What They Never Tell You

What it’s like is I was in this dream where you were this fucking angel floating up and out all the way up into the sky way up to the ceiling of the whole history of the world. And I go, look Maddie, that angel’s got glitter coming off her in giant plasticine waves of blue and white fluorescent light and Maddie goes, uh huh.

Maddie was naked. Lying on the floor making snow angels in the blanket her old man left the last time he came to hang out here. And what happens is Maddie’s arms go numb and she starts to cry. Crying out JOHNNIE, what the fuck did you do, did you dose me? MY ARMS ain’t working. What the fuck did you do? Only I didn’t do fuck. I was just there staring up at the crystalline angel of death of this reality and thinking to myself, why isn’t she naked so I could get a vision inside of here to finally see how the human female animal works. And I go to myself, no chick who had my heart or I was just fucking let me look up there with a flashlight and it was something I had always wanted. BRAN muffins. Do you remember how we used to think Bran muffins were like some kind of god’s gift when really they weren’t good unless heated and covered in melted butter? Some diet. But, there was just her floating up and above us---that angel chick. Maddie on the floor me on the side of the bed. The bourbon almost gone as and as right then it dawns on my brain that my heart had become this thing. A thing I covered up with mud. The dead mud like Rudolph used on his nose from Rudolph the Claymation one from childhood. Whenever he got around that one pretty reindeer chick his nose would glow out and burn off all the mud. BRIGHTLY GLOWNG. Like he couldn’t cover his true feelings. Remember when he covered that shit to make himself fit in with all the ordinary reindeer and they laughed at him and called him names like BLINKY, fucking BLINKY ON AND BLINKY OFF and it didn’t matter, cause the name stuck anyway even though after the clay on the nose made his voice sound like he had adenoids. Do you remember adenoids? I haven’t heard that shit in a million years.----BUT----then after the mud took away the sparkly shine of my heart, then I put TAR on it. I let the tar dry so it was like this sticky ball of tar heart thing.  And then I put a quick drying glue on it over that and heated it up with a flame thing like you use not when you solder, but when you start a big fire or smoke a hit of crack. Like that. That was what was going down when Maddie had a seizure and her eyes aren’t looking anywhere on purpose, just kind of everywhere at once like as in if she were a fucking crazy person or a retard, no offense to anyone who is. But the angel of death was like talking about this dead cat and how the dead cat was fun to gut but even in the morning or mourning of her twisted guilt she licked the knife. And all of a sudden I call 911 cause Maddie ain’t faking. This is it.  And while I waited for the ambulance, the glittery angel taunted me with all my fears since childhood. Like you aren’t good enough and don’t have the OP shorts, instead you have the fucking KMART shorts cause your mom doesn’t understand how you’ll get your ass beat if you don’t fit in. And the whole time you’re rocking and saying to this angel. Please stop being mean. Just be cool, man, you’re a fucking angel from god and stuff. But angels don’t listen. That’s what they never tell you.

the shallow things you can throw away later

you didn't expect her to be this way. what you expected was the biting screaming kind of thing. but instead it wasn't. she held your hand. the veil of toughness left completely and it startled you. you came too quick and then you tried to tell her how shitty that made you feel and how if she kissed you she'd fall in love with you, so you were only trying to protect her, but then when you go her on the couch you kissed her cause it's all you ever really wanted to do. you got so angry that you felt something and you sat there after making excuses for yourself holding her hand with your face buried in her chest. she pet your hair. "you'll get used to it, it really isn't a big deal." but you avoided her afterward, you acted mean when she said, why aren't you talking to me like you used to. you said, "if this happened and i wanted you as my girl i'd hate you forever." she laughed and said, but we aren't in love. i love you, but not that way.

you make excuses for how to not see her anymore. you tell her you are rehearsing or too busy when all you really do is comb for chicks on the internet. you keep meeting them and seeing them and deciding that nothing really matters cause you live at home. you miss your ex. you don't have a job and even if you did you think it's in bad taste to buy a coffee for a girl. it sends the wrong message.

