25.
After Christmas, the limbo in between New Years, there was a daytime festival at a local park, with a stage and a band in the center of a large grassy area. Country/rock music filled the suburban afternoon. Surrounding the stage was a wagon train of booths including games, removable tattoos, face paint, and beer stands. The celebration began around eleven that morning; we arrived at noon. Marc, who’d talked Sean into going, was very excited about this day. Marc adored neighborhood festivals.
It had been a little while since Sean drank with Marc, and I sensed Sean’s only “freedom” was to drink.
When we got to the carnival in no time both of them had plastic cups of beer. I tried keeping up, at first…
Sean and I followed Marc around the festival. Marc would take part in every booth game. He’d had this look of concentration, whether he was throwing baseballs at beanbag clowns, tossing ping-pong balls into floating cups, throwing darts at balloons, basketballs through the small hoops – what have you! Sean nicknamed him “Straight Ahead”. Marc would stare forward, eyes narrowed. He had a real knack for skill games - inside the barroom and out.
After plenty of beer, during the hottest part of the afternoon, Mark got even keener in these particular skillful game wits. His edge was flawlessly perfected - the drinking only sharpened him. Marc was medicine for the heat, and like watching a movie he passed the time. Now and again Sean would try a game but he’d always lose. Then he’d act like he didn’t care either way - but only after losing.
After a while we stood smoking and watched the country/rock band play. The sun and the drinking were taking its toil on me. I’d slowed down, but not Sean and Marc. Marc didn’t care that I wasn’t drinking as much as him - just as long as Sean kept up he was content.
The band sounded pretty good; the lead guitarist was excellent and kept our interest so for a little while we stood in front of the stage. The crowded festival, moving around us, seemed like a daydream after a while. We’d occasionally wander around the booths in-between sets, this as a means to an end, for Marc and Sean to get more beer and Marc to win more games. Then we’d stand and watch the band when the music started back up – and back and forth this way for a while.
In a few hours time Marc and Sean had drank plenty, and, strangely enough, I never really saw much of a change in them. Both, in different ways, seemed more concentrative the more beer they consumed, Sean especially. Marc would sing certain songs out loud, or move clumsily to the music (like a drunken bear) as Dusk slouched with his perpetual wry grin. One time Marc, in between songs, yelled out a request. The band looked at each other smugly, discussed something about the song requested, and ended up playing a different tune (one more popular) but by the same band…
About a half an hour later during another band break…
Marc was talking to a few of Robert’s old friends just outside the perimeter of the music area, when Dusk, surreptitiously, strolled to the outskirts of the carnival…
Robert Sandoval’s pals were both Robert’s age and had their wives and kids with them. Al Kane, a tall, lean cat with shaggy black hair, and Tim Carlson, a wide-eyed, chubby sidekick type with the same uncut hair only brown. Seeing them was the second wind Marc needed…
Meanwhile…
At the outskirts of the carnival lay a field past a baseball diamond. There were some basketball courts further in the distance. Sean was heading towards the diamond – his destination being one of the dugouts for a second wind of his own…
In-between bullshitting with Al and Ted, Marc would glance out beyond the festival at Sean’s receding figure in the distance. Marc was beginning to, the further Sean went, get more disassociated with Al and Tim.
“We’re thinking about walking to Coops for a beer pretty soon,” Al Kane said to Marc. “A beer and a shot, that is.”
“When exactly are you going?” Marc asked him.
“Probably pretty soon.”
COOPS was a dusty little bar across the street from the carnival.
“I’m going without the family,” Tim Carlson said quietly to Marc, referring to the woman and the kids, who seemed somewhat impatient by now, standing behind them. “I’ll give them some money for games and they won’t miss me a bit.”
“Sounds good to me,” Marc said. He blinked his eyes nervously. It was a tick he had in the past and that only came back on particular occasions. “Fuck. I think I lost something,” he said feigning this claim with a bewildered expression. “I left one of Sammi’s dolls I won near the stage. I got to get it before someone steals it…”
I smiled to myself. Marc had won about a hundred stuffed animals, and gave them all away, after winning each, to young cute girls.
“Okay, Marc. We’ll you there,” said lean Al.
