my daily journal of things that happened before I knew about being adopted and a ward of the state.
March 18, 2012
Why Doesn't She Like Me, Lisa? A Tell All.
To all the boys who have been calling me recently telling me that a cute girl dumped them and they don't know why but think they want to know but even as I write this I am doubtful that anyone wants the truth, still I submit the following:
Exhibit One: Your breath is bad, terrible even and we don't know how to say that thing to you.
Exhibit Two: Your penis has the same exact dimensions of the one guy that you can never replace because he was WAY more dysfunctional as a lover and we need that dysfunction to feel sad about ourselves and our place on planet earth as the weaker species.
Exhibit Three: You aren't smart but try to be and we don't know how to handle that. We feel scared of dumb things.
Exhibit Four: We slept with your ex wife and or girlfriend and she told us about that thing you did once that you better not do with us but that you secretly hope will get you arrested one day. We actually admire you for doing it too, we think that took balls.
Exhibit Five: We aren't that available but tried to be. There was that tiny window, but then it closed, you were too nice, mean, angry, sweet, horny, not-horny-enough, BLANK, hungry, too skinny, too KAZAKSTANIAN but without the charm, too fat.
Exhibit Six, Seven and Eight: We wanted something different, we aren't sure what, but we'll know it when we see it.
Exhibit Nine: Your voice lacks testosterone and if we wanted a female lover, well..
Exhibit Ten: Your life lacks adventure and seems boring.
We hope you understand, please forgive us our cowardice but we are fairly certain that you have been a coward too.
See: Ex wife
See: Ex girlfriend
See: Truckstop Bathroom
Sincerely,
Women everywhere.
March 17, 2012
Night In Hell at the Chelsea Hotel
Night
in Hell at the Chelsea Hotel
The man was married, but not in any traditional
sense. Morally speaking, he was getting off his original mark. The Chelsea
stunk of perfume and opium. His trench coat was black and he was dirty. Dirty
from drinking in a nearby dive, dirty from living wrong, from not being able to
love. He brought Dolly with him, if this was his last night on earth, he might
as well fuck. She was no whore either; she had nice skin and a pretty smile.
She told him the first time she got paid for it; she had been out all night and
forgot where she was going. Something about a bus ticket home. She said she had
a mental disturbance that made her forget every man she had since that first
one. She was smart though and took to reciting Allen Ginsberg's Howl for
entertainment every time things got too quiet.
Finally, he said, shut up, and he took her hand in
his and they walked quietly up the stairs. From some of the rooms you could
hear fighting and others you could hear the white noise of late night TV. He
held her hand and then opened the door. They sat on the couch with a bottle of
wine. He told her it was going to be a bad night after she was gone. “I don’t
have to go.” She rested her head on his shoulder feeling the warmth of two
people who needed something they couldn’t give the other one. He had changed his mind when he got her
inside. It seemed too sad somehow to have sex with someone he didn’t even
really know except for drinking. Too ordinary. Too every other girl he’d every
met-like.
“Don’t you want to?” Dolly said.
“Nope. I want you like this, if we do it, I won’t
be remembered.”
“It could be fun,” Dolly said, but made a face that
said otherwise.
“I’m not going to be every other guy to you. No
way.”
After she fell asleep, the man told himself that he
better listen to some music and he better do his drugs before morning. He gently moved Dolly’s head off his
shoulder and lowered her onto his couch.
He pulled the blanket off the chair and draped it over her. He thought her face was pretty in a
noble sort of way, the kind of face that seems wiser than anyone else, only
appearances were false, that much he knew. It wasn’t like he thought it was
going to be, he knew things he wasn’t supposed to know, he tried it out and he
realized he was good at it though, so what the hell, he did it every chance he
got. Some would call it weakness,
but others might say it was talent.
He poured more wine. He got the David Bowie album
and put it on. Dolly was asleep so
he didn’t put it on too loud.
Ground Control to major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills may god’s love be with you.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
He sat down and dialed hoping against hope she
wouldn’t pick up. Why does it always have to be me that calls, he was thinking.
She answered.
“I know, I know. I don’t give a fuck who’s sleeping.”
“Really, is that so? Do you fight with him like we did? I miss you.”
She didn’t say it back.
Later
at four, he put a gun in his mouth and said goodbye for good.
March 16, 2012
Advice For Writers
Lately,
people have been writing to me asking me to help them in a variety of ways.
