The Delivery Guy
By Mikel K


In the beginning all men were created ...

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, "here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools,
Brainwash education to make us the fools.
Hate is your reward for our love,
Telling us of your God above. --Bob Marley

”ANGER IS AN ENERGY...” – John Lydon

At the vet today, I met a couple who had brought an ill pet squirrel to the vet. Several years earlier, the squirrel had gotten thrown out of a tree by its mother because it had a club foot. The couple said that the squirrel was now much like a cat and that the couple’s cats, dogs and birds got along real well with the squirrel.


“Why can’t we be friends...?”—War




“I’m down here at the bottom, looking for a job that I don't want."







Copyright 2007 By The Author

"Have you ever seen God on the bottom of your foot?"

I was seated in the back row of the anonymous place, slouched over, head in my hands, hiding tears, hating life, hating everyone and everything on the planet, hating everyone and everything in that room.
Thirty-four years of living life on my terms, had brought me to this lonely, angry moment, to this lonely, scary place; and then, this twisted mother-fucker, with hair to his ass, who was wearing a biker style leather jacket, started to talk.
"I think that God is everywhere and in all of us. I don't think that one God takes precedence over another God. If there is a God, it is a kind, caring, loving God. I can't buy Christ over Krishna. I can't buy Krishna over Allah. Allah and Buddha are one and the same. There is one God and she loves me. He loves you, too."
This guy wore John Lennon specs. He had musician written all over him and what he had just said was exactly what I had needed to hear right at that moment. No one there could see it in my eyes, but I was sitting in that small room, every day at 5:45 p.m., for an hour, listening to the experience, strength and hope of complete strangers, because I was trying to find the reason why I should not put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.
And, finally, after many, many meetings over many, many months, someone had, finally, raised their hand and had said something that made sense to me. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone in my thoughts. Suddenly, I was not alone in what I had come to perceive as a very sick and twisted world that I did not have much of a part being in.
This guy called himself No George.
No George was his punk rock name. You usually think of punk rockers as having colored hair, no hair or a mohawk, but No George was a punk with long hair. No George was a walking oxymoron, but he made sense to me.
"God is on the bottom of your foot. God is in your nostrils. God is up your butt, for God's sake," he said and I breathed a further sigh of relief.
No George had the whole room in a tizzy. I could see that he was pissing some people off, but, he was making sense to more people. I believe that many of us were sick and tired of having God shoved up our ass. We were tired of being told that God was going to send us to hell for not following the rules and regulations of other men. We were tired of feeling guilty for everything that we did with the alleged eyes of the Lord upon us.
In our hearts and minds, we felt that God probably wasn't an asshole, but that wasn't the message that we were getting from the priests and preachers.
According to them, God was out to get us.


Dose....

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon.
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
When you coming home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time time then.
--Harry Chapin

Some people call me the pizza boy. I call myself the delivery guy. Really, I'm a writer, but I go door to door with food to pay the rent and to make sure that the kids get all the sugar that they can, in the form of cereal, candy and sodas. You know how kids are: they love sugar. I love my kids. If I die tonight, before becoming the rich and famous writer that I think God intended me to be, I will die happy.



Tree...
“A working class hero is something to be...”—John Lennon

“Don't blow it all on the pizza boy, honey.”
She comes to the door covered in dust, obviously renovating the house to cash in on some big re-sale bucks, but she still wants change for her twenty on a $15.60 pizza. Where I come from, that is called cheap or do you sense some lack of gratitude on my part on this fine Saturday evening?
Saturdays are shit for pizza delivery.
I will make 50 or 60 bucks tonight. Last night, I made $115. Of course, I ran my ass off to make it, and tonight I will take it relatively easy, sit on my ass a lot more, and create great works of literature.
That's an advantage to this pizza delivery job. I can write whenever I feel like it. I can pick my nose whenever I feel like it. I can, basically, avoid shithead restaurant owners and power hungry bonus seeking cock-sucker restaurant managers for most of the work night.
And, I have minimal interaction with the customer.
I knock on his or her door, hand whomever the pie, and I’m gone. The customers are as glad to be rid of me, as I am to be gone from them. I don’t have to spend an hour or so with them like the waiter that I used to be, kissing their ass, bowing to their demands. I’m still stuck in the sick and sadistic restaurant industry, but not as a penguin looking poor boy.
I think that I would drive a steak knife through someone’s throat, before I would put up with the bullshit that one human being gives another human being just because they are “the customer” and you or I am the waiter, or as they are called now “the server.”



Foreplay…
“Old man take a look at my life...”—Neil Young

After you die and you are standing in front of your God, do you think that he will ask you how much money you accrued, how many houses, how many swimming pools or how many Mercedes you left behind, or will your maker be more interested in how you treated your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your neighbor, your friend, your fellow man and woman? I’m not sure where this thought comes from, but it makes sense to me. My son says that it comes from your bible.
Sometimes, I pull my truck over to the side of the street, hit the flashers and write, right there in traffic. Sometimes, I write at the red light. Sometimes, I even drive and write, but like using the cell phone or looking at a map, while driving, this is risky.
Years ago, when I was leaving for college, I told my old man that I was going to be a writer. He said that writing was a tough game, that only one in a million make it, and that he didn't think that I had what it took. My old man thought that I should join the army or get some corporate job that had a pension. My old man was up there in years when he had me. All he could think about was retiring. My old man died of a heart attack while on the way to the job, still thinking about retiring.
All I've ever been able to think about is being a writer. A lot of things got in the way, though. Like that hallucinating hippy band once said, "lately, it occurs to me what a long strange trip it’s been."


Fiver
“Lose your dreams and you will surely lose your mind, ain’t life unkind...”—The Rolling Stones
…………………..
"Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end.
-- "One Tin Soldier," Song in the movie Billy Jack by Coven

The gang is gathered at Café Scene Man. There is Lewis the Pill, a condescending intellectual who was too smart to graduate from any college. He has at least a Master’s Degree in Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Politics, Economics, Science, Math, A.A. and Home Economics in his own mind. The fucker has read damn near every book there is. I love him and I hate him. I love his left wing social theories that postulate that everybody is out to get us, or more aptly that everybody is out to get him and that we, and he, are getting screwed by everybody.
Lewis the Pill is an expert at everything. He has a self-learned opinion on it all. He is never wrong. And he likes to tell people that.
“Hey, I am Lewis,” Lewis will say to you, when he first meets you, “and I am never wrong.”
Lewis will never shake your hand, even if he is dating you, making love to you for a soulful soul mate eternity, or just fucking the piss out of you for one night, or a weekend or two, because he is sure that some terrorist somewhere has figured out how to spread death in some sort of a disease transmitted via the handshake.
In his next breath, The Pill, would tell you that he is half Indian and half Jew and that that makes him a “Sue Jew,” and “how are you,” the condescending fuck would say, next, and as soon as he had picked your brain and was burned out on your intelligence, would walk off laughing like a madman, leaving you to wonder what had just occurred.
It was impossible, after encountering The Pill, not to ponder the deeper meaning of our existence. It was as if you had just ran into the next generation of merry prankster, only this generation were clean and sober survivors of deep pain and suffering that would have killed the average man or woman, though it wasn’t readily apparent at first glance.
Also in attendance at McNally’s, was Wayne in Perpetual Pain. We call Wayne "The Priest," because, if we had a church, Wayne would probably be the head of it. The Priest is sort of a poet, like The Pill, and a fucking comedian to boot. The Priest has all these twisted impressions. The Priest can be a soldier. The Priest can be a drag queen. The Priest can be a drag queen who wants to be, or once was, a soldier.
The Priest can and will look you straight in the face with those big blazing green psychotic eyes of his and tell you that there is a no kiss no tell policy in the U.S. Armed Forces and that you should be careful about bending over to pick up a bar of soap in any branch of the services, as well as West Point, the other military academies, the YMCA and on Boy Scout camp outs.
“Honeee, pleeeez,” The Priest will scream after delivering this information to you. And then, if you are not careful, The Priest will kiss you, on or near the lips, and say, “I now pronounce us man and man.”
Then, there is Scratcher, the Irishman. Scratcher used to do manual labor for a living, but his first love was always beautiful women and, to his way of thinking, heavy breathing was better than heavy lifting, so he studied the issue and came to the greater conclusion that the occupation that allowed him the greatest access to fine babes was photography. Now, Scratcher has a studio and all these incredibly, exteriorly, beautiful women come inside his doors, slip down from their high heels, slip out of their slip and the rest of their clothes and pay Scratcher big bucks to take their picture.
What a man. What a scam.
These guys are helping keep me sober, though. I have surrounded myself with them. We meet for not only an hour at the anonymous place, but we meet at coffee shops for sandwiches and conversations. We meet at the gym to lift weights, together. We meet at midnight, under the stars to stare at the moon and remind each other how lucky that we are to be sober, how lucky we are to be alive.
If I just went to the anonymous place for an hour, each day, and that was it, I might not stay sober. And to not stay sober is to die. These guys are keeping me alive. I am keeping them alive.

It was Thanksgiving, yesterday, and me and the kids went to Michelangelo’s house. Michelangelo and I met in a bar, seventeen years ago. I was hanging out, smoking a pack of cigarettes and guzzling Jack Daniels and cheap beer, checking out the band onstage and the ladies around me, when Michelangelo strolled up, a complete stranger, and asked me if I had a joint.
I liked his approach and I said "yes," and then pulled a joint out of my cigarette pack and fired that bad boy up right there inside the club, while the band played on.
Michelangelo and I smoked it up that night and then the following day I again ran into this quirky bald fellow, when I was wandering around the part of town known as the mid, engulfed in yet another painful hangover.
Michelangelo, it turned out, was an artist. I had always wanted to hang out with artists. I thought “businessmen” in three piece suits were shmucks, conmen and criminals, anything for a buck type beings, but that artists must be pure and driven by more than material gain. It was my notion that artists were driven by passion, not by profit. During that second meeting with Michelangelo, he showed me a painting of his, that he had called, "Corporate Dickheads In A Blender.”
The green, blue, white, and blood red psychotic, sort of psychedelic painting was hanging on the filthy falling down wall of a dilapidated dump of a dwelling that Michelangelo shared with a young man who wanted nothing else out of life but to get his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone, and a wild and eyed crazy human being, who seemed desperately intent on consuming more drugs, on any given day, than Hunter S. Thompson had done in his whole career of writing about it.
The painting hid a nasty stain, just lying there, and added an intense abstract feeling to the surrealistic space that I was standing in.
The only piece of furniture that these three refugees from “the god forsaken fucking forlorn world of nine to five numb and dumb normalcy,” as Michelangelo put it, was a large, filthy plastic black trash can that was very empty inside, but was, for some strange reason, surrounded by hundreds of crushed and mostly empty beer cans and several thousand cigarette buttes.
Why weren’t the cigarette butts and empty beer cans inside the trash can?
Michelangelo’s upstairs neighbor was a seven foot too drag queen. “Mikel, mikel,” screamed the drag queen, one day, at me as I was walking along the sidewalk. I had met the drag queen at the punk rock club, the night before, but since I had entered my near usual blackout, I didn’t remember the meeting.
“My name is Ru Paul,” said the man after I had ascended the stairs to the porch, where he stood amidst wild plastic dolls and fully lit Christmas lights in July.
Ru Paul turned out to be way more than just a drag queen, I would learn after hanging out with him for several years in Atlanta. He was an intelligent, ambitious human being with a plan, a dream and, more importantly, a plan of action for how to make his dreams come true. And at that time he was, also, a heavy drug user, who gave me my first hit of LSD.

“One toke over the line, Sweet Jesus, one toke over the line...”
—Brewer and Shipley

Inside Michelangelo's apartment, there was also a large and continually growing pile of marijuana roaches which circled a large filthy bong that emitted an odor indicating that the bong water might not have ever been changed.
The beer cans and the cigarette butts that littered the nasty hardwood floor next to the trashcan indicated that either the inhabitants were serious slobs or perhaps that they were making some sort of intense anti-social artistic statement that I couldn’t yet understand.
Michelangelo told me that when he was sixteen, that he had laid a piece of blank white canvass on the grass out in the front yard of his mother’s house and had gone upstairs to his bedroom and threw balloons full of paint at the canvass and the result was the painting that I just told you about called “Corporate Dickheads In A Blender.”
I was impressed by this; such uncontrived, unpretentious art. How refreshing.
My thought, previous to this moment in time, was that art was created in the boring confines of a stifling studio and was snatched up by rich assholes, who would charge us to see it at some sterile museum where armed security guards would hover over us, telling us to be quiet whenever we whispered and would inform us that bubble gum wasn’t allowed in the gallery even if it was a toothpick that I was chewing on. And then the gallery would sell the art years later, no cut for the artist, no more love for the sweat and blood of the artist than they have for their stock broker.

"I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Dont know what I want but
I know how to get it"—The Sex Pistols

The Pill was trying to explain the history of the Anti-Christ to us. He said that he had seen some great documentary on it, recently. We wouldn't buy into The Pill’s topic, today.
Sex is what we wanted to talk about.
Why is it that all guys want to talk about is sex? Guys are, always, either bragging about how they got laid last night, trying to stick their finger under your nose to make you smell the alleged lingering stank or they are talking about how they are going to get them some pussy, tonight, or how they really need to get some pussy soon, etc., etc.
Normal sex talk wasn’t good enough for The Priest.
Today, The Priest was talking about how and why some women like to take it up the ass. Scratcher said that he didn't like to go there, that once he did all sorts of weird doors were opened. The Priest said that he liked to open the doors, that door opening was what it was all about. While The Priest was explaining his anal theories, I was thinking about Michelangelo and all that he had meant to me.
Michelangelo was the one who had turned me onto the old school New York City graffiti artists. Michelangelo had taught me that a rich man had his billboards and his television screens, but that a poor man could reach the masses with a can of spray paint and some well placed tags. Michelangelo was still smoking pot and drinking beer. Michelangelo was a heavy drinker, but I don't think that he is an alcoholic like me. He seems to be able to handle it. What really baffles me, though, is Michelangelo’s cigarette habit. Me, I was always lighting up, a pack or two a day, coughing blood after a good bender. I was never able to be moderate at anything related to drugs or alcohol. Michelangelo seems to be able to take it or leave it when it come to cigarette smoking and not go over the edge when it comes to booze and drugs.
I had to leave it.



Sex...

"Freedom's just another word for…"
--Janis Joplin

A homeless guy is playing tennis ball with my dog. I have my dog chained to the USA Today Tomorrow and maybe Yesterday newspaper box, while I drink coffee inside the coffee house and rewrite this fucking book. The homeless guy looked like he was in great pain until my dog’s ball rolled over to his feet. Then, he smiled at the ball and he smiled at my dog. The two of them, man and dog, had great fun rolling the ball back and forth. My dog is a tennis ball addict. He really needs twelve step help with this issue. Is there a doggie anonymous for canines that are addicted to tennis balls? Would the dog go if you told him that he had a problem and needed to go?



Severe...

Oh yeah life goes on.
Long after the thrill of livin is gone
Oh yeay say life goes on.
Long after the thrill of livin is gone, they walk on.

-- John Mellencamp - Jack And Diane


When somebody orders a medium, plain pizza, I know that I am going to knock on the door of a cheap mutha-fucka. Sure enough, the short, fat, bald, four-eyed puke hands me a ten for the $8.85 pizza, and says, "keep the change" like he has just discovered the cure for the cancer that eats at his asshole.
God bless America. My last delivery is pregnant with her third child, and though it wasn't "planned," they are going to keep the baby. God bless her. To kill it, might have made things easy, like eating meat instead of vegetables. I could have killed my son. His mother and I considered it. I still have the ultrasound picture of my son waving at me from inside his mother's belly, the ultrasound picture that made me glad that we didn't decide to abort the boy. I'm talking choice, here, and I think that the kid's mom and I made the right choice, though things between us have not always been easy.
The girl that I delivered a pie to after that was like a year or two older than me: I would have banged her, but she barely opened the door. It's o.k., though, I didn't have to fuck her, she tipped really well.
Ate…
"Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes."--Tom Petty

I saw five older lesbians walking towards downtown, tonight, and I thought about how they don't have to worry about getting pregnant or if their kid turns out to be a bum. My dad was sure that I was going to turn out to be a bum. Instead, I turned out to be an alcoholic. A lot of people think that alcoholics are bums. What do you think?
Are there any alcoholics in your family?
Is it in the best interest of the liquor industry to have a very large number of very heavy drinkers running around from liquor store to liquor store to happy hour to beat the clock nights, waking up with blood shot eyes reaching for a bottle of beer or a bottle of booze, or both, to start the day?
I woke up one morning, at about age twenty, not just drunk, but a drunk, a still very young man, with a very bad drinking problem.
In 1981, I bottomed out in Orlando, Florida, just like I had in Tallahassee, Florida, a year earlier. Funny the number of bottoms one can hit; they happen in different places and at different times in your life.
I couldn’t take it in Orlando, anymore. I had just smashed two brand new guitars and had just wrecked another apartment in a blackout. I had a job, but I would only go in on Fridays, when no one else was there, and get my check out of my boss’s drawer. I got away with this not working but picking up a pay check routine for months. I finally stopped doing it, not because they stopped leaving the check for me, but because guilt finally wore me down on the behavior.
I might not have been going into work regularly, but I was a regular visitor to The Orange Blossom Trail, the section of Orlando principally populated by low end strip bars and dead end hookers. I never went into the strip joints. I never bought one of the hookers, but I got some sort of a perverse kick out of fucking with the hookers when I was drunk.
The working gals would come up to my car trying to see if I wanted a date, honey, and I honestly can't tell you where the conversation went after that: one, because I was drunk at the time and, two, because I know that I had no intention of buying a hooker, so what else would there be to talk to a hooker about? I do remember driving off from pissed off hookers, laughing that insane laugh that comes with insane behavior. I'm lucky that I didn't get shot or stabbed down there on the OB Trail. I’m lucky that I didn’t get beat up or get my throat slashed. The Orange Blossom Trail was no place for an ex-frat boy, wanna-be bad ass, when he was drunk, who knew nothing about the streets.
The streets were mean. I was belligerent. I can’t believe that I didn’t get arrested in Orlando. The cards were somehow in my favor, still. They wouldn’t stay that way long. I remember windows breaking. I remember two girls at a pool hall who said they wanted to come over to my place and when we got there said that they had come over so that they could both go to bed with me. That had never happened before and it’s never happened since. I learned that night that one woman at a time is plenty for me.
I called a major airline and told the lady that I wanted a one way ticket to Los Angeles. I landed in Los Angeles with a hundred bucks, not a really smart thing to do, but I made it. Well, sort of. I slept on the beach somewhere between Santa Monica and Malibu that first night. The next day I walked the streets of Santa Monica looking for "for rent" signs.
Someone told me that Al Rubenstein had cheap places for rent and that I could find him at a gym over on Sixth St. I found him. He took my hundred bucks and he gave me a key and directions. The house was old and beat up. It had two floors, each crammed with rooms, each room crammed with a Mexican family or a little old lady living on a social security check. My “room” was the top floor of the house. It was extremely small and very triangular. I had to climb up some sort of ladder like stairs to get to it. It was a dump. My landlord was a slumlord, but I was happy. I had a place to live in Los Angeles. Now, could I find a job?

Numb.


"And start your slaving job to get your pay."
-- Bachman-Turner Overdrive


Last night, I was delivering six fucking pizzas on each run. Tonight, I am leaving the pizza place with one pie at a time. I haven't cranked out any great literature yet, because I have been too fucking busy carrying these pizzas door to door, one at a time. These cock sucker customers won’t all call at once and let me get done with it, they have to all call one at a time, sending me back and forth, back and forth, wasting my time, wasting my gas and putting massive wear and tear on my car.
Some girl from the expensive all girls’ school just called and flipped out because we now charge a 15% gratuity to deliver to her school. Well, think about it, you well-educated, stupid bitch, why do we charge your school 15%? We charge you all it because you and all your sisters are so fucking cheap. This girl is so cheap that she is going to come in and pick up her pizza, instead of having it delivered.
Thank God.
And fuck her.

Nine lives.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
--The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
The “gang” has disintegrated. The “gang” is blown. The gang sucks man. People don’t care about each other. People are fucked. People are fueled by their own egos and by their bank accounts. People start out all nice and friendly, like they care about you, but then, relationships quickly degenerate into the typical human race pattern of how can I use this person, how can I work him or her to get what I want?
Men want to use men to make money. It’s called capitalism. Capitalism is a giant pyramid scam dropped on us by the founding fathers along with the Electoral College, when they, the great men who started our great nation weren’t killing Indians or fucking good looking black female slaves in the ass. Call me negative because you’re too fucking stupid to open your eyes and see what is going on in “your” world and how things got to be the way they are. Tune in and turn on to Monday night football and Hooter’s chicks.
Why do you think that foreigners are kidnapping and killing our journalists, running planes into buildings where thousands of working class heroes are trying to climb to the top of the corporate criminal ranks? Bob Marley is playing right now and he makes John the hypocrite Lennon and Bob the Grossman Dylan look like the pathetic conmen that they and their music was and is.
At least Dylan was a good father. I’ll give him that much. Lennon pulled the fucking typical beatnik loser move movement of blowing off the kid to go “on the road.” Why didn’t the lame fuck pitch a tent and move into Central Park with all his “followers,” as he wrote “Imagine,” and after that so that he could live the lyrics that I assume that he wanted you and me to follow.

“Imagine no possessions; it’s easy if YOU try...”
—the deadest Beatle

Why is it easy if you or I try? Why did Mr. love, love me due the royalties due me stay in the Dakota with his slaves, errrrrrr, servants, running around fetching him tea mate? Why did he keep the hundred and fifty million and not imagine no possessions for himself? Would not it have been just as fucking easy for him to try, as you and I who fell for his lie? Maybe we should call him Sir John to match Sir Dickhead Paul. I’m going to go stick something down my throat and get sick as hell, now.



Stop.

Well that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be...”
—Carly Simon

I’ve got a girlfriend now. I’ve never met her. I’ve never talked to her on the phone. She is my cyber “girlfriend.” We love each other. Or so we say, back and forth in a little box, on the computer screen, in instant messages and in cyberspace emails.
I sort of have trouble with that, with this kind of a “relationship” that is, but my girlfriend says that it will be ok.
Some people believe that Christ rose from the dead; some people believe that Allah is more God than the Christian’s god. Both say that you have to take a leap of faith to be saved, so I guess I have to take a leap of faith to believe in cyber love and to have cyber love.
If this chick, who tracked me down in a chat room and im’d me, is one tenth as good looking as the five pictures that she sent me, then it will be true love. She looks good in a bikini. Her head shot rocks. Her pensive picture makes me contemplative. I think that if we ever meet, we might be together forever.
My online lover is still married, but she is getting a divorce. She came home and found her husband in his and her bed with his secretary. She tells me that, in the divorce proceedings, he is acting like she is the one who was fucking somebody for lunch in their bed. He is acting like it is he who should get the twelve houses and fifteen cars that they have accumulated as a husband and wife team and that she should get a job as a maid at the holiday inn or work her way into a new home of her own as a phone sex operator or waffle house waitress, while he walks with multiple shelters and all the wheels.
I think that they should take out eighty percent of the attorneys in this country and shoot them in the head, starting with this asshole and quickly proceeding to the ones who let the former football player actor walk from the bloody dead corpses of his ex- wife and her then current penis.
Do you do the cyber thing? Ever been to a sub-dom chat room or to a horny hot wives looking for sexy fun, hon? Or have you ever stuck your wandering eyes into a chat room titled “huge titted bww white girl seeks well-endowed young black cop for blow jobs while her hubby is not home?”
Man, you have not lived until you’ve logged on, tuned in and turned on.

Mikelkpoet : You're going where this year, dear; Hawaii?
SweetChildOMine: Lol. We are going; you and me.
Mikelkpoet: Ha ha
SweetChildOMine: I am serious.
Mikelkpoet: We’ll get married on the beach ok?
SweetChildOMine: Ok.
Mikelkpoet: Tee hee.
SweetChildOMine: Will u go to Hawaii with me? I am serious; like in May?
Mikelkpoet: I will go anywhere in the world and beyond with you hon.
SweetChildOMine: Ok then, Hawaii, here we come.

Gosh, I sure hope that my online lover has a good attorney, maybe one of those ruthless guys that I talked about a minute ago, before we shoot him. I’ve never been to Hawaii.



Retreat.

“I’ve paid my dues, but I can’ t pay my tab."
--Stevie Tombstone, the American singer, songwriter, who is a cross between Johnny Cash and Johnny Rotten.

I haven't been writing much, lately. Today, I washed and dried my clothes at a Laundromat. It was sort of a new experience; I haven’t had to do such in awhile.
Last week, I moved out of the household that I had been living in for the past seven and a half years. The way it went down wasn't all that pretty. I spent an hour and a half handcuffed in the backseat of a police car. I spent ten minutes in a jail cell. Before I could make my second collect phone call from the cell, the officer who brought me in was letting me out.
The cop was pissed off. For an hour and a half he had asked my son's mother and her boyfriend if they wanted to press charges and for an hour and a half, they had said yes. Then, perhaps, when it occurred to them that the time would come where they would have to stand in front of a judge and match their story to mine, they changed their minds. This is what I was thinking, anyway, as the cop let me out of the back of his car. The kids' mother told the man who is the kids' other dad that she let me out of jail because of the kids. I learned some valuable lessons from this sober experience about where my anger can take me. It can take me directly to a jail cell, just like my alcohol and LSD used to. Anger can take me away from my kids. I have to stop allowing other people to push my buttons. Somehow, I have to learn to control my anger.
Just because you make me feel threatened or insecure, does that give me the right to lay my hands on you? Just because you call me an asshole, maybe even because I was one, does that give me the right to take you to the lawn and drag your face across the grass? Does my anger give me the right to break a beer bottle over your head or put out a lit cigarette in your eye?
I used to think that the answer to these questions was yes.
I was trained to think that the answer was yes.
"Real men circle up and settle their differences," my father had told me over and over in his gruff Irish accent, the smell of the beer and whiskey on his breath slapping me in the face. I started fighting in the second grade. Regularly, I would come home from school to my mother with my Catholic school uniform torn and bloody. I don't remember her getting mad. Maybe she bought into my father’s theory that real men settle their differences with their fists.
I tried to settle an issue with my son's mother's boyfriend with my fists. 911 was called, as well it should be. I don't want to go there, again. I don’t want my history to repeat itself. I am teaching my kids to walk away from fights. I am teaching my kids to talk their way out of a potential violent encounter. I am teaching my kids to go get a teacher, to go grab a cop if necessary to avoid a fistfight.
Violence begets violence.
It is a lousy cycle.
You beat up the bully, today; a bigger bully comes along, tomorrow, and wants to beat you up, thinking that you hold some sort of an invisible trophy that he thinks that he should hold. Live by the sword, die by the sword means exactly that. I don’t keep a gun in my house or on my person, at this point in time, for a reason.
John Lennon should have kept a gun on him, in his house, and in his limousine. If he had, maybe he would be writing songs today.
I figure, though, that if I had a gun around, that it would be used to settle arguments that could more easily and more expediently be settled without it.
A gunshot can be so permanent.
Of course, I am totally in favor of the people having the right to bear arms. Someone told me, once, that Hitler didn’t want the people to have guns.
Fuck Hitler.
I think that every woman in America should have a handgun in her purse, when walking the streets of the United States of America, a shot gun by her front door, a machine gun by her bed and that she should be well-trained in the use of all three.
Just like man once kept the vote from woman, and kept her bare-foot and pregnant in the kitchen, most men today don’t want a well-trained, well-armed female populace. If women were armed and dangerous, because they were trained to use their weapons, men couldn’t beat the shit out of their “loved” ones as often, rape strangers, kill their wives or girlfriends and then buy a fucking evil criminal attorney, who would do anything, represent anyone, not in the name of justice or even fairness or common decency, but for a buck, a dollar bill, a greenback, baby.

Heaven.

“Written word is a lie.”—John Lydon

I just took a piss. For some reason, while I was urinating, I started thinking about a dead American journalist, a man who was killed by cowardly assholes, referred to in the media as “terrorists.” The therapist with whom I just started, advised me not to return to the jiu-jitsu mat. He said to me, “are you scared of anything?”
I said, “well, I’ve had two guns pulled on me, and screamed, "fuck you shoot me, asshole, to the cop," who pulled a gun on me, in the process of arresting me, and "shoot me, you fucking pussy, to the bully doorman,” who pulled a gun on me, on the sidewalk outside the club that he worked at, his motive, I guess, being to show me what a badass he was. I’ve had a knife or two yanked out and pointed at me and screamed, “rip my heart out you cock-sucking bastard, stab me you fucking pussy.”
In retrospect, I can see that that was not the best behavior to exhibit in any of those situations. If it was me who had been standing there in front of me listening to me screech like an asshole, I probably would have shot or stabbed me.
I then lifted my right pinky into the air to show Mr. Therapy the tender finger that four bouncers had broken on one of the many, many occasions that I was thrown out of a club of music in drunken years past, allegedly pursuing a story about a band. Of course, and as usual, I had become seriously sidetracked in my pursuit of the story by my insatiable desire for the buzz.
If the dead journalist had known how to bum a cigarette from one of his captors, and put the glowing tip out in the eye of one of the fucking cowards who was holding him captive, and then had gotten quickly behind the prick and choked him to death, and had then moved onto the next one or two pricks and choked them out, his story, as written by him, with proceeds going to him to help him raise his new born baby, might have made it to the cover of The Stoned Roller or Whine Time Magazine with an alive him on the cover, brother.
Instead he is dead.
I’m going to let the new mellow me pill, that my therapist is suggesting that I take for anger, kick in and then go back to the mat. Grappling cops and green berets, legally, on the jiu-jitsu mat, is good for me. I like to fight, but I don’t like to hurt anyone or go to jail for it.
Macho bragging about guns and knives being pulled on me and how toughly I reacted is pathetic. Men, and women, who are really bad, don’t tell you that they are bad. You find out that they are bad when it is entirely too late for you to do anything about it. Wham, you are either very quickly on the pavement or perhaps even faster finding your self knock, knock, knocking on heaven or hell’s door. I'm not a badass; I'm a big mouth.



Truck stop.

“This one goes out to the one I've left behind.”
-- R.E.M.

Since I am out of the house, or maybe because I am, my son’s mother now has an interest in my son, which is good. We’ll see how long it lasts. I am trying not to be bitter or hateful. As an alcoholic, I have been taught that anger and resentment are the number one things that can cause me to pick up the bottle or the blotter again. I don’t want to go back to the insanity, the stupidity, the neurosis, the paranoia. I don’t want to go back to the deep, dark depression, the jail cells and the mental institutions that permeated my existence for so very long.
Her interest might not last, but I am still sober.
Really, that’s all I can do; stay sober.
All that I can do is to work on me. I can’t change her. I can’t change you.


Redemption.

Step One: Admitted We Were Powerless Over Drugs and Alcohol—THE BIG BOOK

Tonight, I feel a loss; a loneliness. Do you know what a sick, sad scary feeling it is to be in a jail cell at 5:10 p.m., not knowing when you will get out, but knowing that at 5:30 p.m. you are supposed to pick your kid up outside a bowling alley?
My kids are more important to me than my anger.
Dear God please remove my anger.
I think that I will go on the internet and find some friendship, someone to talk to, someone, maybe, to love. I don’t like going out anymore. In order to pick up chicks, in order to overcome the Catholic guilt of fucking outside marriage, because the Pope doesn’t want me to, I had to blackout. This lead to some serious pussy, but it also lead to some serious trouble. Since, now, I don’t drink, I don’t blackout and pick up strangers. Isn’t it funny how that works?

Mikelkpoet: Send me a pic, dear?
SweetDrumstick: Ok, which one?
Mikelkpoet: One of you that is clear.
SweetDrumstick: Do you want the one where everybody says that I’m a cutie or the one that might scare you?
Mikelkpoet: Both. Do you have a nice ass?
SweetDrumstick: Ok, but they go no farther than you?
Mikelkpoet: Why is there a market for them?
SweetDrumstick: Ok, you asked for it and yes, I have a nice ass.
Mikelkpoet: I’d like to spank it. Could I?
SweetDrumstick: I've never had my ass spanked, but I do like the sound of that.
Mikelkpoet: Cool. What else do you like and what is your name?
SweetDrumstick: You don't sound like The Poet, anymore. You sound more like the typical chat room male. Be careful, you've got an image to keep up.
Mikelkpoet : I’m just a typical American male who thinks with his cock about his bank account baby.
Sweet Drumstick: A poet and a singer and an ass spanker; sounds interesting. What s your deepest fantasy?
Mikelkpoet: My deepest fantasy is finding a woman who I can love, who can love me, without the fights and jealousies, the temper tantrums over this and that, and the disputes over what color the toilet paper will be, who will love my kids as she loves me. And, I guess, that if you, or I, don’t think that it can happen it can’t happen.
SweetDrumstick: I would love to stay up and talk to you all night, if I didn't have to go to work in the morning.




Lucky 13.

"Who's making love to your old lady.
While you were out making love."
—The Blues Bros.

The pizza business is slow, on this Monday night. No customers of note, just a few cheap bastards. I mean, come on honey, do you really think that 75 cents will do me any good? I’ve got kids to feed, a dog that likes to eat twice a day, a frequent shitting cat who needs food and cat litter regularly and a fish that I need to feed every morning.
Last week, one of my regular customers came in to the pizza joint with her son. She looked me deeply in the eyes and told me that her husband was in New York. She rubbed my arm as she talked to me. I started fantasizing that she wanted to suck my cock. The situation baffled me. I liked her husband. He was a decent enough guy. His wife was a real fucking babe, though.
What would I do?
What should I do?
I went on a delivery. When I got back, she was gone. I was relieved. Sometimes if you step back from a tempting situation, that you know that is ultimately no good, and give it some breathing space, God helps you make a decision that you will not later regret.
I delivered a large pizza covered with onions and anchovies, a week or so later to her house. Her husband was on the porch, talking on the phone. I was glad to see him. I was glad that I hadn't fucked his wife.


Share.
“Thank you Lord for letting me see the new day, breath the air of a new day.”—prayer that I learned my second to last time in jail

The second to last time that I was in jail, I was six months sober, and it became painfully obvious to me that, though I had not had a drop to drink in half a year, that there was still something seriously wrong with me and that I needed help. I decided to pray, but I had forgotten the Catholic, The Lord’s Prayer, the Catholic, Hail Mary and that really short, short Catholic, Glory Be to the Father prayer that, as a kid, I liked the most, because it was the shortest one that the priests had been kind enough to offer us for our money in their baskets on Sunday.
There was this guy in the cell next to mine who had gotten to that jail before me, and who was going to be in that jail after me. He had figured out how to get more food out of the guards than they were giving me, and he seemed pretty happy for a man locked in a five foot by five foot cell.
I asked the fellow if he prayed.
He said, “Hell yes, I pray.”
I said “What do you say, when you pray?”
He said that every morning, upon waking, that he said, “Thank you Lord for letting me see the new day, breath the air of a new day.”
Amen, I thought, realizing, immediately, the truth and the beauty in that simple prayer. How lucky I was to still be alive, after all that I had been through in my life, so far. And, for the last ten years; whispering that prayer is how I have started my day.
Speaking of gratitude, it is Thanksgiving eve, and people are tipping like madmen and madwomen; four bucks, five bucks, nine bucks. My customers have a lot to be thankful for: houses, cars, kids. I have a lot to be thankful for: I have a beat up pick up truck, that was brand new when I bought it two years ago, but I have worn it down and out getting these pizzas to you. I have kids to be thankful for. I have my sanity, my sobriety and the fact that I am not in a jail or mental institution to be thankful for.
I didn't think that I was going to get to do the family Thanksgiving thing, this year. I was planning on doing a noon meeting at the anonymous place and then dining with the recovering people, but my son pitched a fit.
“But, but, but it's Thanksgiving, Dad," he moaned to me, when I told him what my Thanksgiving plan was.
His mother called awhile ago, wondering where the kids were. I had already taken them to their grandmother’s house. She said that she was also calling to find out what time "we" were eating.
I said, "We? I didn't think that I would be joining you this year to give thanks?" Her reply was, with that sardonic phone smile that only she can offer up, that if I “sat way down at the other end of the table, it would be fine!” I told her that I would, but that I would be throwing soggy stuffing and crisp turkey bones at her throughout the entire meal.
Regret.
“AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO...”

There is this nasty, nasty, mean old man who comes into the pizza joint, almost every night. He always orders the same thing: a large cheese pizza and a diet coke. He sits in the smoking section, which is the last three booths in the back of the place and smokes between eighteen and twenty-three cigarettes a night. I have emptied this guy’s ashtray many, many times.
As he eats and smokes, this man reads a book.
And he coughs.
And he coughs.
He coughs this nasty cough of death, a sick, scary, emphysema, soon to be cancer cough, a wheezing, nearly choking him to death, mean, ugly cough, like Satan is trying to get the hell out of his throat.
One night, one of the waiters who gets stuck waiting on this cock sucker night after night told me that this dirty old bastard never tips. I didn't like this old man before I heard this, but once I found out that he camps out in one of those back booths night after night, day after day and lays no cash on the table for the person whose table he is hording, no cash on the table for the person who is running back and forth to get this old man his diet coke refills and whatever else the fuck he wants like an unpaid valet, I had absolutely no fucking no time for the cheap, smelly bastard. I started hating him even more intensely than I had before.
I started praying to the Lord, as I understood him, that the emphysema would get him fast, before he coughed in my face and maybe passed the death onto me.
Is that rational?
I mean the dirty old bastard was trying to kill himself, why should I let him take me with him? It had taken me six long painful years full of coughing blood on endless hungover mornings of darkness and depression to beat my above a pack a day cigarette habit. Why should I have gone through all that pain and misery to let this useless fuck’s second hand smoke kill me?
Can you give me a good fucking good fucking reason why adults can blow second hand smoke into their children’s lungs?
You can't.
You fucking can’t.
The way I look at it, this bastard is polluting the air that I breath, trying to kill himself and in the process might take me and my kids with him. I don't think that he has the right to sit in the pizza joint or any restaurant on the planet and blow out all that death, blow out all that second hand smoke.
He has a death wish.
I don't.
The people who he should take with him are the assholes that sell and profit from cigarettes.
The other people who work at the pizza joint call this guy "the usual." I call him "the fucking asshole.” He needs to clean the back of his pants. Is that shit or a tobacco stain that I see on the on his rear end?
Enterprise.

“Some men were born into the good life, some men
get it anyway, any how.”
—Bruce Springsteen

A weird feeling of resentment went through me on my last delivery, tonight. I brought five pizzas to this guy who was about twenty-two years old. He was living in a brand new house. Out in front of his new house, was a brand new SUV and a brand new BMW.
There were a bunch of people gathered in his brand new dining room. A fat red-faced man grinned at me from the doorway to the kitchen. He was drunk as hell. The refrigerator was brand new. The dishwasher was brand new. The toaster, the microwave, the blender, the washer and the dryer were brand new. Everything was brand fucking new and I figured that the drunken old man must have had something major to do with this kid having everything so fucking brand new.
Nobody ever bought me a house.
Nobody ever bought me a car.
Fuck, nobody ever bought me a toaster. The one that I have now, I bought for two dollars at a garage sale.
I’m so deprived.
Why were some people born into wealth and others into a life of work that doesn't pay shit? Why do some guys and or girls inherit hotel chains, airplanes, limousines and all I got from my old man was dandruff, a bad temper and a drinking problem?
The kid tipped fourteen bucks on his five pizzas which was nice.
You have to be happy where you're at, be optimistic and challenged by the future.
I will have a house someday.
And so will you.
Yeah, right.
Ten percent of the population controls ninety percent of the wealth. Do you think they are going to give up any of it anytime soon?


Evolution.

“Everybody’s had to fight to be free...”—Tom Petty

Whoa. Whoa. The usually cheap wanna-be surfer boy with the dazzling white teeth just came up with a three dollar tip. He must have hit his head on a rock at the beach or is contemplating suicide and is giving all his money away. Cheap tippers usually come in packs. It's like all the people who are cheap have each other’s phone number and call each other when they decide to order food to the door and they cheap tip in packs.
Did I tell you that besides pizza, I also deliver Chinese food? Chinese food customers usually tip better than pizza customers. I think that this is mainly because the total bill for Chinese food is usually higher than it is for pizza. I get paid more per hour by the owner of the pizza joint, though. Some of the other drivers at the Chinese place say that Chinese people are cheap, but I think that a better word might be frugal.
Chinese people know what it is like to have nothing over there in China, so when they come to this country, they count their pennies and save them. Many Mexicans who come to this country do the same thing.
Why is it that Chinese folk and Mexican people seem to look out for family members better than we in the USA do? Most Americans can't wait to kick their kids out of the house at eighteen years old, using higher education as the excuse. Most Americans stick grandma or grandpa in the sadistic box known as a nursing home to pass their final years. American family members can’t, for the most part, wait to get away from each other. When you see a Chinese or Mexican family eating out at a Chinese or Mexican restaurant, you see three or four generations of family gathered together. How does God look upon you sending your mother or father to an institution because you are too busy or just not interested in caring for them? Of course, this is the same God that fosters “peace” in the Middle East and allows more and more soldiers and civilians to die each day in Iraq.
Immigrants often seem to get ahead faster than those of us born here. They don't have the American chip on their shoulder and think that the planet or the government owes them something just because they were born here. That's what my Dad said, anyway. He ought to know. He was an immigrant.
I left the pizza joint with two pies on the last delivery; both were medium pies, each costing about 12 bucks. The first guy whose door I knocked on was a real boring shmuck; though friendly. He was one of those non-descript people who you find stuck in traffic in the morning, waiting in a long lunch line at noon, and then standing in a long line at the grocery store at 5:25 pm after getting off from work at the same time as everybody else.
I think that my next customer was a lesbian. She wore a pro-abortion t-shirt and had thick, thick glasses on her head. I guess that she was blind, but I would have taken a blow-job from her. We talked for awhile, and she kind of grew on me. Six months ago, she told me, she took up the mandolin, which, I thought was cool as hell and all, being that she wasn't as old as me, but was still not as young as most people who pick up an instrument. It’s not over until it’s over and it’s never too late to try anything.
When I was a kid, my parents tried to get me to learn piano. I went to a couple of piano lessons and I decided that I would rather be out in the backyard playing Soldiers, or Cowboys and Indians. Every time that I hear John Lennon play the introduction to Imagine, I could kick myself in the teeth. Playing Cowboys and Indians lead nowhere, I should have fucking stuck with piano. (Of course, look where Lennon wound up…) I could have written songs that could change the world, change the way people think and feel, not just write this one for a new swimming pool, eeeeh mates, like I once heard that Lennon and McCartney used to do.
I bought my son a violin when he was four or five and had him take violin lessons. My kid tried for over two years to give up the violin, but I wouldn't let him. I said, "you may hate me now, but you'll thank me later." I don't think that my son hates me. When I come home from a hard day's night of banging on peoples' doors and handing them their pizzas or Chinese food, my kid comes running to the front door and gives me a big hug. When my dad came home, I used to shrink back and slip off into the house and hide. The difference between my generation and the last one is that the last one raised their kids on fear and we are raising our kids on love.






“I learned the truth at seventeen...”—Janis Ian

I'm back at the pizza joint, now.
Business is fairly brisk inside the restaurant. There are a lot of singles eating tonight, men eating alone. Do you think that men are getting sick of women?
I do.
I think that women are getting sick of men, too. Most couples that I see act like they are in Vietnam or Afghanistan. There is a vicious battle of the sexes being fought. I don't know why men and women think that they have to hook up. I guess that they are lonely.
I guess they need sex.
I like being alone. There is no one blowing me shit that way. There is no one telling me how to dress. There is no one telling me how to act in public. There is no one telling me where to be when, at what time, and why. And there is no one telling me what color the fucking toilet paper has to be or how much toilet paper to use on my ass.
I once met this person who claimed that most of us are halves trying to hook up with another half to become whole. Her theory was that that wasn’t a healthy way to approach “love.” She said that people need to work on themselves first and become whole, as individuals, and then, and only then, as a whole should we try to pair with someone else who is also whole.
If I am whole, now, and I am not fully convinced of it, Nowhere George played a big role in my development. When I met Nowhere, I hated everyone and everything. I hated God. I hated Government. I hated my mother. I hated my father. I hated my brother. I hated you. I hated me. I haven't heard from No Where in awhile. I wonder what he is up to.



“If I had a car, I’d be in it because I would think
that I was supposed to use it... but if i only have my feet,
I find other ways to get around. If I had a million dollars,
I’d only spend it...I don’t want to hate, I want to love, but it’s so
fucking hard... everyday I pray, but it seems that I
get no help from the man above..—written to a mad,
mean “oi” band c.d. screaming in my ear

There are no pizza delivery orders in the window, tonight. I guess that I can kick back and create some great literature. Before I pull out the notebook and pen, though, I wonder how it makes someone feel when someone else moves into their house and immediately begins to clean and paint the house? Is it like they say to their husband, “Ed, do the people that bought our house think that we are fucking filthy white trash slobs?
Or does the little loving lady say to Ed, “Ed, let’s take the fucking money and run. Ed, now, we’ve got enough money for the box in Florida. Who cares if we sold our home to a fucking coon or a lesbian, Ed, when all our lives we have said that we and God hate coons and lesbians and that over our dead bodies would we let them move into the neighborhood.
Fuck the neighborhood, Ed.
Florida condominium here we come.
Oh Ed; Ed eat my pussy.
Ohhhhhh, Ed. Ed.
I thought that a movie was being shot inside the house at my last delivery. I thought that the big fat fat-head fat head fuck fuckers from Hollywood had invaded, sort of like a west Nile infection and had bought the house for the night, altered everything in and about it, giving it that right look for whatever it was they were looking for in the name of a buck, errrrr, art.
There was a fucking bright light perched in the middle of the street in front of the house, seated next to a donut munching rent a cop. The light blew an intense white light onto the house and over the whole front yard like Jesus had just come back again and lit the whole world on fire for being the piece of shit that it so often was, and is. It turned out that Holly-weird wasn’t making a movie, though. The whole scene was just the result of a couple of yuppies, new to the neighborhood, with a new beamer and a new Volvo neatly and newly parked out front of their new house, who were painting the house that they had just newly bought.
The lady tipped me two dollars, cash, and gave me a twenty-five dollar check for the order. I think that is cheap. Don't you?
Class war.
Hey ho.
Let’s go.
I would hurry to my next delivery, but I know without a doubt, absolutely for sure, that these two assholes are cheap bastards. I think I’ll stop off and put some air in my tires, even though they don’t need it. Then I’m going to take a piss or two even though I don’t need to. Heck, I might even very slowly chew and intensely spit out a whole pack of gum before I get back on the road. And, basically, I ever chew gum.
I guess that these two slime bags don't like to cook, because they call me every fucking night. I know that they have money, because they have a nice house and two nice cars parked neatly out front: the bigger the house and the nicer the cars, the less that the customer is going to tip. It’s a proven fact, a strict rule of thumb. I’ve done the research and you can trust my report. When I see a new BMW or a new Mercedes parked in front of a new or old house, I know that I am going to get screwed hard up the ass.
Cash-wise, on the tip scene, people with expensive cars are cheap bastards. Rich people, in general, are cheap. I was a valet car parker at an expensive restaurant for two weeks, once, and these fat successful capitalist pigs would pull up in Jags and Lexus’s, go inside and pay fifty bucks for a piece of fish and then come out and hand me a dollar for running my fucking now near fat ass off from one end of the parking lot to the other to get them their expensive fucking car.
These bastards are lucky that I wasn’t still drinking, because, in the day, I would have taken one of those high priced cars out for a long, fast ride and then let that baby burn baby burn baby.
Burn, baby, burn.
Class war?

How do you think that rich people got rich? They got rich by screwing the delivery guy out of cash, jack. Is anything besides ozone and smog trickling down into your neighborhood?

I was right.
The cheap guy, with the big smile, came to the door, tonight, and not his ugly girlfriend. He looked like he was wearing a new shirt. He looked like the type of asshole that you see on elevators in the big downtown business buildings, during the week, wearing brand new looking starched shirts below three piece suits and dog leash imitating ties.
I haven't bought new clothes in years. When summer ends, I break out last year's winter clothes and vice versa when summer hits again. These two cheap bastards, errr customers, always pay with a check and tip in cash, like by handing me a real whole dollar they are doing me some sort of big fucking favor.
This guy’s ugly girlfriend had a new shirt on too. I could see her fat ass parked in front of the wide screen TV.
God, these people make me sick.

Checkout was easy, tonight, because it was such an incredibly slow night. I walked with sixty-five bucks: not bad for the lack of work that I did. I got this party to go to tonight. Scratcher is moving his photography studio into a new warehouse. I know because he got me to help him move, today.
People are always using me for my pickup truck.
Scratcher is always thinking about pussy; I mean always.
What do you always think about?


l si...senor habla palabras de wisdom teeth

It's the day after Christmas. I get to the pizza joint and one of the guys in one of the back booths kind of leers at me, like he wants something and like I am the man who is supposed to get it for him.
I duck into the kitchen to hide from the guy.
I am not ready to deal with a drunk, especially a drunk seeking sympathy and wanting to mooch cigarettes and beer.
The back three booths of the pizza joint are the “smoking section.” Everyday, these three booths get filled up by smelly, self-centered men, who drink alone, smoke alone.
A bath or shower and some soap and deodorant, anytime soon, is not likely for those polluting, uh, inhabiting this section and a shave will only occur when they get arrested and are issued one of those blades that they can’t kill themselves with by the police.
I mean, on the hierarchy of needs scale, when it comes down to a pack of cigarettes or a couple of razor blades, a serious addiction makes a serious addict’s choice easy: he buys the cigarettes.
After I get composed, you know, put on my lipstick, and straighten my skirt, girlfriend, I come out to talk to the guy.
He comes in almost everyday.
He has nothing new to say.
Life still sucks.
He still wants to know if I can “help him out” with a pitcher or two and are there any cigarettes in the back anywhere: some customer, huh?



“Not everyone can carry the weight of the world…"
—Michael Stipe

“You can get the bright lights, but you won’t get them for free...”—Axl Rose

Nowhere has holed himself up in his room at the dump.
He says that he can’t take it anymore and that he has got to write his way out. He says that he can’t take working nine to five for the rest of his life and that he has got to live his dreams. He is tired of selling guitars and wants to play one for a living, instead of selling them. Nowhere wants to vacate the “music” dives that pay him a six-pack to get up on stage and bleed his heart and soul out to ten or eleven people.

Our great country is “governed” by men who have worked no harder than you or I, but who are worth millions of dollars. They are not in touch with what is going on in this nation and they could care less. Our “leaders” are in bed with the corporate assholes who they claim to be regulating. Let’s hope that there is some earth left for our kids to skateboard on, some air for our grandchildren to breath, after the anything for a buck generation of fat ugly American finally passes.
Don’t you think that it’s stupid that we are now supposed to call Paul McCartney Sir? I do. Don’t you think that it is lame, snotty and stupid that Prince doesn’t allow you to make eye contact with him, as someone once told me? What pathetic bastards.
We, the people, made both of these assholes into “royalty” with our record and c.d. purchases and now these two pricks want to treat us like peasants.
Fuck em.

high five...not to be confused with get high five

“A friend in need is a friend indeed. I watched you smile while you made me bleed.”-mikel k screaming on the k band sober c.d.

Boy, there are some dumb looking people at this party of McNally’s that I’m at. I’m starting to really hate parties. People are so pretentious. They have no genuine interest in you, until they realize that you have something that they want or that can benefit them in some way shape or form.
This one guy has brown make up on and he isn’t even a drag queen. He is holding some girl’s hand. She must be pathetic, hanging out with a loser like him. I’d fuck her though. I haven’t had sex in awhile. I’d fuck just about anything, right now.
Some assholes came to my door, today, holding a bible and tried to sell me a book. They acted like they weren’t trying to sell me a book. They acted like they had come to my door to share their knowledge and appreciation of God with me. I told them that I didn’t believe in the Bible, that it was just an instrument written by some men to subjugate other men; and women.
I told them that I didn’t believe in organized religion, that I was raised Catholic and that I thought that organized religion was a crock of shit and that the Catholic Church was a bunch of brainwashed idiots following cock-sucking conmen. The nuns were mean. You couldn’t leave the priests alone with the choir boys. Their God was a hating God, who thrived on your guilt.
My God, today, was a loving God.
I gave the people at the door five bucks, as an experiment to see if they would leave when I gave them the cash.
They did.
They gave me a book and quickly left.
Praise the Lord.