“Right on!”
Marc shook their hands - tight, popular grips. Al and Tim convened with their families. Marc walked in a false direction towards the stage, and then, veering subtly, headed out to where Sean had wandered off…
Sean Dusk sat relaxed in the dugout, facing out at the field. He had half a smoke lit; he’d taken some of the nicotine out and packed some marijuana into the top of the cigarette. His eyes were glazed and calm. The sun began to shy behind clouds; it had been cloudless all day till then.
Marc stumbled out in front of the dugout, carrying two cups of beer. He reached down into the dugout, handing one to Sean. Sean stood, took the beer, and sat back onto the bench. Marc drank his standing outside the dugout.
“What’re you smoking there?” Marc asked.
Sean finished the weed-packed-cigarette, said nothing. The beautifully rude scent of the marijuana permeated the surrounding area.
Marc pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Want one?” he offered.
Sean nodded, said: “Sure.” Marc tossed him a cigarette. Soon both of them were smoking and drinking. Marc looked up at the blanketing sky.
“It looks like it’s gonna rain soon,” he replied.
“It hasn’t rained in a while.”
“I know. Why is that?” Marc asked hollowly.
“I’m not sure, but it must mean something. Maybe a premonition of some kind.”
“Do you think it’ll rain tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m fucked up,” Marc said, his voice slurred a bit.
Sean blew out an easy stream of marijuana smoke.
“I was fucked up. WAS. Drunk as a skunk and practically useless - but not anymore – no sir. After drinking beer all day, a little weed makes you a new raccoon. I’m feeling great. Perfect. And best of all, I’m not burning out.”
“But that’s because you cheated,” Marc said quickly.
“What is this, a competition? I did what I had to do, that’s all. Weed makes the buzz better, gives the drinking story a long, happy ending.”
“I don’t like endings. I don’t like to END when I party.”
“You seem ended now, or pretty close to it.”
“I just need to drink more.”
“You’re holding a beer in your hand. And there’s more back at the festival – by the gallons. But that’s just it – too much beer is a dead end after a while. I mean sure, it’s a nice long street before it stops, but it does stop eventually.” He held up the cigarette. “That’s why I like this… it’s another avenue from the same street.”
Marc shook his head, and said: “It’s not the same though.”
“What’s not the same?” Dusk asked him.
“I need to DRINK to PARTY, not be stoned. Being stoned is different. It makes it so you’re not having a good time anymore.”
“Well I don’t know where you got your information. As for me, I’m self-contained. That’s all I really set out for even when I start drinking. To have a nice net to fall into.”
“You’re cheating though,” Marc said, now somewhat irritably. “We need to DRINK more.”
Sean took a sip from his cup of beer he had set beside him.
“I was kind of enjoying myself,” he said, “sitting out here, relaxing. And I am, by the way, drinking. Don’t you see that this” (holding up the cup) “is a beer – and that I am, in fact, drinking it? Sure, I’ve been nursing it. But this” (holding up the smoke in his other hand) “makes it possible so you don’t have to drink a thousand beers to feel something.”
“You can sit at home like you’re doing now,” Marc said. “You can be anywhere and be stoned. As for myself, I don’t know why but, when I start to drink, I don’t want to stop.”
“Who’s stopped? I sure haven’t. Just smoke some weed. You won’t stop, you’ll just have a great new way to begin.” Sean then smiled, scratched his head. “Shit,” he replied, “listen to me – I sound like Nancy Reagan in reverse.”
“Marijuana gives me nightmares,” Marc said, ignoring Sean’s quip that, I could tell by his tone, was an attempt to break Marc from his lecturing.
“Nightmares?”
“I don’t need to sleep to have nightmares. That stuff gives them to me awake.”
Sean shrugged. Rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself then, Marc. To each his own I guess.”
Marc, after clearing his throat, said in a sluggish, yet somewhat sheepish tone: “Go with me across the street to a bar. My brother’s friends will be there.”
“Shit,” sighed Dusk. “Not the Groovy Goulies you were talking to back there – man, I really don’t want to hang with those guys.”
“They’re really cool guys,” Marc said, somewhat defensively.
