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Mugtoe
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okay, so my bf's parents decided that our little romance was a bad idea, so they took away his passport and the money in his account. I feel kinda weird. I'm forty-four, and my bf is grounded. I didn't really think of it as sexual tourism. They apparently knew about me but got freaked out about it after the fact when he talked about moving over here. Understandable, I reckon. But I didn't go to Ireland because I couldn't get laid in Dallas. And I didn't see our online correspondence as seduction, any more than I would see any courtship as such. We were just infatuated, and it was a good excuse to take a vacation as well.
I suppose I'm a chickenhawk, at least for the last ten years the two partners I've had were considerably younger than me. But it's not an overwhelming preference I have or anything like that. You could just as easily say that I get hooked up with fossil hunters. I'm not attracted to underage boys by any stretch, and I don't care for the drama associated with being the "older guy". But my ex's folks in Wisconsin love me and still call me on holidays and pass the phone around, including the grandparents, and they're pretty normal folks with good jobs and educations. He's 28 now, and his current bf is 55, so he truly is a fossil hunter. My bosses are 77 and 54, and they've been together for 31 years. I just don't think much about age if I'm compatible with someone emotionally and intellectually and physically. I went out with a guy earlier this year who was my age, and I was fine with continuing that, so it ain't like I'm achin to be on one of those "perverted justice" websites and just can't help myself. fuck that.
I was kinda put off by the circumstances of all of this the other day and was wondering if it were even worth it. I was okay with the idea that things might not pan out - I don't cry over guys or not gettin my way. But having someone else step in and make judgments like that and say it ain't gonna happen kinda sticks in my craw a little.
anyway, it ain't drama that I need to take on. If his folks have a problem with me, they are welcome to call me personally. I never asked him to lie to them, and I don't have anything to be ashamed of in this instance. my only question is now whether I'm single or not and should I go ahead and start dating again or see if this is gonna resolve itself in the near future.
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On 1 April 2006 in the late afternoon I was out in the garden tilling and daydreaming when my father walked out and offered to buy me a six-pack of beer. That's about all I had going on at the time in my life. I allowed as how that was nice of him, and I said I'd run to the beer store and come right back.
"No," he said, "I'll ride with you."
I was forty-two years old, and I was struck by the fact that my father didn't trust me to go to the beer store and make it back with any predictability. I was overcome with this sudden realization that the only way I'd ever been able to survive the way I had was to make myself my father's pet and allow him to tend to my needs and bail me out when I made a mess of things. We had both become so accustomed to this reality that it seemed almost normal to both of us. I had constructed elaborate rationalizations for the course my life had taken. Most of the time I simply didn't think about the reality of it.
"I don't think I want to drink, dad."
I went inside and poured out the two beers that were in the refrigerator and changed clothes and went to a meeting in the little town of Weatherford, not far from the farm. It was a Saturday night, and there were about five old women sitting around the table. I recognized some of them, though it had been years since I had been there. I told them that I didn't believe this would work for me anymore, but that I didn't know what else to do. I stuck around.
Three or four days passed, and I began to feel better about it. I decided to drive into Dallas and hit a meeting at Lambda, where I had spent so much time in years past. Years ago I had told myself I wouldn't go back there, and that there was no point in making the attempt. But there was no bad feeling when I showed up there. I felt right at home. I began to drive over several times a week, even telling my dad that I was going to Weatherford and then heading to Dallas, an eighty-mile trip, to hit a meeting there. I was beginning to feel a certain degree of expectation about my life that I hadn't experienced in quite some time.
I asked a few people if they would work with me as a sponsor, but I was turned down for one reason or another. For twenty years I had come in and out, usually accruing a few months of dry time at most before devolving into a puddle of self-destruction and bitterness once again. I had become the bad example, the person people pointed to as a warning. That's no joke.
I finally asked George Stephenson if he would sponsor me. George didn't say yes, but he said I should meet with him at his home for a talk. I had known George since my early days with the group. He had been sober for decades, and he had been the treatment director at one of the facilities I'd been sent to by the courts back in the 90s. I trusted him completely, but I still wasn't sure if I would be able to remain sober and become useful in any real sense. We weren't close, but we had maintained a nodding, friendly acquaintance over the years, and we both knew quite a bit about each other. I talked to him about what my life was like, and I began to fall apart. That lasted an hour or so. He gave me some writing assignments and suggested we meet again in a week.