Sick...
My best thinking got me here, now I need to shut up and listen
.--Twelve step strategy for staying alive.

“Wooooooooooah...listen to the music.”
--The Doobie Brothers

I’ve been told that if you are caught eating meat as an employee of Paul McCartney that you will be fired. If that is true what do you think about that? Aren’t most drummers crazed drunks like Bonham and Keith Moon? Why?

“A boy is born in hard town Mississippi. To find a job is like the haystack needle cuz where he lives they don t hire colored people."
—Stevie Fucking Wonder!!!

Vegetarian thinking almost killed my meat eating. I’m biting into a meatball sandwich, right now, and a young calf with pleading brown eyes is staring at me, screaming as it is slaughtered.
Paul Mac no Donald’s is kicking me off of one of his rock n roll stage hand crews, telling me what to do? Who would survive longer hand to hand, out in the forest or the jungle, or if he was drafted to strap on a machine gun and really fight for his country and not just talk about it: Paul McCartney or Ted Nugent, Ru Paul or Kid Rock?
Hunter Thompson once said that “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Most Americans adhere to a live and let attitude when it come to gays and lesbians, though most churches do not seem to be able to do the same. If cats and dogs and birds can be one with a squirrel, why can t churches show more empathy to the diversity in humanity?
If you ask the average African-American man on the street if he loves the Caucasian man, what do you think will be the reply? Animals and the black man have both been abused by the white man.
I only put three meatballs on my sandwich, today, so I don’t feel as guilty as I could have, say if I had put my usual four, five or six meatballs on the bun. Only a quarter of an acre of rain forest was ruined by some corporate hamburger chain, so that I could have meat in my sandwich. I put lots of green peppers and onions and two or three really thinly sliced tomatoes on the meat: that made me feel much better about having an animal die so that I could eat him or her in a sandwich.
Do onions, green peppers and thinly sliced tomatoes scream and bleed when you kill them? Many black people died so white people could build a free nation. Many black people alive today are still pissed off at white people about this. I have had many black people over the years hold me personally responsible for slavery.
Am I?
heaven...

I used to like to eat big, fat, juicy steaks. I never whipped nobody with a chain and told them to pick cotton. It’s been proven that if you eat more mushrooms than beef that your penis will get harder. I really didn’t think that my dick could get any harder. I used to wake up in the middle of the night having to urinate, but I couldn’t because my dick was so hard. Maybe I shouldn’t eat mushrooms before I go to bed.

“THE QUALITY OF MY PROBLEMS HAS CERTAINLY IMPROVED...”--a twelve step hustle thought

“Well, she was an American girl...she couldn’t help thinking that life was a little bit better somewhere else..,”
—Tom Petty

I didn’t keep the pizza play by play for you tonight, because I delivered Chinese food and not pizza. I worked from 6p.m.until 10:30 p.m. and made 87 bucks.
People tipped real well, tonight, except for one or two assholes. This one prick, who had a real nice house in a real shitty neighborhood, gave me two bucks on a twenty five dollar bag.
What a tight wad.
This loser had the whole interior of his house painted purple, like he was the musician Prince or something.
I hope he chokes on the lo mein.
I got to deliver to this cute as hell punk rock chick, again, tonight. The last time I went to her door, her hair was blue. Tonight her hair was red. This chick is covered in tattoos. She is a major babe. I would bang her in a heartbeat. Hell, I would marry her and cook her fucking breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of her life.
The only problem with our impending, in my brain, romance, is her boyfriend. This guy showed up behind her with the checkbook. Then, he had to go and tip real well: six bucks. He made me feel guilty about wanting to put my tongue on his girlfriend’s clitoris. I hate feeling guilty. It’s the fucking nuns’ fault. The nuns taught me that to even think a sin is a sin and that God is up there in heaven with a chalkboard counting all my sins and marking them down, waiting to send me to hell.
That’s fucked.
The Catholic Church can kiss my ass. My God, today is a kind, caring, loving God. Did I tell you that already? Am I beginning to repeat myself?
My kids are being raised on love, not guilt and fear. Fuck God, if he’s going to be an asshole. I don’t think that God is an asshole. I’m not sure that he isn’t a she.
Who really knows?
You got all these fucking dickheads running around in robes and suits and ties acting like they know more about God than everybody else. Of course, they charge you for the information. Don’t get me started talking about religion. I get really pissed off.
There is truly only one way to meet God.
Die.

Reverend,
He got parking space all over town.
I hear he s pushing people out of the neighborhood,
if you haven’t got the money to pay.
Send me your money and I’ll send you a bible.
Send me your money and I’ll send you a trinket,
The Reverend helping you buy your way into heaven.
It’s a cruel world after all. It’s a cruel world after all.
Ha Ha. Ha Ha. --written while living next to one of the biggest tv churches in the world, watching armed guards shut down the neighborhood on Sunday so people could come in and be on t.v...uh, to pray to the Lord.

“I BELIEVE IF I REALLY LOOKED AT WHAT'S GOING ON I WOULD
LOST FAITH I NEVER COULD RECOVER…"—CAROLE KING


I just delivered a bag to old Mrs. Dunbar.
Early every Sunday morning, and, sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, Mrs. Dunbar orders three Mongolian beef combos and coleslaw from the Chinese restaurant to be delivered to her apartment.
I wasn’t supposed to take Mrs. Dunbar’s order, today, but the other driver, a fellow from Alabama, asked me to. I mention this young man, as being from Alabama, for no real reason, other than that the kid’s mother is from Alabama. Of course, one plus one is two and two people sucking from the same state might could possibly indicate something. (Insert smile here.)
Mrs. Dunbar and her one bedroom apartment stink. And I mean stink. Mrs. Dunbar is nice as hell, but I’ve got to hold my nose while she writes the check or I start gagging. It smells like someone or some bodies are dieing and decaying in Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment.
. It smells so bad inside Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment that you might not even notice it if Mrs. Dunbar died right there on her couch chewing on her Mongolian beef while watching one of those stupid game shows that she always watches.
Today, Mrs. Dunbar had to sit down on her couch to write the check because she said that her legs hurt real badly. She said that she needed to go to the Doctor and get some cortisone shots for her legs. She said that it was her daughter’s birthday, but that her daughter doesn’t ever visit her. Maybe her daughter can’t stand the smell of Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment.

“I can hear you. Can you hear me?”—Michael Stipe R.E.M.

Not everyone that drinks is evil like I was.
I saw this beer bottle on the sidewalk, today, outside the pizza joint and it made me think back to when I started drinking. I was fourteen years old and some kids who I hung out with had stolen a case of warm beer from inside the garage of the house of some old man who lived in the neighborhood.
I remember, almost immediately, puking on my first swallow, but, somehow, I drank two or three or three or four of those warm beers.
I was drunk right away and I got in trouble right away by grabbing the breast of a girl who was a year or two ahead of me in school. She screamed at me and almost beat my ass. There I was drunk and in trouble on my first encounter with alcohol. I should have seen the sign, but I didn’t.

Sometimes, on delivery, I will be polite and wave pedestrians across the street in front of me. Sometimes, if it’s a cute as hell girl, I do this so I can look at her ass as she walks across the street in front of me.
I just delivered to a frat house. Usually, frat boys are cheap as hell. This frat boy just tipped two on a 16.90 bag. Not bad for a frat boy. I used to be in a frat. It was the first time that I went to college and it was in that frat that I became a full blown alcoholic. Not everybody in that lived in the fraternity house drank every day like I did, but in one of those frat house rooms someone was drinking every night and I knew which door to knock on, every night.
On Tuesday, I would drink scotch with Matt Simpson and talk about surfing .On Wednesday, I would drink margaritas with J. R. and talk about stock car racing. On Thursday, I would drink wine with Fred Ledbetter and so on and so forth.
That college town, Tallahassee, Florida, had so many enticements, so many opportunities to help a young college man become an alcoholic: beat the clock nights, happy hours, two for one drink nights, fraternity keg parties, sorority get-togethers, football games, homecomings.

I drank to celebrate.
I drank when I was sad.
I drank when I made an A.
And then, more increasingly, I drank as I nearly flunked out.
I drank on nice days.
I drank when it was dismal out.
I probably would have figured out a way to drink all the time, even if I wasn’t in college, even if I hadn’t joined a frat. I’ve got to stop blaming other people for my mistakes, for my behavior.
So do you.
An interesting thing about joining a fraternity was that the day after you pledged, sorority girls who, the day before, wouldn’t piss on or spit at you, were suddenly naked in your waterbed the morning after a blackout.

“Sex...sex... sex...sex is dead. Sex is dead. I spent the night with a stranger...drunk...never looked her in the eye never asked her who she d spent the night before with...sex...sex...sex is dead. Prefer to sleep alone. Sex can kill you sex can kill you.”--k poem

Why is it that panhandlers walking the street are so friendly?
“Hey, big man, hey big man,” say many a smelly fellow with a big smile, like it’s a high school reunion of some sort that we are having right there on the sidewalk. It’s as if they were saying, “Hey there fellow, weren’t we in Chemistry class, together, in high school? Didn’t you and I used to hustle the chemistry teacher, who was also the football coach, to talk football, not chemistry?”
“Brother man let me tell you a sad, sad story. I have not eaten in days, brother man.”
I’m glad that I’m partly deaf, because I didn’t hear the rest of his sales pitch; I just walked off leaving him there on the pavement smiling to himself.
I used to be nicer to the man and woman on the street. I used to give them spare change, and, sometimes, dolla bills. More often than giving them cash, when a person sitting on the ground, outside the gas station, would ask me for money, I would come out of the place with a sandwich, a soda and a candy bar for them.
And you know what?
Very often, that person sitting on the ground asking for spare change would tell me that they didn’t eat that kind of sandwich, that they didn’t drink that kind of drink, and that that candy bar was not their favorite.
Give me a break.
That person sitting there on the ground was just sitting there trying to hustle up enough money for a tall boy, a hit of crack or a pack of smokes. Should I contribute to that? Should I give someone sitting down asking for money the dollar or two that I could spend on a candy bar for my kids?
I bitched when Reagan and Bush Sr. put the mentally ill on the sidewalks of our great nation. What is my responsibility in this whole homeless mess that we have in our country? Should I tell these people to fuck off when they come up and bother me?
Should I give them a dolla?
What do you do?
Do you have any answers for this?

I’m sitting in the bleachers waiting for my kid’s little league baseball game to start. I look over at my red pick up truck. I hitchhiked to Atlanta, 18 years ago, hung-over as hell, either in or not far from a blackout. I crashed at a frat house until I got a job, because I knew the frat boy handshake, and then I moved into a rooming house.
I continued to drink like a madman in that rooming house. The habit that had started at age 19, in the fraternity house, in Tallahassee, Florida had stayed with me all the way to Atlanta, Georgia.
I didn’t know it then and didn’t find out until a number of years later, but I was bi-polar. Those depressions that I tried to kill with wine, Jack Daniels and or beer were indicative of something that was wrong in my life that I didn’t know about until much later. It wasn’t until I hooked up with my kid’s mother and she started pointing the finger at me and screaming, “you’re manic-depressed, you’re manic depressed,” that I began to realize that there was a medical basis for my wide mood swings and my need to kill my intense depressions with any mood altering substance available.

At this time in my life, I knew nothing about bi-polar disease. What I did know is that I was a drunk, a full-blown alcoholic. I couldn’t keep a job or a place to live very long. I was on the road, for a bit, with no beatnik glamour about it. I was out there, but there were no hippies in V.W. buses to pick me up and take me to Woodstock or Haight-Ashbury or anywhere else.
When I had moved from Orlando to Los Angeles, it was allegedly to study karate with this Korean Tae Kwondo master. Later I learned that I was really running from me. I also learned the hard way that I had taken me with me.
I still had a three piece suit, left over from my fraternity days and I still had an ability to bullshit prospective employers, so I put the suit on and headed into Beverly Hills for an interview for what they were calling a sales rep job. I remember sitting in the sandwich shop in the basement of that big building, where the interview was to take place, realizing that I had just spent the last of my money on the sandwich that I was eating. I had never been flat broke like this before in all my life.
I gulped.
I better be good in this interview.
I was, but someone else was better.
I didn’t get the job.

What I did get was a gig at this place that had advertised “work today, get paid today.” I didn’t realize it then, but this place was a labor pool. Most of the guys that I worked with were winos, men who were even more down and out than I was, men who were already where I was maybe headed for in life.
The West Coast is where I first started getting arrested, if you don t count the public consumption bust that I got at a private party when I was eighteen and back “home” for the summer in the town where I had graduated from high school.
I say Los Angeles, but it was really the Santa Monica police who were locking me up and I say “arrested” but I was never charged with anything in Santa Monica, never stood in front of a judge. I remember one of the police officers saying one morning after one night in his jail that they were “just doing this for my own good.”
I would wake up in the morning, they would feed me eggs and I would be back out into the day, the hangover that was my constant companion, still with me. I got a job at night as a doorman at this rock club by the beach. There was this guy named Fred, just in from New York, who was also a doorman who also liked to do coke and he would always say,
"call me anything but late to the mirror." I had never done much cocaine. Another one of the doormen sold it, one hundred dollars for a gram. I had fifteen hundred in the bank, was all set to grow long hair and hang out at the beach for a bit and be happily minimally employed, but instead, over fifteen nights, I handed over to the doorman who
sold coke fifteen hundred dollars and I wound up on the sidewalk in
L.A., my landlord not taking kindly to me not having a hundred bucks
to give him for rent.
Homeless, I headed for Las Vegas. I did not find a glamorous Las Vegas, like the one that I thought that Hunter Thompson had been portraying in his book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” I found a Las Vegas full of a lot of people a lot older than me who looked vacant, who looked out at the world with dollar signs in their eyes.
I left after a few days.
And wound back up in Tallahassee, Florida.
Fuck.
I had fucked up in Tallahassee. I had broken things in Tallahassee, Florida, that I still couldn’t fix. I owed people money in Tallahassee, Florida that I still couldn’t pay back.
I remember a fight.
I remember things breaking.
Again.
And again.
Jim Morrison got busted in Tallahassee. I never did. Morrison once sang, “but, I never been so broke, that I couldn’t leave town.”
I left town.
Fast.
I followed my thumb to Atlanta, Georgia.

Things got worse in Atlanta.
I started getting arrested and locked up, regularly, mostly in blackouts. The police in Atlanta didn’t feed me eggs and let me go the next morning. They handcuffed me, threw me in the white van, took me to a cell and left me in there until I came up, somehow, with bail money. I faced many judges, mostly in torn clothes, covered in blood and vomit, scratching my head, wondering what I had done to get there.
Again.

I wound up in state mental institutions, not knowing my name, wandering the god-forsaken puke green painted walled halls, trying to bum a cigarette from the other god-forsaken people who were wandering the puke green halls trying to bum a cigarette from other god-forsaken people.
One time, I wound up at what I call the failed suicide ward. I had been sitting at my desk in an apartment that I shared with my girlfriend, writing poetry. I was very depressed at the time, very lethargic. My girlfriend and I had been drinking a lot, as usual, smoking a lot of pot, as usual, and doing our fair share of LSD, as usual, when I pulled a cigarette lighter out of my pocket, leaned over and lit the poem that I was working on on fire. I sat there and watched the flames from the paper leap to the curtains on the window in front of me.
The next thing that I knew I was doing the Haldol shuffle with people who had shot themselves in the head and lived, with people who had jumped off bridges and lived, with people who had intentionally overdosed on pills and had woken to his hell and not the one that they had been trying to get to. The path that I had started on, at age fourteen, had finally, at age twenty seven, taken me to the zombie ward at a state mental institution, a ward full of people who had been or were one or several steps from death.
“Got a cigarette? Got a cigarette? was all that I and most of the folks bumping into each other could mumble.
People who wore stale green uniforms and possessed unsympathetic unsmiling faces kept asking me if I knew what day it was. They kept asking me if I knew who the President was.
I didn’t know who I was.
I didn’t know who the president was.
I didn’t know what day it was.
I had succeeded in making it to the lowest level that was offered at a state mental institution. I had gone from being a near straight A kid to this. I was one step from death.

In between the hangovers, the blackouts and the eventually increasing weekends in jail and mental institutions, I conceived a son.
Having that baby boy saved my life.
I didn’t sober up until the kid was three. That means that I didn’t much buy his diapers or change them. I didn’t much wipe his dirty smelly butt or fed him for those beautiful, precious first three years of his life.
I was in the fog, more concerned about me, my pleasures, my ambitions, me, me, me. I was more wanting to be a poet rock star of some sort than a fulltime hands on father.
When my son was about five years old, he helped me to stop smoking cigarettes. At first, he would just cough in the car as I smoked, as he inhaled my poisonous second hand smoke. This made me feel guilty. Of course, I did not feel guilty enough to stop smoking. As my son got older, he got more vocal about his desires:
“Dad, why don’t you quit? Dad, won’t you please quit? Please. Pleaaaaaaaaaaaase.”

I’m crying now because I am so fucking lucky. I might not be rich or famous or getting laid, but I’ve got it made. I wake up each morning happy, looking forward to the day at hand. I’ve got kids who loves me, a dog that wags his tail when I get home, a cat that stalks one of our teddy bears like a serial killer following a uniformed Catholic schoolgirl through a small mall. What else could I ask for?
I guess that I could ask for some pussy, a soul mate, a partner, because we’ve all been taught that you are not supposed to go it alone in this world. Going it alone and being happy going it alone, defies the social order. More thoughts on this later, thoughts on why I don’t need no woman.

Please see, “I can’t afford a gun,´ on the mikel k band sober c.d. at this point.

There is no great feeling to me than when my son is happy and doing well. I’m sitting in the Little League baseball bleachers, under a hot Georgia sun, watching my son play baseball. My boy has stolen a base or two and has scored a couple of runs. He just nailed his second hit. As pitcher, he has struck out four batters in two innings. So far, all this has cost me is 28 bucks.
I pay my son five bucks for a hit, three bucks for every batter that he strikes out and two bucks for every stolen base and run scored.
My kid is a money player.
I used to choke in sports, at the crucial times. Not my boy. When it’s on the line, when he is in the thick of the toughest situation, my son is Mr. Cool. If I don’t have a pro baseball player in my nest, I’ve at least got a college scholarship in tow!
I picked the bleacher seat that I did, today, because there was a cute lady nearby where I sat. She had these kind of weird legs. These legs were skinny and oddly shaped, but to more than make up for her legs, she had these great tits and wonderful lips. Her lips were incredible. Her son was playing catcher in the little league game before ours.
I was hoping that she was a single mom.
She wasn’t.
This dumb ass looking guy, sitting next to her, got a big hug and a nifty little kiss, just as my hopes were getting high and higher for her and I to hook up and live together, forever blissfully.
The hot-lipped lady laid her pretty head and her long; cool as hell hair on this guy’s wimpy little shoulder.
It made me fucking sick.
I’ve lost all faith in love.
Love is an illusion.
It is the house or the car or the credit cards that keeps most people together. Most couples can’t stand each other. Most couples hate each other. They hang in there “for the kids,” or because of “finances,” though the kids would be much better off if the two would split up, because then, “the kids” wouldn’t have to listen to mom and dad fight every fucking morning and every fucking night.
I told you that I give my son three bucks for every batter that he strikes out. Do you think that this is mercenary? I think that it teaches my son to play for money, like a pro. Over the first two games, getting paid for strikeouts, hits, stolen bases and runs scored, my kid earned 48 bucks. He lost it all though when his teacher said that he was babbling endlessly in class, when he had already been warned to shut up.
Tee hee.

Fast forward six or seven years.
My son is thirteen now, and though he has left baseball for skateboarding, the feeling is still the same. Instead of following him around the state from baseball field to baseball field, I now follow him from parking lot to parking lot, curb to curb, wall to wall and stairs to stairs.
Recently, he and I both watched, in horror, as his skateboard flew from underneath his feet straight down a city sewer. I tried to rescue the board, but I awakened or bothered a rat and decided to let the board be. I also watched him nail six steps with the board, flying up in the air off the sidewalk over the six steps and onto the lower sidewalk.
I was a terrible little league ball player. I was the best player on the worst team in the league. I made the all-star team, but they only played me for half an inning in right field and wouldn’t let me bat.
We all find our niche, eventually, they tell me.
I have found mine: I’m a psychotic, angry poet who delivers food for a near poverty level existence.
Have you found yours?

I just delivered to this kind of hot as hell older woman. I’m not sure if she tipped well or not because my dick got kind of hard as I handed the woman her food. She lived in an upstairs apartment and while I was trying to leave she kept talking to me. I finally said, “Lady, I would really like to stay and talk," which was true, "but, I’ve got two bags of Chinese food in the car."
“Well, drop back by sometime,” she said. She gave me her phone number, but I never called her back. To be honest, I would have been only interested in fucking her, and probably only once, and I’m trying not to do that one night type of thing anymore. I'm looking for the bitch that I want to fuck over and over, wake up in the morning happy to see, ready to fuck again and then head into the kitchen and cook French toast for, ready to do both the sex and the French toast again and again for another day, another week, months, years, a lifetime together, fucking and eating French toast.
But, like I told you, it is my feeling that it is nearly impossible to find such bliss here on earth. Most people that I see coupled around me don’t have it and I won’t settle for less.
So there you are.
And here am I.


What a tight ass bitch.
There are a dozen roses on a table in her apartment and I say, to the lady, “nice roses.”
She says, with a sour puss, “yes, but they’re not mine.”
I say, “Well, they’re still beautiful, and then I say, “Eleven will do, forgiving her the change on her bill. At that point, the bills are in both of our hands. She snatches a dollar back. No wonder no one ever buys you flowers, baby. You’re a fucking cunt.
I got a flat tire, tonight. There is a gay bar across the parking lot from the Chinese restaurant and they were having their Sunday T-dance. The security guard at the gay bar wanted more space for his customers and, pulling up on the curb to make room for them, as I had been instructed, I hit a sewer grate and popped a tire.
This older white guy with snow-white hair, came into the Chinese restaurant, tonight, with this very young, very hot babe. What’s wrong with people? Why don’t they conform to what they are supposed to be, do what society, god and government expect them to do? What is this old man doing with this young girl? Old men should be with old women, now shouldn't they?
The gay bar must make a lot of money on Sunday nights, because they have a city cop standing around all night outside the building. I don’t think that the cop is gay because he looks real bored. He keeps moving from one place to another, not really watching what’s going on at the bar. I bet, if there was trouble though, this cop would be right in the middle of it, fast.
Is there less trouble in gay bars than there is in straight bars? I’ve caused trouble in both. Does that make me bi-sexual or just bar-sexual?
This gay bar is frequented by both gay men and gay women, which is unique and kind of cool don’t you think? Two women just left. One of them was cursing like hell, like she was in dialogue with the devil.
She was really pissed off.
Alcohol has the same lousy effect on some gay people that it does on some straight people. I always used to get pissed off when I got drunk.
Alcohol can be an equal opportunity debilitater.
Alcohol doesn’t discriminate.
Alcohol doesn’t care if you are gay, straight, black, white, educated, dumb, down and out or rich in bank account or spirit.

I had an interesting talk with one of the Chinese food delivery drivers, tonight. He’s a family man, he has a day job and a house payment and all that. In his past, he was in the ministry. We often talk about beating off and its effect on God and your family.
“I try to stay away from people who have found God and stick with the ones who are still looking for him,” he said to me with a smile.
I always feel sorry for the guy who has to take out the trash at work. It’s usually a Mexican, some recent immigrant, very likely illegal. I passionately hate it when I hear people say, “We’ll get a Mexican to do it.”
People suck and they treat other people like shit if they can, if you let them.
Don’t let them.

I was wrong.
I now think that the police officer who monitors the t dance festivities is as queer as a three dollar bill. He is basically a nice guy, though he is a little bit uptight.
Honeeeeeeeeee, please.
Take a chill pill.
Relax.
I got nervous because the officer was standing near my disabled truck and there was a sign near my truck that said, “no parking.” I asked the cop if he was going to give me a ticket. He said that I was on private property and that he had no jurisdiction on private property.
Hmmmm.
How is it then that police officers used to come into my house years ago and pull my drunken ass out!!??
A very, very drunk very, very gay fellow stumbled up to an open parking space and asked the officer over and over if he could, “stand here?”
“I don’t care where you stand,” said the cop. The drunk guy kept saying that he was saving the parking space “for his mother.”
I figured that “mom” was some sort of gay term for an older male homosexual. I was wrong. A short white-haired lady emerged from the car, after several attempts to park it.
Go figure.
Was the young man bar hopping with mom?
Or was it grandma?

I’m riding the subway train home, tonight, for the first time in many years. Two men towed my truck to the shop where I usually have the truck towed to when it needs to be towed. It has a flat tire. I’ll have to get up early in the a.m. and take the train back to the shop to get my tire fixed.
A train pulled up, instantly, when I walked onto the ramp. I got on it. Two guys with megaphones started screaming through the megaphones at the crowd. Everyone got off the train.
When I was drunk, I used to ride the train all the time. And since I never had very much money, I used to jump the turnstile at the entrance to the train station. They can lock you up for that if and when they catch you.
I got caught once.
A booming voice came over the public address system.
The voice told me to go back and pay.
My heart raced.
I felt like a criminal.
I felt like a lowlife jerk loser.
I couldn’t pay.
Alcohol had taken everything.
I went back to the sidewalk, glad that I hadn’t been arrested.

I didn’t know anything about subways when I hitchhiked to the city of Atlanta eighteen years ago, just like I didn’t know anything about black or gay people. On my very first job, in Atlanta, I met and worked with gay people. I got a job as a busboy at a fancy fish-restaurant, downtown. The only straight people at this job were me and the other busboy. All the waiters were gay. They were nice. They worked hard. They worked us hard. And they tipped us well.
And made us laugh.
“What are you two straight boys doing here with all us queens?” the gay waiters would ask, with a smile. One night, after work, the other busboy and I decided to go out drinking with the waiters.
It was a trip to experience my first gay bar.
Honey please.
We had a good time. We got good and drunk. The liquor at a gay bar wasn’t any different than the liquor anywhere else that I had gotten drunk at. Nobody tried to put a hand on me. No one tried to stick anything up my ass.
I think that some people are of the impression that homosexuals will come on to you aggressively, suggestively and unwanted and uninvited sexually. I have seen near zero of that behavior in the two decades that I have lived in this city of Atlanta, that is heavily populated by gay men and gay women.
Twice, when I was in my mid-twenties, a gay man made a pass at me in a bar when he had had a cocktail or two too many. Though I wasn’t interested, it was, in a sense, flattering. Interest is interest now isn’t it, honey? Now that I’m a tired old piece, no one, man or woman comes up and comes on to me!
What a drag it is getting old.
When I was growing up, I was never around black people. My Dad made sure of that. My dad hated, the “niggers.” When black people moved into the neighborhood, my father moved us out. “The niggers cost me my house,” he would often mutter, not really under his breath.
Black people are not the plague. They are not some disease, some curse an infliction of a demented and deathly sort to be feared. Black people are people just like white people. And white people and black people are just like gay people.
They laugh.
They cry.
They love.
They hate.
They pay the rent.
They drive cars.
Blah. Blah. Etc.
It’s elementary Watson, a complete no brainer.

Speaking of black people, it is all black people and me on the train, tonight. It is a minute or two past midnight. Two men who I bet you have had a few cocktails too many, chat very loudly. Another man on the train moves his head up and down rapidly in a funky groove, headphones strapped to his ears. Another man is deep asleep and he makes me aware of how tired I am.
I get tired.
Black people get tired.
Gay people get tired.
People is people, people.

I think that it is interesting to note that, though I haven’t ridden the train in years, I still know my way around the subway system. I guess that it is much like riding a bike; once you have it down, you don’t much fall down.
I am waiting for what must be the last or at least very close to the last, east bound train. I am not alone in my wait. There are a lot of other people waiting. They are all black. How come only black people ride the train late at night? Where have all the white people gone?
Here comes the train.
Thank God.
My bed awaits me.
I am nearly too tired to move. The train speeds up to and goes a bit past me. The last car stops in front of me and the door opens right in front of me. Thank God. I don’t want to move anymore than I have to. On one of the trains before mine, I saw a couple of small, bald-headed children.
Why were they up so late?
My kids are asleep.
I look onto the train at the sleeping children’s mother. She is young; very young.
Maybe she is on the way to a homeless shelter.
Maybe her and her kids are riding away from a beating and are on the way to a battered woman’s shelter.
Maybe this young lady and her kids are riding the train until the train runs out of track.
Maybe they have nowhere to go and are just riding the train out for safety and comfort.
Maybe the children's’ father is violent.
Maybe the children's’ father is a drunk.
Maybe the children's’ father is a violent drunk.
Or maybe the children's’ father is invisible, having slipped it in to make children and then slipped away once they were born.
Tonight, my bed is not my own. My bed is littered with children’s playthings. I smile. Children’s playthings make me happy.
I am taking a moment out of my day to write, while the nine year old goes inside and picks up the four and a half year old from the daycare center. An artist friend of mine started setting up a website for me today. I gave him pictures and will go home and select poems to email to him.
I love technology.
I hate “big business.”

An angry man, with all that he owns thrown over his shoulder, walks in front of cars to get to where he is going, not waiting for a red light, forcing cars to slow down while he crosses the street slowly. A cop stops traffic to let customers get in and out of a fast food restaurant. An old dirty man carries a wet box down the sidewalk in the rain. He will sleep on it, again, tonight.
A lady checks herself into a treatment center. She went in to get off the Darvocet, not to get off of the alcohol and the cocaine that she uses as frequently as she pops the little pills! The lady holds a baby in one arm and helps an old lady out of her chair with her other arm.
The soberer I get, the sicker I realize that I was. I don’t want to ever stop learning. I need to slow down. The Lord has blessed me tremendously. You really should always tell people that you love them, because you never know when their time will come.
Or yours.

I would work nine to five, but I can’t take the shuck and jive.
The alarm clock went off at 6:45 a.m. I was out of the bed by 6:53. I went to the rip off mart and bought cereal and milk for the kids. There was no price tag on the cereal, so the man charged me what he thought was correct. I thought that he was incorrect, but what could I do?
My roommate was talking about how people interrupt other people when they are talking, usually so they can talk about themselves. It is the ego driving us not to listen. It is the ego that tends to have us interrupt others and start babbling about ourselves. I am guilty of this.
Are you?

I just missed a train. There are white people waiting for a train this morning. Do percentages really matter? My father would have thought so. He would have run away. Today’s headline reads, “Japan Banks Add To Crisis.” I didn’t know that there was a crisis. I don’t read the newspaper, except for the horoscopes, every once in awhile. Last week my horoscope said that I would meet someone significant and all my dreams would come true. What is truly significant about this horoscope thing is that I am still waiting to meet someone significant and for all my dreams to come true.
I went to the bank this morning. My teller was cute as hell. She had this real exotic African first name and a plain old regular last name. I asked her how she pronounced her name. She looked at me like I bored her. She looked at me as if to say, “listen here, white boy, the only reason a fine babe like me is talking to you is because I have to. I’ve got this job and you are the customer. That’s it. Don’t push the limits. Don’t flirt with me.”
The sister was gorgeous. I would have banged her. I think that a lot of sisters are gorgeous. I would bang a bunch of them, but they don’t give me the time of day.
Neither do Asian women.
Neither do Mexican women.
Do you see a pattern here?
If God speaks through all of us, then what was Ted Bundy trying to say?

I had lunch this afternoon with a poet pal of mine at a vegetarian place. The poet didn’t talk much. When we got there, I asked the poet if vegetables would be ok with him for lunch. Some people get insulted if there is no meat in their meal.
The poet said, “I guess it would be a good idea. I ate a big steak around 5 this morning.” He couldn’t sleep this morning, he said. People who talk a lot usually have nothing to say.
I tried to order half an order of the home fries that were offered on the handwritten menu. The proprietor looked at me as if I was crazy. He knows me pretty well. I eat here often.
“You can have anything you want, any way you want it, but you will still get the same portion and pay the same price,” he said.
This is the same man who said that it was his goal was to put a vegetarian restaurant next to every McDonald’s on the planet. To call him Indian really limits the description of this man that I want to paint for you. Although this man is descended from Gandhi, he is of the universe. Eat his veggie burger to prove it to yourself.
I don’t like long hairs, though, for awhile I was one. My dad hated the hippies. I try not to hate anyone, these days, but long hair just seems so out of sync with the nineties. It seems like Woodstock, like the ancient past. It is good to be in the now, so cut your hair.
Now.
The Indian gave me half a plate of vegetables. I thought that he said no half portions.

I took a two hour nap, this afternoon. I was still tired when I woke up. I am always tired. I have what is known as sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition where you snore so loud that it drives your lover out of the bed and out of the bedroom and onto the couch in the living room every night around midnight.
Because of this malady, you have nobody to cuddle up next to during the long night, nobody to wake up next to in the morning.
At one jail that I was in, years ago, I snored so loud that I was given my own jail cell. You can’t beat that. Not all jails were so accommodating though, mind you.
Years ago, at another jail, I made the mistake of telling the jailers that I was manic-depressed. They didn’t set me up with a doctor or give me lithium or any other meds, they just put me in one of the bright orange mental patient jump suits which made me an outcast, a leper of sorts, at the jail. Everyone avoided me, like, well, like I was crazy!
I wouldn’t have been in either jail if it weren’t for my drinking. Alcohol put me in some very weird and difficult places over the years.

I did some really stupid things drunk also, things that I should have been locked up for, but that I always wasn’t. One afternoon, I was sitting in a bar in Atlanta and this male prostitute that I knew came up to me and said, “Mikel K, I’ll buy you a drink if you go outside and put a brick through the window of the limo that is parked out back.”
Without thinking about it, I got up, went out the backdoor, picked up a brick and smashed the passenger side front window of the limo. Then I went back to my seat at the bar and hollered for my drink.
One night, after leaving the same bar, very drunk, my girlfriend and I were arguing about something. In order to illustrate my point, I picked up a rock and put it through the bank window that we were standing in front of. An alarm immediately went off and I immediately ran down the street back to the hotel room that my girlfriend and I were living in at the time and changed shirts. I then went back to the bank looking for my girlfriend and I found her in the backseat of a police car.
The officer approached me and I started screaming at him that he better “fucking let my girlfriend out of that car.”
He pulled his gun on me. I started screaming, “shoot me, motherfucker, shoot me.” If I had been him, I would have shot me, but he didn’t but he did get me into the backseat of his car.
“Should I piss in this mother-fucker,” my girlfriend asked me.
I said yes, which was a stupid thing to say, because then we had to sit in her piss for the ride to the police station.
The next day, the judge looked down at us and then looked down at the cop and asked him what had happened.
“Well,” he said, “at approximately 4am, last night, a white male in a black shirt threw a rock through a bank window on Dixie Ave.”
“Well,” said the judge, “this young man is wearing a white t-shirt,” and he banged the gavel on his desk and told us that we were free to go.
In twelve step circles, they say that if life was fair, most recovering alcoholics and addicts would be doing time. My girlfriend and I left the courtroom as fast as we could, just short of running out of there.

It is Monday at the pizza joint.
It is slow on Mondays.
One of the guys working tonight, the dishwasher slash busboy has dreadlocks that reach to his buttocks. He is a white boy. He wears one of those multi-colored hand knitted looking type caps that the Rastafarians wear, only his is black and white not the red gold and green ones that the Rastas wear.
I have known this guy for a while. We used to drink in concentric circles. He drinks quite a bit, actually. Actually, everyone who I used to drink with, or drank in concentric circles with, drinks quite a bit.
Heavy drinkers don’t usually hang out with medium or light drinkers. Heavy drinkers hang out with heavy drinkers. Sometimes it confounds me how people who I think drink as much as I did, like this guy, don’t wind up having to quit like I did.
I had to quit.
I was ready to kill myself, but I couldn’t kill myself because I had a son. And besides, as I sang on the Mikel K Band “Sober,” cd: “I can’t afford a gun.”
The other two guys working at the pizza joint, tonight, have very short hair. They are punk rocker types, sort of semi-skinhead-like in appearance and behavior.
Not all skinheads are bad.
The media always portrays skinheads as violent racists. The majority of them are just decent counter-culture kids, into a different look and into different music, just like the hippies once were into a different look and different music.
The punks and the skins have a better working-class attitude than the hippies. The hippies, with their free fornication and heroin, didn’t keep jobs like the punks and skinheads do. To be a hippy, you just had to grow long hair and not bath. It didn’t cost you anything to affect a hippy appearance. To be a punk or a skin, you’ve got to come up with money for the haircuts and or hair dye, tattoos, which aren’t cheap, suspenders and doc martins, which aren’t cheap, either.
My first and only delivery, tonight, was to an older guy with long hair. He is kind of weird, even though he is nice in a very remote kind of way. This guy has a faraway look in his eyes, as if to say that he has done way too much LSD or has thought way too many weird thoughts and the thoughts now haunt his brain and own him.
This guy’s house is a mess. He is a major pack rat. It would appear that he gets rid of nothing. Stuff gets piled on top of stuff which gets put next to stuff which is then put under more and more stuff.
I have a problem with getting rid of things, but this guy makes me look like a minor player when it comes to acquisition of useless stuff. This guy has more junk than me, more junk than anyone who I deliver to or who I have ever delivered to. He is the king of junk. This guy’s house is far away from his neighbors, kind of isolated, though he lives on a big city street. I hope that he is not the next Unabomber. I hope that he is not a child molester or rapist.
I think that serial killers, child molesters and rapists should be castrated, tortured and then killed slowly. Have I said that before? Have I told you that I feel that way? I would supervise such a procedure, I would pull the trigger, push the button, take a baseball bat to the guy’s knees, put a knife to his throat and cut the vein that gives him life, put the handgun to his forehead, bang, whatever it took to keep a serial killer, a child molester, a rapist from repeating behavior that they have a natural proclivity towards.
I think that Ted Bundy was right when he told us that people like him can’t stop, so society needs to stop them. If society doesn’t stop them, they can’t or won’t stop.
Stop and think about it.

My last delivery was to this white guy who teaches literature classes at a black college. This man is real nice. Often, I have one of my kids, either the 4 year old or the 9 year old, with me, when I knock on his door. Tonight, I didn’t have either one of my kids with me and the guy was nice as hell, full of a genuine concern and all for where they were and how they were doing.
This guy and his wife have a little baby. The baby was upstairs its mother. The man said that the mother and child were both doing well.
I’m such a family man.
It has saved my life.
Praise the Lord.
Keep coming back.

The thought occurred to me, just a moment ago, that you might think that I carry my kids with me to arouse sympathy in my customers, that I am trying to squeeze extra tip money out of my customers by conveniently having not just wallet size photos of each kid with me, when I am on the customer’s doorstep, but also having a kid with me.
Well, you are full of shit.
I carry my kids in the truck with me out of necessity. Their mom works a “real” job and so does her husband. This means that they do not get off work until after I have started my job. My kids would be stuck in some after-school cafeteria program or be the last children out of some daycare center if I did not have certain flexibility in my job.
Do you understand now why my current “career” path is door to door with pizza and Chinese food? The kids come first, the cat’s in the cradle. Ask H. Chapin.
So you are a big lawyer or a fancy doctor with your huge house and your limo like automobiles and I am a way low down on the food chain food delivery driver who you tip a buck or less, because let’s face it, the haves want to keep it and giving it to those who have not much is just not where it’s at. Your kid goes to a fancy school, but you never see him or her.
Fuck you.

My last customer really pissed me off. The street shown on the delivery ticket didn’t show up on the map that is on the filthy wall at the Pizza place, so I had to call the asshole on my cell phone. Dickhead acted all put out. Dumb Ass had to give me a door code for his last name, because he lived at an apartment complex with a locked security gate. The piece of shit prick gave me the wrong code, three two one, and I had to look up his last name, where the code showed to be one two three.
You should be careful whom you mouth off to on the phone. I am a large, formerly fairly violent man. I have put a cigarette out in someone’s eye to end a psychotic argument. I have beaten a man over the head with a beer bottle to end a fight that I thought that I was losing. I have hit a police officer who was trying to arrest me for dui. I am pretty sure that I finally dropped my old man on his own doorstep, years ago in a blacked out drunken rage. They told me, at age sixteen, that I hit the principal at my first school dance, blacked out on blackberry brandy, trying to muster some catholic courage to dance with the high school ladies.
For a long time, I thought that my Dad deserved some sort of a payback for all the years that he had beaten me and intimidated me. For a long time, I thought that the cop deserved a good beating for being a red neck prick and that I was just the guy who should give it to me.
The cop was rude as fuck to me and I knew, even though I was operating, basically, in a blackout, that I was already in trouble, so why should I put up with his shit? The officer acted like an ignorant asshole, making fun of my counter culture appearance and eliciting from me rage and a lack of respect, instead of acting like an officer of the law who deserved respect and got it. Arrest me for drinking and driving, asshole, but don’t give me your opinion on what I’m wearing.
At the time my hair was long and white, spiked. “Billy Idol,” the brothers would call me on the street. They also called me “white boy” and “big man” during different incarnations of my Atlanta existence.
My pants were pink and covered in holes. They were really dungarees in disguise. A friend had dyed them pink for me. I had a torn, sleeveless black shirt on. The look was decidedly “punk rock.” The cop decided that he didn’t like that look. I remember him saying, “I don’t like the way you look, boy.”
I replied, “I don’t really like the way you look, either, man.”
He reached for me; I hit him and all hell broke loose. I guess I was hard to handle. It seems he got backup and they finally threw me in the police van. I lit my sock on fire, just so I could come out and try to hit the officer one more time.
At that point in my life, I hated cops. “What you going to do about the man in blue?” and “They hate us, we hate them, it’s no use.” were the punk rock song lyrics that constantly rang in my head. Like Johnny Rotten had sang, “I want to be anarchy.”

I received seven charges from that incidence of “anarchy”: two counts of simple battery on a police officer, arson, profane and abusive language, dui, no license, no insurance and laying drag.
I lived neurotically and paranoid waiting for my court date, in as state of deep dark depression. I had fucked up before, but I knew that this time I had fucked up in a major way.
I didn’t want to do time.
I was scared of jail.
The brothers in the Atlanta jail weren’t happy to share their food trays and cigarettes with a white boy. They didn’t rape you or beat you up, but they worked you over emotionally. I had learned this the hard way from my overnights in the city jail that I often spent there.
Most of the black guys in jail in Atlanta were there to stay for longer than I was, and they also came in and out of jail way more frequently than I did and they knew it, so they were going to work me for cigarettes and cash money while I were there.
Each time that I got locked up, I would frantically make collect calls to whoever would accept them, desperately trying to get someone to bail me out. A lot of the black guys weren’t getting bailed out and they knew it. If you had items on your person that could make their stay more pleasant, they were out to find that out and one way or another get those things from you.
There are way more black men in jail in Atlanta than there are white men. Some people might say that this is because the black man has a greater propensity to crime. I don’t buy into that. In Atlanta, there are simply more black people than white people living in the inner city limits.

A very stern young lady, approached me before we went inside the courtroom, to face the judge on the charges that I had received from my dui and ensuing fistfight with the police officer. I was sitting on a bench outside the courtroom, feeling very bummed out and scared.
“We are going to give you 2 ½ years in jail, if you plead guilty,” she said. My heart started racing, my head pounded, my breath got short. It wasn’t “justice,” that she was after; it was a strong win record, as a prosecutor, so as to be able to acquire a high paying job as a criminal defense attorney later in her “legal” career.
“In that case,” I said, looking her dead in the eyes, “I’m pleading innocent and I want a jury trial.” I knew that the prosecutor didn’t want to go to trial. Time and money were what mattered most to these young, dressed for success legal types. It wasn’t about justice. She shot me a dirty look and walked away. As she walked off I started thinking.
My thoughts outside that courtroom that morning were about my drinking, where it had brought me, what it had done to me. I was drunk the night that I hit the cop. I had no business driving. I had no business being out in public, even.
The woman who I loved and who I lived with had passed out soon after the two of us had killed yet another bottle of vodka. Stupidly and highly irresponsibly, I had had the urge to go out for just one more drink. I had fumbled through her purse and took the keys to her car.
As usual, I fucked up and, as usual, I wound up in trouble. At that time in my life, I was always fucking up. I was always winding up in trouble. This was the most I had fucked up, though. This was major trouble. Finally, I was facing what was, to some, serious jail time: two and ½ fucking years.
Shit.
Did this experience sober me up?
Did I quit drinking after this very scary experience?
No.

I went to a punk rock show, tonight, after work. Some band from England that had had a hit of some sort in the ‘80’s played. There was a good assortment of old and young punks gathered. I, somehow, span both generations. I, somehow, know people from each age group of misfits and don’t wanna fit ins.
At one time in my life, in the ‘70’s, back when I was a frat boy at F.S.U., I was into disco. My attire as I headed to club land would be platform shoes, silk pants and a gaily colored silk shirt. I would down numerous gin and tonics, my favorite drink, at that time, and dance my ass off, inhibitions killed by the booze.
The disco era was a good time to be young and a barfly. You could walk up to women in the bar, after both you and they had had a few drinks, and ask them to dance. During this period in bar room history, women did not feel so threatened, so hit upon, as during normal bar times.
There was much sex to be had in this era.
Dance and fuck.
Dance and fuck.

Ted Bundy, of course, put a cramp in our dance and fuck higher education life style.
Fuck Ted Bundy.
The fraternity was having a wine and cheese party in the clubhouse of an apartment complex, somewhere in Tallahassee. The guy who lived across the hallway from me, David Schwarz, had a date with Margaret Bowman, a young Chi Omega, who I knew, both from business school classes and student government. Margaret was a great gal.
She had a great smile, a keen intellect and a large lust for life. Swhwarz didn’t have a car, so I dropped him off at the Chi O house so that Margaret could drive him to the wine and cheese event and I went on to get the gal who I was going to get very drunk and not eat much cheese with.
The four of us sat around and drank wine. When the party was over and it was time to go home, Schwarz tried to get Margaret to go home with him, back to his water bed.
She declined and instead she went back to the Chi O house where Ted Bundy killed her and another girl and seriously wounded two others. My door was the second door knocked on in the investigation into Margaret’s death because I was the second to last person, outside of the sorority house, to see Margaret Bowman alive.
Tallahassee was a weird and scary place to be after Ted Bundy struck. Until his arrest, no one knew what had hit us.

In the early ‘80’s, I stumbled, drunk, into punk rock, a habit I haven’t given up even today at age 41 and don t intend to let go of when I’m 91. I still go to the shows. I still wear some of the clothes, though I’m not chained to doc martins and pink or blue or green hair to “prove” that I am something other than whatever it is that I am. There will be a mosh pit waiting for me at the gates to heaven
Looking back on it, punk actually discovered me, I like to say. When I moved to Atlanta, I was among other things, a violent, blackout drunk. At a party at the house that the most famous drag queen of all time built, I ripped the nose off of a street hippy’s face with a large steel staple gun, because the blotter acid and the beer were kicking in and he was pissing me off.
I had just got back from stapling posters onto telephone poles “advertising” the event that the street hippy and I had both found ourselves at. This psychotic and stupid act made me a legend in certain “punk rock” circles.
“Sex and violence, sex and violence:” so sang some British punk band at the time. I liked punk music. I still do. I liked the aggression of punk, the untamed, unrestricted energy of the punk attitude and the punk music. I liked the honesty of punk, the theory of individual determinism whereby you could create yourself as you wanted you to be and not be just who your family, your school, your job, your god i.e. your church and your government had designed and destined you to be. I liked the dress of punk. And I liked the women. Those punk rock bitches were hot They were somehow more honest, more real to me than the girls in the three-piece suits, who it seemed to me, had prostituted themselves, somehow, for a pay check.

What do you do for money honey, how do you get your kicks?—AC?DC

“Do you want to fuck?” I asked one punk girl one night at a punk club.
“Yes,” she said.

When I came out to my car, tonight, after the show, there was a page on my cell phone. I had left the show early, telling the doorman, who had let me in free, that I needed to go home and get my beauty sleep. The message was from my roommate and co-dad, saying that we needed milk and cereal, sugar and coffee.
At our house, these items are essential.
I’m a punk rock pappa, ha ha.
As I was about to take a left turn, into the entrance of the grocery store, I suddenly noticed a car hauling ass from the opposite direction, in the opposite lane. Though it had, at first, appeared that I had plenty of time to make my turn, once I started into the turn, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, I was scared and I did my best to pull my car back.
The oncoming car wavered. It moved over to my lane and then went back to its own lane. The car almost hit me. It was a cop. It would have been weird to have gotten some sort of a ticket out of that situation. “Well son, you failed to get out of the way of a police officer who was exceeding the speed limit…that will be seventy-five bucks.”
Case closed.

I am stuck in downtown traffic, this morning. I hate traffic. I hate being where the mass of man and woman are. It’s Tuesday. I’m working an 11am to 5pm shift at the Chinese Restaurant. I woke up late as hell. It was after 11a.m. when I finally got out of bed. I had hit the snooze button a time or two too often. The manager was cool about it. He said that he had coffee, so he wasn’t worried about it. Often, he likes for me to stop and get him coffee.
My first delivery was cheap as hell. She gave me a check for the exact amount and kind of bragged about it as she handed me the check.
“17.13,” she sang out.
Cheap bitch.
Her order was for 17.13.
I asked the manager if he would call and give her the how was the food and how was the service spiel, so that she might not stiff whoever among us was so unfortunate as to have to bring her her food next time. With the spiel, what we do is, we call the cheap bitch or dick-less bastard up and we say, “Hey, this is the manager from the Chinese place, we just wanted to call and make sure that your food is good.”
When they say “yes, our food is wonderful,” we say great, man or great mam, great and how was the driver? This type of customer always says, “fine, wonderful, the driver was just fantastic in fact.”
Then we close to deal, so to speak: “well, we were concerned, because you didn’t tip the driver and the driver works for tips and a no tip usually indicates poor service on the part of the driver.”
At this point, the cheap bastard or bitch starts hemming and hawing and farting out excuses and gibberish about this and that and starts spitting out an incredible amount of bullshit and lies.

One of the worst things that can happen to you, as a delivery driver, is to have to take a number two when you are in the car on a delivery. Just as lousy a delivery guy experience that can happen to you is to have to take a nasty dump, get into the bathroom, yank your pants down below your knees splatter and spit and look up to find no toilet paper.
I have yet to ask a customer if I could use their bathroom. It would be unprofessional.
“Hello, mam, here is your large pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and anchovies, can I shit in your crapper?”
Besides the where to take a shit issue, the morning has been going fine. I’m delivering Chinese food this a.m. and pizza tonight, a double, as they say. I haven’t been eating very vegetarian, lately. In fact, I just gobbled a roast beef and Swiss sandwich with lettuce and tomato. My new goal, as a failed aspiring vegetarian, is to only eat women who only eat vegetables.
I just finished delivering a double. The first lady I carried a bag to is a great tipper. She always uses an American Express card. I don’t know if lunch is on the company or on her, but today she tipped seven bucks. I asked her how she was, and she kind of whined.
“I feel like a prisoner in this office,” she said.
I looked her in the eyes and said, “There are worse places that you could be prisoner.”
We both said, “you know that’s right” at the same time.
My second delivery came to the door holding a baby and wearing this African tribal wrapping on her head and some cool as hell African clothing. I tried to play with the baby, but that baby was mean as hell. That baby was this pretty, light-skinned black baby. Maybe her folks don’t like white people and she had caught onto that and embraced it at a baby age. I can get most babies to grab onto and hold onto one of my fingers, but not this one. This baby wouldn’t even look at me. This baby just stared off into space, mad as hell.
The young lady holding the baby gave me a twenty and I asked her if she needed change. She laughed and said, “Well, some!” She wasn’t the prettiest girl on the planet, her teeth and gums were kind of weird, but she was really nice. You never know where you are going to run into a person who is nice and make you forget about all the assholes in the world.
I would have made love to her, right there in the doorway.
When a woman is nice, I find her very attractive.

