Sprebas

Was roaming the computer last night, looking for a little fun. Stumbled across this, a real piece of work this emo type of text. Anyway, might as well post it I thought, just for a few good laughs.

After, I'll be that guy people talk about sometimes. Starting with, "Remember when..." and so on. How funny I was. One or two might say how they feel responsible somehow.

 

Was there any signs?

 

What was he hiding behind that warm smile and his contagious laugh?

 

All my stuff put in boxes. Most of it thrown away.

 

The thick stack of papers thrown away. All my thoughts hidden behind my smile penciled down and laid out in plain view for anyone to read. Any answers to be had - thrown away.

 

There would be no other note left behind.

 

What would be the point I wonder?

 

So people might understand?

 

Too little too late.

 

I will be mentioned, talked about, remembered.

 

Then people will go on drinking their coffee.

 

All my problems solved in that one simple act.

 

When I made myself the past.

Chuck.

 

I spend so much time being what people might expect me to be. For instance, when people ask me, “So, what are you supposed to become?” Like, what am I aiming for? What´s my plan for the future? And when people ask me those things, I can never tell them what I really want, because it´s this really stupid thing. Not the dream, that’s not stupid. But the answer is. Telling people you want to live your dream and that you´re prepared to aim for it. To fight for it, and if this dream is not being a dentist or a carpenter, but something totally different, like a writer, then they frown. Almost like you just farted in their face or something.

 

But here´s the thing. I´ve been reading all your stuff. I even became a member of the website, the Cult, to read all those essays you wrote about writing. And since that first time, after I´ve read Fight Club, after me discovering transgressive fiction, I picked up writing again. After a five year long break from it. And now, when I pick up a pen trying to tell a story, picturing it in my head, trying really hard to get that one message down on the piece of paper, I always have this problem. That annoying voice inside my head telling me, this is nothing like Chuck. Whatever I try to write, I always think, “How would Chuck tell this story?”

 

So, what happened was, I met this girl. Yeah, really. She´s asleep now, in my bed, being late at night and all. And what happened when I met her was, sure, I´ll give writing a try. Because up to that moment, before I met her, I really just wanted to go away somewhere. Just disappear, you know. Send a note from the airport to my mother, telling her I´m going away or something. And then, she ruined it all, to steal your words from Fight Club. But not really. Ruining, I mean.

 

The thing is, I have a head full with stories and every time I try to get that pencil to the paper, I just freeze. I go blank. Then I get frustrated and that carpenter job seem really sweet. It took me a while to realize, but I finally did, that I had fallen out of love of writing. Yeah, it´s true. I love my stories, but when they come out, it´s like trying to tell people about a dream you’ve had. About half way through, you realize it´s nothing like that dream you had, so you stop telling. My girlfriend reads all my stuff and tells me it´s great and not to worry, inspiration comes and goes. She thinks I´m too hard on myself. Me? I´m just being realistic.

 

So I pick up other writers like you. Not really like you, but you know. I read Bukowski. Jim Shepard. Salinger. Ellis. I even picked up Amy Hempels complete stories, because if I did, I might become you one day. Of course, it does not work that way. I bet that’s the problem I have, not believing in myself enough to write what I want on my own terms. Telling a story the way I want to tell it. I don´t know if that is something that comes with time. If it´s something I will learn, to learn to trust in my own ability, or something. Or if what I really need is someone that believes in me, someone not being my girlfriend or my mother, telling me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear. Or, maybe they´re both?

 

Anyway, not that you would read this or anything. Just saying.

I have no idea what this is. Had great fun while writing though.

I had this friend who said he wanted to do something, before he gets settled with wife, have kids, buy a house and gets stuck at a job. The old ball and chain, he called that way of life and it was, according to him, almost impossible to escape. "At best, you can postpone it. But it always catches up with you in the end."

 

But before all that, he really wanted to get on the roof of famous tall buildings, free his man stick, point it to the stratosphere and take one good long piss.

 

From that height the sterile by-products having passed through his kidneys and deemed useless by his body, would be scattered by the wind. Dissolve into vapor. Microscopic particles of maple syrup yellow, small enough for anyone downwind to breathe. Said he'd read about something similar in some old French text.

 

I haven't seen him in months now. Not since I dropped him off at the airport and waved him goodbye at the terminal. I have no idea where he might be. But every now and then I get a postcard. A picture of the Eifel tower. Another of the Leaning tower of Pisa. Empire state building. Petronas twin towers. Never any text on the back of the postcard, only my address and a few stamps. The top of the buildings, clearly visible on the picture, encased with an angry red marker. I can't know for sure who sends me these, but I have my reservations.

Lisa was, as far as Richard knew, my girlfriend. This was true a few months back now, back when I went to work with a purpose. Back when I left small notes in the apartment for her.

 

"Miss you" and "Thinking about you".

 

Stuff like that.

 

This was my way of apologizing.

 

At home, talking with this girl on the phone. She tells me she doesn't have a dog.

