Real Life: 2005 And On...

preoccupied: too much in the heart of this constellation of tragedy ridden stimuli. it takes over all of my senses. i’m no longer me but only a mere extension of your misery. and i’m sorry that my love is not more theatrical but drama hasn’t done me any good sense high school. maybe it’s all in your head. a suicide of migraine headaches. a series of hospital trips. sequentialist downfalls making you proud of your defeats. proud of what you could never be. healthy. happy. i want to be your future.

wanting to feel anything but what you feel right now and that’s where i come in; to make you forget. drown you in a love that’s physical. drain you of all that’s taken place in this fiscal year. fuck your past and what you need to get off. i’ll fuck your past and get you off the short cosmic horse that brought you here to me.

i’m sick of being pissed off at the breath that you kiss me with. i sit with a map of massachusetts in front of me and the only thing i can do is sketch your face twice on it.

from her to him: you kissed my lips when they held back secrets and held my hands when they were grenades without the pins. and now i need you like i need a cigarette to relieve my of life’s truth and the stress of your future death. trust is nowhere to be found because you’ll eventually leave me and this earth. i don’t want you to forget that this girl you met is not alright. a murder/suicide cuts right through to my everyday heart attack. every time i move, my bones they break. the only special treatment i need is for you to be my everything.

i’m afraid you’ll be as damaging to my health as my need and my need for a cigarette. i fake like i’m tough and you make like you’re in love. trust is nowhere to be found but we’re cosmically bound-like those chemically linked to each other because of their collective love of heroine.

biology rocks: your bones are brittle and sometimes i forget how easily i can drain anemic blood from your sensitive veins. i need to lose all sense of myself in the frailness of your marrow and become reflection-less in your albino eyes. i’ll try harder to lose myself in your dust and be all that you need. put my bullshit on hold or digest it quicker, try to have my liver filter it out. i’ll use the grammar of the closed caption for the hearing impaired. not exactly silent but not really saying anything new. i will be selfless. i will be your loss of breath, i will be your lack of iron because i am not your air, i am not your calcium.

in china: the need for you to come first and me to come last or never at all because what does it matter anyway. i’m all set. i don’t need you like you need me but i need you all the same.

vision: your vision is blurred as to which it is, if you love so much that it hurts or if it hurts so much that it must be love. it only hurts when there’s a chance of it feeling good. it can only feel good after it hurts. it only hurts if it’s felt good.

SWM SEEKS SBTTL: constantly a few steps behind a flourescent, flickering halo that has burnt out many times before and will probably continue to do so until he is finally really ready to get it right. a brutal optimist with pessimistic predelictions. morbidly romantic with bottled falsetto, a muffled decrescendo and slurred speech in between swearing and sleep. needing days of watered down lips in order to piss away the toxins and be cleansed again. healthy again.

conversation: speaking with the tongue of a chemical as she listens, breathing with paper lungs inked black with tar and nicotine. he’s apologizing for not being able to praise the time in between cold turkey and relapse. because smokers seem to be the biggest liars lying crippled under a shell that’s cracking and splitting. going from selfless to selfish in one half of every breath. sometimes it makes you sick. not good at being in love. not good at knowing anything but never wanting to ask because we’re all worse at knowing. covering yourself with a shell to cripple yourself under. the need to kill yourself slowly and impair those around you. lock up lips; seal words about death. paper lungs dragging you along as you take drag after drag. what if i told you what that smell reminded me of? cigarettes yet again taking precedence over me and my sex. flattering, isn’t it?

SWM FINDS SBIL: more obsessed with how i can make life SEEM as opposed to how it really is. maybe that has been my own version of killing myself all this time. maybe that is everyone’s slow but sure suicide. living for some story or some version of a story that maybe never happened. that’s what life is. some version of some story that may have never even existed. i have until i’m 25. need to buckle down. only a year and some change left. i need to be extraordinary in some way or another. read these words not out of nostalgia but out of affirmation or re-affirmation of truths. these are my psalms. the bible of an alcoholic who thinks he’s a savior. here i sit with yet again too much hidden behind too much lip. what’s behind the lizard skin of my eyes? i hope someday you’ll get it though i fear no one ever will. need to slip it all in subtley. hide it behind a story. a story of how death dictates life and vice versa. collision of coincidence.

drunk guy is an average guy: sick of apologies. sick of what i know you to be. predictable. like all the rest. but who’s truly original? i know your reasons. i know what lies behind those eyes. thought that letting the situation rule us would make us crazy. i’ve clouded it. it’s all disappeared and now it’s just me and you. but there’s a need for a handicap and a curve that i’ve forgotten. i don’t know what to do. i am lost. i am tired. i am angry. i am full of doubts. i am chickenshit. i am a silent asshole. i am bitter. i am helpless. i am a liar. fuck me. and fuck you. i lose respect for you easily. you lose respect for me too when i don’t make due on promises i made in my interview period. i am sick. i am sick of myself and this situation. i am not right for this job. you need a thousand somebodies and i am just one single nobody.

mental health: crazy is close. cryptically hidden behind middle class exterior and decorative design. alone is never lonely. alone is safe. alone is control. not dragging everyone down. alone is without anchor. crazy is close. he feels it, mornings after blackout nights. it has become angry. it has become defeat. crazy eats it’s way through these brittled bones. fossilized in alcoholic genes. trust is lost. we’re all the same. we’re flawed, we’re human. rise above. first step is stepping out of the way of liquids too depressing and liquids too exaggerating. blowing things out of proportion. crazy is close. Y chromosome dictates. he and her are forever in delusion. it’s in chromosomes. it’s pumping in our veins. men hating women. women hating men. it’s all in what we’ve seen. we all pay the price for the damage done by our own sex. our own gender; every fender bender that insurance never covers. crazy is close. crazy comes in a 23 year old bottle. this is familiar. this is the ruins. escalating yet again. alone is without anchor. trust is lost. watched the love we had turning into hate. this is picking up the pieces. this is bowing out not so gracefully. tail between his legs. love is intangible to these soft manicured hands. no one will ever be good enough for these lizard skin eyes. crazy is close. paper liver stained with regret and apology. is he ever sorry? alone is without anchor. running is dignified. running is not selfless, it’s selfish. it’s fear. alone is insecurity blanketed by security. how can you be good enough for someone if you never let yourself have the chance because you run? crazy is close. creeping up and creeping up. crazy is here, not so cryptic. black-out lips have broken the code. suffer in silence. take the first step. crazy is here. alone is without anchor. alone doesn’t suck because it means not with anybody, it only devestates because it means not with you.

cemented in you: in every small town boy there is loss. time spent and forgotten. now under the same star lit canopy of a night sky on the coldest of all pavements, moments return. streets tell more stories than you can, every corner knows truths. when did we write our names there? are we still cemented you?

