someone started a rumor over Facebook that I went Wiccan. I only found out because I started getting a buncha questions about it on Formspring. I have no idea who started it, but it's over and cleared up now. Fucking pathetic the things people make up about me to fill the void in their empty lives.
When I was less than ten years old, my father got me some great danyo fishes; they're small and silver and pretty. But they're only supposed to live about five to seven years. Somehow, one of them survived all of our blackouts due to failed Niagara Mohawk payments and parental arguments and several house movements through shifting temperatures of water. Sadly, the other day, it finally died. It was twelve years old. I found out through my mother over Facebook and my jaw literally dropped. I was somewhat heartbroken. She put it in the freezer because she doesn't want to just throw it away. I want to get it preserved somehow. He was a bad-ass fish. I mean, he lived double his life expectancy throughout some pretty harsh conditions. Rest in peace, fish!
This entry is done. Check out some bullshit on my Tumblr or ask me stupid fucking questions on my Formspring.
Story from last entry continues...
DAY TEN!
We woke up glazed in sweat and covered in dirt that had blown over onto us from the nearby highway road's traffic. The sun was beating down on us so strongly. It was somewhere around 9:30 or 10 and the parking lot we slept near was filled with vehicles. I was glad no one bothered us. Even though we hadn't gotten much sleep, it was too hot to keep laying there and sizzling, so I suggested we look for Cafe Grindstone, my favorite cafe the last time I visited South Philly. But when we got there, they weren't open. I couldn't really tell if they were closed down or not because they still had an events calendar. I hoped someone was just late to opening it. We walked back onto South Street and found a wall to sit up against in the shade on 5th Street and ate the two sandwiches that were donated to us by the nice girl at Foodswings the day before. Even though were cold, they were great. How the rest of the day went was based on whether or not a show was actually happening in State College the next day. But nothing on their site indicated that there was. So I called and it was cleared up... the tour dates I had been looking at were from 2009. I'm an idiot who never knows what day, month, or year it is, apparently. I felt more stupid than I did disappointed, but got over it and started planning for the day in Philly in hopes of making the most out of being there to begin with. We walked into the South Street Diner and got sodas to justify us sitting there and using my laptop to get directions around. Soda on tap from a diner sucked through a straw is the best taste a soda can have. They didn't offer free refills to people who didn't order a meal of some sort, though, so we left soon after. Kara's series of five-second freak-outs were becoming unbearable. I don't recall the reasons why (because I didn't want to focus too much on them), but she would start being a huge bitch to me for a few minutes for absolutely no reason. I'd calmly tell her that I'm reaching the peak of my ability to deal with it and she'd apologize and stop, only to do it again a little while later. Every time it happened, I wanted to walk far, far away from her. But I didn't and couldn't. We walked to the local anarchist bookstore, The Wooden Shoe, and spent about an hour inside of it looking at things, even though we didn't buy anything in the end. An employee told us what was up with Cafe Grindstone; apparently, it wasn't really open anymore and only held shows sometimes, but the owner had pretty much given up on it after his girlfriend left him. Cool. After that, we went to The Bean, a coffeehouse hot spot for all the local hipsters and scenesters. It's so tiny and the menu sucks, but it had free Wi-Fi, so we walked in and got directions to the Mütter Museum, a museum of medical oddities and bones and body parts in jars.
