Oh Man, This is Gonna Suck

Ok. I have to say that I have MAJOR apprehensions about posting this so-called "story" that I wrote 20+ years ago. I don't know how to even get the thing started. It doesn't even have a title let alone a good flow. Jeezus, what am I doing? Mira, please understand that I am absolutely not hunting for a compliment or phishing for sympathy by sharing this thing. I'm am simply holding myself to my own philosophy of "Full Disclosure" which is the idea of airing out the dumb/embarrassing/ridiculous things that a lot of people shove into a closet in their subconscious until it chews up their brains. I also know that None of This Shit Matters (N.O.T.S.M.) so what's the real harm here? There is no risk actually so let's get into it in its full, unedited glory shall we? I'm even going to resist the urge to comment in the middle of the text.

Oh man. Ok... here it is:

Unnamed Short Story, Part I

It was one of those amazingly cold days in February when Arthur Williamson's life collapsed like a beehive hairdo in a rain storm. Arthur, a thin, little man with a propensity towards blue shirts, never took shock well. He once had to be sedated and hauled off in restraints at a surprise birthday party his mother had thrown for him. So it wasn't unusual that Arthur lost his already weakened grip on reality that frigid winter morn when Lorraine, his wife of twelve years, informed him of her plans to leave him.

He met her, Lorraine that is, during his senior year at college. She worked in the campus store that Arthur frequented to purchase odds and ends. Often he would go in just to see her and buy something he didn't need just to feel her hand as they exchanged moneys. One day while buying a disposable douche, he found the nerve to ask her out in his slightly moist voice. She, much to his amazement and joy, accepted. Three months later they were engaged.

They were wedded on September 14th, 1979. Lorraine, a less than attractive woman with an incredible lack of style, wore a frightfully hideous green gown with lavender ruffles. Arthur was decked out in his best suit, a wide-lapeled skyblue number and sporting shiny white shoes. The preacher was struck blind by the tackiness and had to be replaced at the last minute by a tugboat captain with bad gums.

Their honeymoon was not a great success. Their cabin in northern Vermont, which was recommended by Arthur's cousin Sol, turned out to be a 10 x 20 foot room with no heat. Running water consisted of a river two miles north of the cabin through the woods. The bathroom was, of course, the nearest grove of trees. They did not enjoy themselves which is both unfortunate and understandable.

They bought a house in Malden, Massachusetts, a sad, sorry, little place (their house that is, not Malden. Malden is rather dull but it is irrelevant to this tale). A pathetic example of American architecture was the Williamson's abode. It did not so much assault the visual pallet as it left sort of an odd taste in the mouths of those unfortunate enough to view it. Lorraine and Arthur loved their home however and, apart from a little water damage and the occasional evil possession of their cats, the house loved them too.

Arthur, who at the time of their marriage was working part time as a assistant donut filler at the Red Jelly Flavor Cafe, finally landed a decent job in 1980. That illustrious position was none other than assistant to the assistant of the assistant of the head accountant at the firm of Dull, Dull, and Humdrum. Lorraine, who was quite proud of Arthur's accomplishment, only gained 10 pounds that year in appreciation.

For years they lived in uninhibited boredom, enjoying T.V. and the lack of any real communication. Arthur, who had had only one other lover apart from Lorraine (and she had threatened to kill him, his family, and then herself if anyone found out about it), was not very skilled in this area. Lorraine had by 1984 given up on sex with him completely and discovered cats as an alternative (not as lovers mind you but as a distraction from her unsatisfied needs). This was probably for the best anyway considering the possible outcome of their lovemaking. It makes one shudder.

She had a string of cats from 1984 - 1991 numbering near ten. The ones that didn't commit suicide either ran away or were taken by the house. The house killed a total of five cats over the years, usually luring them to the garbage disposal.  One would hear a humming, a startled "Meow!" and a sound like GGGGRRRRRUUUUNNNCCHHHH!! All was quiet after that, excepting the satisfied rumblings audible from the disposal. Another popular way with the house was a sudden, deadly blast of heat from a vent as the cat strolled over. This was less frequent as the house was leery of leaving tangible evidence. Lorraine wasn't particular about life span of the cats anyway. As long as they were cute for a while she was satisfied.

