I am a man of simple principles. More of a love and hug than a rub and tug type of guy, but when I met her in the early spring of 2008 I was intent on not getting serious. I told myself that she could keep me warm as I slept in the back of Benny's old Ford Explorer. The most expensive thing I owned was the sleeping bag I passed out in, it cost me more than the conveyance that doubled as my homestead, and canoodling closely in my cocoon of sleep with a little extra lithe filling could help me keep the windows fogged. With our exhalations sticking close to the glass and providing privacy for our predilections we could plan when to plant our feet on the frosty ground and face the day. As you can see, the best baked breads of broken men often end up Rye, and I got Carawayed sewing my seeds for the future on land left fallow for a reason.

Oh!

How deeply do I fall for complacency and revel in a rudderless existence, passionately kissing the macadam with the force of an 8th grade make out. Clicking teeth, gnashing molars pushing my body to besotted extremes. Eleven years later we were still together. We took breaks for the first few winters, and you can read here about how I took the cure down south, only to hook back up with her in the Spring. Eventually we were together full time year round, and I began to hate her with a vehemence that seethed over like milk from a forgotten double boiler. Spraying forth an angry froth solely because I settled, I could be angry at no one but myself and instead of dealing I devolved. Crippled with addiction I battled daily to plant the same brand of boots from 11 years earlier, and eventually she made the decision for me.

No one likes to be dumped. You don't dump me, I dump you. I was supposed to the end this on my terms. Where did she get the gall to do what I should of done at the end of that first Summer. How on earth did she get the balls to do what I said I wanted and knew I needed but never would have done. I find no recompense in rifling through the piles of clothes that do nothing but remorsefully remind me of how much I really loved her the first few years, before the rank reek of stagnancy clung to our relationship like a seasick hand on a stanchion.

During the nascency of our demise, I was afforded the luxury of going away to attain a sobriety that had been missing for over 20 years. About 50 days into having a clear head I came back for a date to see if we could work things out. I asked the world to let things go as they should, and after hanging around longer than the breakup actually took I limped outside to catch my breath. I'm so angry at her for dumping me, but so relieved to be single again. The tickling trepidation of being on the market again so close to 40 has invigorated my soul. It's time to decide if I should rebound with another rub and tug, or hold out for love and a hug.

In a recent discussion with a friend and after mentioning that very few living creatures are able to live at either pole, I took stock in my temperate surroundings. Modestly middle class and enjoying a comfortable existence I queried of us both of why neither of us could rest in a comfortable median when it came to being healthy. Rationalizing my destructive behavior has been my forte for most of my creative life. Oh how wonderful to be a misanthropic artistic force, my twisted machinations of the written word being my proudest accomplishments. The world must see how miserably productive I can be.

Yeah. So?

So what to do when the engine starts knocking like the tail end of the best bender you believe that you've ever enjoyed. Alliterative prose filled with the best metaphor you've ever created, comparatively placed on an alter next to the best fix you've ever copped. Being a man of a pretenious comportment I may tell you the written word has been my mistress since puberty had me chasing similes for a quick dry hand release. With the deft cunning of a predator in its natural habitat, I osmotically acquired the ability to astound myself with loquacious verbosity. Smugly proud of vacuously empty sentences stuffed like a club sandwich with big words being the condiments. I love to giggle at the fact that people never say, "I had just had the best ham on rye, the mustard was so good!"

No one ever wants to answer the door and see themselves. They long to see a desperate friend they can give advice to. Imagine opening the door to see yourself and having to take your own advice? I can think of very few things more disgusting than that. Gross. I only like to fix other people and then surreptitiously slink back to the bottom of my own destructive proclivities and settle smugly like sediment. So you can take my advice, use it, and prosper or don't. I don't care I'm fuckin perfect.

Assholes.

My engine is hewn from a single block of the purest iron, forged pistons that unfailingly gallop toward an unreachable redline. An incomparable workhorse of perpetual internal combustion. My engine will never knock, ping, or lose timing. Impeccable design and forethought created this design whose blueprints have no equal.

Downside?

The fuel is prohibitively expensive and although varied, increasingly difficult to find. Knowing that, one can see the crux of the issue.

If an engine isn't running it's almost impossible to know whether or not it's destroyed completely or just out of gas.

I was diagnosed by my good friend at work, and, feeling that he was patient zero, he felt implored by his integrity to tell me that I had contracted it. The first symptom was increased apathy and the increasing general dislike for small talk. A smile, and then a dagger. You see? He asked that with fervent zeal. You see?? You see?? You're fucked. That's the give away. You hate these people and their smiles. You've got it. Hence I was diagnosed. I pleaded. I begged. Tell me whats gonna happen. Nah man your fucked. Its too late. You'll see.

The second symptom became apparent somewhere during the next week. It was like an arm placed its wrist on your neck nape, and large knuckled phalanges felated your skull. The heinous head massage let your muscles slack and you knew. The only way to get ahead was the death of those ahead of you. I created fantastic scenarios where my fellow brothers met the reaper. Guts torn apart and stepping over a gurgling brother, grabbing a sweeper and cleaning gum wrappers, I step on their throats and fight the throes of life. Stamping out the last vestiges of their staccato breaths, I wonder if I can get their vacations, or the very least their lockers. I have a lot of winter overalls and can use their hangers. Fuck man, sorry. Those beneath me are concocting their own murderous machinations. I have to stay one step ahead of the reaper.

