Gopher - Issue 26

WRITINGS FROM THE RODENTS OF THE UNDERGROUND
Volume III -- Issue 26
(c) 2000, All rights reserved to Rewired and the Gopher Society.
Rights to individual articles reserved to their respective authors.
We Forgot What You Did Last Summer.
And We Don’t Care, Either.
e-mail submissions or death threats
to untalented, overly-sensitive, scorpion, so-called editor-in-chief at:
Rewired@Trianglepants.com

-The Untalented, Overly-Sensitive Scorpion, So-Called Editor-in-Chief-
Rewired

-The Assertive Sagittarius Grammatical and Spelling Editor-
The CIB Man

-The Gemini HTML-Reformatting Guy Who Puts This Shit on his Site-
Mr. G

-The Girl Who I Liked Who Stripped In Front of All My Friends and Never Called Me Back-
(damned Cancers)
Jessica

-Dedication-
To all my real friends.

-A Big Fuck You To-
To all the back-stabbers.

-Nifty Fact of the Month-
I’m naked right now.
(Ha ha, Nell.)

-Writers for this Issue, No Doubt More Talented than I-
Yustin
Lame
Jason Gurley
Beka Bruning (Beka kicks ass)
Steve
Simpleton
Nightfall
Lou
Phloid
Alex Travalini
Marlin Beressi

Agressitorial	by Rewired
My Day Off	by Rewired
Of Masks, Make-Up and Togas	by Yustin
What You Didn't Do	by Lame
The Perfect Relationship (a letter)	by Rewired
Untitled	by Steve
Sometimes I Wonder	by Iame
The Good Fellows of Washington	by Jason Gurley
To Hell With the Scales (a letter)	by Rewired
Little Fighter Jet	by Beka Bruning
Untitled (2)	by Steve
FADE AWAY	by Simpleton
Little Death	by Rewired
The Great Saladi	by Nightfall
Mutually-Contained	by Rewired
The Suicide Note	by Lou
A Place Hungry for You All	by Rewired
Poem 1	by Simpleton
Superman's Battle at the Meat Show	by Rewired
The Simpleton	by Simpleton
A Poem, Delivered by Myself to this Mundane World	by Phloid
Java Overload	by lonewolf
Get a Grip (a letter)	by Rewired
Dawn	by Alex Travalini
Two Seconds to Life or Death	by Yustin
A Love Poem	by Alex Travalini
Windows of the Soul	by Marlin Beressi
Sinister Intentions, or, When I Like a Girl	by Rewired
My Night on (Primitive Hopes)	by Rewired

I currently hold more grudges than I’ve ever held in my entire life – and here I thought you were supposed to calm down in your old age.
I do tend to be a bit more moody nowadays, and have drifted from the individuals I care for since my departure from the damned college town I used to live in. I’ve been hard at work trying to process all the garbage that has been force-fed me over the last year or so, however – and I’m still trying to figure out all that shit that went on in high school.

A lot of it might be projecting, as Carl Jung helped me realize. A lot of it might be due to insecurities, misplaced values and aggressions, forever-declining physical health, any number of severe psychological disorders (perhaps stemming from the fact that I have some horrendously torturous karmic link with the Food Service Industry), post-traumatic stress syndrome from repeated abduction by aliens, lack of sexual gratification, or being struck by a strong sense of my own mortality and unable to actually live a life due to some crude cosmic force that makes every attempt I make towards achieving happiness or pursuing a greater personal evolution result in nothing more than a reinforcement of my previous borderline-nihilistic beliefs, and leaves me no answers but only further elaboration on my long list of questions. Or maybe I just have a knack for fucking up and tend to know a lot of assholes.

Regardless, writing is my chosen medium of expression for this consistent imbalance in my internal and external worlds. Whether the thought or feeling is only momentary, or is a love or hate that I hold onto forever, it’s something I feel the need to catalog – more specifically here, because I’m too lazy and insecure to send my writings to someone who might help me make a living at it. Of course, I have caught the opinion, especially as of late, that my writing may actually suck and that there is no hope for me in the field. I caught this from an ex-girlfriend (`scales,’ written of below) and `someone else’ through the grapevine. As inconsiderate as such things were to say, and as much as I do intend to hold a grudge and hate the hell out of them for it for all of eternity, I have to face the fact that they may have a point: I am simply not a good writer. I may be better at sticking with my inks and pastels and enrolling in an Art College – but perhaps I have no talent there, either. Or perhaps this is all subjective, these accusations have come out of the small minds and big mouths of prejudgmental goobs, and I take things far too personally – but I won’t buy that philosophy, because it wouldn’t justify how I feel.

So this issue has a theme; at least so far as my writings go: the general grudges and fixations, fleeting moments of anger and happiness that I have had towards individuals whom I once felt so close to (and for some of them written of below, still feel so close to – notably CIB Man and Claire). Most of these writings are new, and some are old – but those which are to be considered old still need expressing here and weren’t at the time of their occurrence due to the fact that I had strayed from Gopher for about a year.

So this issue is meant to do away with some old aggressions; vent them in hopes of them being set free for good. As for the good moments, they are expressed to remind me, in the least, to make some more of them sometime, as they are rather infrequent nowadays. It’ll be a new year for me this month; my twenty-second, and if my prophecy in the Iditorial of Issue 5 proves to be correct, I’ve got one year of life left to go – and I’d like to think that I’d tidy up a bit of karma before exiting the physical plane and hopping into the next life.

As usual, if you don’t like the above or below, there are two options: choke on it, or send me submissions that would make this zine more appealing to you. It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

Like flies to shit, it never fails – things get so beyond my control. It’s not as if I want to mold another person to my preference or lour another into my trap; it’s not as if I want to dominate the world or tell them all how to live their own lives. I just want the chance to be with people alone sometimes – new people – away from my old friends, and I shouldn’t need any justification. I shouldn’t have to tell a friend, for instance, why I don’t want to do something with them on a particular night, for the reason should be blatantly obvious: I’ve got other plans. If that’s not obvious to him, than he is blind. If that’s not good enough reason for him, that’s just too damned bad because this is my life, my free time, and I can do what I damned well please with it.