“They’re always COOL GUYS. But you know Marc, I think I’ll pass on going to a bar when I got everything I need right here.”
“They want to take a shot with us,” Marc said as if Sean hadn’t said anything. “I could use a shot right now. We’ve been drinking too much beer, like you said. A shot would be the perfect thing for us.”
“Go ahead then. You probably know fifty people over there at that place. Go reign another kingdom… just don’t RAIN on my parade.”
“We came here to party,” Marc said, starting to whine now. “I’m starting to burn out and I need to keep going.”
Sean was, I could tell, getting pretty agitated.
“Then go to the bar across the street. I’ll meet you there later. I just want to mellow out, relax.”
Marc sighed.
“Alright,” he said, shrugging…
And then walked off the way he came…
Sean’s view was, once again, the cloudy sky and the pale green field before him. And no more Marc…
He flicked his weed-cigarette outside the dugout…
“Now it isn’t the same,” he said to me.
“What isn’t the same?” I asked him.
“That fucker can’t let anything just HAPPEN. He has to always alter it somehow. Nothing’s spontaneous with him. It’s always the next step dangling on a one-step staircase. Why is he that way?”
“I don’t know.”
“He had all the freedom on earth growing up. He could do whatever he wanted. Whatever he wanted to do he could do, no nagging parents teaming on him, because he never had a dad watching over him – just a very cool mother. I know it must suck to not have a dad growing up, but he had a great time and could do whatever he pleased in high school, and probably got no hassle for it. And whatever hassle he got he got from a mother. Big deal. The only thing I had keeping me from dying of boredom in such an ordinary childhood was my mind. That was my only recess, my fucking mind. That fucker had the whole playground” (points out to the field) “right at his fingertips. Me, I had to invent my own. But now he can’t stand it. He’s older and can’t stand having any kind of independent thought. Spontaneity haunts him like boredom haunts me.” He sighed, then said: “I want to tell you something.”
“Yeah - what’s that?”
“I don’t want to live around here anymore. I don’t want to know him anymore. I’m starting to feel like I’m in jail or something. I’m starting to feel trapped. And I don’t want to feel that way.”
“But there’s nowhere else to go.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you already told me.”
“I told you what?”
Sean again stared blankly onto the field.
“I’m just tired of it,” he sighed.
“Tired of what?”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly? Exactly what?” I asked him.
“Nothing. It’s just me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s how I am.”
“I lost you.”
“That’s the point – it’s how I’ve always been.”
“How’s that?”
“With my friends. I’m tired of my friends.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them... I think... I think I hate my friends. Or maybe I don't." He sighs. "No, I don't hate my friends... I hate myself, and I chose my friends." He sighs louder. "Actually, you’re the only person I feel comfortable with. You’re the only person I can be myself around. You’re the only person I can really talk to… But am I talking too much?”
“I’m used to it,” I told him.
“Used to what?”
“You talking. I’ve heard a lot of it. I don’t mind.”
“That’s good. But I’m getting tired of it.”
“Of what…? Of listening…?”
“No, of talking. But I can’t seem to escape it.”
“Then just relax.”
“I can’t relax.”
“Be yourself.”
“I’m not myself. I’m never myself.”
“Who are you then?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Not really.”
“Just relax. Don’t let them get to you.”
“It’s not really them.”
“But you said it was. You said it was your friends. Or maybe it’s just Marc. Don’t let him get you down.”
“But maybe he’s trying to help me.”
“You said he’s trapping you.”
“I know – but maybe that’s how he’s helping me. Maybe that’s what I need.”
“What. To be trapped?”
“No. To be safe.”
“So then you feel safe trapped?”
“No - I feel trapped free.”
“But you said you wanted to be free.”
“I am free,” he said. “And maybe that’s the problem.”
“I think it’s the weed. You haven’t smoked it in a while. It causes these sort of confused thoughts to treadmill if you’re not used to it.”
“I don’t know,” he said vacantly. “It didn’t used to be this way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t use to KNOW I felt this way.”
“What way?”
“Afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Not of what. Of who.”
“Then of who? Afraid of who?”
“I have a secret.”
“I know.”
“I’m afraid all the time.”
“Is that the secret?”