I am picking my son up from school. I really like the teachers at this school. Most of them are fucking fantastic to both my son and I.
I just flirted with one of my favorites. I know that she is married and all, but I still interact with her. Just because someone is married, doesn’t mean that you can’t say hello and talk to them, does it? I don’t even think about having sex with her.
I do think about her green as hell eyes, though. That’s what attracted me to her, was those green eyes. Then, we started talking and she turned out to be nice as hell, too.
I love when that happens. I love it when you are attracted to someone at some level, mainly because of their looks, I guess, to be perfectly honest, and then you get to know them and the more you get to know them, the more attractive they become to you. This is how I think that true love is. The woman who you come to love may not start out looking as beautiful as some hot bitch, but the more you are around her, the more you get to know her, the more beautiful that she becomes and the hot bitch, the one with the drop dead good looks starts to not look so good anymore.
I have been around some really good-looking people, who have eat shit personalities and they soon become ugly, even in appearance, to me. Am I rehashing the old beauty is only skin-deep issue?
Do you smoke hash?
Snort heroin?
Shoot cocaine?

I feel real serene, today. I feel peaceful and calm. I am not anxious about how much money I need to make, or how much money I should make, or who I should make or would be nice to make, etc. I am in tune with a higher power, whom I choose to call God. I wish that I could get the definite answer on whether God wants us to eat meat or not.
On the one hand, you have radical vegetarian thinking, uhhh, can you say Paul McCartney, which, when I read it, keeps me off meat for weeks. On the other hand, you have guys like Ted Nugent bragging about banging their beef in the woods, then bagging it for consumption at home. Speak to me God, speak to me. Ted Nugent is talking too damn much, like he always does. I need to hear more Derek St. Holmes.
I am going to have a vasectomy on Monday. Several of my male friends think that I am crazy to allow anyone to come near my balls with a knife. Also, they think that I am nuts because I am not currently making love to anyone.
I figure that this way I will be prepared for when the next lover comes along.
This whole vasectomy thing is a decision that I have taken several years to think out and decide upon. I already have three kids, one by semen, and two by a love that is as thick as blood. I want to devote my time, my energies and what limited money I now have to the kids that I already have. It would not be fair to them for me to get someone pregnant and then set up house with her.
We are now a nation of serial monogamists. The new American family pattern is one where the man dumps his wife when she gets a wrinkle or two, and then hooks up with and knocks up a younger woman, blowing off the house, the car and the kids from the last go round, as well as the over the hill wife.
Like Mick Stagger said, “ain’t life unkind?”
I know that if I did not have a vasectomy that, at some level, at some point in time, my kids would suffer, should I decide to shack up with some younger broad and knock her up. Also, I am now 41 years old. My nine year old will be 18 in nine years. That will make me 50 then. I do not want to be changing diapers in my fifties. I do not want to be taking kids to school in my sixties. I do not want to be an old man sitting in the baseball bleachers. I love all the things that I am and have been doing with these kids, but when they are grown, that is it, I’m not starting over. I’m not going to do it all again.
Freedom.
I want to write poetry in England. I want to write poetry in Africa. I want to write poetry in Brazil. I want to write poetry in Baghdad. I want to write poetry in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, Honolulu. I want to tour the world and write poetry everywhere I go.
One of my deliveries, today, was to the African-American strip club. I love to see naked black girls dance on tables, on the floor, on the bar. The sistas shake their ass a million miles an hour faster than white girls. The last time that I carried a bag into this lowly lit strip joint there was this hot as hell light-skinned black babe with funky bleached hair. I could not keep my eyes off of her. It was one of those five minute I fall deeply in love with the lady infatuations that I am professional in developing. I can fall in love a dozen times a night while delivering pizza or Chinese food.
I don’t think that I could date a stripper, though, black or white. I would have serious issues. I want those tits, that ass, that hot wet yearning pussy to be mine, mine all mine, for my eyes only.
Dig?

I am at the pizza joint doing an evening shift. About forty five percent of our in house customers are black. Some of these customers come in and order their food to go and then, when they get it, they sit down at a booth and eat the food out of the pizza box that we give it to them in. I thought that maybe these black diners thought that white people didn’t wash their dishes good enough. I asked one of the cooks about this. He said that they do it so they won’t have to tip.
I don’t know why they do it, but it sure cracks me up.
Do you as a black person hold me personally responsible for slavery?
I love it when a delivery customer says, “can I just have a couple of bucks back.” That’s all the money that there is pal, a couple of bucks. The people that pull this line usually leave me with a buck or less.
Dickheads.
I am standing in line waiting to schedule a court appearance to challenge the two parking tickets that I received last week while bringing Chinese food to the nurses in the emergency room at the downtown hospital. I believe in challenging the system at every opportunity.
I am Abbie Hoffman.
I am Angela Davis.
I went to get a haircut, today, for the first time in ages. My seventeen year old has been giving me home-made haircuts, by running some clippers that he borrowed from a neighborhood kid through my head, when the mood hits me to keep my hair short.
Free hair cuts rock.
I dyed my hair white, recently, with some leftover bleach that I had used to give my nine year old a green patch at the front of his hair. I wanted to get a flattop, so I headed down to the old reliable $5.50 barbershop in the shabby part of town.
Looking through the window, I could see that there was only one person in the shop. The door was wide open so I went in. The one person in there was a new barber. He was somewhat entertaining, in kind of a Liberace or Elton John way. He said that the theatre interested him. I could see him as a character actor at some small theatre.
I asked him what happened to the guy who used to have the barber chair that he was now working at.
“Cocaine,” he said, very dramatically.
The other barber, who was no longer a barber at this barbershop, had always been way cool to my kids. He always gave my kids a lollipop and played games with them. After I got my haircut by the new guy, I found the old guy wandering the street outside the barber shop. I told him that I didn’t want to stick my big fat nose into his business, but that if he ever wanted to get off drugs to call me.
He said that he was going to kill the new barber. He had a crazed look in his eye, one I had never seen on his face before. He scared me. He appeared to be very insane and very out of control. He held a frozen pizza in his hand that he had just micro waved. He was using a filthy blue comb to cut the pizza into slices.

On Monday, I get my nuts cut or scraped or whatever they do when they give you a vasectomy. The lady on the phone at the urologist’s office suggested that I not work Monday or Tuesday night. She said that my balls would swell if I did not rest. I have been accused of having big balls before.

I almost killed a man tonight. I went to a “party” and the imbecile started making fun of my punk rock t-shirt. You don’t mess with punk rock and you don’t mess with me, mother fucker.
Honey please.
I’m trying hard to not think like a bad ass, to not think that I am a badass. I’m not going to hit anyone and I don’t want anyone hitting me. I’ve got to get rid of this residual stinking thinking left over from my barroom brawling days that sometimes still clouds my current perceptions. I may not be a total pacifist peace and love type of fellow, but these days if I need to settle a fight, I'll call 911.

I walked into a strange room at this party. It was full of belly dancer women and men beating on drums. There seemed to be a contest going on to see which girl’s belly could out gyrate the other girl’s belly, sort of a competition among non-competitors. I knew no one in this room.
A stranger is only a friend that I haven’t met yet.
Or a dickhead.

Old Mrs. Dunbar ordered again this morning. Her apartment still stinks. I almost gagged and puked, as usual, right there at her front door holding her bag of Chinese food, waiting for her to come back with the filthy crumpled up dollar bills that she always pays me with. Though her apartment smells worse than dog shit from a dead dog, Mrs. Dunbar is a nice old lady. She only ordered two Mongolian beef combos this Saturday morning. Like I said before, Mrs. Dunbar usually orders three Mongolian beef combos and a side of coleslaw or two.
Mrs. Dunbar said that she wasn’t feeling too well this morning.
Pray for her, won’t you?
Leaving Mrs. Dunbar’s, I almost ran head on into another car. I was looking to the right, at the sidewalk. This hot as hell girl with long black hair and large breasts, wearing a tight white sweater grabbed my attention. It would have sucked to get in a wreck while tit watching. It would have been nice to be a newborn baby sipping milk from her bosoms.
Ga ga goo goo.
This fat, aging nurse has the balls and lack of common decency to say thank you as she tips me twenty one cents on a twenty two seventy nine order. I wonder how she would like it if we all didn’t pay our hospital bills and her fat ass couldn’t eat all the greasy, high cholesterol food that she is used to shoving in her humongous face. I’m going to ask the manager to call her and give her the old “was something wrong the food or service spiel”
Just one floor down, I delivered to the gay male nurse who always makes sure that his co-workers tip good.
Right on.
There are some serious babes on this floor. I would like to settle down with one of about 5 of these ICU nurses. God bless them. They are some hot assed, firm breasted bitches. Three people were huddled by the door as I left, and I heard one man say something about “last rites.”
An old lady was crying.
I have much to be thankful for and will not let one cheap nurse ruin my day.
May God be with you.
And with the lady who has passed.
I have to relate something to you that pissed me off. The other day when I was sitting in that barber’s chair, that old, gay southern barber referred to African-American people as “blacks” and you could tell that he didn’t have much time or stomach for them. He said that he was originally from Alabama and he made some reference to the KKK in a positive way.
Fuck you, you old faggot.
Jezuz fucking crisis…it’s 1998 and there are still people out there with pre-civil war attitudes.
Wake up.
Grow up.
Get a grip.
God made all kinds of different people and the earth is richer for it. We should celebrate our differences and come together with a healthy respect for each other.
Black,
white,
red,
pink n purple,
long hair,
no hair,
mohawks,
afro,
dred lock,
gay
straight,
come together.

I just delivered to a condominium that used to be my son’s elementary school. The girl gave me all ones. I wonder what she does for a living?
Waitress?
Stripper?
She tipped four ones.
Thanks honey.

I got off from work early and now I have to decide if I should book write or girl watch. It’s an incredibly beautiful, sunny, Georgia day, cool and crisp, sparkling fall and all so my choice is easy: girl watch.

The cheap nurse came through, after the manager gave her the spiel, so I take back all the nasty things that I said about her before. She claimed to the manager that she thought that the gratuity was included. She told him to tell me to come back. I did. She gave me two bucks and said, “sorry. I know that you are in the service industry, like me.”
No hard feelings, lady.
Holding onto anger and resentments is my modus operandi. I have been taught that I can’t operate this way any more. I have been taught, by sane and trusted authority that holding onto anger and resentments will drive me back to the drink.
I don’t like how I feel when I am mad or I hate. I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 40’s because I can’t control my emotions.
I love you.
I will try to love everybody, especially those whom I hate or I am mad at. I will especially pray for those that I hate and those who I am mad at.
Amen.

It’s all just fucking theories.
Nobody really knows whether God or Satan exist. It’s a matter of faith or perhaps lack of it, depending on your perspective. Me, I choose to go with the thought that there is something after this life and I choose to call that higher power, God. But you could call it Allah or Buddha or Krishna or goo goo, or blah blah. It can come to you through a flower, a tree, a telephone pole, for all I know or care, as long as you are not trying to shove your telephone pole up my ars.
Dig?

I am crying right now.
One of my customers has a year and a half sober. How this fact came up, I’m not sure. Three people were sitting on a couch drinking beer. The sober guy was drinking a diet coke. He came to the door and started telling me how he was celebrating not having a drink in such a long time.
I will have seven years sober in February.
Thank God.
The man on the couch does it one day at a time. So do I. No matter how much time we have, we are both just one drink away from oblivion and hell on earth.

Were I am at is a great place to live.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.
He died for it.
We get to live it.
Thank God that I have a steady job and don’t have to work for a temporary agency any more, like I was doing when I first got sober.
Delivery drivers are like cops and cab drivers, they take certain liberties on and with the roads that the average driver would, most of the time, never consider. Stop signs, speed limits and, on occasion, even one-way roads don’t mean the same thing to cops, cabbies and me as they do to the rest of the driving public.
I haven’t had a traffic ticket in awhile.
Knock on wood.
I don’t know why, but I feel good on a full tank of gas. My car seems to run better: a little auto-psychology, perhaps.

I’ve heard it said that Gene Simmons of the band, KISS, is a pig. Allegedly, he had sex with thousands of women and took a naked picture of each of them and then published them. I don’t know, what do you think?
Some asshole scratched the Mikel K band magic marker graffiti off of the paper towel dispenser in the coffee shop bathroom, but left the “fuck heroin” graffiti showing.
Am I hated in some circles worse than heroin? Is that good or bad and should I or do I care??? "Fuck Heroin," is one of the "songs" on the Mikel K band "sober" cd. It is very raw. You can listen to it by going to www.myspace.com/mikelkband.

I often get to practice my rock and roll moves at work. Sometimes, after loading the pies into my truck, I practice some dance moves in the parking lot, with my fist curled into a fake microphone. Then, at the end of the night, I turn the mop into a mike stand and imagine that the dirty floor is a packed auditorium.
Rock on.
I just explained to my seventeen year old why I am going to read the book, “Satan Speaks.”
I said, “I believe in God. I choose heaven over hell and God over Satan. But, just as I recently read a book by a black Southern female, I must not live in fear of reading a book by a white male Satanist. I should not be scared of his views, but confident in mine. I should be open-minded and inquisitive. I should have an opinion, but be able to listen to the opinion of others and if they can present me with new information that proves my thoughts or theories dated, dead or wrong, then I should be willing to grow, to change my thoughts and beliefs to coincide with the new better updated information that I have been provided with.”
Amen.
My seventeen year old walked off with a smile, confident now, that I was not going to kill and then burn the dog in the living room as a sacrifice to Satan and send the whole household to hell. Then he turned around with a quizzical look on his face and asked me, “What is a Pagan? Is a Pagan a Satanist?” I thought not, but did not have the answer for him, could not explain to him what a Pagan was. I was an inadequate answerer, a failed for the moment adult provider of information to youth. The kid had seen a pagan on tv where the revolution will not be televised.
Blow up your tv.
Expand your mind.

It is near midnight on a Saturday night. I am at a bowling alley with the kids. The four and a half year old is a blast to watch. She gets so excited with each ball that she throws. I don’t think that she knows that a score is being kept, and if she does, she doesn’t care. She is not here to win; she is here to have fun. And she is having it: a lot of it.
The nine year old blew the three dollars a strike gig I had offered him, because he got so mad losing on gutter balls. I pay him to play. He will be a pro at something. Tonight, though, he had some serious gutter ball anxiety going on.
My son is already a pro in his love for me. I reflect on what a miracle it is that I am with the kids at a bowling alley at midnight on a Saturday night. In the old days, I was so drunk at this night time of day that I was only hours from a jail cell, if I wasn’t already in one.

Vasectomy on Monday.
They will cut my balls and leave me sterile.

My son said that he needed to warm his arm up this morning for his baseball game later in the day. He said that throwing the football, yesterday, seemed to have made his arm sore. We didn’t have a baseball. We didn’t have a tennis ball. The dog had gotten them all. We didn’t even have a golf ball, so I rolled up four white sox and out we went to the front yard. I threw the socks back and forth with my son for a while and then I put a laundry basket on the front steps and let him pretend that it was a catcher’s mitt. As you get old, you have to develop these tricks to stay in the game with your kid.
My boy is playing catcher, right now, before the game, warming up one of his team’s pitchers. He had told me that the coach had him playing catcher, a bit. At first, I wasn’t into it. I was a catcher for my two years in Little League. It is a nasty, sweaty position and I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t want my history to repeat itself in my son, but to each their own. I got a huge thrill out of watching my son mow down a runner who tried to steal on him, during the game, though. He has a great arm.
The team that my son’s team is playing today is undefeated. The other day, my son said, “oh, boy, we are playing an undefeated team. This should be a good game, because we are undefeated, too, except for one game!” The kid sounds a bit like a used car salesman, don’t you think?
“Well, mam, the cd player works, if you don’t turn the air conditioner on, but only if you go no more than 45 mph. Will that be cash or check?”

I dropped my oldest kid off at the YMCA, on the way to the youngest kid’s baseball game. The older kid is seventeen, now. He was five when I met him .On my first date with his mother, he was there with us. At that point in time, I knew nothing about kids, except for the lousy experiences that I had had being one.
For our first date, I was buying his mom and I a six pack of beer and I asked her what to get him. She said that he liked sprite, so I bought him a six pack of sprite. Eleven years later, I am still buying him sprite!
Today, we are roommates and co-workers. He washes dishes and buses tables at the pizza joint. On the way to the Y, I told him that I was going to get a vasectomy.
He didn’t know what that was, so I told him.
He said, “Ouch. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just use condoms?”
“What do you know about condoms?” I asked him opening the glove compartment and pulling out some colored condoms that I had just gotten from the aids awareness people on a delivery.
The kid smiled and said that he “didn’t need no condoms,”
indicating that he wasn’t having sex.
In a day and age where kids seem to be losing their virginity younger and younger and deadly disease seems to be getting stronger and more rampant, it’s good to know that my kid is in no hurry to bust his cherry.
I didn’t lose my virginity until after I had turned eighteen. I had graduated from high school and had moved out of my parents’ Catholic household. I lost my virginity in a hotel room that I had moved into to a girl who had wanted me to lose it to her much sooner than I did.
As well as have sex with this girl, I made the mistake of falling in love with her and, about a year later, she broke my heart by going out with someone else, while I was off at college being a loyal dimwit.
And they called it puppy love.

The opposing team’s bench just came to life. My son’s team is winning 3 to 2, but the other team has a man on third.
The opposition smells that tying run.
They want that tying run.
Dang, they just got it.
Darn.
The kid’s grandmother and I are nervous. My son comes in at pitcher to close out the game. The score is three to three. It is funny to be sitting in the bleachers, next to this woman, today. My son’s mother used to hide me in the closet, years ago, when this lady, her mom, came to visit.
“I would have killed you, if I had found you in that house at that time,” she said laughing with kind of a far off look in her eyes.
The look in her eyes designated that though all was well today, all had not been well in the past. Her daughter, had broken me off of the booze bottle and it had not been an easy or really, safe, thing to do.
Before I met this lady’s daughter, everyone, from my mother to the Secret Service had told me that I had a drinking problem, but none of them had been able to get me to stop. This tough young woman from Bessemer, Alabama was actually able to stop me from picking up the second drink.
I wasn’t happy about it.
I wanted more booze.
And more booze.

I had always wanted more booze.
What good was one drink? I drank not for the taste of the drink, but to get fucked up, to get obliterated. But, also, there was another thing about this tough young Alabama woman that contributed to my not taking the second through infinite drink: she was pregnant. And though I was happy about the impending kid, I was depressed and angry.
The kid’s mom suffered consequences of my depression and anger. She got beat up a bunch of times.
She should have called the police and had my sick, sorry ass thrown in jail. She didn’t. She stood by me and saved my ass. I don’t suggest to any woman standing by a man who beats you up. What usually happens is that he keeps beating you up until he really hurts you or kills you. Call the police the first time he touches you. Have the fucker locked up. My son’s mother should have.
Do you think that all lives have equal value on this earth? Is a doctor or lawyer equal in value, in society’s eyes, to a crack addict? Is Oprah Winfrey worth more in the eyes of us, than O.J. Simpson? Who do you value more, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, Lady Diana or Mother Teresa? Are all men and women really created equal? What if there is just life. No heaven. No hell. No God. No Satan. Would people be decent to each other if there were no cops, no laws?
It is Sunday, time for the weekly T-dance at the gay bar across from the Chinese Restaurant. The parking lot gets incredibly full on Sunday nights. I hope that I don’t get a flat tire like last Sunday. Do you like gay people? Would you want one to be your neighbor? Which would you hate worse to have move in next to you, a black family or a gay family?
We are family.
I got all my sisters with me.
Did you watch the black man in the dress on TV host his variety show?
As I already told you, I beat the piss out of the mother of my son on numerous occasions. I remember thinking that that was the only way I could get her to shut up. I did not like her armchair amateur psychology, her constant analysis of my thoughts and behavior, her inspection and criticism of my writing. I did not like her telling me that she thought that I was manic-depressed. I did not like to hear her telling me that I shouldn’t drink so much.
The worst shot that I ever gave her, was a hard kick between the legs, when she was seven months pregnant. I could have killed her. I could have killed my son. My son’s mother should have either killed me, had me killed or had me locked up. But she didn’t. She said that she thought that I was a good person, somewhere deep down inside. I am very lucky that she thought so. If she hadn’t thought so, I would be dead right now.
Or in jail.
Or in a mental institution.
Instead, this woman gave me one child that is mine by birth blood and semen and two that are mine by love and emotion, whom I treat equal and love equally to the one that my penis and her pussy created. I don’t allow the words step- or half- to be spoken in our household. There is nothing step- or half- about the family we have created. Like I said before, we are family.
Till death do us part.
You go first.

I think that someone should make it a law that if you order food delivered to your house that you should have a house number very clearly visible on your house. Also, if you order your pizza at night, then having a light shining on the number on your house would seriously help.
I had to cell phone my last customer, because her house number was lost in space. Finally, I found the house and as I was walking towards her front door, a bright spotlight hit me as I walked on the sidewalk outside the door. Great move against rapists, I understand, but not much good for the delivery guy. I love those security lights. I love to see where I am going, not fumble in the dark like a canary in a coal mine, but they don’t help me while I am driving down a dark road staring at unlit houses. The customer suddenly showed up on the sidewalk, all smiles, saying, “I thought that I’d be nice and meet you half way.”

I thought to myself, “why don’t you be nice baby and make love to me? I’m deep in frustration and I need a release.” She paid and I left.
Sometimes, I wish that God, Darwin, whoever or whatever would have thrown the whole fucking race thing into one pot and came up with one damn color.
No black.
No white.
No yellow.
No red, just grayish-harmony or rainbow-colored love and laughter: everybody, all of us just one color. No reason to hate your brother. No reason to hate your sister. Of course, then man and woman would find some other basis to discriminate, some other way to hate. Well that fucker has a big toe, we must hate him. That girl has small ears, we must hate her.
I also don’t understand how, why and when it is no skin off your prick to help someone else out, why not do it, whatever or whoever you believe in. I am thinking here, specifically, of those times when you are stuck in traffic and you block someone from making a turn when you could have easily stopped and let them through. All I am saying is give the other mother-fucker a chance.
Call it God or call it Good or call it a higher power or a spirit or call it Krishna, Buddha, Allah, call it a hamburger, call it a cheeseburger and or call it French-fries, whatever you want to call it; sometimes I think of God as being a seven foot two light skinned black man, in a mini-mini dress and high-high high heels. What do you think of that?
Whatever you call it, have faith in it.
It works.

I am stuck in traffic at a fast food outlet. No need to get tense. I’ve got 45 minutes to get where I am going. I’m on my way to a guitar lesson. I just bought my instructor an egg and cheese biscuit. That was part of our deal. The other part is ten bucks.
I have smashed every guitar that I have owned, drunk, starting with the electric guitar that my brother bought me when I was twenty and ending with the acoustic guitar that I smashed, repeatedly, over a complete stranger’s head in the lobby of a public access television studio, ending my career in television.
Both incidents occurred while I was in a black out. I have never been able to master guitar chords. I have never been able to tune a guitar. I was a master at blackouts.
I just beat a cabbie out for a front row position in the most right lane. I think that the cabbie slowed because there was a copper in the rearview.
The woman staring out at me through the fast food place window looks mean as hell.
I hand her a buck thirty-five and say thanks. When she hands me the change, she grunts at me.
What is her problem?
Is she mad at the world?
Does she hate white people?
Does she hate me?
Is she a welfare momma who would rather be at home?
Am I a racist republican or a bleeding heart liberal democrat?
Why are all these thoughts going through my head as I go through the fast food lane?

On the sidewalk in front of me, I spy a girl who I would make love to until the end of eternity just because her hair is so beautiful.
Is that stupid?
I get my balls slashed in an hour and a half. A good girlfriend of mine called my voice mail and left me a message that she was thinking of me “on this day.” That got me worried, like a vasectomy might be a bigger, more powerful, more awful ordeal than I had thought it would be. She said that others were thinking of me and I found a neurotic comfort in the thought that there were women out there thinking about my balls.
I’m checking out this chick right now who is working the counter at the corporate coffee place. This hot young thing is also a waitress at joint in the hip part of town.
I ask her if she is in a band.
“Everybody always asks me if I am in a band or if I paint,” she says. “I’m not and I hate artists,” she adds, “they have such big egos.”
I can’t get my balls slashed, today.
I had to sign a thirty-day piece of paper for insurance purposes. I am having a consultation, though, where the doctor and I talk about the procedure and its ramifications. The nurse who lead me back to the room where I would see the doctor was hot as hell, a light-skinned African American babe.
Skinny.
Tight ass.
Beautiful face.
I wish she was doing the operation.
Or is it a procedure?
I wish that I was doing her.

The doctor came in and told me the particulars of vasectomy. Somehow, we got onto the risk of prostrate cancer and he said that he could check me right there. I guess that every time he shoves his glove-covered finger up someone’s buttocks, he makes a Porsche payment.
I just delivered a wild and maybe weird double. First, I went to a “jack” shack. As it was explained to me, these places contain young women who, for a price, will take their clothes off and “model” for you. You get a chair, a bottle of lotion and a warm towel.
Do you get the picture?
Then, I went to the gay men’s bathhouse.
It is conceivable that I could have gotten a hand job with lotion from some young honey female in one place, providing that I “tipped” well enough, and then I could have gotten a blow job from an anonymous man, wrapped only in a white towel, who was wandering around the steam bath with other men wrapped in white towels wandering around the steam bath.
What a weird double delivery that would have been, don’t you think? Which would you prefer and should you be arrested for it?
Forgive me, Lord, for having sexual thoughts about a woman. The nuns are sharpening their rulers. The priest is getting ready to splash boiling hot water on my erect penis. Is it a sin to have sexual thoughts about a man if you are a man? If so, I’m going to heaven.
Ha ha.
No homosexual thoughts here honey, uh homey.
Ha ha.

I was thinking how so many different things are going on at once. I am delivering Chinese food. You are eating your dinner. Somebody is dieing. Somebody is being born. Somebody is fucking. Somebody is getting fucking up. Somebody is being let out of jail. Somebody is getting busted. Somebody is swimming. Somebody is lifting weights.
Blah. Blah.
Etc. Etc.

The thought occurred to me that women are disposable, like pens. Once I have gotten a poem or a journal entree out of a woman, I can discard her. Such bullshit. Women are goddesses. I now have one in my life. I am blessed. I must be worthy. God has sent me an angel. I must treat her like a queen.
I was thinking, last night, how I always feel guilty working when the owner of the pizza joint is there working also. I’m not doing anything wrong when she is there. I don’t do anything wrong when she is not there. I do my job either way, but I get these deep feelings of guilt, like I don’t measure up or like I am doing something wrong when the boss is there. Is this deep, deep guilt that I suffer from a throwback from growing up with my father and going to the Catholic Church or am I just evil and or fucked?

“DO YOU BELIEVE IN ROCK AND ROLL?
CAN MUSIC SAVE YOUR MORTAL SOUL?”
—Don McLean

One man with one gun could change our whole world right now. Can you imagine if some guy walked in with a shotgun or a handgun and held the pizza joint up, or worse yet, if some guy walked in with a machine gun and just started splattering all of us with bullets?
There are two kinds of poets reading their material in the world today: the boring and the not boring. This girl I know knows this guy who won’t eat anything that his fingers have touched. He throws away the last bit of french-fries and the last finger-full of a sandwich.
It is Sunday and I am back in the Little League bleachers.
It is a nice sunny day, the kind of Georgia fall day where you can wear a sweater and long pants or a sleeveless shirt and shorts and still be comfortable. My son’s team is warming up.
Today is picture day. My son’s team showed up early and got their picture taken, individually and collectively. The guy taking the pictures must be making a fortune. What a boring job it must be, though: taking pictures of little leaguers.
McNally boasts all the time about the wild things that happen to him, and around him, in his fashion photography studio. He boasts about girls wanting naked pictures of themselves and all. I’m pretty sure that I would rather take pictures of naked girls than of a bunch of kids in baseball uniforms, if for no other reason than I would not have to deal with their little league moms and dads.
My son just got a walk.
A couple of wasps keep hovering over our heads here in the bleachers. They are adding an extra edge of excitement and fear to the game. I had to leave the game dead tired and go home to sleep.
I have sleep apnea.
Do you know what that is?

Flashers, those on and off lights in your car, play an important role in a delivery guy’s life. I often leave them on while I am illegally parked, hoping that they will emit some sort of signal to the officer with the tickets as I deliver pizza or Chinese food. Also, I pull over to the side of the street and turn them on when I am inspired to write great bits of literature. The next time you see a pick up truck pulled over to the side of the street with its flashers on, think that the driver might not be stranded, but rather might be an artist working on a poem or the next great American novel or memoir.
Through my years of delivering food, I have seen different people come into the same apartments and houses. I have seen children graduate. I have seen deadbeats get evicted.
I have seen it all, honey.
I just got done delivering four Chinese food orders. It is very rare that you get to deliver four Chinese food orders at a time. The owner does not like to give you more than two orders to deliver at a time. He is scared that it will take too long to get to the customer’s door and that the egg rolls and shrimp salad with hot and sour soup will be cold when it does get there.
A trick that I think that some people use to get out of tipping, is to send a co-worker or a kid out with the money. Nurses often use this ploy.
This bi polar shit is definitely crap. It’s either that or the sleep apnea plaguing me, grabbing at me, trying to bring my day down. I get days, like today, where all I want to do is sleep. I took the boys and girl to school this morning and came home and went to sleep. It’s two o’clock now and the only reason that I woke up was to put some money in my ex’s checking account.
I wrote a check for my car payment on the kid’s mother’s account, last week. I don’t have and won’t have my own checking account, for exactly that reason. I am a check-kiter. I write checks with no funds available and then I run out and try to make the funds available. Often this doesn’t happen and I get hit with fees both from the bank and from the store that I wrote the check to. This pisses me off emotionally and this fucks me up financially, so I try not to do it. I try not to get involved with the whole vulture waiting for a sucker check system culture of criminals in three piece suits.
Caveat Empeor may ass.
The banks and credit card companies love poor people like me. The banks and credit card companies love poor people who they can screw with their fees for this, their fees for that. Your late payment fee put you over your limit, which kicks in an over the limit fee on top of the intensely high interest rate that they are stabbing you in the back with.
Fuck their fees.
Revolution now, baby.
I can’t figure out if I want to eat something or drink a big cup of coffee. I think that I’ll go for the coffee. You know what the credit card company’s solution is when you are having trouble making a full payment two months in a row? They raise your interest rate. That seems like a real smart business move and a great public relations tactic. Here is somebody already drowning and you throw them a cement life preserver. Somebody ought to take everybody associated with credit card profits out and shoot them.
They are such fucking criminals.
Interest.
Late fees.
Over limit fees.
Who elected the assholes who allow banks and credit card companies to fuck us in the ass?
Revolt now.
I fully understand that I got myself into this mess. I am a credit card-alcoholic, just like I am an alcoholic. When I use plastic, I do not feel like I am using real money. It is not like handing over tens and twenties, until the bills start to appear and add up. But, are not the credit card companies much like the cigarette companies, luring you in with glamorous images, when the reality is really grim, mean and ugly.
I am overweight.
I am going to sue Mc Donald’s.

I hate old people, starting with my dead father and ending with this old bitch who just gave me a dollar tip. Old people have never been anything but a pain in my ass. When I was a kid, my parents tried to tell me to respect old people, just because they were old.
Fuck that.
Young or old, or somewhere in between, you have to earn respect. What if an old person is mean and or cheap?
Fuck ‘em.
I just saw an old blue haired lady getting a ticket from a young black cop.
Power to the people.
Right on.

Cheap bitch.
She took all my change for her 50 and then tipped me two on a thirty-two dollar order. It makes me want to holler. I am in a real bad mood anyway, today, and fuck-faces like her don’t help. I took another nap right before I came to work. Naps often make me angry. My temper is real short and I am full of angry thoughts. I yelled at one of the kids before we all headed to work and I feel like yelling at everyone, in general. The bitch was kind of cute, but I’ve decided that I won’t fuck anybody cheap.
Cop’s at the door.
Kid’s on the arm.
Sausage on the veggies and dogs.
Go figure.

It’s Monday.
It is raining.
I am at the pizza joint. I just took a weird triple. A man came to the door holding a very quiet new-born baby, on the first delivery. “You should hear her at 3am,” he said with a weary smile, after I had just commented on what a well-behaved
baby that he had. His wife usually came to the door and the last couple of weeks she had been getting fatter. The last time that I delivered to this couple, the lady’s belly was so out there that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had delivered the baby while I was standing there on the door step with their pizza.
It is often nice to see the changes that people go through over time as I bring them their pizza . Over the years, on my delivery routes, I have seen babies be born, small children become large teenagers, houses get painted, houses get bought and sold. I have seen people move. I have seen people move out and I have seen people move in. I get invited inside many of the homes that I deliver to. I have seen some really neat and clean houses and I have seen some really dirty and disorderly houses. I have seen great works of art that took my breath away. I have seen ornaments in people’s houses that I felt would be ugly at the city dump.

Inside the next house that I delivered to was a dog that started barking as soon as I stepped on the front lawn. I have a dog, and I like dogs, but I have learned, as the delivery guy, that not all dogs like me. I almost learned this lesson the hard way, one night, bending over to pet a small dog that seemed particularly friendly. The closer my hand got to this dog’s mouth, the more its attitude toward me changed. The “friendly” little puppy snapped at my hand. I was just barely able to pull my fingers back in time. Ever since then, I don’t mess with a customer’s dog, no matter how friendly the dog appears to be, nor how much the customer tells me that Froofy, Spot or Fra La won’t bite.
The last stop of this Monday evening was the end of a triple delivery and it was possibly the weirdest delivery of all time. Two police cars were pulled up in front of the apartment building and two officers were standing in the doorway of the apartment that I was supposed to be delivering to.
“She went out, we can’t find her,” said a scared-looking girl from inside the apartment referring to the girl who I was supposed to deliver the large pie to. I just wished everybody a safe evening and took the pie back to the pizza joint.
Been there.
Done that.
I’m glad that I don’t live in a cage anymore.

A weird thing that I have noticed in answering the phone and
taking people’s delivery orders is that, every once in awhile, someone orders our veggie pizza and then says, “ and add sausage.” That is a bit oxymoronic, don’t you think?
A man just gave me a three-dollar tip on a twelve dollar pizza and I can’t help but think what a righteous tip that is. Have you ever noticed that when you are in pain, that you cry out for God’s help, but when things are going well, mostly you don’t bother to talk to him or her?
The thought just occurred to me that if you’re not getting laid a lot, meaning that you are not engaging in a lot of one night stands, that you are going to live longer. I used to get laid a lot by a lot of different women, when I was in college the first time. It was a learned behavior that I picked up on from the Casanovas that I lived with in the fraternity house. I remember one fellow and I used to make a game of it. We would have a contest to see who could bring more girls home. It seems like weird and twisted behavior, now.
I won, though.
It’s fucking two-dollar tip night. Everyone is tipping two bucks. The last guy that that I delivered to made a grandiose display with his deuce, waving the two bills around in the air and handing them to me like he was giving some poor bastard with aids the cure for aids.
The foul breathed dick-head that I just delivered to hasn’t ordered in awhile. I remember that on, like my first or second night on the job, I was real stressed out and late with the pizza, because I didn’t know the streets like I do now. This asshole made some snide comment about me being slow and I let him have it. He suddenly had two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and fat in his face in an intense rage, yelling and screaming.
I calmed down, though, and apologized before anything violent or stupid happened.
Some old bitch called the Chinese restaurant this morning saying that she wanted to pick up an order. I could barely hear her talk, the way she was mumbling into the telephone. Then, I lost her phone number in the computer and had to ask her for it again. Well, you would think that I had just shoved something painful up her ass. She got real indignant and fucking nasty, so I hung up on her, screaming into the phone, “call someone else, lady.” The pain in my ass bitch tried to call back, twice, but I just lifted the phone up a hair and dropped it back down, hanging up on her. Then, I went on about my business of waking up on this Monday morning, bagging orders and taking phone calls from human beings with manners.
About a half hour later, the front of the restaurant manager came in and asked, “Did anyone hang up on some lady?” The old bitch had made her way down to the restaurant and was blowing the manager shit, in person, now.
She was old.
She was ugly.
She was fat.
I was tempted to go out and be nasty to her, in person, but she looked miserable enough without my assistance. She and those in her age group think that they can blow shit up all our fucking asses.
Fuck her.
I don’t think people have a right to be rude to you just because they are “the customer.” That is the same principle as following orders in the military just because you are a private. “Go kill all the women and children in the village, boy. Be all you can be.
Kill. Kill. Kill.”

Overall, as I have said, life is good.
The children put me in the now, with my feet on the ground and my writing and my musical goals keep me reaching for the stars. My program of recovery helps me not regret the past and also to keep my feet on the ground. At times, though, I am paralyzed by a strange and intense desire to not get out of bed. I don’t know if this is because of the sleep apnea or because of the manic depression.
Maybe I am just a lazy mother-fucker like my father said I was. The longer I stay in bed, the more depressed I get. When I wake up, I am in a mean, nasty mood, hating everyone and everything. Daughter-figure, caught the brunt of my anger, yesterday. I hate to take out my moods on my kids. It is not fair. Such was done to me growing up and I do not want to pass it on. I want to break the anger cycle, the belittling of children cycle, the cycle where you are told that most things you want to do are unobtainable for you.
One solution I use to alter my moods, these days is sushi. Raw fish kills my depression and lessens my anger. The only problem with this is that I don t have enough money to eat enough sushi often enough. What a raw deal.
Another solution that I have today, instead of booze and drugs, is to call the mental health department. These people can check my lithium level and based on that level, they can adjust my meds. Maybe I need one of those c pap machines that shoots air down through your nose as a cure for sleep apnea. Or maybe I need both a c pap machine and my meds adjusted. Or maybe I need I a new brain, a new head.
What do you think I need?
What do you need?
Everybody needs something, baby.

He is seated in front of the only open door on this side of the building. As I head for the locked door, he is yelling and screaming like he is an official greeter and I am an old valued customer, a friend. He does not know that I am in the midst of an incredibly debilitating and agonizing three day depression; that I am close to being ready to kill or be killed.
I walked past him full of hate, ignoring his plea for money for a small coffee. When I get in line, he follows me in and heads to the bathroom. Yuck, I think, if I have to go, I must share the same toilet as that lame fucking crack addict. He comes out of the head and leaves the property.
While in line, I thought about buying him a large coffee and an egg and cheese biscuit like I was having. Didn’t he deserve breakfast just like me? What was making me so high and mighty? The twenty-one bucks between me and the street? I could have thrown the guy a white chip and said, “here pal, here’s the answer, sober up. But, if he’s not ready to hear it, I am wasting my time and breath.
Nobody was able to talk to me about the solution until I was ready to put a gun to my head. You have to hit bottom to become ready, willing and able to change. And for each one of us our bottom is different. A little old rich lady may hit her bottom by putting a scratch in her mercedez in the parking lot of a fancy department store. You might have put a bullet in your head, drunk and depressed, and woke up in the failed suicide zombie got a cigarette ward of a state mental institution before you hit your bottom and were willing to seek help and shut up and listen to the experience strength and hope of others.
I am at the Doctor’s office. I think that doctors are such crooks. My son has a pain in his chest. We think that it is a pulled muscle from wrestling with his sister. The two of them watch those big muscle bound professional wrestling guys on the television and then they go around the house, grab all the pillows, make a wrestling ring out of them and then recreate what they have seen on t.v. I often come home to find the four year old upside down in the arms of the nine year old being pile-driven onto a stack of pillows.
Rock on.
Rock and roll.
“Please son, don’t kill your sister or break her neck.”

“No vomiting or diarrhea…?” the lady asks. I hope to hell the kid doesn’t have cancer. When I first picked him up from school, he told me that there was a lump in his chest and I got extremely paranoid that my son was going to die on me. It is not a pleasant thought for a father to think that his son is going to die.
When someone finally arrives to rescue you from the waiting room, they stick you in another room, that looks very official in a medical kind of way and doesn’t have all the boring magazines that the waiting room does, but although you think that the Doctor will come into the room any minute now, it still takes forever for him or her to show up.
The medical people do this intentionally. They tell you to show up way before the Doctor ever intends to see you. They pack you in like sardines in the lobby just like a restaurant packs hungry customers into the bar before you are called to dinner. In both cases, in both places the theory is turn ‘em and burn ‘em.
Go for the big buck, baby.
By any means necessary.
The almighty dollar and not the health and welfare of the person, the patient is why doctors have all these rooms for the patients to be a prisoner in. You wait around for at least twenty minutes after waiting in the lobby for nearly an hour and then the Doctor sprints in and out like he or she is in the Olympics and is trying to break a world record or something, this way he or she can drive a number of Porsches and get the down payment for another house, a bigger better one with a bigger better swimming pool.
Most doctors are not so much healers, as business people. You are just a number to them. The more of you that they can crowd into these rooms and get to wait for them, the more money, money, money they will have. Most Doctors didn’t go to medical school to help people. They went there to make money. The finance classes that they take in college are way more important to them than any health or science class.
Grumble. Grumble. Yeah A.M.A.

I had to go to court, today, to face charges on the two parking tickets that I got for parking the car in a no parking zone, while running in with a couple of hot pies. I got to the courtroom late, weirdly enough, just in time to hear my name being called out and without having to wait through a bunch of boring ass traffic cases before mine.
“How do you plead?” said the clerk.
I said, “not guilty,” and the person sitting to the right of the judge gave me a piece of paper to fill out.
I was prepared to give a long involved speech to the judge about how I am a delivery driver and how we delivery drivers deliver to the jail, to the hospitals and to all these places downtown that don’t have any official parking spaces and how I just hit my flashers and run in and out, but instead I had just said “not guilty” and then looked over to where the cops sit in the courtroom. I didn’t see any parking ticket officers, so I figured that they would let me off, because there was no witness.
I’ve used this trick before to beat speeding and other traffic tickets. Going to court for tickets is almost a routine part of my job as a food delivery driver, though these are the first parking tickets that I have received. I have gotten numerous running red lights and speeding tickets, anything to get that food to you fresh.
The trick worked again. I was out the door and not out a dime for the two tickets.
My truck is getting a new master cylinder today. Am I happy about getting a new master cylinder? Happy is a weird word to use in conjunction with a master cylinder for your vehicle, don’t you think?
This morning as I walked from the car repair shop to the place where I was going to borrow a car from my roommate, I started looking at the oncoming cars. A police car sped up real fast and the thought crossed my mind, for a brief second, of how good it would feel good to step in front of the fucking police car. The thought also rambled through my rattled brain that it would feel good to smoke a cigarette, drink at least a two liter bottle of caffeine-laden soda and drink a super sized coffee, anything to change the lousy way this depression has me feeling.
Anything that is but for picking up a drink or drug.
I can’t go there homies.

I have withdrawn into the fetal position whenever possible for the past three or four days and slept wherever I could, whenever I could. I have blown off plans to meet people. I have blown off things I wanted to do. I have blown off things that I needed to do. A friend of mine said call the mental health center, so I did. I will see the doctor in the morning and he will order a lithium level check.
Blah. Blah.

Wanda Bichaz calls in and orders two sweet and sour pork dinners. “You really like sweet and sour pork, eh,” I say to her typing her order in the computer and getting her total for her. I get to the gate of her apartment complex and her name is spelled wrong. It takes me fifteen minutes to get someone to let me inside the gate. I bang on her door. The lady’s inbred dumb ass son comes to the door and tips me a dollar. I want to kill somebody. Earlier in the day, I treated my kids to a spectacular psychotic episode.
As a delivery driver in a large southern city, I suffer, often, from what I call the intense pressure of having headlights in your rear view mirror.
Anytime of night, there is always somebody riding your rear end, sending their front headlights into your rear view mirror and bouncing light into your eyes, like a silent, but intense, and possibly deadly warning of some sort. This experience especially sucks when I am looking for a number to a house that I am delivering to.
I have learned to hit my turn signal, even though I am not planning to turn, trying to get the people behind me to go around me, so that I can look for the house number without the pressure of intense light reflecting into my eyes, jamming my brain causing psychotic neurosis and extreme mental pain.
Again, I reiterate, I don’t know why people who order food delivered to their house don’t put their fucking house number in a prominent place outside their house and light it, at night, especially on the nights that they order food from me. It would sure make my life easier. It would sure cut down on the amount of time that it takes me to get to your door and it would just about insure that your pizza or Chinese food would be hot, not cold, when I did get there.
I can’t understand why whole neighborhoods at a time exist in the dark. They do it to ruin my evening, of course. They do it to ruin my life. They do it to make me feel miserable. The neighbor hood associations get together and say “we are going to ruin this asshole’s evening every time that he ventures into our neighborhood by telling everybody to turn off their outside house lights at once.
The world is out to get me. I can feel it.

So, I’m driving down Blackout Road, house after house getting darker than the one before it, when I look up through my windshield to see the truck in front of me stopped, with its turn signal on. I hit the brakes and twist the wheel to the right, but I still hit the fucking truck. A girl gets out. I ask her if she’s all right. She says that she is o.k. Then she inspects the back of her car looks at me and says and that there is nothing wrong with her truck.
I am flabber-fucking-gasted.
I clearly saw a scratch or two on her vehicle that would have pissed off some uptown cunt in a Lexus or a Beamer. This punk rock chick was driving an Amerikan made pick up truck. I thank the Lord for punk rock chicks.
My wimpy Japanese built truck is all broken head-lighted. Weep.
Weep.
In the past, you have heard me talk in a very negative, hateful voice. Today, I learned that that is my inner voice and that it is probably my parents’ voice in there, inside me, still, somehow, fucking my show up.
Fuck.
How do I get rid of that hate-filled voice?
I want out of the misery in my brain. If I make it through today without killing myself or totalling my truck, then the day will have been a complete success. That’s the way I have to look at it, sometimes.
One day at a time.
Some days, on the job, my goal is not to make money. My goal is to not yell and scream at anyone or to take anybody out with my fists.
If I keep my job and get to come back on another occasion to earn some money, come back to work with a fresh attitude, then I have succeeded.
Have you ever felt like this?

I started the day crying, mumbling out loud and yelling and screaming inside my head that “it’s not fair, it’s not fair. Life is not fair,” over and over, again. Manic depression has got a hold of me.
My meds are not working. I am living a hell of depression and raging thoughts.
I started a fight, yesterday.
I wrecked my car a bit more.
I am doing the right thing, when I want to do the wrong thing. I want to call the police and tell them that I just noticed the dent in my car and that it must have happened last night, that way I could collect insurance money for the dent.
Of course, there would be karma payback.
Someone suggested that I stay away from sugar.
How the fuck do you stay away from sugar?

Some days are bad.
Some weeks are bad.
Nearly two decades of my life sucked. Someone told me that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I know, now, that tomorrow is a new day. Even as hard as it is today, with this oppressive depression eating me, beating down on me, I know that tomorrow will probably be a better day, after a good night’s sleep.
I don’t mean to burden you, to bitch at you, to moan, to groan and to whine around and at you, to saddle you with my problems, but in my ill mood, my ill mood is all I can think of.
Sorry.

“Depression has got a hold of me. Depression man I got to break free.”—Black Flag

I don’t want to get out of bed this morning.
I am angry.
I consider suicide options. I can’t tell anyone this. I don t want to wind up under the fluorescent light at the mental hospital for five days.
Time for meds.
Time for juice.
Do you know who the President is?
Do you know what day it is?
I dragged myself out of the depression bed and I am now sitting in the kitchen at the Chinese restaurant, waiting for an order that I will deliver in my damaged car. I suddenly realize that I am digging for snots in my nose. It’s not a healthy idea to dig for snots while working in the kitchen of a restaurant. I mean what if a plump, juicy booger jumped off of my finger and onto your food? You might not notice it.
“Hey honey, the veggie lo mein is really good tonight,” you might exclaim to your wife, after I dropped your delivery off, not knowing that you were eating snot.
“Come have a bite honey...”
I deliver the same food, day in day out. Many of my customers eat the very same thing day in and day out. How boring.
I work the same job. I do the same side work i.e. chores that get done at the end of the same shift every day. Where some days I am pleased to be part of a routine world, today, I am severely bored with being one of the mass of men and women. If it wasn’t for the kids, I think, I would surely be doing something extremely exciting,
Yeah, right.
I wanted this to be a book about delivering food, instead it is degenerating into a close look at my mental health. Sister, do you know that delivery drivers come to your house in different emotional states?
Some days, they are happy.
Some days they are sad.
Some days they are psychotic.
Some days the delivery driver is depressed and is handing you your food while suffering from an intense level of anger and hatred.
I feel evil.
I am in over my head on credit card debt and I am drowning. The credit card companies keep sending me a cement lifesaver, digging me in deeper. I am going to have to let the credit cards go and pay them back later when I am stronger.
If I go crazy, if I go stark, raving mad trying to pay bills that I can’t afford, what good will it or I do anybody? This lady, a customer as they call her, was rude to me on the phone because I couldn’t take her check, so I said, politely, “here, talk to the manager.” Then I threw the phone at the computer.

I’m back where I am the happiest: eating sushi.
Sushi is my passion.
Sushi is my life.
I would rather eat sushi, than make love to your wife, or eat some heavenly pussy. You know that you are getting old when you start talking about your teeth and about bridges for you teeth with a friend who you were once young with.
I don’t want to leave behind twenty houses when I die.
I want to leave behind 20 books that I wrote.
I just talked to my brother for the first time in over a dozen years. He told me that my mother has Alzheimer’s disease. The last words that I heard the woman who brought me into this world speak, were to the kid’s mom.
“I want nothing to do with that little illegitimate bastard,” she said. I had failed to meet her high Catholic standard. Now, I was not just a prodigal son, but also, in her eyes, some sort of bastard son doomed for certain to burn for eternity in Catholic hell.
Oh well.
Last night, I had dinner with an old friend who is a teacher. She said that one of her kids told her that his parents don’t let him go trick or treating.
“That is the devil’s holiday,” said the second grade child.
I told her that I knew this Christian kid who had hung himself in the back yard of the house that he grew up in, because he had had sex with his girlfriend, who he wasn’t married to.
The suicide note said that he had brought extreme shame to his Christian family. To me, it is totally not understandable the pressures that some parents put on their kids.
Religion.
Sports.
Grades.
Where is the love?
I took a dump after dinner. I have been wearing gym shorts as underwear because all my boxer shorts are torn up and I can’t afford new ones. All my money goes to the credit card companies.
Usually, I wear black gym shorts, because that is mostly what I own. Today, I threw on a gray pair. Pulling down my pants to take my dump after dinner, I found a brown stripe down the middle. A brown stripe? Now, that depresses me. What do you think about it?
When I was finished having dinner with my teacher friend, I wanted to pay the whole bill. But I couldn’t. I owe Radio Hack $84.00 two days ago.
Every once in awhile, a chunk of earwax will fall inside my ear. I put my finger in my ear, grab the wax and flick it.
Yummy.
I am at the coffee house, drinking hibiscus tea, trying not to kill myself or wreck my car. I have surrounded myself with sympathetic anonymous fellow human beings. This is a safety measure taught to me when I sobered up. When you are first getting sober, it is essential for you to surround yourself with people who can love you until you can love yourself.
I steep the tea bag an extra long time seeking warmth. I look over to another table in the restaurant and I see a man remove all the tomatoes from his sandwich and I want to shout out to him, “hey pal, don’t like tomatoes, huh??”
So, I meet this Catholic girl. She is 29. She wants kids and I think, maybe, I shouldn’t have had a vasectomy.
I can’t meditate.
I don’t have a candle.
I can’t clear my mind. I can t sit still long enough to do either. Can’t is such a negative word. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. I didn’t kill myself today. I didn’t drink or use drugs today. Thank God. I must remember that as a drunk, to have not picked up a drink or drug, today, makes the day a huge success. I must remember that I have beaten some incredible odds to be sitting here today, still sober. I must remember that I am a miracle, a fucking miracle.
I don’t feel like a fucking miracle.
But I am.

