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Roadtrip Blues

I really love and hate driving alone.  Sometimes it's the best feeling in the world to cruise through the night on some twisty road high above the rest of the world.  Other times it's just the worst feeling in the world, like an automotive equivalent of the walk of shame where you feel isolated from the rest of the world in some steel cage.  It's moments like that where I start to wonder if I'm really alive; it's moments like that where I feel like a tree falling down in a forest with nobody around to hear.  Did I make a sound?  Did I ever really exist?

Two days ago, I was driving home from Redondo Beach.  My cell phone was chirping that its battery was about to die.  The needle on my fuel gauge was past empty.  I was tired to the point of being a waking zombie.  To top it all off, I was lost.  In the middle of this all, I was struck by a feeling I couldn't quite put my finger on.  It was all the feelings that have been inside me for a while now, surfacing at the same time.  Disappointment and loneliness lingered as hope filled my heart and I filled my gas tank.

Last night, I was driving home from Santa Monica, still a little stoned, when I hit a cat.  My eyes immediately welled up with tears.  I don't know if it could have been avoided had I been more sober, but I think I'm done with getting high for a while.

When I get high, I just want to hold somebody.  We were sitting on the beach, staring at the moonlight reflected off the water.  It was so bright, she said it was almost like it was really day, seen through a filter.  The moon, she said, was like a hole in the sky where we could see the day peak through.  We imagined a ladder, 2 miles long, stretching all the way to the hole, and children started climbing out.  All this, while I was wondering how nice it would be to hold her next to me.

Fuck, I think I'll just go drive it off tonight.  There's gotta be a mountain out there high enough to fly me away from all this.

This is my brain (off drugs)

It's been a long adventure. It's been so damn long that I have to read what I wrote to figure out where I left off. Where I had felt before that I had been writing from the bottle of a glass of alcohol, today I'm writing looking up from inside a bottle of pills.

How broken was I to feel that I was beyond repair? It seems so far away now, but a few months ago, I could be found sitting in a chair in a cramped and unfamiliar office. I'm not really sure what to call the person I talked to. Psychologist? Therapist? Counselor?

I would take all my problems and all the chaos in my head, and lay them out on the table like a bunch of tarot or playing cards. Take your pick. I would shuffle them around like I was trying to win a game of solitaire of figure out where I was going.

I took the medication they gave me, so I stopped my self medication. Lately though, cigarettes have been tasting really good to me.

So here's what I've noticed. I'm less pushy off the meds. I don't know what it was about them, but they made me confrontational. In the same way, they made me conversational.

Now, I'm more inclined to remain silent. Speech is like a cloud of gasoline, waiting to be ignited in my mouth. The meds were the spark plugs, jumping the gap with a fleeting impulse of electricity and turning the heavy engine that is my voice.

Maybe I didn't write because my mouth took all the words out of my head. I didn't have any left. Or maybe it was being addicted to another drug, video games. But that's just the start of another game I've been playing lately, the blame game.

Where does it all begin? I've been fucking up for so long in my life, it has to start somewhere. Looking back, though, I don't see any night and day changes in my life where it had been working out and then it suddenly went all to hell. One thing that's for sure is that I never learned how to live my life with discipline.

So that's where I stand now. No more meds. I feel all flowers-for-algernon and shit; the happy and cheerful me is going away. I'm at the threshold of a door that leads to a pitch-black room, the blinding light from the connecting room leaking into the next.

But then again, voids exist to be filled. And let me tell you, I've been brainstorming ways to decorate this shit hole for a while now.

I don't write poetry as much any more, but it's still in my heart.

I think I made a mistake. I showed this blog to the wrong people, and now I can't write what I want. But I think I know how to fix this problem. If I just say what I want to say, consequences be damned, that will work things out by itself. I think Chris told me he once felt the same way, and I think he did the same thing. If I'm totally off here, I guess I don't give a shit anyway.