Lorraine started to get the "seven-year itch" around their fourth year of marriage, but didn't let on about it. She was content with being discontented and glad to have something to complain about to the women at the Big n' Hippy (a full-figured women's clothing outlet store just a mere waddle from her house). She spent many hours fantasizing about how she would tell Arthur she was leaving him. She planned to tell him at the breakfast table just as he was shoving a pop tart into his mouth. She originally thought of telling him as he dunked his pop tart into his coffee but thought better of it because often when Arthur was performing such a task, it would go awry. The most common mishap associated with the pastry baptism was when the pressure that Arthur exerted on the tart was far too much for it to take along with the weight of the liquid it was busy acquiring and therefore it would break apart leaving a goodly amount of itself in his coffee. This never failed to completely baffle Arthur and he would spend the next 10 to 15 minutes attempting to rescue the coffee-logged pop tart from drowning in his beverage. Usually, but not always, he would not succeed and end up just drinking the pop tart ladened coffee anyway.

Lorraine believed that if she told him before he could get to this point of his breakfast ritual she could save herself a lot of time. She would grin as she thought of Arthur's expression, with a soggy pop tart in his mouth as she told him. He would probably stare at her and maybe cry or something. The breakfast table was also a good choice to break the news she thought because of the lack of any sharp utensils within easy reach. She didn't believe that he would become violent, it wasn't like him, and even if he did, she outweighed him by a good hundred pounds. Surely there would be butter knives about but death by spreading seemed far-fetched at best. She wondered how he would deal with no more "Lorraine-bottom", as he sometimes called her, and if his mind would be able to grasp the sheer magnitude of it all. Usually she dismiss these thoughts at this point and head into the kitchen to eat with the refrigerator door open. This was a good time for Lorraine and her bottom too.

When the day finally came for her to tell him, he was not even eating a pop tart but had elected to have a waffle instead. He was munching the waffle and taking huge gulps of coffee at the same time (a habit that grosses many folks out but one which Arthur enjoyed as much a s a cheesy paperback science fiction novel. He usually carried one around in his hip pocket). Lorraine thought that this deviation from his normal routine might be a sign of some sort but, not being particularly bright, she ignored her instincts and went ahead as planned.

"Arthur," she began. He only grunted and took another gulp of coffee to get the waffle as soft and soupy as possible, the way he liked it. "Arthur, I want a divorce." she finished.

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Fuuuuuuuuck...wow. I have to end Part I here because I just can't take any more at this time. Ok, I'm going to post the next installment next week and I will continue until the original text just ends super abruptly. Jebus christmas that was ... well, y'know...just... it.. fuck me. OKTHXBYE.

I Will Bring The HEAT

I always liked to write stories. I actually used to like to draw too. I'd doodle on all my notebooks in school which was a better use of the paper than note taking since I never developed the ability to take notes very effectively. To this day my notes from meetings usually have a bunch of broken sentences with IMPORTANT!! and maybe a couple of arrows pointing to some disjointed sentence fragment or barely legible phrase. If only when referring back to these notes I could then put those words into some kind of context perhaps I'd be more successful or at the very least less easily distracted. It would also help if I remembered to check the notes at all. It is clearly a skill set I do not possess.