“You should know.”
“That isn’t the secret?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“I need something to get my mind off of everything. I’m afraid of everything…”
He took of drink of the beer. Then he picked up his cigarette pack, opened it, saw it was empty and said:
“I need a cigarette.”
“I think Marc has some…”
He sighed defeatedly.
“Let’s go find Marc then…”
The clouds grew heavier, and darker. Red sunlit-stained curtains appeared behind them as evening approached…
Across the street the little bar COOPS resembled a brown shoebox. It was pretty tiny, spent, seedy looking from the outside. The regular bar CUES, comparatively, was a paradise.
Sean, who’d just crossed the street from the park, didn’t want to go inside of COOPS, I could tell. But he had to. He didn’t really have a choice.
Once inside and settled:
I sat next to Marc, Sean beside me; Al and Tim sat across from us. We were on a table near the bar counter. The place was crowded up mostly with guys from the carnival who’d ditched their families or sent them home so they could drink real drinks watching sports on one of three televisions above the bar. From the outside COOPS looked, as I mentioned, pretty awful, but inside wasn’t too bad, more or less your average sports bar.
Sean had bummed a smoke off Marc right after coming in, and went outside – a new law had passed where you couldn’t smoke indoors ANYWHERE. I guess he was vamping as long as possible before having to join in with Marc and his brother’s friends. He was out there longer than a cigarette. Marc was getting restless. But eventually, he did return.
Marc introduced him around the table. Then asked Sean if he wanted a beer…
And in no time at all, Marc and Sean had drank two beers and one shot of Tequila. There wasn’t too much conversation at the table. The afternoon had dragged on everyone and now it was catching up. Mostly Al and Tim would watch the game on the TV; I forget which sport was on but the game was semi important and, I figured, it was the reason they wanted to leave the carnival.
During the third beer Marc brought up having another shot of tequila. I saw Sean squirm at the mention of this. When the waitress came over Marc ordered shots all around, and then he glanced around up at the bar area and asked the waitress:
“Is there a payphone around here?”
“In the hallway by the restrooms,” she replied.
Marc got up, disappeared into the dark hallway. The four of us sat there, staring at the TV. The bar was getting louder and louder, continuously crowding up. Cheering arose in its proper place depending on the game. During a commercial break, Al turned to Sean.
“So what do you do?”
Sean cleared his throat.
“Work at a college bookstore. I go to school there.”
“Where’s that?”
“West Community.”
Sean lied about the bookstore simply because he could; Marc wasn’t around. Sean didn’t want to tell this callused pair of workhorses that he worked for his own father. Telling stray dogs that his father owned a kennel never turned out well for him. It made him feel uncomfortable, anyhow.
When Marc came back the shots arrived. We each got more than a shot each, since the waitress knew Marc, Al and Tim. The thick liquor was poured into a drink glass, not a shot glass. Each glass had more than a double shot within.
“Alright,” Marc said, “now we’re talking”. He raised his cup. “To the New Year,” he toasted.
We raised our glasses to his, all of us clinking them in the usual toasting manner…
And once again the tequila went down like putrid fire. It took me a few swallows to get it down. My stomach turned over for a second - I’d almost lost it. But I stayed cool. I took a drink of the beer (chaser) and felt slightly better. Sean asked Marc for a cigarette.
Marc slowly doled a few of them out of his pack. They went outside and smoked. I sat and watched the game in silence with Al and Tim, and in no time the duo had returned.
Then, out of nowhere it seemed, after Marc and Sean had been seated five minutes, Sammi “appeared” at the table.
Marc stood up. He was pretty excited at her arrival. I’d never seem him like that. I wondered why but then remembered Al and Ted were present. They didn’t know Marc all that well and in their eyes Marc and Sammi had a normal relationship.
“I missed my sister’s birthday party to pick you up,” Sammi said with a dull whine.
“You guys leaving?” Tim asked Marc.
“We might go home and watch a movie,” Marc replied.
“Maybe after I drop you off I can go back to the birthday party,” Sammi said.
“I want you to be with me,” he said bluntly.
“I need to smoke outside,” said Dusk, “this air is killing me. Got another.”