somnambulist and expecting: insomnia has crept up and found me again. this time though its not my art and my passion that keep me alive during night time waking hours. doesn’t even really feel like the stress of what’s to come. expectant father. makes so much sense. this is the test. opportunity has brought me to nobility. could do’s have turned into have to’s. coincidence after coincidence all preparing me for this. and i feel ready and excited to raise the most beautiful of all human beings. finally someone to talk to that will listen with eyes not yet judging. i’m going to make one damn good father. hope me and the mother can make it through without spite or the slightest bit of hate. it starts now. love starts here and remains eternal. love starts here. a father starts here and now. i just want to be capable of providing only the best to both of my new loves. am i up to the challenge? to breath life into a family. to begin, or continue taking care of someone fully. two people that aren’t happy with the world decide to make their own. that’s love and family and i’m ready. there’s nothing else for me. i’ve ran the gamit. finished my circle, my cycle. i hope art doesn’t escape me. i hope my genes fit alright and aren’t whiskey stained and bruised so bad that all will see right through me. trying to find a love that’s pure, found it in my unborn child’s eyes. true martyrdom begins now. nobility. selflessness. all the things i’ve been striving for will be brought forth through a womb. life is whimsical. it’s moments that are chaos in theory. split decision thinking. moments are divided; sadness and nostalgia for what’s been lost and happy excitement and anticipation for what’s to come. i’ll make it all make sense. read it all through the pupils of god’s eyes. “the pupils in her eyes dilate relating this moment to many in her past.” what does she see in mine? why does conversation dissipate slowly over time. big thoughts trapped within the boundaries of small words become small words only. my daughter or son will know big ideas, will live big dreams. i may not be the savior, the messiah, but they might be. my children or my children’s children. cycle of life. found me a home life. now i need to know how to find money.

rationalizing: nobler and greater things will be done when one feels it’s their duty to, that they have to. opportunity and the feeling of “hey i’ll do this because, fuck it, i can” has brought us this far and i’ve known it’s benefits.

insomniart: will you forget revelations made while you were in bed? not exactly sleeping, not quite awake, somewhere near dreaming, lips dripping an old familiar taste, faith, fake.

suicide: strangling starts with two open hands. another man’s freedom is your suicide (van gogh’s last painting). all art has boundaries. and i’d rather feel like shit sometimes, or God some other times than just feel okay all the time.

friends and literature: the pomeranian madness of all i know so well seen through paradise eyes tinted with a scrim of sadness. like duluoz i sit and follow and more than one is my cassady. mammone, trav, tom, tiz. they all make up the amaglamation of the most hailed american hero.

memorabilia: multimedia migraine memories. video clips, records, and pictures of half truths and two sides of every story. how it’s said and how it’s taken. all in our heads. how sad.

one wedding, many funerals: the only way you could be in attendance at our wedding is if we combined it with another one of your funerals. that’s the only way we could have everyone we wanted at our wedding is with a bunch of sophomore and secondary funerals.

when it runs out: i pour my heart out just to have something to drink after all the liquor is gone. pouring my heart out and into a glass almost as to chase the bitterness of this tennessee whiskey in this massachusetts town.

last love: shit face kissing another shit face leaves more than just a terrible taste on sloppy lips, it leaves a lacquer like blackness on hearts that pour out and into glasses just to have more to drink when all the liqour is finally just a rain drop style shine on shit faced chins. first kiss, last love. babies and marriage.

freedom- nothing to lose: you’ve wrapped your hands around my neck and your grip gets subtely yet steadily tighter and tighter as each day passes. you’re constantly a few steps away from becoming my ball and my chain. the rope burn around my wrists and ankles is bound to tell this truth as i’m on my knees pleading for the slightest bit of freedom. you’ve got your hands around my neck and you’re squeezing them tightly. you’ve got a knife to my throat and you’re begging “please love me.” and i truly do when i’m free to.

i miss when you were semi self sufficient or at least parasitically living off something other than me and my tiny open arms. where i didn’t have to breath and breath just to give you life. giving you every breath of my life just to see you barely stay alive. like a blow up doll without all the benefits.

high school beelzububs: sick of your comparisons to lovers of yore. old lovers of yours that you tell and you tell were disasters and un-loved. sick of compare and contrast to the devils of your past. sick of failing to be your heaven.

he chews loudly: does it make a difference that i chose to be different? you were forced into a new life and mine could’ve gone right on living or so i think. easy at least to fall back into it; my drunken former skin. but i chose to be a whole new me. for a whole new-no other choice-you. does that mean anything i wonder. timeline. i’ve lost myself. in you. and sometimes i exhume the body of the me that has died and I’ve buried but not for you, for me. because that guy was fun.

florida: having the same fight over and over again. repetitive to say the least though we are creatures of habit who never seem to learn. and it’s not our mistake though it is our fault. don’t take the personal personal. don’t pay attention when words that you don’t want to hear fall from my lips. don’t forget that life is different. don’t forget that we were born anew, baby soft baby breath. a vacation for the wounded is needed and overdue. a visit to the land of ...so fuck off.

heart: only a blueprint of negatives indented in the bloodied fist that rests in the cavity of your chest; the black pile of shit excuse for the beating under your breast bone. that pumps wine-like blood through the street like veins in your small town limbs.your blood is my wine; it cakes the grooves of my forever chapped lip kiss. you drink from my heart shaped glass filled with ice.

photography class: a soft focus on all the wrongs. 35mm lens flipping real life upside down. high key lighting contrasting your blacks and your whites. somehow highlighting your darks. your black is my blues and i sing familiar work song patterns. with the same innuendos.

advertising firm softly: trusting a shell-an exterior that seems to peel off acrylic as the little hand ticks away. and i am lead poisoned. lead to believe in good excuses. left with shit talk games and an infusion of bravado mixed with a hard liquored snear. we’re all filled to the brim with shit. full. we are images, we are advertisements. we are benefits of the doubt, we want to believe that we are what we seem though we’re nothing of the sort and the stories that we tell over and over have sprung leak after leak until we are finally only filled with holes beaming white light lies. sick of what we become when we go from strangers. when our image consultant gets lazy. when the perfect in perfect strangers dwindles.

