vaseline
when you are in recovery and involved in AA/NA you are exposed to a plethora of catch phrases, mantras and mottoes, all designed to help you keep your demons in the closet where they belong, not floating in a spoon awaiting the needle or stuffed in the end of a crack pipe. there must be a million of those little phrases-"it works if you work it, so work it you're worth it", "keep comin' back", "easy does it", and my personal favorites, "one is too many and a thousand is never enough" and " the insanity of the addiction"
the former is a true symptom of the addict. basically saying it is the first drink, or hit, or shot, or line, or pill - whatever method you used to feed the demons, that gets your addiction going again. the latter is just a label that goes with the crazy things people do to get high. as i am rubbing KY jelly onto my ass so that i can smuggle heroin and a needle into the jail, it is that phrase-"the insanity of the addiction" that echoes in my mind while i gently slide the package into my rectum. rectum? damned near killed 'em!
the use of the anus for the smuggling of drugs in prison is one of the most degrading things imaginable. while some guards will surmise that you have earned the right to get high, going through all that to get a fix. others will exploit the fact and continually make jokes and such to continue the degradation that you have already gone through.
once, in elmira prison, a guard thought that he had caught me smuggling a package in the visiting room. he spoke into his radio, "i've got one boofing a package on the dance floor". 'boofing' is the slang for sticking the package up your ass, the 'dance floor' is the visitation room. i was immediately taken from the room. my visitor, the niece of another inmate who had see me in a picture from the yard with her uncle, and had decided that i was cute and wanted to meet me, was taken from the visitation room to a cell with a toilet that did not flush. coincidentally there was a piece of toilet paper on the floor under the chair next to mine, that had vaseline residue on it-from another boofer. they insisted the paper was mine as further proof that i had something inside of me. they took me to a room and strip searched me. after i refused to admit that my visitor, nicole , had given me anything, they decided to let her go. but, they told her, that if it turned out that i had anything inside of me when they made me defecate into a bucket , they would let the chemung county district attorney's's office know and felony charges would be pressed. they took me to a room where the toilet couldn't flush and told me the sooner we got this over with the sooner i could return to my cell and get back to the normal routine of the facility.yeah right, i thought,after you beat my ass on the way to the box. i admit, i got a little shook, i did not know how i was gonna get out of this. nicole's uncle had hired me to smuggle weed into the facility a few months' ago and i was worried that this could get me killed. they brought me my lunch and with it i received a note from troy, nicole's uncle. it read," good job T, way to keep your cool. don't worry about niki she's at home safe and sound. give the package to the trustee when he comes back for the tray and just relax-Big Troy" so i shat it out and gave it up. the staff Sargent came to see me after a few hours. he questioned me and told me that he had to believe his officer and that after dinner we would be going to the infirmary to settle the matter once and for all. after i defecated in a bucket, one of the officers had to go through my shit. i loved watching the pig squeezing my shit as he searched it for contraband. they fed me a laxative and told me i would have to go two to three more times. they took me to a room that had a chair in it and made me sit on it. the guard from the visitation room was becoming increasingly agitated. he would bet his right nut, he kept saying, that we would find the stuff. the chair revealed nothing, 0 for 2. the laxative they gave me was very strong and i was on the toilet fifteen minutes after i had ingested it. this time the guard who 'caught me' was told to search the poop, again i smiled as he squeezed the evidence, and laughed as he retched. he deserved every bit of what he got. after the third trip to the flushless toilet the Sargent told me i would be sleeping in this cell until i passed another sample tomorrow that way there would be no arguments surrounding whether or not i had been caught or it was just a misunderstanding. after i was through in the morning the Sargent apologized as the guard who had really caught me fumed behind his back, while he stared at me with murder in his eyes. on the way back to my cell, Sully, the guard, said "i don't know how you got away with that but i am gonna catch you, i'm on to you now mister" i laughed more out of nervousness than anything else, then he said " i know what you did you nasty little fuck, you shitted it out , then you ate it." to which i silently smiled until we got back to my tier, and then in the safety of having witnesses i whispered ," naw, sully, i shit it out and then your girl swallowed it". and i laughed and laughed as he stomped away. when i turned around , Big troy had a nice sized joint in his hand, and he said "welcome home, soldier, niki says hi and wants you to call her". i was the celebrity on the tier that day as i relayed the story of my capture and eventual release by the enemy. i never told anyone how i was able to get rid of the package, i just kept saying that i never had anything to begin with . that they just wanted to scare people who were really doing it, just for the ears of the jail house snitches. those bastards, the snitches, really make me fucking sick to my stomach, siding with the very people who are paid to keep you down. and for what? an extra slice of fake bacon on sundays? to me these people are as low as the pedophiles that are locked up in PC-punk city or in pigs' terms protective custody.
so niki and i laid off on the smuggling for a bit and she brought a friend, jessika, that i hooked my friend, larry, up with. so the show never really stopped , there was just a new guy in the starring role. larry was more than happy to bring the stuff in, he was a real lonely guy. his family had pretty much written him off when he got arrested for selling drugs. his folks were rich and didn't understand why larry would stoop to such a low thing. " why did you do this to us?" his mother asked from a letter, the only letter he had received since he was locked up. " i can't even show my face, i am so embarrassed i have to do my shopping in a whole different city now....." it went on and on like that. larry acted like he thought it was funny but i could see that it hurt worse than a shank to the gut. to get the letter off of his mind i told him about another time i was smuggling dope from new york city to ithaca, ny, my home town.
i had gotten a ride from a friend, mikey, who owed me forty bucks. i told him he could work it off by giving me a ride to the city. he was bored and had nothing better to do so he agreed.. mikey's car wasn't inspected and his license to drive was suspended so i was real nervous the whole way down that we'd get pulled over and i would have to explain to some hick cop why i had over $3000 in my pocket. after we got to the city and i had bought the dope i had decided to boof it in case we got pulled over on the way back. i had also made sure to save enough money for bus fare back home on top of the expenses we'd need to get back, just to cover my heroin filled ass. i put a gram of dope in each balloon, which, after i cut it when i got back would be 2 1/2 grams per gram. enough for fifty bags. since i was doing over thirty bags a day myself, i figured if a package broke open i wouldn't die , i'd just get real fuckin' high. so, i had 20 one- gram packages of heroin in balloons and i put four balloons in a rubber, greased up the rubber with KY, not vaseline because vaseline will eat away at the latex of a condom, and boofed it.we got home without a problem and mikey laughed at me for doing such a disgusting thing. i said "laugh all you want, but , you would have been in just as much trouble as me if i had gotten caught with that shit because of your illegal-ass car, mother fucker". "well,... since you put it that way...", he smiled.
i drank a huge cup of coffee and waited. i hit the toilet. plop- one, plop- two, plop three, uuggh, i pushed uuuunnngggh, i pushed harder.UUUUNNNGGGH! i saw stars, but still no more packages came out. i was a little worried, i didn't want the dope to get ruined, and i really didn't feel like od-ing on eight grams of heroin. my girl told me to relax and wait , "have another cup of coffee, it'll come," she said.
so, i drank another cup of coffee and i waited, ...... nothing. i sent her to the store for some laxatives. i ate a piece and waited........ still nothing. being strung out on heroin dries you out. it becomes really hard to move your bowels. sometimes you won't shit for a day or two and when you get backed up like that it can be painful, so you have to drink more water than you usually would to keep regular. something you sometimes forget, being all fucked up on drugs and all. mikey suggested getting some cocaine. he said " coke always makes me go, man. it'll work, trust the old mikester". i pull twenty bucks from my pocket and tell him to go get some, and he says " twenty bucks?! c'mon cheapskate kick down at least a fifty , i ain't going down into brown town for no twenty stinking dollars!" i gave him a look like your father does , when you do something stupid and he feels like smacking you, i snatched the twenty from him and gave him a fifty and said "do not stop to talk to anyone but the dopeman, and hurry the fuck up." mikey's an alright guy and all, buthe is easily side tracked. i was notfeeling like waiting an hour for this to work-little did i know the end of it all.
while mikey was gone i ate another piece of the poo-poo candy and tried my luck on the john to no avail. my girl told me to stop or i would get a hemorrhoid or a hernia or something. so i just waited for mikey. now normally when you're waiting for someone to come back with the drugs it seems to take a long time. the whole time you're silently cursing the person that left. come on asshole, you say to yourself, hurry the fuck up,mother fucker. when you are waiting for someone to come back with something to help you crap out eight-grams of heroin, time CRAWLS. it feels like they are never going to get back, ever. believe me, i know!