Moreover, if I feel so inclined as to further justify my choices in sight of your apparent hurt and profound assertiveness; if I give you the specific reason I don’t want to do anything with you on a particular night, that is a sign of my honesty, my trust, and my respect – elements consistent in all true friendships – than I do so under the assumption that you’ll respect me.

I wanted to see her alone, for I hadn’t seen her in awhile. I’d also made previous plans with another friend, another one I hadn’t seen in awhile, so I melded the two plans into one – she’d invited me, and she’d invited him to come as well. She did not, however, invite you. I wanted a night alone with these two people, and I thought that my obvious agitation over the phone would’ve gotten that straight across. I thought you would have kindly gone your own way. Then you came – not alone, but with two others and a third person on the way – into the restaurant I so dumbly told you I was meeting her at.

Friendships are good, and even better are the closer ones, but I need some time away sometimes – for friendships should not feel like prisons from which you cannot escape. Wherever I go, they find me, like moths to a streetlamp at night– like flies to shit.

We leave for the next destination and the train follows us. I am not angry. This changes nothing. I am going to enjoy this time with her. I’m going to drink. Like she said, we drink until we forget our names.

With the onset of the alcohol buzz I find a lightness and a giddiness I seldom find elsewhere. I often complain, but in these instances I do find a low tolerance to be a blessing. Even as I feel that warmth and tingly sensation creep up on me, I remind myself that drunkenness is half-psychological: it’s an excuse to do that which we would not usually do, and act in ways that would be too much out of character without a mixed drink in our hand. It’s a good time for experimenting in the social arena, for alcohol gives you that boost in courage– or is it stupidity? – it takes to carry out such experiments of action and word, and provides the much-needed excuse.

So I revealed to the Lion’s boy the events that triggered my psychosis: I probed and offered words on reincarnation, karma, Buddhism and the meaning of life to the ex-boyfriend of the Leopard. Independently, all beings at the table unanimously agree that I am an `old soul.’ Leopard’s ex says that I had ideas and ways of life that weren’t appreciated in my last life – and I’m here now to figure things out.

So I bring her outside and ask her if I could at least kiss her. Right there, on the steps that led to the entrance to the bar, I laid it on her as hard as I could. I did it again. I made sure it was all right, I did the best to ease my ever-present insecurities, asking again and again. She laughed and said that it was fine.

Why – why only when I’m drunk? I know it’s in me, but why does it only come out during the numbed inhibitions I get via intoxication?
The night had gone smoothly. The time had finally come and I could hold it no longer. It was no longer the point where I began to regret it and realize how dumb it was. I needed this, I unconsciously aimed at this – it was a dire necessity that it came to this. Guilt and foolishness rush to my mind, but all feelings are buried in the subjective storm. It’s been so long since I’ve been back here. Back where I belong, with a goddess.
I tense. I feel my body thrust forward as I grasp hold of her tightly. She’s so cold, but so welcoming. I climb atop her, trembling in need. Something in me is destined to meet with her. I look down into her into the great, big wide open. I see myself in the reflection. I thrust forward again, watching my reflection break up in ripples and waves and splashes as I vomit like the drunken fool I am into the toilet.

I hugged her tightly. She’s always there for me, my goddess, my throne. I threw my all in her and flushed it away, and she expects no more from me – always in the same place, waiting patiently, without apathy or empathy; with total indifference. Always in the same place, so I don’t have to avoid her or lure her. Never speaking or listening, so I don’t have to analyze her or manipulate her. When I’ve built it all up, and fucked up all my dreams, and ended another stupid night with too much alcohol, she waits patiently for me to waste in her and use her.

Laughter rippled through the crowded auditorium as I stepped through a door in the set and out onto the stage. I carefully hid myself behind the easel that I carried as I turned to shut the door. Not only did the audience laugh, but I did as well, and, if they saw me, the jig was up. I could not blame them for laughing, however, as that was the nature of the play.

I quickly regained my composure as I turned and walked towards the opposite end of the stage, slowly stepping onto a chair, and then standing atop a desk. A lovely young woman, curly black hair framing her smiling face, (and that, dear friends, is a story in and of itself . . .) sat down upon the chair I had just stepped upon. I gently lowered the easel, partially-finished painting of myself included, between her and myself. She prepared to finish painting my picture.

Atop the desk, I now assumed the position of a Roman athlete, prepared to hurl his discus as mightily as he could, or, in this case, prepared to hurl his tin pie plate as far as he could. Not only was I in the form of a Roman athlete, but I was also dressed at the height of Roman fashion; yours truly was wearing a nice, new toga. Now that is dressing for success.

As I posed and many lines went by, I saw several flashes and heard the whirring of small motors advancing film. Among these was one very familiar flash and click. "Thanks, mom," I muttered to myself; I was truly grateful I was sans microphone. Sure enough, I was posted on the fridge a week later. I looked at the photo, smiled, laughed, and came to the realization that I had been on top of the world. Everyone was paying attention to me, and I made for nice comic relief. All this, of course, was because I was not me, but Mr. Frank DePinna.

Gazing around at a crowd like that is something that not everyone gets to do. This is truly a shame! The rush that one feels when everything goes as planned, or, even when it becomes an ad lib mess, is beyond words. Everyone is there for you, watching and observing you. You are the focus and center of attention, not anyone nor anything else. It is hard to imagine that it is all an illusion, but sadly enough, this is the truth.

Soon the illusion was all over; the play was done, the costumes put away, and the lines slowly fading from memory. All such memories were left at the cast party on the last night of the show, with only a scarce thought escaping beyond. Occasionally, a thought or two would pop up, but never anything lasting. The entire show was soon nothing but a small chuckle as it was written down as a prior theatre experience; that is, until I got out an old box of photos, some three years later, and began to reminisce.

One photo somehow made its way into my hand, and into my head. I took one look at it and began to laugh. Here I was, standing on a desk, wearing a toga, and preparing to throw a pie plate. The expression on my face was one of forced seriousness, though it could never be seen as such from the audience. We all had many layers of makeup on. Oftentimes, we used this as a way to hide. I began to realize I was guilty of hiding, hiding in the guise of a seemingly frivolous photo.

"How could I be so far from boring old me?" asked the figure in the photo, excitement emanating from behind the serious look.