23 and expecting: on the verge of my 24th birthday dying to hear my child’s heartbeat. to place a more theatrical love back into my heart. it’s been an empty round, it’s been amatuer night, no energy for genuine improv. i’ve quit. i’m sick. feelings that never seem valid. she’s always compare and contrast. black on the black of a white out past.

get used to it: life begins getting used to the previous moment. remember it all changing as if it had taken place in one day. can’t prepare for the next moment just learning to live with the last. getting used to the last.

forgive and forget: forgiveness. i hope your arms don’t hurt from holding all of this shit over my head. bottling up every emotion only for it to blow up with the help of bottle after bottle and shot after shot taken below your belt. i let it all build up and then it all floods out breaking every god damn. and thank god you don’t let me do what i want, you don’t let me leave. you make me sleep it off and try to get me to fuck it all out of my system. your favorite hate fuck. it will never happen again because i won’t let that taste ever hit my lips. no trust in myself. remember this feeling. feeling like a complete fuck up. remember this feeling. the grief and pain of mornings after terribly terrifying nights where 911 is dialed but never spoken.

pregnancy test: mood so easily shifted. i can’t tell pregnant from the person. i can’t tell pregnant from me. constantly bothered just to get lost in my own head where no one is good enough, where everything plays back and plays again finding faults. i can’t escape my own thoughts of miserable. what is in this for me besides probably the most beautiful of all babies. trying so hard just to get her through the day. trying to make her happy but the best is just getting her by. satisfied. remember this feeling; stress. trying so hard to be nothing and everything at the same time. ego less but the only one who can keep her alive. she needs me but i need to be no one. not to take anything personal, not to expect anything for myself. not to want anything. no wants, no needs, i am the nobody. but when it comes to her wants, her needs i am all she’s got. all that she has is the nobody that has become me. and she doesn’t wear a seatbelt when she’s the most sad almost as a dare to the suicide cosmos or karma. remember this feeling; anger and frustration. not being able to forgive myself for failing time and time again. in over my head. don’t worry its all over yours. you could never understand.

written in madness: call it crazy but i traded my “kingdom” just to see one smile. now all that i can do is drink from her dimples, the cheapest of champagne and hand her the most beautiful of plastic spoon bouquets. “will you marry me?”

memorabilia: another multi-media migraine memory morning where we’re stuck in traffic with bullets in our heads. video, pictures and records stand as the only testament to black out nights washing the memory of real life.

do me a favor?: life has become tasks and errands run daily. contact with friends has become a series of favor asking and ten minute chit chats failing to describe lifetimes of meta-physical change. hit the drain, curl up in the fetal position and remember that this is the last night in your body. yeah. every day i need to be born again and truly forget the stress. back to our small house of anger and sadness and silence where there’s not enough room for all of our separate baggage. remember your dreams as a favor to your former self. go to bed. remember how to be free to love. let your mind take a break, have your heart step in and do some of the talking for once. have i really pulled it off? become void of any genuinely good and pure feeling or emotion. have i been successful at shutting down. kicking me in the ass. left with nothing resembling patience or forgiveness or not over reacting. i suck all of a sudden.

black and white stripes: a prisoner of this pregnancy and you’re probably jealous of me. a fear of abandonment and maybe i should be more sensitive but i’m a prisoner of this pregnancy. are you really jealous of me?

9 months of madness: don’t know if it’s been a celebration or if i’ve been mourning the death of my former self. maybe it’s just that damn purgatory period again where i’m waiting for what’s to come. life seems to be turning a straight line into a circle.

pre-post pardem: if this dream or nightmare could end, i’d kill myself to wake up. i take it all back. i want to take it all away. this is the weight of my regrets. a thousand dumbells in the hands of the monkey on my back. i can’ t tell you from the tragic. i can’t tell me from the feeling guilty. i want to take it all back. missing someone for a lifetime all in one second. i cant imagine. and now depression and anxiety is eating away at you like an old pacman arcade game. the mouth of your sadness consuming every cell. terrified that you won’t be able to tell the real you from the hopeless. that pacman will win and you will split your face to ingest mountains of pills and succumb to the incredibly selfish. take our unborn child with you. and now i’m terrified and see the mirror of mistake for the first time, i’d take it all back. i’d take it all away. butterflies of brain matter fluttering up your pregnant stomach as you break down. i can’t tell you from the crazy. i don’t know who you are and i’m lost myself.

not drunk just tired from drinking all night: thinking about how no one should grow older, realizing that i’m not thinking sober. every thought that you drink you drink yourself sober.

White white hospitals: It’s about 4:00a.m on the morning of your birth. I just watched your mother go through so much and bring herself to the brink of quitting but to overcome and hang in there. I suppose it’s like watching the person you love most die slowly and painfully. But it is to give you life and with that life she is re-born as am i. I have just vomited and sat down to eat a bagel and drink a water. I’m filled with a lot of emotions; very anxious for your arrival, hoping that I will be the great father I’ve envisioned and that you and I will take over the world together. I’m also thinking about family as I’m in the same place where my grandfather passed. Memory is strange, nostalgia for what now is present is stranger. But here this relic is. I can’t wait to see you, I can’t wait to watch you grow. I can’t wait to tell you stories and feel your unconditional love and have you feel mine. Your mother and I will always love you and I will forever be amazed by her. I wish you could’ve known your grandmother but I’m sure a piece of you will be her. I love you though you’re not here yet. It’s a little past 4:00a.m on the morning of your birth. I hope god is with you and is with me. I love him though I don’t know if he’s here or not. Dear god, I hope you’re sending Isabelle back a piece of her mother, a piece of her family.

New year: a good new years’ eve toast celebrates the buried flesh and bones of time lost and time well spent like a cemetary throws stones at our late night mournings spent with the ghosts of our dead.

liars: sleeping in a bed of dead skin. fed up with the lie that you’re living in. open your eyes.

8 montfern hygiene: safety net of non-commitment. every thought that you drink, swallowing every sentence that you think is too personal as years of the acid of pre-hangover vomit rots your unbrushed teeth because years of drinking yourself to sleep have crept up. mornings spent in jeans above blankets with keys still in pockets, hangovers hell bent on ruining the ruins of your life.

paleness of forethought: the country seen through a window. every city seen through a bottle. spotting small town familiarity in a parking lot placed all over these united states. it all seems the same, so it goes unexplored. we spent our time in a box with wheels and windows. feels like a lot of time that pales in comarison to what we could’ve been doing. the whitening of skin. you pale in comparison.

hot shit: you begin to die at 150 degrees. your lungs begin to vaporize when smothered with my body heat.

army of ghosts: the pixellation of the memory desintegrates, fading sense by sense. no longer so vivid and moving. now it’s timid and soothing like a movie you watch as you fall asleep. fighting through an army of ghosts to jog through the fog that has crept into your recollections.

christianity: she most likely dislikes most of me. when she’s on your mind like Jesus is at Christmas time

relationship: laying in a bed of ashes with the overwhelming taste of blood in the open wound that is my mouth from another long day, another long month spent biting my tongue. you lay deflated to my left, taking up more than half of the bed. your defined arms still sore after another long day, another long year spent holding everything i do wrong over my head.

aboriginal mourning: carrying your ashes around as you wear half your finger on a chain around your neck. a version of both of us has died and we are in mourning.