finally mikey gets back with the coke. now, long ago i had made a deal with the Big Man Upstairs that i would NEVER shoot cocaine again. i won't go into the details because that is a different story all together, but, basically it went like this: "if you let me live, i'll never do it again". a bargain to which, at that point, i had lived up to. so i told mikey to rock it up, which he was happy to do, the little fucking crack head. then the fucker tries to take the first hit! "gimme that!" i yelled at him, giving him the 'what the fuck are you thinking?' look. mikey had a tolerance to coke, he's a garbage head- if it'll get you high, he does it. it's what earned him the nickname mikey, his real name is al. so i take the hit he has packed for himself and i feel like my head is going to explode. i run to the john and sit, but i am scared to push because i am paranoid that if i do, i'll do some kind of internal damage to myself, like blow out a major vein to my heart. i sit and wait , nothing. when i come down a little i try to push, nothing. so i go through the whole process over again. it still doesn't work. now i am totally wired on crack, a feeling that i completely despise, and i still can't poop out the drugs, so i do more heroin to come down and give the rest of the coke to mikey. which makes him a very happy boy. i myself, am miserable and worried. i send mikey on his way and wonder what is going to happen. maybe the rest will all break open and i'll be out of my misery, after i die the remnants will come out and the coroner will say, "see this here? this here is your cause of death". while holding a half-chewed ham on rye in his hand.
my girl suggests that i let her put on a glove and retrieve it manually. she too, is scared of the consequences of a prolonged exposure to the inside of my anus will have on the heroin, or me. i deny her this awful duty, for now, before i let her do that, i'll do that myself, i tell her. i call a friend who is familiar with the workings of this procedure in the smuggling scheme. he suggests using a suppository. i try it, the whole time fearing for the dope- not my health, and this too, fails. at this point, the dope has been up inside of me for over eight hours. i am sure it has been ruined. another friend of mine, opey, shows up. i tell him the trouble i am having. his reaction is something i did not want. he explains in a panicked way, how i have to get that shit out before i die. "no shit?! tell me something i don't already know,you fucking asshole!". now i am more worried, and after he buys his shit ,i send him on his way.
well, i say to myself, i guess it's time to go treasure hunting. i grease up my fingers and start my painful,degrading search. i feel almost like a rape victim, but at least it's my fingers up there, and i am being damn sure gentle about the whole thing. i search and search to no avail, and i realize what will happen next. feeling lower than low, i give my girl permission to do what she's been suggesting for the last hour and a half. but her fingers are shorter, and thank god smaller, than mine and has no luck herself. i sit down on to my couch and stare at the television but all i can see are the two packages nestled away inside the darkness of my anal cavity. if i had a shotgun at this particular moment in life i may have damn well used it. after an hour or so, i passed out. i woke up to someone knocking at my door, it was 8 am, opey was at the door, on his way to work. he needed his morning fix,when i answered the door the first thing out of his mouth was, "did ya get that out yet, bro?" with genuine concern on his face. my girl was gone, as she went to work at seven in the morning. i went to the john while opey fixed his morning shot in the living room. i tried to reach the packages again. i felt something and i got a finger behind it, it was the ring of a rubber. slowly, gently i coaxed it closer to the exit, slower, slower... i got it!!! i was so relieved, i broke it open right then and there to inspect the dope. to my surprise it had not been ruined one tiny bit. i was so happy and opey was too, so we celebrated by doing a real nice shot of raw.
i handed opey a cup of coffee, and he dropped it. he bent over to pick it up and smashed his head on my glass table three times. i was yelling at him, "yo! what the fuck are you doing you asshole?!" one look into his eyes told me the whole story. he was fucking od'd. "aww great this is all i fucking need.", i said out loud to no one, because the only person in the room besides me, was the fucking asshole who was dying.i slapped him a couple of times to bring him around,he was alittle too high,not over dosing. i went to pick him up to put him in the shower to try to wake him up, and he starts biting me on the shoulder. "yo!" i yell again " what the fuck are you doing?" he says, "what are you doing to me?" i explain what happened and tell him he needs to help me, help him, by standing up. which, thank god, he does. one of his buddies comes to the door and knocks, they are late to work, he gripes. "take him.", i tell his buddy who knows what is wrong by taking one look at him. "well this is just fucking great!" he says sarcastically as he helps opey walk out to the truck, bitching at him about being all fucked up. the cold winter air does him good and he comes right around. "hope you get the other problem taken care of T",he yells, sounding like a drunk as the truck drives away.
i head back to the bathroom, hoping that the next one comes out as easily as the first one did. i feel another ring, but it keeps slipping out of my grasp. i go through this, one, two three, four, five, six times. finally, i get a nice good grip on it with my pointer and middle fingers, i squeeze and i feel a pop. i look at my fingers and they are covered in blood. i collapsed into a ball and burst into tears. oh my god, i am going to get some kind of nasty infection and die now. i call up my girl and tell her what has happened. she is sympathetic and then reminds me that gay guys are way rougher than i have been, and that i should be okay. this calms me down and i stopped crying, but i was still scared to death deep down inside. i give up searching for the rubber and decide to just let it pass naturally. fuck it, the first one came out unscathed, the second one will too, i tell myself.
finally at around four in the afternoon, while at work, twenty-two hours after first going up inside of me in a hookers' bathroom in brooklyn, the final four grams of dope came out. it was such a relief to finally get them out of me that i almost cried again.
i would like to tell you that i said i would never do that again, but it would be a lie. even after all of the tears and fears and desperation, degradation and humiliation. i wish i could say that after that i got clean, but that too, would be a lie. but at least everything came out alright in the end.after my story, larry stood there silently, shock all over his face.for the first tiime sincei had met him, he had nothing to say. a guard interrupted the silence," Ward, Sidle, Kastenhuber, Frank, Jones...visitation"we went to our cells greased up and headed to the dance floor.

the struggle
adolf hitler's autobiography's title, mein kampf, is the most aptly named book ever written. mein kampf means 'my struggle' as you may well know. i have never read it, never even seen a copy of it. i appreciate its' title though, i can relate. life is a constant struggle. with its twists and turns and surprises and letdowns, it is a constant struggle. even those at the very top of the world's economic food chain, it does not discriminate. the grossly wealthy struggle to keep what they have, and to get as much more as is inhumanly possible. the poor struggle to keep their bellies full. even in nature the ant struggles to build its home and the lion struggles to survive as man continually trespasses upon its territory, expanding urban growth. as an addict, i constantly struggle with the demons that haunt me, chasing me into narcotic oblivion.
i can't say that i've seen it all, but i've seen enough. fifteen-year-old junkies, thinking they are so cool sticking heroin into their arms,not realizing that they've crossed a line that is damn near impossible to come back from. crack heads turning tricks, selling their children's clothes and food stamps, they'd sell their soul if they could find a buyer.i once watched a girl cut apart a needle that had blood coagulated inside of it. the blood belonged to someone else. she added water to it and got it to turn back into a liquid and injected it into her arm to get the drugs that were trapped inside the blood. amazingly, she did not catch the A.I.D.S. virus that was inside the blood of the person who had the needle before. another girl i knew, had only one vein left- her neck. she had had a needle break off inside of it a few days earlier and 't done anything about it yet, she eventually died from the infection that it had caused, another wasted life,another soul haunted by the demons of drug addiction. i used to think i wasn't hurting anyone but myself, that my crime was victimless- that I was the victim. a victim of a corrupt society that allowed the drugs into the country. it took me going to jail, this time after a friend of mine who i had been partying with, died. at first, it looked as if the district attorney was going to charge me with criminal negligent homicide, citing my "depraved indifference" as evidence of a crime. the stress that my mother went through following the arrest caused a near fatal stroke that still affects her to this day.my children's mother was forced to keep me form them due to my degenerative appearance, resulting in behavior problems in them that have yet to be corrected. and my boss constantly has to worry that one day,i just won't show up, because i am in jail.
while in rehab, recently, a friend told me about a woman that he knew that would force herself to hold her urine throughout the whole day, afraid to go to the bathroom because someone will steal her crack. she took to urinating in a bowl. one morning she noticed a film around the bowl, she scraped it off and smoked it , and got high! she now does this daily to get her morning hit.
another woman told me how she was trickin' in newark new jersey. living in an abandoned building with the raccoons, using bucket for a toilet.not using condoms to protect her from hiv/aids or hep. she lived there for two years before she finally succumbed to the misery and went for help, last month she celebrated two and a half years clean.she said she used to feel sorry for us men because we had to rob and steal and hustle to get ours.that she was special because of "what she had between her legs." she suffered a miscarriage a couple months ago, and she was riding the bus through the dope spot. she said she thought about getting off the bus to cop a bag, but she didn't have any money, so her addiction reminded her of how she used to get her dope,"i had already bought me another pair of knee pads." she said with disgust,she 'teven got high yet,so she ran to a meeting instead of going right into work.
the other night a girl i know,went to see a band from the 80's that she liked. the drummer broke out some crack and before she knew what she was doing she had let the whole band fuck her,while her boyfriend was there,just to get some more. i was disgusted while she told me she was trying to hurry to wash all of the cum off of her before her boyfriend came back in to the room.
i could go on for ever with stories like that.staying clean is a constant struggle,an even harder struggle than trying to stay high.