Some of them are cool when I say, look I'm all tapped out, some of them get mad
and don't understand my health issues or that I'm in school for a another full
year after this one is done. So, here we go--My blanket advice to writers who
hate me for telling them the truth and the manipulative ones who try to make me
feel shitty for being a real live human barely able to do my own work: you guys
can get fucked.
Rules
for becoming a writer:
1.
Fall in love. It should be noted that there are different versions of love most
of which include one person parasitically sucking off the other more strong
person, but this still can be used to the writer's benefit. What you do is you
label anything love that you can't figure out or when a person acts
inconsistent, one day happy, one day angry (like father), and you sleep with
that person and you listen to their hopes and dreams and they never ask you
about yours and you don't care because deep inside you know this isn't the real
thing but the sex parts feel good and you really really really like their nose,
but inside you know it won't last. This isn't love, and you won't call it love,
but it will hurt you when you end it just as if it were real love because the
person with the nose you love will cry and act needy and you will go, where is
the one guy and or girl who is not needy and just wants to be around me without
projecting their past bullshit onto me and assuming that I feel more for them
than they feel for me when usually it is not the case. Don't you remember the
story about my dog and how I stopped being able to love after my dog was put to
sleep while I was at school? Bambi--I miss him. He loved me. He did hump my leg
(not dissimilar from the men I date or even fake date). But, he loved me in a
way that no one else can because their private parts steer that part of their
brain that they try to idealize and call things love when it is really can I
put my privates into your privates and will you be nice to me after and see me
as a superhero?
2.
Get drunk and take pills. This part, is debatable, because I no longer drink,
but the thing is but when I did drink I DRANK EVERYTHING and drank with a
vengeance and drank at people and drank with men without teeth and found myself
making out with harelip dude and toothless dude and then had boyfriends that
did drugs so I did drugs with them and we HATED each other and HATED ourselves,
but it was FUN. The ones who drink are in the most pain and their pain makes it
interesting to be them in their confusing sad lives and they are the best
writers invariably. I also think the one guy in my class who only likes dogs
and hates humans is going in the right direction.
3.
Jail. I think if you want to be a writer and you have never been arrested you
can still be a nice writer, many people might read you, I just won't care about
it very much. But, I, thankfully, in all my pretentious un-goodness as a human
being, am not your only reader, nor will I ever buy your books or think you're
cool at all.
4.
Look rad. This one is a must for any writer. It doesn't have to do with your
face as much as keep yourself cool looking. You have to have personal style.
That is very important. A style that is not copied or fake. It is your own and
while there may be copiers, no one does your style like you do.
5.
Learn to hate. I was raised by Seventh Day Adventist/Christian
Scientist/Sometimes Cult member parents and they taught me to never lie, never
dance, if you are sick that there is something wrong with you on a deep
spiritual level, because you wouldn't get sick if you could pray rightly. I
don't hate them, but I have learned to hate ideas. Learned to hate people who
try to make me feel guilty. Learned to hate parasites. Learned to hate the
things in myself that close off to you when you are an ignorant person. Hate
has wings. Hate is memorable. You can write about hate. I'd much rather be
hated than almost anything else. I love hate.
6.
Read astrology. This one sounds totally dumb, but is as real as the rest of
them. Look up why people are acting certain ways and find that astrology
answers the most predictable of all the questions you would ever have about
said person, confirming what you already know but are loathe to say. Then you
can admit to yourself that people can be categorized and no one is really
unique or even that different from what it says about you on google. Take me
for example Pisces with Leo rising. I am difficult, self-righteous and hard to
be close to, but once you are in, I am loyal forever. If you cross me, you will
go on my dry-erase board and become one of the people I am on a singular
mission to destroy psychologically. It will happen. The Pisces may easily swim
away if you do one wrong thing, but they never forget a slight. Not EVER.
Serious. And while Pisceans are the most loving and giving of the zodiac, their
ability to choose inappropriate partners is legendary as can be seen if you
study this blog. But, the leo rising part makes up for it in ways that will
make you scared to be alive. All this is factual and should be paid attention
to in legions of ways, so that you can figure everyone out and waste a whole
shit ton of time wherein you should be writing.
7.
Be irresponsible. (Steal stuff, sleep with bad people, say stuff you don't
mean, fake love fake people, don't be honest, etc.) This creates the kind of
guilt that keeps writers up at night and those writers have very little to do
having already worn out their lover, so they have to write stuff down so that
their conscience can catch a break.
8.
Lie. This one should be obvious to any would be writer. But, you only tell the
truth on paper, lying and exaggerating facts makes you memorable and while you
never lie on the page you confuse all those around you into thinking you are
someone you aren't and this makes you memorable. (Writers, that are real should
be memorable).