"How could you be farther from the truth?" I scoffed. Behind all the layers of makeup and all the rehearsing, I was simply a me. There was nothing that could change that. I acted for the brief moments of joy that it brought me; I acted to hide who I was. It succeeded to the audience, but failed me. I was me, I am me, and I always will be me, no matter what I do. Anything that I have, I can choose to keep or to leave, whether it is emotions, memories, or anything. All the choices about keeping and forgetting were the wrong ones.

It is easy to assume that I would simply be able to forget all of the things that got me down. In fact, it probably is simple, but I have yet to master, or even find, this technique. Instead, I carry it all with me, and look for ways to hide it. All of the plays were great ways to do this; all of the shows destroyed all my woes again. But alas to loosely quote Shakespeare, I was fortune's fool! I was hiding behind the characters that I played, being them. I could never settle for just being me, and I had grown up learning that doing so was all wrong.

But now, having gone through these pictures, I have seen what I am doing wrong, and all of it because everyone lied to me. Society, my friends, my family, my own mind, all liars! Through all of the good times and bad, I have discovered that the only way to be happy is to be yourself. I am trying hard now to do this. It is hard after having worn so many masks (and togas) over the years. I smile now, as I slowly place the photo back into the box, gently replacing the lid. Now, laughter only ripples through the house whenever that box is opened, which, by the way, I have made sure is not too often. Instead, I concentrate on taking new pictures, pictures of who I am, who I was, and who I wanted to be. I look at them as I did this one, and think. While I learn from all of them, none of them are quite so fun as the blond, in the toga, on the desk, with the pie plate.

What does anyone say or do? That's one of those questions that seldom have an answer. I know that you’re thinking: “this doesn't make any sense, he's just talking in circles.” Welcome to the fucked up world of lame, where nothing ever makes sense. It's part of the real world some of the time, and crazily messed up the rest. I don't make the rules, I just follow them. What a good little boy am I. I try to have fun, break loose, but what happens? Someone I never know who thinks I'm out of control. I'm tired of playing this game where I'm always worrying if people like me or not. No more, Never again! I have to make my self happy doing things my own way. If my so-called friends want to be a part of it, great; if not, so be it. I'm no better and I’m no worse off then I was before. You see, I don't feel like I fit in. I've always felt this way, I probably always will. Every time I have a get together people don't seem to want to be there. It's like someone had to drag them kicking and screaming, then they just can't want to leave. Why should I even bother? And then there are the people (not just the group, everyone in this frickin’ world) who, when I'm talking to them, stop listening. Hello, you still there? You’re going to miss the best part; it's when I just get up and walk away........ foot steps........ door slams....... everyone left thinks the same thing: "oh well, I never liked that loser any way."

Well, back to the beginning question: “What did I do? What did I say?” Maybe we should be asking our selves "what didn't we do? What didn't we say when we had the chance?"

If none of this makes sense to you, don't worry. It's not you. It's me. I'm just in a bad mood, I'm just having a bad day. Even better, I just need to get laid.

I'm a bit disillusioned and a bit jumbled lately. I’ve been tossing ideas back and fourth, contemplating the meaning of my life and desperately trying to find out where I am, how I got here, where I wish to go and the appropriate strategic moves necessary to get there. All this would be fine, but I've been like this since I was fifteen. It happened in February of 1995, I believe. That's a long story, though – and for a different time. One of those drunken, deep, philosophical-let's-sit-arond-afire-and-contemplate-the-nature-of-existence discussions. We'll converse again sometime soon, when situations are appropriate.

I'm gonna be twenty-two this November. It's not that I feel like a geezer or anything, it's just the fact that I'm not in college, I've got a shitty job where I work for idiots that should be below me rather than above me aristocratically-speaking, my car is basically a loud, venomous trashcan with wheels, moods, and an attitude, I don't know what my idea of a good life is so I obviously can't shoot for it, and, among an infinite multitude of other things, I'm way too wordy and tend to be the-cup's-half-empty pessimistic bitchy type of person.

A girl I grew up with when I was younger has just graduated college. My friend in high school is getting married. Two of my ex-girlfriends are in the Army, married, and having kids. My other friend just got out of Army intelligence. Everyone's doing something with their lives. I'm working, and off the clock I hang out in my place of employment, a 24-7 restaurant where I overanalyze things internally and externally, smoke my lungs to death and drink enough coffee to kill a large whale.

I have made some advances, though. My life is better than it was which, at least from my perspective, is frightening – because no matter how much better things seem now, I live with the knowledge that it's only temporary. As better as it is in comparison to how it was, the situation still sucks, which just goes to show how bad it was.

But I'm an extreme person. I realize that. My pain or angst or whatever is no bigger or more important than anyone else’s. There's no arrogance I have in what I feel, though it is my pride. Just like everyone else, my shit stinks more because I'm closer to it. It stinks more because it's my shit. (I will stop this analogy before it gets too grotesque.)

I can't remember any of my dreams lately. I was getting good at recall there for awhile. I miss knowing what's going on out of sight in my head.
I keep staring at what I wrote here. It's like a lot of things that I write. It feels fake -- like I'm putting on a show. Like I'm weaving myself to some mask, some persona that I created and wrap myself in tightly as if it’s some security blanket. I don't feel like I talk about anything real anymore. I think I'm getting to know myself, becoming more self-aware, but then I look in the mirror, I look that putrid image in the eyes, and I wonder just what the fuck is going on in there.

Two people today told me that happiness was a choice, that it's an option and is not something that is thrown on you – much like feelings of rage, depression, or apathy. They told me that I'm not happy because I choose not to be happy. I told them they were idiots.

Do I really appear this way? Why the hell would I not want to be happy? Nobody's happy – few people, anyway – and yet some of them hide their authentic frowns and scowls behind plastic smiles. It irritates me. At least I'm honest, I often think – but perhaps that's arrogance. It's hard to know when I'm deluding myself.

I didn't take your comment about her as an offense. As I said, I don't know her. I usually try and stay neutral unless someone gives me a reason to hate them or associate their presence with projectile vomiting. It's not that I like her, so-to-speak. I didn't know until later that she was the girl I'd heard so much about before.

