BEING ALONE

I'm not part of anything, but I have some cool things going on. I do a "show" on the Internet, but I don't wanna discuss it, that is, I don't want the me, the "now" me, to be mixed up with the person writing this pathetic frizzle.

For I used to, before writing scripts and doing neat stuff related to show biz (on the fringe of the fringe of the fringe), spend hours scribbling 'bout myself and my loneliness. But I don't feel alone anymore. That is, I'm alone... but not lonely.

Sometimes, though, a deep tragic sorrow will hit me from left field - usually I'm in right field and I'll miss the catch and the other team'll score.

Booooooooo!!!

It's a home game, and the crowd ignores me. They're booing at the other team rounding the bases, not at me for missing the catch.

They don't even know I exist.

See that's the thing: I've spent hours (and days and weeks and months and years) writing and nothing's come of it. I could give in to what others have said: that I have no talent. Well, only a few've said that: online kooks, jerkoffs, scumbags.

Others will acknowledge my talent as something that isn't surprising to them. "You're smart," they'll say. "And creative."

But I never want to hear the word "Potential." That's the last thing any "artist" wants to hear. There's no potential in having potential.

It's worse than the cherry goo inside boxed chocolate candy.

IDLE HANDS

Idle hands are the devil's playground, or perhaps it's his classroom... Because I'm bored as hell when I have nothing to do...

But if I really listen, I'll learn a thing or two...

SUNDAY MOURNING

I was a teenager on drugs but my parents thought I was off 'em... I was eighteen or nineteen and the peak of my real drug use, when I was fifteen and sixteen, were behind me...

I didn't do as many as before and mostly I was depressed...

And at my mother's request I went to a shrink, a nice handsome guy who played guitar and surfed... He had a meeting with myself and a young blonde girl who was kinda pretty (but not very)... And another kid, very troubled, slightly younger...

During this meeting (the shrink wanted us to meet) the kid had a fit... He pointed at us (me and the girl) and said, "Look at you... You have no problems..." And he stormed out of the room...

So it was myself and the girl, and the shrink, and the shrink went to a popular big church (where my parents go now) and set it up so I would go to this church and meet the girl on Sunday morning... The girl was fine with this...

That was on a Friday... Cut to Sunday Morning: skipping past Saturday Night where I had dropped acid, and as dawn awoke I hadn't slept and felt a mess... But was aglow... Burning-out but still, some fire lurked...

And I drove to the church with the wrong music in the tape deck... I didn't want the right music because that would remind me of the drugs that, the night before, put me in this position of feeling different than the situation entailed...

For I now had to go to church feeling like the result of a lab experiement, and to "survive" the situation needed music to make me feel "normal," and I drove listening to Steve Miller and it was "Take the Money and Run," and the peppy lyrics and hand-claps, juxtaposed with my mangled brain, made no connection whatsoever...

And I arrived at the church early... Walked up to a building and there were some young girls there... Uptight Christian types and pretty, more than the girl I'd meet who wasn't there yet...

These two girls saw me, and my long hair, and my... my my... and I told them I was meeting her... Said the name of the girl... And they said, "Oh, how nice," which I realized meant... I was charity.

Well, I guess I was. But the sound of that, "How nice", wasn't nice... And seemed as though this girl I was gonna meet often met losers at church: upon the shrink's request...

So I left.

I drove home and the tape, on the other side, had slightly better music... Doobie Brothers ("Long Train Runnin'")... But it still didn't fit...

So an hour later... In my room... I put on my Neil Young record with a fifteen minute version of WORDS (mostly an instrumental)... Sounding like a brain-dead bull grazing in a vast field of green... The mantra of those steel guitars were perfect for my shunned soul... A symphony to my plotless pointless life... And I was relaxed, and content...

And perhaps if I had that music on the way to the church, I wouldn't have been so mislead that the realization of being a nice girl's charity wouldn't have mattered like it did.

COLLEGE GIRLS

The more I write (scripts), the less I read... I read still but not like before... The peak of my reading books, mostly fiction: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Kerouac, Kesey, Hesse, Hemingway (I like Hemingway), and others... Was when I went to junior college (13th grade) in 1994... I was 25... That's old for college, and I felt old then...

Although now I laugh at how I felt: thinking I was too old for college at such a young age...

But being that I'm 41 now, 25 seems young...

And other than being sore and having no urge to party, I feel better now than I did then... Probably because I have more... And I had very little then...

And I loved college but hardly studied and the girls frustrated me...

I think those years were the last of my true fantasies about women (now it only takes YouTube clips)... And Instead of doing homework in my dusty bedroom (I still lived with my parents) I'd have these "scenarios" about a girl I'd seen in class...

Or in the library, when I tried to study there, and the girls were like beautiful breezy leaves in Autumn... The distraction was unbearable...

And (off the subject of sexual frustration) those contented Asians in the back of the library... Sure, it's true, they study all day and all night, but they have each other and most of the time they're laughing (always very quietly) and smiling at each other...