 

If you as a man perform bad one time, she tells you it's ok. You get over it. No big deal. Then it happens again. And again. And again. Then one day eventually, you'll come home and find a note telling you she's gone. That was two months ago now. And trust me on this, she will tell you it's ok the first few times. Manhood saved. I happens to everyone. It could be stress. Bad eating habits. Smoking. But when you make a routine out of it, eventually there will be a note on the refrigerator door. Her clothes and toothbrush gone. The don't-try-to-call-me-feeling left behind.

 

The girl in the phone, I tell her it's not important whether or not she actually has a dog. What matters is how the story goes to the insurance people and she's way better off  telling them her dog ate her phone. Putting the phone in the microwave oven is not considered a mistake, even if she had no idea it would be turned into Chernobyl.

 

If you have a problem with any modern life accessory, anything electric really, and you need to call someone, odds are I'm the guy you'll end up speaking with. You'll dial the number found in the yellow pages and a mechanical voice will say: "Welcome to bla bla support and divine intervention service. If you have any questions considering electrical equipment, press one now. If you have any questions considering problems with your insurance company, please press two. Would you like to have your fortune read by one (it's really only me) of our psychics, please press three."

 

No matter what number you chose, I will be the one on the other end of the line. Sitting at home in my living room watching TV, solving your problem. Reading your future. Dodging taxes.

 

It used to be I read a lot, back when I told myself and others I wanted to write a book. Shared my dreams with people, friends. Girlfriends. Family. Now, gazing at the bookshelf, I can't decide if I want to read the books or if I want to have read them. Back in the days of dreams and hopes, all my friends helped me get through rough times. Bukowski, Hemingway, Mozart, Beethoven. They took me to places I don't believe exist, but I was happy when I was there. Now I hardly ever do anything other than helping people with their problems. I'm wasting my life. My friends knows this as well as I do. I can change anytime I want. But I won't. Waiting for the big IT to happen. I have dreams if you ask me. Other than that, not so much. I am waiting for something that won't happen.

 

I have my regulars. People calling just to call someone. Anyone. Me. I can tell by the sound of their voice who it is and what their main issue is. I don't know their names so I made some up based on what we talk about. There is Forever alone Misery, Microwave Kate, Sexalot Steve and Billy Bob Cancer. Go ahead, guess their problems.

 

Bill Bob is a heavy smoker. He told me himself and from the sound of his voice I believe him. The sound of a man speaking through a hole in his throat like a mechanical recording heard from the other end of the universe. I've made it my mission to make him give up smoking. Anybody needs a hobby.

 

"You're not afraid of cancer?"

 

The gurgling sound like a speaking sink tells me, "Naw man. The cure however, that freaks me out."

 

He goes on telling me how they, the doctors, put you in some sterile white room where they will radiate the hell out of you. Now it all comes down to endurance, stamina, who can last the longest, you or the cancer?

 

If that doesn't work they open you up and cut away the tumor and even some healthy tissue around it to make sure they really got it all. So, if you have like a brain tumor they'll crowbar you skull open and yank that thing right out along with a good portion of your brain. You might end up like a moaning drooling vegetated zombie. But hey, at least you're alive.

 

To be continued

She calls me in the middle of the night. At one or two or three , even at five sometimes.

 

Fridays, Saturdays or Saturdays and Sundays depending on how you look at it.

 

Asking me, what am I doing?

 

Asking me, am I at home?

 

Asking me, could she come over?

 

I tell her, nothing, yeah, okay.

 

My speakerphone is busted so she texts me: "Outside" and while I wait for the elevator to climb what could sometimes be seven stories, she calls me.

 

"It's freezing out here!"

 

I'm her safe card and some nights not even that.

 

It all depends.

 

Friday night, four in the morning. No calls. That small sting of jealousy - she's out fucking somebody else. And I can't help but imagining, how would it be having sex one phone call away?

 

I let her in. It takes until we are inside my apartment before we speak. I think she's been crying, the mascara making her eyes look like ashtrays. Her breath smells of alcohol and cigarettes.

 

It used to be we were together. Then she met this other guy, and now we're not.

 

She went to the bathroom - threw up.

 

Then we fucked.

I brush my teeth using a brush said to remove 70% more dental plaque than any ordinary toothbrush. The paste is filled with crystals that gives a fresh sensation of cleanliness. I use mouthwash  that lasts until I go back to sleep. I floss.

The shampoo I use prevents the creation of dandruff and the balm contains both C and E vitamins to keep the hair soft and healthy. I shave every day with one of those vibrating blades. I prefer those over an electric razor because it gives me the feeling of a closer shave. The after shave I use prevents irritation and the creation of pimples. The moisturizer I use on my hands contains aloe vera, ginseng and rosemary oil.

There are five different perfumes I choose from, mostly at random. Today I smell of Diesel. I trim my nose hair and clean my ears. I never wear the same clothes two days in a row, ever.

I haven't talked to anyone in four days.

Because having been born with endless possibilities and potential I began to feel more and more like Jerome Morrow, the character in Gattaca played by Jude Law. However, unlike him and his unfortunate accident (self-inflicted?) terminating his abilities for life, I made an active choice each and every day to squander what could have been or might become. Instead, I poisoned myself with cigarettes, alcohol and literature.