I don't know too much about your other half, or even yourself. I know you guys fight a lot. I've heard that come out of both of your mouths, and it's also been quite apparent, though I've never actually witnessed a fight between you two.

What I have witnessed, though, is a definite connection there somewhere. An unspoken thing, at least around other people. I may just be rambling due to my insomnia and immense caffeine intake, but it seems that you guys, regardless of your differences, seem to care quite a bit about each other. It'd be a shame to see the bullshit that clogs the connection between you two sever what might be a great thing.

Again, I'm not in the know; I'm just the watcher who speculates. It just sucks when the bullshit gets in the way of what's really important. I think that if you guys really part for good, you'll both regret it in the long run. I spent two years fixated on the fact that I was stupid enough to loose the girl I love to the goddamned military and some army drone fuck in fatigues. I'm better now, but I'd hate to see anyone go through the same thing.
Maybe love doesn't exist, though. I don’t believe that to be true, but I’m forced to accept that as a possibility. It could always just be a romantic concept we humans drape over a purely primitive, animalistic desire to relieve ourselves of the sexual need in a satisfactory mate – all in order to make ourselves feel more of what we consider civilized and socially acceptable. Or maybe Woody Allen was right: "Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it."

If you two both love each other and piss each other off, both cause each other's tension and relieve it – hey, I'd say you've got a complete circuit, the perfect relationship.

She was like the concrete buildings in this drab city. She would never retain or radiate warmth no matter how long she stood in the sunlight. It's not that she was a completely heartless person. She just seems to lack any basic emotions. If you were to tell her that her mother just died her reaction would be exactly the same as if you told her you'd lost a CD of hers... a cold shrug of her shoulders. Her nonchalance was mind-numbing. It became so bad that just to be around her, to spend any amount of time in her presence, you almost had to remove yourself from feeling as well. In all the time I knew her, I couldn't figure out just why she was like that. She wasn't one of those neglected children who blamed their current fucked-up state on their parents. As far as I could tell, she had always been an introvert, if introvert was the right word to describe her. In spite of her outward neutrality, she seemed to enjoy my company. I discovered this through frequent late nights sitting next to her on her couch watching movies. Although she never directly invited me back, she always made sure I came back. If I said her apartment was too hot one night, she'd turn up the air the next. Perhaps that was how she showed her feelings, or maybe it's just me...

some times i wonder about things that never got to be
i find them had to visualize cause they never got to be seen, heard, or
touched
yet i seem to crave them so much
am i sane or am i nuts
you tell me but let me just add
if i'm not sick then why do i need this crutch
oh the bottle of lust that always seems to find it's way down my thirsty
throat and until it's gone and this day is through i'm forever having
fun with my friends
yes all of you cause i do believe that it is true
don't you
but none of you ever answer and at this point the picture always fades
and at last i wake up to find that yet again
i am all alone
and then like all the times before i realize that in my drunken state
i went beyond thinking and straight into dreaming of things that never
got to be

He sat there, unaware that he was imposing, looking studious in a tweed jacket and a three-day growth. I’d always thought that people bought tweed coats to look smart, not because they liked them, so naturally I assumed the same of this man, which led me to all sorts of instant revelations of his character: he was a liar, he was unemployed, he was this, he was that—the thoughts came and went in three seconds.

The man was sitting on my bench, so I took another. My new bench was across from his, but set at a wider angle, so we both faced the craggy front of the forest on the other side of the softball field, seeing it in two different ways: I saw it, and he didn’t.

He was flipping through a sheaf of paper about an inch thick with gold brads fastening the tops of the pages together. I watched his eyes dart from one corner of the page to the next—was he a speed-reader? He turned pages with abandon, one every ten seconds or so.

The man muttered little things that I couldn’t understand but seemed approving.

There was a squirrel sitting behind my bench, the one that the man stole, and so I picked up acorns from the grass at my feet and began throwing them to the squirrel. The first one scared the little animal away, but I kept tossing nuts, just for something to do. One bounced off the back of my bench—the one that the man stole—and thumped the man in the head.

He didn’t look up, so I got the idea that I’d try again, and I did. I missed four or five times, then nailed him in the forehead. This time he looked up, kind of sized me up, and went back to his papers.

Well, this burned me up. Either he figured I wasn’t anything to be afraid of, or he was ignoring me. Didn’t matter which one—I was mad about the bench, not him ignoring me.

"You’re sitting on my bench," I said to him, and he looked up from his papers and said, "Sorry," and kept reading.

I got up and walked over to the bench he stole from me and sat beside him, closer than he probably would have liked, except he just glanced up and went back to his papers.

He nodded absently and kept reading, so I yanked the papers out of his hand and said, "Man, you stole my bench."

The man rubbed his shadow of a beard. "I’m real sorry. Can I have my script back?"

"Your script?" I looked down at the papers and sure enough, it was a script. I flipped through the pages, seeing character names and weird, unintelligible phrases (ext. room, fade this, zoom that). "This is a script?"

I looked at the man again and kind of studied him. "You don’t look like an actor," I said. "What have you been in?"

There was a shriek from a hundred yards away, some girl, but I ignored it. The man shrugged. "A television show and two movies."

There were a few more screams, this time from the softball field. The actor looked that way, and I punched him in the shoulder. "What movies?"

My eyebrows went up, I know they did. I had just seen The Angels of Pittsburgh a week ago.

By then the screaming had gotten louder and four girls thundered to a stop in front of the bench—my bench. "Can we have your autograph?" they cried, holding out napkins and envelopes and ballpoint pens. One girl took the actor’s script and ripped a page off and gave it to him. "Sign it to Heather," she insisted.

I watched the actor sign their papers, and they looked at me and said, "Are you famous?"

Out of nowhere, a kid in a green ball cap skidded up to us, out of breath. "Hey, you guys want to play?"

"Baseball. We’re setting up at the field, and our catcher and left-fielder didn’t show up."

"Don’t make me punch you again," I said, and we ran onto the field and played a little baseball.

I've been very aware of my life's pathetic nature for some time now. I also take full responsibility for my actions in life – or, in the least, I fully recognize that they are my actions and I don't blame the resulting backlash on anyone else.

