Tossing

Throwing away the shit that made us sick.  The shit that just sits around. I'm keeping that which I can't replace; the coffee and vomit mornings, the loneliness...the bills go to the shredder, like my flesh and mind...all trash. And I remember hanging out at the bar, waiting for her. But all I wanted was for her to not get hurt... I didn't really care about her, or anyone but I knew this chick was on a bad path. So I fucked her, as if that was better. And we kept fucking and then she broke up with me. "but I was trying to help... oh forget it...you're pregnant? I never came, too bored.

Everything is garbage

I throw away these letters and pictures...Memories. I you can't remember then fuck and kick it out of your mind.I'm sure there's something else to obsess about.

Love Letter On Rolling Papers

I throw my past out, so this will go too, here's a letter written to me on some rolling papers:
"I'll never understand how you can be warm in my hands one minute and bleeding across the page the next. I don't take it personally. God, I wish we were still in bed. Freezing at least that would be together in whatever sense of the word that fucking applies to. Fucking hell I'm from the ...spine down. Does pain make you beautiful or just hurt? Fuck I wish I were asleep. (bang up stapling job by the way)-K
(" Sorry I can't bring myself to say "nice zine" being alive sucks)

Shredder

The "new" paper shredder works, possibly too well...I become temporarily jealous of the past-due bills that dive into separation...new independence, soon to be reincarnated without ever really dying.

Pick Up

She notices the pattern of my purchases as she checks me out; "whiskey, over-proof beer, fish sticks, frozen pizza,looks like you're going to have a good 'Good Friday'!" "I'm working on something," I joke, "internal perspective, opening up a gateway, trying to digest the day...Hagakure, Spicer, Levitch." "And you've got electrolyte-enhanced water, gotta stay hydrated!" I swipe my card. "Reality is a close friend of mine and a real asshole." I know exactly where this day is going...I proceed to the balcony with my laptop and a hammer.

Almost Goodbye

I don't know why men and women get together outside of a few good nights of drinking and fucking. And even those nights parlay into mornings of regret, vomiting, shitting and forgetting. But, as if to totally fucking kill each other, we fall in love or think we fall in love. Afraid to shit and barf and walk back into an empty room from a stained toilet...we pursue, to torture, to not be alone, but hate someone of the sex. To have boring sex, if there's sex at all. I eat pizza more than I fuck and I masturbate more than I drink water. I bowl more than I have sex and I barely bowl anymore. But now when I see a bowling ball, I bash my head on it. And when I walk in the door and hear the TV on, I bash my head. I missed you for so long that in my mind you became "gone" and I fell into routines. So while you sit on the couch and I see you awake, I'm used to going into another room. I stopped missing you and now to see you is a burden. I don't want to be away from you, but we've been away from each other forever. We're the closest long-distance relationship going. You still wear my t-shirts and I still move your contact lenses and hairdryer over when I brush my teeth. I wash your plates and throw your laundry back into the dryer after I'm done cleaning all of my clothes.
And now you're a stranger. And because we've barely really spent much time together over these years, I'm more comfortable with whiskey than you. I didn't want it to be this way. I wanted you to replace whiskey but it's not your fault. It's my mind, my ideas, my unoriginal and bullshit expectations of what I think a life should be. But I'll be dead by the time you're ready to start your new life. And I'll be dead by the time I try to start my new life. And I'll die packing up my shit. I'll die looking at my library. I'll die wishing I was one of those authors. I'll die wishing I had a decent band. I'll die wishing I made the beer I wanted to drink in a place that wasn't here. I'll die always wishing I was somewhere other than here...but with you. But now not with you. Now I have to fantasize about other women, because who would want to be with a guy defeated by a love for you? And I must accept loneliness and embrace it. Masturbating with a beer in one hand and cock in another to a train going by in the night, with shades up, thinking "another insomniac with binoculars might see me, good." Cum on the orange line, cum on the green line....go downstairs and jack off on the new coffee bar at the red line that will surely be destroyed once summer arrives...I could never tell you any of this, because you'll just think I'm negative...probably worthless. I can't tell you anything because you have this new bubble around you while I'm still punching in and punching out and wanting to punch the fuck out of everyone.
This isn't what I wanted. I thought what I wanted was so simple, easy. Love...a beach, laughter. I conned myself into a bullshit dream. I always wanted only the last minute of a love story before the last page or the credits rolled. But now even that last page is just toilet at a Greyhound station.