The drawing thing kind of fell by the wayside over the years. I do still have a tendency to make rather elaborate scribbles using my favorite rapidograph pens occasionally. It's not as satisfying as writing for me though. In college - you know what, I really can't say "in college" in the same way that people who actually attended classes and, y'know, learned stuff can. I kinda fucked that experience up if I'm honest and if "kinda" means "totally".  I was super immature and neglected the opportunity completely. Anyway... In college I took a creative writing course and while I eventually blew off that class as well, the teacher (professor? I forget) encouraged me to keep on writing in order to work on expressing whatever the hell was going on in my giant noggin. I thanked her by bailing on her class and college in general. I'm the worst.

one of my lil' doodles

In 1991 I was a two-time college dropout living in Jamaica Plain, working at Copy Cop as a customer service representative and making $7.50/hr (what's up ladies?). I had an idea for a short story and so I wrote what I thought at the time was a hilarious and super interesting story about a man who, having given up on his dreams and aspirations, has allowed himself to become a shell of the person he had once hoped to become. Even that description gives this story more weight than it really deserves. I wrote this thing without an outline or an understanding on how to completely tell a story. There was a complete lack of any thought on where the story was going or what I was trying to say. I also ran out of steam halfway through and failed to write an ending. That's not entirely true now that I think about it. I seem to remember cobbling together an ending that was so wholly unsatisfying that I must have just torn up the sheets of paper. Oh, did I forget to mention that I wrote this thing out long hand? Yep. No computer or even a typewriter involved. Just straight up handwriting on what looks to be very expensive resume paper (thanks Copy Cop). I also found some lyrics that I wrote too. Jury is out on whether those get posted.

At some point I stuffed all these handwritten pages into an expandable folder and forgot about them. Recently, while cleaning out the attic at ye olde homestead, I came across that very same folder and those pages. At first I was all super nostalgic and happy to see them. Then I read the story itself. Oof. Oh my. Look, I'm not saying that I'm a good writer at all now but man oh man I'm certainly better than I used to be. At the very least I have an improved perspective.

Handwritten nonsense story + general disaster area = my desk space

My first instinct was to stuff the pages back into that folder and abandon it in the attic for another couple decades. My second thought was to throw them all out. My final and, I hope you'll concur, best idea was to share this stinker with you all. Yep. Just post this mess and let you drink in the cray-cray. I have a policy of "full disclosure" that I have upheld for many years now and therefore I have zero choice in this matter. What I plan to do is to post the entirety of what I have why resisting the DEEP TEMPTATION to edit what I was scrawled on those 24# ivory linen pages (remember when printing your resume on fancy pants stationary was a thing?). The first installment will be posted early next week and I will put up several posts over the next few weeks until the story abruptly ends (as the original does). Keep in mind not only does this tale have zero point, it's also clunky and, well, shitty. I also discovered while re-reading it that it is mean-spirited and border-line misogynistic. So, uh...sorry about that. I wasn't in the best place relationship-wise back then. So look forward to that? Ok, thanks.

Not So Great Expectations

Have you ever had a moment where you didn't feel like you had anything to add to the conversation, so you just sat there and listened to everyone else talking? Have you ever had that feeling last for months? Yea, me too. As it turns out, I came very close to giving up this blog (wow, that word is still around huh? We still haven't come up with a better way to describe whatever the hell this type of website is? That, my friends, is a failure of our society and I weep for us). I have already neglected Seriously Awesome Monsters to the point of embarrassment (the last post was December of last year), so I'm already on the slippery slope that will launch me into the abyss of zero creativity. Why not just give in and let this thing shrivel up and blow away on the hot, dusty, vaguely poop-smelling wind of the interwebs? Why not indeed. I mean if I'm only coming up with terrible paragraphs like this stinkbag then what, exactly, is the point?

Wow, that sounds like I'm super depressed or something and that is NOT the case. I'm only mildly depressed. Like, a hug and a nice cup of herbal tea will snap me out of it, kind of depression. I'm in a funk I guess. Although, "being in a funk" makes me think of George Clinton and he always makes me smile so maybe that's not the best description. Look, all I know is I fucking haven't posted in a while and I'm not entirely sure why. I just.....didn't. But I am now right? So that's something isn't it? Yes? Question marks?