It was only two or so miles away, but in the crossfire of the heats punches felt like ten. Luckily, the inside of the museum was air conditioned and we were able to leave our bags up front. Kara immediately went to the bathroom and I washed my face with ice-cold water from a fountain. The first floor was pretty interesting. They had a wall of skulls with labels underneath them telling the location and death. They were from all over the world and were the result of illnesses, suicides, wars, and infections. They had a preserved corpse of a woman who had died and rotted into what is basically soap due to all of her body fat, deformed dead babies in jars, molds of faces and body parts with skin lesions and disgusting rashes. It was all really awesome. We wished Tia and Bianca were with us, because Tia would have loved it and the one time Bianca's family was going to take her there, her cunt mother canceled because, "it was going to rain." An hour or so later, we left and sat outside in the shade of the front of the building, as a large group of large protesters across the street screamed and marched about something I didn't understand. We walked back the way we came and stopped in at a place called Sweet Freedom, a vegan, soy-, wheat-, gluten-, peanut-, and refined sugar-free baked goods place. The woman who owned it was really nice and smiley, though I was somewhat disappointed when I found out she wasn't vegan or even vegetarian. We both got a cupcakes and a cookie icing sandwich. I was amazed at how good my chocolate mocha cupcake was, considering there was close to nothing in the ingredients. It was seriously one of the most chocolatey things I'd ever had. We sat there for a bit and used the laptop, then left in hopes of getting a good dinner at Gianna's. But when we got there, a sign on their closed door informed us they were closed for renovations until the day after we were set to leave. Totally sucked. So we went to Johnny Rocket's and had dinner there. They didn't have all you can eat fries at this one, but dinner was still filling and I'll pretty much never get sick of seeing their employees do choreographed dances to songs like "Stayin' Alive". A man sitting behind our table had a ton of nickels, so he was monopolizing the entire evening's soundtrack from the tiny jukeboxes that sit on your booth's table. The weather was calming down outside to the type of summer you want to spend exclusively in a park, laying on grass and staring at the sky. But we were walking to a small but classy independent movie theater called the Ritz, a theater I had been to before, actually, and saw the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. It was so good. Banksy's hardly in it, other than a few times to speak, with his voice morphed and his identity blacked out, but it was created by him, using another man's footage, and turns a documentary about street artists by a man obsessed with Banksy into a documentary about the man obsessed with Banksy, in classic Banksy-brand irony. It was so weird, because at the end, the subject of the film turned out to be an artist I sort of respected who goes by the name Mr. Brainwash. Glad I know what an idiotic hack and poser he really is now.
The sun was setting and everything around was a smooth whisper. It was so serene out. We walked back to South Street. As I was joking around about how I had concluded with Erin the last time I was there that everyone in South Philly finished their pizza, we saw a pizza box sitting on the brick arm of a small set of stairs to an apartment. I opened it for fun and there was a pizza in it with only a piece missing. Not just a pizza, either... a cheeseless pizza with garlic on it. We waited by it for five minutes to see if anyone would come back and claim it, but they never did, so we took it, walked down by the water and ate it as we admired the reflection of lights from the bridge and docked ships shining in the dark water below them. The pizza was really good, probably because it was free. The Pizza Gods were good to us. Across the street from us, a hyper bum paced back and forth by traffic stuck at the red light with a sign asking for work or money. I went up to him and asked him why he doesn't just sit on the sidewalk up on South Street, since I had done it before and made some good money, but he cockily said, "I've been doing this for years!" and returned to chasing cars whose drivers were probably scared of him. It obviously wasn't working out too well for him, but whatever, I tried to help. When we walked back up onto South Street, we found an outlet by a tree covered in Christmas lights and hijacked electricity from it so I could sit on my laptop for a little while and map out an entire day in New York City, going from place to place all within less than a mile from each other. Every couple of minutes, a pack of wild drunks would pass by. One bro jumped over us, after which one of the whores he was with apologized to us like an embarrassed mother. Two different people asked if we were doing okay. We went to the diner again for sodas and fries until 1:30 and then went back to our spot to sleep. We passed right out that night. I woke up once to the sunrise, working up just enough energy to take a picture of it, then went back to sleep.
DAY ELEVEN!