The reward, I felt, was that I knew about my own failure and that it was a chosen failure. A slap in the face of everyone trying or even dreamt of trying to achieve something. I had other priorities. I knew I could change, I knew how, and for every person telling me to get a hold of myself, to get a grip, I went deeper into my own successful enterprise of waste.

After reading to much Henry Miller this came out. Tried to re-write something old but instead it turned out something new and more...surreal. It's not meant to be understood in the common meaning of the word. It's just words in some semi-random order. But it makes me happy to read.

 

Stas came to my funeral, then he helped me steal a car and drove me out into the desert. We had it figured; an hour. That's what it would take before the authorities - society mobs of angry fathers, mothers, daughters, sons and the police - those nazi whores, would start to chase us down. Like fucking dogs, man. The desert was our last resort. A god forsaken wasteland of dunes, vultures and cacti. Some long forgotten suicide space machine taking pictures of Mars or this place, who could tell the difference? This really was the final showdown; country Armageddon.

 

The tank was half empty but it didn´t matter. No way back. Not for any of us. Not for me. Not for Stas. And certainly not for those left behind in the wake. Those grand cities, the last bastions of a dying civilization and their crumbling Babylonian towers. Good meals and warm hopes served on the need and despair of others. The price of humanity being humane was to ignore some of those hard earned principles laid down by greater men from a greater time. A tank of gas, a drum of oil, to the price of a few hundred casualties in some backstreet in Bagdad. The world coming to an end by the sound of super highways going silent. Perhaps to be found later by some future generation of men and women dressed in animal skin. They would tell their children bedtime stories about concrete cities reaching for the sky. It was never supposed to last.

 

What would we find down this road? No one knew for sure. A vague promise of a bright future, here at the ass end of civilization? Probably not. Our radio was busted and Stas was singing. I had always imagined the world coming to an end to the tunes of some crazed Russian composer. Chaos all around. Everyone abandoning ship, jumping overboard, swimming for their life, to the tunes of Prokofjev or Stravinsky. Me and Stas on the keel celebrating our masterpiece; having kick started the apocalypse.

 

It´s a bad start, I know. But this is the way it has to come out. There is no more order and the only way to say it is through senseless gibberish of a fleeing man who once had bought into all the dreams fed to him through his life. Leave it be, I tell you, and listen. The hour has come. And ours has just come to an end.

 

A few weeks ago they had me locked up. At the funny farm, as the word goes. Dead set to cure me one pill at the time. A bump in the road and a crash behind us.

 

"Whore! We dropped the TV, man.", he roared.

 

"You want to turn around and get it?"

 

"Damn man... nah."

 

The car steamed on like a torpedo set for destruction. Small gizmos and cogs manufactured in some factory, inspected and then put together with the sole purpose to make some yahoos day really really bad. Machines have purpose. We, people, we just are. The problem of course, as always, was people telling people they could be something. That they could make it in this foul world. Some of them did, but they aren't the ones we read about in the history books.

Bluebird By Charles Bukowski

 

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him,

 

I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.

 

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke

 

and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that

he's in there.

 

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out

 

but I'm too tough for him,

 

I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?

 

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out

 

but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep.

 

I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad.

 

Then I put him back,

 

but he's singing a little in there,

 

I haven't quite let him die

 

and we sleep together like that with our secret pact

 

and it's nice enough to make a man weep,

 

but I don't weep,

 

do you?

 

Analyse

While reading the poem Bluebird, one encounters the structure, or rather the lack of, that is typical for Bukowskis poetry and indeed some of his novels. The flow is easy, relaxed and close to what most people would count as a short story rather than poetry. In reality, what holds them apart is a matter for discourse. However, it being vague and to some extent metaphorical makes is closer to a poem rather than anything else.

 

Bukowski himself seemed like the sort of man who believed in being honest and real with his writing and thus form, in poems and other texts, was lacking, because to him this was redundant to the idea and/or the feeling being expressed. This idea of form reveals itself in another small poem, merely two lines in length, in which he writes, "As the spirit wanes, the form appears.", explaining his view on form. Any type of writer who is in lack on inspiration or anything that made him or her decide on writing poetry, lack in spirit, as Bukowski called it, might try to conceal this by focusing on form. Writing on verse, using rhymes and counting lines to make the words fit together. This was, according to Bukowski, not honest.

 

The poem Bluebird contains, basically, one word that is open to discussion and is in need of explanation. That would be the bluebird, the main idea the poem revolves around. Already in the first line one get the notion of Bukowski using the bluebird as a feeling. The bluebird, he writes, is inside his heart, the very metaphorical center for emotion, and the color blue is often used as an emotion, to feel blue is to be depressed .

 

In the poem he explains how he fights to keep the bluebird out of sight by various means, alcohol and cigarettes, and it seems he does not want anyone to know there is something inside him, yearning to come out.  This would, he writes, destroy his writing in some way. Perhaps he considered himself a person using black humor in his books and poems, leaving little room for other emotions. In the poem he talks about his book sales in Europe, so this was written in that time of his life when he had become a well published writer, having made an icon of himself. Being a heavy drinker and a bad boy writer of sorts, one might guess he had to maintain this image of himself, this myth around his name, not being emotional. Thus he has to contain some emotions deep inside himself. Only letting them out when he is alone, as he writes in the poem.