I have gone to see the Doctor and tell him that I am thinking about killing myself. I’m in the lobby of the place of mental health with the other zombies, waiting for the cure.” The man calls me.
“Yes, sir,” I tell the Doc, “I need more pills, sir. Or less. I need something, sir. I need something fast, sir, so that I won’t walk in front of that fast approaching oncoming car, when I leave here.
Sir.
These little kids come in and stare at my head. I’m feeling so sorry for myself. My combat boot got in some young lady’s way.
Does anybody know what I am talking about, besides me?
Do I understand what I am talking about?
Do you understand serious depression?
Do you know where my head is coming from?
I have a morning Chinese food delivery gig and I am freaking out because of the Friday traffic that I am about to face, but credit cards due: I'm tied into the machine.
Tomorrow will be more sympathetic. The door to the room that I am sitting in at the mental health place, keeps opening and closing, making noise and pissing me off. It’s only people with problems mental coming and going.
I’m in a trance.
I can’t dance.
I.
In high school, the homecoming queen asked me to go to prom with her, but my dad wouldn’t let me go because he was too cheap, even though I would have been paying for the event. Instead, I stood at the tennis courts, near the beach, drinking quarts of beer with another kid who had nowhere to go that night listening to Neil Young sing, “everybody knows this is nowhere.”
Neil knew.
The girl who was the homecoming queen was also the prom queen.
Fuck.
I really wouldn’t kill myself, but my head is so dead, so full of pain that I am willing to try almost anything to make the pain go away. I am willing to do almost anything to make my head feel different. In the old days, I would have gotten very drunk at this point in the depression.
I see a man stumbling down the street in filthy certainly smelly clothes. I figure that he is more depressed than I am and I am thankful. I am not thankful that that man is in bad shape, but suddenly I am appreciative of the shape that I am in.
An attitude of gratitude starts to set in.

Before I went in to see the Doctor, the nurse had said, “we’ll get you all in to see the Doctor, so that you can get the medicine that you need.” Then she had us go around the group therapy room and state our name and our mental illness.
I felt naked.
I felt like the whole world was staring up my asshole, and then peeking around and looking at my shriveled dick.
“Do you take your medicine?
Are you supervised when you take it?
If you forget to take it, that’s one thing, but if you don’t feel like taking, that is another.” The nurse rambles on like we are kindergarteners, like we are brain dead zombies without a clue.
On some days, I am a brain dead zombie.
On some days, I wish that I was back in kindergarten.

“Do you ever get frustrated with family members and yell at them? I see no significant change since you started taking the medicine, but then again, if you are using alcohol, I wouldn’t see any change,” the nurse rambles on while I sit there in misery.
I haven’t used alcohol in ages.
The Doctor came to the conclusion that I was “decompensating.”
“What does that mean?” I asked the Doctor.
He said that I was getting worse.
It seems very ironic and incredibly pathetic to me that, at a time when all appears to be better than ever in your life, that according to a Doctor, you are suddenly doing worse.
Getting worse?
How the fuck can I be getting worse?
I haven’t had a drink or a drug in nearly a decade. I take the fucking pink pills in the am, upon rising, and the pink and the green pills in the pm, right before I lay me down to sleep.
Getting worse?
What the fuck?
Any person, any day of any week of their lives, no matter what was going on in their lives, could make an appointment with any shrink and that shrink and all other shrinks would diagnose that person with something and prescribe them a pill for it.
It is the same logic that the Catholic Church used in creating and categorizing sin so that you would have to come to them and pay for the cure.
Fuck a bunch of this.

Sometime later, on the way to a delivery, I noticed that I have this huge yellow zit on the side of my nose. It hurts. I am stalled in lunchtime traffic. I look in the mirror and pop the zit. Puss oozes from my nose. I can’t have customers see puss on my nose, so I wipe the puss on a menu.
I’m not working lunches next week and possibly ever again. I can’t stand answering the telephones at the Chinese restaurant. The two Chinese drivers don’t have to answer the phones because they don’t speak English.

I don’t speak Chinese.
Why should I have to answer the fucking phones? I bet if I went to China I would have to speak Chinese if I wanted to work in one of their restaurants. A bunch of fucking bullshit is what it is.
Sometimes, customers make me wait a long time on their doorstep. Both customers on my last double did that. The first one tipped $2, the second one tipped $6.
Which one do you think pissed me off less?
I just saw this guy walking car to car holding a sign.
His sign said: “I have extra money, do you need any?”

I just popped a punk rock cassette into the cassette player: a little angst to get me through the pressure of lunch deliveries.
The shrink had read what I had told the nurse in group. “We’ll have to give you more...,” he said.

When you are in the mental state that I have come to be in, do they ever give you less? Oh, he’s experiencing extreme depression again, after 6 1/2 years on lithium, deseprimine and perphenezine, let’s cut him back and see what happens.
I feel like taking my credit card payment money and handing it to people on the street who ask me for spare change.
I’m trying to speed and the guy in front of me is going slow.
I’m tired of signs telling me what to do. My great traffic battle plan failed. I changed lanes and then the car in front of me decided to turn. I sat there looking at his turn signal, watching the slow car in the other lane drive off.
The shrink decided to add Prozac to all my other pills.
I just realized something, as I drove to make my first delivery on this fine Friday evening: the customer is the enemy.
I must arm myself to engage.

This kid, a new dishwasher at the pizza joint, asked me to save the chicken wing bones from what was my dinner tonight. The kid said that his grandmother had taught him to eat cartilage.
Now that is fucking weird.
I just did something that I’ve never done before…I walked to a customer’s door without the pizza, just holding the bill in my hand.
These dickheads don’t have their house number lit. I ought to spit in their pizza. That’s funny. I just complained to my customer about the credit card companies. When I come back on Prozac, I won’t be so vocal. I’m driving with one headlight, now: real safe, huh? The other light is hanging by a wire, shooting light in all directions.
Poverty sucks.
Class war now.
My seventeen year old was grooving to a popular rock and roll band on the radio. I pointed to the radio and told my kid that years ago, when I was a young, thin lad, the lead singer of that band had made a pass at me. My seventeen year old changed the channel.
This fellow that I know from film school came into the pizza joint with his wife, again, tonight. I am burnt out on the food, since I eat it everyday, but they, obviously, are not. This guy has a wife. He has a good job. He seems to be normal. Why can’t I be normal?
I wish that my younger son would say that he is an addict. He is addicted to video games.
Some guy just called the pizza joint and said, in an angry voice, “I want a large pizza.” I told him that we stopped delivering at 9:30 pm. He cussed in my ear and then said that he had had pizza delivered to his house after 10 pm before.
I said, “that’s bullshit,” and hung up on him. He called back and was rude to the waiter who told him to come down and be rude in person if he was going to be rude. He chewed the waiter’s ear for twenty minutes and then said he was going to “report us” to the owner. We decided that he was drunk.
The pizza cook just came up and told me that the new busboy swept the floor, picked up all the dirt that he had swept up and then had put the filthy dustpan on her just cleaned food counter. I agree that that was a dumb ass move, but what am I supposed to do about it?
I took my first little green Prozac pill, this morning.
I swallowed some milk and cheerios first, and down my throat the pill went. My son’s other dad witnessed the historic occasion.
I’m on Prozac.
Hmmmmmm.
May God save me from me.

I’m at a wedding, today, doing the best I can do, clothing wise, to be dressed for a wedding. The two people tying the knot have successfully lived in sin for a long, long time. God bless them. They now have a baby on the way. I’m glad that she is making an honest man out of him.
Tee hee.
I’ve heard that some people who have successfully lived in sin for like forever get married and soon they get divorced and the relationship is bust. That is kind of weird don't you think? Are vows taken in front of a paid for priest or justice of the peace more sincere than a look into one another’s eyes and whispers into one another’s ears?
There was only one fucking bathroom at the wedding and there was a long line of folks waiting in it to use it. People in the bathroom line keep getting bumped because people actually in the wedding ceremony had to piss or poop. There are a lot of musicians at this wedding. The groom is a musician. He is the baddest mutha-fuckin’ guitar player on the planet, but you have never heard of him. Isn’t it weird how some people get through and some stay “underground.” This guy will be a great fucking dad which is many million dollars more worth than a million dollars or getting your face on the cover of the stoned roller.
I am in row two of the wedding audience. The sun is beating down on my bald head, hard. There are a bunch of long hairs at this event. I relate to several of them the story about how I once had my hair half way down my back and how I was going for some ass length hair, when I woke up one day and realized that I was growing long hair to rebel against my long dead father.
When I was ten or twelve, I wanted long hair like Jim Morrison and John Lennon.
Fuck.
Look where those two wound up.
Instead, as an adult, when I finally had long hair I looked in the mirror one day and realized that I looked like a bad Greg Allman.
Did you see the police mug shots of Nick Nolte when he got his dui.?
Fuuuuck.
I’m glad as hell that I quit drinking when I did.

I have been telling people from second one, when I arrived at this wedding, that I know nothing about wedding etiquette. This is only the second wedding that I have been to in my life, and I blew the first one majorly. Instead of calling the guy, Cunningham, his given name, I called him “Cunnilingus,” his nickname back at the frat house.
Boy was he pissed.
The thought occurs to me that I haven’t seen the bride.
Classical guitar kicks in. All the musicians are sitting around the stage. The caterer is finally ready to give up some coffee and food.
One of the groomsmen comes out looking super dapper in tuxedo tails. I know him and I want to applaud, but I realize that that is most likely inappropriate wedding behavior.
Then, out comes the groom, wearing a big smile. I have to clap a little. People join me. The applause gets intense and the groom smiles. Two video and two still cameras click and hum furiously. A small, smiling child holding a pillow walks out.
And then, here comes the bride! The father kisses the bride and I cry.
The couple holds hands and look deeply with love into each others’ eyes:
“I...the man ...take...thee the woman to...”
and...
“I...the woman take thee the man to...”
The small child steps towards the groom with the pillow that a ring was perched on. The female minister begins to speak, “Love freely given has no limitations, no definitions, no boundaries...I now pronounce you man and wife.”

And with these words, these two beautiful human beings, who had lived together so successfully for well over a tenth of a century, satisfied the church and the state. It was my hope that the relationship never winds up with one or both of them trying to take the other to the cleaners or the boxing ring, if they were to part before death do they part, like way over sixty percent of the unions today sanctioned by the pope preacher and or state wind up.
The couple walks off smiling.
The small child leaves with the pillow. The bride leaves with the ring and the man she loves. The couple are driven away to eternity in a stylish old car. Eternity will begin with what’s known as a honeymoon.. Empty beer cans rattle under the vehicle pounding out a blissful serenade on the street. I’m glad to see that the vehicle that they leave in is not a fucking stupid unimaginative unoriginal limousine. Limousines are so pathetic. What a fucking stupid sign of success and or wealth.


The Waffle Bang Bang is an incredible place. What a fucking well-oiled machine, especially on the weekends. Stroll, wander or stagger in and you will find the most unique assortment of waitresses screaming out food orders way loooooud.
Smathered, scittered, flattened here, puffed up there cooked this way one, this way another, this one cancelled, add this take this off, etc. etc. etc.
Blah Blah.
Yell. Yell.
Scream.
On the surface, it is like a madhouse at any one of these restaurants, at most any moment of any day. Waitresses are running back and forth in a seeming frenzy. It’s as if each one of them has just injected a massive hit of some very potent speed into their arms with plates perched precariously up and down their arms. It is amazing that the whole crew doesn’t wind up in the emergency covered in blood before the end of each shift.
Our waitress said that she needed to get a copy of the book that I was reading. Then she said that she was in recovery. I said how long and she said five and a half years. I pulled up my sleeve and showed her the word sober tattooed onto my arm. She smiled and then headed back to her life in the fast lane.
My son and I are having breakfast. We went through a major trauma last night. Our dog, Javi, didn’t follow us into the house, yesterday, after we took him for a short walk. We searched and searched and roamed the neighborhood screaming for the beast.
Then, the kids and I formed a circle on our back porch and prayed for the safety and the safe return of our dog. Around 2:30 a.m. I was awoken by some familiar heavy breathing.
Javi, the dog, was back.

She’s gotten all fat-assed, probably doesn’t take it off for money anymore. She got busted, again, for dope. We did it once. We never did it again. I was ready. I would have done it again. Perhaps my dick wasn’t good enough. Perhaps my dick wasn’t big enough. Maybe I came too quick. Maybe I didn’t come at all. Did I eat her pussy? Did I not eat her pussy well enough?
Sex.
Sex.
Sex is dead.

“Love is the answer and you know that for sure...
—John Lennon

Is it?
Is love the answer man or mam, or is it cash jack, madam?
What is freedom in today’s world economy, love or money?
If you have enough money, honey, if you can show him or her the benjamins, baby, you can fly around the world right now. You don’ t have to stay stuck where you are at right this second or at six, seven or eight am in the am, being a working class hero, working for the man every night and day, if you have the cash money, honey.
If you have enough cash, jack, isn’t it easier to attract a mate? How can you ask someone to go out with you if you are broke? Hey baby, let’s go to Woodstock for some free peace and love.
We got to get back to the garden, oops it’s closed. Who wants to date some cash less mother-fucker? If you don’t have the green, baby, you must be a loser?
How are you going to provide adequate housing, cars, TV’s, VCR’s, microwaves, refrigerators for your loved one without cash? How are you going to pay the late fee which causes the over the limit fee which is added to the high interest on the credit cards? How are you going to buy the groceries, pay for the fast food? How will you buy the Girl Scout cookies?
You can’t just sit there watching the wheels go round and round unless your rent or mortgage is paid, your car payment is in the mail, the utilities are taken care of, before the utility companies take care of you, leave you cold in the winter, hot in the summer. Deregulation is in the best interest of whom: the consumer, ha ha.
“Hey Ed, we sure pulled that one off on the electorate, those working class suckers. Hey Ed, we’re teeing up for eighteen with the elected officials in an hour. Hey Ed, make sure that you bring that hefty campaign contribution check so that we can keep the ball rolling. Hey Ed, we’ve deregulated the consumers' utilities, now let’s drive up the price he and she pay for a gallon of gasoline. And let’s tell them that that is in their best interest, too.”
“Hey Ed, ha ha.
Ha ha.”

When your kid is younger, you watch him exist at the mercy of coaches in organized sports, who have brought their sons and a daughter or two, here and there, with them to the ball field, who are assured a slot not only on the team, but also one in the starting rotation, though they may suuuuuck.
The behavior exhibited by coaches with their own kid on their team is very un-Christ-like. It is very un-Darwin-like, also, but you sit in the bleachers, year after year, and watch and hope that your kid will learn from the experience and grow strong, somehow, because of it. It is gut wrenching to see the tears in your son’s
eyes as he sits in the dugout watching kids with far less talent than him get way more playing time than he does.
You know, and your son knows, that while those kids who are playing more than him, were in front of the television, or zoned out into the Nintendo or play station, that your kid was throwing balls against the wall of the pizza joint for hours and hours while you delivered pies.
And at the ballpark, after practice, when all the other kids had gone home, your kid would beg you to hit him another hundred or so grounders and then, when you thought that you could head home for dinner, he says, “pop-ups, dad, will you hit some pop-ups to me in the outfield?” And you do so until the sun disappears. And then he wants to head to the batting cage and turn the light on to get some more batting practice in.
"One more pitch, dad, come on dad, pleeeeeeeeeese, just one more pitch, dad."

When your son hits his teens, you watch him pick and choose “friends.” Your kid has no ulterior motives, he is not trying to be in the in click or hook up with the coolest chick, but some of his pals are and you try to guide him through the challenging teen years, although you were a pathetic failure at being a teenager yourself.
The bullies beat you down emotionally and the bullies beat you down physically. The cheerleaders ignored you. Your catholic dad kept you locked in the house and off of the telephone so that you wouldn’t and couldn’t sin.

Everyone in the parking lot, today at the coffee shop where I have been going to re-write this book, has their cell phones out. A red head, whose car got booted, is livid. She is screaming into her cell phone. I wonder who she is screaming at?
The booter guy has his cell phone glued to his ear. Maybe he is talking to his boss for clarification or maybe he is just killing time, acting like he is talking to someone, until the girl calms down and realizes that he is not going to take the boot off her car wheel until she hands him fifty bucks cash or her credit card.
The red head’s man is also on his cell phone. I have no idea who he is calling. This is a high adrenal ceremony that gets played out in front of my eyes each day in the coffee house parking lot as I rewrite.
Peace.

I have definitely and for now and for forever quit working lunches at the Chinese place. I can’t take the pressure. You don t make shit and you catch intense shit. My sanity is more important to me than the mother fucking legal tender. It is seventy-six fucking degrees today in October.
Shit.
My son told me how good his school lunch was today.
He said that he munched on a beef sandwich and scored an extra ice cream. He said that he “found” an extra dollar in his backpack and that he had no idea where it came from.
Geez, I wonder.
My boy told me how he and his classmates watched a movie in school today about the Revolutionary War. He told me how he saw men getting their arms chopped off and having something nasty done to their heads when bullets were lodged there.
The ex called and asked me how I was doing. She was specifically checking into the Prozac situation.
Well, I started taking it on Saturday and I haven’t wanted to kill myself since Thursday. Is that good? I did feel a greater calm in hanging out with the kids, today, after school, though I have been told that the effect of Prozac takes a week or two to kick in.
Am I perhaps experiencing a placebo effect?
You know the new thing that the kid’s mom has come up with? She doesn’t want me to introduce her to people as the mother of my child.
What?
And whyyyyyyyy?
Should I introduce her as the blonde from a bottle that I met in a bar and knocked up? Would she prefer that? I think she is trying to re-live or regain her youth. I mean the woman is not acting sensibly.
Take it on good authority from me, Mr. Sensible.
Isn’t it funny how people can seem to have their act together when your act is way fucked up and then as you are slowly getting your act together their act starts looking fucked up. Forgive us our trespasses, Lord, but more importantly help me to forgive those who trespass against me.

Things are starting off slowly, here at the pizza joint, this Monday evening. The kids have already bummed two dollars and fifty cents from me, so that they can play video-golf.
Video golf?
Two-fifty?
Who is the criminal who designed a game that costs this much to play eighteen holes inside of a small box that attracts small children to the screen and causes them to badger their parents endlessly for money?
My first delivery, tonight, was to a seminary dormitory. I hate delivering to this place. The closer you get to God, the cheaper you get with the delivery guy. Sure enough, the weird-looking guy with the big ears handed me a check for sixteen on the nose.
No tip.
May you rot in hell with your bible, while I run with the Angels who tip, upstairs, you cheap mother-fucker. I called the guy back and said that I was the manager and was your food good and was the driver all right and he said yes. Then, I said, well you didn’t tip him and our drivers work for tips. He said that he didn’t know that and I said o.k. we just wanted to make sure that our side of the street was clean and then I said goodbye.
What an asshole.
Mr. Seminarian needs to go do some go to Hell Marys or something. The cheap shit ordered a large Greek salad with his large, plain, pie. I hope the feta cheese makes the big-eared prick sick.
Are you starting to sense that there is something possibly wrong with my attitude? People wander into my website and wonder why I am pissed off all the time. A friend of mine designed a site for me. It has many of my poems and a daily section that I write in daily called The Daily K. You should check it out at www.185cool.com/mikelkpoet.
Are you awake?
Are you conscious?
Have you read the news today, oh boy, and taken a look around see which way the wind blow? Do you really think the answer can be found in a pathetic statement like the answer my friend is blowing in the wind? Have you reproduced, i.e. breeded, Miss Thing? Have you taken a good look at the world your kids are going to inherit?
Your grandkids are seriously fucked.
How the fuck can you not be pissed off?
Is your head in the sand?
Man.
There is a big table of lesbians eating at the restaurant and the waiter is growling because he is sure that they are going to run his ass off and then leave him only a buck or two. Gay men typically tip real well. Lesbian women do not have the same reputation. Women, in general, are lousy tippers. It’s probably because all of us sexist pig male slobs have been keeping them down for so long, hogging all the good jobs and getting the educations, while they get knocked up and knocked around.
No wonder there are so many lesbians. A woman can probably treat a woman so much better than a man. Who needs a penis fucking things up?
As I rewrite this book to please the agent to score the major book deal major movie deal that sends me around the world, signing your book and licking your pussy, if you appeal to me, I spy a cute young girl outside the coffee shop sipping an ice coffee, while chatting to an older sort of good looking broad. The younger girl had a face that could make you melt and never recover your sensibilities. She had slightly larger than ordinary breasts and an ass that could keep you happy until death did you part from it.
But, you know what? She smokes so I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick pal.
The manager slash pizza cook was in a pissy mood tonight, as usual. He got slammed, while my delivery business was dieing. It’s 8 o’clock and I have taken only two deliveries all night. Someone is plotting against me on this credit card debt thing. I’m going down down down.
They are dragging me down.

I really hate wiping my ass.
Sometimes, it takes like 20 or 30 wipes to get my butt hole clean. Sometimes, I can’t get it clean and I just save it for later until my asshole starts to itch. When my asshole starts to itch, I know that it is time to clean it again. I know, too much information.
Thanks for sharing.
The bathroom at the Chinese restaurant sucks.
I always forget that there is a nasty puddle of water underneath the toilet, because the landlord is cheap like all landlords and won’t fix the fucking thing. I never remember that the nasty puddle of piss is there, underneath me, until I pull my pants up and the filthy cold water hits my legs.
Yuck.

I am at the anonymous place.
This place gives me great strength and peace. I come here for answers and I get them. For years, I fought the word “alcoholic.” Now, there is great comfort in knowing what I am.
In town guys and girls with tattoos, hip hop kids and punk rockers always tip good, way better than the pathetic losers with beamers and swimming pools. I just got 5 on a 25 dollar bag from a guy covered in tattoos from the top of of his arms to the bottom of his arms. The guy threw me no attitude. It was cool to interact with him.
I hate the cock suckers of the world.
Cool people rule.
My car is a fucking mess, as usual.
I feel bad about it, like I am a slob. I blame it on the kids, but find no relief in this, no escape. There is no one to confess to, no purgatory to retreat to and to attempt recovery in. There is no chance of peace on earth right now, just this hell of filth.
It is a Wednesday night. I am delivering Chinese food. My first delivery was cool, a blue-haired punk rock kid wearing a black and white Betty Paige t-shirt who tipped 3.50.
My second delivery was a cunt, an old bitch, who complained that the price of her food was too high, because a 15% gratuity was included in her order, because she had ordered from a hotel. I wanted to cuss the old bitch out, but I held my tongue.
I don’t feel the need, today, to tell everyone what is on my mind. Thank God for God. And praise the Lord for Prozac?
Hmmmmmmmmm.

I’m starting my day with a cola and a coffee at the anonymous place. There is this inner voice, this morning, telling me that I am a bad person. You don’t have enough money to pay your credit card bills: you are bad, bad, bad.
The Suck Shack bill is now three months old. The un-cover your assets and steal them card is one month overdue. I am over my limit on two master rip off cards. This shit has been really bothering me for several weeks now. The pink pills have helped, a bit. They have put some perspective on things. Father’s little helper, I refer to them as and chuckle.
The anonymous place puts things in perspective, too. Hearing what other people are going through and have running through their head, helps me put my shit, my insanity, the calamity in my brain that seems so insane in perspective.
Well, that guy’s father just died or that woman has aids or that man just got out of jail this morning after a fight in a bar in a blackout the night before. Listening to other people share what is going on in their lives makes my little credit card problem seem so insignificant.
For a couple of hours anyway!!

I have this problem with dripping toothpaste and saliva onto my shirt when I brush my teeth. I never notice it until I am out in public. It embarrasses me, makes me feel really little, like I am not good enough for your love.
Nothing has really changed, just the way I look at things. Perspective is everything. Attitude is everything and if you watch late night info criminals’ television, you know that you can develop a great attitude by paying three hundred bucks for cds from the positively happy to have your cash, jack, confidence man, mam.
And, of course, you can develop a great body in just seconds a day by buying our all new shoelace workout system endorsed by crooked chuck the recovering heavy bag hitter and the used to grace the glamour magazines girl.
Don t people have any self respect? Are these late night crooks that hard up for a buck?
Honey, pleeeeeeeeeeez.
I am at the anonymous place, learning to live in the solution. There is a program that must be worked to stay sober. Working with another alcoholic is one of the keys to the method. That’s all I can tell you.
It’s been great not working lunches. By not delivering Chinese food, I have had more time to myself, more time to relax. I have not yet spent the time working on the great American novel.
I am not perfect.
Yet.
It’s another Friday night.
I am delivering pizza.
First, I am going to whine and, then, I will share with you some good news. Have you ever noticed that when you really expect something, that your expectations are not met?
I have been waiting to run into this girl who I met at the pizza joint months ago. One of the pizza cooks told me that she often still often comes into the joint to eat, but, dang it, never when I am there. Tonight, she finally came in and it was nice to see her and chat, but fireworks didn’t go off, my life wasn’t changed greatly, etc. I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch or something and she said yes.
So, now, since I gave her my phone number and she didn’t give me hers, I have to wait around until she calls. My inner voice doubts that she will call.
I am an insecure loner with a boner.
The good news is that the cheap lesbian, who always orders from me on Fridays, tipped 5 bucks.
Hallelujah.
Maybe it’s because it’s Halloween Eve. Maybe it’s because she got to eat some killer pussy last night or earlier in the day and eating some fine pussy made her feel benevolent.
Did I tell you that I’m a loser with the ladies?
I’m 41 and I’m still scared to ask them out. The Catholic guilt lurks in the deep recess of my brain like a nun surreptitiously trying to fuck a priest.
Have you ever notice that people don’t expect receipts when their pizzas are delivered to the door?

Tonight seemed mellower than most Friday nights, though I have been busy until right now. I don’t know if it is the night or the Prozac. The girl was cooking, tonight, said that I seemed quieter.
Isn’t it funny, unique and strange the effect that drugs have on you, both the legal and the illegal kind? Popping, dropping, sucking and snorting the illegal kind, I wound up spastic, suicidal and depressed. I abused alcohol. I abused LSD. I would snort all the cocaine and speed you would give me or that I could get hands on by hook or by crook. I tried not to put my rent money into the white powders. Cocaine had once put me on the streets of L.A. I already told you that, though.

She’s is good-looking, so she thinks that she ought to be on TV. or on the cover of magazines. Ugly people don’t get their face on the cover of shit. They don’t get their faces on nothing but police dockets, wanted posters, etc. All men and women were created equal my ass. We live in a strange world where what you were born with can make you or break you.
I am ugly on some days, beautiful on others. Prozac has stolen some of my sense of humor. I am more detached, less affected by the world around me.
Tonight I met, Betty, a little old, skinny, white-haired lady hooked to an oxygen machine. Usually, I run from old people, but Betty’s spaghetti sauce had dripped all over the bag of Chinese food that I had handed her, so I cleaned it for her.
“Come in,” she had said, because she was too weak “today” to go to the door.
“Why are you hooked to the oxygen?” I asked her.
“Emphesema,” she replied.
“Did you smoke a lot?” I asked her
“Yes,” she said, “and as bad as I feel now, a cigarette would be marvelous.”
The Lord can be psychotic.

Tonight is Halloween. Greedy little kids wander the streets waiting to bust windows with eggs and hard candy. It’s funny, in a very weird way, how some Christians hate this holiday. They see it as a festival for Satan.
Fuck em.
Halloween has developed into a great American holiday, whatever it started out as.

I knock on the door, say “trick or treat” and then try to convince the customer that I am not the pizza delivery guy, that I am just a tall, heavy-set, middle-aged man out halloweening as the pizza guy.
She laughed.
She didn’t tip all that well.
She just laughed.

I just delivered to the all girls’ school. We include the tip, now to these little rich kid whores. Yikes. This girl waited for what seemed like an attorney, uh eternity, while I rooted through my pockets for her 20 cents change. What a cheap bitch. This is a rich little girls’ school. These girls are the ones who are supposed to be our future. They are the brains, the supposed smartest younger ones among us who can change the world, rearrange the world. And they are the ones who stiff waiters and delivery guys. Fuck you, you intellectual whores. How can you solve the problems of the world when you are cheap as hell with the working class right in front of your fucking nose, standing at your fucking doorstep with your fucking dinner?
A young guy was waiting outside, ever so patiently, for his little rich girl date. She showed as I was leaving. They hugged and kissed. His hand hovered dangerously near her ass. You know that he wanted to pat that ass.
I would spank that little rich ass.
Hard.
This sober whore just showed up at the coffeehouse as I was doing the rewrite. This bitch was never really good looking enough to deserve my attention, but since she was a recovering whore I was nice to her. Then, the more recovered she got, the more snotty she got with me, so basically I’m ignoring the fat assed fake-titted bitch.
Tonight, she walked up with a tall thin blondish girl with nice tits. Who knows if they are real or Memorex. Anyway, the other day, I heard that old fat ass had a girlfriend.
Girlfriend?
I thought that the fat whore liked to suck dick.
I think it sucks when some girl hangs out with the girls acting like she is looking for dick when she really wants some pussy. Something is just fucking wrong with that.
Straighten up, girlfriend.
Halloween has been a pretty fucking busy night. I guess people don’t want to cook when they have to take the little beasties door to door. I just got my first cheap tip of the night. Some effeminate looking guy, who is not gay, but wears ear rings and probably little girls’ panties, gave me a buck.
I hope that someone gives him some poison candy, or puts a razor blade in his apple, not that there is anything wrong with looking effeminate or anything.

“They put a hotwire to my head for all the things I did
and said...they made these feelings go away, model citizen
in every way...”--John Lydon

If a woman introduces herself to you as “John’s friend,” does that mean that she’s banging John?”
I’m sleepy, this morning.
I’m going to work a double: I’m picking up a morning shift at the Chinese restaurant and I’ve got my usual night time slot at the pizza joint. Things have been going real well since I went on Prozac. I haven’t wanted to kill anyone, including myself. My temper has been even for perhaps the first time in my whole life. It is weird how I spent all those years using illegal drugs and alcohol, searching for something that I never found.
Now, I have these state-prescribed drugs that are making me feel normal for the first time in my life. It’s kind of weird, like clock work orange.
I am at the World Love House, falling in love with the bus girl, who brought me my coffee and water with lemon, thank you. She is oriental, maybe Vietnamese or from Thailand.
I would marry her.
Last night, Saturday night, Halloween, was a great night to deliver pizzas. People have started decorating their houses much like they do at Christmas, only with orange lights and flashing pumpkins, screaming witches and scary ghosts instead of multicolored lights, green wreaths and fat old Santas.
There were lots of kids out in costume. Way more people than usual called in for a delivered pizza. I made a hundred and twenty bucks.
Yes. I’m rich.

Overheard:
Guy one, “Gosh, there’s only two seats.”
Guy two, “Yes, but there’s only two of us.”

The Chinese gig went by so fast, today, that I got to write nothing down, scribble in no notebook, write no poem, work on no novel. Tips were incredible. I made 90 bucks in like 4 hours.
One guy tipped 13 bucks on a 43$ bag. Of course, one guy tipped 2 cents, but overall I would say that God is aiding me in getting these credit cards paid off.
Praise the Lord.
Isn’t it strange and hypocritical that when things are going the way you want them to that God is a great, but that when things suck he or she is a prick. Please re-read Job and then burn your bible.
I’m at the Pizza Place, now. I don’t usually work Sunday night here, but the other driver needed off. I started off my pizza evening with deliveries to two cheap bitches. The first one I am not familiar with, but the second is a regular. She is too damn lazy to cook dinner for her kids. She always comes out with a beer or cigarette. Why don’t you cut back on the vices a bit, honey, and tip the delivery guy more?
Have you ever hoped to catch a squirrel? I am out in the neighborhood handing out menus for the Chinese restaurant and the Pizza Joint and I see a squirrel run from me. It somehow reminds me of being a kid.

Today is Monday.
The lines at the bank are horrible. I went to one banking location this morning and left because the line was too fucking long. I figured that the long line was maybe due to the fact that it was lunchtime. Now, it is several hours later, and the line at another banking location is equally as fucking long.
I hate standing in line with the mass of man.
Is it wrong to ask out a girl who has a boyfriend?
Does it make you look stupid or horny and blind if you ask a girl out who is already going out with someone? I almost asked this girl to dinner, moments ago, and right before I did, she said that she had a boyfriend, sort of. How do you have a sort of boyfriend?
Isn’t it twisted and bizarre that chicks who have boyfriends sense that you are going to ask them out and will bring up their boyfriend, somehow, in the first or second sentence of the conversation: ”well my boyfriend was painting the bathroom the other night and…”
Though I am an old man, 41, I still get nervous, neurotic and shit nearly all over my pants when it comes to approaching members of the opposite sex. Historically, I would mostly wait it out until some woman asked me out. There were often many, many long waits over the years.
Waiting around, like in a long line, is something that I have always hated to do. I think that I get better at it, with time, but a good book, or writing a good journal entree sure helps the time pass fast.
Things are slow, tonight, at the Pizza Joint.
Two regulars are dining at booths. One guy eats a whole large pizza by himself every time that he comes in. He reads a book and chain-smokes while he eats his pizza. The fucking weird mean old bastard, kind of grunts at you when you say hello to him or ask him what the fuck he wants to eat and or drink. To some he might seem harmless enough. To me he is major pain in the ass, a member of the species that Darwin somehow failed to eliminate. He is cheap, self-absorbed and smelly. I often see him walking about the town and he seems feeble.
I hope he falls.
The other regular is bald and covered in tattoos. He always orders a beer and a meatball sub. He is very pleasant, but still there is something about him that makes me not let my guard completely down.
I would not want to get in a fight with this guy, but then, I wouldn’t and won’t have to fight him. We get along. Perhaps it is the respect for the mutual psycho that lurks in each of us that assures that we would never tangle.
I have to apologize or make a retraction. Do you remember me telling you about the regular customer who was cheap? Well, though I bitch to you, the reader, to the customer’s face, I am always nice, smiling, polite.
Call it a Southern Smile approach.
Anyway, though this guy is cheap, I like him. He is a friendly person. Tonight, he and his girl, actually invited me into their house. She had recently had a small accident and we were discussing it. The guy tipped 3 bucks, not his usual dollar something.
Praise the Lord.
See what a good attitude can do?
I’ve got to change this voice in my head, this angry, hateful voice. I’m not sure where it’s leading me, but I am sure that it is not to a place where I want to wind up.

I had a salad tonight for dinner.
It was boring as hell.
I kept yearning for meatballs.
A woman, who frequents this establishment, keeps dropping subtle hints to me about my meat eating. She is not in my face about it, she is more a manipulator than a bully about it.
She has said that she would go out dancing with me. She never did. What a whore.
An angel of sorts appeared at the phone booth near the pizza joint, tonight, a gorgeous, sexually liberated angel. This girl is a stripper, but before you dismiss her as a drugged out anything for a buck loser, let me tell you that she refers to herself as a sober, sex industry worker.
It turns out that she is a useless piece of shit, too.
I hate everyone.
Punk rock 101 hair lesson. The bottle has two black people on the front of the bottle, but the secret to punk hair spiked hair is Murray’s gel. Trust me. I’ve had a vasectomy.

It s been said that Rock and Roll never forgets. And neither does the delivery guy. I got an order from a guy who stiffed me last time that I carried some food to him. He most heartedly apologized, when I called him back and said that I was the manager, but that doesn’t pay for my gas or underwear for me or the kids pal.
Driving to his house for the first time in quite awhile, I wondered if he was going to stiff me again? I got these awful feelings of hatred and greed thinking about him. He handed me a check with a three dollar tip in it.
I am an asshole.
How can I make these negative voices inside my head disappear? I saw a couple of young girls smoking it up in their little car and I wanted to share with them the tale of Nancy, the little old lady hooked to a breathing machine with emphysema fighting to take a full breath to show them where they might wind up.
You can’t fucking tell people what to do, though.
I’m going door to door, again, handing out Chinese and pizza menus. Cats run from me. Dogs bark at me. One particularly vicious dog, locked, thankfully, inside his house aroused a male voice, who started yelling. I wasn’t sure if the guy was yelling at me or the dog.
Fuck both of them.

Whose idea was it to put thorn bushes in the shortcuts between houses?
Coffee starts the rainy day.
Eggs with cheese and onions are on the way. I don’t feel creative. Are you naked, alone?
I’m glad that dogs are held behind fences and inside houses and are not allowed to roam free. If their bark is as bad as their bite, I would be in trouble handing out menus.
No menus this morning, though. It is too wet. I am at Grease
World, again. It is not as loud and crazy as on the weekends.
Whoever made the grits rocks.
These grits are so fucking much better than that old bat Julia or that fucking crook Martha could whip up. Don’t you hate when people have this all cheery and helpful television personality, when, in reality, they are uptight useless money grabbing bitches?
When I was a kid, I used to watch this show called the Dang Dandy Ranger show. The Dang Dandy Ranger came across in my dad’s living room as nice as hell guy.
On the television, he appeared kind and loving to kids.
I begged and begged my mother to take me down to the studio to be on the show. Finally, one day, she did just that. I was happy as hell when I took my seat, kind of in the rear of the kids’ section, which, of course, was flashed regularly to the viewing public to up the ratings.
I started chit chatting with the kids around me and was having a grand time waiting for the show to begin, when, suddenly, someone grabbed me by the neck and whispered in my ear, very mean and psychotically that I better shut the fuck up kid, the show was about to start.
The hard hand belonged to the Dang Dandy Ranger. What a prick. All that love, all the warmth and friendship for children that you saw from your home on the TV. screen was just a front for the cameras, a way to make a pay check for an uptight non-kid loving asshole.
Sometimes, you grow up faster than you want to.

These are the best grits that I’ve ever had.
They are nice and lumpy, like a cancerous breast that will recover with love and broccoli and sips of your own piss.
It’s a dreary day, too wet to hand out menus, so I slept the morning away dreaming about spanking Julia and letting Martha suck my dick.
I have just come from the anonymous place, fortified with anti-beer strength and a whole bunch of gratitude. I’m listening to the radio. Commercial time: it’s about this beer, that when I was a kid, you could only get west of the Rockies. So, of course, we beer drinking kids wanted it
Our expectations were high.
When we finally got our hands on a can or two, the beer sucked. The beer was watery. It tasted bland as fuck. Nowadays, you can get the beer anywhere on the fucking planet. Who wants it? If I was still drinking, you couldn’t pay me to drink that shit.
The fucking beer commercial must have tapped into some emotional hotspot, some psychological, subconscious trigger, somewhere in my brain, because I found myself craving a beer.
Fuck that.
I had just left the anonymous place.
I was fortified with anti-beer energy and here was this beer commercial fucking with me.
Double fuck that.
I changed radio stations.
Fast.
This disease of alcoholism is cunning and baffling and trust me one beer would not have been enough.

I have spent much time being an outsider and it occurred to me, today, at a sushi lunch, that I was an outsider, not because I was different, but because I wanted to be an outsider. Insecurity kept me on the outside looking in. Fear kept me from opening my mouth and talking to that girl or joining that group.
And then, later in life, when I fully understood what a useless pain in the ass ninety nine percent of the people that I had so far come in contact with were, it just plain made sense to stay away from most of them.
When I was a kid, I went door-to-door delivering newspapers. I would also go door to door selling subscriptions to the newspaper. I would also sell thin mints door to door for the school and chocolates for the Y. What perfect preparation all that was for going door to door today as the food delivery guy.
As a kid I was much more of a prostitute at your front door. I was a small, but ruthless capitalistic pig who would tell you anything to make a sale. I would use all kind of kid sympathy approaches to close the deal, to make you open your wallet to me. I would smile and lie. I would lie and smile. I would smile and tell the truth, whatever it took to get you to hand me the cash jack.
Cash was king, when I was a kid, pal.

11:30 a.m.
I am at the Pizza Joint.
I dropped off some flowers and a card to surprise the owner. Her husband and the pizza crew are throwing a surprise party for her, tonight, to celebrate the fact that she has been in business for one year. What a class act she is, a tribute to the finer aspects of capitalism, proof that you don’t have to be a complete shit head to make your money off the back of others.
Oops, I spoke too soon. The boss lady later degenerated into a major shit head and I snuck out the back door one night with the kid, rather than put up with her bullshit just to make a buck.
Do you detect a pattern here?
Is the whole fucking world wrong and I am right?

The pizza manager, who is usually in a bad mood, is covering the owner’s shift, this morning, so that she can go to some sort of a meeting. The usually major dick headed manager is in a great mood. He offered me coffee and talked me into waiting while he cooked a breakfast pizza.
Even a cup of strong Ethiopian coffee and a caffeinated soda could not wake me, this a.m. I was fifteen minutes late to work at the Chinese restaurant.
It’s a wet day.
I am working a double.
My son has his last fall baseball game, today, but I doubt that they will play it.

I wish that I could stop mumbling under my breath after I leave the customer’s door. It is so negative. “Cheap bitch,” I just muttered after this girl with nice, big, firm tits residing in a tight black shirt gave me 31 ones for $29 order.
She seemed miserable. I sort of felt sorry for her, though I was pissed that she was a cheap bitch tipper. There she was with those great tits and that fine ass body and she was miserable. She is probably a stripper. From what I’m told, most strippers are unhappy as hell. They present this great front, like everything is grand, dropping drawer and sticking their pussy in front of any man’s face for a buck or two, five or ten, but inside it ain’t.

I’ve been told on many occasions, that most strippers are suffering from some sort of childhood trauma such as daddy, uncle, granddaddy or all three of them fucking her when she was a kid.
Many, many strippers are heavily into cocaine and alcohol and or more drugs and alcohol. You can't really be happy with all that going on in your life. I can’t fix this big titted bitch or any of them girls that take it off for a living, or anyone else, as a matter of fact. I can only work on me. I know that I don’t want to be like her, and being mean, miserable and unhappy over the amount someone tips you is the exact fucking same thing as being unhappy over life, or your lifestyle, or your girl or boyfriend or whatever the fuck else it is that makes you fucking miserable. Unhappy is unhappy, whatever way you arrive at it, and I don’t want to be unhappy.

I just delivered to a children’s hospital. The nurses were listening to the sexual advice show on the radio, when I got there. I was surprised to hear such a radio program on in a hospital. I mean, I thought that doctors and nurses already had all the answers to all the questions about sex and it was they who we were to turn to, not a couple of dickheads trying to be funny for a buck or two million on the radio for advice about sex.
Fuck.
If doctors and nurses don’t have the answers to our questions about sex then who does?
Car salesmen?
Cops?

I set my alarm clock for 6am this morning and got my fat sorry ass out of bed and into the gym by 6:30. I did these things called intervals, where you do one minute of cardio and one minute of weights and then you keep on moving and alternating from station to station until you’ve lost a hundred pounds.
Yeah right.
I jumped.
I pushed.
I ran.
I sweated.
My heart beat fast.
I groaned.
And then I went to the coffee shop and had a huge cup off coffee full of cream and sugar.
My son told me that he made an A plus in violin, that he was the only kid in the class who could play a certain song. Later, he gave me his progress report card from school.
I was not pleased. Although my son does his homework diligently every night, he almost as diligently forgets to turn in his homework on a regular basis. Also, he talks too much in class.
Oh no, another me.

It is Monday night at the pizza joint.
I need money.
My truck has been gouging me. I owe my son’s mother money on a check that I wrote on her account.
Money.
Money.
Money.
Who is the asshole that invented money and then so unfairly distributed it?
One of the pizza place’s waiters is taking an order at the counter from a customer with as fine buttocks as I have ever seen in my life. This woman is very tall and she keeps pushing forward on her toes, so that her great ass sticks out even more prominently.
I really think that I need to get laid, jerking off is just not making it.
I am a half trying to become a whole, so that I can meet another whole and multiply. Not physically, solely, but mentally and spiritually, as importantly.
The vasectomy will take place on Monday.
The living room wall of the last house that I delivered to was covered in Civil War books. I commented on this and the lady of the house said that her husband was writing a novel. I told her that I was writing this book and we exchanged emails, figuring that her husband and I would be looking for an agent at the same time.
She was a very nice lady. She invited me inside the house. I gave the pizza to her son who stood there holding the dog, a very un-dangerous looking Irish setter who the lady said wouldn’t bite me, but might slobber all over me. The lady said that she was a French teacher.
I wouldn’t have banged her because she was married.

This model whore told me, tonight, that she left New York City to get away from her rich boyfriend, something about not feeling right about being supported by him and wanting to get more into Jesus. A photographic acquaintance of mine spotted her with her new boyfriend, last week. He was driving a new brand new beamer. Some habits are hard to break, honey.
I hope that she is happy. I am trying not to hate, these days, but it is hard. I have been trained to hate. I am comfortable with hate.
Jesus.
You should have seen the girl in the last apartment that I delivered to. She had long legs and a tight ass that was being displayed in some sort of black dancer tights. She was living in sin, or I would have banged her, for sure.
What a fucking double standard I have. I won’t bang a married woman, but I might bang one living in sin, except for the last delivery, as I just said. Do I really think that a church or state sanction is more important than the vows between two individuals?
Am I a complete idiot?

A miracle occurred on my last delivery. A brand new beamer sat in the driveway and I said, “oh fuck, here we go: low tip time,” as I approached the house. The guy came out of the house dressed real nice and was super friendly.
And.
He tipped 7 bucks.
The owner of a beamer
Holy shit.
What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with the planet?

I slept until 1 p.m. today.
There is a pretty deep guilt associated with my sleeping this late. I should have been up a 9 am typing and then been out of the house and on to the anonymous place for a noon meeting. Instead, I slept late, jerked off and headed out for lunch at the farmer’s market.
Jerking off, first thing in the morning, often gives me an energy boost, wakes me up, gets me moving. I always use saliva as a lubricant when I jack off. I’m not sure why.
I just lied.
I use saliva because it feels good. Jacking off with just my hand hurts. Lotion is not as enjoyable to me in a good jack as saliva. I mean if you re going to sin in the eyes of the Pope’s Lord, you might as well do it right, you know, and get full enjoyment out of it, because you are going to their hell, anyway, pal, if you are not already in it.

Do you hate me because I beat off?
Am I a sinner, sentenced to hell, am I an evil human being because I beat my meat?
My Dad used to wake me and my brother early on Saturday and Sunday mornings screaming at us that the two of us were lazy losers who were sleeping our lives away and that we needed to get the fuck up now and do something productive.
I know, for sure, what my father thought about sleeping late, but I never, directly, got his opinion on jacking off and for this I praise the Lord. Wouldn’t it suck to be jacking off, working it real good, like maybe, to the naked image of Drew Barrymore and your dad walks in?
Did that ever happen to you or someone you know?
Kiss me Drew.

My old man was Catholic, or at least he came up, or started out Catholic. Near the end of my life with him, he started sneaking off to the beach for hour long walks, with his pipe, after dropping my mother, my brother and I off at the church for the long boring ass Sunday mass. My dad would act like he was going to park the car and then show up at the end of the long boring hour highlighting by the church's passing of the basket, acting like he had been in the church the whole time, suffering the hypocrisy and tedium as we had been.
I have no doubt that my father’s policy on jacking off was pretty much the same policy of that of the Pope. Is it funny that priests can fuck choir boys in the ass and then the Pope will cover the church’s assets, yet we are going to the Pope’s hell if we jack off?
I'm not a jacker-offer when I'm in a relationship. Funny how that goes.
I wonder what my father thought about on his hour long walks along the beach, when he was supposed to be sitting on a hard ass church pew with us, standing up and kneeling down and standing up and kneeling down and sitting while the priest droned on about...?
Most people, as they age, seem to get closer to churches, and often will a great portion, if not all of their earthly assets over to organized religion, perhaps thinking that they can buy themselves a slot in heaven after a total me, me, me life of fuck fuck you you you.
And you.
It would appear that my father’s faith in the church wavered as he neared death, but that he cared not to share that view with my brother and I. One day I pointed out that he was skipping church to take a long walk in the sand and he basically told me to fuck off.

Today, I really craved chicken or fish for lunch, but I went with tofu instead. It was bland as hell. I was wanting to kill as few animals as possible for me to live. Beating off and eating vegetarian will keep you alive longer.
If I had slept with a different woman every time in my life that I beat off, I would be dead.
I don’t know if I want to become old.
There is an old man seated in front of me, here at the farmer’s market cafeteria where I am having the tofu. This old guy wears these large, dark glasses. His face hovers directly over his food and he pushes the food onto the fork with his finger, just as a small child might do. I want to try and take care of my body and mind as best as I can, so that I can enjoy my old age. I hope that it’s not too late.

The night is starting off rough.
This little bitch that I work with just blew me shit because she took an order that is like 90 miles from the pizza joint and I’m pissed off about it. We have a certain delivery area and it is in my best interest to make sure that we stay inside it.
"But it's within the circle on the map," this stupid girl keeps whining . Beoches like this should be forced to work at Waffle Hell or at the Pancreas Pancake Place and not at a hip pizza joint.
The phone rings.
It's another female pain in the ass.
This woman takes forever to order a fucking four item large pizza, asking me stupid questions about the history of anchovies, olives, onions and pepperoni, like I know or care. Besides this, she is fucking talking to somebody else in her house about what do they want on the pizza the whole fucking time that she is giving me the order. Then, when I ring her fucking large pizza into the cash register and give her the price for her order, she asks if we have a smaller size because she doesn't want to pay that much.
I hung up on her and told the manager that she would be getting a nasty phone call in a minute or two.

Now, I'm parked in front of a house, waiting for someone to show to pay for this large pizza. There is a car parked in the driveway and a car parked in the garage. I figure that these shit heads either went to a neighbor's house, or are inside fucking or committing suicide.
Then, the fucking bitch pulls up with her boyfriend and kid and starts giving me immediate shit. "You got here sooner than you said you would," she says, like there is something fucking wrong with that. And then the useless whore tips me a fucking dollar after I have been stranded in her front yard for fifteen or twenty minutes, wasting valuable moments of my life on an unappreciative cunt.
The useless piece of shit bitch obviously called the pizza joint from somewhere else, like work or the mall, and thought that she could beat it home before I delivered the pie. People often call the pizza joint from work or from their car phone. Actually, I didn't really mind the wait. It gave me time to write some great literature.
So what am I bitching about?
I’m bitching because the whore’s attitude sucked. Come to think of it, the attitude of a lot of the human race, in general, sucks. The human race will blow you shit and step on you like you are dog shit on their heels, if you let them.
Don’t let them.

I don't like dressing nice. I don’t like wearing three-piece suits or ties or waiter outfit penguins outfits, preppy clothes, or lame shirts with a collar.
When I wear a “normal” fucking collared shirt, people treat me like one of their own, which is to say they treat me like shit. When I dress like a criminal, they fear me and thus give me respect.
Who got more respect, the Black Panthers or Martin Luther King Jr.?
Who got more respect, Gandhi or John Wayne?
I'm starting to think that that sick mother fucking “punk rock” performance artist G.G. Allan had the right idea. Maybe I should start shitting into the palm of my hand onstage, and off, and start flinging it at the world.
I'm trying to be a nice person, these days.
In the morning, I hit my knees, close my eyes and say to God, "thy will be done not mine, guide me in thought, word and action, Lord."
By nature, I am a greedy, self-centered, hating, angry person. All that got me was time in jail and mental institutions and a strong desire to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.

I almost got shot delivering pizza, last night.
The couple that in this house, that I was making a delivery to, always tip good. They are kind of stand-offish, though, never really fully opening their door. I’m not sure what’s up with that but, like I think I’ve said before, some black people often just give me a dollar or nothing at all as a tip.
But, not these folks.
Well, anyway, last night, I knocked on this couple’s door and nothing happened. There was no car in the driveway, so I stared to think that no one was home. I knocked again and then I heard a voice say something in kind of a muffled scream. I figured that the wife was screaming at the husband, "do you have the check or do you have the money, honey," like so often happens, when I
I wait and I wait and still nothing. No one answers the door. I knock again. "Who is it?" said a muffled voice.
"Pizza," I say.
The lady opens the door with a scared look in her eye. Her ten year old son grins at me. "Momma was scared," he says.
"I had the phone off the hook. I was about to call 911," says momma.
I smiled and said, "Well, at least you didn't run and grab a gun."
"Oh yes, I did," she said, disappearing behind the door for a second and re-appearing with a large, black .45 caliber handgun."
She tipped me five bucks and I left the house.
Fast.