Marc gave him a smoke. Sean left.
After more watching the game, and during the commercials, of meaningless, boozy chatter, Marc said: “Where’s Sean?”
“Maybe he’s takin’ a piss,” Tim said. “You gonna help him or what?”
Al laughed.
“You sure do worry about him a lot,” said Sammi, half jokingly.
“He said he went outside to smoke,” Al replied. “Maybe he’s taking a dump, leave the poor guy alone.”
“Drink your beer and shut up,” Tim grinned. “You got your girlfriend with you now,” he had a tinge of flirtation towards Sammi in his voice, “what else could you want?”
But Marc didn’t care about the beer or the girlfriend. He looked burdened. Seconds turned to minutes… turned to fifteen minutes, then twenty…
Sean Dusk had left. He’d ditched us. Since Marc had driven his Uncle’s car, it wasn’t really ditching us, but he left without a clue.
Sammi driving, Marc shotgun, in her car (leaving the Monte Carlo at the park), drove me home. My house was but five minutes from the park; Marc fell asleep on the way…
26.
Marc had plans for New Year’s Eve. He’d told Sean and David all about it. He’d more than suggested to them to join him and Sammi at a party. It was going to be at Al Kane’s - the guy from COOPS - pad. Al and his girlfriend lived fairly close to the Cavern, according to Marc – literally on the “other side of the tracks”…
By New Years Eve I think Dusk was still spent from the carnival. He had no desire to party. He seemed bleary in mind and spirit after all the drinking unlike before, when he could do it every day with little consequence. Marc had talked to him that afternoon about the party, and Sean had agreed to join him at Kane’s. He’d even promised to bring David along…
That night we sat at Dusk’s house: Sean, David and I, watching TV, when the phone rang. Sean didn’t budge.
“Check this out,” he said. “He’ll keep calling for about ten minutes. Then he’ll stop. That’s when it’s time to worry.”
He was right. For about ten minutes, on and off, the phone kept ringing. Sean had the answering machine turned off. His parents were out of town.
“Do you think it’s safe around here?” David asked. “He might come after us.”
“Yeah,” Sean agreed. “We should split. Drive around and do something. Anything but remain here.”
It didn’t take more than the bat of an eye before Sean and David got up. Sean grabbed his keys off the table and put his jacket on. I could tell they’d done this before. It was their in-case-of-Marc-Sandoval fire drill.
We didn’t go to the Cavern, for that, Sean told us, would be “unsafe”. We didn’t go to either of the two local movie theaters either. It was best, according to both him and David, to simply drive around. That’s what they had learned. Just to drive around with a tank full of gas, turn some loud music on, talk a little, and waste the night away.
Whenever they did talk, it was about Marc. They talked about how progressively bad he was getting: bad an in “irritating” sense: how he’d been driving both of them bonkers. I felt as if I were in the middle of something. Things had been getting boring without Marc, although it was more relaxing; but still, somehow I missed him.
I thought to myself that maybe ditching Marc was unfair. I thought maybe Sean could’ve just told him straight out he was becoming a nagging pain, and maybe the nag would lessen. But I rethought that. You really can’t tell Marc anything. It’s tough to point out things to him - especially his shortcomings, without him pointing out yours, or telling you the reason for his was because of this or that or whatever reason he could muster up. I think Sean was at his wit’s end even knowing Marc Sandoval. But then again, when Sean was around Marc, he kept pretty cool, and usually seemed to enjoy himself, getting drunk and smoking – the stuff he didn’t do around David. But, I noticed, when he wasn’t loaded around Marc, he seemed bored, out of place. I guess you could have called Sean a two faced person, but it was beyond that, it was more complicated, for he’d always act the same way, he just, at times, didn’t seem to feel the way he acted. Both his faces were the same face. Sure Sean was a pretty tough person to figure out, and Marc was tough to be around. But only Marc took the effort to try figuring Sean out, and I think only Marc was tough to be around when Sean was present, especially if it were both Sean and David together. Figuring out Sean Dusk, and what made him tick, was what, in my estimation, became Marc’s Achilles Heel. And Sean sensed this, that Marc wanted him to “change” somehow, and Dusk didn’t like it one bit – or rather, he didn’t think it necessary. I don’t think he saw any logic into Marc trying to figure out a friend.