you've read too many of those books about how to act like you don't like someone to get laid and you have become a hollywood cliche. she tells you she sees beyond all that and it makes you think she is deranged for liking you because you really are a douche. a total douche who runs around town telling people what kind of pussy a girl has or how someone's ass is too big or how the girl smelled weird or had nipples that bugged. in fact, your hatred of women runs so deep that it's all you can do to not tell them to their face how phony most of them are. but you have nothing to give them, that's the part that makes you hate them. you don't love yourself. that's the other part.

she isn't phony. and her vagina is perfect. like an alien you tell her. if an alien were a 15 year old hot girl.

if you give your heart, you will die. dead like forever.

so, you act like a dick and it empowers you. you tell yourself that she is out to capture a man, you never see an ounce of purity in anyone because you don't have an ounce of purity. or if you do, it's locked down deep where no one can crush you anymore.

she tells you how she's still in love with someone else and he hates her now and it doesn't matter because guys hate her all the time. you laugh at her suffering. you tell her she is annoying. you think when she says it makes her want to die that she is lying. you don't care about her at all. you actually hope she dies too. then you can feel better. cause no one on okcupid ever asks you anything tangible. once she's gone, so is your connection to the earth. you pray to god for that. but she doesn't die. instead she persists.

she tells you about the time the gang beat up her ex and how he had his jaw wired shut and he would go into the bathroom and slice open his chest saying, "look what you made me do." it creates distance because now you are among them. the men who loved her and the love turned to hate. you are ordinary--a person without your own thoughts on things, you are only concerned with what other people think. you are just exactly like them because you are too afraid to just be yourself.

what this does it make you die a little. every single time you see her, you hate her more and more. and she says, we never even fucked enough to get it going. and you go, yeah, but i don't want one of us to catch feelings and you mean her, but that's because in her case it's always "them" catching feelings and you want to kill her ego for it.  if you knew anything, you would know that her heart might like you, it might think you have a great big brain and it might like to fuck you like that one time you took her from behind. but the thing you will never get past is your hatred for women and your taste for killing anything good. if you can squish a girl and bully them enough, they will give up, you hope. then THAT will make you a man. you don't know yet you don't have to hurt others to be happy.

whenever she is around all you can do is think of getting her naked, so it doesn't really allow for friendship. you tell her, i have to fuck a bunch of other girls right now, cause fucking you is like going to the olympics. in the way where you don't fucking go if you don't train first. and you think the thoughts that everyone thinks to themselves and never says. if i were a more authentic person, if i were kinder, smarter, better in bed. but then you think again. there can't be any picket fences, you like younger girls and even if she is the best lover and has the best brain, you like the ones that won't call you or connect with you cause it is they who make you feel safe. safe and alone so you won't be too disappointing to them. you don't want something real. you want shallow things that you can throw away later.

you walk out into the street and look for something to kill. killing has been on your mind a lot and you don't want to tell her cause even though she is innocent in many ways---too trusting and not judgmental, she would not go for killing even a baby mouse. baby mouses don't feel anything, like they don't have names and stuff, you tell yourself. you are going down to the river, where you can kill something. you don't want her to know. you avoid her and you hope she dies somehow so you can kill things without her knowing. you are deathly afraid to be around her as if she will know things like a mind reader or a gypsy knows things. there was a time when you couldn't look her in the eyes and that time is back upon you. she can't understand how her vagina can make a person feel scared or less than or insecure, but you know she has never been a man. and doesn't understand man thoughts. the bad thing is you have absolutely no one to tell. you can't tell anyone because this one guy in your circle used to be her boyfriend and then another guy liked her and bailed to go fuck around as much as possible until his soul got better. you are a shitty person and no one will tell you that because they don't know what you are doing and how you feed on other people's pain.

all you really wanted was to take from someone. you didn't know that she was more predatorial than you, so you can tell yourself anything you want. you still know what is true. the reason you can't be around her is that she makes you hate yourself more than you already do.