“I was cruising home through Bakersfield, early Sunday morning listening to gospel music on the colored radio station and the preacher came on to say that you always have the Lord by your side...”—The Rolling Stones

"God doesn't want us to be poor," said the man to the group gathered at the anonymous place. A bit later, I raised my hand and asked the group gathered, "if God doesn't want us to be poor, then how come I'm so broke?"
That got a good laugh from the group.
After the meeting, the man who was an expert on what God wanted and what God didn’t want came up to me and said, "do you want to know the secret?"
I thought that, maybe, he was going to offer me some cash or a job that I didn't want.
Nope.
"You have to pray to God to be rich," he said. He said it several times, then he said, "yes, that's the secret," and then he walked off. Outside, in the parking lot, I saw him standing next to his expensive car. He was smiling broadly and was showing a contract, of some sort, to another man. The God expert man held the contract high in the air, as if he was worshipping it, sort of like a priest does with the host during communion.
The man who he was showing the contract to, was looking at it in complete awe. Why hadn't the man shared with me what was in the contract?

My brakes are broken.
Again.
It has only been 10,000 miles since I last had them fixed. As a delivery driver and, even not as a delivery driver, I am hard on brakes. I do a lot of in town driving with a lot of my foot hitting the brakes hard. I just thought you might want to know this.
One of the regulars came in, last night, with a lady friend.
Sometimes, this guy comes in alone, sometimes he comes in with this lady friend. The guy made some comment about me needing to shine my boots. I’m not sure of the deeper meaning, here. I’m not sure if I should have grinned at him or told him to shove it up his ass or put my boot upside his head.
Old thinking.
Sorry.
I just delivered to old Mrs. Dupree. I wonder if she ever gets out of her apartment. She always makes me wait on her doorstep and goes and gets an extra stinky dollar or two for me. Mrs. Dupree says that she tips me more than the other drivers because I am nicer to her than they are. Mrs. Dupree’s apartment still stinks rotten and still, sometimes, makes me gag awfully. Mrs. Dupree’s dollar bills are nasty too, though I do appreciate that she thinks that I am nicer than the other drivers. I can be nice. I can be nice when treated nice. I can be nice, when I want to be nice.
I can be twice as nice.
I haven't been writing much, recently.
Today, I washed and dried my clothes at a laundry mat, which I haven’t done since I was living alone in a rooming house.
Last week, I moved out of the house and, more importantly, out of the household that I have been living in and with for the past seven and a half years.
To tell you the truth, my departure wasn’t all that pleasant or pretty. I spent an hour and a half handcuffed in the backseat of a police car. I then spent ten minutes in a jail cell. Before I could make my second collect phone call from the cell, the officer who had brought me in was letting me out.
He was pissed.
For an hour and a half he had asked my son's mother and her boyfriend if they wanted to press charges and for an hour and a half, they had said yes. Then, perhaps when they had talked it over and thought about having to stand in front of a judge and air our grievances, they changed their minds. Natalie told Peru that she let me out because of the kids.
Though this sober handcuff and jail cell experience was painful, I learned some valuable lessons about where my anger can take me. My anger can take me directly to the same place that my booze wound up taking me on a regular basis: to a jail cell. My anger can take me away from my kids. I have to stop allowing other people to push my buttons. I have to learn to control my anger. I have to learn how to control me.
Just because you make me feel threatened or insecure, does that give me the right to lay my hands on you? I used to think that the answer was yes. I was trained from a young age to think that the answer was yes.
"Real men circle up and settle their differences," my father had told me over and over, again and again, in his gruff Irish accent, the smell of beer and whiskey on his breath. “If they mess with you, you hit them,” my father had taught me, so, consequently, I began my pugilistic adventures in the second grade.
Regularly, I would come home to my mother with my Catholic school uniform navy pants torn and my white shirt Catholic school shirt covered in blood. I don't remember my mother ever getting mad or seeming overly concerned about the torn pants and bloody shirt. Perhaps my mother also subscribed to my father’s theory that real men settle their differences with their fists.
Or, maybe my mother didn’t know what to do. Maybe my mother had to do what my father told her just like me and my brother had to: in every moment.
On every issue.

I tried to settle an issue with my son's mother's boyfriend with my fists. 911 was called. I don't want to go there, again. I am trying not to be live a bitter life. I am trying not to live a life of hate. Circling up and settling your differences, carries charges with it that lead to a jail cell in the new country. My father died before I could tell him that. I wonder if he is brawling with Bukowski in front of the Lord.
I doubt it.

Tonight, I feel a loss. Tonight I feel a loneliness.
The pizza business is slow on this Monday: no customers of note, just one or two cheap bastards. I mean, come on honey, do you really think that 75 cents will do me any good? Would it do you any good? How about if I shoved it up your ass by way of thanks?
Last week, one of my regular customers came into the pizza joint with her son. She looked me deeply in the eyes and told me that her husband was in New York. She rubbed me on the arm. I started fantasizing that she wanted to suck my cock. The situation baffled me.
I liked this woman’s husband. He was a nice guy. This lady was a major fucking babe, though. I started freaking out.
What should I do?
What would I do if she gave me the opportunity to have her lips on my dick? I went on a delivery. When I got back, the lady was gone. I delivered to her house, tonight. Her husband was on the porch, talking on the phone. I was glad to see him. I was glad that I hadn't fucked his wife. Maybe she didn’t mean anything by touching me on the arm. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to suck my penis at all. Maybe I’m just a major fucking idiot who needs to get laid more often.
Or get laid at all.

My son and I are seated in the auditorium at the elementary school where my son graduated from and where his sister on her way to graduating from. My son’s sister is seated on the floor in front of the school stage one is a circle of kindergarten children gathered in a circle around the teacher who teaches the kids acting.
I have so much to be thankful for.
This year, I was invited to five different Thanksgiving gatherings. Years ago, I remember being at the grocery store in the psuedo-hip part of town with my old lady, Priscilla. Me and Priscilla were buying beer and cigarettes that day to get us through the holiday the next day.
Directly in front of us in the check out line, was this kind of red neck looking and talking fellow. He wore a t-shirt that said, "it ain't easy being sleazy." He said that he was the “chef” at the restaurant across the street and that he was cooking a turkey the next day, which was Thanksgiving. He bragged about all the trimmings that he was going to fix, like some fancy stuffing and a cranberry sauce the name of which I couldn’t pronounce then, and I can’t remember now, and mashed potatoes of a similar vein as the cranberry sauce.
None of this really interested me or Priscilla until the “chef” said, "…and we're' having free beer."
Priscilla and I were the first in line, the next day for his Thanksgiving “buffet.” When the doors opened at noon, we went in and started guzzling beer.
On that hallowed day of thanks, a free buzz was all that we were out and about and thankful for. Pricilla is clean and sober, now, fifteen or so years after our Thanksgiving beer guzzle. I didn't think that she was going to make it. After she kicked me out of the apartment, that we had lived in for several years, for hitting her in the face in front of other people, she moved on from the volumes of beer, wine and liquor that we had consumed together while dropping acid and smoking pot to shooting speed. The state of California was made aware of her addiction, and her practices related to it, and they threatened to take her two beautiful children away.
This made Priscilla straighten up.
Today she has been clean and sober for a number of years. You praise the Lord and I’ll thank my higher power.
The “chef” didn’t turn out so lucky. I understand that he is dead now. And I understand that it was the booze that killed him.
May God look over his spirit and his soul.
He was a good man, beaten by a bad ass disease.
The disease of alcoholism is killing millions of good people, right now. See the malt liquor commercial on the “bad” side of town.
"Cut me some slack, what is so bad about being poor and black? They killed the Indians. They killed Martin Luther King Jr. They killed Gandhi and John Lennon. They’ll kill me and you. We’ve got to get it down. We’ve got to get to higher ground."--the mikel k band, on the "sober" cd

It is Thanksgiving eve.
People are tipping like madmen.
Four bucks.
Five bucks.
Nine bucks.
They have a lot to be thankful for: houses, cars, kids.
I have a lot to be thankful for: a beat up pick up truck, my kids, my sanity, my sobriety: the fact that I am not in a jail or mental institution, or dead from the disease. I didn't think that I was going to get to do the family Thanksgiving thing, this year. I was planning on doing a noon meeting and then dining with the anonymous people, but my son was pitching a fit, "but, but, it's Thanksgiving."
My son's mother called a while ago wondering where the kids were. I had already taken them to their grandmother’s house.
Into the phone, I said, "we...? I didn't think that you would want me around this year for the turkey?"
The kid’s mom said that if I sat at the other end of the table, it would be fine. I told her that I would, but that I would be throwing things at her! Just turn it over and don’t try to control everyone and everything and every thing will be all right.

There is this nasty old man who comes into the pizza joint almost every night. He always orders the same thing: a large cheese pizza and a diet coke. He sits in the smoking section and smokes between twelve and fifteen cigarettes a night. I have emptied his ashtray, many, many fucking times on many, many fucking nights. As this filthy and disgusting old man eats and smokes, he reads a book.
And he coughs.
He coughs this nasty cough of death, a late stage emphysema cough. I found out, recently, that this fucker never tips. I didn't really like him before, but once I found this out, I had no time for the fucking asshole cheap booger.
The way I look at it, this mother-fucker is polluting the air that I breath. I don't think that it is his right to sit in our restaurant and blow out all that second hand smoke. Maybe he has a death wish.
I don't.

The other people who work at the pizza joint call this asshole "the usual." I call the usual "the asshole." He needs to clean his pants; and shirt. And take a bath. And head east. Or head west. Or north or south, just somewhere else than within the air that I am trying to breath.

A weird feeling of resentment went through me on my last delivery, tonight. I brought five pizzas to this guy who was about twenty-five years old. He was living in a brand new house. There were a bunch of people gathered in the dining room. A fat ruddy-red faced man grinned at me from the doorway to the kitchen. The refrigerator inside this guy’s house was brand new. The microwave was brand new. The oven was brand new. The fucking toaster was brand new. All the living room furniture was brand new. Everything in the house was brand new and I figured that the drunken old man, who was grinning at me, must have had something to do with this kid having a brand new house with everything brand new in it.
Nobody had ever bought me a house. Hell, nobody had ever bought me a car. I'm thinking that no one bought me much of anything once I walked angrily out the door of my parents' house at age 18.
Should I have a chip on my shoulder about this?Why were some people born into wealth and others into a life of work that doesn't pay worth a shit?
The kid tipped fourteen bucks on his five pizzas, which was nice, so I can’t really hate him right now. You have to be happy where you're at, be optimistic and challenged by the future. I will have a house, someday. And so will you.
Bullshit.
Class war now, baby.

I saw a bumper sticker, recently, that said, “no one should own two homes, while there is one person who doesn’t have a home.” What do you think??
I talk a lot about revolution and class war. Do you think that I am full of shit? I think that I am jealous because other people have things that I want and I don't know how to get them. My war, my revolution would be no good for you baby. I'd be like Castro, fine dining while you run around like a zealous idiot believing in "the cause." There is no cause. The revolution will not be broadcast from a five star restaurant.

I woke up this morning curled deep in the fetal position and gave immediate thanks to God that I was here for another day, able to see a new day, breath the air of a new day. It was raining outside, so I had to put a bunch of clothes, pillows and blankets in heavy trash bags, before I threw them in the back of the pickup, sort of a white trash umbrella, I guess. The kids and I were going to spend the night at Michelangelo’s.
Like I told you, Michelangelo was the man who had taught me about art. Ted Turner had his billboards. Ted Turner had his CNN. I now had a ninety seven cent can of black spray paint and was just as potent. Ted's bi-polar and so am I. Do you see any other similarities between Mr. Turner and me?
What the human mind can conceive and believe, and work for, it can achieve. Or like Ted says, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
What do you think?
The “family” wasn't doing the holiday at grandmother’s this year. As we did, on occasion, we were celebrating the day of thanks at a restaurant. My son and I rode together to the gathering.
My son is a smelly little kid, who farts all the time. I think that he has stomach trouble. Stay away from him. His breath stinks, too.
Ha, ha kid, just kidding.
I wonder if my son will ever make it to this page in this book. My son is, so far, not down with reading. Skateboarding, play station II, television and skateboarding videos are the things that most attract his attention.
Did I say skateboarding?
The only reason that I got into reading when I was about his age was because we had a contest in the sixth grade to see who could read the most books. The kid who read the most books won something or got some sort of an award or recognition of some sort and, of course, since I liked to win things and was always hungry for recognition, I was all about reading books, at least until the contest was over.
The kid who I beat in that literary battle was reading books by authors in the vein of Shakespeare, Ezra Pound and John Milton. I was reading books like Ball Four by Jim Bouton, The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson, books that were like two hundred pages maximum full of sheer adrenal.
At that time, I also liked to read about Jim Morrison and John Lennon, Angela Davis, Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, the yippees and the hippies.
Tune in and turn on.
The revolution will not be where?
Trapped in my pristine ultra clean better homes and garden type Irish Catholic home, stuck in school with Nuns and Priests for guidance who instilled in me a deep, dark fear of the creator, my maker and who made me feel guilty for being alive, for being human, I liked to stick my nose into what the counter culture was up to.
My dad hated the hippies. Gosh, he fucking hated the hippies.
I tried, over and over, to get my hair over the collar of my shirt, but it was always a no go with my dad. In my thirties, I went like five years without cutting my hair or shaving. One day, I looked in the mirror and realized that I looked like a bad Greg Allman and that I was actually growing hair to rebel against my father, who was, now, over a decade dead.
I cut it my hair within a day and shaved two hours later. The true counter culture wasn’t about hair, in the sixties, and it is not about hair or lack there of now.
Nor will it ever be.
Never judge a book by it’s cover, except this one which I thought of titling Buy This Book instead of The Delivery Guy. Define to me just exactly what it means for an artist to sell out?
The holiday went well, yesterday. The kid's mom and I gave each other a hug and then she bummed twenty bucks off me for gas so that she could make it to the place where we would eat turkey. She also said that she needed me to pay her utility bill, Monday morning, so that they wouldn’t shut off the lights off at her house.
I told her that I was saving my money to make my car insurance payment. She said that I could write a check on her account, like I had been doing for years, and then she would rush to the bank when her check came in to cover it.
Does this sound like dysfunctional co-parenting?
What do you think?
I don't live with the kid’s mom, anymore, but it seems like she wants to carry on the same old patterns. After being broke yesterday, she announced, today, that she was driving the kids and her friend Hilary Momarilla to Arkansas to spend the weekend with Momarilla's mom. I was of the impression that the van that the kids’s mom was going to trot up to the mountains in with the kids in tow was uninsured.
I was also of the impression that Miss Thing needed her van to get to work and to take the children to school in. What if the fucking van breaks down on the way to her little vacation? She wouldn't have the money to fix it.
It was a new phase of the same old bullshit.
When I mentioned all of this to her she stalked off pissed as hell. The only time that this bitch is pleasant to me, is when she is hitting me up for money and getting it. Then I got really pissed off myself. My blood boiled. And then, I said some really stupid things, as I usually do, when my blood boils.
I came to an amazing conclusion, tonight.
The conclusion is that I am sick of being powerless over this woman. She has worn me out with lies and bullshit and I can't stand the sight of her.
Be careful who you fuck. You might be fucked for eighteen years, life or eternity.
Looking back on all that I've just said, some years later, I can't believe what a pathetic fuck I was. What a whiner. The kid's mom and I get along great now. Somehow, we have learned not to push the buttons that we were masters at pushing on each other for such a very long time. She lives her life. I live my life. She has her days with the kids, I have mine. I pay my rent. She pays her rent. Blah. Blah.

It is a Friday night, at the pizza joint, the day after Thanksgiving. We weren't as busy as on a normal Friday night, but we were busier than I thought we would be. Somehow, on one delivery, I handed the wrong pie to this one lady. I didn't discover the mistake until my next stop, when this fucking loser douche bag opened his pizza box to see if his pie was burned and discovered Canadian bacon and pineapple on what was supposed to be a plain cheese pizza.
I pulled out my cell phone and immediately called the other lady back and told her that I had discovered my mistake. She said yes, you made a mistake, but we're eating it anyway.
Dang.
So, on the way back to her house, I called the pizza joint and put in an order for a large cheese pie and went ahead and gave the ladies their bacon pineapple pizza, also. They had tipped well, they were nice and what the fuck was I going to do with the pie that she had ordered and I had made a mistake with anyway?
I called douche bag back and his wife answered.
I told her that I had just ordered them a new pizza and that I would only charge them five bucks for it. She showed her gratitude by acting like an asshole and saying could I hurry it up.
I hope that these two dumb fucks don't have sex and produce kids anytime soon. There are already enough dumb ass people on the planet. Douche bag only tipped two bucks, which I really would have preferred to shove up his ass.

Anger wears me out.
After I yelled at the kid’s mom for a bit on the phone, this morning, continuing bullshit in a continuing bullshit situation, I was walking to the truck with a pie and this black guy asked me if I had any change.
I said no and walked on.
The guy followed me and said, "but I only need 37 cents.”
I screamed at him: "Are you deaf? Or just stupid? I don’t have any extra change."
The guy walked away from me with one of the strangest, most dumbfounded looks that I have ever seen on a panhandler’s face. I don't think that he had ever been panhandle turned down in that manner before.
I mean give me a break.
The parade of panhandlers is endless in this fine city is endless. I’m near the edge myself. Should I give a crack head or a street drunk my last discretionary income buck to help him or her get high, or keep the buck and buy a candy bar for one of my kids who are doing well in school? Which party is better for bums, the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
Are you down with the lame left or the obnoxious right?
Anyway, my point is, or was, or had been that when the smelly fellow walked up, I was already to go off. My anger had taken me to the place where not only was I ready to fight, but I wanted to fight. I lusted for blows. I wanted to kill or be killed, or at least beat up or be beat up. Hadn't I learned my lesson from attacking the kid’s mother’s boyfriend just two weeks ago? Hadn't I learned anything from being that little kid who got beat up in school and came home covered in blood?
In the case of attacking the kid's mother's boyfriend, I had wound up handcuffed in the backseat of a police car and had made it into a jail cell for ten minutes. And here I was, only a few weeks later, acting crazy in my head, again.
Thoughts lead to actions.
Garbage in garbage out.
You know, I have heard these little fucking sayings all my life, but I don’t think that I have ever truly listened to them. I don’t think that it has ever truly sunk into my fat head, my thick, thick skull what these sayings mean.
Will I ever be able to listen?
Will I ever be able to learn from the experience, strength and hope of others?
It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If so, then I am certifiable crazy. I love and hate a woman who I once loved. She gave me a child. She saved my life. Is this any way to pay her back; with anger and hatred?
I allow her to push all my buttons.
Is that her fault or mine?

My kids are somewhere in Arkansas, tonight. I hope that they are safe and happy. Dear Lord, please help me to be a great father. Dear Lord, please remove this anger that confines and cripples me.

I’ve got to piss and I want to scoot from this book store slash coffee shop over to the home supply place and see if i can get a shower head for uh, err, the shower.
You must realize that I‘m not saying that I need head.
Javi, the dog, is outside lying around being chill and all. Some young girl named something just complimented me on my dog. Babes are always walking up to my dog and petting him, saying ohhhhh, ewwww what a pretty dog, but they never say a word to me, as I stand there looking like a dumb ass holding his leash.
What’s up with that?

I don't want to be a fucking superstar.
I woke up this morning with another deep, dark depression trying to claw its way into my brain. The pain was so extreme, that I just realized that I didn't take father’s little helpers this morning, upon rising, like I am supposed to.
If I had taken the pills like I should, would they have given me immediate relief from the pain? It’s never worked that way before. There is no quick fix, no easy answer for the pain. The pain is like terrorism, it will take a long time and a long term strategy to defeat it.

I've moved out of the kid's mother's house. Thank God. I'm living with a friend. Living with this friend will lead to him not being my friend anymore. I'm not so sure whose fault that is. Are friendships supposed to last forever? My “roommate,” The Feigner, came home from his mommy’s house, where he went for the holiday, just as I was getting ready to go out the door and deliver some Chinese food. He asked me if I wanted to go to breakfast, he was buying. I figured that he was fat with cash from mom. I ate my eggs and then when The Feigner looked at the bill, he gulped, deeply.
I understood immediately what was up, what he was thinking.
“You want me to pay for mine?” I asked.
The Feigner smiled a sly pseudo- conman smile, with a large look of relief, and a little yellow from an egg running on his face, "you shouldn't have said that, bro," he said. I figured that if I let The Feigner buy me breakfast now, he would hit me up for something later and later.
And later.
The Feigner is always opening and closing the refrigerator door, checking out what is inside the refrigerator, even though he never puts anything in it. One morning, The Feigner asked me if I wanted an egg sandwich. I said sure, noting that he was cooking my eggs and using my bread to sandwich them in.

“GOD WILL SEND YOU WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO ARRIVE AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT...”—who said it and why?

I have so very many things to be thankful for and yet I sit here and bitch.
The night that I moved into Scratcher’s studio, The Feigner started moaning that he needed a cigarette. I, of course, the righteous, recovered from inhaling a pack a day man, told him that he needed to quit. He said that he was not about quitting and could I give him a ride to the store of convenience.
When we got there, he asked me if I had the price of a pack.
Allegedly, this kid has come a long way. A year and a half ago, he was supposedly kicking in doors and coming out with televisions and vcr's, so that he could buy some pills to chop up and shoot into his arms.
If I was waking up alone, right now, it might not be good. I am used to having kids around, waking me up and asking me to get the milk and cereal together so, it is good that Scratcher and The Feigner are here with me. Scratcher did me a huge favor by letting me move in, when I really had no place to go. It was a very quick exit that I pulled from my old place. I had to get away from the crazy useless bitch. Her insanity was driving me crazy. She is to blame for so many problems of mine. Isn't it convenient to have a scapegoat, someone that we can blame for our problems? Isn’t it easy to see the bad in someone else, when we are feeling miserable and wretched ourselves?

Now that I've calmed down a little, I am wondering if the kid’s mom is really the problem. Since I sobered up, I have been taught to look for my part in the problem and to fess up to it. Often, I am a self-righteous bastard, with little empathy for the fucked up behavior of others. I really can't spend a lot of time on self-analysis, right now, though. I've got a show to do tonight. My music stand is in my storage space. I've got to get it out and do laundry before sound check at seven p.m. tonight.

When I woke this morning, I wasn't much feeling like doing the gig. I called my bass player, Bony Morton, and told him that we had to be at the club at 7. He got all excited. It is our first weekend night gig ever. His excitement was infectious. It gave me the momentum and intestinal fortitude to call the guitar player, Fammy Mimms. Fammy didn't answer. I left a long message. Then I called the keyboard player, Field Fellow. He was at work and wouldn't get off work until eight. We don't really need a sound check, anyway. We are an improv unit. Everything, except the words, is new and fresh each time out. You'll never hear the bass doing the same thing twice. Bony makes sure of it. Bony hates songs. Bony is out to destroy all music. I kind of like songs, but don't know that they would lend themselves to what I do.
What I do is yell and scream.
Mostly.

I am at a Laundromat now.
Somebody else's kids are yelling and screaming. It is driving me nuts. I want to tell the kids to shut the fuck up and yell at the mother, "what the hell are you doing bringing your bratty kids in here while I'm trying to clean my underwear?"
The lady has four kids.
Four of them: all girls and no old man in site. Maybe he is on the job, trying to keep a roof over their head.
I wonder if it means that I am poor, since I am doing my laundry at a Laundromat. I thought that maybe I would meet some interesting people at the Laundromat, maybe a bohemian poet or two or some good looking artsy chick that I could screw. But, there's nothing but a fucking bunch of losers here.
If you can't afford a washer and dryer, today, in the United States of Amerika, what the hell is wrong with you? What are they, like a hundred and fifty bucks for the pair, used? You must have voted Democratic or something and think that the Republicans hard earned tax money should go to help single moms, heroin addicts and the homeless.
After I finished doing my laundry at the down and out Laundromat, I went to the grocery store. I wanted to buy some orange juice, but I knew that The Feigner would drink it all. He gets up before I do and before he even looks at himself in the mirror, he is in the refrigerator looking around. I guess he wonders if Santa Claus came again and brought him something good to eat and some yummy orange juice to sip on.
The Feigner really likes o.j.
That fucker can drink some o.j.
What am I the fucking o.j. bank or something?
Just the other day, The Feigner was bragging about how he was on his own all grown up and supporting himself. "Ain't nobody taking care of me but me," he said with large drops of my orange juice falling off his lips, my orange juice container pressed to his dumb ass mouth.
Later that day, Scratcher said that The Feigner always gets his rent check from his mom.
All grown up.

We are at the club, me and Bony Morton. We are drinking coffee and watching the other bands load their equipment onto the stage. There are four bands playing, tonight. We are the first band up, which means that we will be the last to load equipment onto the stage. Field Fellow just showed up, all apologetic, asking if he could bow out because there was some family in town for the holidays.
I said hell yes.
There is no stress to this project. We can improv as a guitar, drums, a bass and a voice with no keyboards tonight. This club is so rock and roll. They play Aerosmith. I like Aerosmith. I like the fact they bottomed out and wised up. They play Ozzie. I don’t like Ozzie Osborne. What a lame fucker. He preaches rebellion and destruction while furnishing his beautiful Hollywood home with the profits from selling your kids a lifestyle that he and his rodeo drive shopping wife and kids don’t live don t live and don t live.
Pooper was saying just the other day how Ozzie is more of a corporate shit head than even the worst of corporate shit heads.
What pissed me off, most, about Ozzie, the brain dead idiot, and still pisses me off, is that I heard him on the radio, one night, and he told everybody listening that Alcoholics Anonymous sucked.
What the fuck did he want to do that for?
There's a bunch of people into old and stupid Ozzie, unfortunately. And, unfortunately, what he says holds water in many circles. If the twelve-step dance didn't help him straighten up and not mumble and stumble about, it might help someone else out.
And Ozzie Osborne should give them that fucking chance.
Of course, relapsers always bitch that the program sucks. It’s par for the fucking course. And Ozzie Osborne is a serious relapser. His drinking and drugging have actually made him more incoherent than Keith Richards.

I don't think brain dead Osborne is responsible, however, for some kid killing himself because he listened over and over to an Ozzie tune, anymore than Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King would be responsible for some psycho grabbing a machine gun and killing a small town because of reading a book, or Hunter Thompson be held responsible for an entire generation’s drug use because he wrote the book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” I do wish that Mr. Osborne would remain anonymous at the level of press radio and film on alcoholic's anonymous.
He’s got his opinion. I got mine.

Listen to me. I woke up all depressed, not wanting to get out of the bed and now I am telling the world how to live. Just when you think that you have seen it all, some asshole proves you wrong. The drummer in one of the other bands has brought along a rubber practice pad and he is beating the shit out of it, playing along, I think, to the jukebox.
It is really nauseating.
I want to tell him to fuck off, but I have almost learned the hard way that drummers are not the best people to pick a fight with. Drummers beat on things, habitually, and, in fact, want to make a living at it. Most of them have hard, calloused hands, as a result.
When you want to rock, you have to be flexible.
And stay alive. And don't pick a fight with the drummer.
The cat who booked us here said that we would go on at 9:30 p.m. and have 45 minutes to play. When we got to the club, there was a sign on the wall saying that our set time was from nine to 9:45. At nine, me and Bony got up onstage and got ready to do our thing. The sound man sound checked us. Bony's standup bass sounded fine and I didn't really need much checking. I said one two testing one two this is a test two or three times and screamed once or twice into the microphone and we were ready.
Then the doorman came in and said that we could wait until 9:30 and see if a few more blokes would show. The bar area was crowded. People were knocking back intoxicating beverages in passionately. The bar folk don't give a fuck about what we are about to do onstage. They didn’t come here to see us, or anyone else who would climb up on the stage tonight. The people at the bar came here to get drunk. When I get up on that stage, I’m going to scream into the microphone like Satan might, if you had just talked him into becoming a Christian.
The people at the bar will take a sip of nothing while I am onstage. This I promise you.
I woke up early this morning to drive over to the house that I used to live in and give the seventeen year old a ride to a job that he works on Sundays. I made the mistake of going inside the house and looking around for my mail. The place was super-depressing: a filthy pig sty. You couldn't tell that kids lived there. And realizing that they did, you, or at least I, felt this intense pain and sorrow for them.
There was a full trashcan on the front doorstep. The sink was full of dirty dishes. A huge pile of wrinkled, unfolded clothes were thrown on the "kids’" bed.
In the kids' “mother’s” room, as usual, there were empty beer cans and an overflowing ashtray. Several bounced check notices were left unopened on the television. When I lived there, and it has not been all that long since I left, I thought that this white trash pig sty slob existence was normal. I was so thankful for having had a couch to crash on when I got out of jail eight years ago, that I let my son's mother use and abuse me. I did anything that she asked me to do in order to be with my son on a daily basis. My son's mother is mentally ill without diagnosis. Her self-proclaimed declaration is that she is perfect.
As I drove the boy to work, I was once again filled with hate. I wanted to yell at something or someone. The kid asked me how I was. I could barely talk. I was hoping that he would slip into his usual non-communicative morning mood. My anger rose and rose and shifted directions, from one source to another. I started focusing on and hating one of my roommates, too. I started hating him for eating my eggs. I started hating him for eating my ice cream. I started hating him for playing me, for thinking that I was some kind of chump.
My plan, this morning, had been to go home and catch another hour of sleep before I went to work. I realized that I must change plans.
I needed some gratitude.
I needed some serenity, some sanity.
I needed to go to a meeting.

When I pulled into the anonymous place’s parking lot, Tom Petty was playing “Breakdown,” from inside my car radio. I put on my shades and tried to get into the song. There was a guy on the porch who I didn't particularly care for. He was a weird dude, borderline scary. He always talked about God.
God. God.
God.
He talked about God all the time, but had this serious serial killer look and feel to him. When the song was done, I looked up and the fellow was gone.
I thanked God, God, God.

I went inside the clubhouse. A couple of older ladies, who I didn't know, were making the coffee. I made a bee line for the bathroom. I looked like shit. The mirror showed that my hair was standing up and dancing every which way that it wasn't supposed to be. The look was not punk. The look was slept on and not combed. My hair was starting to grow out and this was the morning price that I had to pay for having thin hair.
Not balding, but thin.
An old guy drinking a cup of coffee, in the lobby, pointed out that my shoe laces were untied. I told him that it was the new style, fresh out of Paris, that all the kids were doing it.
"Well," he said, "I hope those kids don't trip and fall!"
What a prick.
I walked away from him, fast. I didn’t have to tell the man what was on my mind. I didn’t have to let his stupidity incite my anger. He was being the fool and I needed to let him be the fool and not wind up being the fool myself, yet again, once more, like so many million fucking times before. I didn’t have to yell and scream at him and give him a loud as fuck piece of my mind, or, worse, the back of my hand.
I put my head somewhere else, fast, and moved my ass away from his space in time. I wandered inside to the place of anonymity, where strangers have so much in common, keeping each other alive.
Another day sober; another day not in jail or a mental institution. What a blessing that I have been given.

An old guy picked up a blue chip. He hadn't had a drink in 22 years. God bless him. The meeting had changed my attitude, altered my outlook on things, given me perspective, given me gratitude.
The meeting had gotten me out of my head. When I had entered the room, I was full of hate. But then people had shared their love with me. Love was contagious. When people care about you, you start to care about people.
I am a dangerous human being, left to my own devices. I am self-centered, depressive, greedy, anti-social.

“Well, she was an Amerikan girl raised on promises...”
--Tom Petty

Tonight, I delivered pizza to a girl with perfect breasts. My eyes dwelled on this girl’s tits, while my mouth spoke to her. I was feeling lonely and I started telling this girl my life story, right there on her front steps, pizza bag in hand. I confessed to this girl that I was not the biological father of my daughter, who often came to this girl’s door with me.
I told her my dreams, my ambitions, what I like, what I disliked. All in about sixty seconds, so the pizza would still be fresh and hot!
I felt like an idiot.
I was telling this customer deep personal things about myself and my kids. I think that I wanted her to fall in love with me, though I have told myself that a relationship, right now, is the last thing on the planet that I want, that love for me is non-existent, that I was born alone would die alone and was probably better off being alone and being left alone.
See what a nice pair of tits can do to me.

The front end of my truck is fucked. The vehicle wobbles like one of our customers weaving back to the back booth from the pizza joint bathroom on lousy beer and cheap wine.
The kid’s mother told my son, this morning, that she wasn't going to let me see him for a long time. My son asked me if it was not his right to see who he wanted to see.
This whole fucking thing would not be an issue if I hadn't been such a dumb ass dickhead, who lost his temper and started yelling and screaming at the woman in front of an audience of idiots who were guzzling beer and trying to kill themselves with cigarettes and greasy pizza.
I need to control my fucking temper.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It has been a long, angry day. I cried for ten or fifteen minutes, in the truck, behind the wheel as I drove to a house tonight. I was feeling lonely and insecure. My kids were out of town. I feel like I have a lot more to say, but the manager just asked me to take out the trash, so I can’t camp in this notebook for too much longer, right now.
I made a hundred bucks tonight, so I have no problem with taking the trash out. The clicking of the clock on the wall pisses me off. My son's mother pisses me off. My roommate pisses me off. For whom does the bell toll?
It tolls for me.

I am sick and tired of my explosive temper.
I am sick and tired of not having control over my own behavior, my own moods, my own existence. I never know when or where I will go off. I never know when or where I will explode. I am a time bomb tick tock, tick tock waiting to go off and I can never know, never predict when or where the explosion will occur.
The anger bomb can go of at work. The anger explosion can occur while I am in traffic. The explosion can occur when I am walking down the street. The explosion has occurred in front of my children. The explosion has occurred at home. The explosion has occurred at work. The explosion has put me in jail. The explosion has occurred while in jail.
Dear God: please help me control my anger.

I am sitting in a non-anonymous meeting room, again.
I have come here for answers.
Again.
And again.
And again.
When will I get the answers? When will the fucking solution settle itself inside my seriously rattled head? Tomorrow, I will enroll in yet another anger management-violence counseling group.
I need help.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I spent the entire weekend feeling like shit. I spent the entire weekend alternating between anger and guilt. All weekend, I felt like a bad person, though I had done nothing wrong. People told me that I was not a bad person that I was a great father and a fine human being, but I did not believe them.
I called my son’s mother’s voice mail at work, figuring that she would check it on Monday. I left this long rambling apology for screaming at her in front of everyone at the pizza joint. I am sick of apologizing. Her soon to be ex-husband said that she has said that she is sick of hearing apologies.
Show me, don't tell me.
Like I said, she told my son that she wasn't going to let him see me for a while.
I live in fear.

The beast was lurking this morning.
The beast sought to pull me into the evil, scary, abyss. The beast wanted to drag me into the deep, dark hole of depression.
There were two issues plaguing me the second that I woke up. First, there was the fucking weekly music column that I had not yet typed and emailed to the fucking paper that I wrote a fucking weekly music column for. And, of course, there was the continuing saga, dilemma and issue of the issue of my son's mother within my existence and psyche.
Take steps.
Do not, do not, do not lie in bed and let the beast beat you.
Get up and do something, take some action.
Refuse to lay down.
Refuse to give in.
God doesn’t hand you more than you can handle.
I called my editor and worked him like he was a psychologist or shrink. I have all kinds of personal problems, I moaned to him. I have moved out of my children's home and I feel lonely, insecure, angry and depressed.
He listened quietly. "Would you like another day on the column?" he asked.
“Why, no,” I said, quite surprised and thankful, “I actually only need a couple of hours
“You got it,” he said and hung up the phone like he was ecstatically getting rid of a bill collector.
Then I called Ms. Satan, my son's mom, the most evil woman on the planet, the most evil woman ever hatched. Ms. Evil didn't answer the phone, she was out and about plotting to take my son from me for forever. She was out and about plotting to steal the huge fortunes that I didn't have yet. She was out to ruin my day, my week, my now.She was out to ruin my life, my forever.
When the beeper on the evil woman’s answering machine beeped, I launched into another one of my immediate telephone voice mail apologies.
This one was perhaps five minutes long.
I didn't give the answering machine a chance to talk or respond. I tried to make Ms. Evil see that I was a pathological madman, with no control over his insanity or his temper. I tried to let her know that I knew that the problem was not her, that it was me. I tried to let her know that I was willing and able to work hard on my madness.
I begged for her sympathy, her understanding, her forgiveness. I was like a small Catholic child in the confession booth on Saturday telling the priest about all the bubble gum that he had stolen during the week, about the dirty pictures that he had looked at with the other kids behind one of the neighbor s house, about the warm stolen beers he had guzzled in unlit back yards with his schoolmates.
My confession went pretty well.
I felt that I was convincing, that I had probably made a dent in her armor. I would check back with her later and see how many Hail Mary s she would administer, how many Our Father s I would have to mutter in order to not go to hell.

Tonight, the pizza delivery gig went pretty well. The war did not rage in my head all night as I drove. I didn't hate anyone or anything. Prayer and two meetings had returned me to sanity.
I was still going to plunk down twenty-five bucks, in the morning and join the anger management class, though. I would sit down in a close circle with men who had beaten their wife and or girlfriend and had gone to jail. I would sit down in a close circle with men who had beaten other men and had gone to jail. I would sit down in a close circle with men who were beat by their anger and had come to that close circle for help, some voluntarily, like myself, most, however, court ordered.
I should have signed up for this class a long, long time ago, but learning to not regret the past, I was glad that I was where I was now, ready and willing to seek help.
You can’t do some things alone.
Changing some behaviors requires help. I was sick of my anger. I could not take it anymore. I was ready for any way out, any solution, short of suicide, and I did not have the answers myself for myself.
I needed help and I needed it desperately.
I needed another modus operandi. The operating manual that I had been born with and had used up to this point was defective. Me left to me and my thoughts and my actions had lead me to real jails, real mental imprisonment and real mental institutions.
My anger was really pissing me off.
I was bottoming out on my anger, because it had taken me to the same place that booze and drugs had: the bottom.

I've always done what I wanted to do and now I am learning to do what I need to and have to do. I went to my first anger management session at 10 a.m. this morning. There were four guys there. I know that two were court ordered. I know that one told me that prayer was the answer. And I know that I got a lot out of being there.
I was honest.
All my years in at the anonymous place had taught me to not beat around the bush about issues plaguing me. I talked about attacking my son's mother's boyfriend on the front lawn. I talked about getting handcuffed and going to jail, as a result of attacking the kid’s mom’s boy friend .
I talked about exploding in anger at the pizza joint, about yelling and screaming at my son's mother in my place of employ, embarrassing and degrading her in front of a room full of strangers.
I talked about my violent, angry past.
I talked about my violent, angry father.
I talked.
And I talked.
Hell, I was paying twenty-five bucks for this hour of work on me and not just throwing a buck in the basket at the end of the hour like at the anonymous meetings, so why not talk, talk, talk?

“It occurred to me that my son was just like me...”
—Harry Chapin

I am now the father at the basketball game, instead of the greedy guard gunning to get his name and face in the newspaper, the cutest cheerleader on his lap on the bus ride home.
He calls me step dad or Mikel, but to me he is my son or son-figure. I have been with him for twelve years, ever since he was five. I bought him a six pack of sprite on my first date with his mother and I am still buying him sprite!
My, how he has grown.
He is a senior in high school now. Slow down kid, slow down. You’re making me feel old. The kid was the drum major on the marching band in the fall. Then, he said that he was going to make the basketball team.
And he did.
He is sitting at the end of the bench, right now, like I used to, only our reasons are different. I was at the end of the bench because I was pissed off that the coach had fucking dared pull me from the game. I was at the end of the bench, sulking, angry, full of hate because the coach had had the audacity to pull me for missing over twenty shots in a row.

How fucking dare he.
The coach should have let me stay in the game and keep shooting, shooting, shooting the ball. The odds were with me, I thought. I was the one who had wore the hoop out for years and years, hour after hour, day after day, when everyone else had moved on to playing baseball or dating.
I was a gunner, who hadn’t hit, and I was on the bench and I was pissed. My dilemma, now, is to teach my kids a good attitude with my bad attitude. How can a guy who had absolutely no respect for coaches, who thought that ninety nine point nine percent of them were assholes, teach his kids to subjugate themselves to the coach for the good of the team.
One kid picked rap and the other picked skate boarding.
Praise the Lord.
The Wanderer sits with a smile on his face, cheering his team on. It will lead him to better places than where I wound up. I haven't been to a basketball game in years. When I was a kid, basketball was my sport. Pistol Pete Maravich was my man. Pistol Pete was the ultimate gunner. Pistol Pete scored the most points on his team.
I wanted to score the most points on my team.
Me.
Me.
Me.

Right before sixth grade, right before I entered the public school system after having been a good little uniformed Catholic school boy for so fucking long, my dad grudgingly bought me this cheap piece of shit plastic basketball from the grocery store.
He paid ninety nine cents for it. It was one of those balls that you find in those big wire baskets that they sometimes set up in grocery stores to sell cheap gaily colored balls to stupid little kids.
My brother and I would go up to the elementary school and throw that fucking piece of shit stupid ball at the basketball net and rim for hours. In the beginning, that cheap plastic ball only occasionally dropped through the hole.
Then, after much time and many, many shots many, many dribbles, I got decent at shooting that piece of shit ball and dribbling that piece of shit ball and I tried out for and made a team of ten year old eleven year old and twelve year olds kids.
We had a couple of practices during the week, and games on Sunday. We got to wear uniforms. I sat on the bench most of that year, but we won the league championship. The next year, I was a starter and we made it all the way to the championship, but lost.
I thought I was a fucking hotshot.
On Monday mornings, after a Sunday afternoon game, I would often see my name in the newspaper as my team's highest point scorer. I think that it was at this point in my life that I got addicted to seeing my name in the paper and in print in general.
It is a sickness that I have still not gotten over.
Fuck my sicknesses.

Scratcher was up when I got back from taking the kids to school. He had the music blasting and the blender whirring. He was making one of those protein shakes that compliment his weight-lifting program. I watched him do a set of bench presses, thought about what day it was, whether it would fit into the Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine that I had mapped out to avoid exercise and not feel guilty about it. "Well, I can't work out today, it's Tuesday," I thought and then I realized that it was Wednesday.
Heh, Scratch, o.k. if I work in between you?" I asked.
He eyed me as only Scratch can, with a look half amused and partially baffled like he wasn't quite sure what he had gotten himself into here by allowing me to reside in his domicile. Not only had Scratcher given me a place on the floor, but now I was trying to work my way into to his personal gym.
I fixed a huge cup of coffee before I lifted the first weights. I figured that the caffeine and the sugar would help me lift more, that I would have more energy to work out. I don't know what kind of beverages Arnold had utilized, on his way to the top of Mount Olympus, but it was my plan, for at least today, to use caffeine, cream and sugar to develop muscles.
The Feigner was nowhere in site.
Thank God.

The Feigner had showed up for briefly, chowed on some of the leftover french toast that I had made for the kids' breakfast, drank the last of the kids' orange juice, complained about how cold it was in his little room and disappeared. I accused him of being a spoiled little rich kid who was used to having everything provided for him and he replied that he grew up with a poor mother and five brothers and sisters in a crack house.
The Feigner was like my son's mother. He had an answer for everything.
Fuck The Feigner.

Tonight was a very uneventful night on the pizza delivery gig. I had ten deliveries all night, made 55 bucks. I delivered a large pie to one lady who I wouldn't have minded getting naked with.
I am glad that I have had a vasectomy.
My desire is not to get emotionally or financially involved with a woman for a long, long time, if ever. My brother, the attorney in California, says that the next woman he hooks up with will have to own her own house and will have to travel a significant distance to be with him, in other words live at least across town, if not the country.
I am worn out on the dating aspect of women.
I am a failure at relationships. I need to work on myself and become whole before I try to pair with another human being.
I went to the opposite of my twelve-step meeting today. Here, I learn how to not try to control other people. Here, I learn how not to get angry at other people.
It is really neat. I am the only straight male in the group.
The rest of the group are gay guys and gay girls.
It is refreshing and rewarding to see that the issues that affect me, affect everyone, no matter what their sexual persuasion or skin color is.
We are family.
Alcohol and drugs are an equal opportunity killer. Alcohol and drugs do not discriminate based on outer appearance. Alcohol kills the rich. Alcohol kills the poor.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill alcoholism.

I only got angry once, tonight, and it was at my son, when he was trying to ask me a question, while I was trying to answer the phone and talk to a customer in person and at the same time ring that customer out on the cash register. My son needs to learn when to bud into a conversation and when to bud out of one and I need to learn not to explode, emotionally and verbally, which I didn't do tonight or today at all.
I thank God for this.
Good night.

It is raining this evening.
That means I could be busy.
There is one order up, already, and it's not even five o'clock. I am supposed to come in at five, but today I am here earlier trying to crank out great works of literature.
The Poem bought me a laptop. This has changed the whole writing game for me. Now, I carry a computer with me, wherever I go. I am cranking out words like a madman, or more aptly, like a mad word man. I better get my ass up from this laptop and go deliver the pizza that just came up, before it gets cold, before I get fired and this mad word man has no job.
I did not write in my journal the last few days. Sometimes life takes over, grabs you by the testicles and doesn't give you a free moment. I’m on my way to the park. I bring the kids here once or twice a week.
First we stopped by my son’s best friend’s house, and picked him up and two of the kids that his mom watches in her house on the weekdays.
This kid’s mom is a rock. She is a single mom. Single moms are superhuman, I have learned by observing this woman.
I am a single Dad.
Hear me roar.
To pay the landlord, my son’s best friend’s mom is a nanny, of sorts, who has set up a day care center, of sorts, in her small house. This set up gives her flexibility that having a real, or should I say, nine to five job, would not afford her in raising her children.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for this woman, as a human being and a mother. This lady knows that a job with the man would steal valuable child growing up time from her, so she has decided not to lay down with the man. She makes money and she is there when the kids get home from school.
Right on.

It is Thursday night. The pizza joint is slow. Two weeks until Christmas. Everybody is out buying things to slide down the chimney. I have had just two customers, so far tonight and they were two cheap bitches, the first a semi-regular. As usual, this bitch tipped a buck and some very small change.
What pisses me off most about her is that she and her husband are building this huge addition to their house. It's like they get cheap with me so they can save their pennies for their home improvement project.
Well, shit heads, I have rent to pay, also. And I have to buy gasoline at ever increasing prices to get to your rapidly expanding house. I have car insurance to pay for, oil changes. I have to buy breakfast lunch and dinner for me and the kids. Why don't you go to the fucking grocery store and buy a frozen pizza? You don't have to tip the grocery store cashier. In fact, they have those new registers where you can check yourself out by scanning all the items yourself and putting the money in a slot.
You don't have to even talk to anybody.
Hell, you don't even have to look at anyone.
Especially me.
The next cheap bitch spent the whole delivery on the phone talking to someone. She wrote in a dollar fifty tip on a fifteen dollar credit card order.
What a cheap whore.
I don't see how people can be so cheap. I bet she never gets laid. I wouldn't fuck such a cheap piece of shit.
I haven't seen Moper around much lately. He blew off the pizza delivery gig that I got him for a security guard gig at one of the colleges. I told him that you didn't have to do much at the pizza gig. He said cool, but at the security gig he didn't have to do anything.
When you don't see Moper out, at the coffee house or at the anonymous place, it usually means that he is withdrawing. Moper is bi-polar, like me. Often, depression gets a hold of him and there is nothing that he can do about it. I tell him that he needs to keep an eye on his meds, take them regularly and check in with the mental health people when he is supposed to and when he needs to.
Moper told me that when he forgets to get his prescription refilled, he will start rationing what lithium he has left, taking like half a pill here and a half a pill there. That’s fucking stupid. It is kind of sort of like what they call self-medicating. In my opinion, manic-depression, or bi polarity is a lot like alcoholism in that it does not want to be treated and that it is cunning, baffling and powerful.

It is cheap shit night, tonight. Nobody has tipped over two bucks. How the hell do they think that I am going to be able to buy presents for my kids to pretend that Santa stuck under the tree? Like I said, Christmas is just two weeks away.
My last delivery broke the mold for the evening and tipped four bucks. This chick is super friendly. It sucks that she has a live in man. She has the greatest fucking tits on the entire planet. I would fondle these tits with my tongue for many hours of each day and night.
Forever.
The gal is a little plumper in the legs than I like them, but I could overlook her legs for a chance at those fine nipples of hers. This fine nippled lady and her man were putting together the Christmas lights and all that to decorate their apartment for the holiday.
If this woman was mine, I wouldn't have time to put up no fucking Christmas lights. I would be in the bedroom all the time banging her and making love to those fine ass titties of hers.
Have you ever jacked off onto a woman’s tits?

I woke up at a quarter to noon, today, fit to kill. I stumbled to the refrigerator and reached for the o.j. The Feigner had beat me to the punch. There was a small amount of the liquid left, not enough to moisten my parched mouth, to quench my intense morning thirst.
The Feigner had pulled a trick that I had used in my youth, one that used to piss my father off greatly, that of leaving just a swallow in the bottle so that you could say that you hadn't drank the last of the beverage and so that you wouldn't have to throw the bottle out.
I fixated on The Feigner all day.
The Feigner was the target of the intense hatred that I felt, all day. I fully realized that if it wasn't The Feigner who I was pissed off at, then it would have been someone or something else that I would have fixated on and hated.
Hate was hate.
My hate did not discriminate.
It was random.
It was uncontrollable.

I had skipped my anger management class on Tuesday, citing finances as the reason. I wanted to pay my cell phone bill and I had made only one meeting at the non-anonymous place all week.
You get what you put into the program, whatever program it is, and I had not been putting in. I had slipped back and away from the safety and comfort of the anonymous place. I had stayed away from the valuable thoughts and lessons that the non-anonymous place offered.
Somehow, I made it through the day without yelling at anyone. I did slam a door when The Feigner said goodbye to me as I was leaving for work. Whatever I feel today, whatever I am angry about, I still need to stop and thank God for another day sober, another day not in jail, another day not in a mental institution, another day not on the streets in skid row, mentally and physically.

Again, right this moment, I am fighting, very hard, against getting angry. Yup, it’s the kid’s mom pissing me off, again. I am really not sure why, but I would strongly guess that it has something to do with the kids and the past history of she and me.
I keep asking God for his will to be done, but my anger keeps running the show.
I am glad that I wasn't there at the Chinese restaurant, moments ago, when the kids' mother came to get the kids. I think that I would have had a hard time being nice to her. I don’t want to pull another public humiliation of the kid’s mom performance.

“Depression’s got a hold of me...depression man I’ve got to break free...”—Black Flag

When anger gets a hold of me, I have trouble letting go of it. It festers and boils. It is like a monster that expands and expands. I have no control over it. I am trying to learn to control it, but the process is slow. There are slips. There are bad days. I am not perfect. All that I can do is to work on it.
It is strange what age does to a woman's face.
I just delivered a pie to this girl who I have known for years. She is much younger than me. She has always had a decent face, a nice body. Today, she looked ragged out and aged. I guess that I am no spring chicken either: just another observation from the delivery trail.
Do men age better than women?
Is there enough cream in that bottle to once again make you a teen?
I made fifty bucks delivering Chinese food for 3 1/2 hours this morning. I think that the Christmas spirit has invaded many of my customers. Last night, on the pizza route, the people were laying out some heavy cash. I think that the more that I am around them, the more they tip me because they think that I am a wonderful human being, a wonderful human being who has children.
They do not see the hate inside of me. They do not hear the greedy, angry voices inside my head. I smile at the door, standing in front of them, hiding the evil inside, hiding behind the pizza bag.
I think that my first delivery of the night wanted to bang me. She was this kind of older woman with nice eyes and a wide ass. I really think that I could have flirted with her some and that we might have wound up doing the old dirty on her floor or on her bed or couch or somewhere, anywhere fast, inside her house while her large pizza was getting cold in the kitchen and my truck was waiting with the next pizza down below.
I'm so horny, I could almost fuck a good-looking pillow, but I passed on this lady. I'm not Catholic or a prude or anything, so I might have gone for the old hanky panky stanky, but for reasons I’m really not sure of I didn’t. My son's mother says that it is unprofessional for a pizza delivery guy to try and sleep with some girl who has called in and asked for food delivered.
The kid’s mom says that it is “unprofessional?”
I didn't know that carrying pizzas door to door was a profession. I've always kind of looked at it like something to do until something else happens. What if something else never does happen?
My son's mother says that it makes a girl feel uneasy when the guy who came to the door with her food hits on her. How's a guy supposed to get laid? Go pick the fucking pizza up if you want to feel comfortable.
Right?
Honey please.