 

In the poems last lines he describes his relationship with the bluebird to be "nice enough to make a man weep", and then, with the poems last two words, direct a question to the reader, "do you?". This is a powerful tool, making the reader a part of the poem, asking the reader if there might be any similarities between Bukowskis emotions and the readers.

Wrote this between midnight up untill the early morning. While reading it sort of shows in the text.

 

It was a phone call from Richard that woke me up that morning. His hollow voice speaking with a pace of someone who needs to remind himself he has to use his mouth all the while formulating words in his mind. Being fast awake I'm having a hard time figuring out why someone is asking me where I am. The meeting had been moved up one hour and I was already ten minutes late. Ze Boss wanted to get it over and done fast so he could return playing golf or fishing or whatever.

 

I tell him it´s my day off. But instead of apologizing for the early wake up call, he tells me they had a change in the schedule yesterday. I´m supposed to have the morning shift. Wasn´t I at my office? I begun 45 minutes ago. Didn´t I get the memo?

 

"Sure, whatever." And I hung up. A long shower and two cups of coffee later I´m sitting in my cubicle mustering energy to log in and hit the green light, opening a channel to the outside world of angry costumers and bracing myself for the onslaught of yelling, begging, threatening and cursing that is my day at the office. My job is to act as the first line of defense against any complaint our customers might have.  Doing support over the phone is not all bad if one would remove all the calls I get. Besides that it´s all about drinking sour coffee and dodging Ze Boss when he´s lumbering around the corridors looking for someone (read; me) to wipe his shoes on.

 

Down the hall the meeting is being wrapped up. I can see them through the windowed wall standing up and chanting the motivational speech du jour. Richard, the big cow-person with his back towards me, holds his hands in the air like some jesus-freak singing kumbaya. Ze Boss is all about motivation. Always sending us e-mails telling us how important we are, being a big cog in this machine that is the company. Telling us to take pride on our work. Helping people is always important, he keeps repeating anytime he gets a chance the same way any nazi officer might yell "Arbeit macht frei" all the while dragging Jews into some vault-like chamber with heavy locks in the iron doors giving them breathing instructions. Taking pride in a good days work. Eating supper with the family, praising his wife's cooking and teaching his son right from wrong.

 

Any speck of motivation I still have coming to work is the money and a vague hope that Angelika might wear her black dress again, revealing more skin than a day at nudity camp, leaving little room for fantasies but enough to keep me occupied lonely nights. Angelika with her ass still in the right place, the narrow line working its way up between the shoulders and tits like vanilla muffins begging to get the frosting all licked up. Oh yes, that´s my motivation all right.

 

Richard hanging over the thin wall of my cubicle like a drunk slob, trying to communicate.

 

"Where were you today? Don´t worry about Dave, I covered for you."

 

No day is a good day to handle this big man and talking to him is as appealing as a bad case of syphilis.

 

"At home, man. Sleeping."

 

Richard, twitching, eyeballing the room like a fugitive on the run from Stasi, sweat pouring from that red basketball head of his. Ze Boss still inside the meeting room and Richard draws closer to me, crawling inside my cubicle, a close fit for anything his size. Down on his knees in the proposal position, he tells me, " You can´t keep this up. One day they´ll fire you."

 

The idea of being fired is a breath of fresh air but I could see how the word scared Richard. I could see him a home, spending his spare time mixing oil and gasoline in bottles before he pushes down pieces of cloth in the bottleneck, in preparation of the day he might get fired. After which he snaps and goes completely psychotic and burns down some neighborhood before anyone knows what happened. The police finding him on some field with a gun pressed against his chin ready to blow both his brain cells into the sunlight. One might say he´s not all there.

 

He moves closer, all confidential, and says, "I´ve got something to tell you."

 

"Not now man. I spent last night with Jack Daniels and I'm in no mood for nothing."

 

Richard, all confused, "Is that the guy who works at copying down on floor nine?"

 

Grinding my teeth, I fight the impulse to throw the fax machine in his face.

 

Sure.

 

Whatever.

 

He manages to drag me away to the coffee machine down the corridor all the while he keeps talking about what he wants to tell me. This big secret he´s having, whatever it might be, must be something any normal sane person would consider a big pile of failure. Me pushing the button on the machine.

 

Sugar.

 

Sugar.

 

Sugar.

 

And cream.

 

Another thing with Richard is his total lack of ability to get straight to the point, and now he´s going on about this girl he´s been seeing for a while and bla bla bla. After a while, arriving at something like, "And... uhm... well." Richard moves closer. "Yesterday she told me she´s pregnant."

 

A mistake in the making.

 

"Great man. Congratulations."

 

"I don´t know. What should I do now? Should I marry her?"

 

"Do you love her?"

 

"I dunno. I might."

 

"Well, figure it out and make a decision."

 

Richard nods, looking all down like a child being told it has done something wrong.

