works archive added8 12 2001

Pull The Trigger.   I sat at the last table in the expensive yet somewhat charming restaurant - appropriately named “The West Level” in downtown Philadelphia. Indulging in a cup of mocha while waiting for the bill, tarnished thoughts kept running through my tired brain. With every heartbeat, an aching pain hammered across the middle of my head. In the corner of the diner, a pair of younger girls laughed and stared while I rubbed my temples. As I mouthed the idea to myself, the all too familiar thought came pondering around again. Women in general disgusted me - especially younger ones: so naïve, so complacent, so happy. I myself had not experienced that same happiness in a long time. Even as a child, carefree in nature and spirit, there was a seed of self-contempt and hatred sprouting, taking root. Now a young, strong plant had started taking over my entire being, and I couldn’t help becoming overwhelmed with it.   These two particular ladies were really into watching me. Their laughter filled the small restaurant. I could almost taste their rotting flesh getting older, their breaths getting shorter and shorter every day of every year until finally, left dying decrepit and alone, the failing vessels gave out. There is human form in all its glory. You see, as the body dies, joints and tissue start to stiffen, to decay. What they didn’t seem to realize is that their beauty was short lived and didn’t make a difference in the world - to me, at least.   Although I had lost their attention, the two girls were far from leaving my sick mind. I imagined the one on the left spread out on a mattress like a dead cow while some sweaty, hairy man rode on top of her, penetrating her body so violently, their combined stench saturating the entire room. Sex is such a crude and disgusting activity, isn’t it? Yet for some reason, almost everyone is drawn to it, as if the inner demons were trying to escape and breed, to quench their thirst for blood, bile, and semen. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen. I’d play the field but I’d rather be on the sidelines doing something more productive…but that comes later on.   Finally the check came, and after paying up front as well as leaving an average tip, I departed the shit-hole diner, actually feeling worse than when I first entered. Thoughts of mine usually turned out making me more depressed and mostly angry. The incident with the two sluts simply intrigued me - in an exasperating fashion. I’d been down that road far too many times and didn’t particularly care to travel it again. As afternoon sun baked the filthy streets of downtown Philadelphia on this breezy and somewhat warm day, I recalled the events of last night - I didn’t exactly want to think about what happened, but I guess that’s how my brain likes to work. So close to death, but still not able to pull the trigger. * * *   The night before (the last one I could remember) was a blur, mostly from the mix of hard drugs and sleeping pills. I guess sleeping is a sort of escape, a way out of the inevitable disease. Sanity seems to be very closely tied to being awake, but while you’re asleep - that’s an entirely different matter.     3:15     3:15   That annoying neon glow from the clock on the table illuminated the bedroom for separate flashes of about a second apiece while my head rattled around the pillow like a pinball stuck in the works. Insomnia had plagued my insignificant life for some time now, but, like everything else, I had learned to adapt. Almost time for the 3:20 AM bus to downtown.   The next day passed just like the rest, dragging on until it seemed impossible for its death, the hours clinging on to the last like fingers on the edge of a rock until finally, one by one, they let go, give up and die just as the next day starts. It’s a sick repetition, but I’ve learned to cope - almost. The bus chugged by at 3:20 right on schedule while my life stayed the same. I always heard that when you can’t sleep, days turn into weeks with no real change of state, but until it actually happened I had no idea how right they were. Does life actually mean anything when you feel immortal? Sleep is a mind-vacation, a daily dose of “dreaming Valium” so your brain doesn’t feel so much like a machine. The mind is such a powerful, precision-based functioning center that it needs a way to become more than just a brain, it needs entertainment and personality. Being awake 24 hours a day tends to have its consequences.   