Minimalist

In an attempt to skim down my possessions I struggle with wondering why I don't just throw it all away?

Thanks, Cats

I pass in and the cats are occupying most of the bed. I raise my head, they look at me and meow something that sounds like "morning, asshole." The woman is gone as always. I didn't piss myself. To celebrate this moment in time, I grab a beer and lie in bed, next to the cats. They don't judge. If they do, they don't articulate it well. I watch some news. I can hear the train outside. I drink. I wonder just how productive I will be today. "Not very" I think and get up to get another beer.

Or Money to the Bum

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

That Fucking Feeling

I can feel how I want to feel...if you disagree with me...I don't know, fuck you? You can disagree with me on facts, but not my innards. You don't have to accept it but that's how shit is. The alcohol just brings it all to the surface...it spills out of my mouth, out through my skin, I stink of truth...truths that I internalized, that forced me to break breakables....just to prove a point. You keep trying to convince me that I'm wrong in my actions, wrong in my thoughts and words. But I only wanted to be with you. Just tell me you don't want to be with me, not for my mind, but for my hands, my knuckles, my skull, glass, plaster, drywall...give them all a break, because I will break it all for you or because of you, with love or hate.

Missing California/Fuck off/ Do Nothing

I remember the pleasures of digging holes. Just digging. Spending an afternoon digging and drinking. The problem with digging holes in the city is that you don't get too far before you start hitting pipes and shit. The dream of digging a hole to the other side of the world is stunted about 2 feet down. Now I don't even have access to dirt. I can stare at train tracks and listen to assholes all day. I can go to a park and maybe dig a hole there but someone will call the cops and call me "weird". I'd dig a hole in the sand but I know what is in the sand...I can't dig away from myself. I can't dig a hole, have my soul crawl inside and leave my body to get taken out by the tide. I wish I could shed these bones, this skin. Crawl into a shell, get caught boiled and eaten by a cunt with margarita breath.

Doom In The Elevator

Closing in on 39, walking into a box that will take me to the 6th floor, apartment 604, I have a vision of absolute death. I was jolted. It was some reminder that there is no forever. Which is fucking fine. I felt that for a moment I had a choice and could live forever, but then I remembered that no matter what, the earth would die. So, eventually I would face death. I remember one afternoon when I was 13 and mowing the lawn. I was afraid of going to high school. It was May and school would begin in September. "Time moves so slowly that that day will never come," I thought as I mowed. That was 26 years ago. I have since attended and graduated. Lived and fucked and passed out in peculiar places. And it's getting close to the tipping point, where life will be sliding toward death instead of accelerating upward to something other than anything I'm ever doing, I'm putting the breaks on to put off death. I got off the elevator and drank 10 beers and hoped it was my day off from work. I thought about going to the Men's Warehouse and jacking off in the dressing room on a suit or something but instead I just drank and watched the fucking train roll in and out of the Roosevelt stop. Fucking death.