Looking Into the Eyes of My Friend High On Crack
Yeah, yeah, i know. you can say every cliche 'til you're blue in the face, i've heard them all 1000 times. yet, after all the denials, accusations, name calling, finger pointing, set-ups, betrayals, double-crosses, okie-dokes, switcheroos and whatever else have you, when the dust has settled and it's all done and over with, you are the one left standing there. scheming, mouth running, finger stretched outward, ace up your sleeve, a false bottom in your words and empty eyes exposing your lack of a soul. limpid jet black pools of emptiness reflect my face as you return my gaze, reminding me of a sharks' eyes. machine like, in their infinite search for food. MORE is the only word a shark knows. watching you comb the floor picking up different shades of all things white. i don't remember dropping any and i didn't see you do it either. i feel like stomping your head in to take your out of your misery. just stomping and stomping until your head is completely mashed into the rug. i once let him live with me because his fat, ugly, mannish-looking, bitchy, lesbian whore of a girlfriend kicked him out of their house.you know the drill, they got high, started drinking, she started bitching, he started not taking it like he usually does because he's whacked out of his brain on crack. a poke, a prod, a push, a shove and two back hands later, she's on the phone with the cops. they show up , a fuck you get out of my house and a can of mace later and we're at the city lock-up for the night. waking up in the morning to go to court with stank breath, mace face and sleepy head. 250 dollars and an order of protection later, he's at my house asking for a couch to crash on for a week until he moves into an apartment up above some bar. sure, i let him, what are friends for, right? after a couple of days, he asks/tells me he is going to have his son over for visitation. i tell it to him like this: this is what i tell all my friends with kids, the bottom line is that they are your kids. i myself do not bring my children into this house due to the simpled fact that there is a LOT of drinking and drugging going on in here, however if you can keep an eye on your kid and are responsible for it (which everyone ends up being anyway),it is your choice. he did not take the hint and brought his kid down anyway ,nobody ever does. he began to have his kid over every night for a few hours while she did whatever the fuck big, fat, ugly, mannish-looking, bitchy, lesbian whores do. one day i came home, and there she was cleaning my house. cool, i thought she was making sure it was clean for the boy. the next day he told me, he was going to spend some time with his family. to be considerate i said i would spend the night at my girls' house to give them some privacy. the next day ,when i went to get my morning shot , all my dope was gone. no one knew what happened to it ,no one took it, no one ever does. but i know what happened, el fucking cudo del cracka, got all smoked up and wanted to do some dope to come down, mother fucker, after all i had done for him , this is how he is going to do me? yes! yes it was! and i deserved every bit of it when i let a few days on the couch become 150 bucks a week til he found a place. fucking door mat loser that i am. now she was living in the tiny apartment that seems to shrink every time her hulk of a frame enters a room. one night i came home to the distinct smell of burning crack cocaine, i told them that i didn't really want that in my house, do you have any more? i smoked a couple of hits throughout the night and went to bed. the next day,home boy was still there at 10;30 in the morning.he claimed that his boss didn't need him today, tuesday on a sunny day in the middle of may? he works in the masonry field, i begin to get suspicious and i can already hear my girlfriend telling me "i told you so,". a few days later, they get their deposit from the house they were living in back from the landlord. they pay me the two weeks rent they owe and i leave for work. when i get home, once again they have a pile of crack. this time i do not ask for any, i tell them to remember that my girl does not approve of the use of crack no matter how much heroin she does, and will not tolerate its' presence in the house. so they moved their little c party for two to their bedroom, where their baby was sleeping. i woke up at four in the morning to some noise or something and had to use the bathroom. as i returned to my room i could hear the voices of four or five people. the stench of crack smoke filled the kitchen. i pushed open the door to their bedroom and looked inside. my friend was holding a pillow over his baby's head to keep the smoke away from it. a few months earlier i had nailed all the windows in that room shut to keep intruders out of the house. there were three other people in the room besides them i knew two but i'd never seen the other one and with all of the musical equipment in the house i was not comfortable with him being in my house. i told them the party was over and it was time for everyone to leave, at which the unknown guest said he was a guest of my friends and didn't have to leave. i ignored his ignorance and suggested they put their son in my room in the baby bed so that he could have non-toxic air. that's ok, his mom says, we're almost done. i corrected her, no you are done and told the other crack heads that they didn't have to go home, they most likely weren't welcome there either, but they were no longer welcome in my home. the two that knew me politely picked up their shit and left, the other did not so i grabbed him by the neck and dragged him to the door and threw him out as he kicked and screamed and threatened and begged. after i locked the door he banged on it saying that his shit was still inside. i looked at my friend, who remains nameless because i don't speak to him and don't want to conjure his presence by typing it either, he looked in the direction of a pile of crack on the desk, probably a gram or so. i said it was rent for having a place to smoke and that if he continued to stand outside my door and scream i was gonna open the door and beat the shit out of him. when he didn't stop screaming i grabbed a bat and opened the door , it only took two swings to get my point acrossed and he ran away. i was so angry now, and wide awake. my friend and i smoked the crack. after it was gone he stared at the floor and mumbled one word answers to my conversation, his transformation into this thing disgusted me so i did a shot of dope and went to sleep. i woke to their baby crying at about 7:30 in the morning, i heard his mom shush him back to sleep, i myself knowing that people would start coming over for their morning fix, got up and did my morning routine. the baby continued to wake up every hour or so, she would shush it back to sleep. at 10:30, i told them i would cook the baby breakfast. what i saw afterwords sickened me. their baby, after being in that room, with no fresh air, while they smoked crack from before i got home from work at 9:30PM til 4AM, was retarded and lethargic. normally it was playing with the toys and getting in everyone's way trying to learn how to walk. today it just sat on the couch and stared into space like a zombie. it made me sick to my stomach that they had done this to their child. at 1:30 i cooked us some lunch, which the baby hardly ate any of. after, i told them they needed to get up to take care of their son. while i was at work the baby began vomiting, they said they thought the boy was sick from eating a cotton from my floor. when i came home i asked for the next week's rent, when they said they didn't have it, that they had smoked $1400 worth of crack in a little over a day, i began throwing their shit out of the house. which wasn't much anyway, i called the boy's grandmother and told he the situation and to come get they boy so that it would have a place to live. now we are no longer friends. it's been that way for over a year and probably won't ever change, seeing him drive by in his beat up car inspired this rant, which i dedicate to him.

Confessions of a Football Junkie
i love football. i love everything about it.after the super bowl , i am usually a little depressed and bored, but luckily i have quite the affinity for college basketball as well. after march madness the NFL draft comes around and i usually watch the first couple hours then check in every hour or two. after the draft i have enough new football information to last me a couple of weeks, then the slow period begins.
in the end of june beginning of july ,the fantasy football magazines start coming out.fantasy football geeks are among the hardest of the hardcore NFL fans. i am not an ff geek but i am definitely getting closer to it each and every year. i usually buy four or five magazines and pore over every word that is printed from cover to cover. i make notes in the margins and compare the numbers and rankings of each magazine,devising systems that and formulae that calculate the best of the best at each position , or each team . who has the hardest schedule , streaks , slumps, jinxes , curses , etc,etc...giving me plenty to do until late july comes around.
then... free agent signings , training camps and exhibition games begin. players hold out and get injured , traded or cut. my fantasy football drafts and the beginning of the college season, which i watch to see who will be coming to the NFL,ushers in the regular season of the NFL.
the first weekend happens so fast that it's just like christmas-you wait so long for it to get here that when it finally does , it is over so fast that you wonder if it really happened.
i used to gamble on football and was pretty good at it , it was like having an extra bank account only sometimes i put money in, and couldn't take it out.
my week would start on tuesday, i'd spend the day with the spread sheets, combing over them looking for the cracks that would lead to the money .thursday , i'd pick a college game, one on friday ,three on saturday ,and then three on NFL sunday for each the one o'clock and four o'clock games , the sunday night NFL game , then monday night NFL. on tuesdays i'd add up my winners and losers ,then either paid or collected on friday.i collected more often than not ,but i gambling kind of ruined watching football for me.i no longer rooted for my teams, i rooted for the spread.one day my boss told me that he thought i had a gambling problem and i said "how much you want to bet that i don't?" and then it happened,i told myself that i wasn't going to bet on the super bowl. fifteen minutes before kickoff i walked over to the phone and placed my bets . i stood outside of myself watching the machine i had become and was helpless.although i won, it was the last game i ever bet on.
i remember this one weekend , i lost 1800 dollars! on tuesday, after i had added up my bets, i looked at the number and was in shock.i reached into my pocket and pulled out my money... i had three hundred and fifty dollars-one thousand, four hundred and fifty short of what i needed! i was physically sick.i didn't get off of the couch for two days,and now it was thursday-24 hours away from collection.i went and picked up my pay check for 500 , now i was at least a little closer to half way there.the phone was ringing when i walked in the door, it was THE BIG MAN ,"HEY CREEP, " he yelled into the phone "YOU'RE DOWN 18 LARGE",like i didn't know that already,"I'M JUST CALLING TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE COMING DOWN TO THE GRILL TOMORROW." i assured him i would be there and then hung up.
the grill was just one of the three places he won from degenerate gamblers,people that can't cover their bets.i was definitely not going to be one of those-once you are there ain't a bookie around that will take your action .
i went to the Hill to get some pot, i called in an old favor and got two on the cuff,that's credit ,for four grand . i offered it to a friend for a one-time-only 2750,which would get me completely out of this mess, but he was broke.he could only take a quarter pound off of me , so i sold him one for 800,i was now over a thousand-1150 to be exact , just 650 away from getting out of this hole.