I continued to meet with George on a weekly basis for over a year. During that time he did what no other person had ever done for me, and something for which I will be eternally grateful. He took me all the way through the Twelve Steps of that process and gave me something I had never experienced before. Hope. Perhaps anyone could have done that, since my willingness was the trigger that made everything possible. But no one could have done it the way that George did.
I wrote letters and approached people in person to make amends. I began to pay off old debts, and I did extensive inventory of my relationships and began to develop new ways of behaving toward people in my life so that I could hopefully make right at least some of the damage I had created over the years.
I was beginning to feel true freedom from the tyranny of my impulses and emotional states, and I was becoming a co-creator in my own life with the order and organization of the universe. There developed a rhythm to my life that was sustaining, even when, as George would put it, I was "stirring up dust bunnies in my head". I had an Intercessor of sorts, and I began to experience real peace of mind.
I had moved away from my father and gone back to work at a company that had employed me back in the 90s. I had gotten a place of my own and given my father back his gas card and stopped taking money from him without paying it back. I was self-supporting through my own efforts. I made it to a year and began to sponsor other people myself. I really felt like I had something worthwhile to transmit to others for the first time in my life, and I fully expected not only my material circumstances, but my mind and behavior, to continue to improve with time. I was handed difficulties and felt no panic or need to run from them.
Toward the end of 2007 I began to experience some of the same old troubles that had afflicted me in the past. I was a bit scattered and casting about for a fix. I was encountering trouble from the same defects of character that had dogged me for years and years. This is nothing new, and I bided my time and figured some more work with George would help. Things were good, in spite of my misgivings about what lay ahead.
I talked to George about sitting down again and talking. We made plans to do that soon. All was well. George was not only a very spiritual man, he was also a trained therapist with years of experience in treating addiction. More importantly, he was my friend and had the ability to tether me back down to earth when I was spiraling off into orbit mentally. He would ignore my intellectual acrobatics and stay on point. Just knowing he was there was a great help, though I usually took it for granted.
George was kidnapped and murdered in early February 2008. For a couple of weeks, including his disappearance, the discovery of his body and capture of his killer, the various friends flying in from out of town and the eventual funeral, everything was rather suspended, and I was numb. All of us with whom George had worked gathered together and talked about his effect on our lives and how we should stay in touch and support one another, and we meant it at the time. But we were burnt out by the emotional rollercoaster of that period of time, and we have since retreated into our various corners and kept mostly to ourselves.
I've been off the rez the last couple of months, scattered and spinning my wheels. I still do those things that I've always done to sustain me, but I remain somewhat at a loss. I still wake every morning, turn on the coffeepot, piss and brush my teeth, make my bed and get down on my knees and pray. I then take a handful of pills for my heart and pour a cup of coffee and go into my study to write and read and meditate. I still give thanks every night and inquire what I may do to correct my errors, and I do that sincerely. I still meet with other people like myself, though not as frequently as perhaps I should, and I still stay in constant contact over the phone with friends who share that same road. I told the one remaining person I sponsor last Sunday that I was trying to fire myself from that job, and he said he wouldn't let me. I wasn't getting into drama. I just felt like I had very little to offer him. However, once we began to work on his list of amends I freely shared my experience, and we worked out a process for him to address those people and situations going forward. I was glad he had shown up, even though my phone was turned off and I was offline.
I signed up to chair the six p.m. meetings in April on Wednesdays, and that will anchor me a bit in place. I'm still not sure where I'm going, but I have that same urge to run off and live somewhere else, or get involved in some romantic adventure to distract me. I've done that before, with obvious results.
I'm grateful to be sober. I'm grateful for the time I had with George. I'm scattered, but I remain consistent with most of the things I've been doing these past two years. That is not a lot of time, but it is the longest I've been without a drink or a drug in almost twenty years. And it is the result of the first time in my life that I have surrendered completely to that process that carries me forward today.
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My sponsor was kidnapped and murdered this week here in Dallas.