friday night party nights: hypocritically limping, nursing a critical wound after shooting yourself in the opinionated foot, trying to forgive yourself and your god as an audience of one waits for the other shoe to drop. putting your best full of shit foot forward while contemplating cutting the other one off. the real you.

november 22nd 2005:
five years gone by
in the time it takes to drink five glasses of champagne
while blinking an eye
and though much has changed
a hole still lives in the cavity of my chest
where a bloodied fist rests
and beats as my heart.
this void where a friend once occupied space
but which continues to throb
sending pained signals to the brain.
and this throb is proof that he still exists
along with the memories that can’t be drowned, or can’t wash away,
and those thoughts that resist
the habit and diversion of one thousand, eight hundred and twenty five days.

gross: sweating as if he’s been eating bullets. his past following close behind his shadow as he’s chasing the future

taste of a dead man’s tongue: stepping over the dead body of the night before barefoot on amber colored broken glass and a hundred tiny pointed crowns disguised as turned over bottle caps. She sits Indian style on the floor cutting at her wrists with sighs of relieved frustration after black out lips sank every ship built in every bottle of liquor. Her insecurities don’t speak they scream with tongues of high school like over dramatics. She brings her history into every drunken bout.

Finding comfort: After the priest spoke words over the dead, and after “let’s go back to your place” -words that she said, we became two freaks laying in bed, after painting and painting the sheets red; commiserating, on our backs laying.

Losing isiah: Every idea gets lost in this town’s throw around because every thought that we think we just drink it down.

Burnt orange: Spitting out the rusted silver of a spoon that has been choking us for years.

Alcoholic lovesick blues: I was going down cold turkey street, mama, cause I thought it would lead me back to you. I was going down cold turkey street, mama but then I turned left onto relapse avenue. You can’t quit what you love most, even if it’s for the one you love.
To ease the pain and kill some time, I started with champagne and moved onto wine. And because I can’t handle any one of my many fears, I gulped down jack daniels and cracked open a beer, then finding myself in quite a pinch, I reached for that green glowing bottle of new Orleans absinth. Later I choked, fainted and fell to my bed after smoking all the brains I had left to my head. I woke up hours later drenched in self pity, went to the fridge to find the hair of the dog that bit me. Another open wound to pour salt in and lick it, grab a lime, kiss it, and with a flick of the wrist and a flash of Spanish liquor, I’m back to ridiculous and feeling even sicker then I did when I started, a tortured artist brokenhearted killing time, wasting my life while waiting to die.

Losing Thomas: Sipping every idea in the throw around, every thought that you think you just drink it down. And suddenly I lose faith in the ground that you’re walking on. While you live in the indiglo night glow of your cell phone.

Moving in: Two human beings that coexist under the pretense of madness. The pretext of madness.

The jesus brewery: Inhibited by the bitter taste that has replaced common sense. Depressing your central nervous system until your tongue feels numb and you lose your inhibitions habitually in a ritual as related and divine as turning water into wine.

Beached up and whale-ish: Finding yourself washed up on the concrete shore of sidewalks just outside of old bar floors. The places you used to haunt like the ghost of your former self; no insides to speak of, just a tormented shell of a human being; soulless, classless and seething with anger.

Awwww fudge: She turned and said, “count your blessings now and continue to hope.” I said nothing, walked over and washed her mouth out with soap because positivity is vulgar and renders faith useless when her depression is corrosive to the bones and the guts: a central nervous system of rust.

Epitaph of ellipses: He could no longer speak to them. And he came to know with instantaneous certainty that this kind of silence, when it descends and becomes a shroud, a cocoon that smothers every sense, is an entombment from which no one will ever awake and arise.

Drapes: Here I stand, a tapestry of scar tissue stretched across the architecture of bone and cartilage and I’m fucking missing you. Here I stand, an arterial artillery squirting blood every time the heart pumps memories of love and sexual innuendos into my bravado of battle wounds.

Sand on your feet: as the mouth of the ocean sings a most familiar tune of hourglass sands and of a thousand beaches déjà vu. Handing me a music note to gulp down and feel warm.

Hungry hippos: The double helix double feature; a d.n.a double date. Angered not by actions but by the hypocracies “she’d never let me get away with that.”

Open your eyes: Stuck in automatic; love struck and stagnant. The spit filled words that come out of your mouth aren’t remotely close to their weight in gold. I hate the weekend version. Acting as if it’s her first day on earth. Annoyed by being surrounded by child like immaturity.

reminders:
I saw a girl in the street that reminded me of a girl I would never meet I will weep tonight.
I saw a girl in my bed that reminded me of a girl I had dreamt
I will live in my head tonight. I saw a girl on the train that reminded me of a girl I once dated I will masturbate tonight. I saw a girl coming out of the shower that reminded me of a girl made up of flowers I will smell and fuck her for hours tonight. I saw a girl in a wooden coffin that reminded me of a girl with whom I had talked often I will whisper while sobbing tonight. I saw every girl in this world of fake and flight and it only reminded me
of the pearly gates and the fight to not just curl up safe and die tonight.

Last apology, hopefully: Here I sit, my skin stained with regret. My sad, sorry heart a bloodied fist punching it's way through my wooden child like chest. I have created a ghost that sits on two sets of lips and haunts potential happiness. I won't be cleansed until all of the toxins have finally left my piss. I will never be forgiven in my own head as long as that taste stays familiar.

Ask the Ice: I’m the setting sun when you don’t want the day to be done. I’m the stormy seas that brought you to your knees. If you don’t come around, I can never let you down. If you don’t come around, I can never let you down.

The End

I buy a house with my sister and parents and we begin renovating it and then find a better job that uses my degree and is normal hours and far less stress. The Gods have smiled down once again. We’re happy and a family. We learn how to live on Friday nights. We don’t get along smashingly well all of the time but there’s far more happiness and good times then there are bad ones. I’m truly happy with the life that I have built or has been built around me with much help. I’m extremely happy for the beautiful person inside and out that is by my side and ecstatic about the little lady we’ve created. I falter every now and again due to immaturities, booze, insecurities and resentment for the situation Belle was thrust into. I’m learning. I let music back in my life and join Joe’s band. I take out my aggression on the drums again for the first time in two years. It soothes like aloe.

One night I sneak out of the house after Belle falls asleep and go to Trav and Bren’s trailer that they’ve lived in together for a little over a month. We drink some beers and listen to the new MINT CONDITION record. It blows my mind and Trav has the only copy so I needed to sneak out to hear it again. After a couple of listens, a drunk Bren takes me into his bedroom to play some songs he’s written on an old acoustic guitar. He wants me to write something to them. I sit in the corner with a pen and paper late on a week night thinking about only getting home to my wife. Nothing comes into my head resembling philosophy or poetry as he plays some well written songs sloppily. I force some lines and then get out of the trailer as soon as I can without making Bren feel bad. It seems like the cousin magic might be over.
I get home quietly and climb into bed. That next weekend I tell Joe that I can’t do his band anymore and pack up my drums yet again; this time putting them in the attic of my new home. I decide to concentrate on being a loving father and a loving husband; two of the hardest, most inspiring and poetic jobs there are. I put down the bottle and pick up the pen and write this summary remembering things as I go but not having the energy to include them until the rewrite. Fiction, fiction, fiction.