As ill as I may be in many aspects, I recognize that the world I live in is equally ill. I have heard that I'm far too negative and I tend to dwell on things that I can do absolutely nothing about. I won't accept the fact, however, that I cannot do anything about that which bothers me – so I probe it, and yes, find faults in it which result in my complaining about it time and time again. By focusing so much on what's wrong, I'm trying to find out what's right. I've been trying to discover what it is I want out of life, and what it is I want out of myself. The bitching is an extreme way of explaining what I don't want. It’s working out the shit in the sore. It’s me studying and sorting through things, processing it all, and trying to toss away what it is I don't believe in, don't like, and don't wish to be.

I am far from comfortable, no matter what you may believe. To the contrary, I'm very uncomfortable. Numb in my anger perhaps; immobilized by my fears, maybe, but I am in discomfort, and trying to better myself.

I know I can change. That's no question. It's what I want to change about myself, and what I want to change into that stands as the issue. I don't have it any worse off than anyone; I don't measure pain. Everyone's got their own, and it weighs no more than anyone else's. People can suffer great torture and have it affect them little; they can suffer little torture and have it affect them greatly. We're all wired differently, and we respond to the same things in different ways. The goal is to find what we see as the short circuits in our wiring and rewire ourselves into the person who we want to be.

I'm not pissed at my friends about joining the military – but I joke about it, because it makes it easier. I am against the whole idea behind it, yes, and I don't think I have to join it in order to justify those beliefs. I don't hold it against you, or Claire, or Phloid, or Chris, or anyone for choosing their own path. Yeah, I miss you. Yeah, I miss Claire. Being sarcastic is my way of dealing with it.

So what if I get a little upset when things change so drastically? What if I tend to fly off the handle when the people I care about go so far away and I can't do a damn thing to control it? I recognize my idiocy for what it is, and I exploit it in an extreme way because I get off on self-mockery. It's a way of dealing.

The real problem is that I envy what I had in the past and I'm angry at myself for not seeing what it was. I enjoyed the times I had with my friends at the coffee shop before my little group fragmented. I enjoyed sitting in your car with you, talking oh-so abstractly and smoking cigarettes in the McDonald's parking lot and fooling around. I enjoyed getting in the car at Phloid’s house with Claire when we were going out -- and I enjoyed driving to a restaurant at three in the morning just so the three of us could have coffee and fries. It all changed though, and that hurt me, and it's no one's fault. I don't hold it against you or anyone, though I realize that I often throw out my anger in words, written or spoken, that are thrown your way.

Becoming an adult is not conforming to society – there you are wrong. Becoming an adult is learning to stand up for who you are, what you believe in, and accepting responsibility for that. I am as much an adult as you are. Perhaps more so.

You seem to think you know me so well, and I find that funny. The blank stare of mine that you described really got to me. You think I don't find you interesting, that I never listened to you, that I didn't go home and write about how great I thought you were? If you think I didn't care, or that I didn't listen, or that the stare I had was blank and that I took nothing about you or from you to the inside of me, you are blind. Never doubt the fact that I valued you as a friend.

Conversations can have depth. So what if I like talking about subjects beyond the mundane, brainless things people generally talk about? It helps me learn more about a person when I get their views on what I consider the more `real things'. You sound as if you've given in to the blatant stupidity here, Scales; that you somehow equate adulthood and maturity with ignorance and subservience. It doesn't have to be that way. Thinking and talking in depth about things you're calling here `abstract' aren't childish things to be put away, but rather loose forms to be filled with substance via application.

Our concept of friendship certainly differs here; let’s not be so – could `abstract’ be the right word? To me, being a friend is finding value in someone no matter what their faults, no matter how angry you can get at them in a passing moment, so long as they respect who you are. I listened to you in curiosity, and I tried to share with you – but I’ve seen that I mean little to `the new you’ and your `new life’.

I stand curious about you and what’s really going on inside you, and you don't seem to give a damn about me. I'm curious about you regardless, but if you truly don't give a damn, don't write back.

look to the left of you, you'll meet my eye
cause i'm right up here next to you, flying in the sky
from up above here down below, seems so small
so insignificant does it, really matter at all?

little toy people driving their, little toy mercedes
from their million dollars houses, it's enough to make you crazy
and you know with them and their wealth i, would never trade places
cause they walk around with bulging wallets, fake smiles painted
on their faces

look down at the poor and needy, sneer at the poverty stricken
on their way to some enormous office building where they, sit around
all day bitchin
to their coworkers about how life's, been so shitty
and the 20 year old girls they have for wives
sleep around with every body

let's make away with it
we can fly 'till we run out of fuel
then my little fighter jet will go
crashing down with yours

yeah, let's make away with it
we can fly 'till we run out of fuel
they’ll find my broken pieces...

lying next to you.

I don't know what intrigued me about her. Maybe it was the way she managed to make direct eye-contact with everyone on the bus. Even if it meant twisting around in her seat to stare at the people behind her until they looked back at her (often times in the form of a brief, uncomfortable "is she still staring at me" type glance). Perhaps it was the way she ate her orange that made her so fascinating, meticulously picking every trace of the peel away before biting into it as if it were an apple. Maybe it was her vintage 40's style hair and dress. Whatever it was, it compelled me to stay on the bus with her long past the time when I should have gotten off. It compelled me to follow her off at her stop and it drew me into the small cafe she was heading toward. I held the door open for her and took a seat at a small table as she approached the counter and ordered a beverage. She took a seat four or five tables away from me. I sat as she sipped, as we watched nothing in particular (yet still taking great interest in it). Various other customers came and went while we remained. We both seemed to be content to be alone. After what seemed like hours, a cafe lackey commandeered her large table for a larger party, leaving her homeless. Much to my surprise, she passed all the other open seats and joined me at my table, which put an abrupt end to my coy voyeurism. I attempted to break my own imagined tension by leaving, but she grabbed my arm as I stood...