Uh, so what's up? How've you been? Good, good. Glad to hear it. Oh? I didn't realize that she...she said WHAT? Oh, that bitch. Look, you gotta get away from that toxic relationship then. She's trying to bring you down to her level. What about that guy? The one from the place? Yea, him. Cool! So you hooked up? And? You're still kinda seeing him but you don't want to put labels on it in case he doesn't feel the same way about whatever it is you're doing together. Ok, that's a bit confusing but whatevs. I've been with the same person since 1992 so I don't have a lot of experience in the dating scene as it is currently structured. My only insight was Crazy, Stupid, Love and can we all agree that Ryan Gosling is a dreamboat? We can? Awesometown.

Me? Oh, uh, not much really. I mean, yeah shit has happened in the last 3 months but it wasn't anything that I think is really interesting. At least not interesting enough for this super exciting state of the art cutting edge fucking award winning bloggy blog blog blog y'know? I mean, isn't this the very same bloggy blog where I talked about urinals? Yea, it is. This is also the exact same place where, not too long ago in fact, I discussed my inability to keep myself from crashing into things. I've even gone so far as to take up an anti-formal shorts position. So, yeah, I can't just let ANYTHING that pops into my head get posted here. I have fucking standards. Seriously, would you really want to hear about me going to a class at the Massachusetts Firearms School? Or how our crazy neighbor is trying to get us to take down our brand new deck? Or, what if I posted, in installments, a short story that I wrote in 1991? Nah, that shit is played out son. Let's just relax and enjoy the fact that I'm posting again and holy shit, isn't that enough? Of course it is.

Eyes Forward Dummy

I just bit the ever-loving-shit out of my tongue. I'm sitting at my desk going through emails, plotting out my day whilst enjoying some lovely sliced fruit, when my tongue just decides that it wants to see what it'd be like to lay on top of my molars for a just a split second too long. You'd think that after hanging out in my mouth for lo' these past 40+ years it'd understand that this is a terrible idea. I bit down on it and it made a horrifying "CRUNCH" sound in my head. I'm pretty sure that other people could have heard it, that's how loud it was. Oh fuck that hurt. I think I'm bleeding. Luckily I have a little mirror here at my desk (so I can check out my eyeliner and rouge) so's I can inspect the damage. Hold please while I do so. Yep. Blood. Nice work stupid. I can't even chew properly. Fuck me. I didn't even bit the tip (ooh, that sounded wrong). I munched down on the fucking side of it. The thick part (again, poor choice of words there). Ugh. It looks a little shredded. Grosstown, Stupidville. Popluation: Me.

I'm pretty fortunate in that where I work is flexible enough to allow me to have non-traditional hours (I'm usually at my desk by like 7:20-ish and I skate by 4pm). This permits me to avoid the bulk of the traffic on my dumb commute. That's not to say I just sail into work as the only person on the road, it just makes it less shitty is all. I appreciate this y'see. Otherwise I'd have to go back to using the commuter rail as my main form of transport and well, fuck that. I like the idea of public transportation as long as it is all you mahfuckahs taking the train leaving me to drive on unclogged roads. In practice, the MBTA is wholly unreliable and, frankly, not significantly cheaper or convenient. This coming from a guy who used to work for an energy conservation company (3 different times!) and –  lest we forget – Green-fucking-peace.

On the days when I can't leave on time due to a meeting or whatever, I can end up spending quite a bit of time sitting in traffic behind people judging their behavior, usually unfavorably. The Look-Talkers (those drivers who have to look at the person in the passenger seat while they are talking while in command of a 4,000lb vehicle), The Lane-Drifters, The Slow, The Tailgaters, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with these morons. Recently I was stuck traffic in Revere near the Wonderland T stop and in the left hand lane was this car full of laughing teenage girls. They were shriek-laughing and dancing to some pop song and generally being young. I glanced over at them because the one who was driving was far more concerned about how much self tanner she had on than where her car was headed. She was clearly having difficulty with the concept of painted lanes and I was genuinely concerned that she was going to play bumper pool with my car. Once I had determined that she had regained control of her shitbox, I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the Disapproving Eyes of the woman in the car behind me. She thought I was checking out these girls in a super-creepy-leering-old-fart way and was slowly shaking her head. She was JUDGING ME and finding me GUILTY AS CHARGED. Fuck you lady.