i went back home exasperated,i threw my hat down on the table and wondered, what the fuck am i gonna do? i called in my thursday nighter , texas tech giving 14 points for a hundred and fifty bucks, and opened a sam adams. i woke up to knocking on my front door the west ender-a gambling' buddy of mine-knocked on my door. he handed me a coffee and said he was on his way to turning stone, an indian casino a couple hours north , to play some black jack. i saw that the sun had come up, it was friday -payday-doomsday.i grabbed the paper from him and looked up the Tech game, it wasn't in the paper-damn late games.i grabbed my jacket without even thinking about the ramifications of losing and left with him.i looked at the clock it was 830 in the morning-i had nine and a half hours to come up with the 650.
west ender and i got the casino at 11 .we hit the black jack tables and in fifteen minutes i was down to four hundred, i was getting sick. told me to take a break and get some fresh air. i walked around for a bit ,the thing about casinos outside of vegas and atlantic city is that there isn't anything else to do but gamble. it was around 1 in the afternoon when i finally took my pathetic ass back into the casino.
when i found westy he was laughing and carrying on having a good old time . he was up about 1200. i sat down and lost another two and a half .now i was really fucked i ran to the toilet and vomited.on my way back to the table a die from the crapshooters hit my foot , i picked it up and handed it to the croupier.i had 150 in chips left. i said fuck it, and put the whole 150 on the pass line.i didn't know shit about craps.i prayed to the gambling gods and watched the woman roll the dice.
they bounced off the wall and a guy watching yells "SEVEN!" and my 150 doubled.smiling i picked up two fifty and put another fifty on the pass line, she rolled again ,this time getting an eight. chips began flying all over the place . guys were yelling ten on the hard eight ,thirty on six ,fifty on the come. i looked at the old man next to me and said what do i do, i never played this before, he looked at meas if i had asked for money. a dealer told me a quick explanation of the game . i looked around the table for the most chips and started copying his every move at a ten percent cut.he was betting with the green 100 dollar chips , i used the red tens. my money began to grow.
i was really starting to have fun when i got the dice.i had a basic idea of what i was doing, and i started rolling .i made about eight passes before i lost.next thing i know west ender is at my side " i've been looking all over for ya , we gotta go,its 430.i had already placed my bets, i told myself last roll, win or lose i take my chips and go.the woman who hit me with the die had the dice,she rolled a nine. i had chips on five , six and eight,the pass and below the pass all in all about 114 dollars.she started rolling. she hit my five,i collected and pulled my money off of five. she hit the eight,i collected and took the eight pile. she rolled a few more times the hit my six, i pulled the six. now all i had was the pass , and below it. she rolled and rolled and rolled -eleven i collected the rest and picked up my chips.i threw twenty to the dealer that helped me learn and split.
how much you win , creep? asked old wester as we were cashing out.i counted....1650!i was only 150 dollars off!there was light at the end of the tunnel!
on the way home ,west ender kept telling me how lucky i was.that never -neeeeeverrrrrrr happens my friend.you never win when you're down like that.i told him i was a quarter cherokee and that it was my reparations , we laughed like loons .west ender had got the indians for 2500. he kept saying "we scalped 'em!" we listened to espn radio on the way home, when i learned that texas tech had covered, i screamed so loud westy almost crashed ."i covered , i covered, i'm in the clear!" i felt as if i had just gotten out of jail ,like a huge weight had been lifted.
i walked into the grill a little after six, THE BIG MAN says-"YER LATE CREEP" i smiled as i handed him a fat wad, 1650,texas tech covered last night. his fat face never changed as he pocketed my money . for a second he looked like jabba the hut"GIVE THE CREEP WHAT EVER HE WANTS" i got a double shot of jaegermeister and a pint of sam adams , i slammed them both and doubled up , repeated and got one more."HOW YA FEELIN CREEP?" jabba asked, "i feel no pain" i said .i climbed off the stool and stumbled home into the cold darkness wondering who i was gonna pick tomorrow.

Circles Psychos and Silliness in Xanadu
my point of view is crooked and jagged ,to the left and to the right .if it was on a chart it would look like a stock market report. i consider myself a conservative liberal, not too laid back and not too hard line. i straddle the line ,i am not a flip-flopper although ,like everyone else, sometimes things are able to change my opinion. by experience , new information , maturation, whatever.i feel like i am an average american, well not average , but close enough-ok i talk to average people, ok? close enough. i get around well enough , socially. i've partied with politicians(my friend travis had DUBYA on his speed dial), the fellows that live in the "jungle" , homeless crack smoking hookers, rock stars , porn stars , millionaires, ceo's, beer brewers , tattooers , glass blowers....you name it .i've had the privilege of enjoying just about all walks of life.ya know , it's funny how social circles weave together on the pattern of life.
i am a student of knowledge , seeking the truth. an avid pupil of the human condition and the secrets of the universe. the path i've taken directly correlates with my crooked and jagged point of view. it helps to keep me in tune with the vibrations of the universe , its beating of the drums. my heart longs to be one with the universe. i can feel its magnetic pull on my body. the closer i get the more i feel my soul grow , feeding from its stream of cosmic energy. the actual expansion of my entire being that is held within this body. i feel as if i could move mountains in this state. for one millisecond, i am aware of what it is like to be god. the feeling hits you with an overwhelming force. sometimes faith healers are able to summon this energy and it drops the people to the floor and they writhe in holy ecstacy as hands of eternal light lie upon them. in that perfect instant of bliss you are pure emotion and wisdom, one with the sun. infinite. after ,you are never the same . your aura shines for days ,drawing the attention of anyone who comes near. they are drawn to you and don't know why, some people subconsciously get uncomfortable with this cosmic attraction and instantly hate you.your energy is infectious ,as if you emit a spiritual musk. its as if you just got laid for the first time in months and everyone can tell the difference, now matter how subtle it is , in your prescience. many people search to attain this feeling forever, to drown in its infinite wisdom. soldiers of the light , overdosing on evolution, blinded by the brightness, forgetting the lesson of icarus. they become unable to interact with others socially. they shine like the sun , giving off a creepy vibration that makes others uneasy with the feeling of being of a lower human.1000cc'sof 100%pure emotion ooze from every pore of their existence. if a fly were to land on them and soak up their sweat,everything they landed on later, would instantly begin to return to the great creator.like a bee pollinating flowers. giving death life and feeding life death as it buzzes through its existence . completely unable to comprehend its great importance , even as one of life's vermin , as an essential member of the planet. a card carrying insect since we were but still just an amoeba floating in the pond scum.
that is until that day that a great ray of light shone down into that puddle of filth and out we crawled. slowly evolving , sucking oxygen inside of our wretched existence as we grew into our present beastly forms .chronologically speaking we are still babies , still learning through failure after cursed failure. we have been condemning ourselves to the fiery pits of hell ever since that fateful day when one cell became two. with our greedy , hungry eyes, our sticky , lustful fingers , our jealous , angry hearts ,our stubborn , vain minds and our filthy , lying mouths.we are worse than crabs in a barrel. completely willing to stomp out 1000 people's dreams for a chance at slaking the thirst for our deepest , darkest desires. adamantly pulling anyone back down into the drop of filthy grey water we came from for a minute of instant gratification. wanting what we don't know't need, needing what we don't know't have, and having what we don't know't want. a perfect circle in such a perfectly imperfect world. as we float endlessly through space in a circle, inside yet another circle, as we ourselves are circled as it itself circles and circles and circles .inside an even bigger circle.
it's no wonder every now and then someone says "the hell with this lunacy stop this existence i want off" .tired of the mundane trappings of everyday life , dizzy from all the damn circling.sick of been tired of it all . laughing to themselves as they say "i'll show them" and 'they' don't know't even take even an iota of interest.just another cruel joke life hands out on an eternal basis,like when you say well it couldn't possibly get any worse....heh heh heh.the grates joke of all? it smiles back at you from the face in the mirror and the seven years of bad luck that is soaked within its' prison of glitter and glass waiting to be released. collecting its' dust and recording all that it sees. until it lay in pieces and releases the fate as it fulfills its destiny.like a djinni trapped in a bottle, except it only hears your wishes it doesn't grant them.all the time the phrase , be careful for what you wish for emanates from its sheen.just imagine all the stories a mirror could tell, the sights it had seen.all the beauty of humanity and its true beastly nature.tears of joy and pain. the first breath of life and the last breath of death and every other kind of breath taken in between.
and as i wheeze out my fragile little death rattle, body no longer to withstand the abuses i have endured it with, i shall fear no evil. for i will have already walked through the valley in deaths shadow and have been through hell and back. and finally , rest in peace i shall.