I have been taught that a good night's sleep is sometimes all that you need to change a very bad day into a very good one. That is certainly the case this morning. I woke up feeling good, perhaps not in love with the world, but at least not hating it.
I cooked a big scrambled egg and sausage breakfast, last night, right before I went to bed. The Feigner woke up and came out sniffing the air. I gave him a couple of pieces of sausage and he devoured them like a homeless guy attacking half a can of vienna sausage that he found in a trashcan.
All day long, yesterday, I prayed not to hate. This morning my prayers have been answered. As I came out of the shower, I saw The Feigner rustling through a box in his closet.
"What are you doing," I asked as I headed to my room, soaking wet. The Feigner mumbled something about trying to find bus fare to get to school. Without thinking about it, I went to my very small and sort of hidden savings stash and pulled out a twenty.
"Here," I said, "give it back to me from your Christmas cash." The Feigner tried to not take the bill. Last night he had said something about being sick of having to depend on other people.
Yesterday, I was hating The Feigner because I thought that he had drank too much of my orange juice. Today, I was trying to do something loving for The Feigner and for humanity, in general.
I feel much better when I am in the space of love.
I feel much better, when I care about other people and try to do things for them without expecting shit in return and when I am thus happy, I have a higher quality of life.
I am learning to let go.
Slowly, I am learning that I can't control other people, places and things. I can only work on myself. I need to keep my side of the street clean and God will do the rest.
The kid’s mother surprised me, today.
She told the truth.

My anger level has been fairly good on this Monday before Christmas. My son called and left a message on the machine saying that he and his sister didn't go to school and that he wanted me to call him at his mother’s house.
I waited until I had got out of bed for the final time and I had the coffee brewing for the first time today, before I rang him up. I tried not to point any fingers, place any blame. I went to a meeting at the non-anonymous place. We talked about God and letting go and letting God run the show. We mostly agreed that when we tried to run the show that things wound up being majorly fucked up.
After the meeting, before I went over to the kid’s mom’s house, I bought the dog some food. From what I could tell, the dog hadn't eaten in a couple of days. Funny how there is always money in her household for several packs of cigarettes and a margarita or two, three or four, but the dog can eat air.
Or shit.
Later in the day, after the kids and I had eaten at Burger Doodle for like the nineteenth day in a row, their mom called me to check in on the kids.
I asked her why the kids didn't go to school and she said that she had fucked up. Now, that was refreshing: honesty. From her, in her current incarnation, I am not used to her being honest in any way, shape or form.
I am used to deep, dark twisted fantastic tales from the inner recesses of her psychotic, demented and, perhaps, lonely as hell and confused mind. I am used to deception, lies and bullshit. Hmmm, come to think of it, she is now giving me the exact same type of bullshit that she used to get from me.
Payback is hell, mother fuckers.

I am not a perfect person.
In fact, for a very long time, I was very anti-Christ-like in behavior. My life was about me, my wants, my desires. I had no real concern for anyone or anything around me, except for the buzz.
I was a sick fellow.
I was deeply diseased, but I didn’t know it.
Everybody around me knew it, but I didn’t know it.
I was trouble for me.
I was trouble for you.
I was a problem for me.
I was a problem for you.
I was trouble and a problem for most of my life, so I can understand fucking up. I fucked up for years. I fucked up for years and years.
I fucked up.
And then I fucked up.
And then I fucked up some more, until I got sick and tired of fucking up. There was no one who could tell me to stop fucking up. There was not anyone who could do anything about my fucking up.
But me.

The best thing that you could do with me was to minimize your losses by staying away from me. Until I was ready, until I hit what I now know as my bottom I was a menace to myself and others. Over nearly two decades of getting drunk most every day, I had everybody from my mother to the secret service tell me that I had a drinking problem. Did I listen? Did I take the suggestion of others that I had a drinking problem?
No.
I got drunk. Again. And again and again and again and and...

So, looking at me and my behavior, should I not be able to learn a lesson about my son’s mother and the rest of the human race? I can do nothing about my son's mother's behavior, except love her and pray for her and maintain a healthy distance from her and between us. This woman gave me the greatest thing that any woman can give a man: children. If it had not been for the birth of my son, I would be dead or locked up.
Speaking of my kids, Wok Doki Man has struck. Again.
My son headed immediately for the magazine section, when we stopped at the store of convenience, this a.m. to buy some orange juice. I also bought more sugar for the kids in the form of a bottle of generic cola and a brand name citrus drink.
Who ever created Wok Doki Man, the toys, the video games, the magazines, the TV. show and the cards should be shot in the head and then hung. All my discretionary income, which is very little goes to Wok Doki Man.
Wok Doki Man is everywhere. He is making someone very rich. Screw Wok Doki Man.
My son was sitting on the store floor in front of the magazine rack, concentrating more intensely on Wok Doki Man Magazine than anything that I have ever seen him concentrate on in his life, except for his baseball game. I paid for the beverages and magazine and was ready to call it quits for the day.
I find it to be a very warm and comforting thing to do to just vegetate in my abode with my children. I find myself completely in the now, in those situations. Having a child and having to provide for a child is the first time in my life that I have ever cared for anything more than I have cared for myself.
Raising a kid can make you self-less.
Raising a kid can make you much less selfish.
Don t have a kid until you are ready. But then again how do you really know when you are ready? Does God figure into the birth of your child or just your dick and her pussy? Have you ever changed a diaper? Have you ever tried to help a kid cure his acne, perfect his little league swing? Have you ever seen a tear in your kid’s eye in the little league dugout cause he knew that he was a better outfielder than the coach’s son who always got to play?
Can you instill a good attitude in your kid when you have a bad attitude?
I wasn't supposed to work tonight. I hired this high school kid to take Tuesday nights, so that I could spend the night with my kids. This high school kid was supposed to come in and train last Monday night. A couple of hours before he was supposed to show up, he called me and said that he was sick, that he had stayed home from school all that day, that he was puking, that he thought that he might die.
I said o.k. then, come in next Monday and train, so that you can start next Tuesday night. Last night, Monday, I never heard from him. Two strikes, you’re out, pal. I put a notice in the window that we are looking for a driver for one night a week: Tuesday night.
Do you want the job? Do you qualify to be the delivery guy?
.
Last week, I was talking to my brother on the phone for one of the first times in twenty years and I asked him if he had ever thought that I was an alcoholic or did he just think that I was an asshole?”
His immediate answer was that he thought that I was an asshole.
It seems to me that something that Keith Richards would say might be appropriate here, but I can t think of what or like my old man and a million other old men have said to their sons and daughters over the centuries, "you make your bed, you lie in it.”

Ever notice how when someone does something well, they say, “I did it,” even if it was a team effort, but when they fuck something up and can get away with sharing the blame with others, they say, “we fucked up.”

I have been taught that I can t regret the past.
I can feel a resentment simmering and I am using all the tools at my disposal to fight the fucking beast. I want to point fingers. I want to accuse. I want to hate. But, I am also trying to walk in the way of love, today.
I missed my non-anonymous meeting, this afternoon, intentionally. Life is usually a series of mad dashes, a blind rush from one place to another, from one location to the next, often never knowing where you are going and often never reaching any particular or important destination, even once you get to where it was so important to get to.
I’ve got to get off the treadmill a bit. I’ve got to slow down, somehow.
I took the kids to school, this morning. I came back and tried to get more material off my old computer and onto my new computer. I had some success transferring email addresses, by sending them in emails. I had no luck sending files of my writing from one computer to another.
Though I am in a state of sort of disappointment, I have experienced no real rage today. Some guy called me looking for the number to the anger management class. It would be funny if I became some sort of a conduit for angry men to find answers through. Just as I stay sober by freely sharing what has been freely shared with me, I would assume that I should pass on whatever I learn about not living life in a state of rage to those still living in a state of rage.

It occurred to me, on a delivery the other night, that I have more than a passing involvement in my customers’ lives. I was talking to a lady tonight and she told me that her husband had left her.
"He wanted his freedom," she said, looking very sad. I was trying to tell her that the break up of a relationship was not necessarily a bad thing, that I had recently gone through two different types of breakups and that I felt a great freedom. She seemed surprised and curious, but at that moment her daughter started screaming from the bathroom and the conversation broke down, out and off.
Another one of my customers was pregnant. She said that she was due in two weeks. I expressed surprise. Had it been that long since I had last delivered a pizza to her door? I certainly don't remember her as showing the last time I was there. She laughed about this. She really wasn't huge, like some women get. She was expecting a boy. Her house was for sale. Her house has been for sale for a long fucking time. They must be asking too much, because the house is in a great part of town, a part of town that I will never be able to afford to live in.
Last night this guy tipped me twenty cents, and I knew it, and I thanked him like he had given me a million dollars and I wasn't doing it sarcastically. I am hoping that something is coming over me where the almighty fucking dollar is not always the bottom line in how I feel about my fellow fucking human beings.
This major dickhead called tonight for a delivery. I knew that he would be a pain in the ass at the door, because he was a pain in the ass on the phone. The minute he opened the door, he threw me major attitude. "You ever been to New York City?" he said, setting me up.
I stood there and tried to look stupid. After a moment, I said, "why yes. I went there for two weeks, once. I went there with a drag queen. We ate hot dogs and drank beer.”
The guy looked a little shocked, like he was thinking what the fuck does a damn fucking drag queen who eats hot dogs and drinks beer have to do with my mutha fuckin’ pizza mutha fucka?
I couldn't resist continuing. "...but I was on a drunk, I was stoned the whole time I was there, tripping on LSD and swallowing Quaaludes. I was trying to try to fuck with him because I knew that he was waiting to fuck with me.
I had screwed up mentioning Quaaludes, which was actually a lie. I have only done one Quaalude in my life. It was in a motel room in Orlando, Florida where I was making love to this girl I had picked up outside of Disney World. The next morning she told me with an angry look on her face that I had passed out right in the middle of the act of passion on top of her.
But, back to the asshole from New York, at the door: dickhead then says, "are you on Quaaludes tonight? Is that why my pizza took so long?" I thought about telling him to fuck himself and call Dingbat’s Pizza. I thought about what a lame dickhead he was and what a major fucking prick that he was being.
And then a miracle occurred.
I acted nice to him.
I smiled at him and said, "I'm giving you four bucks off. Sorry if the pizza took too long." I shook his hand and the putrid, dickhead actually smiled at me. The nice thing about being the delivery guy is that my customer interaction time can be cut to seconds and that I can control the situation. I can make a customer smile, or I can send a customer into a psychotic rage.
Not too long ago, I would have prayed to my higher power that this asshole choke on his fucking calzone and that someone would shove a slice or two of his pizza deep up his ass. Tonight, though, I gave him some money off of his pie and I prayed that his food was cold and that he never calls us again.
Now that’s improvement, girlfriend.

I went to a meeting the first thing this morning. We talked about acceptance. After I did some serious fucking whining at the beginning of the hour, I listened intently for the next 59 minutes.
What I heard was that there were people in the room doing way worse than I was, dealing with issues that made my problems, the things that I was allowing myself to wallow in, seem trivial and insignificant.
As usual, I was thankful for this wake up call and left the building, if not singing and dancing, then at least happy in my improved attitude. The contentment, the positive flow from the meeting lasted about two hours. Soon, my mind was at it again, attacking the quality of my existence, telling me that this or that sucked, that this or that person should be hated because...

It is a Thursday night at the pizza joint. Things are slow. In the first two hours, I have delivered only three pizzas. The customers have not been handing over the big bucks tonight.
Last night, my son's mother asked me not to refer to her as my son's mother. She wants me to refer to her by her first name. I have a suspicion that she wants to be called by her first name because she doesn't want anyone to know that she is a mother. She is in denial. What a dumb, stupid fucking bitch. Being a mother is her greatest fucking asset, but she wants to parade around like she is some sort of high school chick with no obligations: I am your kid’s dad baby. You fucked me and you fucked up, if that s the way you want to look at it.
There was no dog food in the bitch’s house and no toilet paper. I was going to buy some and leave it on the front step until I checked the mail and saw that she had bounced another fucking check. The bounced check fee that the bank took from her could have bought dog food and toilet paper. She has cigarettes. She and her boyfriend have pot and beer.
And the beat in my brain goes on.

I am not supposed to be taking other people's inventories. I am supposed to be living and let live. MY KID’S MOTHER wants phone bill money for calls that I made while I lived there, but says nothing about the money that she owes me.
The Feigner really surprised me, last night. He expressed gratitude for all that I and someone else were doing for him. He said that we were keeping him afloat. When I think that someone is working me, I get pissed. When someone thanks me, I feel humble.
I now feel that there is hope for The Feigner. And I also now hope that there is hope for The Feigner. I also fucking hope that there is hope for me.

I just lost my temper. I threw some Styrofoam salad bowls down and started whining that my salads were never made for me anymore, like they were supposed to be. It was like the fourth night in a row where this had happened. The manager got mad at me and, I think, lost his temper somewhat, also, while he was telling me that I couldn't lose my temper.
I really think that something else was pissing me off and I just used the lack of salad maintenance to vent, a place to go off on. Where do you put the anger? What do you do with it before it kills you or you explode?
I am having trouble accepting things as they are, today.
I want to change people. I want them to conform to my desires and needs. Needless to say, it has been a long day in my head. I can't think of anything of note to report from the pizza delivery route tonight. A bunch of normal people in nice houses with well-decorated Christmas trees smiled at me as I handed them their pizza. They all tipped decently and so the story goes.

I decided, this morning, that I like to sleep more than I like to exercise or fuck. One of my greatest joys is to be able to get into the bed at night and not have to set the alarm clock. There is an intense thrill to this action; or non-action.
We had a Christmas party at the pizza joint last night. It was fun. I bought the kids a couple of large drawing pads and some pencils, brushes and paint. They sat around and created great works of art.
My son took great pride in pointing out who was drunk. "Ellen's eyes are bloodshot and she can't quit grinning,” he came up and informed me. “Edward bumped into me. I think that he was very drunk," he later reported.
I have trained a monster, an anti-booze, anti-cigarette monster. Excuse me if I don’t apologize. The kid’s mother is always telling me “to get a life,” that I spend “too much time” with my son, that I will wind up old and lonely. Please see the song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” by Harry Chapin for my reply to this.
I tried to point out to my son that it was the holidays and that during this time of year many more people imbibed much more than usual and that just because I didn't and I couldn't, that he and I shouldn't hate people who do or judge them just because they did or do.
I was talking as much to myself, as I was my son, here, trying to teach myself, as well as my son, a lesson about tolerance. I find myself less and less attracted to places where there are intoxicated people and cigarette smoke. Since I don’t go out to bars, anymore, and since I have a young kid or kids at the house, most nights, I have developed this internet chat room habit. It has started to consume me.


M: Obviously what you want to do is up to you. i would prefer to keep talking but you seem to go through moods of getting upset because it is not "real". i am confused by that due to the fact that i am married and you wouldnt touch that with a ten foot pole anyway. I also meant what i said about the fact that even though that is the case, if it was not, i feel that you have this pattern of rejecting women...--susie


"we re not enemies, we just disagree..."--the strokes

susie: i run from women that don t have what i am ultimately looking for...should i settle for less and i run from ones who have what i might be looking for who are half a country away cuz i don t want a long distance relationship...

although, at times, i am serious about meeting you in person, in the long run it is probably best to not as we would always have that hanging over our head...i ve been reading the bible alot and the word adultery sticks out like a sore thumb...i like you susie cutie much and i love you on certain levels...you have a right to stand up for yourself in our "relationship" and you did that last night which i admire...

"friendships" can sustain the easy times, but the friendships that make it through arguments and hard times are maybe the truest...now hike you skirt baby and let me stick my horny cock deep inside...

--with love, your friend pablo doo da the poet



I got to Worst Buy, today, at about 11:30 am. I headed straight to the future gambling boy section. I couldn't even get near the fucking aisle where gambling boy was located.
Throngs of useless, dumb ass human beings had beaten me to my son and daughter's Christmas wish. Plan B: I then searched for something Suck Man, anything Suck Man.
A little old man and a little old lady had gotten in front of me in the Suck Man aisle and were moving very, very slowly. The thought crossed my mind that they were walking slow because the gates of hell were waiting for them at the end of the aisle. And because I was so full of the Christmas spirit, the thought of pushing them to the floor and stepping on them and on over them entered my mind.
'Tis the season, mother fuckers.
When I finally got by the worthless retirees, I discovered that all the Suck Man stuff was also gone.
Suck.
Man.
I was heartbroken. Christmas was ruined. I was a failure as a father and as a human being.
Depressed, dejected, neurotic and very lonely, in this huge, hungry Christmas crowd, I headed to the nearest mall, fingers crossed, even though I had been warned, that the situation at the malls of America was even worse. I had been informed that astute shoppers had been pulling the key Christmas gifts off of the mall shelves since the day before Easter.
Corporate America was trying to assist with the whole process by trying to figure out a way to cancel Easter and Halloween and further melt Thanksgiving into Christmas, because Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving, marketing research had shown, got in the way of Christmas spending.
The lines at the mall were even longer than the ones at Worst Buy. I had to stand in one extremely lengthy and tedious line just to ask a question about game buttocks.
"We've been sold out for a week," the worn to the bone, weary and worried looking store clerk told me. “You might try the high priced toy stores upstairs,” he said, surveying the long line of pathetic and angry holiday shoppers behind me, who were waiting not patiently at all.
The scene was much like the one that a death row inmate views before the state puts him to sleep for being a bad boy, with all the reporters and various witnesses and spectators sitting in the bleachers waiting to watch him die.
I dropped my chin to my chest and was immediately filled with an intensely deep guilt and massive shame for not being able to buy the Christmas gift for my children that they wanted. Slowly, I walked away from the game buttocks area, hands deep in my pockets.
In my head and in my heart and soul, for right now, I was the most pathetic, useless and evil creature on the planet: I made the Grinch look like Britney Spears when she was still a mousketeer puppet of the cheap and fascist Disnery Corp.

I am fucking tired.
The kid's mom asked me if I wanted the kids to sleep over. I said yes. I always say yes. Then the kid’s mom called back to say that the kids said no, that they didn’t want to spend the night at my place. I called back to investigate. "There's a good TV. show on in the morning," said my son. I was being blown off due to a lack of cable, again.

Christmas Day. I got nothing that I wanted, today. Santa didn't bring me a fucking thing. My son got nothing that he wanted, either. Like I told you, Buttocks Boy and Suck Man were sold out before I got to Worst Buy and Smell Mart. I'm trying to be bitter here, but really I can't be.
I can't say bah fucking humbug and sincerely really mean it.
I can't be fucking scrooge or the dumb ass bitch Grinch, today, even though I’ve been trained to, indoctrinated to be by our buy, buy, buy society.
Even though there was a serious lack of materialistic things, around our Christmas tree, there was much to be very thankful for, so the day didn't go down like the pathetic self-centered whine fest that it could have been.
After watching my son and his sister rip into their presents, I snuck back to the cot in the basement of the kids’ grandmother’s house, that I had spent the night on. I curled deep into the fetal position and started counting imaginary snowflakes, talking to fake reindeers.
After a couple of hours, I was busted. "You should be playing with the kids.” It was the kid’s grandmother, standing over me with her hands on her hips. I tried to ignore her and get a few more minutes of sleep, but she stood watch over me, like some sort of an assistant to Santa supervising a lazy elf or trying to pull an addicted reindeer out of the crack house.
I wasn't hungry, like I usually was on this holiday, but I ate and it was good and I was thankful.
The brownies ruled.
Ruling brownies can’t tell me how to vote though.

After lunch, my son and I went into the back yard and threw the football back and forth. I made up imaginary situations, in imaginary games, for my son to work through. My son's uncle and his brother joined us and we chased each other and the ball through the leaves all afternoon.
Last night, it seemed crazy to me that two men, my son's uncle and my son's step father(god, I hate that word…) were sitting in the hot tub and smoking cigars on such a cold, cold December, Christmas Eve night were. Today, though, I sat in the hot tub water for an hour and a half myself and “relaxed.” while my son screamed in my ear, "hey, dad, watch this. Hey, dad, watch this."
Not wanting to leave the hot tub quite yet, I invented punting and passing the football games for the kid to challenge himself with.
As I've told you, financial incentives lead my son to greater heights in his athletic and scholastic endeavors. I was always a choke artist, when I was a kid playing sports. My son plays for the money. I lied when I said that money was evil. It is people that are evil and how they use money in this world that sucks.
Amen.

“everybody cries...”--rem

Some asshole stole my leather jacket, today.
I'm trying not to get angry and or depressed about it. I'm trying to say that God intended it that way, that whoever stole my jacket needed it worse than I did. I'm having trouble doing that, though. I'm having trouble letting go. It is the second leather jacket, in two years, that has been ripped off from me and I can t fucking afford to replace this one.
I like my leather.

At least whoever took this one didn’t bust out the window to my car to get it, like someone did a couple of years ago to steal the last one. I didn’t lock the door. I made it easy for the pathetic fuck crack head to steal my jacket as I ran in to pick up a delivery. The dickhead made himself at home in my car and my jacket. Fuck praying for this asshole. I hope he dies slowly of aids in a jail cell getting a nightstick shoved up his ass violently by a psychotic prison guard.
Or guards.
It was cold today. As I delivered pizzas without a jacket, several of my customers said, "shouldn't you be wearing a coat? It's cold out..."
I explained my plight. One guy gave me an eight dollar tip and said, "happy holidays." I'm pretty sure that he tipped me so well because he felt sorry for me because of the fucking rip off of my leather jacket. I'm getting depressed. The kids are at their mother's house watching a movie. I should have watched more movies with them while I lived there.

“everybody hurts...”--rem

I am tired.
It has been a long day.
I worked a double, today. In the morning, I worked at the Chinese restaurant. It was slow, but not slow enough that I could get any writing done on the computer. I take the laptop that the Poem gave me with me everywhere I go. Like my leather jacket was, it is my constant companion. I even take it into the toilet, place it on my knees and type on it while I am taking a shit. Is that fucking dedication to my art or what?
I am sitting in the smoking section of an all-night eatery. I am waiting for a friend who smokes. I thought I'd be pleasant about it, though I am perhaps the archest-enemy of second hand smoke to ever inhale someone else’s death smoke. The people around me are pissing me off. They seem to be having such a bloody fucking good time. They don't care that my leather jacket got ripped off.
Fuck ‘em.

Rewrites are weird.
I am at a coffee shop, downtown. I am typing. I look up and I see two guys talking. A couple of minutes later, I look up and see one of the guys hitting the other guy. I think, well none of my business, I’ll just keep re writing. I’ll just keep typing and mind my own business, since no one looks like they are about to get beaten to death. From my perspective, as a retired bar room brawler this fight looks pretty lame. Neither guy really knows how to fight. They are just slugging it out like a couple of amateurs.
The next time I look up, I see the guy who had been getting hit the most, before, doing most of the hitting, now. I realize that these two guys are heading towards my laptop, so I get up and put a chokehold on the guy who is now on top of the battle. I get him near the door and push him out onto the sidewalk screaming, “I’m just breaking it up man, I’m just breaking it up,” hoping that he would realize that by no means was I taking a side in the altercation. The only side that I was on in this brawl was the side of my laptop.

Now, if I could have your patience for just another brief moment I’d like to say just one or two last things about my stolen leather jacket and I swear to you that I will stop talking about it and the incident. The first leather jacket that was stolen from me was the biker kind, like musical metal heads wear. I wore that black leather jacket for seven or eight years and then one night some asshole broke out the back window of my pickup truck and wiped me out. The asshole took my leather jacket and everything else of value in the truck.
The prick took my cd player. The prick took my cell phone. The prick took all my cds. I didn't realize for several days that the prick had also taken my leather and all the spare change mother fucker that I kept in the ashtray.
A leather jacket is somewhat like a dog and some women. That jacket was a part of me. It was worn to my contour. Each spot of spilled paint, each coffee stain meant something to me. The longer you are with a leather jacket, the closer you become to it. I had only been with the jacket that was stolen from me today for about three months. But we were close.
I hope that my jacket wasn't pawned for a hit of crack cocaine. I hope some homeless guy, who was cold, stole it and is walking the streets warm and proud in my suit coat like leather jacket.
I am warm tonight. I borrowed my roommate’s coat. It's not a cool leather jacket, like the one some fucking asshole pathetic crack head stole from me today, but it is keeping me warm, I hope that you are warm tonight. Peace.

I feel like shit, today. The thought of a cigarette seemed pleasant during certain moments of certain parts of the day. A minute ago, though I have never stuck a needle in my arm, the thought of a shot of heroin even seemed nice, though I have never shot heroin. I snorted a line of it once and it put me to sleep. I was already too deep into alcohol to add heroin to the mix. The book "The Basketball Diaries," by Jim Carroll had hipped me to the pain and misery that being strung out on heroin would lead you to.
I am in pain, so I seek more pain. It makes sense to me. I am an addict. I am used to adding shit to the shit. It comes naturally to me, but heroin. No thanks. I have had many good friends and several good friends die of heroin. Please listen to "Fuck Heroin," by The Mikel K Band to get a feel for what I am saying here.
Thanks.

The pizza delivery gig is slow, tonight. People have been out all day fighting over after Christmas sale items. I long for some soft breasts to caress, some tall stiff nipples to kiss and suck. It seems that a female touch would be nice tonight, though I have recently come to feel that there is no hope for me and the female.
Women and I are aliens.
Women and I can be friends, but we can't become intimate without fucking everything up. There is no soul mate out there for me. I will hurtle through space and time alone.
Alone with my children, of course.

I was too fucking tired last night to write much.
Some days are long and pathetic. A good night's sleep helps a great deal and, usually, can turn a shitty day into a pleasant day beginning the next morning.
I used to think that getting drunk would make my day better. And for awhile, in the beginning, it did provide nice short-term escape.
At times, there was even a comfort in blacking out. The world went away for awhile.
For a second, this morning, the demon was still with me. The thought crossed my mind that I couldn't muster the energy to wash the dishes. Scratcher seems to have made up his mind that this load is not his. He is usually good about the dishes, washing at least his fair share, often more.
The Feigner, of course, is another fucking story. This guy has never washed a dish in his life. He seems to think that he is a Rockefeller or a Kennedy and that Scratcher and I are here to serve all of his personal fucking needs. The Feigner just got back in town. He went to see his mom for the holidays. I bet his mommy had to wash all his dishes for him and then he left her house when the holiday was over with whatever money and food he could steal from her.
Moper and I did coffee until 5 am two nights ago. I woke up the next morning feeling as if vodka and tequila, instead of caffeine, had ravaged my mind and body. Moper is a creature of the night. He is used to staying up all night and binging on coffee to do it.
I’m a wimp. I go to bed early. I try to sleep late.

I made decent money for a Monday, last night, on the pizza delivery route. As usual, this one bitch pissed me off. She is such a cheap whore. She's got her house. And she's got her two cars in the garage. And all she can hand me is a buck forty tip.
Fuck her.
Technically, the cunt is out of our delivery area. I could tell her to fuck off and I probably should. But I am trying to be a nice guy. I really am. It is not my nature, mind you. It is a fucking struggle, but it is one that I am undertaking. Pray for me.

I had coffee, last night, with this girl who I would like to fuck. We talked for about an hour and when I was walking away from her, my dick was all wet, soaked in pre cum, you know, because I got hard for her and ejaculated in my pants a little.
This girl has the greatest tits.
I could get lost in her tits for hours, days, weeks, but most likely not for forever. Tits are not the basis of eternity. Dig?
Do chicks who lead with their tits wind up with men who will love them until the end of time or do they wind up with men who lead with their dicks are into tits and will take off when a better pair of tits come along?

The girl standing in front of me right now is a little short girl. I love little short girls. They really turn me on. Most of them are real tough. They have to be, because people are always trying to push them around, just because they are small.
I love to bang short little girls. This girl has the greatest hair. It is long and dark and soft. Do you know that some girls get off on you pulling their hair while you are fucking them.
When we were done talking, the short girl thanked me for hanging out with her. She said that it helped her a lot, that she was dealing with some issues and that it felt good to spend time with another human being. I wonder what she would have thought if she knew that the whole time that I was with her that I was thinking about how great it would be to have my penis inside her and my tongue on her nipples.
I really wanted to kiss her. I really did. I wonder what she would have done if I had: screamed and ran away?
Kiss someone that you love today.

It is the skid row of regulars, tonight, back in the smoking section at the pizza joint. In the last booth, there is this tiny little black man who claims to be a mechanic. He gets really fucked up, every time he comes in. I mean really fucked up. On Christmas eve, he asked me if he could have a free holiday beer. I told him that I didn't own the joint. I told the manager what he asked for and she said that she hated him and that he never tipped and there was no fucking way that she was giving him a free fucking beer.
In the next booth is the stinky old chain-smoking pathetic piece of shit man that I have told you that the other pizza joint workers refer to as “the usual.” When this fucking asshole is gone, as usual, I will have to clean up his nasty old nasty, old smelly ash tray and pick up his gross fucking napkins while I clean his fucking nasty ass table.
I wish that the inevitable lung cancer that is going to take this old man from this earth would kick in right now and take his nasty old man ass to hell or wherever he is ultimately headed, right now. The world, my world, would be an easier place in wich to breath. And, more importantly, the pizza joint where my lungs are working at would be an easier place to work in.
In the last smoking booth, which is the closest one to the booth that I am sitting in, the one that everybody calls "my office," are the two old bastards from the retirement home across the street. These guys, though they are in their sixties, act like a couple of kids. They have deep southern accents and deep fucking laughs. I believe that they drink decaf coffee every night and I bet that they don't tip, either. These two seem to be best friends. They chat endlessly. I see them all over the town, walking, talking, laughing, smiling. These two also like to sit on the downtown bus bench and pass time, not waiting for a bus, just killing time until, I guess, death takes one or both of them.
Up front, tonight, is a table of thirteen dickheads.
They called up about an hour ago and asked if we could handle them. I had to laugh. It is almost the New Fucking Year. The place is dead. Can we handle them? The grinning dickheads are dressed up like they are a high society bunch. It would probably piss them off if they knew what a bunch of lowlifes were sitting in the back of the restaurant.
What a fucking weird world it is.

I feel at peace, today.
Can you believe it?
Unfortunately, it took a day and a half of rage to get to this place of mellowness. It is a Saturday night, New Year's Day. The pizza joint was closed and I had a night off: a fucking night off. I never get a fucking night off. I actually didn't know what to do with myself. A girlfriend of mine, who is just a friend, said that she was having dinner with her mom and that I could join them. I thought that maybe that would be cool. I have long wanted to bang this “friend” and, of course, I can’t tell her this because she is just a “friend," so I just said “sure, dinner sounds great.”
I learned, a long time ago, to respect the small man in a fight.. If you are not very careful and you think that you can kick his ass just because he is smaller than you, you will have your guard down and the little man will fuck you up.
The little man has been picked on pushed around, picked on and degraded since kindergarten and he is carrying around a lot of anger and I mean a fucking lot of anger.
As I have told you, I have also learned to respect small women for their feistiness and strength. Why am I talking about this again? Most likely because small women interest me, sexually, and I am a moron who way too often thinks with his dick.
My friend, who is a girl, but is not my girl friend, and who makes it clear over and over that she wants no part of me sexually has a set of requirements for the man who will next get into her pants.
My friend is only interested in sex if it is in a committed relationship. And the other member of that committed relationship must have a high paying job, already own a house and several nice cars and on and on. I said to her, once, couldn't we just bang as friends without the house and the cars and all?
She said no, emphatically.
No, No. No. No.
Anyway, me and Little Miss no no no no had spaghetti at her mom’s house. To me, Little Miss’s mom was cool as hell. She wasn't one of those mothers with whom I had to walk around the house all on pins and needles and with whom most subjects are taboo.
Me and my friend's mom laughed and joked like we had known each other for years. Miss’s mom offered me a glass of wine. I said not unless you want to pay my bail. She picked up on my direction right away.
Keep coming back.
After dinner, I went to the anonymous place. I was really looking forward to the meeting. I hardly ever get to go to the anonymous place at night. The crowd is different in the evening. Sometimes this night meeting is not the healthiest environment for me to be in. There are a lot of skirts to check out, if you catch my drift.
I was wearing The Feigner's sweater. I had grabbed it as I went out the door. The Feigner is always talking about how we is a team and how we all look out for each other, here at the space we live in, while he is using everybody else's soap, toothpaste and toilet paper and drinking their o.j. and frying their eggs.
I already told you that my leather jacket got ripped off, last week. As I was getting ready to go to the Misses’ mom's for dinner, tonight, I tried on this fucking loser ass tweed jacket that I used to like to wear.
My tastes have changed, though, praise the Lord. Looking in the mirror, tonight, I could see that I looked like a rather stupid mother fucker in the tweed and as I was walking out the door in just my old black turtleneck, I saw the Feigner’s sweater.
It was cold out.
It fit.
I wore it.
I was on the porch of the anonymous place for like a minute and The Feigner sees me in the sweater and goes, "hey, is that my sweater?"
I said, "no, it ain't your sweater," just joking around.
He asks me again.
He asks me like ten times and I say no each time. Finally, I quit playing around and told him the truth.
"Yes. It's your sweater. Isn't it ok that I am wearing it?"
The Feigner looked like someone had hit him in the jaw. He looked surprised, angry, hurt, degraded and stolen from all at once. I started thinking about all the eggs that the fucker had eaten of mine in the last two months. I started thinking about all the fucking o.j. that he had stolen from me and swallowed without asking for it in the last few months. I started thinking about all the fucking soda that he had gulped when he thought no one was watching. And I started thinking about how he was the one who always talking about us being a "team."
Team, my ass.
When it fully hit me that the prick was serious about being, not only offended, but that he was actually pissed off about me wearing his sweater, I flipped out. I tore the fucking sweater off and I went up to him in the circle of people that he was conversing with and threw the sweater at his feet. "There's your fucking sweater, asshole," I said and I walked up to my truck and drove off.
No anonymous meeting tonight, kiddies.

The next day, Sunday, was painful. I worked a double. I delivered Chinese food in the morning. I delivered pizza at night. All I could focus on all day was the Feigner. I wanted to fuck the dude up. I wanted to grab him by the neck and put the fear of God in him. I wanted to let him know what a low life motherfucker he was and how I was superior to him in every phase of life.
My hate was pure.
My hate was intense, as usual.
And as usual, I let anger ruin my day.
Fuck.
I got home and talked to Scratcher. Scratcher, as usual, didn't have any solutions. "You guys will just have to work it out, " he said.
He also said that it sucked because "now we are all walking on pins and needles around the space." Scratcher was getting free photo services and supplies stolen by the Feigner from his very part time job, so he had no real interest in looking at things objectively.
Such is life in our consumer society. If you have what they need and you give them what they want, they won t consume you, they will let you get away with murder, rape and theft of everybody’s 401k: time to control all the Middle East oil in the name of “freedom,” baby.
Bombs away.
I went to sleep. I dreamed about The Feigner. I took him out with a right. I took him out with a left. I dropped him with a sidekick to the knee. The mother-fucker would never eat my eggs, again. The mother-fucker would never drink my o.j. again. The mother-fucker would never touch my stereo, or touch my computer, again. The mother-fucker would never embarrass me, again, or make me feel insecure at the anonymous place or anywhere else.
I woke up. What The Pill had said was true. The Feigner had hurt my feelings and that was why I was angry. As usual, I didn't want to feel insecure or embarrassed, so I took those emotions over to anger where I was comfortable. I knew how to yell. I knew how to scream. I knew how to beat people up, if I had to, and sometimes even if I didn't have to.
Earlier, in my sleep, I had heard The Feigner come into the space. I could now hear him rooting around his room. I didn't know what to do, but I knew that I really didn't want to take a swing at him or even yell at him. By now, I could even see that it wasn't even my job to point out his faults to him or to others.
The answer as to how to handle the situation became clear. I got up out of bed walked up to the Feigner and apologized for “my part in it all.” "I'm sorry that I threw your sweater at you," I said. "I'm sorry that I wore it."
I wanted to throw in all sort of qualifications with my apology, but this, but that. I wanted to say, "and" and "and" and I wanted to tell the Feigner what I thought all his problems were and how I thought that he could and should fix them. I wanted to fix The Feigner, control and manipulate him just like I wanted to do with many other people, places and things in my existence.

The Feigner looked up with a smile. "It's all cool, dude," he said with that fucking sly smile that drove me crazy. I figured that he was probably happy as hell that now he could go on guzzling my o.j. and smuggling my eggs into his belly.

Tonight is perhaps the slowest night ever at the pizza joint.
It is almost time to go home and I have only taken one delivery. The guy who ordered it, told me on the phone, that he knew me and then almost choked when I told him the cost of his medium pizza.
“Do you have a small pizza?" he asked.
When I got to his house, he had two very large, very new fucking cars in the garage of a house in a nice neighborhood. He tipped me a buck seventy five, which is really cheap, considering that he "knew me."
Another order just came in.
I hope that it stays slow. I have been sick for four days, battling the flu. I just want to go home and get in the bed.
Last night, I fell on my way down some steps after delivering a pizza. I went straight up in the air and landed flat on my back.
Ouch.
I have been swallowing ibuprofen for twenty-four hours.
My new coat broke the fall, somewhat. My new coat is not leather, it is this big wool trench type coat that is very thick, like my head. Of course, I had to fall on the front steps of a good customer and not a bad one. Of course, I did not fall on the slick steps of some shithead who is rude and or condescending and cheap tipping. Of course, I didn’t fall on the steps of some asshole who I could have turned a cock-sucking ambulance chasing dickhead type attorney on.
Mr. C, the owner of the house where I fell, called the next day and talked to the owner. He was checking to see if I was alright. Mr. C orders a medium pepperoni pizza like clock work almost every other day of the week and he always tips three or four bucks. If I had broken my back and lay paralyzed a vegetable for life in some god forsaken spinal center I would not have sued Mr. C.
Mr. C always has a smile on his face, a pleasant hello on his tongue, something fun or interesting to say. His wife is quiet, but nice. They have been together forever and still have that happy glow and special look of love in the eyes for each other, that most married couples have lost somewhere around the last blow job or second to last mortgage payment.
Yesterday, when the pain finally faded and I opened my eyes, there stood Mr. and Mrs. C with deep and honest looks of concern on their faces. "Can we call anyone? Can we do anything?"
The chance to scream ambulance, chiropractor and, of course, most importantly to call a greedy ruthless attorney was not there. I could tell that nothing was broken. I could also tell that I would be in a bit of pain for at least a week.

I don't have much to say, tonight. This guy who I can't stand just came in and is eating at the counter. Thankfully, he is trying to bang the girl who is managing the pizza joint, tonight, and he doesn't have time to get condescending or crappy with me.
He is some sort of businessman. Most “businessmen” suck. Businessman is just a word for asshole. A businessman is a prick who fucks people over for money and everybody is fucking brainwashed to think that just because you have a lot of money that you are fucking Jesus Christ or something.

Money is God, isn’t it children?
I asked my kid if he would be happy if I was a millionaire and he said yes.

I was supposed to talk to this whore, who I met on the internet, on the phone, tonight. She might come into town and let me meet her in person. The fucking bitch’s phone line has been busy all night. She is like me. She is addicted to the internet.
I was up until five am searching for women to chat with, last night. I must be hard up as hell, or something. I used to meet women in bars. Now I am trying to find them on a computer.

People don't lie online.
Do they?
I think I met this woman last week who was really a man. She went for the old cyber sex thing way too quick, said she was coming to town to stay at a motel for two weeks and then just disappeared into cyber thin air. I bet there is some man out there laughing about me moaning and groaning while he vividly described some big tits and a wet pussy that he didn’t fucking have.

XXXXXXXXXXINTERNET CONVERSATION HERE DUDE...

The pizza joint was packed like smelly sardines in a cheap tin can, tonight. It was a fucking madhouse. It was fucking nuts. Fucking Fridays
The waiters ran about like Heisman trophy halfbacks on some weird batch of speed, that an outlaw punk rocker had cooked up in his stripper girlfriend's bathroom and sold to the Coach, who was also the science teacher, for an advance copy of the next chemistry exam.
I was severely disjointed this evening. Some asshole forgot to write down a phone number on a ticket right in the middle of the rush, but did remember to write down the wrong street address.
We wound up giving the girl the pizza for free about an hour and a half late. She was pretty cool about it, actually, giving me a couple of dollars tip. Most assholes look at a delivery fuck up as a chance to stiff the driver. How cheap can you get? You're getting the fucking pizza for free and then you turn around and screw the driver out of his tip. People really suck, don’t they?
I tried to look as large, as psychotic, as angry and anti-social and detached, as possible, tonight, whenever I walked into the fucking insane piss house called the pizza joint, when there were no pizzas to deliver.
There is something about a busy restaurant, especially one that I am employed at, and thus expected to do things in, that gets me really psychotic. I started thinking about sticking a steak knife in someone's throat, if they fucked with me and I wasn’t even sure if I could find a fucking steak knife in a pizza joint.
"I'm sorry that we burned your pizza, asshole, here's seventeen stitches in the head to show how much I care."
I'm a seriously burned out waiter. For 2.01 an hour plus tips, I would wind up back in jail, or worse, some mental institution.
"What are you in for pal?"
"I killed some asshole who didn't like his breadsticks."

I went to an art opening, last night. The art there sucked, but the babes were fine. I flirted with this twenty something engineering major, who said that she used to be heavy into photography. This chick was a goddess. She was nice as hell, too.
What the fuck was she doing talking to me? Women hate me. I am the anti-guy.
Later on, last night, I was standing against one of the art gallery walls and this fine pair of tits walked by. There was a tattoo between the bosoms. I was trying to think of something clever to say like, "I’d like to be your tattoo, too."
Instead, I just mumbled , "I like your outfit."
The girl looked at me and said..."Mikel!"
She knew me, but I couldn’t remember from where. I looked at her, dumbfounded. How could I have forgotten those breasts, I mean, that face?
“Mikel. It's Mary."
"The Virgin Mary."
"Remember, I used to date Joseph."
Just kidding.

I had almost blown off going to the art opening. I was going to do laundry instead. Isn't that pathetic? I must be getting old. I do like clean clothes, though, but not better than fine ass tits. I mean, you have to have your priorities straight in this existence.
These old alcoholic men come into the fucking pizza joint every fucking night. They come to the counter and order the cheapest large beer that we have. Then they move to the back booths where smoking is allowed.
They drink and smoke.
They drink and smoke.
Sometimes I wonder what they think about while they drink and smoke. I wonder if they realize that life has eluded them, that all they have done in and with their life, basically, is to drink and smoke, drink and smoke and that they have let their life just slip away and into the bottle and an ashtray.
After a couple of beers, these dickheads wobble up to the counter, hold out a handful of pennies and ask the manager if it is enough for another beer. I don't know where they come from. I don't know where they go. Part of me doesn't care. Part of me knows that they could have been me. Part of me knows that part of them was me. Part of me wishes that the fucking shift was over and that I could go home.
I read this article last night about millionaires. The article didn’t say this, but you know what: millionaires fucking suck. You know why? Because once they have one million, they want two million. And once they have two million, they want a mother fucking billion. And the more they get, the cheaper they get.
There is something wrong with the distribution of wealth in this world. You got some motherfuckers with a billion dollars who are not paying shit to the people working for them. These fucking assholes have got seventeen or eighteen thousand fucking houses and all the fucking cars they want and, in the same city, but for sure not the same arm guarded neighborhood, you have men and women laying down on the sidewalk in their own puke and you call that freedom.
Freedom, my fucking ass.
There is something wrong with it and there is something fucking wrong with us. We are taught to applaud and worship the biggest pricks among us.
What the fuck?
It seems cruel and unusual that Gated William and Turner Too can make a billion dollars or two in a day and you've got people sweating it out at 2.01 an hour running around bringing billionaires their food and drinks.
It seems evil and ruthless that some men have billions while other men push shopping carts around full of aluminum cans.
What the fuck, huh, what the fuck?

Someone, who I respect, said that people on the street want to be there and there is nothing that you can do to change them. He said that if they wanted to be billionaires that they would get off their ass, “work hard” and become billionaires.
Another guy I know said that that is a crock of shit, that "they" told you that and that it is a lie and that the truth is that not everyone can make it financially in the world as it is.
What do you think?
Are you making it?
Do you want to be a billionaire?
Have you ever woke up on the sidewalk covered in your own puke?
I have.
And, I doubt that I will ever be a billionaire.

The weather here, today, is very nasty.
The snow that the kids anticipated never arrived, just ice and rain and a mean ass chill that cuts through even the thickest winter coat into the most hidden bones.
It has been said that we, in the South, whether you were born here or have transplanted yourself here from parts not South, are not prepared for such weather. Our blood is thin. We drive like idiots. You would think that the delivery business would be brisk with weather sucking like this. You would think that people would want to stay home in the heat, in the comfort of their homes and have us delivery drivers come out in the cold and knock on their door with their food.
Wrong.
This morning, the Chinese restaurant was dead as fuck. Right now, deliveries at the pizza joint are slack to suck. Fuck. I have started picking up some a.m. Chinese food shifts to try and keep up with the credit card payments.

I was thinking about the future, about where I would be, about what I would be doing. I also gave thought to what I need to do today. I'm thinking of leaving the delivery business. I want to make more money. It is frustrating to want to move into a certain neighborhood and to only be able to afford a studio apartment and not the two bed room pad that you would like to rent for you and your kids and the dog.
This guy I know is opening a mortgage loan office. He said that he would hire me. This other guy that I know says that there are an awful lot of crooks in that business. This lady I know who is a real estate agent says that it is hard as hell to make any money in the mortgage business.
I don’t fucking know.
Some guy called the pizza place wanting someone to deliver flowers from 7 am to 11 am. Maybe I should do that. The owner of the pizza joint says that I should work on my book from 7am to 11am and not deliver flowers.
She is probably right.
I am a writer.
A writer should write.
Dear God guide me and help me provide a home for my children, as a writer if that is your will.

It is slow as hell, again at the pizza joint. I have been here for two and a half hours and have only carried two pizzas out the door.
I don t hate anybody tonight.
I don t feel any anger.
The restaurant, itself, is kind of busy, but that does me no good. I wind up at the counter ringing people out. I wind up bussing tables and, occasionally, I wind up waiting on someone.
I make no more money for this. I get no tips. Why the fuck should I do it? To help someone out?
The owner?
The waiter?
This is capitalism, pal. If you can't get off your ass and make it on your own, then tough shit, fuck off, fuck you, fuck off and die. Or you could join the lazy addicts and useless mentally ill people on the streets of our great nation. I walked out the door the day I turned eighteen and I have never looked back. I'm not a millionaire, but I'm not a panhandler, either.
Fuck everybody.

It is a nice day. I am at the park with the kids. This girl comes roller-blading through. She had a bandana wrapped around her head that says she is gay. It is that multi-colored banner that you see on houses and cars all the time. The thought occurs to me that she might not be gay, but that she just wears that bandana on her head to fend off men, to weed out men, to not get hit on by men.
There are a lot of women with kids at the park today. I figure that most of them have a man who is at work somewhere. I had a date of sorts last night. I met this girl online about 6 weeks ago. We have chatted a lot online and a bit on the phone. She decided that she wanted to meet me, as friends. She has already agreed to marry this guy she met online who lives in Germany. She says that though they have never met, she is in love with him.
Fine.
So we meet as friends. I bring some tea. She fixes it and introduces me to her seventeen year old son. I give him a copy of the Mikel K Band Sober c.d. to show him that I am cool and not just here to bang his mother.
The kids splits.
Me and his mother go into the living room. She shows me some pictures on the wall. We sit on the couch. She pulls out a quarter ounce of pot.
“You don’t mind if I smoke do you?” she asks.
Yesterday, I picked up a blue chip. Eight years without a drink or a drug. “No, I don’t care if you smoke,” I say.
“Here, smell this. It is killer” she says and sticks the bag of pot under my nose. I haven’t sniffed a bag of pot in almost a decade. Even when I smoked it, I was never really sure why I was sniffing it before I smoked it.
Pussy, I understand the smell of, pot I didn’t and don t.
I sat there, listened to her do most of the talking and watched her smoke it up for about an hour. Then I said that I had to go. I moved fast. The next day, I took her out of my buddy list on the computer. We have nothing in common. She smokes dope every night. I fight on a daily basis to stay out of jail and mental institutions. One hit of pot could send me back to my drug of choice: alcohol, which could send me back to the day I woke up reaching for a gun that I didn't own to kill myself.

It's Valentine's Day and I am lonely.
It is fucking slow tonight. I had thought about taking the night off and hanging out with my son, but I didn’t think that it was possible for me to take the night off. There is no one to cover the shift for me. We are hiring another driver. I think that I am training him on Thursday. I told the owner that I would like him to take Monday nights.
Monday night is my official night with my son alone, just the two of us. I see him every day, but I work at night. Work sucks. I am wanting to take a vacation, take some time off, but I can't. I am broke. I live day to day. If I got fired tonight, I would be broke tomorrow morning. Two high school girls were kissing in one of the pizza joint booths, earlier. Do you think that gay couples should be allowed to be legally married?
Several weeks ago, I was fixing a salad and this very well-dressed, very old man started bitching to one of the waiters about me. I guess the prick was peeved because I had my coat on and was behind the counter making a salad. I was rushing in and out between deliveries and no one had fixed shit for my delivery.
When the old fart left, I asked the waiter what the dickhead was bitching about. The waiter said that the old man was saying that he hoped that I had washed my hands before I stuck them in the salad.
The waiter had looked the old man straight in the eyes and said, "yes sir, we all wash our hands before we touch the food." I had to laugh at this. The waiter should have also told the old fart that he, the waiter, was gay and that he liked to fuck his boyfriend in the ass, because he was and he did. I bet the old man would have gulped on that one. I bet if he knew that the waiter standing in front of him was gay, he would have had a fit and not finished his food. I bet that he would have wanted to complain to someone, make someone’s night miserable. Old guys like that make me sick. They all need to go to hell.
Or heaven.
Just get the fuck out of my earth, pal.

I am ill this evening; and tired. I woke up yesterday with a slight sore throat and heavy nasal congestion. The symptoms that I was suffering from kind of cleared up during the day, but they came back with a vengeance at night. I long to go home and sleep, but I am stuck at the pizza joint trying to make some money towards the car payment.
A female friend of mine was saying, yesterday, that she was going to get a part time job so that she could buy a new car. She said that the transmission in her car was shot out. I wanted to tell her to not buy a new car.
Car payments suck.
And the insurance on new cars is high. I know. I bought my truck brand new three years ago. I hate being sucked into the system like I am. I long to get back to the garden or move to Walden Pond, but, with kids, there is no chance of it. I am stuck in the middle with you.
Besides, did you see Woodstock II, the garden was set on fire and pissed on.
I did a poetry reading last night at an uptight art gathering. I was the last thing to happen and not coincidentally, almost nobody was there when I went on. My female friend came with me. At one point in the evening she said something about how it was a pain in her ass that I was hitting on her.
What a useless whore.
This girl, as I told you before, wants to find a nice Christian man and get married. I think that there was this guy named Christ and that he was a good fellow, but I don't think that he was born to a virgin or that he rose from the dead. That is just stuff made up to keep you in line, to make you believe that being a Christian is better than being a Hare Krishna or whatever else.