Traffic continued to crawl along and I kept my head pointed straight ahead. I didn't like the idea that I had been labeled as a pervert by this lady behind me (yes, I know I'm projecting here....relax) and I wanted to prove my innocence by COMPLETELY ignoring the car full of banshees mere feet from me in the next lane. After a couple of minutes of this I started to get annoyed with this scenario. Who was that lady to think poorly of me? She doesn't know me. Who made her judge and jury? That's totally my job!! Then I noticed up ahead on the sidewalk was the living embodiment of a creepy guy's fantasy girl. Asian? Check. Schoolgirl outfit? Check. Pigtails? Check and mate. All she was missing was the Sailor Moon outfit or perhaps a massive lollypop. She was Knives Chau in a nutshell. I saw that she was walking towards where we all were sitting in traffic and I decided that since this lady had already judged me as a creepy creep, then I was gonna go ahead and just stare right at this girl as she walked by. And I did. And just as I was about to continue my stare like a full-on skeevy meathead, the girl glanced over at me and A) caught me! B) I realized that omg she's like 15 or 16! and C) I felt EXACTLY as I should: A super creepy old dude. Bleah.

So uh, sorry random asian schoolgirl. I'm gross. And screw you lady in the car behind me. You're a tailgater anyway.

Religious Bigotry

Religion to me has been a conundrum for some time now. I was raised Catholic and as a little kid I was a true believer. I bought into the mythology completely and without wavering. I knew there was a heaven and hell and just as surely as I knew my own name (it's Mark by the way...see? I still remember!). There were rules about what behavior was good and there were specific things you absolutely could never EVER do. Not only did I never doubt their authority, it never even dawned on me as a child to question it. I went to church every Sunday as well as CCD (a.k.a. "Sunday School" although it was never actually on Sunday. It was usually during the week and at night). The ritual of the sermons and the repetition of the odd little play that we put on every week at church with the priest – here's where he will stand up there in that shiny dress thing and he will say these words and then we will all respond in a monotone with this phrase. Then someone will ring a bell thing or play one sharp chord on the organ and then we will stand up or kneel or something en masse. Wash, rinse, repeat – it was comforting. I liked the structure of the mass and how the building was so physically intense. It must be the truth if they went through all this trouble right? I even liked confession and would sometimes make up stuff just to see if I could get more Hail Mary's assigned to me. I think you will agree that I may have misunderstood the concept a little.

As I got a little older, maybe 12 or 13, I started to have some serious doubts. The cracks in the stories became too large to ignore and the very same ritualistic nature of the Sunday mass that I used to look forward to began to irritate me with its repetitiveness. I couldn't understand the point of saying the same things over and over again, week in and week out. It seemed absurd. About this time I had convinced my parents that it was perfectly ok to let me go to church on my own. I would get up early on Sunday so that I could go to the early mass (which was like 9am or something like that). But instead of actually going to church, I would ride my bike downtown and just goof off for 45 minutes. After the service was over, I'd ride by the church to see which priest had been giving mass so that if my parents asked who did the sermon, I could rattle off the name. Not a terrible lie in the grand scheme of things but I do still feel bad about the cowardly deception all these years later.

Why didn't I just tell them that I didn't want to go to church anymore? After all, my dad had kinda fudged on going regularly by this time so the precedent had been set. But my mother was still a firm believer (and remained so right up to the end) and I'm pretty sure she would have said "No way, kid. You're going to church. End of story." Things were not "discussed" at our house. Things were decided and you had to play along. I don't mean to make that sound like such an ominous thing because it really wasn't. It just ... was. And I would still go to church occasionally. Maybe I was experimenting (as I now understand it) to see if my waning faith could be reclaimed, that maybe it was only a temporary lapse and by going to one more inspiring mass I'd be re-calibrated or whatever. But nope. It didn't take. I couldn't get past the idea that the priest was just some guy. He couldn't POSSIBLY know 100% for sure that all of this wasn't just complete nonsense. Why then was he so adamant in trying to convince others that he was right?