The next time I woke up, Kara was gone, parked underneath a nearby tree to evade the beating of the sun. So I moved over to her and joined her. Two men, one with a serious limp, were across at another tree, also sleeping. We kept waking up and moving, chasing the shade of the pine tree as it moved with the location of the sun. Kara got sunburn on the back of one of her legs and my face was left a little red as well. We woke up finally at 1 and gave up trying to stay out of the sun's direction, since the shade was disappearing and we were almost right up against the tree itself. I had pissed on it the night before, too, which made it even more unappealing. It was another really hot day. I showed Kara a funny little sex shop called Condom Kingdom and then we ate lunch at Johnny Rocket's. That place is great. One of the managers saw us and said, "Two days in a row?! Nice!" After that, we walked toward the Chinatown Bus station, through the smoggy, miserable, corporate part of the area over-populated by suits-and-ties and homeless people. We got our tickets back to New York City and then waited. A dirty man my age came in and asked if I did shrooms. A Puerto Rican man on his cellphone asked me how to spell the word 'behave'. They had a big fish tank and inside were two bright orange fluorescent fish who seriously looked like they were so happy to be alive.
We left at 3:30 and slept most of the two-hour ride there. The bus smelled like a toilet that had been converted into a fish tank. When we got off, we began to follow my messy little directions jotted down on a small piece of lined paper crumpled up in my pocket. Our first place of interest was an anarchist bookstore run by women called Bluestockings. It was really cool inside and their selection of books, zines, and anarchist periodicals was incredible. All the girls hanging out there and working there were some of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life and I felt like a piece of shit pig for thinking that inside of a women-run anarchist collective. Just goes to show how 'male' I still am. We looked around for a half hour and grabbed a buncha free stickers. I thought about buying some things, but they were all too expensive for my tastes and the 'Sodomy Not Bombs' shirt wasn't available in my fat-ass size anymore. Kara got a bandana with the outline of her girl parts on it. From there, we walked to ABC No Rio on Rivington to check it out. I'd never been there, despite its history in the New York City DIY punk and art scene. When we got there, some skinny hipsters in sombreros and on bikes were hanging out outside. Inside where we entered was some lame art exhibit with alcohol being served. The art on the walls was most just splattered paint on some paper. What was really artistic was the building itself. Everywhere we turned was something cool. The walls are completely covered in creativity through paintings, graffiti, and other physical creations.
We were mostly interested in checking out their notorious zine library, which is composed of over 10,000 alphabetized titles. It's a small room and there were already three people there who worked there. The first thing I did was ask the guy at the computer if they had the original zine format of Evasion. They did! I looked through their letter E and found the folder with it inside, all photocopies and sloppily put together. It was like staring down at the original scrolls the Bible was written on for me. Kara was hesitant, but began to look around. And then we left, passing by the stench of beer on the way out. From there, we found our way to a place called Lula's, an all-vegan ice cream parlor on East 6th Street. Kara was excited like a little girl in a toy store about finally being able to eat soft-serve vegan ice cream. That was the first thing we got, after being fed two little samples on a tiny sugar spoon of some of their flavors. We got spiral on cones covered in sprinkles. It tasted just like, if not better, than the 'real' thing. And since this was probably the last time we'd be able to order like we were in a Friendly's as vegans, we then split a sundae; one scoop strawberry, one scoop drumstick, covered in hot caramel, sprinkles, gummy bears, and coconut whipped cream, of course topped with a cherry. The man and woman working there were super nice and friendly. The guy actually said he started MerchNow, which is located in Albany. After that, we walked to a place called Cafe Viva which has one of the most vegan-friendly menus I've ever seen at a pizza place. They had vegan slices right up front, so we got two, partly to make up for Gianna's being closed the day before in Philly, along with some garlic knots. Because I'm an idiot, I then took us on an hour-long walk to nowhere up 7th, accidentally winding up in Times Square, which at this point I totally despise, on our hunt for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater to see a stand-up comedian perform for a Comedy Central album recording. It was really stressing me out being there, because I hate tourists and I hate the way everyone acts fascinated by a part of the city that is really just one big perpetual commercial and pollution. We saw two cops taking turns getting a picture taken with some homeless guy holding a sign saying, "Can I have a beer?" with their cellphones. It wasn't until we stopped in a Cafe Metro that we were able to find out where we were and where we had to go. We eventually got to the UCB Theater in time to catch their midnight open mic, which is free. It really cheered us up. They had some stand-up and some improv groups, all of which were hilarious. Though at the end, they had an improv group who spoke entirely Spanish, for Cinco de Mayo or whatever, and so I was clueless about what was happening the whole five minutes they were on. One comedian said that when he was a kid in school, they asked the kids what animal they'd be and he answered, "I'd be a jelly fish because if you don't have a central nervous system, you can't have feelings." It was hilariously emo. We walked to Union Square. I wasn't looking forward to trying to find a place to sleep, since the city is so hard to sleep peacefully in. We sat on some benches and people-watched. Kara was more tired than I was.