I thought maybe Marc felt he was being let go. Maybe he felt like a token, a pawn. Or maybe he simply felt left out. Maybe he felt he didn’t have something Sean did (more than just money), and he wanted it. Maybe he had competed for so long, with so many other people, in physical activities or for women, and had won, that he’d finally met his match, per say, because now the “field” was of the mind, i.e., the “pool table” was more cerebrum-based than it was based on physical wit. Who knows, maybe Sean was his narrator; maybe Marc had been missing having a voice in his head to keep him going. I wasn’t sure…
But I felt bad for Marc that night, in the beginning of the night anyhow, when we’d first driven off to evade him, but eventually, in about an hour’s time, it faded.
In between talking about Marc, Sean would turn up the music. He had a tape in - a new band that had come out that year, and had really changed things in “rock” music, a raw and edgy trio from Seattle, Washington. Sean and David were pretty into the music that night, and I liked it too. It’d been a while since we could drive around and simply turn-off our minds and “listen”, without having to, as Marc would put it: “Do something!!!”
And through this, now and again I’d think about that party Marc was at, and indeed, beneath it all, I was happy I didn’t go. I wasn’t in the mood, Like Sean or David, to rage the seven seas with Marc and the pirates. People like them, I noticed, who lived to party spontaneously were even more predictable than those who lived in shells – where we preferred to be…
My God - we drove around so much I swear I must’ve heard the same songs three or four times over. But it was good music (still is) and I didn’t mind.
“Happy New Year,” Sean would say every once in a while. Then he’d reply in a mocking voice, imitating you know who: “Come on, guys – let’s DO SOMETHING!!!”
We didn’t need booze or even a carton of eggs, or a bunch of trash cans or a lungful of cigarettes to have a good time that night, because the “good time” was simply that we were wasting time, and quite enjoying it. And after a while all the shit Sean said about Marc got real convincing. He’d said it enough times so I began to see the light. But still, it concerned that particular night only. It was a duel of some sorts. In a way I felt kind of sorry for the guy. I just couldn’t let go of that. He was too important a character in the scheme of things as of late to be just let go… but was he being let go, or was that just how he reacted us simply wanting a break from him…?
David and I crashed at Sean’s house that night. Sean’s bedroom was downstairs inside a small converted study. David and I lay on the floor. I was the last one to fall asleep but I think Sean thought he was. It seemed as though he couldn’t crash with us in there. He kept having to get up and go into the bathroom. He’d do this every five minutes, for nearly an hour. When was in bed he’d move around a lot, tossing and turning as the sound goes.
After a couple hours of lying there I went into the bathroom, which in a small closet hallway outside his sliding door (two sliding doors led to his bedroom), and sat on the toilet, my pants still on - I didn’t have to go but I was tired of lying on the carpet listening to David’s incessantly cozy snoring. The bathroom was small and messy. Sean had a salad of underwear all around the floor, some tucked into corners, others in the open. Below the toilet, to the side, were some paperbacks and a couple movie magazines. There was a bottle of baby powder near the stack of books and some powder on the floor. I saw a piece of paper behind the books. Scribbled lines of tiny island paragraphs filled the page. I lifted the paper, quietly, and read:
MOON
to choose a bashful moon
and not
a wicked sun
while night makes up
for daylight’s curse
exposing everyone…
KING
I met the offspring
of a king
he told me once
(a simple thing)
that “as the son
of one so vast
your only future
is the past”…
LSD
I remember being born
the switch from dark to light
instead
of lying in a bed
the light
escaping from my head…
When I finished reading, I thought I heard noise coming from Sean’s room - I probably did - so I, very precisely, to not make any paper noise, put the page back down and then picked up the magazines. Beneath them was more paper - what looked like a few pages stapled together. I sat there for a minute, staring at the wall. Then I looked down and moved a few of the magazines. There were some more papers beneath, typewritten, a few pages stapled together. I picked them up and read…
CLOWNS AFTER MIDNIGHT i.e. EMPTY PROVERBS OF THE NIGHT – by Sean Dusk
help me I think I am dying right now I need help or I will die…
somebody must remember that I am alone and I need somebody…
I have never had a girlfriend who really, truly loved me, so what’s it feel like…?