The Cornell Graduate
k-rock was a cornell graduate .i first met her after moving back from texas. she was married and strung out and her husband didn't know. he knew she dibbed and dabbed but he didn't know to the extent to which she was stuck. at least he made it look that way . deep down i think he knew and liked it because it kept her needing him . he had a good job and made good money and didn't pay attention to his bank account. what a dumb fuck.
k and i clicked right off the bat something my ex-wife hated when we first met . she was jealous and it showed . k and i got a kick out of it and even poured a little fuel on the fire . her being from the southwest , scottsdale, arizona, and me having lived in the southwest, in austin, gave us a bit of common ground to build a friendship upon . pretty soon we were hanging out on a regular basis
i developed a little crush on k-rock and she knew it . she would wear these petite little outfits that showed off her gorgeous body and flirted with me unabashedly . it got to the point that my ex was convinced that we had had sex. but at the time it wasn't true . she'd come down and hangout and we'd talk and laugh, and on our trips to syracuse to score dope ,she and i paid little attention to anyone else . i would tell her that if she wasn't married she would be in big trouble , because i would be all over her . but i respected her wedding ring and the man who gave it to her although didn't know him.
i started to become the boyfriend without the benefits . i kept her ego going and she kept me interested . then one day she came over and was pretty sick . she looked awful . she sat down and i was playing my guitar and watching tv . she whispered ,tony, i'll do anything for a bag of dope . it sort of broke my heart to hear her say that . i didn't want it to be like that if i did in fact get to have her . i wanted it to be because she couldn't help herself . i even gave her a chance to take it back by pretending that i didn't hear what she said . but i was immediately turned on. just the thought of finally being inside this gorgeous piece of southwestern beauty had my head spinning . then she asked me if i heard her and repeated herself . i asked her if she was sure that she wanted to do that and she nodded her head . so it was an excuse for her to get to sleep with me. she was telling herself that she had no choice and that i wouldn't front any to her . i walked into the bedroom and she followed me . i let her get straight and then we were all over each other . the dope loosened her up a little and she told me how much she thought about this every time we were together , i admitted that i did too . it was amazing . we agreed that if she weren't married and i weren't with someone that we would be perfect together .
we continued to have sex in the daytime ,sometimes i gave her dope ,sometimes i didn't. one time she came over and dropped to her knees giving me one of the best blow jobs i've ever had . she was so dirty about it , letting me explode all over her face and breasts . after about six months or so , her husband "found out" she was using . i think he found out we'd been fucking because he told her that she either went away to rehab or he would leave her. she submitted ,but told him she wasn't going to go sick . and he brought her to my house to get straight.
she came in and fell into my arms bawling . she was hysterical , i couldn't understand a word she was saying . finally i got her to calm down and she told me what had happened . she gave me the money for two bags and told me how much she was going to miss me . now i was really excited . in my sick head i was so turned on by the fact that here she was crying in my arms , while her husband was outside my house no more than fifteen feet away . i grabbed her hair and kissed her hard . she tried to resist at first , but i'd given her too much good sex for her to resist . i shoved her on to my kitchen table face down and ripped her pants down to her knees . usually we needed to fool around a while for her to get me going but not this time , my dick was hard enough to cut diamonds . i stuck a finger in to her pussy to get her ready but it was already drenched . i shoved my cock inside her as hard as i could , causing her to scream out in pleasure . i began fucking her as hard as i could , as if there was a bee inside of her and i was trying to smash it into mush . with every pounding she screamed and screamed . she started to shake uncontrollably and she let out a high pitched scream i had never heard come out of her . all of the neighbors' dogs began to howl . " oh my fucking god" she screamed and i ran with it . " who's your fucking god , bitch , who's your fucking god?" she tried to hold back she bit her lip. i was about to explode " say it you fucking filthy whore , tell me who owns this pussy!" "you do !" she screamed "oh tony it is all yours! " i made sure she knew it too " anytime i want it i"m taking it , right ?" "yes!" " tell me your my whore! " ." i'm your whore ! baby fuck me hard! this pussy is all yours!" . i grabbed her by the throat and squeezed it soft but rough "then turn around and suck this cock you filthy whore !" and she sucked it harder then she ever had, going at it like a porn star. i exploded inside of her mouth and almost fell to the floor. she looked at me and smiled . she knew she had me strung out on the pussy just as much as she was on my dick. she kissed me on the cheek and went out to meet her husband and then i did the stupidest thing i could have ever done.
since i'd had a feeling that her husband had found out about her infidelities ,and that, not the fact that she was strung out, was the reason that he was sending her to rehab.i'd always thought that he let her stay strung out because he was insecure and that if she was strung out then she would always need him and his money.k had been western unioning herself two hundred dollars every two or three days and spent all the money on heroin. when her husband ,eddie , had gone to the bank for money and found the cupboard bare, he was pissed .on top of the fact that his wifey was fucking someone else , she was giving them(me) their savings.he went home infuriated, threatening the end to her free ride on the heroin wagon ,he gave her the ultimatum: rehab or divorce.now like i told you k-rock was a cornell graduate ,she had a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and eddie's family was filthy rich with one child so when they die all that money is going to go to them , she made the same choice that everybody else would have made;rehab.
i asked k for a ride to tops to pay my electric bill,she told me that eddie was in the car so that probably wasn't a good idea . she pecked me on the cheek and turned to leave. i followed and she said eddie's out there. i told her i knew and that i was just getting a pack if cigarettes . she gave me a funny look but didn't stop me . i turned to lock the door and wished her luck, she said thanks and turned to leave. i looked over her shoulder and in the car staring directly at me with a look of pure hatred on his face. i smiled and pretended to pat her ass , then mouthed the words" i fucked your wife"and added in a fuck mime to clarify what i was saying. he exploded ,"you mother fucker "he screamed as he struggled to unlock the door and get the car door open so he could get out. i leapt from the porch and did a perfect flying kick landing it right underneath the door handle,knocking him back into the car .i grabbed the door and bashed his leg with it repeatedly ,now all he wanted to do was get back in the car.as i attempted to break his leg, k-rock screamed both of our names, which got our attention. i leaned forward and i told him ," if i get any trouble from the cops,or if i ever see you down here near my house again i am going to consider it self-defense."i asked him if i was clear and he nodded his head and then he started up the car and drove away.i stood there in the driveway chuckling to myself watching them drive away.a few weeks later, before she even went to see her husband she showed up at my work.dressed in a mini skirt with no panties on.
i started to catch serious feelings for the girl i was with and told k we had to cool it for a while . at first she was as jealous as my ex-wife was after she introduced us . but , after i explained that with her being committed to an active marriage she had no real right to be so ,she relaxed and we continued our friendship as if it never happened . it was the first time i was actually able to stay friends with a girl after we had been involved sexually so quickly it usually took at least a year to even be able to be civil, much less in the same room. k was smoothe and quite level headed so the transition went along quite easily .
k-rock and i went on many successful dope scoring missions together either to nyc or Rochester , depending on what time she had to be home, or as i called it, what time she turned into a pumpkin. one of the things i liked best about her was that could talkier and that we related easily.when we went on long trips together , time went quickly because of the long conversations we could have.i often wondered if her and eddie were able to talk like this. i hoped they were,for their marriage's sake . if they don't the house they live in going to get smaller and smaller.One time in new york city k-rock and i and sid , a guy we brought along, were in tompkins square park. we had split up to try to find some dope because our regular connection, mildred, a hooker from williamsburg in brooklyn, was in rykers for thirty days for something or other. although i didn't like the idea , k thought it would be easier if we split up,i guess she thought it would be easier for her to cop because she was pretty. i was having no luck when i spotted her talking to some street kid , so i began walking her way. when i was about twenty feet away , he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close sticking a small blade to her throat-in broad fucking daylight! i kept walking up to them, neither of them had seen me. i got close enough and snuffed him, i caught him in the ear . he dropped his knife and fell to his knees. just then someone yelled and all of the sudden about twelve kids from all around us began to close in . she had walked into the middle of a bee's hive and was about to get stung when i came along. sid had witnessed the whole event from about fifty feet away but wisely stayed put, and when i had acted he calmly started walking for the car. k and i ran with a modern-day oliver twist and his gang hot on our heels. k kept a spare set of keys to her car in the compartment under the arm rest between the front seats , she pointed her keys and unlocked the doors for sid and he got in and started the car. we got in the car with about fifteen feet to spare.one of the kids had dented the door by kicking it as we drove away . we laughed like loons as sid made his way through traffic .each of us recalling our roles in the encounter. realizing how close she'd come to getting seriously hurt k began to cry. now we were sicker than before, and it looked like we weren't going to find any dope.