Union Square is one of the most diverse places I've ever seen, other than the Food Stamp line in my own city. Everyone is there of every clique, race, and pseudo-subculture, and they're there all night long, playing soccer, doing BMX tricks, skating, getting drunk, sleeping, making out. I suggested we lay down on the ground by an empty space by a water fountain. As we laid there, I heard a loud explosion, then watched two guys get arrested. Sitting right across from us was a ripped crackhead with a fat Mexican whose gender I was unsure of. He or she was rubbing up on this crackhead's abs and biceps, biting his nipples, and eventually began trying to suck him off even though cops were arresting people only a hundred or so feet away. It was weird. Before the sun set, we gave up on Union Square and returned to the Williamsburg Bridge, where we laid down covered by a sleeping bag on the grater behind the concrete barrier, right above the loud sound of passing subway trains and traffic of the early morning commute on both sides of us. It wasn't very good sleep. It was only a few hours later that I woke us up and suggested we get going. We sat around a Dunkin' Donuts for a bit, then walked to Allen Street to take a bus home. When left unoccupied for too long, I begin remembering all I'm running away from. So the night before, I had plenty of time to remember I had eighty-six hours of community service left to do and a court date on the 27th, as well as the annoying fight with Social Services required to get my Food Stamps back. I also started thinking about the girl I love, whose name is still unknown to all of you, and how she had promised to keep in contact with me during my trip and then just didn't. There was a lot of confusion about which bus to take and where it was. The Chinese people who run the buses can barely speak English, so they couldn't help very much, even though they acted frustrated that we couldn't understand them. We got the bus early in the day. We slept almost the entire ride and Kara's dad was waiting for us on Central Avenue when we got there. He dropped me off at home and she went back to hers. We had an amazing trip. And it was time to return to my reality in the city I hate.
Bluestockings.
Dick Chicken.
ABC No Rio.
Yes, it was important enough for me to take a picture of.
VEGAN SUNDAE!
UCB Theater.
Union Square Park. The prettiest place for the sketchiest of happenings you can find.
I had a couple dreams about killing people during the trip. One night, I dreamed I was choking someone to death. I put a washcloth over their face and then squeezed against their Adam's apple as hard as I could. I even had my brother step on the back of my hands while I did this to intensify the pressure against their throat. Another dream I had one night, I watched a man cut someone's head off and set it on fire. They were really graphic and vivid and I wasn't sure how to feel about having them when I woke up.