Friday Night Fights

Everything is great for a while. My schedule gets crazier. I’m up with the baby during the night if she wakes up which she mostly doesn’t then I get up with her at about 6:00am and hang with her until I go to work and Belle wakes up. Then I don’t get home until midnight and the cycle continues. We both get pretty lonely. Something needs to change. I need a new job and I need to own a house. I begin the search for both.

Joe starts a new band and asks me to join. I politely decline due to my new situation and pack up my drums for them to live in my parents’ basement. Me and Bren talk often about starting something up again. He wants to give me back the gift of words and music. It’s hard to get together so our grand plans fall by the wayside. I hang out with Dave every now and again which is nice. He has forgiven. We talk of a reunion show really believing that it’ll happen. His and Bren’s relationship is the most strained. Other than that we all still lived and loved. Colin is missed as he is in Boston living with Gwen.

***

My parents start taking the baby on Friday nights giving us the chance to go out and enjoy each other again after hard months (more hard on Belle obviously then me). She has turned 21 during pregnancy and now wants to go out to bars and enjoy her youth. I understand her desire but am over it all and just want some time to myself to get back to art and the written word or just relax and get drunk at a new home that is mine. But I relent and go out with her to towny bars crowded with people that I’ve become socially awkward around and could care less about their presence in my life. Every Friday night ends in a fight.

Nine Months

The first person I tell is Jr. since I’m going to have to bail out on our apartment together. I’m nervous but he receives it extremely well. He goes right to the liquor cabinet and pours a couple of shots and then hugs me like that of bears. It feels great. We’re nervous to tell anyone else thinking that no one will truly understand how the world wanted us to be together. When I finally tell my parents, my dad is extremely excited and my mom is cautious at first but when she realizes how happy I am she joins in the fun. Belle’s grandparents receive it well too. They have known me for years from the old neighborhood and I fooled them enough into thinking that I had a good head on my shoulders as well as a heart worth it’s weight in gold.

I don’t know if I should change right away or party out this nine months as if it’s the last days on Earth. Belle tells me to party, so I do. Ironically it’s the most selfish time of our relationship for me. I was already burnt out on selfless. I go back to meat and beer. We move back to Clinton into a fully carpeted apartment. We have little to no money. Belle is constantly sick for the first few months. I do as much as I can. We don’t have cable and I’m working second shift taking Belle’s car. She’s stuck at home with no cable. She walks over to her Gram’s everyday. It’s hard for her. My schedule sucks.

One night I decide to go out after work and hang with Jr. I get hammer-faced drunk since I treat it like it’s a vacation. Belle calls me about apartment problems and I get angry. I know it’s just excuses to get me to come home. I tell her to pick me up. When she does I go ballistic on the car ride home. It’s frightening and I’m astonished at my actions the next day. I didn’t wear stress and booze well. I blamed her for the death of loner me. I had gone through so much searching to find answers and to truly find myself but I only knew single, alone, traveling bum prophet me. I didn’t know serious relationship me. Everything I had learned didn’t mean shit because now was a completely different situation. I realized I had to start all over because relationship me was doing no good for anybody. I try to straighten up my act. We go through a lot of relationship talks to strengthen our bond. We’re still very much in love, we’re just learning how to live with it under the most strenuous of circumstances.

I’m looking forward to the arrival of our daughter. I think it’s going to be truly when I become the martyr I was dying to be. I had expired what little Christ figurine status I had with Belle. I needed this birth to get it back.

I start losing my patience more and more easily at work. I had been treating my clients with the compassion, devotion and personality that they probably hadn’t seen in years but it was taking its toll. Again, time had dulled everything. I started to forget. I needed a change, I needed a vacation. On the one year anniversary of Belle’s parents’ death I go to Florida with Trav to visit Mammone. We drink and smoke and I miss Belle. It’s a good trip but one I regret taking.

We move to a better apartment towards the end of the pregnancy. It’s bigger and nicer and we finally get cable. I get home from work one night and Belle tells me we need to go to the hospital. She convinces me she’s not going into labor that it’s just a formality because some liquid was leaking. We laugh and joke on the ride out to Worcester. When we get there we realize that this is it; this is the night. My daughter enters this world at 6:00am that next morning. I’m moved and her eyes answer all of the questions and calm all of the fears. I have a family. We both have a family.

Exiting Nirvana, Entering Nirvana

I begin working at a residence for autistic adults and children. It’s the first time I’m working full-time without any plans of taking off for tours or anything. It’s a trying job and it begins wearing my patience thin. Belle and I had shared our make-out night in the middle of July, didn’t hang out again until the beginning of August before I left for a month for tour and an LA visit. Then we did anything we could throughout most of September and October to be with each other; she’d stay with me in the city 3 days and I’d ride my bike from the train to town and stay there for a couple of days. I decide to move to Worcester November 1st as she finds an apartment as well. I move in with Jr. who did all of the work finding a place and hooking it all up. I’m still on autopilot at this point, I’m doing whatever it takes to be closer to her and there for her. I get the job at the residence before moving and start right away. By November we’re basically living together. We’re in separate apartments but staying with each other every night. I’m worried about what’s going to happen when we stop being wooden sticks under each other’s armpits. I’m worried about what we’re going to think of each other when we’re able to walk again.

We’re in love, there’s no doubt about it and it’s something very different from anything I have ever felt before. There’s an urgency behind it. It’s a zombie love. I’m dazed and will do anything for her. She feels alone. She has nobody but me and I didn’t care to have anybody but her. Mammone has moved to Florida, I’m working with Trav and Tom and living with Jr. I’m also bartending on Saturday nights at the bar. I’m working a lot and spending every other minute with Belle. My schedule and my life catches up to me.

The first time we let booze and separation into our lives we see trouble. I crawl to her apartment late at night drunk and fired up. We have our first real fight, I don’t know what it’s about but it sinks in my gut the whole day after which is filled with apologies. I had basically been trying to be a good person for the past couple of months. I didn’t drink, didn’t eat meat, felt like I was doing good for humanity with my work situation and was completely selfless when it came to my relationship. The façade started crumbling. I started wanting an identity again. And all of the anger I was hiding and resentment that I was bottling up started coming out when liquor loosened my lips. It was the first time in years that I had no time for myself and reflection let alone time for friends. I lived and breathed Belle. I didn’t sleep until she slept. I did whatever needed to be done to make her feel less alone and less tragic.