CAN'T SLEEP

Often I can't sleep... Or I'll sleep for three hours and then wake up, and can't fall back...

This is worse than than not falling asleep.

Being an insomniac is no fun... You don't have the urge to create or enough energy to get outta bed and watch a movie... You're too tired for everything, even sleep...

It's horrible.

But in the afternoon, after work, napping is no problem... I lay down and usually, in a matter of minutes, I'm dreaming...

Oh if someone could figure a way to bottle that afternoon feeling... So during the night you could use it for the same result...

TOWER RECORDS

I miss TOWER RECORDS... That's where I bought most of my four-thousand DVDs... I was in my thirties... I'd go and not talk to anyone... I detested the coffee-gray hipster employees who wore pins against this and for that...

They were a group of people who seemed as if they all slept together and didn't want to talk to anyone else, that is, customers like me who spent money like it was going out of style...

I didn't (and don't) have kids or a wife so that's where my money went... You know, most of the time at TOWER I was annoyed at the employees (and customers, I guess) and made zero contact with anyone...

But now TOWER is gone... There's no more big record store with a bevy of DVDs for me to browse through and buy new, and I miss it... I miss going there...

Actually there was one worker I knew... Her name was Mary... She was a mess... You can tell she did a lot of drugs in her youth (she was forty or so), and had that honestly that goes with it, very blunt but she was cool and not too obnoxious...

She'd been a waitress at the restaurant next door (or, across the parking lot) where me and friends'd go in the nineties... We always like her; thought she was amusing...

When she worked at TOWER we'd say hello and towards the middle of the nineties, things weren't going well for the place... The internet: you could buy songs online...

The store kept changing... The books and magazines were moved to a smaller section... And Mary, she told me, had a new job... "I now strategically place the magazines where people can buy them..."

It was kinda sad how excited she was; the same kinda thrill the people had walking aboard the Titanic, most likely...

The only difference being, I think she saw the iceberg coming...

THE PERFECT GUY

I went to a cowboy bar with a friend from my work, a girl named Summer who was pretty in a way but I didn't think of her that way, because her way wasn't my way... That is, as they say, she wasn't "my type"...

And I wasn't her's but she was attracted to me the way girls are usually... More of a hidden crush that means about as much as a Valentines Day Card to your pet...

I had fun at the bar and we danced and later, back at her apartment, we kissed... And that was it...

I was (we were) pretty messed-up, and I think she pulled away because, as they say, she didn't want to "ruin it"... But what was there to ruin? There wasn't anything...

So the next day, after waking up on the couch, I met her roommate... He was one of those perfect guys into mountain climbing and canoeing... With the jutted chin and blond hair slightly balding which doesn't matter because his oval face is sunburnt-tan, and he's fit and wears clothes that fit to a build built from real work and manly, genuine exercise (years later, he'll jog pushing his baby in a stroller)...

He was a nice guy, like they all are... And why the hell not - he was the perfect guy?

And I don't think they were "together" but maybe he liked her... (Although he was much better looking a guy than she was a girl... but she was more confident than most girls I knew, and that's all it takes)...

When I drove off she was helping him put a canoe on (or in?) his truck... It was an orange canoe and his shirt was dark green...

MY THIRTIES

It's tough to write about my thirties because not much happened... I was addicted to pain pills but it was more a crush than true love, and I could take 'em or leave 'em... The problem was I had several bottles (first bags) I purchased and sat watching old movies ("Journey Into Fear" mostly) and instead of popping the pills I'd bite off pieces, and they made me more uptight than anything else... (When you're uptight alone you don't chew out people, you chew out yourself, argue with your own mind, remembering things and people that pissed you off and argue with them what you should have said then but didn't, which is why you're pissed in the present, remembering...)

I had two kinds of these pills, regular and extra strength, and if the regular didn't work I'd take the extra and vice versa... Soon I knew which worked when and why and what felt good and what to take after what didn't work will now that I took the other (and if you took the wrong pill and then took the right pill, the buzz from the wrong pill backed up the buzz from the right one)...

But that uptightness I felt on the pills was a contented uptightness and I didn't write much... Actually that's not true... I wrote a lot but nothing means anything now...

I filled steno notebooks with plays and poems and prose about mobsters and assassins (the plays were about normal people though, and the poems about me) and I remember one morning after writing all night, driving to the next city (in Southern California "cities" are separated by mere blocks) and I went through a drive-thru, got a "breakfast burrito," went home and slept and slept and I believe it was all just like that for the first five years of 2000 (I was born in 1969 so my age is about equal with the decades)...

And what's the point of all this? Well it's just that I miss a lot of things, but I don't remember much of my thirties... although they weren't entirely wasted. I began writing screenplays in 2003 and haven't stopped since... None have sold, I never win contests, nothing will become of any of 'em (most likely) but 13 scripts in eight years times isn't bad...