YEA WE HAD A LOT OF GOOD TIMES FROM THE DAYS GONE BY
AND THE FUN WE HAD WHEN WE WERE DRINKING
YOU KNOW THOSE MEMORIES WILL LAST UNTIL WE DIE.
BUT MY TIME HAS COME AND I'M NO LONGER HAVING FUN.
I GUESS I'D BETTER RUN
SO YOU CAN REMEMBER ME SHINNING AS BRIGHT AS THE SUN.
BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS IT'S BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN FADE AWAY.
DON'T FORGET ME AND I'LL NEVER FORGET ABOUT ALL OF YOU.
WE SHARED SO MANY LAUGHS
I HOPE THEY DON'T STOP WHEN I PUT DOWN THIS GLASS AT LAST
AND BECOME A SOBER CITIZEN AGAIN
SO LONG TO YESTERDAY
DON'T LET THE THOUGHTS OF ALL OF US TOGETHER EVER FADE.

You smile and say, `for one who disbelieves in god
You sure called out his name a lot.’
And you think this shallow world is all that’s real
And you hide and block off what you feel
You ran away to reprogram yourself
You burn in passions to blind you from your hells
Why do you reduce me to this?
Why do I feel the need to kiss
One friend of many that’s abandoned me
To run away and work for the enemy?
This is symbolic
This means something.
This will be retarded
This holds no meaning.
This isn’t happening
Because I don’t want to.
Oh, no, I want to,
But I don’t want to want to.
`Ignore your brain, block off the constant thought,’ you say,
`And feel the soft air and sweat between us swing and sway;
Loose yourself in emotion, focus on the feelings, not
In that rigid, trapping logic. I’ll take you to the land of no thought.’
Then it happened
Before I knew it
`Is this okay?’ you ask softly.
Oh yes, I want in it, I want to
Open up my heart to see
The rhythm that I’ve been seeking.
`Open up your eyes’, she says,
`And now look into me.
Why can’t you open up so I can look inside?’
I think, why can’t I take the time to realize?
Why do I have to swallow my pride and
give into the desire that draws me to your thighs?
This is the end of me
This is the end of me
This is the little death of me
With my dick in the enemy.

Under cover of darkness, I sit here toying with my mind. There was so much in my head once, now it all seems lost. Where it went, some dark crevice of my mind, I cannot find. Great knowledge of arcane arts, powers beyond human comprehension, all forgotten, now replaced with hatred, and worse yet; nothing. I puff slowly of my cigarette of a clove tobacco, trying to calm the storms in my head. I do not remember who I am, or where I came from. The years have brought turmoil, and my mind has lost the war with itself. I pull my cloak about me, hiding from the chill of this night. The world is asleep around me, but I, once great and well renowned, sit here in sleepless slumber. Forgotten, even in legend. Twenty years ago, fifty years ago, a thousand years ago, I can’t see any of it. I turned to wandering this great forest some 300 years ago, and even my reasoning then has slipped my mind. A beggar I have become, looked on as an old man. The years have been good to me though, and though I only look of man’s 60’s, I am but thousands of years old. I have slipped, I have let myself grow old. Perhaps I could still find the token of youth, and return myself to the mortal world as a charismatic young man, but alas! What’s the use? Return to a world I no longer know or understand, bah! The wild growth has been much more kind to me.

Where has the love gone, that I once held so dear? Where has my desire gone? Banished from my mind, it seems. Is it still inside my head?

From out of my pouch, I pull out this stone, which I’ve possessed as far back as I can recall, and far longer than my exile, I believe. Holding it in my hand, I look at it’s beauty. It looks like a simple onyx stone, carved into a decent sized gem, but it is not. I know that much. Some hidden power lies within, waiting for something to wake it. Looking at it’s shape, completely spherical, precisely measured by some great tradesman, it reminds me of an orb. But what is inside? A powerful spirit, ashes of a great warrior, or, like my mind, nothing? Searching my mind still brings no answer.

Perhaps all is lost, that I once knew. The world has changed, that I know. No longer do kings rule mortals for hundreds of years, no longer do the races flourish together. They have all left this age, into the forgotten recesses of the minds. This is not my world, I am certain. My world was lost long ago, but I fail to let it go. What reasoning, I do not know.

The night is waning, and tomorrow holds some answers I foretell. And I, the Great Saladi….Wait! I remember now! The powers of the mind, the words to invoke a blizzard in the heat of the deserts, the words of transportation, I remember it all! So great was my empire, so powerful was I, before I was banished by men! Thrusting down my cigarette, I stood if full stature again, a mistake I cursed until my dying day. The leaves of autumn do not like the fire of a still-lit cigarette, and quickly do they flame. Had I remembered how to keep my youth long ago, I would have been able to flee, but an old man, even with more power than all of the great armies, cannot fight the flames of nature. Withering in these flames, cursing my sluggishness, I have no choice but to accept this fate of stupidity.

It’s time to go to sleep
Her head is on your knees
And there’s much more freedom in your dreams.
It’s time to breath the air
And swim beneath the warm waters there
Beneath the surface you cling to, so cold and scared.
You watch her as she sleeps
Her eyes flicker under the lids
And if you could just pry them open,
Perhaps you could touch the sincerity
that flows and brews within
her baby blues.
But it is you who falls asleep
And she wakes to watch you dream
Wondering what you mean
When you say you really care.

It's a sunny Saturday after noon. I should be happy out enjoying myself but no I'm inside thinking about how, when, and where to end my life. But what do you care you don't even know me. Maybe some know a little about me but only what I choose to tell them. You don't know how hard I try to be happy, have a good time laugh, how much I love some one who never loved me back and who could never love me back because of something she says is wrong with her. Maybe it's nothing maybe she is the way she wants to be. I have been used, mind fucked and beaten up by so many I'm tired of the same old shit. How can I be strong when I was forced to be weak, told I was stupid, and ugly? So who do I owe this great gift of life to my dear old dad yes you raised a fine young man one who hates him self more than the ones who do him harm. Forgive they say well that's what I did and they came back to do it all over again and they continue to day after day. What a great fucking world we live in but don't worry by tomorrow my words will be but a memory .Who came up with forgive and forget any how, oh well it doesn't matter. I was always told "follow the rules boy and don't ask any questions". The one question I'm wondering now is do I take the sleeping pills or do I use the shotgun? What the hell I'll use them both ‘cause it's better to be safe than sorry.