I was crashed on the couch under the air conditioner, which was kicking out the air on high and cool, around three p.m., planning to rise shortly and take a shower and then leash the dog, grab the laptop and head to the coffee house to rewrite this, The All Amerikan Novel.
There was a rattle at the door.
The dog barked.
“Son?” I said.
“Yes father,” he replied.
“Have you got your key, son?” I asked him, knowing the answer.
“No,” he said.
“Get the spare key,” I said, deciding not to blow him shit about how he is always supposed to have his key with him and how he never does. Also, I was too sore from work the night before, to get up and open the door for him, like I normally would have.
“It’s hot out there, pappy,” he said. “It’s real hot.”
I decided to roll over and go back to sleep and wait until six or six thirty when the sun had gone down to do the walk to the coffee shop. My son doesn't call me "Pappy." My son doesn't call me Dad or Daddy, Father, Pops or any word at all related to me being his father. My son calls me, "Mikel," and I like that. Does that insult any sensibility of yours.
I hate being called, "Mike." My name is not "Mike." When you ask me my name and I tell you that it is "Mikel," why do you turn around and immediately call me "Mike?"
Fuck your "Mike."

When I got to the coffee shop, later in the day, and settled into my regular table by the window, my regular table by the electrical outlet and got plugged in and turned on and had cranked up the portable c.d. player, loud, to drown out the coffee machines, the blenders, the house music, the conversations, the sound of the door opening and closing, etc., I got a very, very scary surprise when I clicked on the laptop icon which opens the book: one hundred pages of the book were missing.
Fuck.
How the hell had I done that?
Had I deleted instead of saved? I had placed the computer down too hard onto some surface? Had I spilled water or coffee onto the computer, thus eliminating a large chunk of five or six years of work? I need to remember to make a backup of the file that contains this book, every day.

Far too often, I go through my life looking at the lives of others, wishing for what I don't have, not appreciating what I do have. This thought just passed through my head, on the hot, hot, Atlanta summer walk to the coffee shop.
Even though it was well after six pm, malicious thoughts were still entering my brain, wrecking and rattling it. For a brief moment, I was back there were I had been at the beginning of this book: hating, fixating on one perceived asshole to the next, who had somewhere, someway, somehow done me wrong, my brain in pain bubbling with anger and hatred about to explode, anywhere, anytime.
On the sidewalk, outside the coffee shop, I saw a kid on a skateboard and for a brief moment, I thought that it was my kid and I was happy. It turned out that the kid was not mine, but the happiness stayed with me: funny how that happens.

My ego is brittle.
If I don't protect it, you might break it. I have to believe in me and my writing. It is all I have. I don't have an MBA. I don't have a BMW. I don't have a law degree. I only have the word. The word may one day be heard and make me some money. It may not. I do not pursue the word for money. I pursue the word because I have to.
I am attached to the word.
Me and the word are one.

The pizza joint has been slow, again, tonight. Doesn’t it seem that I tell you this often? It never really gets slow enough where I can sit down and write. It kind of sucks my time, keeping me just barely busy, helping me just barely be able to pay the bills.
I went home early from the pizza joint, last night, sick as a dog: chills and a sore throat caused me to cash it in a half hour early. I'm such a fucking working class hero. I seem to have inherited my father's sick working class ethic. My father practically tried to go into work on his deathbed. In fact, it was related to me that my father’s last words as he was dieing were “tell work I won’t be in today.”

Recently, I considered giving up being me. I was going to become somebody else in the name of better housing. I want to move into the neighborhood where my son will be going to junior high school in the fall. I thought that it would be nice if he could walk home after school or ride his bike home or stay after school for sports and then be able to get home without waiting on a ride from Dad. I wanted to get a two bedroom apartment.
I couldn’t afford it.
I just found out that my son's bike got stolen from his mother’s house. This was a six hundred dollar b.m.x. bike that I had bought for three hundred and twenty five dollars from this punk rock kid that works at the pizza-joint.
Things often don't go down the way you want them to. I found an affordable very small two bedroom apartment in a different part of town. My son won't be able to walk or ride his bike as easily to and from school as I would have liked, but he will have his own bedroom, one that he will share with his younger sister. And he can ride the bus to school. I can't wait to decorate the kids' room. I can't wait to start buying stuff for it.

“You can t always get what you want but if you try you just might find...”—Mick Jagger

Another day.
I feel like shit.
I’m unhappy because the jeans that I am in, I have been in for like four or five days. I need to buy some new pants. I need to do laundry.
There is this old bitch at the Laundromat who harasses me for leaving my clothes in the machines for too long. I go into the Laundromat, I put my shit in the washer and I sit there bored as hell for a half hour, watching my dirty underwear and smelly socks go round and round, while I glance at a day old newspaper that I pulled out of the trashcan or off of one of the chairs in the Laundromat. When the rinse cycle is up, I put my wet clothes into the drier and head off to the pizza grind.
That is what I call multi-tasking.
I am delivering pizza while my clothes dry. I avoid the boring laundry mat, while I make a boring buck. For the most part, I am back in front of the drier pulling out my warm and happy clothes the minute the clock would strike a minute before or after exactly an hour if there was such a clock in existence.
Surely I don’t want to leave my panties and pretty hosiery sitting around in a public place, honey, any longer than they must.
The mean bitch ogre is usually standing near my driers with her hands on her hips. The intensity of her meanness indicates that at some point her life that she was either a nun, or a devote Christian without a fucking clue about what Jesus actually said and how Jesus actually lived.
I haven’t bothered to explain to the old bitch yet that I am a very busy man, a single dad, and sometimes that I am forced to take steps that are in my kid’s best interest that might not please her or the kid's mom.
Get over it, lady.
Fridays are my busiest nights as a delivery guy: usually.
Tonight, though, it is slow as hell. It’s 6:15 pm and I have only delivered two pizzas. The laundry mat bitch would be on my ass whether there was a demand for the driers that I was occupying or not.
It’s her nature to be a mean bitch because she is fat and old. It is her nature to be a mean bitch because she is old and ugly. It is her nature to be a mean bitch because she is old and lonely and is out to try and make the rest of the world feel as miserable as she does.
I mean, I’m not trying to take her inventory or anything, but a fact is a fact, mama. Besides, like all women on the planet, she desperately wants to fuck me and knows there is not a chance in hell that I will put my tongue on her lonely old pussy.

I need new pillowcases and now that I think about it, I also need new pillows. I don't like my sheets either. And I need a mop. Things didn't used to be this way. I don't ever remember being concerned about pillowcases and mops.
I never mopped the floor. I just got evicted from it and moved onto the next floor. What has come over me? Today, I am living in a small two bedroom apartment.
My name is on the lease.
The phone, the gas and the electric are all billed to me.
What a concept.
You might think that this is no big deal. You have been living like this for years. But I do think that it is a big deal. This is the first home of my own that I have had in the eight years that I have been sober. It is the first residence that I have ever had that I have a fighting chance to reside in until the lease is over. And then I will sign a new lease. I will pay my bills month after month like a happy and comfortably numb mass of man.
When I was still drinking, I, on rare, rare occasions talked some poor soul into renting a space of some sort to me. My residency never lasted more than a month or two. My past is covered in wrecked rooms in rooming houses and terrorized apartments covered with spray painted walls, pock rattled with fist holes from deep dark blacked-out nights of drunken rage and loneliness.

The day is starting off slowly. I have been on the internet, flirting. I find my ladies on the internet, these days. I don't have the time nor do I have the interest to search for women in the real world. Out there, in the real world, your initial reaction, your initial attraction is based on looks. On the net, you get to check a chick out inside out, first. You get to pick her brain. You get to tease her. You get to see if she has a sense of humor, if she is creative, if she has a brain. You get to see if she is horny and if she will settle for a one night stand or if she is saving the poontang for soul mate true love. You get to see if the lady is lonely. You get to see if the lady is married. You get to see if the lady is single. You get to see if she has kids and if the father is involved in raising them.
More on this later.
Right now, I've got to take a nap.

P 299xxxxxxx extensive chats good lead in to next book here...XXXXX

I have cut back to one double a week. This is a new concept for me. For the past several years, I have been running my ass off and not really getting anywhere. It seems that the more money I have in my pocket, the more money that I frivolously spend.
Yesterday, I brought my lunch to work at the Chinese
restaurant. This is a totally new concept for me. I get Chinese food at half price, when I am delivering, which is a good deal, but bringing your lunch is an even better deal. It's healthier, too. I have been working out. Once you start working out, you just naturally start eating better. I guess that it's that mind, body, spirit thing. The three aspects to us as human beings work together, they go hand in hand, hand in hand, hand in hand. When one of them is out of kilter, the others falter and when you are working on one, the others get healthier. It seems to be symbiotic like that.
We are at Burger Doodle. The kids have been driving me crazy, asking me to go to the grease pit each and every day. They do not crave burgers. They crave brightly colored cheap plastic toys and the marketing assholes at fast food headquarters know it.

Makes me puke man has invaded the planet. Makes me puke man is worse than any computer virus. Makes me puke man is worse than noise pollution. Makes me puke man is potentially as dangerous as a nuclear blast. Makes me puke man is on t.v. There is a Makes me puke man movie. There are Makes me puke man cards. There are Makes me puke man videos, both for the big screen and there are Makes me puke man games for those nifty little boy toys that all the kids must have that cost only a hundred bucks, even at the cheap discount store.
Why are kids so into Makes me puke man and who is the asshole who created Makes me puke man? He makes me want to puke, man.

Last night was a jamming night for deliveries at the pizza joint. I made enough money to pay the cable television bill, the light bill and the portion of my rent that I didn’t have. The night started out slow and I thought that it was going to turn out to be like the night before: four deliveries and little cash.
Around eight pm the phone started ringing of the hook, like someone had said that we were giving pizza away and that the tip was included. Delivery after delivery poured in. I started telling people that it would take at least 45 minutes and maybe an hour for me to get to their front door, right off the bat.
I was covering my ass. I would rather tell a customer that I will be there in an hour and show up in twenty minutes than tell them I will be there in twenty minutes and show up in an hour. I have never gotten a dirty look from a customer for showing up early with a pie.
A nurse from the hospital that I have refused to deliver to for the three years that I have been at the pizza-joint called and wanted a delivery. Things had slowed down and I was already sitting on some good cash for the night, so I was in a good mood and said that I would deliver to her: she seemed nice.
I told her that we were going to put a fifteen percent gratuity on the order. She didn’t seem to care either way, which was a good sign. People who gripe over an included fifteen percent tip are also going to be a pain in the ass in a number of other ways when you arrive with their delivery.
They are hard to deal with at the phone. They are hard to deal with on the door step. They are cheap, mean, ugly people and I wish the Lord would take them right now, before I have to deliver to them. Then I could pray for their souls and not have to deal with their shit personalities.
It is essential with college dorms, hotels and hospitals to include the gratuity. College students, transients in hotels and nurses do not help me put food in my childrens' mouths. They do not help me to even pay for the gas that it takes to get to their house or business. They would let me put wear and tear on my car and waste my time bringing them food for nothing.
Fuck that.

There is this one man who I swear I will never deliver to again. He lives in a quarter of a million dollar house. He has a couple of really nice fucking cars out front. He has a very well manicured lawn, He orders a large pie from me once or twice a week and never tips more than a dollar.
Fuck him.

I am at a new day job, now, training to be a head-hunter, i.e. a recruiter and the boss just came in and asked me for a status report. I can t talk to you anymore right now.

I hate people who come into a restaurant five minutes before closing time and ask if you are open. Yes, we are open, asshole, but we are trying to clean, check out and go home: go home to our wives and families, go home to our dog, go home to our cat or our goldfish.
Fuck off, dickhead.

This couple sat in a booth near the front, slowly taking romantic bites out of pizza slices and sipping from green beer bottles. The man kept waving his bottle in the air, like he was signaling for another beer, which somehow further pissed me off.
I had wiped the tables, swept underneath them with the broom and was ready to vacuum the floor, but I couldn’t, because the fucking stupid rule is that I can’t vacuum the fucking carpet while customers are still “in the house” as we call it here in the restaurant biz. And, thus, I can’t go home until these late arriving inconsiderate pricks finish eating.
Fuck ‘em. If they stay much longer, I’ going to crank the vacuum cleaner up and start with the carpet next to and underneath their booth. Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooommm. Add that to your fucking romantic pizza dinner on our time, losers.

One of our regulars, a man whom I often give a ride home, at the end of the night, ordered a large deluxe pizza for delivery from his usual seat in the back booth of the pizza-joint, right near quitting time. I laughed. What a fucking genius.
Jeremy Sudson has figured out how to get a pizza delivered and a ride home at the same time. Jeremy laughed. The owner laughed. Jeremy drinks a lot. Jeremy drinks a fucking lot, but he is not an alcoholic like me. He is an alcoholic like him. He passes out, he doesn’t black out. I am trying real hard right here not to take his inventory, point the finger, lay the blame, make accusations, and create insinuations.
Just about every day of the week, Jeremy Sudson comes into the pizza joint, after he gets off work. Mr. Sudson sits in the back booth of the bum section, chain smoking Salem cigarettes and guzzling glasses of wine. Mr. Sudson usually drinks at least half to three quarters of a gallon bottle of wine each time that he comes into the pizza joint.
I’m going to start praying for him.

Mr. Sudson spends a lot of money at the pizza-joint and tips really well. He is, also, nice as hell. He says that he would do anything for anyone and I believe it. Some guys talk about helping other people out so that you will think that they are great guys, but when it comes down to it, they don’t and won’t do shit for anyone but their own sorry ass selves.
Some people actually do something for someone other people and most of them do not say anything about it. That is the kind of person that Jeremy is, as far as I can tell. Of course, he could be a serial killer, too, you never really know do you?
Mr. Sudson is always telling me that he has money and that if I ever need any just ask him. He says that he knows that I am a great Dad and a great person. I don’t see how Jeremy has so much money. He is a worker just like me. Maybe he works more hours or works harder, somehow. I don’t know. It seems to me that Jeremy is spending most of his hard earned money on glasses of wine at the pizza joint, Salem cigarettes and large tips to the waiters.
I could be wrong.
When I dropped Jeremy and his pizza off at his basement, he asked me if I would haul his trash away for him in my truck. He held his nose and pointed to a black plastic trashcan with no top.
“Take that one first,” he said. “I will pay you fifty bucks to take all that trash.”
I knew that Jeremy had been drinking heavily, as usual, but I loaded his trash in the back of my pickup truck. I really didn’t want any money for helping him out. Like I said, Jeremy Sudson is a nice guy and I don’t have to make a buck off of everybody.
The black trashcan stunk very badly. It stunk so bad that it made me gag. Maggots swam in the water that was inside the can and bugs flew all around it. I looked inside and could see some sort of a dead animal decaying in there. Jeremy said that it was a squirrel.
Jeremy then handed me three twenties and asked me if I had a ten. I said yes I do and praise the Lord. Isn’t it amazing how great God is when cash comes your way? Television evangelists take note.

Tonight sucked: it was slow as hell. I only took ten deliveries. I almost got depressed for the first time in ages. Not because the night sucked, but because of my kids. The mother of my son called and said that my son was bitching at her because she had brought home ham and cheese for him and his spend the night friend for dinner and didn’t get them hamburgers like her and his sister had.
She said that I needed to talk to him and here he was.
I asked him what was wrong with ham and cheese and he said that it sucked. Later, he said that he was starving and I wanted to say that if you were starving you would eat the fucking ham and cheese, but I bit my tongue. I try very hard not to cuss at my son. My dad used to cuss at me all the time and look how I turned out: alcoholic and manic depressive.
Then my son’s eighteen year old brother then called bitching about how his mother don’t buy no groceries, but brags all the time to him and the world that will listen about how she is providing him with a room and electricity. He said that he is getting pissed off.
I don’t know what to say at this point. I tell him that some kids got it worse than him and that some kids got it better. I point out that his best friend has got a job at the pizza joint because his mom is lousy at bringing home groceries also.
I am also getting depressed because my car insurance is ten days late and if I don’t get it in the mail, soon, they are going to cut me off and I can’t have that happen, since I drive for a living .
It looks like it’s up to me to feed the boys on a night when their mother is supposed to be responsible for all that. I could get all pissed off here and start talking again about how the kid s mom has money for two packs of cigarettes a day and hair color nearly every fucking minute of every fucking day and bar tabs with nice big tips for the bartenders nearly every fucking night of the fucking week, but she can’t afford groceries for the children.
But I won’t. I fucking won’t.
I mean why did she have kids anyway? Was it because the act of creation felt good? O was it a biological urge being filled? Did having kids make her feel wanted and needed.
Whatever.
I need to work on me and not her.

The owner of the pizza joint is in a pissy mood tonight. She told me that she is tired, but I think that she is pissy because there hasn’t been much business for the past two nights. All the restaurants around us seem to be busy as hell. Do you think that people are sick of pizza or that there are just too damn many pizza joints out there? I think that cheap booze and second hand smoke have scared away most all of the paying customers and have left us with the highly popular and highly populated back booth skid row section which will not pay the rent.

It is Sunday morning. The Lord is resting and the priests and preachers are perched at their podiums hustling the mass of man and woman seated in the pews in front of them like a seasoned carnie works a crowd of parents with children. At least the carnies are straight up in their hustle and don’t claim to have an inside line to the Lord. The priests and preachers beg for cash from their constituency like a crack head madman does on a street corner waving down addicts to buy bags of powder that came from a laundry detergent box.
I was going to go to this church today that meets in a coffeehouse, but I decided that I wasn’t in the mood to listen to somebody else tell me what their version of God was. Me and my oh sweet Lord are doing just fine.
I’m in a pissy as shit mood this evening. My son is spending the night at his mother’s house. He brought this other kid over to spend the night with him. His mother brought home ham and cheese for the kids to eat, saying she really couldn’t afford to feed this other kid. My son pitched a fit because his mother went out to eat and got her and his sister burgers. He said that it wasn’t fair that he didn't get a burger, that he didn’t like ham, that ham sucked.
He said that he wanted a pizza. Then he said that he wanted burgers, ketchup and mustard only and fries. And could he have SIX of them. He wanted to feed his friend and some freeloader who is staying at his mom’s house rent free. I told my son that I would deliver the burgers. Then I got busy. Then I got tired. Then I got a call from my son’s brother. He put his order in for some free pizza and then changed it to burgers, too.
My car insurance payment is late. If I don’t pay it, I am fucked. I went to the grocery store and put all the money that I made into a money order. Then I went home and waited for the phone to start ringing.
At eleven, my son called. “Where’s my burgers?” he asked. “
“What you been doing?” I asked.
“Playing Nintendo,” he said.
“I thought you were starving,” I said.
“I am,” he said.
“Well I ain’t getting you no burgers, tonight. You are going to have to eat ham.” Silence and an angry goodbye.
The phone rings again. It’s the kid’s mother.
“Why didn’t you bring over burgers?” she asks rather unpleasantly.
“Why don’t you feed your kids?” I wanted to ask.
You only have them three nights a week, I wanted to say. Why do you have two packs a day of brand name cigarettes. Why do you have fifteen to fifty dollar bar tabs almost every night with grand tips for bartenders that you are trying to impress. Why do you eat out all of the time, take care of yourself first and think nothing of the three kids that you brought into this earth. Why am I giving you money every month when I make $15,000 less annually than you?
Why? Why? Why?
Why did I wind up with the right kid, but the wrong mother for that kid? Why was I drunk when I got someone I didn’t really know pregnant?
She tried to make out like I was the bad guy, as she has always done. She is never wrong. It is always someone else’s fault.
“It’s eleven o’clock and now I will have to fix something for them,” she says. Yes and that will probably interfere with you getting your skinny red neck ass on the barstool as soon as you would like. That means you might have to take some responsibility for some small children who you created and who are years away from being able to feed themselves, being able to fend for themselves.
That was how I felt this morning about the events that went down last night. It takes me awhile to see my part in the wrong of any situation. I drove by the kid’s mother’s house on a delivery tonight and saw my daughter figure sitting in the window. I stopped and she came out.
“Can you bring me a pizza?” she said with that cute six-year old smile. I laughed inside. All my kids saw me as was as some sort of a vehicle for their pizza desires. We don’t like what mom has to eat, so we’ll call Mikel and get him to bring us a pie. My son came out with his friend, shot me a weird look and then headed back inside to the Nintendo.
I told my daughter that she might have to eat peanut butter or tuna fish tonight. I asked her if she wasn’t sick of pizza and she said, "no.” My kids eat pizza at least four times a week. They come to work with me until their other Dad or their mother get off from work, or happy hour. My son heads to the wall, outside the pizza joint, and throws a baseball or tennis ball against it for hours, catching it with his worn glove. My daughter figure likes to ride her bike on the sidewalk outside the pizza joint, roll pizza dough into imaginary figures, inside, and bake them. She also likes to play hostess and meet and greet any kids who come into the pizza joint to have pie with their folks. She is kind of like a six year old hostess, a greater of sorts for, and to, the younger generation.
Many parents say that they come to the pizza joint because they want to see if my daughter is there. She is very good for business.

After I left the kids at their mother’s house, I started thinking about last night. I had carried a lot of anger about the incident all day. I am sick of living angry. I decided that my son’s mother was right when she said that I should have called when I had changed my mind about bringing burgers over.
The Catholic guilt kicked in, the need to apologize and the need to confess. Bless me father, for I have sinned. I am always the sinner, the one to give in, the one to admit that I was wrong, to offer amends.
Do you think that such behavior is appreciated or do you think that you are whipped like some poor dumb ass donkey by a mean farmer trying to dig that last row to sow tobacco seeds so more people can die of cancer.
Pussy whipped.
Whip it good.
It is amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for your body and your mind. My attitude was better this morning when I woke up, but by no means perfect. The phone rang shortly after I woke up. It was 8:30 a.m. and the caller id said that the call was from my son’s mother’s house.
My first bet was that it was my son saying that his mother could not or would not take them to school. My second thought was that it was the kid’s mother and that she wanted money, though both she and I knew that I did not have any.
“I didn’t hear the alarm clock.” She said, in a kind of three quarters cheery half guilty tone of voice. “and I took them in late on Friday. I don’t want them to get in trouble. Can I bring them over to your place for the day?
Normally, I would be ecstatic and jump at the chance to have my kids for the day. They could watch TV. and play video games, while I slept or tried to find true love on the internet.
“They can’t come over. I have a new job,” I told her.
“Oh. You didn’t tell me,” she said.
Do you tell someone who tries to soak you for nearly every extra penny you get that you are trying to increase your income?
The urge to yell and scream wasn’t as strong as it was yesterday and I had somehow avoided all public displays of rage yesterday and was totally amazed at myself to find myself saying nothing, absolutely nothing into the phone.
The silence became my answer and my son’s mother and I parted and started the day without yelling and screaming, which is major fucking improvement or a fucking miracle or something fucking.

When the monks stop singing and the Poem has left the hot tub, the work day is supposed to begin here at Headhunter from the Poem home central. It seems that my writing has become so much more important to me now that I have taken on a job as a recruiter i.e. headhunter with the Poem.
Maybe I see my dreams slipping away. Maybe I think that I have sold out as a poet writer artist and signed on as a salesman, a corporate pawn, a puppet, a geek, a criminal, a con man, one of the mass of men desperately conniving, aspiring, perspiring to get ahead to get some head to not despair so quietly.
Or maybe I see a way out of the massive credit card debt and stifling student loans that I have stupidly accumulated accumulating an English degree Journalism minor that I didn’t really need.
The Poem’s has it made. He lays around in a comfortable chair all morning, slightly snoring and doesn’t stir until I start unwrapping chicken to cook for lunch.
I have to make phone calls on this job: endless phone calls.
“Good Morning, Mam, “This is Me Using A Fake Name and I’m looking for the person who heads up your variable program marketing platform program.”
“Well, you using a fake name...I never heard of such a program…”
It occurs to me that the Poem might be working me, that he might be playing a huge, cruel and painful joke on me. Perhaps the Poem doesn’t really have fourteen years clean and sober. Maybe he really doesn’t have fourteen years away from that last hit of LSD, that last ounce of pot, that last eight ball of coke and or speed, that last bottle of whiskey, that last case or two of beer.
Perhaps trying to become a better writer the Poem has relapsed and is hallucinating when he tells me that he made $170,000 last year and that if I do what he says to do that I can be successful, also.
Whatever.
Today, I am calling telecom offices in South Florida and Atlanta. I am looking for a specific person who heads up a specific program. This phone shit is a major pain in the ass. I’m glad I didn’t quit the delivery gig to do this.
I want to run.
I want to hide.
The Poem says that I can’t quit, that if I quit this, I will quit everything that I ever attempt, that I won’t ever get the book published, that I won’t get the real estate job that I’ve been thinking about trying to find and become successful at as a mortgage broker. The Poem is kind of sort of saying that if I quit the headhunting job, that I will fall off the edge of the planet in disgust, tears streaming from my blue eyes, a failure like my father always said that I would be. The Poem is part Anthony Robbins, though not as big, and part Timothy Leary without the drugs.
Someone once said that it is lonely at the top. Well, let me tell you something, honey please, it is also lonely at the bottom. I had two messages on my “business” phone waiting for me this morning. I was scared to listen to them.
Imagine that.
When I got to The Poem’s house this a.m., there was a note on the door from the Poem saying that he was sleeping until ten and that I should go ahead and go to work or go to the gym and he would see me in a few hours.
I wanted to run to the gym.
And when I got there, I would keep running.
Run. Run. Run.
Instead, I hooked up my computer and installed the new mouse that Poem had acquired for me yesterday. Then I got on the internet and found a random female in a random chat room to chat with. Then I made a call to a friend and arranged for my daughter to spend the night at her house with her and her kids.
I did anything and everything to avoid getting on that telephone and trying to ferret out leads. I did anything and everything to avoid getting on the telephone and trying to convince strangers that I was something that I wasn’t and that they should do what I had called to tell them to do, my motivation being solely that there was a buck in it for me if they did.
What is wrong with me?
These leads are going to lead to paychecks.
So says the Poem. And I believe him.
It is my job to find specific people who head specific programs in the Telecom industry in specific cities. Once I find them, I will pitch them about a job with the competition and try to get them to email me their resume. Once this is done, the Poem and a guy called The Bomber, the phone recruiting pros, will take over, close the deal and we will all get big fat checks and live happily ever after.
Hmmmmmmm.
I have a long list of all my creditors on the wall in front of me as an incentive to produce, produce, produce, make phone calls, make phone calls, make phone calls. I have really nice pictures of my kids on the desk in front of me, to further remind me of why I am here.
Yet I am scared that I can’t do it.
I am scared that I won’t measure up, that I won’t be able to cut the mustard or the bologna, the peanut butter and or jelly sandwich.
The Poem just woke up and wandered in and said to call the
Bomber and tell him what I had done so far in the day. He said that the Bomber could supply additional information and motivation.
I was scared.
I didn’t think that I had come up with much in the last four days. I had been beaten by receptionists, told no by sales managers: defeat and rejection had been my constant companion throughout each and every workday.

The receptionists seemed to have three ways to beat me.
One, they would say that they weren’t going to give me the information that I was seeking. Two, the receptionists said that they didn’t have the information that I was seeking. And, three, the receptionists transferred me to someone else who should or might have the information and I usually ended up being stranded at a voice mail.
Around day three, I started leaving messages to some of these voice mails. “Hello,” I would say, trying to sound like a corporate guy, and not some berserk poet with a band and no record deal, “this is the guy with a fake name looking for...”

I wiped my ass with newspaper, for the first time in my life today. I was on my way to the rewrite and my stomach went ballistic as it is wont to do, these days, from old age, too much coffee, too little fiber and or all three of the above.
One good thing about the gentrification of the inner city is that there are all these fucking port-a-johns dotting the landscape, which comes in real handy, when you have to take a nasty diarrhea dump on your way to wherever you are going. This portable toilet was short on toilet paper, though, but some kind soul had left an issue of the local weekly newspaper for my convenience.
The next time I wiped my ass I was nearly able to read the sports section off of my ass.

Last night, I decided to put my recruiting career in the hands of the Lord and not set the alarm clock. If I woke up in time to head out into the a.m. traffic and to the office then so be it. And if I slept the day way away, then that was what my higher power intended for me to do.
I woke up at 7:30 am and was sorely disappointed with the Lord’s decision. I would have to go into work. I would have to make phone calls to people I didn’t know and try to gather information about other people from them. I would have to continue on the path to being a telecommunications industry recruiting trailblazer.
I discovered, almost immediately, on this job, that the larger a telecommunications company is, the less likely that you are to actually talk to a real human being when you call. One day, I decided to call a phone number that I had for a huge telecommunications company and if I got someone on the line, I was going to ask that person if they could give me the number that I need in Las Vegas.
“Let me get this right,” said the man who I finally got on the phone in New Jersey. “You are in Atlanta, calling me in New Jersey, for a phone number in Las Vegas/”
My heart started pounding. The guy was beating me. I started to babble, “That’s right Ed,” I said, “isn’t that amazing, your company is one of the biggest in the business and for days now I have been unable to reach a real person, I just get recordings. Help me out Ed, will you?”
Ed came through and the number lead to a deal.

I just ended my career as a recruiter with a phone call to The Poem’s voice mail. I told him that I was tired, that I was depressed, that last night the idea of killing myself seemed appealing. I told him that the idea of one hundred and seventy thousand dollars impressed me, but that I was unwilling and unable to do what it takes to make it in the field of recruiting.
If i was to make it, I would have to make it my way.
I have no interest in recruiting.
I don’t want to get on the phone all day, call strangers and try to get them to change jobs. I told Poem that I was another one of the failures whom he had held out to me for so long not to be. I told The Poem that I was a loser.
I brought my son in and told him what I was going to do before I made the phone call and then I asked him what he thought about my decision. He said that he thought that I ought to hang in there until I got the first check, because we needed the money for bills.
I thought how I had told my son’s mother all about the job and how much potential it had. I had to live with the thought that she would realize that I was happier being a low paid pizza delivery guy than a high paid telephone salesman.

Today, I just want to sleep and get my ass to a meeting.
I need to remember that I am a raging alcoholic and that everyday without a drink is a successful one. What good is one hundred and seventy thousand dollars if I kill myself in the process of trying to get it?
I haven’t been to Jiu-Jitsu since I started trying to work two jobs. I haven’t been to the gym. I haven’t been eating well or even eating very much at all. I have been sliding back to bad for you and me sugared carbonated beverages instead of healthy for us water with lemon.

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. a nagging depression was trying to keep me on the futon on the floor. I hit the alarm clock several times, even turning it off during an interesting news story and a good song.
Usually, I would listen to these things, but this morning I had no interest in anything. I told my son that he had half an hour to get ready and be at school.
Ten minutes later he was yelling for me to get out of bed. He was dressed and ready for the cereal that I had promised him. I poured the brown sugar coated meal into a bowl and added milk.
Like a zombie I delivered it to the little man who I love.
Little man is not so little anymore.
I am amazed to look over at him these days and see how big he has become. I remember, just yesterday, I was the practicing alcoholic who couldn’t seem to buy diapers or formula for his baby. Now this former baby in diapers is moving, fast, in on being a man.
I got a nasty letter yesterday from the lady at the law office that is in possession of one of my student loans. She said that legal action was pending if I didn’t pay. Some guy at my alma mater had said they were going to give me a deferment. I don’t know what the fucking deal is. I do know that if I could have succeeded as a recruiter, I could have paid all these bills.
Guilt.

The fleas are back. I set off three flea bombs two days ago and last night my son informed me that they were back. It sucks. The gold fish tank needs cleaning and a new filter, also. Let me see if I can think of anything else bad to dwell on this morning to completely ruin my day.

Last night this lady came into the pizza joint during a rush. I was in the middle of answering the phone like nine or ten times in a row and had made three over- rings on the cash register in the span of the last two minutes. The instant I put the phone down, this lady barked at me, “do you take orders?”
I thought about it for a second and without looking at her and I barked at her, “no, I don’t take orders.”
With a huff, she stormed out of the restaurant. Another lady watching what had happened came straight to the counter and just as aggressively said, “can you settle my bill,” waving a check and some cash at me.
“No I can t,” I said and walked off fast.
I went outside, sat down and questioned my sanity.
I really thought that it was fucking possible that I would lose it, tonight, or that maybe I already had. People can be such low down mother fucking assholes. They think that just because you work somewhere that they can take their shit out on you, treat you like a dog that they have no respect for, treat you like you are some sort of fucking slave.
Some days I just can’t fucking deal with this I am the servant you are the customer bullshit. Can you supply me with the reason why I should have to when the customer is being a fucking asshole?

It is Mother’s day.
I have no idea where my mother is. I have no idea what my mother is up to, nor do I really care. I want nothing to do with my mother or my son’s mother.
I try not to hold grudges, these days, but here are certain people that you are just better off leaving the fuck alone, staying the fuck away from. The nuclear family that I grew up in sucked.
We might have looked a bit like Leave It To Beaver from the outside, but inside we weren’t, nor, I bet, were you and your outwardly great looking nuclear family. Nuclear, when you think about it, was a very apt term for what was going on inside the facade.

Some girl beat the shit out of her four year old, yesterday, in front of a video camera and the footage made it to all the news networks. Where the fuck were the news cameras when my old man was kicking my ass?
A really hot lesbian couple, one a militant butch looking Spanish Lady and the other a fucking Latino goddess just came into the coffee house holding hands and pushing this cute as hell little girl in a stroller. Following them was this little jock looking eight or so year old boy.
The butch babe came up with the three year old girl and asked if the dog outside was mine and if so could they pet it. I said yes and yes.
I saw a lot of love in this family.
Wake up, America.
These fucking Betty Crocker left over, Martha Mitchell wanna-be type, stern bitches that show up painted like an aging Barbie doll, on the late night news talk shows, saying that a child should have a mom and dad to be normal and healthy make me fucking sick.
While they are on the tube, their Doctor, lawyer or elected representative husband is in their bed with the Hooter’s girl or some strung out young stripper.
Give me a fucking break.

People come into the pizza joint and think that they can sling
their shitty attitude at us and that we will take it. I have told numerous shit heads over the past couple of years to “call Domino's, dickhead.”
Those guys in little red shirts and pizza hats may have to take all the bullshit that some people are capable of throwing at those of us in the “service industry,” but we, at the independently owned and operated pizza joint, certainly don’t have to.
Fuck ‘em.
We don’t wear the corporate uniform and we don’t have the pressure from fascists at the top that the corporate pizza delivery guys. Fuck a bunch of rules and regulations when it comes to pizza delivery. Those rules and regulations are made so that a bunch of fat ass corporate dickhead types will wind up with the major share of the pizza cash while we are on the front lines out there running around the streets of America delivering those pizza door to door and profiting pathetically.

Typically, an American restaurant will reward the asshole customer with a free meal and or a free desert. The shit head that complains the most and makes everybody the most fucking miserable has his or her behavior reinforced with a gift, a freebie from the restaurant.
I am not Jesus Christ and I don’t aspire to be.
I do not turn the other cheek very well.
If I owned a pizza joint, my solution for the problem customer would be to tell him or her to leave and never come back. This way, I would develop a clientele of people that I like and who are easy to get along with and not a bunch of hard to get along with pricks.
Fuck the shithead.
Let the shithead eat somewhere else.
Let him or her eat shit

“Breakdown it’s alright...”—Tom Petty

Depression is my jailer.
It sets no bail.
It robs everything from me, but the joy of being a father.
In the morning, I don't want to get out of bed.
At night, I don't want to go to sleep. I have no interest in eating. I have no interest in exercise. I go through life going through the motions, passing from one minute into the next like a zombie.
The thought of a bullet in the head seems comforting.

Yesterday, while driving, while feeling the pain of a lonely and desperately depressing existence, I mumbled out loud without realizing it that, "life sucks."
My son looked at me in shock.
"No it doesn't," he said emphatically.
How could my son understand? How could he feel my pain? My depression feeds on itself. My depression goes from one aching, nagging thought to the next, to the next, to the next, more and more multiplied.
One after another, bad things seem to happen.
Bills arrive.
Things break.
More bills arrive.
More things break.
Bills that got paid last month and the month before seem un-payable this month, though not yet due. Problems easily handled yesterday or last week seem insurmountable, today. I don't answer the phone. I don't respond to email. I cancel things. I cut back on plans. I try to back out of commitments.
I make no plans for now or the future.
Yesterday seems futile.

Another a.m.
I take pills designed to make me feel better. I put some cheap coffee in the second hand coffee maker that I bought from the estate of a dead man on a Saturday morning.
I check my email.
No new conclusions have arrived.
I create a new document on the computer, intending to write some great literature. Someone told me yesterday that not only can they see everything on the hard drive on your computer, but they can look through your computer screen and see what you are doing in your living room.
Hmmmm, maybe you should move your computer to the bedroom and really give them a show.
Fuck you, big brother.

Before I get started on some great poem or piece of prose, some fat chick, who works in retail, instant messages me. Last week she sent me a picture of herself sitting on her bed in some sort of Victoria's Secret type of thing that she bought at Ball Mart.
She tells me, tonight, that she is lonely and horny, that she has just gotten in from working all night and now she has to go to bed alone.
Hmmmmmmm.
What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?
I try to act interested, but something tells me that she is keeping me from my destiny. I can't be stopped from going down in history as one of the greatest writers who ever sat on his couch and typed into a laptop.
Can I?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxinternet chat here?????xxxxxxxxx

The kids come through the door, home from school, and all notions of fame and fortune, Hemingway and Hunter Thompson are dead. It's time to cut apples and oranges into convenient bite size pieces. It's time to groom the little leaguer for the majors, get band aids ready for the inevitable fall of the six year cyclist from her thrift store bike to the cement sidewalk.

We create our own downfall.
We open our mouth and supply people with the information that they need to drown us later. And they do drown us, with a word, a statement, with a look of disapproval, with a look of hate or a smile.
I am waiting for some kid to reply to the poem and picture that I sent her. She will read it and reply that she is only 21 and that I am a dirty old man.
xxxxxxxxxx internet convos
I turn on the internet looking for communication that I can't find in the real world. Tonight, I can’t find it in the chat rooms either. A lonely married woman tries to joke with me, thank me for chatting with her one night last week, when she was drunk and horny and her husband who hadn’t fucked her in years wasn’t home.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx internet convoxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I didn't know that this lady was married when I first started talking to her. Women are enough of a pain in the ass single or divorced without entering into the fucking major can of worms that fucking with or fucking a married woman can bring.
I check on this 23 year old girl who sent me a picture of herself nude. I had to tell her husband to fuck off, one night recently, because he called me a faggot several times and asked me why his wife had my picture.
I don t know asshole, but I’m fucking glad that your wife is your problem and not mine.

I am an internet chat addict.
If the kids will let me, I will spend four or six or seven, eight nine, twelve or sixteen hours a day searching chat rooms for interesting or seductive screen names. If a woman has been smart enough to come up with a screen name that interests me, then I read her profile and if that is intelligent, provocative and or sensual, creative, humorous and challenging then I will im her and say hey.
If she responds I say how are you and then we take it from there.
xxxxxxxxxx internet convoxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On the internet, I have had women say that I am a great poet and a wonderful father. On the internet, I have had women say that my poetry sucked and that I was an asshole. I have received hundreds of pictures of women from themselves, quite a few of them with them with nothing on, not asked for.
I have met several of these women and slept with two so far. Do you want my email address?

I am tired.
I got up at 8:45 this morning to go play tennis for the first time in 25 years. I ran back and forth on the white lined green asphalt court chasing the yellow ball down, in my mind, like I was still in high school, though my body couldn't keep up.
My son got bored with tennis pretty fast. He and a friend were now sitting down, watching me teach his younger sister the game.
My son started whining that he was ready to go home.
I got mad at him.
“It's always about you. As long as your hands are on the Nintendo controls, as long as you dominate the play station, as long as you are hitting the single or double or scoring the run on the baseball field, as long as you are picking the flavor of the ice cream, as long as you are throwing the football, hitting the tennis ball, then its all right, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what anybody else wants. Does it?”
I hate it whenever I sound like my father did talking to me when I was my son’s age. I hate when I start to think that my son is just like me, or worse just like I was. It is a scary thought.
How many jail cells will my son have to be thrown into and bailed out of before he learns? How many halls of how many mental institutions walls will he have to wander up and down before something inside him changes?
Like father, like son?
I pray not.
Later that day, my son and I settled the matter that had started at the tennis court in the meat department of a grocery store. I threw some inexpensive chicken legs in the basket and asked him what he wanted for lunch. He didn’t answer or answered in sort of a pissed off mumble that I perceived as moping.
“You've got a bad attitude.”
That was, basically, all I heard everyday growing up.
“You've got a bad attitude. You could accomplish so much if you only tried and if...you changed that bad attitude of yours...”
And now, here I am standing in the meat department of the discount grocery store, that will soon be eaten alive by the monster food chains, with a five dollar pack of cheap chicken in the buggy, screaming at my son that I am sick of his attitude and that he is about to really see a bad attitude.
I could see my son looking around the store. He was embarrassed, just like his mother got when I went off in public. He, just like his mother, didn't like these public airings of our, uh errr, my grievances. Dirty laundry is not to be aired out in public now is it? We are supposed to keep it behind Leave It To Beaver superficially strong nuclear family walls. Drop the cash in the church basket on Sunday jack, show off the wife and kids to the congregation and then get back to business, as usual, of fucking everybody in the ass on Monday.
Fuck all that.
The nuclear family that I grew up in looked good from the outside. Maybe we didn’t live in a mansion, but the house was new, there were two cars in front of it and the lawn was pristine.
I’m too tired to write, but when you come to think of it, when do you ever find the time, in between swimming lessons and Little League baseball games and pizza deliveries to do what you think that you really want to do?
Some men are doctors, some men are lawyers, I go door to door with hot boxes of pie. I don't make a lot of money, but I get to spend a lot of time with my children. I am in the bleachers for the ballgames; I drive to and from the swimming lessons. I pay for the tennis lessons and stand in the next court watching, coaching, encouraging and then for hours after and for the six days until the next lesson I hit ball after ball to a smiling kid.
Sometimes, what you think you want, or thought you wanted, gets taken over and replaced by something completely different, completely out of the blue and completely better for you than what you were hoping and planning for.
There is a God.
She has looked out for me.
They have taken me off the drug perphenezine and I find that I have little tolerance for much. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but I suspect that it will turn out to be bad for me. While comfortably numb, there was a buffer between me and the “real world.” The psychotic tendencies and the hatred that I was taught by my father and by the experiences that I had growing up with and at the mercy of my fellow man and woman for the men and women in the world around me were buffered.
Off this drug, I have developed, in less than a week, a pure hatred for the people whom God has surrounded me with. I am sorely in debt on this Mikel K Band "don't say hate" c.d.. I woke up in the middle of tonight thinking that I wanted to break up the band. Fuck the band. I don’t want to be rock star. Rock stars are cheap shit heads like Micky Jag Poo Poo who ride around in limousines and get paid millions of dollars to appear in a movie that they have no talent to act in, while the extras on the set get fed bubble gum and black coffee with no cream no sugar for breakfast.

The short ugly bastard should have had a vasectomy years ago. Rock stars are fucking self-centered whiners like Wee Wee of the Poni Pimpled Plutons . Years ago, someone I know, came out onto their front porch and found two men seated on his front porch, with needles stuck in their arms. This guy knew, all too well, who one of the fellows was, an old “friend” who had turned into a raging thief and a master liar and conman to fuel his heroin addiction.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said to the other fellow with a needle in his arm. Why, I’m Way Whiner Wee Wee of the Poni Pimpled Plutons,” said the other fellow, as if that gave him a right to trespass.
Rock stars are self-centered, conceited pricks with their head so deep up their own ass that it negates any joy that I can derive from the God given talent that some of them have. Rock stars are pathetic pussies, unprincipled, no balled wonders. One day they don a dress, the next day they try to sell us a manly image, anything in the name of a buck and to get their picture on the cover of a magazine.
And that is exactly what I had been trying to become for the larger part of two decades, until the kid came along: a picture on the cover of a fucking magazine with a bunch of imaginary and transitory people in love with me.
Be careful what you dream, your dreams may come true and make sure that the dream you dream is yours and not someone else’s.
Edward the Pill had his girlfriend call me late last night. The Pill wanted to save a hundred bucks a month on a storage space where he was hording all his possessions, so that he could sponge off some relatives and save on rent money. Supposedly a principled man, learned of a book that taught great principles for living in kindness with your fellow man when that really wasn’t your nature, The Pill had failed to return ten or fifteen phone calls that I had sent his way, the last of them letting him know how desperate I was to continue learning the book from him so I could help this fellow that was calling me and knew even less about it than me.
The pill had helped me move once. He knew that I had a pickup truck and he figured that I owed him. Well, when he has his girlfriend call this afternoon I am not going to answer just like he didn’t answer when I called him. It is a little talked about Christian principle that says fuck you.

I went to church last week and the guy who turned me onto this church keeps emailing me and asking me what I thought about it. This guy has been nice to me and, as Christians go, seems to be a fairly decent fellow. Like most guys who become an expert on the Lord he seems to have found a way to turn his belief into a job and not have to show up and punch a clock or deliver a pizza like the rest of us.
I wore shorts to church.
I was the only man in church with shorts on and my friend came up to me and joked that you can’t wear shorts in here, nobody else does. I looked at him and I said do you think that the Lord is mad at me for wearing shorts? He paused and said, with a smile, no “I think, perhaps, that the Lord is mad that more of us don’t wear shorts. It’s hot in here.”
I like this man.
He lives, as far as I can tell, Christian principles, instead of just blabbing about it and trying to get you to live it. I am not down with the myth of Christ, however, and this is what the man from the pulpit kept spewing onto us.
“Died on cross, rose again, did it for us. Died on cross, rose again, did it for us.” Jesus is just alright, baby.
Emerging Dickhead a.k.a. Nowhere George returned last week. I have tried not to talk about or record my feelings about our first meeting in six years.
“I’m on my bus,” he said, “come on over.” The last time I saw him he was living in the attic of a rooming house and now he was living on a big silver tour bus with a bus driver, a tour manager and a twenty one year old girl that he had met at one of his gigs. It didn’t seem to me like a very cost effective method of travel, for a man at his stage of the music game. A van would have done his tour just fine.
The candy on his bus was stale and Emerging Dickhead told me and my daughter figure that we couldn’t shit on his bus because the toilet was broken.
What the hell good was being a huge superstar if you couldn’t shit on your own bus?
Was that what making it in rock was all about?
Hey, pull the bus over, driver, I got to take a shit.
Was it that way for Elvis or the Beatles?
We left his useless piece of shit tour bus behind and headed out into the night because Emerging Dickhead desired some ice cream.
No limo.
No taxi cab: just me paying for gasoline, like in the old days, because Dickhead didn’t “like to drive.”
I don’t remember talking about anything of use. We go for wings at a sit down joint. Though my admiration and respect for him is seriously diminishing, I praise Dickless and tell him what a brilliant artist he is.
I used to believe in this cock sucker.
When the check came, he asked me if I was going to pay it, saying he only had Canadian money. What a pathetic piece of shit. I couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

The Pill’s girlfriend called me this morning. This chick has been nice to me and others in the past, so when she asks me to help her and The Pill move their shit out of the warehouse, caught off guard, I say “sure,” even though I already have plans for the day.
I’m trying to be nice, something that I have been told, many, many times, over and over, is not my nature. This pair helped me move, awhile back. At that time, I thought that the three of us were great friends, because we were hanging out a lot, day in day out.
Later, I realized that these people were not friends, just acquaintances, fellow sick souls who I had collided with passing through a brief time span in our existences together, in sort of a grand communal attempt to get better after lifetimes of sickness.
Our bond was not eternal, we were not destined to break bread until death do us part.
Well, I’m not healed yet. I still can’t walk on water or raise myself from the dead. I am still sick, imperfect, mean, lonely and lousy, unable and unwilling to turn the other cheek and let you slap that one too.
The Pill lost me as a friend when he didn’t practice what he preached and didn’t respond to me in my time of need. The Pill may have been depressed, when I rang him up, but so am I, today, and the best thing that I can think of to say to The Pill is something he may remember from our “punk rock” days: “fuck you.”

This book is not to have a happy ending. I’m not sure if it has a beginning, a middle, or an end. I don’t know if it has a plot or character development, or any of those other elements that you are supposed to have to have a book.
It was written on hate, not love.
My hate is pure.
My hate begins in the morning when I wake up and it ends at night when I fall asleep. My hate goes with me everywhere that I go. I have learned to cage the hate, but it wages a constant battle with the bars and the lock on the cage. My hate beats me every time that I try to subdue or kill it.
The only time that I don’t hate is when I am with my children. I am trying to break the cycle of hate in my head. I don’t want my children to hate. I don’t want my children to think of their fellow man and fellow woman as mean, evil, ruthless pieces of shit who would do anything to anyone to make a buck.
For a half hour, tonight, we couldn't find the gang-boy. It wasn't in its usual spot. The last gang-boy that we owned, me and Whopper Hopper had left in the car in the hip part of town while I went and had a coffee and Wop Hop had a screaming ice. When we got back to the vehicle, the gang-boy was gone, a hundred bucks blown, possibly some happy crack head headed with it to the whore house.
Whoever came up with the idea of one hundred dollar toys for children should be shot in the head. Come to think of it, the guy who figured out that he could sell a cup of coffee for three to six bucks should be taken out and executed, too, or, at least be severely beaten.
I am a formerly violent man, so I give blessings and thanks that, tonight: I sit in the living room of this dinky apartment, two small children with me, while I cook macaroni and cheese and hot dogs while listening to music.
The children find the music that I play boring.
“Can you play something more interesting?” the six-year old girl asks.
“Your music sucks,” says the eleven year old boy, with a sly smile on his face. I want to play the song Born to Run Like Hell for my kids. I want to play my son any song before that song back from when the pop star was a poet on fire, before the poet became a mainstream millionaire.
A million years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I tried, desperately, to turn people onto the poet. When he was the poet, I was addicted to him. People told me that he sucked, that he couldn’t sing.
People flock to him, now, like lemmings.
Change has come.
I put the Sex Fucks in the machine. This is hardcore punk and daughter figure likes it. She slam dances on the carpet in front of the TV. My son looks on, but doesn’t join in. The living room mosh pit is not for him, today. Today, he is concentrating on the skateboard that he traded in his state championship baseball glove for.
Is there a college scholarship for skateboarding?
Is college an education or an indoctrination?
Bless me father, for I have sinned and I really don't know where to begin.

The music just ended. The tv is turned on, but there is no sound. The goldfish hang near the top of the water. What they are doing? I haven't a clue. It seems that I am in transition. Yesterday, I agreed to coach my son's little league team. I have gone from being locked up in jail cells and mental institutions, on the weekends due to drunk, blacked out behavior to being the Little League coach.
Praise the Lord.
I know nothing about baseball. I quit the game at age 12, after two years as the best player on the worst team in little league. I fully realized that I sucked at the game when I made the All Star team and they put me in right field for half an inning and then, immediately, pulled me out and put me back on the bench.
At that point in my athletic career, I turned to tennis. I tried to get my son to play tennis. He found baseball. Before he switched to skateboarding, my son spent hours and hours throwing a baseball against a wall and fielding it with his glove. And that was after the team’s official practice ended.

...try to take a dictionary put a picture on it seek a definition for a word you can't see...