I found myself at the same diner almost every afternoon, ordering the same thing. Must be the odd sense of comfort found in unbridled monotony. The same shit-head bastards sat and ate their same greasy entrées while jabbering about their useless and meaningless lives while I sat alone and spent my insignificant existence being depressed and angry. Most people shared dreams of fame, fortune, and family, but I secretly indulged in fantasies of suicide and random acts of senseless violence. My favorite was the one where I packed twin assault rifles and aimed for the heads of innocent “victims”. Another good one involved a silenced sniper rifle and an unannounced location - to be Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver” or ‘one of the boys’ in Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. I know, I know…trying to live my life through film seems so, I don’t know, unlike me. I guess a man can dream, can’t he?   This particular day, I can’t really recall the exact date, didn’t seem too much out of the ordinary. 12:50 and I was at the same table in the same shit-hole ordering the same trash from the same bitch - the sanctity of life at its grandest. When the food came, I choked it down like normal and left the same tip. On my way out I noticed a different woman sitting in the corner booth than usual. She had dyed black hair, about 24 years of age, and a green shirt with some garbled writing on it that I didn’t understand. Feeling a bit bold (or just stupid), I decided to risk it.   “So, what does it mean?” I bent down slightly, to let her look at my face - which seems to make strangers feel more comfortable around new people. Looking at someone’s eyes was a different story. It’s like looking into a window that hasn’t been cleaned in a long time - look hard enough and deep enough, and you can see their entire world.   “Excuse me?” She gave that oh-so-familiar look that asks, “who the fuck are you and what the hell do you want?” but I was used to it. Hell, I could practically be a linguist with all these puppets in the world with the same fashion, same character, and same morals as all the others. Just who was behind them with his hand up their asses? The word “God” came to mind and I brushed it away. I can’t really say much though, I’m just one of the herd myself. I asked bluntly, “your shirt”.   Her head darted down quickly to her chest, I guess she forgot what it said or something. Surely there was another agenda of some sort, but hell if I knew and hell if I cared.    “Oh,” she said, realizing that I wasn’t some creep talking about her chest size (which was adequate, to say the least) and that I actually was interested in her shirt topic. Ever since middle school I had been curious in acquainting myself with certain types of females.    It must have been either the testosterone of adolescence (that never seems to die even after the pimples do) or some part of me deep down that wanted to make friends, I never figured out which. “I’m not exactly sure what it means,” she said, giggling. Her hair flowed back over her shoulder like an ocean wave, as to caress her shoulders as it passed. She definitely had the beauty of a woman, but something was trying to draw me closer to her. She smiled up with a heavenly look.   “Huh. I was just wondering. You look like you don’t belong here.” My words floating down towards her flesh while she looked up into my eyes made me feel different than usual, like all the inner hatred and anger from the day just fell out of my being, through my shoes and into the floor underneath. Her skin radiated, and that saturating scent of a woman parted the air as it reached my face. It had been a long time since I actually had a friend of the opposite sex. It had been a long time since I ever wanted to have a friend of the opposite sex.   She smiled, her full lips spreading across those gorgeous features like a virus infecting its unknowing host. “Well, actually I’m just visiting from New York. I used to live here, but that was a lifetime ago,” she explained without hesitation. It was like we were already chums, spilling secrets of spoiled sex and lust while hiding our own inner temptations for each other. I sure knew how that went, unfortunately.   “Well, I’m sure you’ll be all right. Philly is a molehill compared to NYC,” I smiled, staring into her eyes intently. She reminded me of someone, or something - I didn’t quite know what it was, but it brought with it feelings of comfort and ease. We looked at each other for a few awkward moments before I broke the silence again. “I suppose I need to be going. Maybe I’ll see you here again?”   “Yeah, hopefully I’ll see you around,” she was smiling as I departed. Even after I left the diner, her image burned and imbedded itself into my ever-growing memory, like a shining light at the end of one hell of a dark tunnel. * * *   Another night, lying in bed hoping to sleep - praying to sleep. The warm feeling of drowsiness, followed by another feeling known to you at the time of unconsciousness but gone by the time you wake up. To be able to rise up to the comforting sunshine, the previous night simply a memory - not stored but simply fleeting like a cool breeze on a muggy day. Shutting down the system for daily repairs was a necessity that I was being deprived of every night. My mental and physical health definitely did not benefit from this bastard insomnia.   