The final symptom settled over me like a December fog. It coddled me maniacally and I began to talk to myself out loud. Every female was subject to a lecherous inspection and the positing of their supposed sexual abilities. It was a visceral consumption of all social mores. Objects degraded with the finality of a pig tailed wrangled headboard smash. Discarding the conquered, I surveyed the landscape for the next happenstance.

Since my diagnosis, I have taken the certain steps to consider myself almost cured. I have nothing but a garbage pail mind, and finally in 2015 I have decided to stop throwing away the recyclables. Now, I take the time to fill at least three different bins. I know others are afflicted and they don't know how to fix it. Find me and I will help you over come what has come to be known as Creepinsons. Together we will either fight, or, as the silt settles, revel in it.

I don't know why. I'm really not sure. Why exactly doesnt my wife toss me the fuck out? Im sure I smell like the ass end of a sewer, I rip butts on the sly end of a bender whilst wearing shorts that havent seen a wash since a Sabbath in June... Breathe son. Its August. Despite my short pants walking themselves tawahads the gahhbige can, I know I can relate towards one reader at least.
ok. more than likley none at all, i grow there in the dank. strutting roots in the dirt, sauntering like i have more than one lapel that isn't bent under my collar, spinach driven between my front teeth, teetering like a tike without a flipflop on a boardwalk.
Im a guy nowadays that makes retro seem before midnite. Im up most nites till 4. Tossing street trash at my twenties, the shadow of the facade that drapes my thirties hangs like a collage in my teenage bedroom. Blacklights backliting tears and hospital corners proffering cleanliness, rubbing one out after prom, crying before my mother died and being dry when she did.
Sputter cough, sputtacough, choke, choke, run.

Rifling through the hydrator in the fridge, grabbing a beer, and celebrating sobriety is a monumental occasion. You weren't Kurt when high, you had to search, and ended up in every degrading situation that you used to regale as another townie's prophecy. Destitution mixed with exhilaration, a smattering of self satisfaction coupled with foxhole prayers. You're coming up on a thirty day key tag, and stepping in inches towards what others call normalcy. But a jagged wound remains, sans stitches, plastered with the plastic bandages of a neglected first aid box.
If you've been busted at the seams for what seems a lifetime, the wave crashed and sucked back to sea, the visceral remains around you're ankles against the suck. Nerves tingle, everything's raw like the butchers back room. Ribs cracked agape, bones saws stripping ribs. You're voyage has turned old friends into the detritus,the marrow bones vacuum sealed and sold to the dogs.
Coming to terms with a destructive fuck up, to you, is like courting a fifth grade lover. Can you stand me? Check yes or no. If you can, would you like to hang out. Check yes or no. The trick is being prepared for the no, while expecting the yes with ruddy cheeks and feigned confidence. You've tackled every shit situation in you're whole life alone, and this is another one. Yes, Nancy, you're just saying NO, but the people need their pound of flesh. You wish that they'd take it in neat amounts, but they need it in jagged clumps, excised with a bread knife. You've shit your soul, and kicked with confidence but its not enough. They want you face down, boot to neck, curb to mouth and screaming. You're sorry, but they need blood and part of you thinks they all deserved a quart. Coming to terms with their blood lust you realize you need it all to prove them wrong.

I wanted to take a second to see if you still read. What I typed last time was two past petrified. If you do. Still reeds standing placated by the lack of bluster. Bottles quivering empty to be recycled by the flag pole as the stars and stripes stand stagnant. Straddling the chasm? Trying to reclaim the past? Posit this. Everytime your curser blinks, your cursor winks like a miser slinking with his shekels past a slightly cracked door. Another feat ahead seeing the feet be clad in another we'd be glad, be glad if she peaked at her past type. Run on. Go ahead, barefoot, I dare dare you. The tautness of your twenties, glimmering in recollection like a sunset, fading like my wardrobe. The permanent press. As we squirm towards egress, pack and squeeze into the cracks of these facsimiles. In the past we seized. Grasping. The chances, trying to be Frank, while be Francis. All types of cancers lurking in the shadows the metastases splitting their tumors like a pack of thieves. All we breathe is apathy, and you can see it. In the air and in our purpose, the snacks in our lunch box to the Fireball in our Thermos. Being the blanks, to the gunfire in the skirmish, looking crooked with a beer belly at fucks with six packs, Its the firmness, so tight, with which I'm critical, the truth declared illegal rumours rampant deemed admissible. Another missive full of favorite words like penchants and proclivities, the barrel over dams, the bland we find inspid. These bent and crooked knees, tendons fraught we the fears of failing. We quake and quiver and when they snap and roll, its the nothing. Not the pain, the leaves us flailing.

