3

I’m sorry you got rejected, B .. I thought to myself. But that’s not really how it happened, the bartender just creates this atmosphere where she’s the hot one and maybe she’ll like you.
Really she wasn’t hot, she had that lower back fat that puffs out when girls who shouldn’t be wearing tight tops wear tight tops.
The dynamic felt dishonest, rude -- especially with the intensity of the play still in my bloodstream. Meanwhile she was laying it on thick.
Southern ways don’t work well in New York. It’s that same line: the way I act brings about the stories I’m in. I didn’t like how she was conversing with me without conversing with me, flirting without flirting, when really all I’m there for is to watch some sports since the hotel doesn’t have televisions in the rooms.
In strip clubs, it’s obvious the in-genuineness of it, so it’s not rude, just sad. She kept explaining to me the different drinks, including the Manhattan, and it occurred to me why she was treating me like this, her assuming I wasn’t as sharp as her due to my Southern ways.
I ordered another expensive mixed drink from her, finished my food, and officially dined and dashed.

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(Sunday, 20JUN2010)

The liquor caused a slew of dreams, still seemingly centered around unemployment. The main dream, the one that the other dreams stretched out of, was where I was working for J__ but more permanently, and his wife and daughters were all sitting around a circular table, gossiping, wrapping gifts, decorating for some party or holiday, being loud -- if felt like a scene from Dickens.
In the dream I hate the way I’m acting, as if I were the houseboy, a member of the family but not. Meanwhile I seemed happy to be there, my surface emotions enjoying it, betraying my deeper emotions. I laughed a lot in the dream.
I woke, showered, and asked the clerk how to get to Yankee Stadium. I stopped in a diner across the street and a little up from the hotel. Everyone talks about New York food, but really it’s just American food. Or its Arab food, or Indian food, same as when I was overseas.
On the subway I continued writing compulsively, and didn’t get why. .. Wordless poetry in between, I repeated to myself, the wordless poetry that is God; I can learn that, remember it, even if I have to memorize it and repeat it over and over in my head the rest of my life. I will learn this.
I’ve been writing a lot because I’m getting myself ready to be stoned again. The first time was so intense, I couldn’t keep my cool in front of House; had to tell him I was having flashbacks. I didn’t want that to happen with Adam, yet I knew I needed the weed.
I’ve been feeling a strong anxiousness leading up to my arrival at Yankee Stadium. I don’t know if it’s the prospect of smoking weed tonight with Adam, or if it would be this noticeable on its own.
Awkward moments are adding up together, fueling the anxiety: I asked which way to the stadium when I got off the subway despite it being right in front of me. How was I supposed to know the cement wall was the stadium? Turns out I was in the wrong seat after the game started, had to move up a row.
Yesterday I was standing in line for the bathroom at a Starbucks, a guy came up with a girl to stand in line, they were in the middle of a conversation in which he said to her: _I mean, success is really determined by the person’s parents, not the person, you know, in the end that’s true._ He kept looking at me, and after he said that I looked at him. _But we’ll talk about it more after we get outside,_ the girl said, as if countering me. I felt embarrassed, being maneuvered around.
After the game there was an hour and a half bus ride to New Jersey. I didn’t know what time it was as I raced down the stairs at the Port Authority, not knowing if I should be in a hurry or if I had plenty of time. Seamlessly I reached the bottom of the stairs and got in the back of a line that was about to finish loading onto the correct bus.
During the bus ride I tried to kill the anxiety with common sense. It was all I needed to be anxious, smoke some pot, and trip out.

I wrote a list of rules to remember, ones designed for that moment where the weed has got me lost; I can look at the list and stay cool. I’ll trust my own handwriting, like the guy in Momento:
It WILL wear off.
You WILL write it down.
You MUST stay Him (Brave), just like how it’s been with alcohol. You must win.
You WILL answer for everything, not just the flashbacks but the present also.
The MOMENTO-sound inner voice is your Real one.
Remember you’ll say more WITHOUT WORDS than with words. Back when your body was owned by others I used words, wrote words, to make the difference. You don’t do that now.
Be GENEROUS. Use weed your way on your own time.
For some reason I thought back on my days in the military, how I was too young to know any better. I thought I had to reckon with them, but later found out I was mistaken. They weren’t from Horrific. They were far from being Hims. Their kind had these papers that said they owned the definitions of things, so my younger self was misguided, and then confused.
Mine was the last bus stop, at a mall that was closing. The Mall was huge and I stepped through it looking for a bathroom as Adam made his way there to pick me up.
It was like walking through a scene from Stephen King, all the shops were closed but their lights remained on and their music still played. At one point I passed an ice cream stand, its displays still functioning, its cheery music creepy since there wasn’t a soul around but me.
When you get high you’re gonna be ripped from the clouds and will be all the way on the ground, I told myself, It might be scary.
I just have to trust that the words have already been written. And if I forget or get uncertain I have to trust that I can find them. I just have to remember somehow: Horrific, Beautiful, Him, Wordless Poetry. I will remember the rules, I will remember the rules ..

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I think about how we’re all the gods and go somewhere else when we die, go to some kind of home base. Maybe I’m the scrappy one, the horrifically brave one, as opposed to the Adonises like Michael and Gabriel. I can see myself pumping my fists into the air, getting ready to go back to the horrific -- and remain Him despite it -- since they won’t.
It’s not wrong to be the best. It’s not wrong to be the only Him, if you’re all that’s left of the gods. It’s not murder, it’s not arrogance, it’s just a reality, a possibility you have to deal with every day. True loneliness is the natural risk of being eternal.
It feels violent. The Pride to be your best, which turns out to be the same as the Pride to be the best. I learned along time ago from researchers (a book called the Denomic Male, studying evolution through apes) that the root of human violence was Pride.
So there’s a good kind of pride, a good kind of violence then; a good kind of fight, maybe, the most primal thing in the world.
Pride is a promise. You promise yourself you are Good, which reflects as violence when evil approaches and tries to take your freedom to be Good. Tries to trick you out of your Identity.

__________