Banksy Liberated

The Banksy has finally been liberated because the gas station changed owners. Fuck to the yes. The old owners kept this little doll carefully hidden for YEARS. Tonight she is free. Thank FUCKING GOD for new shop owners.

Amen Los Angeles, we can finally sleep now that our art isn't hidden. Now, let's rally to free the one outside the Beverly Cinema.

I made the poor dude inside take one picture then took several thousand more. I don't know how long she'll be there. You know how people like to steal shit. 

sometimes you lie, sometimes i do too

i am alone sitting outside the house where you wait. you have what i want, the yellow dress, my journal.

i tell you a lie, it has to do with how much i love you and how much i'm going to do better.

you stare out your window at me, jerk your head telling me to hide from your girl as she's leaving. her hair is pulled back, that thin frown ever present.

but that isn't the only thing. the only thing that there is, is need. my need versus your need, yours for power over me, mine for my journal, which carries not only my secrets but the secret of jared.

jared was my friend once, he lived in the middle of the city. we used to be musicians. i went to his house before he became an actor, he gave me a book by alan watts. is that his name? something about beat poetry. or the way of the beat poet. some dumb spiritual name for a book that i never read and would never read. spirituality is fake. trust me. i've seen the fake meditators who beat their children and cheat their friends out of every last sense of themselves for the sake of filling up the empty.

jared's boyfriend was there. i was supposed to act like i didn't know they were a couple. what they were didn't matter to me. i was just lonely.

that night we drank and jared kept disappearing, spoons were black, and people were passed out on the floor of that giant apartment building when you go up cahuenga from hollywood blvd. and turn right on franklin. the first building. you know the one.

we were up at the top. there was a fire escape, but no one even opened a window, we just listened to records---the sex pistols, marrianne faithfull, the cure, the clash until one of the needles just made that sound and all of us were too out of it to do anything.

robbie was his name, jared's friend. he died in that room with us, but i left sometime around 4 am, out walking around looking for my car. never afraid of the street. so close to gunshots and the jail that hides right near capitol records.

jared's secret is in my journal. i need it back. he's not going to be implicated, nothing happened, someone just took too much and i thought he was sleeping by the time i left.

you were there too, but i never told you. i didn't want you to carry that with you. i'll carry it for everyone, plus you told me that things made you break, that was when i stopped telling you the truth. maybe we can remember it together sometime. me on one side of the table knowing something i will never tell you and you on the other side asking me for something in exchange for my journal. but, at some point i'll go get us starbucks and i'll put the pill in yours and you will pass out and i will get what's mine.

i have some secrets i want to protect---none of them are mine---you and i lived--- when so many others were dead on accident.

If I Die Before I Wake, Burn My Stories First

If die before I wake, Burn My Stories First

I was looking at the back of the world’s ugliest sweater. It’s the kind with the ribbon that goes in and out of the holes in a line of the pattern. You would like it. You think that sort of thing is pretty. We like different things. You like the ornate, I like simple, stripped down things, distilled to their soul. Other than that, we fuck good. You cook for me, but you have gotten fat and boring. I like the sex, but can’t stand the fantasy football. The way you sit at your broken red computer and lurk there and complain about a dude named Carnival and then stare outwardly when I notice that nothing is going on inside your mind. The brain you pretended to have is all gone and you resent me for that. You aren’t doing your dreams and you resent me for that. You resent me for everything, but won’t say it.

One day you tell me I look like Rosanna Arquette in this movie about a deep sea diver. The next day you tell me, “That jacket of yours makes me want to die. You make me want to die.”

Who cares. We are just wasting days until one of us bleeds out.