"Police Make Arrest In Dallas Man Found Murdered
DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ― Dallas police have arrested 32-year-old Robert Lester Canaga of Dallas for the murder of George Stephenson.
Stephenson was found stabbed to death Thursday afternoon in his childhood home in Gainesville. He had been missing since Tuesday morning.
A long-time friend of Stephenson reported him missing after he missed a number of appointments.
"George is a very methodical person. He follows routines. George is responsible, not impulsive, so I immediately suspected there was some sort of difficulty," said Michael O'Neal.
By Wednesday morning, police discovered his credit card had been frozen due to suspicious activity.
"According to the Dallas Police Department, someone has been photographed using his ATM card," said O'Neal.
Police say Canaga is the man seen in that surveillance video."
http://cbs11tv.com/local/missing.fo...d.2.648790.html
George was my treatment director at one of many rehabs I'd been in. He was my sponsor and the first man to ever go completely through the steps with me. He was the kindest, most spiritual man I've ever known, and he was my friend of twenty-two years. It is only because of George that I can handle losing George, but it has still been a very difficult couple of days for all of us who knew him well.
I never had any hope until he worked with me. I never before felt any real peace like I have experienced in the last two years. Also, because of George, I have no real anger toward the man who murdered him. That man is simply irrelevant to me at the moment.
We all die. Frequently that is an unpleasant process or event. Few of us, however, have in our lifetime the opportunity to touch people in such a positive way, and reach as many people, as George did. I am truly blessed to have known him in such a substantial way, and I share that circumstance with quite a few people who knew and loved him. There were at least fourteen of us who he sponsored and worked with regularly. A large number of us met tonight and watched the news reports and cried and laughed and talked about George and shared stories. That process will likely continue over the next few days.
I can move on from this, but I won't be able to replace George. I trust that I won't need to at this point.
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Dear Bill,
Hey, buddy, I got up before 3am this morning and figured I’d write you a quick note to catch you up and let you know I haven’t forgotten about you. There’s not a great deal to report here, but I can be fairly windy in reporting very little sometimes.
I still haven’t signed the papers on the new truck yet. I haven’t heard from the truck dealership, and I haven’t called them. The initial problem was that they had no way of documenting my income. I had tossed all my old paystubs, and we changed payroll companies back around October or so. So my year-to-date figure on the check I took them in December didn’t show very much. I had very little credit history, oddly enough, other than the lien the IRS has against me, which I’m paying off steadily. So anyway, it’s been well over a month, and I’m still driving that new truck for free and not complaining. I have my old truck back, and I’d be happy to sell it, but I’m in no hurry for that either.
I’ll make some time this morning and go to the post office and get you a money order while I have a little jingle in my pocket. I haven’t sent you any money in a while, and it costs me so little to make a big difference in your quality of life in a given week that I hate it when I put off doing that. It’s Friday morning here, so I reckon that won’t get to you until next week, but still.
I got myself into dreams of romance over the last month or so and gradually lost sight of any proportion I had to my perceptions. It’s funny how that can happen with me, but the results can be pretty pathetic, and even tragic, if I don’t have a little humility about it.
I met this guy online and chatted with him on the phone a few weeks back. I told him that I wasn’t interested in long-distance relationships or internet romance, and that I’d have to meet him soon. So he flew down from Virginia about three days after we first talked. That was pretty sudden, but I told myself and him that it was the only way I could keep talking to him with any sincerity. That was my rationalization for getting me into the very situation I told myself before that I would not get into the notion of developing.
We had a great visit over the weekend and enjoyed each other’s company and visited with my friends and family and saw some of the local sights. I was smitten, really taken with him, and I hated to see him get on the plane and head back east that Tuesday morning. Immediately I began working on him to move down here. I was relentless about it, actually pretty obsessed with the idea. I reasoned that his circumstances were perfect for such a move. He was unhappy where he is, he’s between jobs, he’s single and ready for some kind of relationship and we seem to get along perfectly and enjoy spending time together. There’s also a good deal of mutual attraction physically. He doesn’t know very many people where he’s at; it’s not his hometown, and he’s essentially couch-surfing there as it is. He is in the midst of a settlement process for a neck injury he developed while working, and he has a doctor’s appointment in February, but I assured him that we could fly him back up there for that at minimal cost so as not to disrupt that process.