Yesterday came to mind, the diner, speaking with the girl in the corner booth. If I could only see her again, maybe my mind would clear somewhat, a horizon become visible. Of course, the thought of a single woman dispelling the haze and disease that took decades to create was quite hard to believe, but I guess every man needs a fantasy to blindly grasp at. Her beauty flooded my mind as it did when I first set eyes on her. The black hair, somewhat past shoulder-length, dark eyeliner (the only visible makeup), dark skin…the works. Closing my eyes, I could almost smell her through the musky apartment stench. Good God - I was obsessed with this girl.   This realization sent the pictures and relived memories tumbling back to the pits of their origins. The thought of “obsession” over a single human being (we all know that human beings aren’t worth obsessing about, much less obsession over a member of the opposite gender) left me feeling severely depressed and angry at myself. How could I let someone get into my head so easily? I had talked to her once and didn’t even catch her name for Christ’s sake. I tried desperately to think of something else, anything else, but to no avail. The girl had planted herself on my brain like a starving leech in the Sahara, my nonexistent self esteem a perfect environment for her unnerving icky-ness. Damn I’m such a moron. No, I’ve got self-control - I can handle this.   That’s the problem with being negative towards life. The easiest way out of a confrontation with yourself is to label your inner personality as unimportant. Then, you can either insult yourself and move on or accept the idea that changing yourself means compromising your beliefs and then rule that as unacceptable. By opting for this “easy way out”, you often times miss the initial issue, therefore not doing yourself any good. Negativity is very self-demeaning but also very contradictory. I would say that I suck for being so negative, but…you get my point.   Hours crept by while I tried desperately not to think of her. It was time for my usual meal at the diner, but I was having a hard time convincing myself to go. “You have to go see her again, just for the sake of knowing if she’s there or not,” my one side made a good argument. The other half tried to counter. “Knowing if she’s there or not doesn’t make a difference. If she is there, you risk an encounter thus leaving yourself open to rejection and humiliation. It’s not worth it!” The second side was making a lot of sense. It felt like I was being pulled two different directions at once, both sides seeing who could stretch me the most before I snapped. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Times like this are when drugs become your best friends. * * *   I came-to in front of the toilet, face down on the tile floor lying in a puddle of vomit. Obviously, I had taken something that didn’t play nicely with others, and, like usual, my body had to pay the price. The only good thing that could have come out of this predicament, I said to myself as my elbows worked the upper torso slowly off the ground, is precisely what I didn’t let happen (judging by the pounding headache and unchanged chronic fatigue). I guessed that the pills were an attempt to sleep - until that damn girl came back to my mind. Fuck, I knew it couldn’t have been that simple. As my face pressed against the porcelain throne, the same thought raced through my head just like every other time I gut-wrenched the bitter stomach fluid - purge past perceptions. The way we as a species “evolve” (or try to, at least), is to move forward to advance our common knowledge and become more efficient. To hold on to previous ideas that prove to be wrong or incomprehensibly narrow-minded is exactly what holds us back. To find true happiness, true euphoria (not that self-created bullshit) means to let go of what you think you know and find out things for yourself. Beliefs are just that - they are what you were told, and that doesn’t make them necessarily true. But enough with my insight, back to vomiting.   An hour or so later, staggering around the lonely apartment seemed like the appropriate action to take. But that was before I realized what needed to be done. To clear my head, I had to help point someone in the right direction. * * *   Slouching in the corner booth at the diner, the place looked bigger than it did from the outside. I was a mess, I knew it. My head was spinning, the smell of food was giving my stomach a turn-to, and the room was making me dizzy - perfect. No sight of her yet, but I had plenty of time to wait. The waitress didn’t seem to mind me, and the coffee was black as night. Guess that wasn’t exactly aiding the predicament.   