 

"Anyway man. I have to get back to work."

 

"Wait wait. If I do marry her and raise the kid... what then?"

 

"Then what?"

 

"I dunno. Anyway... you know any good names? For the kid."

 

Standard procedure, having engaged in a conversation with Richard was a commitment not easily broken. Him never wanting to let you go and cling on like a bad case of hemorrhoids. Knowing this will be one of those days I take out my pills, pop the cap open and flush it down with some of that thick black ooze disguised as coffee.

 

"What's that?"

 

"Vitamins."

 

"Vitamins huh?" he says all suspicious.

 

"Vitamins."

 

In the corner of my eye I see Ze Boss make his way down the hall. Richard also noticed this and start walking on the spot, his moth tapping like a fish on dry land. Making my way towards the cubicle, dodging Ze Boss all engaged in a phone conversation. Richard following me like a stray dog looking for a meal. Staring at the screen, I hear Richard whisper, "So, any names you know? Would be great to come home telling her a few good ones."

 

"Try Snafu. It´s unisex, works both ways."

 

"Snafu", he says tasting the word. His face going limp and dumb as his mind is working on a response. "I´ll tell her. Thanks man."

 

"That´s why I´m here."

 

Richard, the big cow, was okay. Great company for anyone looking for a fast way to improve their own self-esteem.

 

Working my way through the day. Getting yelled at by some costumers being angry because their stuff is broken.

 

"My hairdryer doesn´t work."

 

So?

 

"My washing machine don´t clean my clothes."

 

So?

 

"The remote to my new television didn´t contain any batteries on the purchase. What batteries should I buy?"

 

And so on, until. The beep in my headset signals a new call has been connected and I do my less than cheerful greeting routine , "Welcome to bla bla support, how may I help you today?"

 

Silence and a breathing. Vague at first but then louder and faster. I know this drill and pull out my notebook from the drawer and draw a new line across the other four all the while I try to make contact.

 

"Sir? Ma'am?"

 

Heavier breathing and an occasional moan. I pretend I´m not enjoying myself.

 

"How may I help you today?"

 

"Oh... ah... mmh..."

 

"Uhm... you in any danger ma´am?"

 

Please let her be in some danger.

 

This is working out great, until this. A terrible roar like a beast from hell across the maze of chest high fake walls.

 

"Stanislaw!"

 

I to get up and gaze across the room, noticing Ze Boss scoping me from the other side. I get back down, fast, and hope that somehow he didn´t see me.

 

"Stanislaw!", he yells as he´s making his way over to my cubicle. His head appearing on the other side of the wall, gazing down on me. The woman in my ear moaning and calling me Derek.

 

"You weren´t at the meeting this morning.", he clarifies.

 

"Sure I was."

 

Checking through his papers, flipping them, searching for the attendance list.

 

"Oh... mmhh... louder Derek."

 

Is that a humming in the distance? Please let there be a humming.

 

Ze Boss, now with a hellfire rage, throwing his list on my desk, asking me if my name is anywhere on the list. I pretend to search. I take my time.

 

"Stanislaw!"

 

"Oohhh... Derek."

 

Right now I wish I was Derek.

 

Ze Boss is collecting his thoughts all the while I could see him trying to not to do anything rash.

 

"David", I try, "was there a meeting today?"

 

Ze Boss does his scolding thing. Uses words like "team" and "cooperation" and "motivation" a lot. In my ear some woman is screaming at me.

 

"Louder! Faster... oooohhhh. Derek! Derek. My god!"

 

I cross my legs and try to look somewhat interested in what Ze Boss is trying to say. Nod my head at the right moment. My dick pulsating against my thigh.

 

"I´ll write this one up, Stanislaw.", he finally says and wobbles of with his golf bag swung on his back.

 

The line is dead. No moaning. No breathing. No humming. No Derek.

 

I check the corridor and then rush of towards the toilets, my erection pointing the way.

There is a lie in my head telling me it's true.

But I shrug it off. Phase it out with music and a pencil.

Sometimes at night it comes creeping and whispers its honey promise in my ears.

Soon, it says.

So very soon.

There are voices in my head telling me they're real.

I lock them away and pretend Im the one running the show.

Late at night they come and I write them down.

Messing my head up. Putting it on spin.

Sooner or later, they say, I´'ll run out of paper.

Soon.

So very soon.

The lies become true.

Lite skåpmat som blivit kvar från sommarkursen, som aldrig blev mer än lite klotter på papper. Lika bra att slänga ut det här innan det börjar lukta. Har separerat texterna så man kan se vad som hör samman.

 

She spent so much time in her youth being everything men crave for. At least, that one craving they feel any lonely Saturday night with a few beers running through their system. When nature took its course it left her confused and alone. Asking herself why no one had told her it wasn´t going to last. Now she roams the bars. She hugs the pole in the cheap low life discos and spends her nights with outdated men in motels with neon signs. Trying to take back the life that left her standing on the island. Had she know she might had developed a personality.

 

Overfed and under stimulated. That´s how Id describe anyone these days.

 

Frank Black once sang "There is a place". I guess he's right, but I can´t know for sure.