This takes away and never gives back
This drains my days, and I begin to crack because
You can’t stand there and tell me
Who to be
You can’t show me
How I am
You can’t tell me
How to live
You can’t change me — only I choose for me.
You can’t break me and you can’t take this thing inside away from me.
I try to adore you
I try to care
But the rage in me simmers
Did you ever stop to catch a mere glimpse of what resides in here?
I try to guide you
And let you guide me with your mundane wisdom
I try to respect you
I try to understand how you came to be what you came to be
And you don’t give a shit about me or why I am
I look inside you, but keep away from me
You can’t change me, I won’t swim in your shallow pool
You can’t break me, this land inside is blocked with a brick wall.
So just keep your distance, and wait until I break these chains you have on me
There’s a world out there hungry for you all,
a place I’ve lived and a place you’ve never seen.

YOU SAY I'M WORTHLESS
I GUESS FROM NOW ON I SHALE BE
BUT ONCE I SERVED YOUR PURPOSE
I WAS JUST YOUR DICK A STIFF FUCKING ROD
YOU USED TO PENETRATE YOUR INNER SIDE
AND NOW YOU'RE THROUGH WITH ME
SO YOU TOSS ME ASIDE
LIKE A USED TAMPON
A CONDOM FILLED WITH CUM
OR A CANDY BAR WRAPPER WITH A LOSING GAME PIECE INSIDE
BUT UNLIKE ALL THE OTHERS NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU PUT ME TO
THE CURB THE TRASH MAN WON'T HALL ME AWAY
UNLUCKY FOR YOU
DOUBLE DEPRESSING FOR ME
'CAUSE NOT EVEN TRASH WILL EXCEPT THIS FUCKED UP PERSON
WHO ONCE WAS ME

He was a looser. I was still fighting; my score wasn’t up yet. This was sort of a test of my self-faith in a way; holding back in light of temptation. That man, however, had lost. He was a sad, sad, pathetic creature.

It wasn’t the height of the midget that bothered me, nor was it the grotesque image of his deep wrinkles, or even his long, stringy hair – my first impression of the man came from the look in his eyes. That wasn’t to say that the rest of the eyes in the place weren’t disturbing – indeed, in most of the eyes I dug into I saw filled with every imaginable version of sexual perversity – but the midget man really irked me. The way his eyes went over that woman – no, that girl – on stage... This guy didn’t try to hide, if he even noticed at all, the fact that he was literally salivating. The drool literally fell into his lap, which I thankfully could not see because the man was situated at the end of the stage. The midget’s eyes fixated on her vagina. One of her eyes was on him – the eye of obligation. The other was on the wad of green in his right hand that he flashed at her, baiting her, his gaze never wavering. The small fellow was the epitomized manifestation of the collective sickness that was given a playground here at the post-midnight Meat Show.

Of course, I fully realized that this made me a hypocrite – for by whatever reason I myself was presently situated on the stool by the bar situated by the far wall. I wondered to myself if perhaps I was the only person here who was waging an inner battle over the question as to whether it was morally acceptable to be here.

I had been a Superman in my own right. Reserved and in complete control for years, sacrificing food, sleep, sex, and the accepted social and societal sanity in order to probe deep within myself and to destroy my false ego and strive toward higher goals: a higher truth that would give me a more accurate and clear depiction of the true nature of reality. I had tried so hard for so long to resist my urges, to decondition myself, to revive myself, to rip away the layered sheaths of ignorance I’d found smothering my true being – and then somewhere I fell.

I tumbled due to turbulence. The outer world had caught up to me, cornered me, convincing me of the necessity of conforming to at least a certain degree. So my attention shifted outward, and though I ran away at times for long stretches of much-needed solitude in order to maintain some type of balance in myself, to sort through the chaotic bullshit that fluxed and flowed in the mass of gray matter between my ears. I studied the characters in my life and the interrelations and situations that enveloped them and seemed to interconnect us all in a vast, multi-layered web of souls. I sought to understand them, and through them and a process of determining the likeness and differences between us all, it might pave a road that would lead me to a greater understanding of myself.

So I allowed myself to be drug along into situations such as these, journeys such as the one I was in now, for the purposes of expanding my awareness and stockpiling the `knowledge’ offered to me through the lessons that Life’s Greatest Teacher, Experience, guided me through. As awkward as I felt, as alien as it all seemed to me, and as immoral as I was certain it was, it was necessary. For one to know good, one must experience evil. Thanks to events like this, I was learning more and more concerning who I was as each day passed to the next. This all had a purpose, and I had to keep reminding myself of that – this was all part of a process.

Or, I suddenly realized, perhaps the Truth really was that I was a horny, depressed heterosexual male who jumped at the first opportunity he had had to go to a nudie bar and was now trying to justify my fears of the present situation by labeling it `an aversion to superficial, animalistic, primitive urges sought by those who are much lesser evolved than myself.’

This whole situation, of course, was highly symbolic of my life. The nudie bar was my mind – a dimly-lit place, with thoughts and things doing who-really-wants-to-know-what in the corners, all mere electrons for the focal point on stage in the spotlight.

The thoughts – perhaps more accurately put, `urges’, `desires’, or `passions’ – sought to dominate me via raising their population. Feeding them doesn’t satisfy them, they just want more and more. The urges, these dirty little bastards, were aimed at jumping up there on stage, shedding themselves and merging with the presented beauty in an act that, by law of nature, could very well produce a third factor, a child (Heglian concept – and the Chinese Tao) which would add but one more innocent offspring of primitive impulses to be conditioned by the horribly inane environment and take up more room in an already-crowded brain.

The thoughts don’t do that, though. They just watch the Meat Show, focus on it, fighting their desires and often stepping to the stage, offering it’s money – it’s sense of worth to the whole of the world – so it might lour the beauty to come closer. It cannot come closer to the beauty, however – it can only look, and is forbidden to touch. The border of the Free Land and the Off Limits was defined not my a fence but by a stage, a mere elevation, a lighted area that is forbidden save for the naked hierarchy that is meant to stir the thoughts and drain their worth. A method of torture, teasing us at the thought of a low means of temporary freedom.

In the end the thoughts give up the outward expression of their actual goal and merely run to solitude and play with themselves.