Stutter steps and rumination, the cessation of the sensation of attainment. You see I achieved a level of mediocrity and proclaimed it to be the pinnacle. A cynical misanthropic hot shit who meanders off topic and falters. Stumbling, staccato stratification, words placed in containment, on some insane shit strapped to the lally column in the basement.

Things I will quit today: procrastinating, dangerous behavior. Things I will quit eventually: opiates, amphetamines, tobacco (mouth), procrastinating. Things I want to quit: none

Things I want to do tonite: push a weak premise until it shits out nothing but punctuation.

Things Ive done tonite :

My friends, at 31, if I'm enjoying the Private Stock, I wonder what dusty bottle sits on the bottom shelf. If this is the premium, whats in the well? Well, Ive made a list.

I am thankful for: Whitney, Jasper, my dad, my evil female twin who is actually 34 and female, my job.... my experiences : I was one of those shitheads who shouldn't have survived his teens, never mind his twenties, and in my nascent 30s I feel like a soldier without a war. For the past 16 years I have done a fuck of a job trying to kill myself. A ouja board told me Id be dead by 17, so I told my parents Id be rich by 21. Y2K didn't drop a 747 on my head like the cabbie told me it would, I was hitchhiking after my car ran out gas when I had a headfull of blue gelltab acid.

Fuck. There I was 18 and still alive. So like most kids who find themselves alive at 18, I went to college. I didn't die stuffing 300mg of prescription speed up my nose for three months, eating two blister packs of cold medicine, or doing full funnels of blackberry brandy. But I did find myself on thin ice during the first freeze of a New Hampshire October. Four years later, you'll be happy to know that I graduated college, and fuck that ouja board. I was STILL alive.

2004. 23 years of age and ready to take the world by its, I don't know, hand? Not its balls at all. Maybe by its forefinger. Like a toddler shakes hands, I tumbled into shift work, temp jobs, and fifths of brown liquor. Busted 8 balls had me ghostbusting the carpet. One contact lens, stumbling walks in Sunderland.

The highlights : falling in love with a Jersey girl, and pissing on a cop outside the Elm Street Tavern.

2006. Started to account some of the damage in this domain. Look it up. I was still alive and living in the bEAST. Sean, Jay and a rottweiler named Jade saved me when a liter of Jim Beam pushed a TV and a cable box on top of me when I did nothing but try and take my pants off. I sold shit door to door, and bilked the residents of Hartford's fine Albany Avenue out of their welfare checks. Drank my breakfast daily with a salt and pepper superhero salesman from Manchester, UK, and burned out on bourbon whisky and broken promises, briskly did a runner down south to America's phallus. When I got there and found a fedora, threadbare shirt, and the game of tennis, I was remarkably still alive.

2010. 29 years of age and back on Cape. In April I found Whitney. Two years into new job on the water with the love of my life bubbling on my arm, I found the streets paved with opiates. Two bulging discs in my back after losing a game of chicken with a blue hued Saturn sedan, a sympathetic doctor who moved here from Florida turned relief into repast, and help to hindrance.

The winter: laid off, strung out, in love, still alive.

2012. Early fall I turned 31, and two weeks later a cunt named cancer killed my mom. I peaked into the tunnel of life's regression and saw the span of two weeks turn my mother from just that into a raving psycho and subsequently to a vegetable on a life vine of morphine. Bedpans, bedsores and RNs with degrees in mollification. I arrived at her death bed achingly clean to find her room the same way. I took a sabbatical from any attempted sobriety until now.


The ouja lied, planes didn't crush me cause computers can tell the difference between 1999 and 1000, even the Mayans fucked me. My moms last words were, "You don't know what your up against." I figured once again on the eve of 122112, that this was it. Nope. I'll make a go of it with the woman and dog I love. I'll plan for sobriety whilst preparing for life......

While being proud that I made it out of this 40 alive.

Very rarely may an amalgam of South Shore detritus be welded well. Normally the sparks splaying about the workshop peter out. Very rarely do they conjure the conflagration that has become stoked so strongly in a being whose main fire's stasis is a smoldering wet log, that sighs and hisses in the damp fire pit of a sober September.

A scepter wielded by the sorcerer of grief, great swaths ripped by the swats of deftly maincured talons gape your armour. We all have our own images sharpened into a sickle of a personal reaper. Draped in robes or garbed in a tailored suit, a bare skull or a perfect mustache creeps in crepuscular nonchalance. A date rape predator or a guardrail without rumble strips. I grumble and sip and wonder and wish.

Death rattles and ample doses, repositioning preventing soars of a certain unobtainable scab. Seemingly normal questions poised provoke answers obsequious. One jigger of orange juice from concentrate to every protracted absence, and a visit to the nurses station to elicit a joke that jostled normalcy.

Once upon time a verdant August begged from his neighbor, natures equivalent of a cup of sugar. What he got in return were two packets of Splenda and an apology for the dearth.

They chorused the notion that there was no time to prepare, even though an abundance was a normalcy, and, while apologies showered from random places like a rainbow from a broken garden hose, I prepared to quaff my coffee black whilst imploring myself to never enjoy the taste.