She showed up about twenty minutes to two; I knew she’d be there. I was as close to walking out as I would ever be the minute she came in and took a seat. The same place as before, only dressed differently this time (of course). Flowing black hair framing a radiant glow of…woman. Testosterone was evil, but it definitely had its perks. I, on the other hand, was still crouched in the corner like a caged monkey, waiting for the moment the scientist opened the latch so I could spring onto his head, screeching wildly and violently clawing at his neatly combed-over hair. I was feeling a little crazy.   “Do you know that the average amount of lead in city drinking water will kill most animals after prolonged exposure? I mean, humans being the exception if you want to split hairs about who’s wild and who’s not. I would say that I’m ‘wild’ sometimes - if not all the time. Humanity in general is a pretty wild association too, in general that is. But wild animals don’t concern me as much as the wild humans.” The bench made that awful farting noise as I meticulously climbed in, my eyes darting around nervously.   “Oh - Hello to you too,” she said, as shocked as I had pretty much expected her to be, but still smiling. This time, she was dressed just as casual, only with plain colored clothes on instead of unknown logos. I didn’t let her say anything else just yet.   “For as long as we can remember, we being the human race, we have been trapped in a prison of monotony, our single purpose of life being procreation and the passing on of our traditions and beliefs. We truly were hunters and gatherers of the time period. Finally, with over six billion homosapien inhabitants of this planet Earth, we have broken the chains of incarceration, free to expand our knowledge and manipulate our beliefs as we see fit to do so. Yet, with all this alleged ‘freedom’ in the world today, why is there still a sense of oppression, or the lack of motivation to further our status as intelligent creatures? I’ll tell you what happened - consumerism. The system worked just as they had hoped! Free will vanished into your television sets. Whatever they want you to be, you have become, and without any further persistence on their end. Its like we were lining up to conform! Individuality has been raped, exhausted by brand names and sponsors, commercials and credit cards. Now I don’t say this to imply a hatred on the force behind the word ‘they’, for ‘they’ have no name, no association, no soul. ‘They’ are not even identifiable, it is just the only way I can describe it, you know.” My eyes shifted from side to side as the words rattled out of my mouth like some sort of presidential address, the mindless chatter filling the table and evaporating into the evening atmosphere. She stared blankly as I continued on.   “You see, it just so happens that the new industrial revolution came about the same time we were gaining in numbers and opening our eyes to the vast possibilities in front of us. Sure, there have always been the deadweights in society - the skeptics, the economically liable, the fundamentalists. Now the opportunity for advancement is greater than ever, but of course the sparse deadweights have turned into mass religions with many more followers and a greater bite outta the whole pie. A bigger swing on the big picture.” I was staring at her in the eyes, those beautiful unknowing eyes, reaching for a grip. She was so close to believing me, to letting it all go and reforming what she is as a person. Cutting the fat and leaving nothing but raw meat to chew on. Of course, I didn’t expect someone to change in just one night, and unfortunately something was holding her back. She needed something, something to show her the truth.   “Umm, so…” she blindly searched for a new subject to change to, something to tide over the rush of information while she decides if I am a competent person or just a bumbling idiot. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know anymore. Nothing came up within the first few seconds, so I decided to help her out.   “So, how’s the weather? Well, the sun’s out and its breezy, but there seems to be a sneaking suspicion of a sudden thundershower later in the afternoon. I guess we’ll have to wait it out.” I smiled. There was an element of fun in playing with minds, and it got increasingly harder as a relationship is formed. She still had that look of shock, but it was quickly evaporating.   “Yeah, umm, I was kind of wondering when we were going to get some rain.” Like she knew what “we” needed from our trusty Mother’s watching eyes.   “Yeah. So, how’s Philly treating you? Not too much trouble from the ne’er do wells, I hope?” I kept ringing my hands. It was obviously causing a distraction. She kept staring at me for a few seconds before answering.   “Well, I’m only in town for a few more days,” her face was a radiant glow of