She begins expecting it of me and when I slack off a bit on taking care of her she gets angry. I begin looking for the praise and gratitude that was expressed in the beginning of our time together. The more minutes that pass, the more silent we get about what has taken place. Only some nights after drinking do things get crazy where she blames me for my big idiot ideas that I expressed to her mother, or we go to her now old house with intentions of burning it down. It’s all pretty crazy. We’re all off balance. She feels guilty about what has happened, I feel guilty for what has happened. We blame ourselves secretly. The secrets turn to sadness and rage when allowed to peak out. We’re like born again Christians punishing ourselves for original sin. We are absolved of everything done pre-tragedy and pre-us, we are now new people but we are not one without the other. We’ve lost our identities and punish ourselves separately for our roles in the tragedy itself. It’s not the easiest of situations when time starts healing outside wounds. I start forgetting why I’m here in the first place, we need reminders but no one wants to speak of anything. What once was a relationship based on speaking of God and his role in this world and the pain that we were going through has become a relationship of chit-chats.

Our intimacy and chemistry is second to none and we enjoy each other with great passion and excitement. We know that this is eternity without discussing it. We know what could happen if we aren’t careful but even the worst case scenario doesn’t seem bad at all. One day at work I get a phone call from her telling me that she’s pregnant. I leave work, she picks me up, we go back to her apartment and take a test to be sure. “Congrats” her roommate says to me after seeing the results. I go buy some beer and non-alcoholic cider and do some celebrating. “You know we’re going to get married, right?” “Yea, totally.” Isn’t it romantic? This is late February. We’ve known each other for six months.

Real Life: End of 2004

worn silent tires: i should’ve asked where your loyalties lie and re-iterated the fact that this is not only how we live but it’s how we’ll die. the tension now seems wet blanket thick as it drapes the air between all of us. the silence is incisor biting, ripping into flesh but is what you deserve.your announcement was cuticle claw gripping from out of left field and the drive home must’ve killed you slowly as every highway line and mile slid beneathe worn and tired tires. you probably went straight to her touch to tell her about all the words that were never muttered while we drove back pounding fists on dashboards and van roofs as music blared ready to drink the anger away. another one bites the dust, bass players are a dime a dozen but you were the one that made just about as much sense as anything or anyone. now, though, we’re in your bloodstream, infecting you for the rest of your life and that you thank us for and to that i say your fucking welcome. this isn’t just a band, it’s a way of life that’s not only partly living but a love that becomes a delicate eternity. and when she asks these friends in gorgeous whispers about men rusting in the rain of woman water, we’ll push you into the spotlight bashful and bronzed pale and pink. the only thing i know is that i’d rather stay here and die with all of you then save myself. titanic like romanticism i know. you talked me off the ledge time and time again just to step onto it and leap off arms clinging to the thoughts of green and the greed of sex. good luck. you live in your cell phone while we live amazing lives on the road. the only thing that sucks is you talked me off the ledge time and time again just to put sneakered feet up there and plunge right off.

outside the model: “i love you” she smiled cinnamon and stale cigarettes with a sunburnt white petal shadow at her feet after a bleak and dreary beach of a day. “i love you” empty words claiming heavenly meaning when feelings are utterly mutual and requited.

capacity for nostalgia: virginia beach 3:00a.m holds a piece of me that i will never be able to get back. everything is finite. even memory. sad to never be able to feel it again. coming down off the drug of virginia and philly, and long beach, new york and north carolina, and athens, georgia and el paso, illinois and now covington, kansas. the drug of tour.

to be or not to be (in a band): dreaming when awake, dreaming when asleep. a constant wait and a constant struggle to be better for a moment. for a perfectly eastern moment. a bruce lee perfection. finding heaven again and again in pizza places and in bars. shifting perspectives on home. conflicted yet again between passion and stability. eating shit wih a salad fork but having the time of a life.

emily and stella: getting more and more blind after every sip. pussy clouding head and vision. everyone’s metal detectors leading to the beautiful beeping and beeping as we step over each other to get there. sift through the sand to reach the one and only clam. jealousy’s always an issue. ego control around a dog answering to stella artois as it bites as all to a comely death.

music and words: drink my blood if it’s your sweet symphony.

heaven in flies fucking: figured it all out while watching dragonflies fuck on the boat on the lake. where to cum, to them is to make a heart and then fly away. we all float. that’s when i found heaven or found life. not too sure. i think they’re one in the same. like thirst and hangover have become words synonymous with one another. life isn’t a constant question, it’s a constant answer. trapped in between “fuck you” and “help me.” everything is trying to prove that you’re in heaven. life is heaven. life is more than 24 frames per second art. the five senses are art, are evolution; technological evolution. everything starts a classic and all classics are reproduced but reproduced to infinity if need be so that we realize that this is all beautiful.. it’s all a dot, a cell, a pixel, a color, a sound. art of a moment, come together on the radio, stoned looking at a sunset on water through framed glasses thinking this exact thing that i’m laying my eyes on is a classic painting that i’ve seen. this song has been done before. a classic. everything is a story. why did i wear sunglasses? buy them? who invented them? why would aerosmith cover come together? why would this d.j play it at this moment? why would rotti stop on it? for this very moment. fate as it were. just to show me that there is no life, no death, no heaven, no hell. just beauty and art. and now instead of thinking it’s cause i’m the messiah, i realize that we all depend on each other. it’s a give and a take so that we all can get it. beauty in evil. beauty in good. you’ll know what i’m talking about. figured it out, you will too.

a facsimile thereof: it’s your name i call out. your name that cuts through alcohol soaked and dazed dark air. your name that runs through my mind at least twice before i realize that it’s not you that’s there with me, in between my sheets. i guess there must’ve been a little of you spiked in the punch. they must’ve laced the pot with a little of you. and now there’s no place i’d rather be than inside your head or making love to you in my bed. but instead i’m stuck here with whoever this is. some cheap imItation of you. a faceless white mask with your image projected upon it. i’ll roll over after the big collapse and fall asleep with a smile that the thought of you has painted on my face. and it’ll take either your death or years and gallons of turpentine to rub it off.

tour: like a bizarre family reunion every time we’re on the road. like little home placed all around the country. it’s warm, it’s loud and excited thoughts and conversation.

hipster night: me and all the other cats in my band spent all night after blowing, dipping our bills, looking for some serious chicken dinners. i know that i’d just sit around digging those mellow kicks until i found myself alone surrounded by dead soldiers, completely burning with a low blue flame because there were just no dames in the barrellhouse that were really tuning me in and getting my signal. i mean, i was beating my gums with this one chick but her crumb crushers were too snaggled. it wouldn’t have cut the mustard if she were to do a little deep sea diving on me. so, i told her to cut the scene. then this one piece of serious bedroom furniture copped a sneak at me. i would’ve danced on her dime all night but i was busier than a one legged tap dancer doing next week’s drinking early. i would’ve hauled her ashes all night too. what a drag.