The downside, of course, is that this is a very sudden and dramatic change for both of us. I live about a thousand miles away. We’ve only met in the last month, and he knows nobody in Dallas except for me. All my protestations to the contrary aside, there’s no telling how things would actually develop between us. There’s no opportunity for that process of shared experience over time to take place in which a normal relationship would grow between two people. We would be microwaving what otherwise would be a slow-cooked meal and hoping for the best. He has a history of uprooting his life and moving cross-country with the vague hopes of things being better elsewhere, and he’s understandably hesitant to do that again.
All the same, I had convinced myself and told my family and friends that he was probably moving here soon. It suited me to believe that, and it more or less fell in line with the way I approach these things. It also seems to be the way he operates, whether he’s comfortable with that or not. I figured that, in light of that, we were both, at the very least, a marked improvement for one another over partners and circumstances we have each chosen in the past. He is thirty-seven and fairly centered and self-aware, and I am sober going on two years and moving forward with my life in a substantially methodical and stepwise fashion. I can really build an edifice of rationalization that is rock-solid and unassailable when I’m in the mood, Bill.
Things began to come to a head over the last few days. He’s been under the weather, and I’ve grown impatient; not so much for him to make a move, but just to tell me that he is, in fact, coming and when he’d like to do it. I pushed, he equivocated. I sulked and pouted, he reassured. I missed the talks we’d had that hooked me in the first place, the long conversations about the things that interest each of us, and the fascination that comes with getting to know someone else’s insides. I really like that stuff when the curiosity is mutual and bound by some measure of affection, but my demands were creating some distance and building a reticence in him, I think. I was objectifying him at that point, and it had become an obstacle to the very thing I desired.
I lost sight, most importantly, of what is really important in my own life. I am living now by a set of principles that require that I be willing to let go of my old ideas about what works and brings me happiness, that I let go of my unreasonable demands for security, prestige and romance. I became fearful that I would not get something I wanted. My self-centeredness in that regard was the chief obstacle to my own happiness – a happiness that is not contingent upon the satisfaction of my disproportionate demands when those demands are subordinate to that Process which I have been attempting to put into practice in my life over the last year and ten months.
I awoke this morning just before 3am with a brainstorm. My mind would not shake it loose. I felt like I knew a few things:
1. He is unhappy where he is
2. he is going to move somewhere, and it is likely not going to be in the town where he lives right now
3. he’s probably not going to come here, or in other words, I didn’t make the cut
4. I have a resentment against him, God and myself for screwing myself out of something I thought I really wanted
5. the only thing I have any real control over in that situation is my own resentment, and that resentment can potentially wreck my life in a very real and substantial way regardless of the possible outcomes of this situation
So I got up and started my coffee, got on my knees in the living room and prayed the way I do every morning, went to the bathroom and sat down with a cup of coffee to read and write and clear my head and find some relief and another way to approach this so that I could let it go. It wasn’t important whether any or all of those first three propositions were true or untrue. The last two were where my responsibility lay.
It was exactly those unreasonable demands that were instrumental in bringing down the longest relationship I ever had. It was similar demands that ended the last relationship I was in, though I think it was more my resistance to my partner’s desires that was my part in that one. I suppose it is more or less that situation that drives most people apart and creates conflict in people’s lives everywhere on the planet. What I had to do was let go of the idea that the solution was in finding a way to meet those demands, and instead, to find a way to let go of that attachment to their satisfaction, such that, whatever happens, I can be happy and usefully whole again. This is how that Process works. This is how moral inventory and self-examination and dependence upon the intercession of God work in my life to dispel the ill effects of self-deception and self-centered fears. Resentment and hurt feelings and the attachment to unreasonable demands upon others and God are all things that work to form a tyranny in my life. I labored under that for forty years or more, and it nearly killed me. It does, in fact, have the power to kill. The slavery to my impulses and emotional states is the end result of following my disproportionate demands and desires and attachments to their logical end. Following that road leads back to a drink. And for me to drink is to capitulate to a living death.