Sometimes I float up out of my body and look down at myself and wonder what my mom would think of my low choice in a man. I do not think about what my dad would think, cause that would only hurt. It’s like I’m behind a screen of smoke or some kind of thick vapor that prevents me from seeing the truth, which is your hair is unfortunate and you already told me all your stories and they were all good ones but only about other people. You have no real stories to tell because you have to hide what you’ve actually done to people. If you keep talking about your friends, maybe I won’t ever know.

All you had was a record player. What did we wear? Nothing. You wanted us naked at the keyboard and at the bass. But you couldn’t concentrate. You’d write one line and have to go smoke or call your dealer or text your old girlfriend, the one that loves you even if you hurt her and like to hurt people because you have nothing going on inside. It makes you feel important to hurt her, like you meant something once even if you’ve wasted your whole entire life.

You told me, “Baby? I like to suck a dick every now and then. what do you think of that?”

I said, “I think you shouldn’t tell me about it, but if you really like it, you should do it.”

In my mind I’m thinking, whose dick? Some tranny? Or even if you sucked any of your bisexual friends’ dicks then what would happen to me? Maybe you should use a mouth condom, but even though everyone talks about mouth condoms—does anyone know anyone who has ever actually used one?

You disappear one afternoon and hide in bushes up near Dodger Stadium smoking crack with homeless people. I wonder if you suck their dicks. If they are clean and if they smell like homeless people dirt smell or if they smell good like a clean dick.

Whenever you disappear, I wonder about girls not realizing you prefer sexual contact with boys or men or whatever. I consider that you and I made love for 5 hours at a time without breaks. I wonder what that means and think about it categorically like this: but if he likes cock and made love to me for 5 hours what does that equal? Like an equation for such a thing could equal something tangible. As if making love equals love. Or the words spoken are stand ins for action never taken. I love you, but have to go suck a dick and shoot crack and tell everyone else all my stories so they can tell me I’m amazing. To you, love equals absence. In a way, that’s true for all of us. Love that can equal an absence makes sure you can never really be invested in anyone. Not in the way where if you invested your full heart, that to lose a person would unearth you. Take you apart bit by tiny bit until you were nothing.

One day you came back, you were clean again for 3 days, I dosed you in the bed and gave you Suboxone and Xanax. You told me you were going to see your son. But, then you made pancakes.

“I have to go get high.”

“But I thought you were seeing Jack.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t you see him and then get high?”

“I can’t wait is all.”

“Don’t you love him?”

“I love him but don’t want to give him anything. Same for you.”

I was all sucked out at that point. But, your friend had been calling me over and over wanting to see me. It didn’t mean anything, it was just loneliness. The loneliness of a love that is only an absence not a presence.

I slept with him. I’m not proud nor would I ever tell you. He hated you and called you a cockroach and didn’t understand how you could end up with someone like me. He thought he was better than you in bed and one day, while he was inside of me he said:

“I bet you’ve never had anyone make love to you like this.”

I started laughing. I laughed so hard and long that he rolled off of me and looked sad.

“You still love him, I can’t believe it.”

“No, it’s not love, it’s the obsession with why someone would hurt me. It’s not even the same.”

I call that dude jackhammer because that was his idea of sex. He thought he knew what he was doing even though it was clear he didn’t know and wouldn’t ever know. I didn’t want to take that away from him. It bored me to see someone so engaged in something that didn’t even interest me, but I needed someone to pretend to love me again. Not in the same way you pretended to love me. The way you pretend to love is more believable. That’s why there’s a string of broken hearts all around you.  I always said you should have been an actor.

But, now, I hate you with my whole heart, just like you wanted.

But, I still want my stuffed puppy dog back. The one that was supposed to protect you while you were shooting drugs. He wasn't supposed to be yours forever. He was just like a companion or something. Do you even know his name is Flip Wilson? I don't like the idea of him with that girl you met in rehab. Her talking all baby talk to him and stuff. I don’t like the idea of that dog in your sober living with the dudes that peep each other through the hole in the closet. That dog saves lives and he wants to come back to live with me, but if he has scabies or something then forget it.