Merry Christmas to you, Cheeseball.

The end of the  year is approaching and the end of the decade is on its tail. I thought I might sit down and free write everything that’s happened to me in the last ten years, but I haven’t found the energy yet to do it. I still might. We’ll see.  Next semester I have to write a 40 page critical paper and that shit is terrifying.

I leave for residency early Monday morning and won’t be back for ten days. In between then and now is three houses, three Christmases, presents, workshop materials, packing, facial waxing, and a cheeseball the size of my head.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Word.

A conversation with my mom.

Me: So then on Facebook–

Mom: Wait. What’s a face book?

A little bit in love.

I get attached to my characters. It’s probably unnatural. I probably need help. I think about them all the time. It’s like they have their own show in little shadows in my head saying the things I tell them to say and listening to the music I tell them to listen to and feeling the feelings I put inside of them. I’m a little bit in love with all of them, even the bad ones.

When I get really involved in a story it takes awhile to come out of it. Like, for one or two seconds I am convinced these people are real and they’re hanging out somewhere waiting for me to get there and when I realize where I am my heart breaks a little. Is that crazy? That might be crazy. I feel crazy for saying it.

Maybe it’s a control thing. I know where they are going even if they don’t. Sometimes they trick me and end up in a super random spot, but mostly I’m in on the plan from the beginning and it’s me running the show. I may have to reorganize and I may have to shave some time, but they don’t change. The people they become on the page are exactly the people they were in my head. I love that about them.

Two days later, and my body still hurts.

I reached a point in my mid-20s where I was okay in my mind and okay in my body. I don’t want to call it an accident, but I somehow settled into a nice happiness (at least happiness for me, which isn’t particularly happy so much as less sad). I had quit smoking. I wasn’t drinking as much and if I did, it was an accident. I partied in the sense that I had books to read and school to do and plans to make and so I’d cut myself off after one or two. I’m not saying I didn’t get drunk every once in awhile, but it wasn’t to the degree of sickness.

Look, nature versus nurture. Genes and pre-disposition. I come from an alcoholic background and don’t know if that plays into it or not. Back in the beginning, I used to find it very hard to stop after one drink. When I say it was hard to stop after one, I mean I didn’t stop until I threw up. My body kicked in because my mind was too in love with feeling nothing. I wondered then and I wonder now if I should just stop drinking all together because I don’t know that I can contain it.

For the last year, I’ve felt like I’m in a halfway zone. I’m not as out of control as I was back in my late teens and early 20s, but I’m not exactly as balanced and harmonized as I was in my mid-20s. The fact that I haven’t worked in a year is a hard burden to bear.

I realize I am pursuing some dreams right now, and that is all good and wonderful and yummy, but the fact remains that I have financial responsibilities and calling my relatives to ask for money and filing my unemployment claim every week and sending resumes and sending resumes and sending resumes is difficult. A year ago I was begging for time off to write and work with dogs. And now I am begging for income.

We had a big party Saturday night. I drank almost an entire bottle of wine and then followed up with some hot rum something or other that was delicious. I kept drinking and drinking and drinking because I never felt like it was enough. I drank so much because I was sad, I am sad, and I am full of despair for the future.  I think back on it and I’m fairly certain I was one of the drunkest people at my own party. Sad. It’s getting harder to stop after one again and that is really freaking me out.

In the parking lot at L.A. Fitness

9:30 AM The guy in the car next to me chugged a beer, stuffed the empty can into a plastic bag, shoved the bag under his seat, got out of his car and went in for a workout.

The Mullet Guy

The problem was that guy had a mullet and we were miles away from anyone rational.

“It’s just ten years,” this dude was saying. “Ten years isn’t that much.”

The dude was a friend of the guy with the mullet and the guy with the mullet was with my friend and my friend may or may not have recognized the haircut as a mullet. A damaged childhood can do that to a person.

So the dude was trying to convince me that it was ok for us to have sex out in the desert because even though he was 29 and I was 19, ten years was no big. In my head I was like, bro, it’s not the age difference, it’s that you’re not hot.