Shortly after I came home, I got a phone call from a girl I met over Facebook and had already seen around a few times over the years named Amy Counter. The first time I saw her, I thought she was really pretty, but that was years ago. The last time I remembered seeing her was at a school art exhibition I went to with Tara. I couldn't stop checking out her legs. I didn't know much about her other than that, but when I added her to look at her pictures on Facebook, she actually responded and said we should meet sometime and have conversations. So one night, I rode my bike to Scotia at 10 at night and met up with her at Dunkin' Donuts to sit and get to know each other or whatever. It turned into three hours of some of the best conversation I've had in a long time. We are different in so many ways and both of us admittedly would usually write each other off in advance, but for some reason we didn't and get along fantastically. She believes in God and is all spiritual and stuff, which is incredibly sad, but she's not like any theist I've ever met before. She's specifically opposed to condemnation, admits to not knowing anything, is indecisive instead of 100% sure about what she's read and believes in, and doesn't shove it down people's throats. So as of right now, it's excusable, until she surprised me with a line like, "I'll pray for you." She's a virgin, but is still sexual. And even though she comes off as such an innocent, middle class white girl, she has done nothing since I've started talking to her but betray my low expectations. She's a really interesting and honest person and one of the only people I've met who's been able to match my willingness to discuss anything and everything so bluntly and openly. She listens to really brutal tech-metalcore, which surprised me. She also doesn't wear underwear. She's confident, but not stuck-up; just strong, like so many females I know aren't. She's so jam-packed with adorable habits and idiosyncrasies and I'm really enjoying getting to know her. The other night, I rode my bike to Expresso Therapy, a small local cafe in Scotia, and we sat there for a little while. A kid named Jared I met through Tara came in and the three of us played a game of Scrabble. Amy somehow won, but not before asking me if she could use words like 'eBay' and 'farty'. We met up with an ex of hers, Terry, who I had met maybe once a few years back when he was still straightedge, and spent the night walking around. We swung on the swing sets in Collins Park and then, after we got told to leave by a scumbag cop, relocated to a picnic table in complete darkness by the Mohawk off of some desolate road. Hanging out with them was awesome. Terry was an alright guy. He had some good stories to tell. We all talked about sex a lot. It was weird having that conversation with two people who used to date. I find myself so often knowing exactly where someone's sentences are headed, to the point that I even usually have a prepared retort that I came up with months in advance. But not with Amy. Apparently, the only thing I can expect of her is to never live down to my expectations. Not only that, but she has one of the greatest, most abundant smiles I've ever seen. She has beautifully imperfect teeth. I enjoy Amy's company a lot and I hope we keep hanging out.
Total cutie.
I hung out with Trevor one night. He told me he's planning on killing himself. I told him it would probably be a good idea. We spent the night at his place, just catching up on each other's lives and watching graphic gore and prank videos on his laptop. I almost always enjoy my time hanging out with Trevor. I'm glad he can know my opinion of him and his actions/choices and still consider me a friend. He's also pretty funny sometimes. I wasn't really taking his plans of committing suicide very seriously. I was serious when I told him he probably should kill himself, because he should, but after hanging out that night, I found myself thinking constantly about reasons that maybe he shouldn't. Truth is, I couldn't come up with much. He's made many small, stupid decisions that don't effect his life in the long run, but he's also made some very huge decisions that have royally fucked him over. I admire that he made those risky decisions, because I myself do not have the guts to make certain decisions that require me to gamble my life in the long-term. He's not even twenty and has already attempted moving to the opposite side of the country to pursue his dream of being a full-time musician, then went and opened his own business... only to have both fail and blow up in his face. And now he's stuck with a debt and loneliness that most men don't encounter until their mid-life. I feel bad for him, which is why I fully support his suicide. But I also started thinking he should take advantage of hitting bottom and start to really live life without compromise. That's what I did when I hit bottom and I haven't been happier and more content and free than I have been these last two years. The other night, I hung out with him until sunrise in his kitchen, on the floor, just talking and watching stupid videos on his laptop. Gemma was passed out on his bed.