young and pretty: goddamn these long island girls. the girl in the bar that constantly has two guys around her the whole time. goddamn these long island girls. wearing less and less clothes, showing fresh firm skin because life hasn’t damaged it yet. too young. too young for me at least. they see right through me, they know that i’m passed my prime. i’ve staled, i’ve rotted.

coasters: when old photos of you and me become just another place upon which i set down my drink. old photos as coasters, they captured the moments and now those moments are magnified through ambered glass or covered up by silvered aluminum. but that moment is gone. there is only right now and right now i’m blackening my insides; my guts and my heart. slice me open and find what can only be described as a shriveled nothingness where organs once did their job without disturbance. i’m destroying everything that makes up my person; my body, my mind, my soul. but i love the people i do it with too much to stop. i’m alive. making it harder to be awake. how do you argue with a dream, a dream that’s episodic?

last thought: i wish it were a smaller world so that i’d see you more often because you are just barely the best i’ve known so far.

eulogetically depressed: the sky opened up, weeping and bleeding for you tonight and i ran out shivering in the requiem of downpour, bathing and cleansing; needing to be baptized with your memory. soaking wet and top heavy with devastation, feeling oddly prophetic because of a jeff buckley song and week old mentions of tragedy that must’ve sent but a whisper into the universe to be grasped and grabbed by the filthy hands of the selfish, the egomaniacal, the murderous and perverse. we’ll hit this one head on, damp and dusted, hopefully leaving crutches at the door because we weren’t given the leisure of choice but to get through this dripping wounds and bruises. i just don’t want to think about how you left this earth anymore, i only want to dwell in your footprint; the footprint left on my heart and know that our lives will forever and always be yours.

fuck the world; chapter two: finally done, finally not only accepting but embracing the idea of being grown-up. it all culminated in one night of music, fireworks, a town and a last living encounter with a loved one. it was drinks, sweet words, family, friends (new and old) and bonding through shared memory; a swim in cold, familiar water at the most beautiful of all places and a shirtless walk home at the hour of the sun’s waking; or birth; reminding of many similar walks after the best of nights. and like that i was done. surprised that it all had gotten me to that point, to that epitome. nothing left to do but let go and move on. start something new. be in control and try and reach new peaks, forgotten peaks. i am grateful but feel like i’ve wasted a lot of time. time to get it back. we all trade our youth for something and i’m going to trade it in for good.

new thoughts from the road: now i have the luxury of a healthy alone and poor her is trapped in it’s strangling hands. she’s all i want to see now. her and my family. a best is gone. another one may be too. i just want to be the best person i can be and not let hate encompass me. i want to be walking love. i just want to be good. truly good. go back to actually striving to be something. no longer so self-indulgent. christ might be a myth; a character invented as something to shoot for. i love that he loved. and i want to be that. i hope i am that. comfortable as opposed to comfortably numb.

illogical coincidences: i will make something beautiful out of your life and your death. playing a bigger role than maybe you’ll ever know and i don’t want to trivialize the time we spent living and breathing together. it’s never logical and this is about the most senseless shit ever.

martyr moments: think i’ve yet again bitten off more than i can chew, i can’t even save myself and here i am dead set on saving you and everyone else.

here for you: feel the need to tell everyone that there is no need for defeat. i’m here for all of you whenever you’re ready to let me. whenever you’ve dealt with what you need to deal with. the actions that were funny as we were young but have now become serious and sad. i’m chasing a halo. i’m chasing heaven. i’m letting the world change me in preparation for changing the world. love will ensure immortality. this life is only partly living but love is a delicate eternity.

pupils not dilated: i wish i could make you see what i see, feel the peace that i feel. your eyes were open that night and mine were closed. but maybe you need the closed eyes perspective. mine were open to the world for years that you didn’t even have eyes for and i need your eye-less clarity.

tied to the wood: i wish i could take it all away and feel the burden of the weight of what you witnessed. i’d carry that stone, i’d wear those thorns, i’d let all the spectators spit at me. spit the shit that all seems so silly now. it all seems so silly as life is forever altered and i’m at peace with it as much as i can be. don’t put up the bars, don’t lock yourself in that cell. i will never let you believe that i don’t care; that i don’t love. i’d carry that weight so that you could be lighter. so that you could float.

a new trinity: people are happy for the chance that we have. they know what i am and what i could be to you. you had conversations with 3 of the greatest humans to walk this earth. the holy trinity in our own way. i am the father, travi is the son and mammone is the holyest of all spirits. you’ve had a religious experience and i want to live it vicariously. i need that too. i need that too. L.A is too far away. brighton is too far away. too far away from the heaven of a night that you had after one hell of a month filled with harder than ever days.

american dollar: there’s a chance for me to love the way i look through your eyes when you know yourself better when your image is mirrored in mine. and i can never take away the pain that you feel though i try to squeeze it out of you or kiss it all away. no one will ever be able to know how you truly feel but i’m willing to try for the rest of my life. a risk of mental illness that i’m willing to take. no one’s ready to die when it all comes crashing down. there’s no serenity in the look in their eyes especially when it’s premature and violent. someone could take it all away in an instant. be secure in the fact that you’ve found someone that won’t. trust in me. i’ll be the God that you don’t believe in anyway.

cremation: touching each other lightly until our skin is rubbed raw, gently peeling the flesh away until we are just two skeletons clutching each other so tightly that our bones decompose into dust and ash. speeding up the process of love and cremation.

the radio: let the radio do the talking as we sit with silent bones. a song that could’ve easily been playing for years. comfortably sitting in the chills and moisture of moved. let the world change you and you will change the world. i’ve had to delay my life in order to have the opportunity to do the great things that i’m destined for.

change: the need for these streets to freeze like a hell being iced over and over again. what once tauntingly advertised comfort and familiarity is now haunting; this newly publicized necessity for the loss of memory. a better late than never and sobering clarity.

a place that stands still: the more years that pass, the harder it is to revert our mind set back to the innocence we felt when young. there’s too much tragedy and shit gets too hard, too hard to forget no matter how much you cling to denial. this place stands still and therefore has rotted because that’s all that stagnant brings. it makes me feel like i’ve entered a time warp every time i come back but it’s not in the good way. because i am changed. and change is not only eminent but now is essential because it means growth and evolution. i don’t want to let anyone let me rot. i want to be forgiving. i don’t want to let anyone let my rot. i just want to be forgiven.