That all sounds very dramatic and verbose, but it is simply a logical process and the nuts and bolts of how I continue to move forward and work toward objectives that are not of my choosing, but which, in the long run, bring me real happiness. The downside is that I have to swallow a good deal of pride and live with the embarrassment of doing all of this in public – it’s just my nature, I suppose, to let everyone see my guts in all their distended and convoluted glory. The upside is that I grow a bit, and that pride I am chewing was simply false pride in any case.
It matters not, really, whether he moves here. He will do whatever he does, and I can’t control that. He may show up next week, or I may never see him again. It likely will be some other permutation of the possible outcomes, as it almost always is in my life. The nice thing about all of this is that the emotional disturbance on my part has come and gone in the space of a very few days, and at no time during that period did I consider going off the reservation. It didn’t even occur to me. I got myself wired up on a bit of an emotional bender and showed my ass in public, but the end result was some raw feelings and a clearer picture of me.
I really like this guy. I really do. Hell, he could move here, and we could have a wonderful life together. Everything so far has led me to believe that he’s a good fit, and I see no reason why that should change, if circumstances conspired to allow that. The important thing for me, however, is that I not take my eyes off of what is truly necessary for me to keep moving forward on the path I chose back in April of 2006. Without that focus, I’m no good to myself or anyone else. If I can maintain that (and that is an act of will that is really the proper use of will power in my life) then I can have anything I want that God wills and be satisfied with it.
I work with a couple of guys who, oddly enough, deal with very similar issues, and I have lately been at a loss as to exactly what to say to them about their situation. As a sponsor all I really have to share is my experience, and my experience over recent days has really only been negative. I think I see now what the answer was, and why that answer was slow in coming. My experience points toward one thing, really: a dependence upon a God of my understanding to give me peace of mind and true happiness, regardless of circumstance.
Yer faithful correspondent,
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Jackin, whackin, spankin that puppy
Behind the restaurant, in the dumpster
Pagin thru the dirty mags
Wipin off the guacamole
Drippin from the slidin door
Hopin wetbacks don't discover
My aromatic lovin place
Sleeve my cock in chimichanga
Thrown away with cigs stuck to it
In a moment, I'm in heaven
Makin tons a sour cream
Lick my fingers, so delicious
I just love me some Mezkin food.
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good: keeping a can of air freshener on my desk. I have the most explosive, satisfying gas ever lately.
bad: it smells like someone shit a mango tree in here
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11 October 2007 –
I had the most bizarre and vivid dream last night, and it was very intense and sad for me even for many moments after waking. It was in color, and it felt very real.
I was meeting most of my immediate family in England, though the principle characters I presently remember being there are my mother, my father and my sister Pam. I believe Danny was there as well, though his presence was insubstantial to the action. We were at a palace that adjoined the ruins of an ancient castle. The palace was bright white and large glass windows everywhere, and the ruins a moss-covered crumbling pile of terra cotta stones, though it was also apparently in use. A coach went regularly over to the castle along a narrow road.
I had apparently changed a great deal physically. I remember that. People commented on it. The main thing I remember though is that my mother and my sister were both creating a big scene about something I can’t remember. I was furious with my sister, and to some extent with my mother as well though not quite so much, because this was the home of the queen and the seat of government, and we were the center of attention, though we were merely there as tourists. If I remember correctly, my sister broke something, maybe a window. I’m not sure. Her and my mother were yelling at each other in tears about some ancient family upset that was meaningless anymore. I remember being frustrated and embarrassed by the fact that we couldn’t be out in public. We were supposed to attend some show or spectacle and ended up being escorted out – at least I remember leaving with my father to go outside.
The palace-castle complex sat atop a large hill with steep sides with a river fronting it. There was a group of peasants, or at least plain folk, sitting amongst some large stones on the hillside in the sun. It was beautiful weather. Dad wasn’t doing well, I think. I sat my father down in that group and took a seat myself at the edge and looked up. A coach was traveling along that narrow road immediately above us, and I noticed that the stones along the edge of the road were crumbling and coming down the hill. Then I noticed that the entire structure of the ruins was collapsing and rolling down the hill toward us.