 

She was living proof anyone could make it in the world without any decent education and total lack of talent. You would only have to sell yourself. And for the right amount of money and the right reasons, you could make it.

 

Your kid is not special.

 

All of the things I´ve done, there is only one thing I truly regret.

 

It may sound stupid. But that´s the way I feel about it. And there´s no other way to say it.

 

There was some Caligula insanity about him.

His beard looked like evolution going the wrong way.

Writing out words on the shells and piling them all together in a bowl. Stas holding an egg for all to see and read out loud, "Career".

Reading out loud, "A career in law."

He´d read out, "True love."

After each egg he´d read, one of us would walk up to him and grab the egg.

He´d read out, "Fame and fortune."

Then, placing themselves in front of the red brick wall tanned green from graffiti and the words, "Eat me"

Stas would read out, "Publishing a book."

That was mine.

I stepped out of the circle and got the egg, now smudged with writings since watercolor is only so good to write with. I held it out high in the air and threw it at the wall.

After all this, I'd go home and watch some television.

Left behind in that dumpster part of town, in that alley, is a puke of shells busted open. A white and yellow waste drying in the sun. Along with all our broken dreams.

Skulle skriva några scener, men tack vare kass planering blev det att dra ut skiten ur röven. Dessutom är en av texterna jävligt inspriterad (läs översatt) från en tidigare text. Inget jag e stolt över, men nöden har ingen lag.

Scene 2

The first part of the treatment was all conversation. Regular I´m-going-to-a-therapist-and-this-is-how-it´s-supposed-to-be conversations.

 

She had questions. Oh, all these questions.

 

It used to be this was lots of fun. But now I´m here because my girlfriend insists. It´s in her interest I´m getting better. Improving.

 

I tell her, my therapist, all this. I tell her, out meetings, my problem at home and so on. It has something to do with television. Good ol´fashion entertainment in a box.

 

This last month, I´ve been at home from work. On the sick-list. PTSD my doctor called it. So he gave me some Celexa. After that we tried Paxil. Zoloft. Prozac. Oh, that lovely Prozac. It´s not that it makes me feel better, I just don´t care anymore.

 

I tell her, my therapist, when television don´t do the trick, they give us medication.

 

"Oh?", she says.

 

I tell her, before this. Before therapy. Before Zoloft and Prozac. It was me. And my TV.

 

Back then, after my girlfriend had read that article in Cosmo how girls can gain weight from the pill and now insists us to use a condom every time, I went through the days like a suicide victim that had survived. I was longing for my own murder.

 

And it wasn´t just the weight that concerned her. There was things like eye-flicker and thrombosis. Acne. I did not want that to happen to her, did I?

 

Well.

 

I could react I guess. Live my life and all that. But I just switched channel. I could have taken up a hobby. Collect stamps. Golf. Work out at the gym.

 

I was way into Prison break when she told me. If your girlfriend tells you you have to use a condom from now on because some friend had said, it really hurts to install a copper T UID, you best change channel to ER. Or Discovery.

 

Or when you suggest a femidom and she don´t know what that is, change to Navy CIS.

 

And get this. A regular condom is about as thick as a string of hair. So, when your girlfriend tells you that not thick enough. Not safe enough. You better get Baywatch on. And fast.

 

When she comes home with a special mail-order condom. Ultra-safe. With dual layer and integrated carbon-filter for chemical cleanliness. Guaranteed to be impenetrable. Specially developed for anal-sex. Four times the thickness of a toenail. When you can´t feel the difference between your girlfriend and a fence hole, switch to CNN.

 

Before soon, I was sexually oppressed and addicted to porn. And you know there is something wrong with your relationship if you bring your laptop with you to the bathroom. The door was locked and the computer on the toilet seat. A piece of paper on the floor. I was fifteen again. Sneaking of to jack off. Like when I took extra long toilet visits that puzzled my mom. She would knock the door and ask, "Was everything all right?"

 

There is only so much a guy can take.

 

But now it´s my girlfriend knocking the door and asking, "How about a shower together?". Like we used to do back in those days. I finished. We showered. No sex.

 

This is your life, and then you die. Soon she mourn our dead sexlife. I had killed it she would scream. Making up for it by indulging an orgy of chocolate and wine and TV. I could spend a toilet-roll on a weekend. She watched Sex and the city. I took long walks. To our garage. With my computer. It´s not until somebody tells me I know there is something wrong.

 

And a bad habit I developed was I could never get my rocks off to the same porno-clip more than once. I had spoiled myself. The porno-industry is huge, so it´s never really a problem. Until.

 

You know accidents happen. You read about them all the time. You see them on TV. Earthquakes and great tsunamis wreaking havoc, killing thousands and then some. And then you go on enjoying your meal. Because these people aren't real. You know this. On TV whole cities gets swept away by some flood. It´s TV. It´s make believe in a box. People get robbed on the way home. Schoolchildren sell drugs. This happens all around you. But you don´t worry. It won´t happen to you. Then. It sweeps your legs away and turns your life inside out. Now it´s not a small paragraph in the newspaper anymore.