An email for Z

I failed to mention why this whole writing about bartending thing has to find an endpoint. There are a few strands and I'll spare you the others but here's the main one. Perhaps you remember "Bloody Knuckles" a piece about a guy from Jersey who kept drinking Bud and taking wads of napkins from the dispenser to slow/stop the bleeding. He was one of my first afternoon customers at the InnBar. Anyway, he came in last week. I didn't recognize him at first although he looks like James Caan. He started talking to one of my female regulars...a fat bitch, nothing to get jealous about but you'd let her suck your cock if you ran out of bricks to break your skull with. Anyway, they're talking and I'm like "I know this fucking guy" then finally it hits me and I flat out tell him " you were here when this bar first opened, and it was a day in Fall, actually, you wore a brown leather blazer and yellow tinted sunglasses, ordered 4 buds and your hand was bleeding..." I didn't want to make him uncomfortable in front of this chick who may or may not wanted to fuck him, I don't care. "He said, yeah, that sounds like me," Then I did say what I shouldn't have said "you wanted to kill your wife and your knuckles were all bloody and I was like what the shit!" "Yeah, we argue a lot," he said calmly, but we've got great daughters. I just took them to Gary, Indiana just to show them how miserable life can be. Then I took them to my home town in Jersey that is just a prison and a junkyard. They don't like me anymore, I'm no Jersey Shore, just a Jersey asshole." "Well, how about another gin for the road, I need to close up here," I said. He whispers to my friend "I need to fuck". She laughed. "Hey," he said and got up, "at least I said it." She turned to me with her mouth open "can you believe that guy?" "Eh, the guy just wants to fuck something," I said, maybe it wasn't the coolest thing to say..."What?" She said. "Come on, you've got three kids, you fucked someone, somewhere at least three times." "Oh my!" she exclaimed. And like all the other girls, women, assholecunts, that think they want to fuck their bartender, I turn the lights out on them. They don't want to fuck me, they want to throw up on me, or complain to me, or get me to their room and then tell me to leave...I know the drill, that's why I don't open the toolbox.

Chapter 1

I don't know where these people come from. I can figure out their geographical information but I can't figure out just where the hell their minds were born and fucked. I'm not saying anywhere is better than anywhere, it's all in the mind. And if you don't have one, well, I'd like to say you're fucked but I'd be wrong. You'll find someone just as mindless as you. And instead of dying, you'll have children and world will remain imbalanced. Fuck you.

Cocaine Nose

‎"I'm going to show this city who is boss..." he said. "I know every motherfucker in this town." He looked like a worm with a bad shirt...haircut. He yelled into the bar that consisted of four people, "come with me if you want to party!" He asked for another martini, I poured water into a martini glass and placed it in front of him. He went to the bathroom and everyone started laughing. When he came back he had this blood-snot-coke mixture that everyone noticed. I handed him a cocktail napkin and he said "what the fuck?" I said "Hey, asshole, I don't want your fucking phone number, but you might want to wipe the bloody coke-snot from your nose..." I stood back and let him make his own decision. He started to sway and say "I'm going to party in every bar in this fucking city!" "Okay, I hear there's a big party going on in your room," I say. "Oh yeah?" He looks at me like he lost his allowance."You should go there," I tell him. "Okay, Okay, I will!" He tries to stand tall, but he's a dumb fucking kid. Like most of these assholes.

The Rope Salesman (original draft)

The Rope Salesman

The bar was empty aside from this guy from Omaha who owned his home healthcare business. I yawned and turned the lights to their “last call” level.  Somehow we got on the subject of bands and we both interested in Social Distortion,…etc. I didn’t mind pouring him beer anymore, now that I knew he wasn’t a complete fuck.

Then in walks in a man that owns the quintessential blue collar worker look. He sits, not realizing that I’m about to close or that he interrupted the only semi-stimulating conversation I’ve had all day. He wants a Bud Light. I pop it and put it down in front of him.

There’s a baseball game on and we start talking about the BoSox, his team. He’s a Boston man.

“I just woke up,” he said drearily. “I was drinking on the plane and then must’ve had a drink every mile from the airport to here,” he swigged.

The home healthcare guy piped in. “So now you’re not going to be able to go back to sleep.”

“Right, I’m going to have to get fucked up again just to take a nap,” I’ve got to get to the convention center in a few hours.

“What’s going on over there,” I said mechanically. I didn’t care, I rarely very do unless there’s a porn convention in town or a whiskey festival.

“Hardware show,” he said. “Store owners, tools, manufacturers, that kind of shit.”

“Do you own a store,” healthcare asked.

“No, I sell rope,” he said with a straight face.

Healthcare and I busted out laughing. A rope salesman. It wasn’t that it was so strange, it’s just that you never hear someone say “I sell rope” or even think about someone saying it.

“I used to manufacturer it,” he pounded his beer and signaled for another. I popped the top and placed it down in front of him. “now it’s all made in China, and it’s all shit.” He sucked back a long swallow and then pulled his shirt collar down to expose a red burn around his neck.