But first of all, I need to share a story. Lately, my good friend Joey Gu posted a story about me on his blog, that left me feeling a little embarassed and needing to defend my honor. So, this is my revenge, Joey, a story about you. Having grown up together with Joey on the outskirts of Riverside in a small town of Mira Loma, I have so many stories about Joey to tell it boggles the imagination. He really should have known before he even posted his that I would come back with a story of my own. This is my message to you Joey Gu: next time, you'd better think about who you're dealing with before you bite off more than you can chew.

For all the man of mystery and endless adventures he is, Joey Gu came from humble origins that most people never find out about. Well, no more, today I separate the man from the legend. I remember my first encounter with Joey Gu at Son Shine Christian School (Joey's past in private school still haunts him, I personally think it's what drives him to act the way he does) on the first day of second grade.

I had a Ninja Turtles coloring book in front of me, and I was trying my best to color within the lines. I sucked at coloring even for a second grader. Anyway, so I look up for a second, and there's this Chinese kid even smaller than I was (and I was pretty small) with the dorkiest bowl cut and black horn-rimmed glasses I'd ever seen.

I did my best to give a look of annoyance (I was trying to look like those cool kids on Saved by the Bell) at him. I mean, come on, I had a fucking Ninja Turtles coloring book, and who's this herb trying to get all up in my steez like he can drop it like it's hot? But he just stared somewhere between my face and the desk, although his gaze never really did seem to land on my chest or on anything in particular at all. Tired of these games, I sighed, "Yeah?"

"Hi my name's Joey Maximum Gu can I sit next to you?" he asked without pause. Jesus Christ I was so annoyed at that moment. But the kid looked like the type who could burst into tears if I said the wrong thing. Without a word, I pulled my backpack off the chair next to me.

Man, I'd really been trying to save that seat for Caren. We were pulling grass from the baseball field during recess one day the spring before, when she had told me that she liked how my clothes smelled. Maybe that's just how girls are. They like how things smell and they make sure the world knows it. Whatever it was, I was hooked on everything about her.

Hm, I just realized this story doesn't really go anywhere. Joey didn't say anything for the rest of the day, and I didn't say anything to him. I remember that I decided to be nice and play with him during lunch, but when we played catch with the big red handballs on the playground, he had no coordination and he threw like a baby. So let me try to take this somewhere...

One day, in eighth grade, Joey called me. He had just masturbated for the first time. I was grossed out on the outside, but at the same time, it was fascinating to me, having never tried. It was disgusting. Unprepared for what was to come, Joey had ejaculated on his dog. Joey had to give his dog a bath and then take it for a walk so nobody would find out.

Okay, so back to saying stuff that I don't feel comfortable saying because of the people who read this blog. Well I think I played with somebody's heart when I shouldn't have and I feel really terrible about it and at the same time I fell for somebody I can't have and now I'm so lovesick that I haven't felt normal for weeks. I hope life finds you well, friends.

From the bottom of the bottle looking up

I woke up today with the worst hangover I've had in a long time.  Last night, I got so drunk that I didn't fall asleep so much as I passed out.  It started out with a martini, which then turned into vodka on the rocks and finishing up the Smirnoff Ices that are sitting in the fridge.  I wouldn't be caught dead drinking Smirnoff Ice, but they've been taking up room in the fridge forever and if I didn't do it then, they would have stayed there forever.  I was so damn drunk that I blacked out, too.  When I checked my computer this morning, I saw several attempts to converse online with people.  They went sort of like, one line from me, and then some response from them.  Then I lost interest and did something else.  My guess is that something else was losing consciousness.

I feel like the man in the movies who wakes up from a shipwreck to find himself on a desert island.  The memories of the vicious storm the night before are more like a dream.  My body aches from withstanding the turbulent waters, but at the same time, every breath I take fills me with new life.  God damn it, life is a beautiful thing.  Sometimes you just need something else to help you see it.  I guess that something else is also losing consciousness.

Some of you might not understand this, but it's moments like these that make my drinking problem all worth it.