I have some friends but they are very far away…
I love to think about the rain; I hate the sunshine today…
when is she going to exist…?
I have lost a lot of years doing nothing…
I wish the sun would shine, shine on me forever more…
thinking of them is a real nice thing to do when there is no one left but me…
I cannot believe I’m hooked once again on cigarettes…
what is there for me now? I am nobody and I’m very tired, but never sleepy…
he is trying to kill me…
the tree outside is noisy…
my father’s watching television…
I feel alone and that’s an understatement…
All work and no play makes jacking off a dull joy…
I wish I had someone to talk to right now about feeling sad and pale and lonely…
I had a dog and now I don't and now I wish I could walk her…
I don’t wanna go to work tomorrow because I hate it…
I wasted a lot of my time as a child as a child wasting time…
I never did see what was in the sky that day, the day I looked down all day…
The ferris wheel broke its promise…
dreams are really fun I miss them I really do…
romantic how romantic…
I wish I had some sorrow left…
hope I care one day…
nothing but dust is what I’m made of DUST…
my telephone is mute…
are there eyes on the ceiling…?
mother I am sorry don’t cry don’t CRY…
tears are falling down on me so now how are you feeling…?
people talk to me all the time and sometimes I hear them…
summertime is jealousy…
I grew up in the suburbs…
when I am alone and feeling like this STAY AWAY…
idle thoughts are never meant to be but they’re all around me…
wow I can’t stand myself feeling like I’m coming down…
reality is nothing but a screen door…
hear the wind, it’s loud, but it’s not windy out…
crickets are Adolph Hitler…
I am too afraid of suicide to live another minute…
real evil is not rehearsed real evil is spontaneous…
never felt like taking over never was a man for real…
I need a beer but I need a cigarette more…
gray is gray but blue is you…
god small g god I feel so low GOD…
you’re sick if you’re reading this – you’re me if you’re writing this…
never…
listen if you want to hear, shut up and listen…!
tell me will they ever, ever, ever let me in? I don’t want to go in EVER…
give me another moment of childhood, another childhood moment of careless recklessness…
try to be strange and you’ll be misled…
I could have done so much more…
they don’t believe in me…
this is not poetry this is not madness, this is toilet paper stained with sadness…
never saw a tree fall never saw a river roll never saw…
stars in the night, I can’t see stars but they see stars and I need them to see them for me…
blind I am blind…
prayer is laughter…
the night is magic & as dreams are tragic the rabbit suffocates in the top hat…
must not think, must not think, stop and, wait as…
the endless night…
just won’t…
hesitate…
…
I felt sleepy after reading it through the first time; I read it through twice. I got up and began to open the door and then I remembered…
I turned back, flushed the toilet, turned the sink water on and off, opened the door, and returned to my place on the carpet.
Lying there again in the semi darkness of the room I couldn’t hear David’s light snoring anymore. He was on his side with two prayer hands rested on his check the way cartoon baby sleeps. I heard Sean moving around on the bed, but not for very long. In no time he was breathing easily that sleep easy breathing like David. And from there it didn’t take long before I was sleeping too…
And the next morning I was the first to awake. It was pretty late in the morning. Sean was half asleep, coming in and out of waking, but David was still out cold. I stood in the bedroom and looked outside the window, which was partially covered by the wooden blinds, each half opened. It was right then that I saw something I didn’t tell Sean ‘til much later. I don’t think Sean, with the stress he’d had, needed to hear right then that Marc was sitting in his car, which idled in the middle of the street, and was staring over at David’s car, which was parked along the curb of the house. I saw Marc’s long bell shaped black head of hair and I could even make out his peering wide moon shaped dark eyes. And I didn’t move. I stood frozen, and even though I knew he couldn’t see me, my first reaction as to duck out of sight. But I stood like a deer in headlights. A strange feeling came over me, I was afraid. I glanced down at Sean Dusk sleeping and then, back outside. A glance was all it took. Marc’s car was gone as if it hadn’t even been there at all…
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