He brought out his loaded shotgun and asked me to hold it. I'm terrified of guns; they're one of my biggest fears, actually. And until then, I had never touched a gun before. He took the slug out and put the safety on. Holding it, I felt ugly. I felt like I was smoking a cigar or holding a dead baby; there was just this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness loaded into this empty shotgun that was cold at my fingertips. I cocked it back and pulled the trigger. There wasn't much force. We talked about it for a few minutes and I tried to help him figure out a good position to hold it in so he didn't fuck up blowing his head off. And then I spent the rest of the night talking to him about why he shouldn't kill himself. He says he's not interested in anything, which is true and I've known that about him for a few years now, and that all he wants to do is sit at home, watch movies on Netflix and play video games. So I told him to fucking do that and not to let anything stop him. He stuttered a lot and said, "That's true," to a lot of what I was saying. He also kept bringing up how he couldn't find the nerve to actually do it yet anyway. To which I told him, sincerely, "If it weren't illegal, I'd blow your head off for you." There's no reason for any of us to be alive. The computers in our brains that store years upon years of data, memories, photographs, and preferences will shut down in an instant when we die and no one will ever be aware of what was going on in there for the most part, unless we leave behind tangible evidence that speaks only a fraction of what we were really thinking. Nothing we do today will have much of an effect on tomorrow. But the fact that we're even here, let alone the fact that we live on a planet that miraculously is in the perfect position in relation to the sun to maintain life, is nothing short of a miracle. So we might as well take advantage of our moments of consciousness here, right? We won't be able to reflect on it when we die, because there's no afterlife, but we can reflect on it today. And since we are here and have managed the capacity to feel, we might as well make the best of it. And maybe even strive to make the world better for the generations that come after us (if there are any).
I put it off for the first couple of days being home, but I eventually started getting up early just to make phone calls to people in government- or state-run organizations that ignore me. After a couple of days of being ignored, I was able to finally get everything settled with community service and Food Stamps. I'll be starting community service tomorrow morning at 7:30AM at the Hamilton Hills Art Center, a place for kids to be dropped off after school by their shitty parents to fingerpaint or whatever in the worst part of my city. I had actually done community service there before a few years ago. I'm hoping they cut me a break and maybe write me off for more hours than I actually do, but I plan on being there every day this week from 7:30AM-6:00PM when they close. I'll be able to get in over fifty hours that way. I'll still have thirty or so left after that, but I'm not worrying about it until it comes to my next court date. Speaking of which, I called my public defender, too, and left him a message telling him I wouldn't be showing up for court on the 27th. I'm leaving on the 24th to go to Kentucky with Kara for Crucial Fun Fest, four days of some of my favorite bands and fun far away from home in a state I've never been to. There's no way I'm missing that and am fully prepared for a bench warrant being put out for my arrest while I'm gone. Hopefully, that doesn't happen, but if it happens, it'll be worth it. I also got Food Stamps all figured out. I got a thing in the mail with my name on it and I could feel a card inside when I bent it, but when we opened it, the card had my father's face on it. They got us mixed up. Even though we have different case numbers, Social Security numbers, and birth dates, they got us mixed up down there. Fucking ridiculous. So we had to go down to Social Services and let them know about their fuck-up. After a lot of apologizing, they decided to just reopen my old account so I could use my old card and they reimbursed me for the month I went without anything, giving me $370 in Food Stamps. I totally went out tonight and spent $200 of it on food. The rest will be reserved for survival on the road!
Someone started a rumor over Facebook that I went Wiccan. I only found out because I started getting a buncha questions about it on Formspring. I have no idea who started it, but it's over and cleared up now. Fucking pathetic the things people make up about me to fill the void in their empty lives.
When I was less than ten years old, my father got me some great danyo fishes; they're small and silver and pretty. But they're only supposed to live about five to seven years. Somehow, one of them survived all of our blackouts due to failed Niagara Mohawk payments and parental arguments and several house movements through shifting temperatures of water. Sadly, the other day, it finally died. It was twelve years old. I found out through my mother over Facebook and my jaw literally dropped. I was somewhat heartbroken. She put it in the freezer because she doesn't want to just throw it away. I want to get it preserved somehow. He was a bad-ass fish. I mean, he lived double his life expectancy throughout some pretty harsh conditions. Rest in peace, fish!
This entry is done. Check out some bullshit on my Tumblr or ask me stupid fucking questions on my Formspring.