In this home, there is a monster that eats our socks.
I ran out of gasoline for the first time ever, as a delivery guy, last night. I ran out right after my last delivery for the new pizza place that I am now working at. Thank God I didn’t run out of gas before the final delivery. It would not have been a good way to make a good first impression.
Usually, this little yellow light lights up on the dashboard of my truck and alerts me that I’m about to run out of gas. The little yellow light didn’t come on last night until the truck was puttering to a stop. I was sort of at the corner of a busy intersection and soon a couple of cops pulled up. One of them had me sign a waver, saying that I wouldn’t sue him for denting my bumper, if he used his car to push mine around the corner into a safer spot.
I knew this cop.
He was a young guy with red hair. He hardly ever smiled and it was impossible to make him laugh. I had tried to make him laugh on many occasions at the old pizza place, when he came in with other cops to have a slice and a soda. I had previously concluded that he was just a prick, an uptight fellow with major attitude.
But here he was, in a time of need, helping me out.
So, some people don’t smile all the time. Get over it. The parking lot that he pushed me into was the lot for some sort of a physical plant for the city. There were a lot of white city trucks parked there. One was pulling out of the lot, as I pulled in. I flagged the driver down and asked him if he had any gas stored somewhere in that building behind him. Without hesitating, the guy said “no, sorry,” and drove off.
I hated to do it, but I would have to call my kids’ "other dad," the man who hates to be called "sir,” my co-dad Kevin Buddha. Buddha had the kids at his house for the night and I really didn’t want to disturb him or the kids, but I had exhausted my phone list: no one, who could help me, was home in my time of need. It took Buddha and I a minute to figure out where gas could be bought in the area at 11 pm at night. We figured it out and Buddha said that he would be there as soon as possible.
While I waited, I also racked my brain trying to figure out someone else who I could call, so that Buddha would not have to leave the house and come out into the night. As I was thinking, the man in the white city truck, who had said “no, sorry,” walked up holding a large red gas can.
“Do you have a funnel?’ he asked with a big smile. I found this in the back of the building. I said that I had no funnel, but that I would look for something that would work. He said that he would go back into the building and look, also.
I had a gallon water jug in the back of the pickup that I thought that I could cut into a funnel; the gentleman with the gas had a knife. I knocked on the door. The man came out with another gas can and said that he would transfer the gas into this one that had a funnel. He did so and then he poured the gas into my truck. I started the truck and then came around and tried to give the man some money.
He said no.
I said let me buy you a pizza, then. He said no, that people had helped him before and that he was glad to help out. He said that he had four kids and I said be good to them kids as he walked off into the night.
There are places in this sometimes desolate cold world where strangers become friends and help you through the night.
Praise the Lord.

If I didn’t tell you already, I’m back at the Chinese restaurant carrying bags of Chinese food, door to door. I walked out of the pizza joint about a month ago. Times should have been hard, since then, because I have not been working as much, but they haven’t been, because my thinking has been good. Most of my life is lived in my head. If I can control what I think, re-program myself away from all the negative and hateful thinking that has taken up full time residence in my brain, then life is good, no matter what is going on around me.
I have learned to pray, instead of staying inside of my head and dwell on things that are or not ominous. When I start to think that I am in way over my head on credit card debt, when I start to think that I am being sucked into some deep dark painful vortex by cruel and evil men and woman, who would do anything to stick me with another over limit or late fee, I start to say the Lord's prayer over and over.
I especially try to focus on the line, "as we forgive those who trespass against us." I am all about me being forgiven. God and my fellow man have let me off the hook on some nasty, mean shit. If life were fair, I would be dead or in jail or wandering the halls of some god forsaken state mental institution.
But I'm not.
I am the little league coach.
Can you believe it?
I have gone from handcuffs and the backseat of police cars and jail cells to running batting practice for twelve eleven year olds. I have gone from nights and days of madness at mental institutions to being the guy that 12 eleven and twelve year old boys look up to as coach.
I have been allowed to be responsible for a part of these kid’s child hood memories. God has given me a huge responsibility and I am very blessed that he or she has done so.

I met the weirdest guy that I have ever delivered a bag of food to, last night. He had long black hair and a very rough looking beard. He had Charlie Manson looking eyes and one of the scariest demeanors that I have ever encountered in a human being. I got the feeling that this fellow got an intense satisfaction from being strange. I believe that he was one of those type of persons who delighted in scaring fellow members of the human race, if he actually was part of the race at all.
Maybe he was an alien.
Do you believe in that sort of thing, that there might be aliens among us?
Perhaps, this guy was one of those computer geeks who work for the internet company and has severely limited social skills. I don’t know, but I do know that I was glad when my encounter with Mr. Wack was over.
I was totally shocked when this guy tipped five bucks.
The question comes to mind, would I rather encounter a normal person who tips a buck or a weird guy who tips five dollars? I like to keep weird people at a healthy distance, these days, but it is nice to be able to pay the rent and feed the children.

I went to church, last night. It was a weird experience. The Catholic Church has changed or at least this one that I went to last night is different than any of the ones that I grew up in. A really good looking blonde-haired young lady stood on the altar, wearing a conservative black mini-dress and black go-go boots and handed out the white wafer things at communion. You must be kidding me. How great is this? A gal like this standing there every Sunday, might keep me coming back to church.
Is it called communion when you receive the white wafer thing at the Catholic church? It has been so long since I went regularly to church, that I can't really tell you. I pretty much went to church every Sunday of my life, until I was eighteen.
I had blacked out after an night of heavy drinking and had woke up in my bed next to a beautiful blonde sorority gal, whose name I didn’t even know. We were both naked. I couldn’t remember how we had got there or what we had done.
I wasn’t living the life that the church had taught me. I wasn’t living the life that my Catholic parents had raised me to.
So I left the church, just like I had left my parents. Nobody was going to tell me what to do. Not my parents. Not the church. Not god. Not the government.
I didn’t know it then, but I had embarked on a path that I will now call painful anarchy. There was no revolution to be with me though. There was to be no great social change or divine revelations in and or of the mind. I was blazing a trail that had been blazed by many before me, and would be blazed by many after me.
I was not alone in those jail cells and mental institutions. Many others were packed like sardines into the drunk tanks, begging let me out of these cold steel bars. Many others were and will be wearing the straight jacket wandering numbly about in a thorazine daze.
I had never seen a rock band in the Catholic church before.
I had seen bands in a few non-denominational Christian churches and a few others, the denomination of which escapes me.
One thing that I found boring as hell about the Catholic church, when I was a kid, besides the stand up sit kneel stand up sit kneel routine were the boring ass hymns.
From what I saw growing up, the majority of Catholics can’t sing, but they are taught that they should. The majority of Catholics are taught that God wants them to sing to him and that they should belt out those boring ass hymns to the Lord, even if it is a painful awful experience for man and woman here on earth in the pews next to them. After I left church, last night, I was talking to this guy and he asked why the Catholic priests live so wealthily and Buddhist monks give it all away.
I am trying not to wallow eternally in the bad.
I am trying, now, to look for the good in every situation. In the beginning, the sober meetings were bad. The meetings were boring as hell, but eventually, they saved my life and restored my sanity. It took me awhile, but I came to learn that if I could stay in a meeting for the whole hour, though fifty nine minutes of that meeting might suck, that there was that one minute that God wanted me there for and that if I left I would have missed that minute.

Note from a woman who I met online:

Talked to you last night on IM. Read your stuff. I like how you think. You have a freer style than most crap-heads that hit the printed page. And you write from the gut, not from some Vaseline-encrusted camera lens. The world is not a perfect place. There are jerks, there is baggage, and God does not fit in a package. Keep writing, it will save your life better than any other drug. I wrote my way out of hell for 20 years. The anger is gone, but not always the anguish. Hope yours gets better.

All is bleak.
Death seems pretty.
I hate my fellow man.
I hate myself.
I yelled and screamed at my eleven year old son, at






least once a day, intensely, for the last three days. I have turned into my father.
Nothing my son does is good enough. He doesn’t wash the dishes to my satisfaction. He doesn’t fold the clothes and put them up in neat piles, to my satisfaction.
I blamed him because the carpet is dirty.
Who cares if the fucking carpet is dirty. I threw all the stuffed animals about the room because he didn’t seat each one neatly on the couch like I like them. I threw the bowl I boiled oatmeal in into the sink because my son didn’t scrub all the food specks off it when he cleaned it.
Later I found a smashed plate in the sink. My son left for school early this morning, tears in his eyes. He wanted to get away from me. He wanted to get away from the hell that I had created. I feel like a murderer.
Somebody kill me.

What happens when you ask for help?
A very small percentage of the population gives it to you. And a large percentage of the small percentage of those who give it to you, give you at least a tablespoon full of shit with it.
I needed help, recently.
Someone turned me onto a church that gave out food. Getting that bag of food from the old cocksucker in charge of giving out food for that church was a demeaning and depressing experience. The old bastard in that “Christian” church was condescending prick who had given himself the title of lead asshole.
I would just as soon blow up that fucking awful temple of God than step foot in it ever again and ask for anything. I got a bag of food, but I had to eat shit to get it.

Lonely women, looking for what, turn their computers on in the a.m. as they pull on the battle garb of the day. Some will suit up like they are working for Hugh Hefner, thinking that their breasts and buttocks will get them by or get them ahead or get them some head or whatever it is that gets them through another lonely day.
They claim that they don’t want my instant message, but they talk for hours about what they want and what they don’t want. They tell me things on the computer screen that they would never tell me to my face. I ask them things that I would never ask them in face to face if we met at the grocery store or at a coffee shop.
Sexy Southern Angel told me, last night, that she had found a man shortly after her divorce, when she had sworn that she would never settle in with a man again. The last time I that talked to her she had said that she had found the one and was moving in with him. I wondered if he had a huge cock or a bank account that made it not matter if he had a dick at all.
Other women spend their morning dressing to hide what the Lord has given them. They try to look like a nun, either to please some Catholic convert trying to be a priest or to fend off the salivating advances of a male work force that renews its subscriptions to Playboy and Hustler magazines much faster than it reads the Wall Street Journal or the Bible and has watched Tommy Lee screw Pamela Anderson in the ass so many times that the band Motley Crue actually has started to sound like they have something of value or intelligence to say.
Pretty Pretty Mary is online putting on her makeup. She claims that she doesn’t need a man or want a man, but is only after expensive dinners or whatever else of material value she can get from members of the opposite sex.
One night, she went to dinner with some guy who it turned out that she thought was a loser. She ate her expensive fish and then got up and left and went to see some other guy. She sent me a recipe for meatloaf, once. I’m not sure why I stay in touch with her.
Today, I can't afford the three for one store brand can of tuna fish that is advertised on a piece of newspaper that is starting to look like it may have to be used for toilet paper. I’m sure that Pretty Pretty Mary wouldn’t be interested in me. I doubt that she is down with wiping her ass with the Sports Section.
When I deliver food to a woman and ask her how she is doing and she says, we are doing fine, I always get the creepy feeling that she thinks that I am asking her to suck my cock and she, immediately, wants me to know that that ain't happening because she has a boyfriend.
Do you know how as the delivery guy I know that it is time to get a new pair of sneakers? My socks get wet while I work!!

This rich bitch customer was fumbling through her wallet tonight looking for pennies to tip me with and I made some comment about the election and then elaborated on it. Finally, she found the penny that she was looking for and as she handed it to me she said, “you know, it’s pretty bad when the delivery boy knows more about politics than you do.”
I also know more about city street terrorism and dark of the night blacked out guerilla warfare than you do lady and the thought crossed my mind that a brick through her large and expensive designer front window, while she slept, or a knife buried deep into all four of her Mercedes tires, somewhere after midnight would be richly satisfying.
Of course, I don’t live like that no more.

I don’t know if the bitch knew it or not but we didn’t have a President elect yet, a full twenty-four hours after we the people had voted. At each door, tonight, I said to my customers “who’s the President?”
“I don’t know!!" was the usual answer.
“We don’t have one,” was the little bit more clever reply that some people came up with, but “who cares, we’re watching The Simpsons,” was the best reply that I got all night.
One of my customers, tonight, gave me a check for the exact amount of the pizza from inside the warmth of her very nice house, while I stood on the cold doorstep in the rain holding her pizza in a bag keeping it warm and fresh for her. With the check, came a dollar cold cash tip and huge thanks for coming out. I assumed that she was a Republican allowing trickle down economics to work.
Cell phones have altered the way we live. I have almost killed myself twice, tonight, talking on mine trying to find out where a house was while I drove in the pouring rain. People don’t tip more, when you deliver their food to them in the rain. More of them order, but the tip percentage doesn’t go up.

My next delivery was to a bi-racial couple. They thought that it was an amazing coincidence that it was Florida where all the turmoil was occurring over the vote count and how one of the candidates had a brother who was the Governor of that state.
Aren’t coincidences amazing?


“No child is bad from the beginning.
They only imitate their atmosphere.”
--Prince

My old man instilled in me, at a very young age the kick the piss out of them, if they fuck with you, theory. I know that I have told you this before and I also know that I have told you before that at age forty-five an officer told me that “he understood, as a father, where I was coming from, “but unfortunately, in this county, sir, the winner of a fight goes to jail.” So what would have pleased my father, now places me in a jail cell and, as a single dad trying to raise a son to not hit not fight, where does that leave me?
It leaves me needing to reevaluate.
It leaves me needing to reprogram.

The girls who work at the coffee shop are at a table near my table talking loud as hell. Tom Petty is screaming “you don’t have to live like a refugee,” through the headphones attached to my ears. Tom Petty does not drown out their inane babble. If I had a cell phone, I would call the guy who owns Suck a Star and report them.
Nobody has the right to interfere with my comfort and my freedom, even if it interferes with their comfort and their freedom. I’m sure as hell that this is what the founding fathers had in mind.

“Teach your children well...”—Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

My parents taught me to blindly respect all adults.
Fuck that.
I teach my kids to respect people who treat them with respect. There are a lot of adults in the world who deserve to be castrated, tortured and then slowly killed for their lousy treatment, not only of kids, but of the entire human race. Instead, in our culture, if an asshole pulls out an American express card, we treat him or her with reverence.

Whoever invented those toilet paper dispensers placed in coffee shops and restaurants and other places of public shit where the top roll of toilet paper is supposed to drop down once the bottom roll of toilet paper has wiped the last ass, ought to be mother fucking shot. I like to wipe my ass fast and get on with my life, not sit on the porcelain bowl and fight the fucking toilet paper dispenser one sheet at a time to get enough tissue to wipe my ass.
There are two teenaged girls in the coffee shop with their mothers. One mother has a pretty decent body, but a mouth large as fuck. It is funny the different things you see and have to put up with when you come out and mingle with the mass of woman.
There are an awful lot of really good-looking Asian women coming into the coffee shop, today, with white men. Is there like some sort of a convention that I missed out on somewhere or something?
There is a sexy, both beautiful and brilliant looking Asian girl with her pretty as hell face buried in a laptop across the coffee shop from me, whom I spoke to briefly. Her laptop cord was stretched from her table across the aisle to the wall outlet. Being skilled at such things and being totally in love with her and completely infatuated with her, for the moment, anyway, I initiated a conversation with her by telling her that she needed to duct tape her chord to the floor, more to protect her laptop than to avoid some asshole falling down and breaking his nose.
She looked up at me, briefly; with sort of one fifth to one third smile, as if she was trying to be nice, but what she was really thinking was fuck off old man, I know you want to eat my pussy.

I read somewhere, recently, that black people were twelve percent of the population. Where I stay at, it is more like sixty or seventy percent of the people are black. That doesn’t bother me. Black people can live wherever they want to, as far as I’m concerned. Mighty white of me, you might say. The majority of black people that I have run into on the street, in the work place and all over the apartment complex that I live are cool. Black people have been often portrayed as mean and violent or lazy and stupid, a dangerous threat to whitey.
But they’re not.
Black people are like gay people who are just like you, whoever you are, and me, a white boy son of working class Irish immigrant parents.
Black people shit.
Black people piss.
Black people fuck.
Black people love.
Black people need housing.
Black people like to eat, they like to go to movies, they like to watch television, they like to work, they like to study and on and on, etc. etc.
I can’t figure out white people that hate black people and I can’t figure out black people that hate white people.
I also can’t figure out why some black people dress in Afrikan clothing. Many of those black people seem very militant towards white folks. There is this natural foods grocery store near me where a lot of the black workers dress like that and I often see them working the cash register checking out black folks all happy and, hey how are you brother or sister and then when I come up with my organic milk and some tofu, they act like I just put them on a boat and whipped them. I mean, they got a scowl on their face like I had them picking cotton or something and was having my way with their women.
I didn’t do anything bad to no black folks. I am here just like they are, trying to get by until it trickles down, mon. And what’s the deal with all that Afrikan clothing. I mean you don’t see no Irish descended folks running around in kilts and blowing bag pipes, do you, or no Italians carrying pizza with them everywhere they go or Polish people carrying kielbasa into the stores or work place.
It seems that if you want to dress all African, so bad, maybe you ought to move to Afrika to make it easy on yourself. Most of these folks dressing all African and such, get out of and back into, a huge vehicle of some sort made in Detroit.
I guess it’s their business, though, how they dress and where they live, what they buy and what kind of car they drive, and not mine. I mean, you don’t see me saying that the punk rockers ought to all move to merry old England or go squat in New York City, do you? You don’t hear me saying that all the Goth chicks should move to Transylvania or hell, do you?
I’m praying that I’m not being racist here. Maybe if these folks would smile at me, every once in awhile, and more than grunt at me, I could ask them all these questions that I have about all this and I wouldn’t be living in the fog about it, left up to my own imagination to try to answer all these questions about people seeming to be trying to act and look so different than me and why.

I just waited hours for the door to the bathroom at the coffee shop to open. I almost pissed in my pants and shit in my drawers standing there. When the fucking bathroom door finally opened, a young white kid, caught somewhere between punk and hip hop, strolled out chatting on a cell phone. Like, I said, before, cell phones have altered the way we live. Cell phones have altered the way that we stay in touch with each other. Cell phones have altered the way we communicate with each other. Cell phones can be a dangerous pain in the ass when used while going twenty five miles over the speed limit and changing lanes in the road.
Some people, including this guy who just came out of the bathroom, need to have their cell phone shoved up their ass for general stupidity and intense lack of consideration: their complete lack of respect for anyone but themselves. Cell phones are like abortions, fake tits and cloning: they are with us and they will not go away, no matter what laws you pass.
Like Einstein said, when he unleashed the nuclear bomb on humanity, (gee thanks pal), everything had changed, but the way man thought. The thought comes to mind that, knowing this, Einstein, being such a smart man, might have thrown the fucking nuclear equation into the trash, instead of handing man the ability to completely eliminate man.
Some people are such inconsiderate cock sucking, mother fucking slobs. They come into the coffee shop or the pizza place, they make a mess and then they stroll out of the space, leaving a fucking dirty ass mess for their fellow human to sit at.
The nine one-one spirit, lasted until nine one-one thirty.
Moments ago, this moron was sitting behind me, grinding his teeth and making a nauseating sounds as if he was breaking marbles or pecans with his jaw. The fucker got up and left two dirty ass napkins on the table that he sat at that look like he blew his nose with them and then wiped his ass on them.
How hard would it have been for him to drop his trash in one of the nineteen thousand trashcans conveniently located right in front of big his fat face? Think globally, act locally, my ass. No wonder the fucking planet is dieing.
The other day, my son commented that someone had told him that one day that we would be living in outer space and that we couldn’t pollute space like we did the earth.
I said “why not?”
I’m trying to eliminate the words please and thank you from my vocabulary and, also, to break the masochistic habit that I have developed of holding the door open for people coming into anywhere from behind me. Why use please and thank you when no one else does?

And thank you for using the monopolistic phone company.
And thank you for using the only cable company in town.
And thank you for shopping at greasy burger;
would you like to up the ante with a bigger fry?
Do you see how phony, how plastic and how completely demeaning to employee and customer that these fake thank yous are that corporate Amerika forces on us? There is no genuine gratitude in these canned scripts that the greedy and often criminal corporate executives force their front line employees to use.
There is no true sincerity in corporate America's thanks to us. Every time that I hear someone on the phone use a forced thank you for shopping at Ball Mart pitch, I want to stick my finger down my throat and make myself puke.
It is sad to see what these words have become in the hands of the corporate criminals who dominate us? Employees are not allowed to exhibit any genuine emotion or feeling. Employees are not allowed to exhibit any natural sincerity. Employees are not allowed to exhibit any originality. Employees' smiles and even their frowns, in certain cases, are scripted.
Up on the wall, in front of these corporate employees is a flow chart that details how employees are to handle both positive responses, as well as rejections. Corporate employees are not trained to use their natural human emotion. Natural human emotion is stolen from them, and they are trained to act like robots: a manager of some sort hovers over the employees.
If customer A does this, do that. If B says C give him D. I give corporations and their whole fake thank you thing a big fat fucking F...for FUCK YOU.

Have you ever held the door open for one person and the whole fucking world comes rushing through? No one looks at you, no one says hello, no one says thanks, no one says anything on their mad rush to. And when someone does acknowledge what you are doing, they look at you like you are fucking stupid, like you have slowed down just short of the finish line in an important race and let your opponent catch up and pass you. They look at you like by being polite you have allowed yourself to fall behind at this thing called “the human race.”

My patience level is for shit today. It’s one of those days where and when no one on the planet can do or say anything that will please me. I stopped by this jewelry store with daughter figure, earlier today, to let her try and find fourteen dollars worth of something that wouldn’t break when she placed it around her neck. This was part of my first walk with her and the dog through the neighborhood since the rash of brutal child kidnappings, rape, torture and murders had started selling beer, soap and financial services on the cable networks.
The walk was a bit surrealistic.
I didn’t really want to display the girl to the public, to let the outside world look at her, thinking that somewhere lurked eyes that would want to put his hands on her and hurt her. There are as many child kidnappings going on right now as there were when the television networks were highlighting the incidences, but now the networks have a war to sell commercials to instead. And they can charge more for ads run during war coverage than they can for ads during child kidnapping cases.

The last two necklaces that daughter figure had bought from this store, had been of the exact same type, because she really, really liked the design and color of the necklace. Both necklaces, though, had fallen from her neck and onto the floor within an hour of being bought. When we had returned with the second broken necklace, the girl behind the counter said “would you like a gift certificate for that,” making it clear that our cash was as much history, as maybe your 401k in the hands of corporate executives.
And here we were, back at the store, today, in possession of that fourteen dollar gift certificate. In front of us, allegedly working, I guess, was a fat girl who was just sitting there reading a book and a skinny girl who was just standing there, staring off into space.
Neither one of them smiled at us; neither one of them said hello or how can I help you? Neither one of them had acknowledged that we had entered the store in any way shape or form.
I understand that many black people hold me, the white man, responsible for slavery, but do they also blame the little eight year old girl with me who just wants a new necklace that she can wear to her first day of second grade next week?

Should you attack the system or assimilate yourself within it and work for those things that you believe in? Is getting your face on the cover of every magazine and getting to chit chat and tell the world what you think on every television show a search for attention or a search for the truth?
I am trying to look at my own heart, here. I am trying to look at my own soul. I am trying to look at my ambitions and motivations, here, and not take anyone else’s inventory.

Somebody put two bullet holes in one of the coffee shop windows, last night, completely shattering it. I know who did it. I come here everyday to re-write this book and I know that it was one of the two angry rednecks whose car got booted, yesterday, because they parked in front of the coffee shop and then walked right by a big sign as they left the parking lot that said that you will be towed or booted if you park here and you are not a customer of the coffee shop.
I watched how the tall redneck guy reacted to finding a boot on one of the wheels of his red redneck pickup truck that had almost a hundred confederate flag stickers on the rear end of it.
I watched him rant and rage.
I watched his use of anger.
I watched his use of threats: his performance was spectacular. He was like a fucking spoiled child who wanted a cookie, when there were no cookies anywhere to be had.
I also watched for two other things, while the big baby redneck was pulling his parking lot temper tantrum. I watched the red neck, very closely, every time that he got into or near his pick up truck: intuition told me that there was a gun in that truck. And intuition told me that the red neck might very well pull a gun out and if not pull the trigger at least use that gun to get what he wanted, which was to have the boot on his left front wheel removed without him having to pay fifty bucks to the guy who put the boot on his truck.
I’m not sure what I would have done if dickhead had pulled a gun.
Most likely, I would have gotten to the front door of the coffee shop and somehow warned the parking lot attendant that there was now a gun involved in his business transaction. Whether I would have yelled, or walked, or ran up and whispered in his ear, I am not sure. I am sure that somehow, someway I would have assisted the boot man.
The second thing that I was studying from inside the coffee shop was the attendant’s behavior. I admired the way that the attendant was reacting to the redneck’s abusive behavior. The attendant did not react to the redneck s anger with anger. The attendant did not yell and scream, stick his finger in the redneck fucker’s face and say “listen here you mother fucking stupid redneck, I’ve had enough of your stupid fucking bullshit. Pay up or shut up.”
The parking lot attendant did not let the dickhead redneck make him lose control. He stood his ground and was firm in explaining what the deal was to the demented redneck, even walking Mr. Rage Man over to the huge warning sign that the angry redneck and his equally dumb ass redneck pal had walked right by on their way to somewhere other than the coffee shop.

Some cops will smile at you and say hello when you smile at them and say hello, but many of them will just kind of shoot you a mean look and maybe grunt at you like you are the enemy. I am not the fucking enemy officer.
I used to be.
When I drank and drugged and wound up in the back of your police vans, handcuffed in a blackout for another angry act of violence perpetrated for who knows what fucking reason, I was the enemy.
And you know something, when I look back on it, one hundred percent of you officer guys and gals, whether you smile at me now or not and say have a nice day, treated me way fucking decent for the asshole that I was, when you met me in a blackout.
I should have had my ass kicked.
I should have been beaten to a bloody fucking pulp for the things that I did and said, for the lack of respect that I showed you, not only as police officers, but also as human beings, i.e. god’s children.
But you didn’t beat my ass.
You got the cuffs on.
You got me in the back of the van, and then you got me to a jail cell, where I was usually alone. Alone in that blackout, isolated from the rest of the prisoners, yelling and screaming, kicking and punching the hard concrete walls and the cold steel bars until I passed out in a pool of my own vomit, covered in blood from my fun night out “partying.”
And then, in morning, you woke me from the pile of yellow and green vomit that I had used as a pillow and lead me to the general population cell where my new roommates were quick to figure out that I was the drunk prick who had kept them all awake the night before, screaming at what and why in a psychotic blacked out state of pain and insanity.

One day, not too long ago, while I was shopping at the pretty pretentious natural foods place, I had to take a desperate shit. The men’s room was locked. Some bastard was in there crapping, stinking the muther-fucker up.
I turned to the woman s room.
I knocked and checked the doorknob.
The door was unlocked and thus unoccupied, or so I thought, so I opened the door a crack. Inside the girl’s room was an elderly lady drying her hands with some brown paper towels. She looked up, gave me a dirty look, and made some sort of noise that I didn’t recognize.
Poop was now seconds away from exploding into my underwear and filling my pants. I don’t know if it is my diet or my age, but there are certain moments when I don’t have full control over my bowel movements and sometimes my ass just wants to shit wherever it wants to shit, with little or no regard for the location of me and the rest of my body.
The lady came out and I moved past her, fast as hell, saying “it’s an emergency, it’s an emergency” and, locking the door behind me, I got my pants off, just in time. Upon finishing, I reached for the toilet paper and I suddenly realized that the old lady was standing outside the bathroom door, yelling and screaming, yelling and screaming...”THERE S A MAN IN THE WOMAN’S ROOM.THERE S A MAN IN THE WOMAN’S ROOM.”
What a whore.
The old bitch was acting like I had raped her and had then stolen her 401k and kicked her dog in the balls on the way out from her home that I had set on fire. From where I sat, on the toilet, I imagined that she had the whole fucking store staff lined up outside the woman’s room door waiting for me to exit, along with the store’s rent a cop, who would arrest me for illegal shitting.
I started screaming at the lady through the locked door. “It was an emergency, lady, an emergency, lady, an emergency.” The words didn’t seem to sink into her fat head. She got louder and louder, screaming more intensely, with increased pain and passion like something that I was doing was causing her pain to escalate.
I wiped my butt, opened the door and walked by her as fast as I could. I was headed for the sidewalk, pronto. I wasn’t going to argue with the old bitch about whether what I had done was right or wrong, moral or immoral, legal or illegal.
It had been a necessary action, it was over, and I was headed out the door to enjoy the rest of my life. As I came out of the bathroom, I encountered a man about my age, who was dressed in the same sort of psuedo-Afrikan garb that the bitch by the bathroom was wearing.
“Why you disrespecin” my wife?” he said very loudly and very angrily. “How dare you disrespec’ my wife,” he added quickly, getting even louder and even more angry, escalating quickly into the same intensely manic and excited state that his dumb ass old lady was in.
“Pal,” I said, “your wife is sick...she is a sick woman, do you understand, pal? You have a sick, sick wife. I am sincerely thankful to the Lord that she is in your possession and not mine.”
As I walked away from the demented duo, I kept chanting a sort of mantra-like “sick, sick, sick” to drown out the couple’s yelling and screaming as I moved closer and closer to the front door and freedom.

I walked through the hot Southern night greatly relieved to be out of the up tight grocery store and away from those two insane people. I walked briskly to the train station and immediately planted my ars on one of the benches and, immediately, a young man sat down on the bench next to me and started rapping at me: “Hey man have you got a dollar, I’m hungry,” he said to me.
This guy wasn’t your typical panhandler. His clothes were new. He wore really funky, nice jewelry and his hair was cool, nicely styled, like from some hip salon.
The kid looked like he could or did front some hip hop band. The only thing that was wrong with this picture were the kid’s eyes. His eyes were lit up and sorrowful, like he was in a deep, dark pain that he either felt like there was no escape from or that he had no idea how to no escape from and only answer that he had come up with, so far, was to wander up and down the subway station aisles telling people lies.
When the train finally arrived, the kid got on it and wandered up and down the aisle from seat to seat stopping to give each person the same pitch that he had given me. In one seat there was a girl chatting on a cell phone. The kid stopped next to her, leaned over and repeatedly asked her if she had a dollar. The kid got impatient as fuck and gave the girl an eat shit look like how dare you stay on your fucking cell phone while I’m trying to ask you for a dollar.
Addicts, when you get right down to it, are very, very self-centered people. What pleases them, is what they will do. What feels good, is what they are after. Many of them are still chasing the incredibly great feeling of their early highs, back when the booze and the drugs made them the life of the party, back when the booze and the drugs helped them wind up in bed with guys or gals that they were either too shy or too inhibited to pursue, normally.
Back in the beginning, the buzz made them the life of the party, everybody’s friend. That’s my take on it, anyway. That is the way I now look back on my career as a boozer and a user. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to have good times. And I was ruthless in my pursuit of feeling good and having good times, so ruthless that over a decade later when booze and drugs no longer made me feel good and the good times were far, far behind me, I was still imbibing, snorting and dropping whatever I thought would make me feel different than who I was.
This a.m., while waiting for the first train of the day to arrive, an older guy came up to me holding a piece of paper saying how “these fuck wads” had jerked him around and wouldn’t give him back the money that some girl had stolen out of his pocket the last time he was on the train, even though the train cops had caught her and he had gone to court and all and the chick had been convicted.
I said why don’t you go over to headquarters and talk to somebody there, and then I went back to doing my morning stretches until the train arrived, like I had been doing when the guy had walked up and interrupted me. I closed my eyes and started inhaling huge scoops of air through my colossal nose. I could sense the guy coming closer to me and I could hear him rattling the piece of paper in my direction, still bitching. “Look,” I said in a very strict voice, “I’ve given you all the advice I’ve got. You can either take it or leave it, but I don’t want to hear anymore about it.”
Though my eyes were closed, my ears were open and I could hear the man and his piece of paper walk off fast. Soon, I could hear him ranting and raving, rattling his piece of paper in the air and bitching to the people sitting on the bench at the other end of the station about how he had gotten screwed.
I gave this incident no thought until later in the day when I was at the coffee shop, lodged behind the laptop doing the rewrite. My thought now is that, most likely, this guy was a conman of some sort and had wanted me to look at his piece of paper to show me how much money that he had waiting for him somewhere and ask me for an advance on it and, of course, we could meet there in an hour or so and he would give me an extra ten or twenty for helping him out. Corporate criminal dickhead like people operate at many different levels of our society.
Ever wanted to smoke pot real badly and bought an air bag?

I went to the pharmacy, yesterday, to buy some hydrogen peroxide, per the vet’s instruction, for my dog’s rear foot, which had some sort of weird red mark on it that was causing him to limp. Right as I walked up to the counter, I let out this little teeny fart. About five seconds later, the cashier reached down and pulled out a spray can of air freshener and started fogging the air with it.
“What s wrong?” I asked, innocently.
“This place stinks,” she said, shoving the aerosol can under the counter, leaving me to wonder if other people farted in the proximity of her check out counter and if so, how often . I mean, she hadn’t just pulled the spray can off the shelf for me. It was already under her counter when I arrived.

When a chick is really good looking, but when she opens her mouth and in ten sentences or less she shows me that she is a moron, her looks don’t mean a fucking thing to me.
Speaking of corporate-criminal-dickhead like behavior, there is this local asshole who lets you work for him and then he doesn’t fucking pay you, as agreed. On occasion, you get the word through the grapevine that he is telling the unpaid to meet him at this bar or that bar and he will cut you a check, but by the time you get to this bar or that bar, the prick is gone. Mother fucker can run up a bar tab, bar to bar, and, it seems to me, that he is being a big man bellying up to the bar on the money of the men who fairly gave him their labor.
What an asshole.
A pal of mine says that arguing or fighting over forty bucks is just not worth it to him. I said, “then how much will you fight or argue over, four hundred, four thousand, four million?"
A fucking promise is a fucking promise and a principal is a fucking principal at whatever level of the game you are at or are not at. If I can’t trust you at the four hundred fucking dollar level, do you think I’m going to advance to the four thousand or four million dollar level with you, give you more time from the precious minutes of my life that are tick, tick, ticking away? I could have been home watching television with the kid or walking the fucking dog instead of helping you build your business and your bank account.
I have also learned that certain lessons are cheaper than others and that each one is a learning experience that will come in valuable at some later time. Hmmm, or maybe this theory is put out there by assholes like this guy so that they can rip you and me off.
The old me is retired.
There are bits and pieces of him, uh err, me out there. Some parts exist in rumor and innuendo. Some parts exist in parts of my personality that linger, that are stubbornly refusing to fully go away. Some parts exist in bits and pieces of my behavior that I daily struggle to put on hold, bite my tongue, parts that I have to take a long or short walk on or with.
I have learned that the backstabbers, the pathetic pussy patrol, the lousy loser jealousy society, not only think and say that you are shit when you are a raging asshole, but there will also be those out there who will condemn, criticize and lie about you when you are doing the next right thing.
What is the moral to this?
You can’t control other people. Don’t worry about what others are up to, what they think, say or do, just find your own path and walk it with out stepping on the flowers or the children.
As I was taking a shit and a piss in the coffee house head, I was thinking that since the toilet didn’t fully flush that they should put a sign on it that says hold handle until shit is fully flushed.
And then, I was thinking, that if I owned the coffee shop that I would put a sign on the toilet that said “hold handle down dickhead” and at the front door I would put a sign saying, “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone and to tell you to leave right now if we feel like it.”
And then, I started thinking about language and laws. The word fuck can get you in trouble. Yet, some asshole or assholes can rip you off on the gas that you cook food for your children with and keep them warm with in the winter. The game is not played fairly.
Why?
Who made the rules and why do we let them get away with what they have done to us? Is it because we see the World Series as important? Is it because we are preoccupied and fascinated with strip joints, Monday Night Football and Hooters Girls?
Is it because the outcome of a football game is more important to us than researching and developing an alternative energy source to foreign oil? Or is it simply like Martin Luther King Jr. said, that we are too busy trying to pay our bills, fix dinner for our kids, make our car payments to think outside the limited little box that has been created for us?

You couldn’t tell that this guy was going to camp in the bathroom until he got real close to you. When he got up on you, it looked like he wasn’t fully homeless yet, but was drinking heavily enough to wind up there soon. I had to take a desperate coffee induced piss, but this homeless guy is still in the fucking bathroom, taking a shower in the sink, getting ready for a happy hour, a yum yum feast of a bottle of mouth wash and cigarette butts found on the ground.
Also in the coffee shop, today, as usual, are the kind of sort of hippy pseudo punk Jesus freaks who are, as usual, rambling on about well, uh, Jesus. The Jesus freaks, who started off seated behind me, have now moved onto and into the table and chairs in front of me and their discussion, ahora, is mainly about who gets the most cell phone minutes for the least amount of cash and how some guy has screwed one of them out of money.
Ahhh, the Jesus, card, don’t leave home without it.
Jesus is money.
Jesus is cash jack.
Jesus is money.
Jesus is cash jack.
Money,
money,
money.
Jesus,
Jesus,
Jesus.
Can I get me an amen brother?

The fucking c.d. player on my laptop won t work.
I think that I uninstalled it, somehow, late one night, in a manic fit of uninstall frenzy as the computer kept telling me that my hard drive was nearly full.
“Your hard drive is nearly full, danger, danger warning, warning, your hard drive is nearly full danger, danger and your memory is nearly overloaded or fragmented or brain dead or, or, or. And your virus protection policy has expired danger, danger.”
It is truly amazing the way that humanity has devised to get into your wallet or purse, even when you are safely locked inside the comfort and convenience of your home; even when you are a mentally ill with anger issues recluse who has dandruff, sleep apnea, and a constantly hard cock with deep lingering Roman Catholic guilt issues.

Anyway, Marley, the poet, with the dread locks, who is definitely a black man, is maybe a Muslim, maybe not, but is definitely not responsible for blowing up anything or for sniping no one, and is probably about as tired of the man as I am, clues me in on how to push a paper clip through the little, nearly invisible, hole sitting quietly next to the big black square well lit thing that you are supposed to push on to get the c.d. player to open.
The true blue eyed devil might call that a nigger rig, but I call that friendship, one hand reaching out to another hand, one hand reaching out to help another hand without looking for a handout or some spare change It's a beautiful thing and it’s a fucking dieing art with everybody on the planet including me.
Reverend Fairy-Can Can is right: I am the blue-eyed devil. I am the blonde haired, six foot tall, blazing blue-eyed soldier that Hitler sent out, high as hell on cocaine, to fuck up the world. Bullshit. I'm just a guy trying to get by just like you who are labeling me. I’m getting fucked by the government, the utility companies, the banks, the credit card companies, the collection agencies and the bitches who won t reciprocate my love, just like the black man is.
Can you dig it brother man?
Can I get an amen?

Whenever a woman announces that she is now “bi,” I am, like, fuuuuck, another cunt to compete with for cunt. Bi chicks aren’t as mean, though, as some lesbians. I guess that since bi chicks are still into cock, as well as cunt, it keeps them from acting like militant Muslims do acting like the white male is Satan on earth.

Younggirl [3:16 AM]: Hi...if you want call me... I need to hear your voice.
This girl was eighteen when we met on the internet. I told her that she was too young. She said too young for what, which was a very valid point.

”One without a friend is like the right
hand without the left...”
--Bosnian proverb

Isn’t it very sad and extremely sadistic how the media grossly profits from child kidnappings, war and savage sniper serial killings?
One day, during a serial sniper butchering spree, one cable show had "experts" on, who were saying that the sniper couldn’t be a marksman, because, today, he had shot someone in the stomach and not in the head, so his aim was obviously not good. The next morning, a man was dead with a shot to the head. Thanks for the fine who, what, where, when, why and how.

When I got up to the counter to order a coffee today, the young man working behind the counter said, "I got this one for you." I looked at him thankfully. The dollar eighty two that he saved me meant that I could lunch on an organic banana, a cheap orange and a thirty cent wheat roll on the way to the space of anonymity.
Praise the Lord.
The barrista is one of those guys that my dad would have called a “nigger.” Or maybe, my dad would have called the barrista a spic, but you know something: just like my Irish Catholic mother never got to see my “little illegitimate bastard” son, my father never got to see the beautiful, sly, smile on Kevin’s face.
I can see that hate in other people eyes, hearts and souls is stupid, so why the fuck do I hate everything? I don’t know why I hate everyone. Was hate bred into me, or was it something that I learned? Was it taught to me by my father or was it taught to me by every one of you with your words and by your actions, in the way you treated me, in the way you failed to treat me or was I just a sour puss at birth?


Today is another one of those days where I have very low tolerance for my fellow human being. It is one of those I hate my fellow man days that I have far too often.
I have no patience for anyone or anything, today. I am ready to go off on someone with minimum provocation. I am also doing my best to eliminate the closest friendships and relationships that I have. And since I have already eliminated most of my “close” relationships and friendships, this does not leave me with much to do today. I might do a million pushups, lift weights every day working to fatigue a different body part everyday, but, inside, I’ll always be that skinny kid whose dad let him get beat up on a sidewalk in front of his little brother.
There is this group of Christian punk rockers in the coffee shop, today, as is often the case. This young, very long, very purple haired pretty thing with tats about half way down her arm just walked in. For her, I would believe in and die for Jesus.

This is the end…
Mad Dog J picks up a nine month chip, tonight. You know what, I have now picked up eleven years worth of one year chips and I almost couldn’t tell you what color the fucking chip is that Mad Dog is going to pick up tonight.
And you know, it doesn’t fucking matter.
What matters is that Mad Dog is one of the winners. Mad Dog hasn’t had a drink or a drug, today, and neither have I. Mad Dog gave me and Javi the dog a ride home after the meeting and as we pulled up to the front of my humble abode Mad Dog said to me, "people like you."
I said, "Mad Dog, that is really good and that is really good to hear, because, in the old days, people didn't like me."
Before the dog and I got out of the car, Mad Dog and I talked about love and about how if you give love, you get love. We also talked about how if you put out hate, you get hate right back in your face.

My toilet is broken tonight, but I'm not going to blame anyone. I'm not going to hate anyone.
Kisses.
I can’t stay angry at the gang.
People come into your life for a reason, some of them stay and some of them go. Life is not static; and enjoyable moments and good times do not last forever, exactly as they were, exactly how you were once enjoying them.
New good times, new good people are just around the corner. Life is change as the Buddha would say.
The kid’s mom is the kid’s mom. She is the woman who brought the life into the world that saved my life. I can’t control her behavior. I can’t carve her into being the woman that I want her to be or the woman that I think that she should be.
I can love her. And I do love her.
I don’t have to love her up close and interact with her every day. I don’t even have to like her all the time.
Loving her is essential.
Liking her is not.
The most important thing is that I respect that she is who she is and respect her individuality as a child of god on the planet earth. She may not be the mother to my son that I want her to be, but then, I know for a fact, that I am not the father to her son that she wants me to be. With time, our relationship gets better and better. All the mean and ugly things that I say and have said about her in this book are a reflection of an imbalance in my life. I need to concentrate on me and not worry about her; or you.

I could say that the rest of the world can go to hell, but I won’t. I will say that I have learned, finally, and the hard way, that I can’t control what god, government and pizza delivery customers do or say, so why should I get all bent out of shape about it?
Why should I ruin days, weeks, months, years, my whole lifetime agonizing over things that I have no control over. All I have control over is me; all I can do is to think locally, so to say, and the rest of the globe will take care of itself.
I have come to learn that I am a control freak and that when the rest of the world doesn’t do exactly what I want it to do, I explode in a terrible two-like tantrum, wetting my diaper with depression and anger, pointing my finger at everybody else, when the problem is really me, me, me.
I’m tired of being the problem.
I want to live in the solution.

May God’s love be with The Feigner. I know, now, that God put the Feigner into my life for a reason. There was a lot of me in The Feigner. I was really mad at myself when I was mad at The Feigner, because I still had the same defects that I was so angry about him having.
It is sort of like, I was raging at myself. I wouldn’t want to be roommates with The Feigner ever again, but I hope that he is doing well in his world wherever he is.
Scratcher is Scratcher. He was there at a very angry sober period of my life. I think that God put him there during that time for a reason. I bet that Scratcher’s priorities are still taking pictures of babes and hooking up with babes, though not necessarily in that order. Scratcher may have found a nice girl to settle in with and have children with, but I doubt it.
Some men are not cut out for nor are they interested in having kids. There is nothing wrong with this. There is more wrong with not really wanting kids and having them accidentally or unintentionally. That’s what I think, anyway.
May God bless Scratcher.

Nowhere George?
Nowhere George has written some of the most brilliant songs ever written
He is out there on the road on a tour bus living his dream bringing those songs to the people who love him.
Nowhere George was a catalyst for me, sent by the Lord. I was a catalyst for him, sent by God. He was the trigger to my sobriety. I was the trigger to his dreams of making music.
He is only human.
I am only human.
Don’t say hate.
It’s not too late.
May God’s love be with him.
He has his dreams. I have mine. You have to be careful that you don’t start dreaming someone else’s dreams.
The Pill is The Pill. I love him from a distance. Moper is Moper. I love him from a distance. These guys were there for me at a very important time in my sobriety. They helped me make it through from the other side. They helped me become a winner. The anonymous meetings were like my classroom and these guys were my tutors who helped me pass the class. Though we don t hang out like we used to, they are still a part of me. Though I had words with both of them, I still pray that they are happy today.
I haven't seen The Poem in awhile, but I will never forget him and the love that he gave me. Our paths were one for awhile. I will never forget walking that path with him. The Poem helped me stay sober, also. He did not so much teach me things as lead by example. The Poem had confidence in this book. He said that it would be a best seller.

I was cleaning out our house, a little bit, last night? Why do I always call this small apartment a house? I guess because it is a home to my son and I.
Anyway, I was going through these banana boxes that have been stacked in the bedroom closet from the day that we moved into this residence, over three years ago. I’ve been lugging these boxes around from rooming house to apartment to rental house to apartment for over two decades.
These notebooks contain twenty years of spiral notebooks of all sizes, colors and thickness, napkins with different types of liquor spilled on them and words scrawled on them, pieces of paper, lined and unlined from all over the place, from bars to buses, jail cells to church pews, containing “poems,” phrases, thoughts, ramblings, journal entrees, love letters, notations of who I hate now, who I hated an hour ago, who I hated yesterday and who I’m going to hate and or love tomorrow.
While going through the boxes, I found an old photo album from when I was a kid and I handed it to my son saying, “here, take a look at this and see what you’re old man used to be up to.”
“Which one is Snot Face Stevie?” my son asked, immediately, holding up a basketball team picture from when I was twelve years old. “That’s him,” I said, pointing to the guy who had loomed so large over me for so many years as a kid.
“He looks like an idiot,” said my son and we laughed.
“He was an idiot,” I said, with a smile, and you know what, that asshole, that bully, that fucking manipulative dickhead coward suddenly didn’t have any power over me anymore.
Even into my middle forties, I had entertained the pleasant notion of going back to that to that town where I had grown up for awhile and kicking Snot Face Stevie’s ass for all the pathetic piece of shit things that he had done to me as a kid .
But, as my son and I stood there, looking at that picture and laughing at Snot Face’s imbecilic face, it didn’t seem necessary anymore. In fact, it seemed downright stupid to be thinking of his sorry ass, at all, still, after all these years.
Something that had, for most of my life, caused me such great pain, no longer had any hold on me, a great weight had been lifted..

Then, my son pulled out the only picture that I had of my father. The picture was fading, turning yellow in places, but you could still clearly see the old man standing in the back yard, up north, with his rifle over his shoulder. I don’t know why my father had bought that rifle. To my knowledge, he never shot anything or anyone with it, never went hunting with it. I think that he had it in the house because it reminded him of his farm back in Ireland and all the freedom that he had had there as a young man to roam the flatlands and the woods, never seeing another human for days.
“He looks mean,” said my son, probably heavily influenced by all my how bad I had it as a kid stories.
“Let me see that,” I said to my son. He handed me the picture and I looked at my father. “He doesn’t look mean,” I told my son. “He looks skinny, maybe a bit tired and he either has a smile or a smirk on his face.”
I was sure that my dad was chuckling inside about how he was standing there in the backyard with a rifle on his shoulder, as I tried to learn how to use my first camera, knowing that I would most likely have only that picture to remember him by, since he wasn’t much for standing in front of a camera.
“Did he love you?” my son asked me.
I looked at the picture again and, this time, I saw more than just my father standing there with a gun on his shoulder in the back yard. I saw the patio next to him, that was made of large heavy stones that my father had built by himself. The old man had lifted every heavy stone on that patio by himself from the car to the backyard and had placed them on dirt where grass used to be before he had painstakingly dug it all up.
Then, I noticed the pine trees in the picture.
You could see two of them in the photo, but there had been far more in that backyard. Each pine tree had been one of our Christmas trees. My dad hated to see dead Christmas trees scattered on the sides of the streets, almost as much as he hated Christmas. Each year he bought a living tree and when the holidays were over he took the tree out to the back yard and planted it so that tree would live.

Was my dad perfect?
No.
Am I perfect?
No.
Are you perfect?
No
Did my dad love me?
Yes.

THE END...



THE VERDICT IS ALREADY IN ON “THE DELIVERY GUY”:

Mikel:

When I received your email I was at the brink of having not slept for three days, but I opened up your site and found the "excerpts from The Delivery Guy." Despite my utter exhaustion, I read the whole thing!
I haven't read anything this funny since 1997, when I listened to George Carlin on vinyl, with my mother. Your writing held me by the throat like a Steven King novel! (Clive Barker?) That probably didn't make sense (I'm tired, gimmee a break).
Your views on God, religion, race, sex, innocence, and the world around you are hilarious, but also hold a very unique beauty. As a writer, myself, you have greatly inspired me.
I don't know what else to say. I'm going to keep reading your stuff and I'll keep harassing you with my opinions of your great work as I go along. Ok with you? Lol.

Dude, I wish you all the luck in the world. You deserve the best; you and your kids.

Much Love,
Mary Lou

Hey Mikel,

Mad Dog J gave me your "official" website, so I thought I would check it out. Your website is awesome: you have some great stuff. I can't wait till your book is finished; I'll certainly buy the first copy! Hope your having a great day!
Valerie Girl





The "Official" Mikel K Website can be found at www.185cool.com/mikelkpoet







"What's more important: a best seller, your picture on the cover of the big magazine, signing a long line of autographs; or fixing noodles and a cup of fruit for a nine year old girl on the days that she comes to your house after school?"
--mikel k

Mikel:

What's more important...is people like you in our lives, Mikel, people that say simple things that have a profound effect.
We all have dreams, Mikel, but are they really as good as the lives that we are living right now? The above paragraph, that you wrote, made me stop studying and go sit out on the grass with my four year old and five year old, instead. Up to this point they had been nagging me for half hour to come join them.
What if tomorrow never comes and today was the last day we watched a butterfly, or sang together? Yes, I think you're right, we should embrace the dream we are in today.
You are a great writer, you changed my day, today, into a better one...for me and for two little hearts. What more could you ever hope to achieve, but to move people with your words?
The fame is already there for you; in the people that respect what you say enough to embrace it. Can we help it that those with the money to pay you to say it are as yet blind? Probably they're blinded by the money. Unlike the rest of us, blinded by the sunshine on a beautiful day spent with the children we love.
Have a great night Mikel & thanks...
An Australian Mother












AnArtistAlso: I've been reading some of your 'Delivery Guy' work; Interesting…very interesting.
AnArtistAlso: What I like is your passion in writing...you are deeply connected to the true meaning of humanity...feeling the hurt from those who really suffer; and your anger spills forth over the insensitive souls who demand.
AnArtistAlso: I like that, Mikel, you are a cause fighter / warrior in many ways.

Mikel:

I read some of your journal entries and discovered that you are a talented, caring person with a real talent for words--a bit Charles Bukowski-esque--this is a compliment.

--Katherine



Mikel:

A quick note for you: I've got about 5 hours into reading the Delivery Guy. I've laughed, I've cried, I've been mortified. I think that's a good thing in a book.

--Cynthia




“If you wrote your book like the story that you told me about the rip off of your prospective girlfriend's car stereo - - shocking, interesting, and, perhaps unintentionally, hilarious--then you would have something. I would start your book with that. Is that one in your book? No. Why?”--TRK

"No worries Mikel! I loved The Delivery Guy!"
--Danielle Trussoni,
Author of "Falling Through The Earth"

Mikel, I started reading your book at 11:40 pm and did not stop until 1:15 am. My intention, initially, was just to read a few pages, but once I started the journey of "the delivery guy" I could not stop. First of all, you have a great story to tell, and you have found the perfect voice in the sometimes angry, sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny and witty and always brutally honest delivery guy. Mark Twain chose Huck Finn to tell his greatest story. That was Twain's gift to literary America. You have found your storyteller.”—David “Coach” Boyd


“Being there, on the phone, listening to you interact with the people you were delivering to; holding my breath while you made change, received your tip…
Listening to your heavier breathing as you rush back to the car, get in…
saying you miss me, although I felt myself pulling the words out of you.
Sometimes you let me feel like I'm such a part of you...”—Secret Lover

***For many, many more interesting internet chats with Mikel K, look for K's upcoming book, "Confessions of a Chatroom Junky."

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