I jumped. It was as though I had acquired some phenomenal parkour talent. I leapt from one place to the next down the hillside while huge stones crashed around me, knowing that everyone in my family was doomed. I jumped across the boundary between the grounds of the castle and the adjacent buildings of the town. I was in a crevice of some kind about three feet wide that ran down toward the riverbank, and I somehow knew I was safe there. I continued down to the front of the building and turned to the right until I came to a walkway overhead. It was as if I were in some sort of dry storm gutter that surrounded the building. I looked up and there was my sister Pam reaching down to help me up. I was in tears. I didn’t want her help – I was furious at her – and I was devastated that the rest of my family was all dead. My parents were dead, and I knew that. I couldn’t’ speak. She walked me forward from the building to the sidewalk, which was just a dock on the river and into a small reception office about the size of my bedroom where a man behind a counter gave me a lifejacket. I walked to the door and saw the river right there and looked back to my left up the hill and saw the castle gone and the palace remaining and knew my family was gone.
I awoke with a tightness in my chest from sobbing at the man behind the desk and trying to get him to understand that everything was gone. It was REALLY weird.
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10 October 2007 –
It’s 9:13 p.m., and I just put in a dip that I wasn’t really even craving, just to stave off a potential craving later. I’m dipping less and less now, generally twice a day at work and once in the evening. I dipped a great deal more when I was smoking cigarettes. I am willing to be free of tobacco altogether now, and I no longer see that eventuality as something to dread. Those sorts of feelings come and go. I wanted a cigarette badly a few days ago. Hell, a shot of bourbon, dank nugs and some heroin sounded good at that time. That passes. In the eighteen months since I stopped drinking and doing drugs those instances have been truly rare for me. I haven’t given it much thought; I’ve always had something to do that occupied my attention and kept me focused, even if that something was one of the transient impulses that lead nowhere and spring from that same inner well of compulsion that drove my earlier, more self-destructive, choices.
All is well. All was well also when I was feeling miserable. Giving “all” my stamp of approval when the mood strikes seems a bit superfluous, actually. Perhaps I shouldn’t arrogate that sort of authority for making value judgments to my unaided mind.
My walks these past two days have become a bit more energetic, strident even. The follow-up appointments with both my doctors loom large next Wednesday, as if I should be preparing a defense. For what? To prove that I’m being a good boy now? Not quite. I simply use that as a benchmark moment, one of many to follow hopefully, against which I can measure some increment of progress towards a longer-term goal. I suppose I want to buttress my current determination with the approval and encouragement of my doctors for what I’ve been doing so far. There is less my old need for a pat on the head inherent in that so much as just plain nagging fears and doubts I have about my strength of character and ability to follow through in a stepwise, measured process toward an end. I mean, the rubber kinda hits the road here, Pancho. I may not be a new creature, but the building of some new creation is largely in my own hands and no one else’s. Trite as it may sound, this really is no dress rehearsal. I am forty-four years old, and it is likely twenty years past the time when I should be safeguarding my health against the infirmities of old age. So whether in indolence or haste, the walks will continue, I hope, for some time to come.
Cody is taking me to the State Fair tomorrow after work. We were supposed to go to a movie, but he had previously promised a friend he would go with him to the fair, and I’m tagging along. It is something of an attenuation to what I had envisioned as a date, but perhaps that is a good thing. We could use some buffers in our relations at this point. They are at best strained, despite both our protests that we still love each other very much. I assume he is still dating the DJ at the bar where he is now working, and I am, for all intents and purposes, single and available, even if I have not been aggressively so. It’s not like I haven’t had enough on my plate to consider lately. My recent circumstances have put an ice-pack on that fevered dream. It is still there, but I cannot afford to lose myself in it at the moment. Neither one of us misses the relationship we had, or at least what it was becoming, but I do miss him a great deal.
I’ve never had spectacular success with relationships – how do you measure that, exactly – and he’s never done relationships at all. I’ll opt for counseling when things even out for me and that becomes available. I’m open to the idea, whether or not he and I achieve any kind of reconciliation. There are obviously some kinks in my psyche that need ironing out, independent of whatever he brought to the relationship. I keep hearing an unwritten country song in my head this evening with a line to the effect of “too afraid of a broken heart to ever fall in love”. I’m sure it’s already been written. I love him very much and care a great deal about him. That, I know, is genuine. It will be nice to spend time with him, and I do not intend to use the opportunity for anything other than just that.