By the time I entered high school I was no longer going to church and had entered the lapse Catholic phase. I didn't know what I thought about religion or god or spirituality or anything really. If someone asked me about religion, I still identified myself as Catholic but all the strength behind that word was gone. I just wanted to live my dumb life and not address the subject of faith and honestly it was really easy to avoid. I guess I was an agnostic at this point because while I didn't think organized religion (of any kind) had the answers, I still had doubts as to whether or not there was/is a higher power/god. I simply didn't think about it that much, if at all. I was too wrapped up in my own day-to-day drama and narcissistic to think beyond myself in any capacity. In other words: A teenager.

After I moved out of my parents house I would have some discussions with friends about the subject of religion and while I don't think we really thought we were solving all the world's problems with our meandering drunken blather, I did find that these conversations moved me further away from what my parents and the church had steadfastly taught as the absolute truths. I liked talking to people who had had different backgrounds and interesting perspectives on what it meant to be religious. It helped me work out the confused thoughts and nagging doubts I had been ignoring for years. I didn't want to think that all of the stuff I had been taught was wrong, but it was looking more and more like this was the case.

It took me a few more years to ramp up the courage to admit to myself and others that I don't believe in god, the afterlife, miracles and all of rest. I became an atheist. And it wasn't a bad thing either. It was liberating. I grew up believing that doubting god's will or daring to flat out deny his very existence was not only unfathomable but downright impossible. You could insult god by not believing and in turn incur his wrath. Why would you doom yourself to hell by thinking these thoughts? Ok, the stories are a little dated and maybe there was some creative license with a few details but why not play it safe and hedge your bets with the ol' agnostic route? You can always reverse yourself at the last minute before you die and wind up in heaven with a quick "forgive me Father" prayer. Right? Isn't that basically what the guy who was crucified next to Jesus did? But no, I can't. I won't. I don't know how to fake it.

The problem that I have had with all of this is as a born-again atheist (is that possible?), was that I have been struggling with really strong opinions about people who identified as religious. I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them. I was condescending towards their beliefs and while I've never actually said anything to right to their faces, I certainly was judgmental and probably somewhat arrogant towards them (I'm a terrible actor). I was wrong to do that and basically I was being a religion bigot. If that's not a thing, it is now. I had to reconcile my own belief system (for lack of a better term) and how it shapes my world view as a newly formed atheist, now that I was "out of the closet" (so to speak). Should I "turn the other cheek" about religion or would I be a zealot and bang the drum loudly for the atheistic view? Well I certainly can't be a dick about this...so I've taken the "live and let live" approach. Because if I think that the priest is just some guy who doesn't really know if what he's talking about is really true, then who's to say that I'm not exactly like him? As I have shown time and time again, I'm a huge dummy.

Where am I going with all of this? I guess I'm not entirely sure. I've been thinking a lot about this subject lately and with religion AGAIN coming into play this election season, it's really been bothering me that there doesn't seem to be a voice of reason. I do not want religious beliefs to be a deciding factor in policy issues. I'm tired of hearing from wingnuts on both sides of most political debates that our country is doomed and the only way to regain our former glory is to fight over issues like gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. I'm simplifying here of course but for fuck's sake I thought we were all equal in this country. How is it that some groups are more equal than others? I hope that most people who are religious don't think the way that the politicians and pundits on TV seem to believe, but this is making me nervous. Please tell me that social conservatism isn't as widespread and prolific as it appears to be. I can't get my head around that concept. Who the fuck do you think you are if you think you can impose your beliefs on others? Is that what your god would have wanted? I thought it was all about loving each other for who we are? Or was that just a bunch of hippy bullshit?

If you do think that way, then I'm pretty sure by oppressing your fellow human beings by imposing your archaic religious dogma on them is a one-way ticket to hell. Luckily for you though, it's all made up. But for reals, get religion out of politics and let's fix some goddamn potholes.