“If it was my rope, I’d be dead,” he said.

“Jesus, when did you try that?” I asked

“Just before I came down here, “ he said and signaled for another beer. “My rope don’t break.”I put the beer down in front of him.“My wife will attest to that,” he snickered. “Well, I guess she can’t really.” He slammed his beer while me and healthcare stared at him, waiting for him to say just kidding, or something, some kind of Ralph Cramden anti-wife joke.

“Whadda I owe you?” was all he offered.

Asshole Grand

I'm not going to embellish the hard fucking truth...that is I really just don't fucking care. Yeah, everyone's shit exhausts me and all I want is to drink endlessly by the beach, have a quick one-two heart attack and die...as the waves roll in and the sun sets. Could be tomorrow if you told me how shitty the next day would be. And the next and the fucking next and the motherfucking next day would be...I only smile to slide through the crushing nonsense that is being a-fucking-wake. I pour, yeah, I fucking pour.And while I consume you exhume your nonsense, your constant noise. You can't even breathe quietly...

Bed Bugs

I walked into the office, the head of maintenance was talking: "It wasn't bed bugs, those guys douched their assholes and shit on the bed" "Douched their assholes? You mean enema?" I said."Yeah, I asked one of them, he said the blood was from his pee pee. They were all fucked up" I looked at the punch clock and thought "should I even bother?"

Hard Drinking Night

Hardest drinks I've had in awhile...walked half the city...had the blade and remembered days and nights when I didn't have to consider a blade. I stabbed the dead, I turned in the river.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Outside,the white girls entertain him and tell him "we're bored" while their husbands watch football in the hotel lounge. Inside, he buys the girls drinks and says, "ladies, these are on me, because someone has to pay attention to you." The white men are intimidated by this guy from Belize and slowly they put their arms around their women. Protection mode. "Nice move," I tell the guy. "I know women," he says and then passes out. The fat white guys take their bored, attractive wives back to their rooms and pass out. The wives start thinking about the guy from Belize who is now in his room and keeps calling the front desk yelling "I ordered a motherfucking pizza, you know where it is. Stop fucking with me." I'm cashing out, boss.

Pajamas

Pajamas to the liquor store...ambition, I have arrived.

Driven To Drink

I didn't want to drink tonight but the drunk asshole at the bar, who drew the correlation between him coating his cock in testosterone gel and his wife growing a beard, drove me to it

Sandwich Guy

Translated note from something I wrote on a bar napkin: That fuck won't shut up about his sandwich. He tells everyone that gets near him about that fucking sandwich. How many times after a man says the word "sandwich" is it legal to stab him in the throat

This Fucking Guy Again

The tone of the night was set perfectly by the guy wearing UGGs who took a shit in his pants on the train. He walked his turd(s) up and down the car, stimulating everyone's gag-reflex. I held my breath for two stops before almost passing out. When he got off the train, he walked past the window with a thin-lipped look of suspicion and satisfaction. Then I punched in. The drunken horny pet-food saleswoman tried to rape my friend, her eyes bulged of wine bloating, she looked like a stepped on rat, dazed...I think she wanted to get fisted.

What Is Wrong With Some Drinkers

What's wrong with so many drinkers is that they insist on mixing their alcohol with Coke or cranberry juice or some other sick government subsidized sweetness; they don't appreciate the burn or the urgency of a solid, neat drink, like the smell of a collapsing book found in a remote corner of the library (next to the guy shitting his pants) or a fucking map found in the junked Le Mans. They spray Lysol onto history and buy catalog featured shirts and download bestsellers and routes that end up in a folder next to the "urination porn" one way or another. These "drinkers" want to minimize the effect of imbibing by way of diabetes...By adding some "mixer" they have avoided the stigma of "socially drinking and bathroom fucking"...where after no orgasm and exhaustion just results in vomit and television quotes that bond and break the holder of the hair...maybe a moist paper towel and breakfast. "But it was like puking on Matt LeBlanc's cock!" Straight liquor gets to the point. I'm going to tell you something and then I'm going to either fuck, kill or sleep. Or do all three in any order the night dictates. Fuck pineapple juice and orange and cranberry too. Fuck Coke and Cognac, vodka and Coke. Right now, the only acceptable mixture is blood and alcohol.