we pulled over on avenue d between first and second, there used to be this cool club there, it looked like a scrap heap with all these amazing metal sculptures everywhere. it used to be where i would buy new needles, now it was a garden, the lower east side sure had changed since guiliani took over. we sat in the car for a minute trying to figure out what we were going to do. i got out of the car and walked over to a bodega to get a drink. when i came out there was this older black guy walking a ratty bicycle with a flat tire and a chain on it that looked like it was worth more than the bike. i took one look at him and it was obvious that he was on dope, maybe methadone, because his tracks were old and thick as if he were shooting up with a bike pump. i approached him and asked him if he knew where to get any dope.he got mad ,i had offended him because he thought i was a cop . "a guy looks jus'like ya's th' one sent me us'state" i walked away apologizing for bothering him.we sat there for a few minutes more trying to figure out what to do when he came back to the car." come on you an' me right now." he refused to let sid come and out of being sick i agreed. i gave sid a look that said "follow me." and walked away with him. he walked fast constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure sid hadn't followed. he took me to this apartment project .i was the only white person on the whole lot. we went into one of the buildings and got into the elevator.graffiti and what looked like blood covered the walls,the stench of piss and rotten garbage filled the car , " how much you want?" he asked/demanded. i was scared , my gut was in knots .this is it , i thought , this is where i die.i asked how much for a bundle ,he told me 80 bucks, i peeled out 80 in my pocket and handed it to him. the elevator stopped and we got out and had to go up another flight of stairs , in the stairwell it was dark ,the light was out . i was petrified and he knew it " see " he sang " now you knows how i feel. " grinning like the chesire cat, teeth and eyes shining in the darkness. he left me in a hallway , knocked on a door and went inside . i wanted to run , right then and there , but i couldn't for some reason , i wouldn't abandon the 80 dollars i'd given this random man from the street. he came back out five minutes or less later and handed me the bundle . i shot a bag right then and there, he asked me for ten dollars for his trouble . i asked him to wait and told him if it was good i was going to buy more. "oh,iss real good shit ,man, you love it.you see."he smiled . the dope hit me pretty hard and for a second i thought i was going to fall out . i pulled out 680 dollars and gave him forty, "this is for you,but i want eight more bundles", he went back in and came out even quicker than he had the last time. the whole way down the elevator i was waiting for the shoe to drop , the trap to spring . i kept expecting a gun to my face and someone demanding all my shit.the dope in my veins had relieved the fear a bit ,but not much. by the time the fresh air had made its way into my lungs i was practically falling over from the adrenaline that had built up inside of me.i have NEVER been so scared in my life ,before or since. my hands and legs shook as i walked the eight to ten blocks back to the car .
sid was non-chalantly reading a village voice leaning up against k-rocks car and she was doing her nails. i gave sid a rash of shit for not following me,and he came up with some lame excuse and k just asked "so, how much dope did you get?" i stopped in mid-sentence and almost slapped her for being such a damned dope fiend, but how could i ? we drove to a more discreet section of the lower east side where we poked up and they commended me on the quality of the dope. for the stress of the journey through hell i'd just taken, i told them the guy charged me 120, they bitched abit but what could they do? i was the one who'd just done what neither of them would EVER do. we split up the dope and headed for home.
over the next few months k started to gain weight .one day while i was looking at her i noticed that her breasts had grown, and it dawned on me ,she was pregnant.meanwhile,the company her husband eddie worked for was about to go under and he was interviewing for jobs in other cities.one day while he was in phoenix, i told her that maybe it would be good for her to get away from ithaca , to have a chance to start a new life with her husband. i told her that he was going to get hired in phoenix ,that i could feel it.and it would be good because she'd be close to her family and that her mom could help with the baby. she looked at me in disbelief wondering how i knew. i told her it was obvious. i asked if it was eddie's and she said even if it wasn't that it was still eddie's. a month later she left for phoenix,she told me she would send us pictures of the baby. i told her that she was going to go to phoenix and forget all about us.that she'd wonder from time to time how we were , but that it was okay for her to forget us ,that she and eddie deserved to have a good life , that her baby girl deserved to have a good life. i still think about her now and then and smile when i do , she was a good friend.take care k-rock,take care.

Drowwning in Enlightenment
Located in upstate ny,at the southern end of cayuga lake,the second largest of the finger lakes, in the seat of tompkins county , lies ithaca ny.home of cornell university, ithaca gun(obviously), ithaca college and the highest waterfalls east of the mississippi river-taughannock falls. former home of carl sagan, summer home to new jersey devils star joe nuendyck. to leave ithaca you have to go uphill, the city lies in a pit . it was once the center of the film industry before they fled to sunny southern california. and in the center of it all is where you'll find the average ithacan .
welcome to the ithaca commons- lunatic central. where ,for some, it's still the summer of love and the stench of patchouli hanging in the air like a bad omen is proof. the hippies have a stronghold here and have watered down the effect of protests and marches by having one almost weekly. this is the new world order hippy who preach tolerance and acceptance of others while looking down their unwashed noses at those who don't think like they do. screaming bloody murder about the iraqi war and saving the environment ,then they climb into their beaten down vw bus that gasps and wheezes as it labors on down the road, leaving a trail of jet black oil and other automotive fluids, and sending smoke signals to the other twelve monkeys cult members griping maniacally about the current Washington administration with the demeanor of a conspiracy theorist.meanwhile they sit on the commons all day preaching about how much better they are than those who feed into the great beast that is the capitalist system ,as they sell their pot, ho-made jewelry and other hippy shit. damn hippie-crites.
out patients from the mental health services do the thorazine shuffle, the prozac rock and the haldol drool from their roosts ,as if the dodo never died.the mad buffalo hill jogger sweating off his run, "three times up, three times down" he proclaims to anyone who will listen. vinny ,the mad cackler ,howls with laughter through a blue fog of smoke , hearing the voices inside his head do their stand up routines .the angry russian and his poor , abused , shell-shocked wife make their way to the liquor store to get,yep you guessed it ,another bottle of rot gut vodka. so that he can make her fuck all the other local loonies who have twenty bucks, then beat the living shit out of her for being a whore.ahh young love. gothic matt ,the acid casualty,waits for eleven o'clock to roll around so that he can get his daily allotment of his ssi check. the mhs has to dole out his money to him ,otherwise the junkies will get him to spend all of his money on dope, then give him water shots all day.poor bastard is just so lonely ,that he'll do anything just to feel like he has a friend . a skinny little black guy dressed like a mixture of beatnik, guardian angel and black panther, hands out his poetry/rant/confession of how the government and police are harassing him. accusing him of sex crimes that i suspect he is guilty of . in the text of his testimonial ,lying among his claims of their intrusion of his life is the doozy, that the fbi planted a micro-camera "inside my penis".bernie the rock guitar god mosies along carrying a pawn shop window special , and a pignose amplifier strapped to his hip. torturing the guitar as it screams for mercy through the tiny speaker that is amazingly loud. he talks just like peter the puma from bugs bunny , the one that wants "oh three or four "lumps of sugar in his tea.from the opposite side of the commons standing in front of the first bank of ithaca is richard the schizophrenic street preacher of armageddon . not only is he entertaining but some of his one-liners are eerily sensible."nixon sold us to china for his wine collection" he bellows at whoever is unfortunate to have to do business in the bank.and my personal favorite " you can control my mind ,but you can't control my bladder" while he urinates on himself the statement that much more validity.in one of his more lucid moments, he told me he was in vietnam and that he worked for the cia,and that they planted a micro-chip inside his head so that they could tell him who he was supposed to assassinate , and they could know where at all times ." but i fooled them " he says smiling his two toothed smile as if they were dull fangs. he pulls off his hood to his sweatshirt and reveals an amazing scar, that runs from his ear to ear behind his head.he was really quite believable,and then as if a switch had been hit and he was gone,back to crazy old richard again.
at the west end sit the , sipping their swill from paper bags and arguing over who said what to who , in some three day old fight. the stench on their booze soaked bodies overtakes the patchouli."say man,"says smoothe old hovie,"ya got thirty nine cents for a quart?" his trick is to ask for a small amount and to be honest about what he is going to spend it on and he is able to stay drunk. i used to wonder what he did about sundays before they let the liquor stores stay open on sunday. they terrorize the students' families with their vulgarity and appearance as they shop for their dorm room's accessories. champ, an old boxer, hollers out to any woman who passes by,"scuze me ma'am,but your slip is showin'!". it always gets a giggle from the other drunks.he once told me a story about going out to a bar in new orleans after a fight he had down there. after a while he realized that he was in a gay bar and he voiced his downright disgust with the lifestyle they had chosen. one of the lads had taken particular offense and walked up to champ and told him " there's two things i love to do ; suck cock and fight!" and he finished his anecdote with,"well, i don't know how he sucked a cock ,but he sure went right up one side of me and down the other." after that he figured a guy that could fight like that couldn't be all that bad, so he sat there and got drunk with him for the rest of the afternoon.
the chess players slap their timers,as those waiting to play peer over shoulders scrutinizing every move. a bunch of young potheads gather together in a circle kicking hacky sack ,taking turns selling the next ten dollar bag of weed to the newest pot head on the scene. a bunch of high school punks sit and watch smoking their cigarettes too cool for everything. taking turns telling lies to each other about asses they've kicked, crimes they've pulled off and girls that they fucked . a junkie slipping in and out of while he defies gravity , holding a lit cigarette in his hand. it burns away as if it were a fuse to a bomb. his anemic,pasty-white girlfriends' eyes roll into the back of her head like a human slot machine. she turns and vomits in the bushes every time she lands on jackpot.
college student oblivious to the cruel world of fate that awaits them after they graduate and are cast off the educational assembly line into the "real world" where the answers come not from books and professors.they stoll by self absorbed noses in the air ,knowing and thinking they are better than the townie scum that they pass.