9.
Be memorable. In all ways, be different. Think different, say different things
that no one else would say because they are too concerned with being properly
human but not a real human. Don't cater to societal expectations. Be a nice
person one day a mean person the next.
10.
Write. While this is something that should be obvious to anybody, it isn't. You
should write everyday and have opinions about the world you live in that are
sacrilegious and scary to others, but don't fabricate this--they must be the
secret things inside of yourself that you secretly think but would never ever
say because you are too polite to say to someone's face. Say those things. Like
when I broke up with you and I said the sex was good I only said it to make
your face stop crying. I didn't say it because it was real.
11.
Be more yourself. I don't know what else to say about this one. Only you know
what that means. But, if you are secretly copying anybody, trying to be like
somebody else in anyway, style, dress, speech, thought, stop that shit and
become what you were born to become. YOUR OWN PERSON.
12.
Eat things that aren’t known to be food, like hotpockets.
13.
Question God or ideas on God or all the ideas that are in your head and ask
yourself, are these my own made up ideas or did I steal them or be infected by
someone else’s thinking to believe them. do this everyday about everything
until you are able to generate your own ideas not tainted by socialization,
weird parenting or psychologically abusive “friends.”
14.
Dump people that are dicks. Do not let people around you that don’t make you
feel better or suffer in some way, but for sure get rid of the dicks.
Especially if they are dumb.
15.
Burn things in your oven. Food because you fell asleep, but other things are
fun to burn in there too. Use your imagination.
The
end.
March 14, 2012
The Burning
The Burning
And there are other reasons I burned the mattress.
I learned to sleep standing up against the wall
The moon cast a shadow on the mattress
of the both of us when we were children.
You were in your bug phase
The one where we researched the bugs that could exist
in a house with no couches, no tables.
You told me, “They smell like cumin.”
But I couldn’t smell it
We checked our bodies
Cleaned our couches
I still have the vacuum cleaner
It was 400 dollars.
You were married, that’s the one thing I never say
It was a girl who worshipped me
Her name was almost like mine.
March 13, 2012
Caroline--Dedication
Some of you
know that my friend Caroline Thompson died of an overdose January 6th. I still
don't know what exactly happened, and it is a terrible loss to everyone.
Before she left us, I had just been offered publication in a journal called
Blood Lotus Journal---it will be my piece Try Stuff--it's somewhere on this
blog. I wrote to Caroline or called her and told her to submit. Then, she died.
Her father recently wrote to me and said her poem On a Drawing of How to Kill Sam Pink was
accepted and what did I think of the journal. I told him it was a great journal
up that gets looked at by the Pushcart people and they give chances to many
amazing new writers--in other words I told him what I knew--please accept. I will be in
that same journal with her, so I wrote to the editor and asked him to make sure
we were going to really be together in the same issue. She was a poet, and he
is the fiction editor, so it took a few hours to figure it out. But, he wrote
to me sincerely offering his condolences for the loss of this friend and wonderful writer, and asked if I would like to say anything on her behalf--of
course I would, but what could I say? Her poetry is a work of genius? That she was a beautiful human who made me laugh at myself? What? So, I wrote a small dedication and it took me awhile to come up with
something that made sense and didn't sound trite. Death is confusing, I'm still
sad over it and I didn't want to be indulgent--I want Caroline to be remembered. So,
the following will appear in the next issue of Blood Lotus Journal as a
dedication to our friend Caroline Thompson. We fucking miss your guts, my dear
and you will not be forgotten.
Caroline Thompson was my friend and fellow writer. She died on January 6th of an overdose that for sure was accidental. I know Caroline’s choice those final days resulted from the thing most of us as writers deal with, an overwhelming sensitivity to the harshness of day to day reality and that she just wanted peace for one second from the brain that she was gifted with. Unfortunately the wrong mixture ended her life and broke our hearts. She was a wonderfully inappropriately funny human who wrote about the absurdity of life in a way that was remarkably disturbed and poignant. I miss her terribly. You can find her work at http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com <http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com/> . And who am I? Just another contributor to Blood Lotus Journal. I am honored to be printed in the same edition as my dear friend. I wish you all could have met her. She would have made you laugh your guts out. This little blurb is in her memory and to remind all of us who struggle with such things: life is beautiful, hard and incomprehensibly short. So, do what you love and be yourself and stay alive. Your invisible friend, Lisa Douglass.
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