"Guest"

He sat there and with straight (drunken) face and said this: The last time I went home, my toilets were clogged, my engine was jammed and my wife's asshole was falling out. I got the toilet and the car fixed and let's just say there are other assholes to fuck. But no, I took her to the doctor and they shoved her asshole back in (makes stuffing motion with boot). It's all good, I'm fucking this nymphomaniac...I just don't want our kids to meet, they might fuck each other...but shit, I'm gonna go to the gay club and get a free drink...thanks for listening..."

Meat Locker

Outside, the meat locker comes to you. The cold preserves the human cold cuts waiting for the bus, where they will spoil in the summer, sweating through their packaging. The butcher waits. The barbeque sauce is simmering, waiting for the flesh that gives up the fastest, the veal of the scumbag weak. The train keeps pushing assholes that shit themselves from stop to stop. The mail was delivered.

A Sartre Moment

A Sartre moment: cleaning the shit out of this catbox. Washing the dishes. Writing this...what is the afterglow? Masturbating with bacteria-laden hands? Meow, you cunts. Your shitbox is cleaner than my...oh, how the ceiling is falling apart, much like the neighbors, much like me...shit, kitty...I get nothing out of this but you shutting up...I'll clean every toilet in the world, if the world could just shut the fuck up for a moment.

What's the Fucking Point pt. 2 Billion

I don't know why I get up, wake up...Every morning, I've accomplished sleeping for an hour...within that hour I dreamed that my nose hairs had grown so long that they were floating on top of a martini I poured. Then I was lost in a Sears store in the 1980s. Running around displays and racks of clothing, looking for my mother. I told someone to fuck off today, on the curb. I thought about beating up a random child and I bought alcohol. I need to pass out but I can't. So I do some homework, that somehow always earns me an A and I'll consider watching pornography or perhaps the food network. I want to pick up the guitar but if I do, I'll never put it down. It's like writing. I'm afraid to begin because I know I'll start writing myself into oblivion...it's like drugs and alcohol, it's like passion but all I have is a train running through my fucking skull. If I put hand to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and mind to screen, I know that I will die. I will never produce a perfect piece and no one ever finds a perfect life or perfect love...in the darkness or in the cafeteria or on the train or on the corner on in the alley or the bus, you breathe in imperfections, sadness, hope, desire, purpose. But the skin and the voice can be anchors. The drugs, the screens, the connection speeds...all dope. And I'll get shit from somewhere, the gods of the anti-drunks. Cunts. Home and space and living...you want to go to Paris? Go to Paris and suck a dead cock in the alley, if you don't you were anywhere and nowhere...just something to talk afuckingbout. It's hell and assholes everywhere.

Fuck This City

Choked on the "air" of this city, just to get from one bar to the next. Couldn't buy a sandwich without being swarmed by the stench of "fuck and fucked". Some guy wants to throw down because he thinks I'm cutting in line at the "wing station" when I'm just trying to cross through to get to the "booze aisle".
Watched the red line throw up another train of sausage at 13th street. White Trash repo fucks on the television at the bar and everyone laughs. Guy urinated on Redbox while pretending to rent "Flight". Scumbag passes in on corner and tells scumbag friends "I didn't fall down, I chose to lay down,"...on the sidewalk...Can't walk down the street without someone screaming, just screaming. I want to scream too. Fuck this city.

Outside, the meat locker comes to you. The cold preserves the human cold cuts waiting for the bus, where they will spoil in the summer, sweating through their packaging. The butcher waits. The barbeque sauce is simmering, waiting for the flesh that gives up the fastest, the veal of the scumbag weak. The train keeps pushing assholes that shit themselves from stop to stop. The mail was delivered. At the grocery store again, food is an after thought...I'm surprised how empty the liquor department is, is this place even open? I stock up and buy some plantain chips just in case...