I’ve noticed something on my evening walks, and during my walks after lunch during the work day as well. I smell things. I smell the Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood. I smell the Thai restaurant. I smell the coffee house. I smell everything. I imagine smells. There is a great variety of things that I used to eat with impunity that I simply no longer consider as viable options. It occurred to me last night as I was walking that I can now enjoy not only the memories of those foods and the experiences I associate with them; I can also simply enjoy the aromas themselves. I’ve read many times that a great deal of what we taste is experienced through our sense of smell. There is no reason I cannot enjoy those sensations just as much now, simply because I no longer fill my gut, and consequently my arteries, with the bulk of material that carries that matter into the rest of my body – and out again into the Trinity River.
I had a great deal of fun drinking and doing drugs over many years. I hung off the precipice by my very fingernails, such as they are, and lived intensely while I was dying incrementally. I swam in the muck and celebrated a good portion of it. I do not regret much of that, but I know that it is something I can never do successfully again, and never really did successfully in the past. How do you define success at something like that, anyway? The point is that those things I can enjoy now in my mind are like the best hit of weed I ever took, the best drink of straight bourbon in an air-conditioned bar when everything was perfect. Those moments rarely ever existed anywhere other than in my self-deceived imagination, but for me they were Platonic ideals that were as real and continuous as the creak of the chair I sit in at this moment. I can taste them, and I can feel their effects right now. And why not? What is the use of a rich interior life, a vivid imagination and a well of experience from which to draw if not to drink deeply for the rest of my days? I not only have the hard lessons of a life characterized by bouts of conspicuous consumption. I also have the thick residue of my difficulties from which I may mine those moments that, for me, represented real joys. The other benefit I gain is that my experience makes me uniquely useful in some other ways, and that is something that only comes with continuous sobriety and continuous cheerful labor and service. But that is for another day’s reflection.
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7 October 2007 –
I love days like this. I got to goof off, and I also felt like I got things done. I slept until 10am this morning. I went to Target this afternoon and bought a steam-cooker and then went to the farmers’ market and picked up loads of produce before returning home. I like playing in the kitchen and washing and separating stuff to pack away for the week in the fridge, and I like having new kitchen gadgets to fool around with.
I made a HUGE plate of veggies in the steamer and chatted online for a bit before leaving on a walk just after sunset. I walked a couple of miles through the residential streets around my neighborhood, starting out from the shops at Bishop Arts. It’s a mostly Mexican neighborhood, but it is slowly gentrifying. There are smells of meat grilling and the sounds of the polka beat and accordion coming from the long stretches of smaller homes fronted by wrought iron fences that seem somewhat disproportionate. Cats lie in the sidewalk here and there, and occasionally I am met by the yipping of a Chihuahua. These blocks are punctuated by larger old homes meticulously restored and decorated, but it is still mostly the barrio. People lounge outside together talking on porches and in breezeways. I like it just the way it is.
I am glad to be alive.
I came home and showered and folded laundry and washed dishes and took my evening pills. There is no noise but the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard and the whirring of the window unit. I have new shoes and a new bedspread, and I have books everywhere. There is still a good deal of clutter about the place, but I’ll get that sorted out once I can do heavy lifting again. It’s job security of a sort, in any case.
I picked up a CD yesterday at a KNON sale in the parking lot outside the radio station. The artist is called Cottonmouth Texas, and I recognized him as an acquaintance of a guy I went to school with who I see online. I ripped it to my computer and gave it a listen. His stories sound like a cross between me and Jim Carroll, oddly enough. I should get busy writing and make more mp3’s soon.
This weekend I’ll go to the river to see dad and Sarah and spend some time with them. I’ll go to a benefit show in Deep Ellum on Saturday night. Between now and then I have lots of work to do catching up for lost time at the soap mines.
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27 September 2007 –
Well, so much for my celibacy experiment. Cody came by to get his mail and visit for a moment before he went to work at the Round Up, and we couldn’t really help it. It was nice, however, and I had missed him a great deal. He kept saying he wasn’t coming back, and I just kept enjoying the fact that he was here. So it’s all good, I suppose. I’m sure I can get twisted behind it again at some point if I choose to. For now I’ll just consider it a pleasant afternoon with someone I care about a great deal doing what seems to come very naturally to both of us.