it is a collage of the human condition ,here, in this three of universe. a banker, accountant and a lawyer , sit together scoffing down lou's hot dogs,talking about business deals done and trials lost or won.overpriced merchandise, all geared towards the pockets of the parents of the students, hang in the window of in this valley of glass and cement.the latest catch phrase or rock icon ,name brand or "ithaca is gorges" printed on it. in fact, everything in town is overpriced due to the spoiled rich fucks that invade the town for four years trash it, fuck our women and leave.
fresh nubile young bodies, the old and decrepit,and everything in between all come together in this hub of activity -the eye of tompkins county.police eyeballing the young and disorderly,keeping up their paranoia and making the shopkeepers feel "safe".the stench of stale vomit, beer and bleach waft out of the bars awaiting another night of drunken college debauchery. piss stains and vomit in the doorways of the unfortunate businesses that happen to bookend the bars.kids scream from the playground as the pedophiles peep from their crevices nearby.ugly parents with even uglier children , who will have almost no chance in life,doomed at birth to continue the vicious that their bloodline has been cursed to. rolls by semi-wheelchair .first he was thunder, then silent thunder,now rolling thunder. cannister of oxygen strapped to the back of his chair, tube under his nose,feeding his emphysemiatic lungs housed inside his agent orange racked body-thanks for serving our country son!i call him by his birth name -marvin. beautiful women walk this way and that heads follow like a compass to true north. the bretton666 yells "mom" to the better endowed ones.cell phone conversations and random notes of music are carried in the wind, the players tunes ,with open cases at their feet,spare change and random dollar bills beg for companions from the felt.
self important community "leaders" pat themselves on the backs as they cut the ribbon unveiling another piece of "art" they paid a sum of money for, planning the next"city beautification" project ,undermining the city with their best ideas ,as they say in na "your best thinking got you here." litter dances on the wind as you head for a urine filled elevator to one of the parking ramps,leading you to the street-a maze of one way roads , filled with potholes to rival new york city's.they stake their claim on your cars' alignment and underside,making your escape from this "most enlightened" mecca almost impossible .

G.O.D
GOD, the great cosmic bully and joker.a blood thirsty Deity with a thousand names and a million faces. ever vengeful and watching , with the deepest pockets in the known universe. from the cavemen shivering in fear from every flash of lightning to children in sunday school learning of the sins of theirs that killed their god. oceans of blood have been spilled in his/her/its name. torture , incarceration and death all with the stroke of his mighty hand through his vicars on earth. every major event in history is shrouded in the church's shadow like an ever-present black cloud of doom. if the almighty loves us so much why does he require so much suffering and sorrow?
men sat down and wrote out the rules that were supposedly sent via burning bush, hallucination , or just downright lie, on how the one who is all wishes us to show our devotion. on our knees cowering we beg and plead for this that and the other while the divine coin flip is cast to decide the fate of our wishes. great buildings erected in honor of our creator are built daily. we flock , one day a week to give thanks for our graces and beg for mercy in our plights. follow the book these aforementioned men have written, and edited and rewritten over the centuries, mis-translations , spelling errors and outright fiction adding to the confusion. for every passage there lies a contradicting one. yet we carry the books as if they are a set of rules to a game. admit our sins and all is forgiven or "donate" 10% of our earnings weekly as if putting a down payment on our place in the afterlife.don't worry what you do somewhere in the books you can find salvation for it. the church has over-looked everything from the crusades, to the burning of intelligent women at the stake , to slavery , to the holocaust , to the anti-communist movement, to the more recent muslim wars. it seems we've come full circle fighting on the original holy battlefields where the soil is barren and the place has become a desert wasteland with pockets of greed sprouting from the earth through derricks . killing our home in the name of the almighty dollar. ignoring the signs. we had so many hurricanes this year they used the whole alphabet. floods , mudslides , melting polar caps. those appointed to lead us searching for a way to leave us once the going gets towards time to go. blood-sacrifice is at an all time high and it seems we may never quench gods thirst.

Dysfunction Junction
frustration, i see ,is going to be a familiar feeling when it comes to building this thing. i spent about two hours typing up this entry the other day and for some reason it didn't post ,i have some of it written down and i could tell myself that it is just a draft, that i wasn't finished but oh hell, i guess i better get used to that huh .i am little pissed that it happened ,but oh well.the space bar thing is way more frustrating than that. last year on the eighth of september the ny state police decided to pay me a visit but i wasn't at home, so they came to my work. you see, i was partying with a friend of mine and some asshole he was with and the guy died. they were trying to score some crack and they ended up buying 60 dollars worth of chalk . they were bummed out, so when my heroin dealer showed up they bought two bags of it. they had been drinking and doing god knows what else all day and i told him that it was a bad idea to be doing heroin . i said that the valley kid(a kid from the valley in hollywood , california) had done six beers and two shots and damn near died, off a half of a bag.i said,you are way too sensitive to dope to be doing any right now.he says the kid from the fuckin' valley ,i took half of their dope before they even got it.twenty minutes later oney was struggling for breath, i go you fucking asshole,i told you so ,i get him breathing and tell his friend go get his car and come back. he does and while he was gone i went into his pockets and took the rest of the dope. and then i got oney on his feet and walking around . when the kid came back we walked oney to the car. i told the kid, if he starts breathing like that again....and i saw the look in this kids eye and then i said i think you're gonna need to take oney to the hospital, the kid says is that gonna happen to me? and i told him if that was gonna happen it already would have , but you aren't gonna be able to keep an eye on him and he needs it so go to the hospital. they leave. the next day here comes the staties .i guess that the kid took him home and god knows why gives the guy valium,and he dies,and then tells the cops that i gave the guy heroin and that i was some big time dealer and that i shot him up and all this crazy shit and the cops believed it. oney died at 830 AM kid found him at 1130 and based on what he told them ,they got a warrant at 345 abnd were in my house by 4PM. at six they came to my job and arrested me, in front of customers and they were talking about criminal negligent homicide and that they found a bunch of heroin (200 dollars worth , less than two grams) in my house and then they took me to jail. they put me on the radio and tv news, put me in the paper and included a map to my house. while i was locked up someone tried to break in and steal my shit. and then they told my girlfriend that if she wouldn't testify against me that they would violate her probation ,so now we were both locked up. then my landlord told my folks that they were going to throw all my shit into a dumpster, so a good friend of mine rented a u-haul and stored our stuff in his barn in a town named spencer(a really small, dry town where people are fucking crazy,and incest runs rampant.i think it is the official town pastime) meanwhile they offer me a two-to-four for the whole situation and i said no fucking way ,because i was not guilty of the crimes they were charging me with, the next day they released me. i went to the barn to get some clothes , and went out with a couple friends and got drunk . while i was passed out in the truck they robbed a pot dealer and the dealer called the police and when the cops found out i was with them,even though i was sleeping and had no idea that this had even happened they assumed i was the "ringleader". they assumed that this was a heroin debt and one of the guys in the truck let them believe it . so they arrested me again and then while i was in jail, a volunteer fire-man in spencer started causing fires and the barn all of my worldly possessions were in was his first fire! he eventually got caught because he was the first man at the scene of the fires, fucking dumb ass! so when i got out the second time, i had no job and no place to live and for a week ,no girlfriend . life was miserable, but i guess it couldn't get much worse right? then my mom had a major stroke and needed brain surgery , and after the surgery i had to move in to help her out with stuff and to take care of her ,i haven't lived at home since i was 15 and now here i am at 36 living with my girlfriend at my mommy's house(how pathetic,i am surprised she didn't leave me right on the spot). then an old charge from '97 popped up and they gave me three years probation. then they gave me another three for the heroin charge . and just recently kane christianson, the dumb ass valium dealer got, 1 and 1/3rd to 4 for criminal negligent homicide for not taking oney to the hospital and then giving him valium after i told him he needed medical attention .and so here i am sitting in this chair griping to you about it whoever you may be.