 

I guess that´s how it goes. If something is to happen to you. Say, you´re at home in your bed, all tied up. The disaster is in the living room happening your wife, one dick at a time.

 

After that, you´re changed. Something´s different. Permanently. It could happen to you. Sometimes, fate shuffles shit your way. So you stop reading the news and flip channel when a news anchor starts talking.

 

I can´t watch porn anymore.

 

It was supposed to be any ordinary breakfast jerk. Some web-page with all these thousands of amateur porn clips.  All these orgies from drunk college parties, grainy and shaky videos with more sound than image. I was halfway there when I noticed the tattoo. I had honestly not seen it. A small frog on the ankle. I could not make out the color. I knew it was blue, with green dots. One guy under. Another over. Forrest fire and hurricane. Some oil-tanker releases oil, disturbing an ecosystem for generations to come. Some disasters you can read about. Others just happen. Two guys inside of your girlfriend on the web. You could not make some disasters up.

 

I finished. Wiped it up. This was the point of no return. The hammer had fallen. Wham!. Everything is different. Permanently. Standing there, in the living-room. Naked down to the ball-sack and a handful paper and cum. My girlfriend on screen getting off. Without a condom.

 

My therapist nods and tells me the time is up and hands me a new prescription.

Scene 3

It´s drool on paper. That's what she called it. All this ranting and preaching and complete lack of character was the complete opposite to what readers wanted.

 

I'm at my first meeting with an editor. It took me long time to get here. All those texts I´ve been sending to the magazines. Not even Playboy wanted anything to do with me. Those many many short stories pushed down on paper. Staying up late at night doing what I love only to be told nobody wanted anything to do with it. My soul on paper. Useless. Proving my dad right once more, as when I got home from high school that last day and he asked me to show him my grades.

 

"Now we even have it on paper that you're a moron.", he said.

 

All those texts I wrote about being trapped in a coffin. Slowly suffocating. Some far off allegorical piece about how we all are trapped in our own way of thinking and life. Yes, I wrote more than one of those.

 

Or the one I wrote about the two clubs. An allegorical piece about heaven and hell and how most people strive to end up on the guest-list entering heaven. And St. Peter, the bouncer, telling each and everyone to fuck off.

 

Or the story I wrote about that woman who had a miscarriage that survived. So she puts it in jar, pokes holes in the lid and feeds it milk and vinegar through a straw. Then it grew up and wrote a story about a woman who had a miscarriage that survived. Really clever if you ask me.

 

She said, the editor, she said, it´s not that it´s all bad. Some parts were alright. But most of it was crap. And the way it was written, had I even re--read it once?

 

"John Milton never wrote any easy to understand texts.", I dared to say.

 

Did I just compare myself to John Milton?

 

"Did you compare yourself to John Milton just now?"

 

Holy crap.

 

Then she goes on talking about the three act-structure and how any writer should make the protagonist a likable person, so the readers can relate to him. To feel and care for him. And I don´t have any climax. Any good story needs a climax near the end.

 

"It´s an auto-biography", I say.

 

Does your life have a climax? Does any? What would it be I wonder?

 

When she brings up Aristotle and something about his poetics, she has lost me completely.

 

All that complaining I do, about how our society is an Everest pile of crap ruled by the media and our mainstream entertainment. That´s gotta go, she tells me.

 

No reader want to be told their life has no meaning. And what´s that shit I write about my father? Some distant cry for help kind of crap?

 

By now, I´m getting up, ready to leave. On my way out, before I close the door, she says, "And please, don´t send us any more of your crap."

 

Don´t call us. We won´t call you.

 

Thank you for nothing.

 

I try to stay positive. Bukowski first published when he was about fifty. But if this is how it is supposed to be, I would rather not be published.

 

"Why don´t you write a crime-novel?", the editor had asked. "Those always sell."

 

Gimme a break.

 

So I threw it away. The novel. My master piece. My piece of crap. My drool on paper.

Stas comes to my funeral, after that he helps me steal a car and drives me out into the desert. Right now, where we are, it´s the end of the road. That´s not a figure of speech.

 

This place, the long black road, it´s not on any map. Someone, somewhere, thought it would be a good idea to build a road straight through the desert.

 

"There", they would say. "Why don´t we build something there?", pointing at the great piece of brown nothing on the map.

 

But somewhere down the line the funds ran out. Or maybe some paper got lost in the shuffle in some city planning office.

 

Me and Stas, we didn´t have enough juice to drive the car back. This was always supposed to be a one way trip.

 

"It´s like being born", Stas would say. After we get pushed out of our mothers birth canal, there is no going back.

 

"This", Stas says while doing a ziggity zag and a boggiewoggie and a bit of cha cha cha.

 

"This is the end of civilization. Right here!"

 

On the other side of the road, ending in a sudden stop like the drop of a cliff, is only nature. Out there by the horizon, the sun is penetrating the clouds, drawing patterns in the sky. It´s pretty the way you´d think of heaven as beautiful.

 

Without this road, the car, me and Stas, you would think this was some other planet. Pictures taken by some suicide spacerobot on Mars or some bombed out leftover from a nuclear holocaust. Planet Armageddon.