I went a little overboard shopping this evening. I went to Target to get dad some speakers for his computer, and ended up spending $130 on that and housecleaning supplies and stuff like toothpaste, toilet paper, paper towels and shampoo. I then went to Tom Thumb and spent $75 on groceries. I got home a little after 9pm, and I just finished cutting up veggies and fruit and packing it all into little plastic tubs to carry with me for meals over the coming days. I also got a few packages of salmon, some smoked for omelets in the morning and some frozen and thawed for cooking tomorrow afternoon and in a few days time when I get sick of chicken again. Sometime early next week I’ll get myself a steak again as well. I don’t figure it hurts to have one per week.
I got some fat-free cottage cheese and bananas, raspberries, oranges, plums, new potatoes, red cabbage, broccoli, carrots and celery. I got skim milk and a half-dozen eggs to tide me over until I get to the farm tomorrow night. I also have frozen, unsweetened peaches from the farm in the freezer and one tub of those at work. They’re having a birthday breakfast at the office in the morning with sausage rolls and doughnuts, and I told Lynn to count me out on that. Historically, I’ve been the one to bring all that stuff in at least once per week, and I think I’ve used up my quota. I’ll treat myself to lots of fresh fruit and some of those rice cake snacks tomorrow. I got a few packages of those as well. I’m a huge fan of kettle corn popcorn, and I was disappointed to read all the fats and trans fats on the label two weeks ago. I have since found some of those rice-cake snacks that are the same flavor, and I’ve stocked up on those.
I actually eat quite a bit still, but none of it has any sugar or fat to speak of. I was amazed at how much sodium is in everything I buy, however, and I’ve been pretty careful to limit that. I went looking for vinaigrette the other night and ended up just buying some balsamic vinegar for my red cabbage, because everything else was loaded with sodium. I’m eating pretty good stuff, however. Every day I grill some chicken or fish and dress it up with lemon juice and perhaps a little rosemary or Tabasco. I eat a great big egg-white omelet just about every morning and accompany that with some oatmeal with nothing in it but skim milk and banana, though tomorrow I may opt for berries in it.
I noticed today that my chest and arm were still noticeably achy on my mid-day walk, but nothing like they were two weeks ago. I think I’m covering at least a mile each time I take off from the office, sometimes double that, but I’m taking it easily and reading as I go most of the time. I always feel better afterward, even though I’m sweaty and tired. I gave away an entire box of wild grape jelly to my landlady this evening when I stopped by to pay the rent for October. It was the last batch dad made, and it was pretty liquid stuff, but she likes it that way. She says she drizzles it on her waffles and stuff like that and uses it like syrup. She’s welcome to it. I enjoyed picking the grapes, but dad did more work making it. I was happy to give it up. I have a few jars of the first batch still, and I can eat a tiny bit of that on toast from time to time. She gave me one jar of homemade apricot preserves, and I’ll enjoy those for a weekly treat or something.
Come to think of it, I should mail off some chow-chow soon, as I’ll have less use for it with these eating habits. It’s got plenty of sugar in it, though most of the jars I have are the spicy kind. I have plenty of tomatoes canned from the garden, and I’ll have plenty of use for those in the coming months.
Money will be tight for the next week, but I have just about all the food I’ll need for four or five days at least. I shop for food more often, but I tend to eat everything I buy and enjoy most of it pretty well. I have less waste and less compulsive eating, and I still have plenty to eat. I’m not drinking nearly as much water as I had been for some reason. I’m just not nearly as thirsty, and I don’t feel the same need to continually flush my system that I did before. I should probably drink more than I am now, however. I made a pitcher of orange juice this evening.
Dad got high-speed internet this week for the first time. Sure enough, he’s enjoying the difference. I’ll head out to the river tomorrow night to look over that for him and hook up his new speakers. But mostly I’m going out to play with Sarah. I was only there for a few minutes last weekend, and I miss her all week long when I’m in town. I really love my dog, and she’s really attached to me as well. I should bring her into town more often when the weather cools down some, even though it means filling up my truck twice a week instead of once in order to accomplish that. I remember filling it up almost every day and charging the gas to dad’s card. A lot has changed in the last year and a half.
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