A Day in the Life of a Valet
I started off as a lowly valet and eventually became half-owner of a valet business. we had the contracts of several nightclubs, fine dining restaurants, private parties , a couple .com places and best of all-strip clubs. one in particular was owned by a porn producer so i got to meet many , many , porn stars . anyway one of the clubs i worked at was fully nude and because it was fully nude you had to bring your own alcohol. so when i decided to go out and party that was the place i would usually go to .i got along especially well with the head manager mark , the head doorman ernie , and a bouncer named james. we'd get a bunch of beer and liquor and give it to the girls to ensure that we would get special attention from the ladies.
mandy was a gorgeous girl, she was all-state swimmer,in texas no less , in high school . she was beautifully toned and was extremely pretty. one night a cruel twist of fate came mandy's way, in an instant her life was changed forever. while driving home, a drunk hit her head on while driving an enormous buick. mandy was in her little mazda rx-7. the tiny japanese sports car was no match for the hulk of metal the careened over the double yellow line at 60. he didn't even hit the brakes he was so obliterated. in a matter of ten seconds mandy's leg just below the knee and the rest of her body went their separate ways,never to see each other again. mandy refused to let the accident slow her down, she went to physical therapy everyday for a year and a half and got a prosthetic leg and she returned to dancing. although she didn't have to work , and never would due to the settlement from the accident, yet i think she felt she needed to feel attractive and if a guy was willing to pay her for her company well in her eyes she was still pretty.
prosthetic limb or no, i thought she was fucking gorgeous. if you didn't know that she had a prop-as she calls it- you couldn't tell it was fake. she would do silly stuff , like let it fall off if a guy was disrespecting her and if someone pissed her off she'd throw the foot part at them . she had two different feet for the prop ; one was flat for sneakers and other flat-footed articles of foot wear and another was arched for high heels and the like. it really is pretty amazing what they can do these days if you lose a limb. they took her skin color and matched it perfectly to her prosthetic ,and gave her tanning ointment to even out the sun coloring.
mark, ernie , james , and i were sitting at a table drinking and carrying on the way drunken friends in a strip club do. i was watching mandy dance for an asian man at the table next to us. i was trying not to be obvious that i was watching , but when you are as drunk as i was you lose all of your stealth, assuming you had some to begin with. if not you're just more clumsy and oafish then you already were. but mandy knew i was watching her and she didn't mind at all, she began to look at me as she danced for her Asian man.
the boys and i continued our blast of a time we were in the VIP room , where we were supposed to be having that much better of a time,hey it's VIP. a few girls were sitting at the table with us partying. normally , one of the managers or floor bosses would pull the girls aside and say "if you ain't dancin' you're leavin'." or something less kind but since mark was THE boss exceptions were made-naturally. mandy had finished her dance with mr.chaing and excused herself from his own little party he and his friends had going. the other girls at his table were staying. there was money here and the girls could smell it like a shark can smell blood in the water, and they weren't leaving until they had every dime in their pockets/purses whatever.
mandy sat down on my lap and asked for a drink . i poured her a stiff crown and coke. i had a good buzz going and before mandy had even sat down . james and i had been trying to top the other with saying the most offensive outrageous thing one could think of, poor mandy never even had a chance. i told her i thought that mandy didn't really fit her personality and that she should change it,i paused as if i was thinking of a name and then i said "how 'bout eileen?" james laughed so hard his captain morgan's and ginger ale spurted from his nose like a faucet. mandy stared at me, eyes wide mouth wider , but smiling. i noticed the pierced and got turned on , which she noticed right away. "oh shit!"ernie yelled and mark laughed hysterically , but none of the girls did i went from the table comedian to complete asshole in a millisecond as it registered on the slower ones "yeah", i continued "mr.chaig's " table could call you irene" more guffaws from the boys and now some of the girls added a couple nervous titters here and there. mandy took it in good spirit . she had a great sense of humor ,which added to her sexiness ,and had come to terms with her accident and had moved on . she once told me that it had happened to her because she was able to accept it and that most of the other girls wouldn't have been able to saying "god doesn't give you more than you can handle " which i personally disagree with but i never bothered to tell her that. she laughed and called me a dork . which i liked because any time a girl has called me a dork or any name like that, i usually end up sleeping with her . "how about peggy ,or pipi one-stocking?" by this time we all laughed and the slight faux-pas had been forgotten.
mandy finished her drink and ordered another i made this one a bit stronger to increase my odds. everclear's song "you make me feel like a whore" came over the PA, "oooh " mandy purred/slurred "i love this song" before i could agree she had stood up and began dancing for me. she was so sexy and she added a lot of effort to be extra sexy, being a little bit dirtier than the club usually allows . she straddled me ,her back to my chest took two of my fingers, placing them in her nether region and mark interrupted us with a "that's a little too far , time for bed kids."in a fatherly tone. even at play mark was on top of his club . as she leaned into me i whispered i want to lick your stump,peggy" what was that? she asked i detected a little anger in her tone i changed it to , "i want to lick your wet ..." she smiled at me as she stood up to put on her thong , with her glorious ass in my face ,i couldn't resist..."y'all take credit cards right?" before she could say yes i ran my card down the crack of her butt as if it were a credit card machine, my boys erupted with laughter. mandy turned and slapped me across the face, hard , with a smile on hers, there's your receipt asshole. this was followed by the whole table laughing, especially the girls she pulled on her thong and walked away smiling at me in the mirror, and made her way back to mr. chaing's table. round one went to pipi one-stocking.
about an hour later mandy appeared next to me in her street clothes,she picked up my car keys and asked me if i needed someone to drive me home .absolutely, i said my good bye's quickly and followed her out the door. she drove me to her place, she shared an apartment with her boyfriend jason , who was tending bar at treasure island, a place on sixth street in down town austin ,and he "wouldn't be home til seven or eight." jason drove this super hot mustang , it was one of the fastest cars in the city . i had driven it once and had got it up to 70 in second gear. when we got in the door, i had barely shut it before she was on me like a boa constrictor. she was quite strong for a girl and was solid as a rock clothes went this way and that and we collapsed together on the bed completely naked . after having sex a couple of times she fell asleep, the ultimate compliment. i pulled the sheets off of her and examined her gorgeous body in all of its glorious nakedness . i practically broke my arm slapping myself on the back and wore the silly grin of a teenager who had just got laid for the second or third time. i examined the trail of clothes strewn about,it looked as if a drunken monkey had gotten into the hamper. then in the doorway to the bedroom i caught sight of the prosthetic leg , still in its cowgirl boot standing up in the bedroom doorway . it looked so funny sitting there , so abandoned . i started laughing to myself ,which made me laugh more because i knew that i sounded like a lunatic laughing to myself all alone with this hot one-legged stripper chic lying next to me. a distant rumble made me stop laughing quickly ,mandy shot straight up from a dead sleep."ohmyjason god'shome!quick get your shit " i ran around the house looking for my clothes which were thrown all over leading a drunken path to the door. jason's car pulled up out front, there was no way i could go out the front door without being seen .i ran to the balcony, i was three floors up! fuck what do i do? i threw my clothes to the ground and climbed over the rail and shimmied down to the bottom of the barrier and i swung back and forth to get momentum and dropped with a loud thud to the second balcony. i looked in and a frightened older mexican woman looked at me and screamed." no por favor i yelled pointing at her front door . then i pointed upstairs "espouso es aqui, en la casa! en la casa. "ahhh " she smiled and laughed. she opened the door and tsked tsked me "ay sancho" she said. sancho is the mexican slang word for the man who is sleeping with the wife. she handed me a towel and i peaked outside just as jason slammed his front door closed. as i ran to get my clothes a bunch of people clapped and whistled and commented on my daring escape. i picked up my things bowed and ran for my car and sped out of there as if the devil himself were behind me. as i got some space between me and the house , i flashed back on the boot and giggled like a maniac fresh off of his first kill.
i didn't see mandy for a couple of weeks. when i finally saw her , as she pulled in to the lot i approached the car, "hey where ya been?" a pair of boxers flew out of the car window and hit me in the face. "you left your fucking underwear in my bedroom asshole! jason took my foot and hid it! i had to order another one and they aren't cheap!" the idea of her walking around on her prosthetic limb without a foot made me laugh. "its not funny,you fucker", she whined/teased, smiling. i parked her car and carried her bags into the clubs dressing room. as i set them down and said "have a good night" and walked back outside to continue doing the best job i ever had.

First day on the blog
Hey all,
This is my first attempt at this blog thing,and i am quite computer illiterate.I wanted to find a way to get people reading my writing,and to get feedback on it as well,whatever it may be.I have around fifty poems published on poets.com under the pen name suisidle,but i am growing tired of the snobbery on the site.The space bar on my keyboard sucks and sometimes i really have to pound on it,so i apologize in advance for any run on words.
I live in ithaca ,ny.A small town upstate an hour south of syracuse.ithaca has been named the "most enlightened city in the US" whatever the hell that means.the town is run by a bunch of stupid hippies and gays and lesbians aren't harrassed here,so i guess that is how we got our "title" . Cornell University and Ithaca College are based here and it brings a new influx of bad drivers and drunken jocks every year and our high school seniors flee the area hoping never to return,and i don't blame them.
It is said that ithaca runs a top one of those magnetic vortex fields where phenominal stuff is said to happen,but i think it is just a freak magnet,because they(the freaks) flock here in droves.i have no idea what i want to do with this thing but i figured it will be something to cure the boredom and to get me writing.
I don't capitalize out of laziness and i figured if e.e.cummings can get away with it than so can i.my punctuation is dreadful,but who really needs it anyway?i have been a heroin addict on and off,for the last ten years or so,and i have some pretty interesting stories to tell.
last year,on sept.8,the nys police kicked in my door,as a result of partying with a friend that ended up dying.now i am a member of ithaca city's treatment court and must toe the line for the next three years.they test my urine three times a week,so it is pretty much impossible to get high,and i don't drink so i guess i will be using this as an escape for the time being.
So any way i will be doing this as often as i can and i will tell an epic tale or two,and i must admit some my poetry is pretty good.i write music so some of them are songs but they still read pretty well.also i will not always write straight forward like this,some of it will be more of a rant,orjust an excercise at being a whacko.feel free to tell me how much you think i suck,because there isn't enough honesty in the world anymore.thanks for reading,and have a great day!