7:1: live a lifetime in a year that once belonged to the dogs. cells rejuvenate. looking to see where all of the pieces fit. the pieces of this world i’ve accumulated, in order to make the puzzle that will alter lives. hopefully for the better.

wrecking ball: she’s been a statue of what she thinks she has been for all this time and can’t rebuild it even though she’s conscious of it crumbling and it’s necessity for remodeling and reshaping.

a study in existentialism: found on a page that marks a place. a once physical representation of home that has become non-existent as of late replaced by the abstract notion of man being utterly homeless. impeccable timing to stumble upon this definition of life and home and nothingness:
.pascal.
when i consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which i fill, and can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which i am ignorant, and which knows me not, i am frightened and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then.

mouse trap: life becomes habit and diversion. everything that is trapping. in order to make us forget that god is dead or that there is nothingness that waits for us. there is only one type of people; those wating to die. some are in a rush to wait like those that climb up the stairs of an escalator to wait at the top for something to arrive.

who i am: “signate matter” - the particular matter of mine that fills this space which i am now occupying and that excludes any other solid body from filling the same space. spatial and temporal.

quoteth the raven: “if a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death.”

museum of history: my room in my parents house becomes a museum of artifacts. proving that i am as much a part of history as anything else that has lived and left. left a mark if only in a glorified cubicle stuck in space at what has become someone else’s house. not mine but those who just raised me there; housed me there in hopes of me growing the wings they always wanted and flying to make a life for myself somewhere else. a timeline of dates and facts because memory has become too much the unreliable narrator as more time passes. i need it all situated. i need to be fiction. i need proof of a life lived when all seems null and void. a vast emptiness.

come and scoop me up, god: reason has lead me to a place where faith needs to take over and run with it. run with me. definition of a drug i guess.

boston wins: the creepy hitchhiker is a backseat driver. everybody has their day and last night just wasn’t my night.

from different worlds: the roots will choke each other out. there is the necessity for seperation.

change and it’s writer’s block: time just keeps on doing it’s thing. it’s tick tick ticking. seconds, minutes and months are wasting away without my thought to catch up with it. it’s been four months, it’s been four years and aniversaries are escaping me. i guess i’m still getting used to this new skin. haven’t had time to do much thinking in it. maybe that is what’s meant by habit and diversion and it’s sad. i never wanted it for me. i’m onto bigger and better things and thought will creep back as routine and comfort return. i’ll figure it out. just bear with me.

Skeletors

A community of people is devastated. I’m crushed. Mammone is more hurt than anyone. He and her were the closest out of anyone of us that had worked at the nursing home. We go up to the house and commiserate with loved ones and family. I worry about Belle and feel like she’s the only person that I want to be around. I feel like we can cling to each other and help ourselves through this. I feel blessed to have seemingly been prepared for this by some unknown cosmic force. Right when I had found peace with life and death, someone was taken from me. I hug her at the wake and call her before leaving for tour. We hang out and talk about everything. Mostly we talk about God.

***

“I thought you said you were never going to call me.”

I stop rubbing her lightly, gently peeling her flesh off in hopes of us becoming just two skeletons clutching each other so tightly that our bones begin to decompose and turn into ash. I stop trying to speed up this process of love and cremation, taken aback by the blunt butter knife of a question that desperately tries cutting through the not so thick air of my parents’ bedroom.

“What changed?” She strains to roll over to look me in the face. Trying to put even more importance on trying to put me on the spot. As if she is trying to make me feel uncomfortable or embarrassed by the fact that I told her that I was never going to call her after the one night we had.

“I don’t know.”

Still taken aback a little bit by the moment. I feel pushed out into the spotlight bronzed pale and pink. Silence settles in but it’s the silence of comfort. I begin to trace her hair over her ear thinking about what has taken place over the past couple of weeks. Every incredibly tragic moment creeps back in. I realize that my answer makes no goddamn sense. “Everything has changed. That’s what I should’ve said. Everything has fucking changed.”

I kiss her lightly on the forehead in somewhat of a patriarchal fashion. She lets what she’s been trying to forget creep back into her realm of reality. It was, almost for a second, like her biggest problem was dealing with the drama of a drunken make-out that has turned into a comfortable embrace. It was almost as if the question of “Why” was only delegated to this phase of being an attractive nineteen year old girl. But, of course, that was only for a second and then it all comes flooding back. She rolls back over and lets me go back to gently peeling the muscles from her bones. She goes back to drowning in the memory of their eyes. We sink together in hopes that someday floating will come easy. The truth is, neither of us know what the hell we’re doing.

***

That tour, instead of drinking away the days, I spend them jogging around the different towns that the road leads me to and missing everybody that I feel needs me back home. I talk to Belle almost nightly the three weeks before returning home. I see tour for what it really is. It seems like a bunch of us trying to delay the inevitable. We’re all living as if we’re still eighteen. We’re living as if this purgatory period is a vacation. I realize that it’s not necessarily for me anymore. My priorities have shifted dramatically. I’m no longer just me, I’m thinking for two already.

***

Johnny from MINT CONDITION hears our new E.P and tells us to get out of our contract so he can get us back in the studio to re record the songs along with some others for a full length. Because of his clout in the industry, labels were approaching him hoping he would find some bands to produce or closely work with. He hadn’t found anybody and then thought that we’d be perfect for this opportunity. He tells us not to worry about money or a label. He believes we’ll find a big label to jump on board. It seems like this is finally our break. We begin looking for ways out of our contract with the small west coast label.

On the road we get a call from the guy who runs the label. He says that he’s selling it to some bigger company that will probably have us re-sign contracts. He tells us not to worry, the record will get released just later than expected. We’re happy. This is our easy way out. We just wont re-sign. I hang up and we wash our hands of it and look to the future. In one month Belle would tell me she just bought my band’s new record and she loves it. It had come out without us knowing. Another straw to break the weight of the world’s back.

***

We go home, say goodbye to Colin and take a break from each other and music. We decide to go back to just being dudes playing music; no next big show, no hoping for big booking agencies, no urgencies. We just want to have fun again. I tell Joe to sell the van after he proposes booking shows with whoever on bass just to make money to cover our bills. We get rid of some of our assets though we’re still tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Christmas comes. We haven’t played in months. I’ve moved to Worcester to be closer to Belle. We are the only thing that matters to one another. We’re on some different planet where salvation exists in a four arm embrace. Bren comes over my apartment that I share with Jr. We drink some beers and then talk about playing again. We’re excited to be just dudes playing music again. He voices concerns about never being what we want to be though. We realize we’ve done the best work we ever have with this last E.P and understand that it’s still not good enough for us to be truly confident and happy with it. It’s decided then that we’ll lay ORANGE ISLAND to rest. We make up some handwritten contract and sign it. We believe that we are truly the only real members of the band since we started it years ago and because we handled mostly all of the music and writing duties respectively. We are dicks who don’t realize the collective. We don’t tell the other guys. They find out from strangers and are upset for obvious reasons.