I thought I was going to be hanging out with my friend but she was hanging out the guy with the mullet (also ten years older) and so whatever. I just went because the real reason I was in town wasn’t calling me back and I was tired of his shit in the way that meant I was completely obsessed with him and hoped he’d call my house, find out I was out, wonder where I was and who I was with and become insanely jealous.

The mullet and my friend were involved in heavy petting, which was rapidly leading to making out, which was turning the sharp corner to a hand job. Meanwhile, this dude was sitting on the back of his tailgate with me huddled up between his legs telling me that this other guy I was obsessed with was “crazy” for not being out with me. Then he started in on some sad song from his past and I was no longer interested in any of it.

I don’t remember how we decided to drive out to that wash and I don’t remember how we decided it was time for us to go back into town. It was just one of those things you do in a small town. You go somewhere and then you leave and go somewhere else (e.g., Wal-Mart, the island, Hastings).

Thursdays are green.

I always think of things to write when I’m driving. So, like, this afternoon I had this one station on and a Beach Boys song came on and I remembered this guy I knew told me a story about him and his mom singing it in karaoke. Just then, right when I flashed on that, something else popped in and I thought YES! But now I seem to have forgotten it.  The scene in my head was yellow and sunny, which makes sense since the Beach Boys are yellow and sunny kind of band except that Brian Wilson is crazytown in his brain.

In high school, my 11th grade chemistry teacher was fond of telling students that she assigned colors to days of the week. It wasn’t just that Tuesday was gold.  Tuesday was gold because Tuesday was gold and anyone who didn’t know that just didn’t know anything.  Her legs would sometimes bleed for no reason and she smelled like old, but the color theory was interesting. She had her own mind, her own way of thinking, and I did awful in her class and I didn’t like her as a teacher, but I give her credit for barreling through 30 some odd years of high school chemistry.

Yeah, I could use a tape recorder. I could call myself and leave voicemails with ideas. Blah, blah. I just don’t. I do keep a notebook in my bag and write stuff down on occasion.

Nine Ways to Begin Writing

(From Poets and Writers)

A line: That’s the trash. They’re just taking out the trash.

A list: tumbleweed, heat, wild fires, wet dirt, tail gate, smoke rings, empty apartments, Viagra, five, driveways, air conditioning, wood polish, priests, red eyes, Jack Daniels

A title: Devil Town

A character: a narcissist and an intellectual walk into a bar….

A situation: suicide

An event: funeral

An image: a plate in the sink with dried ketchup

A subject: redemption (that one works)

An oddity: breaking into a dead man’s apartment through an open window

Poop on a leaf

Despite the fact that I live in Arizona and that everything here dies between the months of June and September, I have three trees in my backyard that drop their leaves. Twenty miles north of us is desert, yet for the last three days I’ve been in my yard raking mother fucking leaves. My dog follows me around as I do this and when I ask her if she’s having fun, she looks at me and wags her tail.I say, you know something? I am not having fun. I am having an allergy attack and then I am having back pain and then I am angry that I seem to be the only person who has lived in this house that recognizes the climate in which we live.

My dog likes to poop on things. She’s done it all her life. When she was a puppy and we were house breaking her, she would poop on top of books we left on the ground, on top of piles of laundry, in shoes, and so forth. Of course this was super annoying. I had to throw out books and shoes and various items of clothing all the time and it used to frustrate me that she couldn’t figure out to do all that outside.

This morning when I went outside to clean up the yard (must do this everyday because of flies) I noticed all her poop was on the outer edges of all the piles of leaves. It was almost cute.

(PS – I stared at this for awhile trying to figure out better transitions, but couldn’t…so…anyway…)

I think Justin Timberlake has a new song with references to fast food.

Pier 1. Get out of my face. I want those candles over there on clearance. I don’t want a basket. I don’t want to open a credit card. What’s the interest rate on that credit card? You don’t know? I’ll give you a hint. It’s at least 30%. Merry Christmas. Your credit will go in the shitter.

I’ve been watching Parks and Recreation on Hulu. Love. LOVE.

Today I crafted a wreath made from odds and ends, and I was proud of myself for my thriftiness and creativity. OK, the bow is crooked. OK, nothing on it matches. Anyway, it was fun. I suggest you try it.