 

Stas, doing his balancing act on the edge of the road, holds his arms out Jesus-style, and I ask him, did he bring the water?

 

I´ve heard you can survive without water for three days.

 

Three weeks without food.

 

Stas, with a smoke in his smile, shakes his head. No.

 

After that first week without food in a place like this and you begin to wish you could stop surviving.

 

Getting to where we are right now, we had to pass the signs. Every now and then, all the way from that last turn right down to here, we passed the signs. Saying something like;

 

You now have five miles back.

 

You now have ten miles back.

 

Up until this last sign, the one I´m looking at right now, telling us we´re halfway there. Whatever that means.

 

This is a dead end if there ever was one. Meaning if your car runs out of juice or breaks down out here, you are dead. Sure as a roadkill.

 

"You sure about this?", Stas asks.

 

I gaze across the horizon and the burning desert that goes on forever. If I don´t have any second thoughts now, I know they´ll come around soon enough.

 

I tell Stas, "Even a bird that escapes the cage sometimes long back."

 

And suddenly, I remembered what Stas told me as I picked him up outside the state correction facility. That´s what they call prisons nowadays. I guess that´s what you´d call an euphemism.

 

Anyway.

 

He was standing outside the fence with a bag tossed across his shoulder. No shoes. Stas had stopped using shoes long before I ever meet him. He explained at one time that he knew a guy who loved shoes. And one day, this guy, as he came out of a shoe store with his brand new shoes all wrapped up in a box under his arm, got run over by a speeding car.

 

Now get this. His girlfriend asked the hospital staff to give her his clothes, all cut open by the doctors that tried to save his life. In his wallet was the receipt, and she returned the shoes later that day, for a full refund.

 

That´s people, Stas would say. Always planning ahead. Buying shoes that last. But what if we did not have a future?

 

Everything leading up to this moment, me and Stas, ready to begin our crossing, had something to do with a story.

 

I´ll tell you everything.

 

It began with an editor. And a climax.

Clean sheets. And the smell of stale waiting rooms like in every dentist reception you could imagine. The hotel feeling of someone, some stranger, slept in this bed right before you did. And when you get declared healthy enough, when you´re cured, someone else will take your place.

 

You could ask me and I would not be able to tell you. But I´m alone in here and the nurses and doctors and what you would call my family had all stopped knocking. Had given up calling through the door. Begging me to open up. To unlock the door and let them in. You need help they´d say. It´s time for your medication. Before people give you medicine, they have to convince you you´re sick.

 

So they gave up. I can still hear people outside coming and leaving. To check if I´ve changed my mind and decided to give in to my state and to do what they tell me to. To accept. That´s all some of these people keep telling me. I have to accept this and that. Drugs going into my system through tubes into my arms. Those people in white robes, clean hands and friendly faces. Their sweet salesman smiles.

 

This nurse. The one who treated me at first, before they had her replaced on her own initiative. Oh how she loved to talk. And that would be fine and all. Any sane person loves a good conversation, right? But she. She does not talk to you as much as she kicks the words into your face. There was something with her. The way she moved. Wobbled. Her voice, like ten thousand fingernails on a blackboard. Her hyena laugh, everything about her - you could tell a mistake had been made.

 

Then came the other. The replacement nurse. Pushing me around. Threatening me with some Mephistophelian horror if I did not behave. She even lifted me clean of the ground once, last time I tried to leave, and shoved me back down into bed. Since then, she insist on jamming the thermometer up my dirt hole. A real nurse Ratchet. I think I love her.

 

You would think someone would tell you why you´re at some hospital. If it weren't for all the people bothering me, I'd stay. I have food here. Not good food, but there is a lot of it. There is a TV in my room with channels I don´t have at home. But then some kid walks in.

 

All young and pimpled. Dressed in this black shirt with some angry guy screaming right at me. Stuff in his nose and ears and everywhere. He did not even bother to not have holes in his pants when he came by.

 

He´d sit by my bed all concerned and ask how I was and stuff like that.

 

And when I asked, he´d simply say, "Well, I´m your son, dad."

 

"The hell you are."

 

All those people. The doctors. The nurses. A shrink and even a guy claiming to be a priest. They all insisted on telling me these things about me.

 

How I lived my life all alone. My wife, they tell me, died last fall. Cancer. They even bothered to get some calamity in here telling me we were related.

 

And why would they do this you ask?

 

I don´t know. But I do know this, you don´t want to be cured if the disease makes you happy.

"Sometime in our life we go through one thing. The moment of our life. We might not even know it, but there it was. The best time of your life and after that it´s all downwards. That one moment. And we spend our remaining time trying to surpass it but we never quite get there. Of course, we still have our hopes up for the future. How are we supposed to know that the best have already been served and we were ignorant enough to fully enjoy? We don´t. So we carry on searching. And then we grow old. We hope, right up untill the very end, we still have that hope of tasting it one last time. And when death comes knocking we shit ourselfes. Going, was that it?

Oh, and, most of these moments people have. They have been on drugs.

What does that tell you about reality?"