And I'm pill-free except if I pass a kidney stone... Then I need 'em, and take more than a nibble...

RECLUSIVE

People think I'm a recluse... But who are they? My family, perhaps... They don't say it, but they think it...

My friends... Oh, I don't know... I only have two left but every now and again I run into people I knew from the eighties and nineties... It's nice seeing them, especially the women... They're married, but I'm newly skinny and thankful I don't look like I did five years ago... A plump maverick of mist...

Now, leaner, I have confidence... And can speak without smiling...

A LET DOWN

I eventually let everybody down, but not by any actions... Nor by words... I don't put them down, not anymore... I used to, but not to their face... I don't think anyone really understands me and I don't understand anybody else, except a few folks I can't stand...

RIDE TO A CLUB

There was a girl named Lisa that I knew, she was one of the original "Death Rockers"... Now they call 'em "Goths"... I was a heavy metal kid then a hippie (dug Iron Maiden then Pink Floyd) yet I always dug these dark gloomy folks, especially the chicks...

As for Lisa; we never hooked up but I knew her when I was sixteen and... Years later, eighteen, I didn't have a car... She called me up... What a nice surprising surprise... It'd been a while since I'd heard from her, and I don't think, even back then, she ever called me...

It was exciting hearing her voice... That sexual energy mounted within my mounting frustration and she asked, "Can you give me a ride to a club, called Olde World, tonight?"

As I mentioned, I didn't have a car... I told her this, and that was that...

STRESS OF YOUTH

Fear is the feeling of youth... Even when I was in my early twenties, if I walked into a place, say, where you eat or get coffee or even a record store or concert where there were others, young like me, I'd get a giddy nervous feeling like I didn't fit or that I just might fit if I say, or do, the right thing or act the right way...

But I'm older now and it all doesn't matter... That invisible age where the stress of fitting in and being accepted is long gone... And this freedom from the game, I like it okay...

It's nice and relaxing but there's no adventure...

NOT VENICE BEACH

I was in a rehab at eighteen and there were younger teens there... I was the only real "hippie" and had long moppy hair and slept the entire week, coming down off months of speed and LSD... I did wake up now and again and in fact got in trouble for something so I couldn't go with the group of kids on a field trip to Venice Beach... That was a bummer... Venice Beach is the place where Hippies live and sell cool stuff and I remember when the kids were gone (none were into sixties music, at least not like me) I was sitting out in a gloomy patio separated by a brick wall, but that you could climb, so I could hear a radio playing in the next patio... Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ("Carry On") coming from a (what sounded like a) small transistor radio...  You could hear the beautiful voices and static too... I sat smoking a cigarette, listening to this song, beat and shaggy and sleepy and not stalking sunny Venice with those lucky kids who, when they got back from the trip were fulla smiles, wearing costume sixties memorabilia... I watched 'em from the hallway as they entered through the side door, turned around, returned to my room and went back to sleep...

DREAM OF A HIPPIE GIRL

What's worse than a bad dream is a good one, especially if you wake up wanting what you dreamt and it isn't there...

A young hippie girl, dirty-blond, bright as sunshine, wearing an orange shirt and a Bob Marley Beenie and... she had a cold... I told her I was really sick a week earlier and to her, the cold was a minor setback and not even that; she was ignoring it as she sat on the table, smoked cigarettes, and told me how great the concert was I missed because I was too sick to go... I didn't want to hear... I told her, "I don't want to hear about the concert because I'm depressed I didn't go." She told me anyway... Actually she sang a song by the band (not really, but in the dream it was) and I didn't mind her rubbing it in... She was more massaging it than rubbing...

I never touched her though... She liked a friend of mine, Rich, a guy I knew years before and haven't seen in over a decade... Funny how our cast of characters we never see in life make special guest appearances in dreams... They were hanging out in some room (scene-switch) and she was seated beside him with her head in her arms, napping (and dreaming?)... They weren't touching... She was an asexual nymph... I told Rich, "I think she likes you," but he was oblivious...

Before that I dreamt I was outside in a big park and there was a Beatles cover band playing... The guys were in their twenties, dressed like the Beatles with mop-tops but still looked like themselves... I don't know them in real life but in the dream they looked like guys I'd have seen in the late eighties when hippiedom was making a comeback, and all the young good looking kids, guys and dolls alike, were into that stuff when I was just getting out of it... When I was into it not many had that look... I was more grunge (years before the trend) than anything else, and at one high school the class had to discuss me being in there because of how shabby I looked...

This Beatles cover band played old tracks and sounded great... Had soul (rubber or otherwise) and carried the grooves... And I was grooving to each song and next door was a church I used to go when I was a kid... I walked... Actually I drove from the park (we used to ditch church and hang there) and the Beatle band went to the church... My dad thought they were nice young men even though... or he didn't realize they played music by "filthy communists"...

But it's that hippie girl in the dream I mentioned first that's still on my mind... I can't shake her... God how frustrating...