Then she came on stage, with heavy metal blaring in the background, laced in leather and wearing that sinister look. The midget’s eyes grew times two, and he shuffled in his pockets – or so it seemed and so I hoped for the purpose of retrieving his monetary worth to give away.
She shed her skins slowly, working her body in ways I had never imagined in the most vivid of my sexual fantasies. The angles – the positions – the flexibility… I saw myself there, atop her. I fought the thoughts. They battled and bruised each other. Why fight the urge? Why the resistance?
Why the addiction to orgasm? Why the unbearable desire to get between those thighs and work out that energy, that angst I’d reserved in me for my more morally-acceptable creative outlets that, under close analysis, might be reduced to a sort of intellectual masturbation?

She squirted syrup on herself, among other substances. She beat her breasts on the sides of a man’s face. I didn’t like that. More than a handful is to much – wait, wait, wait, what was I saying? – but good god, to get inside her….

God. A good topic at a time like this. That’s what the culture does to us (or is it biology, with the culture justifying, reinforcing and further perverting our primitive, biological impulses? Whatever). They make us worship that hole as a god. It is the object of male faith, and we sacrifice ourselves to it. We show the owner of the hole our weakness. So many women say they love giving guys blowjobs – and it isn’t at all due to the taste, though they’ll swallow it out of courtesy – but because they love the look of innocence, of weakness, of vulnerability and subservience in the guy’s face. All because we’re programmed in some fashion to worship that hole as the god. Relationship is the church. Foreplay’s the altar. Sex is our ritual. Pussy’s our god. The vagina is the animals’ only true god. The yearning for the hole is the animal’s only driving force. Everything else revolves around the nucleus of that desire.

“Why don’t you come up to the stage, man?” Allen asked. “You’ve got a wad of ones, don’t ya?”

“C’mon, dude,” he smiled, nodding towards her, as he knows about me and women in leather. I quickly wonder what his girlfriend would think if she knew he’d gone here, seen all this, and gotten three lap dances. “Pussy’s waitin’ for ya.”

The Eastern religions regard mankind’s suffering as due to its soul being in bondage to it’s biological body, and through that medium to the world of matter to which that body belongs. The reason it was bound to the biological body, and thus the objective universe and the rigid, confining laws of physicality, was due to it’s tendency to fall into the addictive pattern of desiring sensory gratification. That’s why monks dedicated their lives to living simply, meditating often, speaking little, occasionally fasting, and strict celibacy. They see that we get stuck in patterns of action and thought, trapped in our emotional cycles, and that these things basically create the complex network we carry from life to life and consider our `Self’, but which is really just a false self, the ego. They see that we are addicted to Maya, to illusion; that we misplace value in pursuing such shallow, animalistic goals. What one desires and lays one’s faith in – generally-speaking, desires that can be achieved through the means of the senses – one gives away it’s power to. Wherever you focus your dependence, that which you depend on has control over you. What you desire owns you. Therefore, to achieve liberation, one must fight against the convenience of shallow, materialistic goals, the mundane conformity and accepted modes of thought. One must have `authority’ over oneself – one must achieve mastery over one’s mind, one’s senses, and one’s desires, realizing that all is illusion anyway and that there are higher, more meaningful, deeply spiritual goals to shoot for. We are free by nature, but born here as slaves. We have freedom so vast and complete that we can choose to be slaves – and all of us here do so, or else we wouldn’t be here, for that is the only reason we return life after life. One that chooses to be ruled by the six senses – touch, taste, sight, sound, seeing and mind – choose that slavery. There are those that are constantly battling in the limbo – there are people like me, fighting.

“Sam,” Allen said. The naked girl danced before him and his friend. “C’mon…”

She looks at me. I look at her. I swallow, I put out my cigarette, giving my oral fixation a rest. I get up and go to the stool at the stage, money in hand.

She comes up to me, her vagina inches from my face. I look into her eyes. It always makes them nervous when you do that. I try and let her know this is not me. I’m not like this. I’m not this shallow. I’m interested in what’s there behind that brick wall in so many eyes, not the hole between your legs. It’s just the fake part of me, the animal part, that desires that gratification, that has passion for the rhythmic illusion of my naked body lying atop your naked body and…

She looks disturbed that she’s showing her body and all that I do is stare at her eyes. In this world – the world at the Meat Show – perversity lies is not desiring the superficial, or having the passions of an animal. It’s funny how the science of things flips on a dime when you walk in that door.
`This here is a Meat Show,’ she seems to say to me. `I show you my body, and you try and gaze at my soul. Is my body not attractive enough for you? Am I not worthy enough an object for you?’

She tricks me. She caught on quick. She grabs the hat from my head, and I follow her eyes down – beautiful brown eyes – to her breasts – her beautiful breasts – to her belly – so sexy – and then my new hat got broken in, in the most unbelievable way – then --

TO ME THERE IS ONLY ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME "THE SIMPLETON" IT'S NOT 'CAUSE I'M STUPID OR THINK OF MY SELF AS OVERLY SMART. I THINK MY INTELLECT LIES SOME WHERE IN BETWEEN. SO I FEEL IT SUITS ME, AND OVER THE PAST YEAR I'VE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT MYSELF THROUGH TALKS I'VE HAD WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO WEREN'T REALLY LISTENING TO ME. I’VE TALKED MORE ABOUT MYSELF THAN I WANTED TO, SO LET ME TELL YOU MY LONG TERM GOAL I HAVE FOR THIS COLUMN. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS I WANT TO MAKE MANY PEOPLE LAUGH AT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING; I ALSO WOULD LIKE OTHERS TO FEEL ANYTHING, BECAUSE ONCE YOU STOP YOU'RE NO LONGER HUMAN YOU'RE JUST A REPLACEABLE MACHINE.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT: IF THE BULL SHIT THAT SO MANY PEOPLE TALK WAS A REAL SUBSTANCE, WHICH WOULD THERE BE MORE OF LYING AROUND; VERBAL OR TRUE BULL SHIT?

A drop of blood -- a tear drop,
the dirty rust brown of dried life.
It has left a track down the side of my face.
A dry track of wet blood left on the right side.

A bloody tear on my cheek, a bloody tear down my side.
The knife intended for my back was just off.
Off just enough to let me live with the pain,
instead of dying in shock before pain set in.

i still have one analgesic thought:
The memory of Love shared.
Tempered by the bitter taste of love only half lost.
And sweetened by the most unlikely of hopes.

i see the dirty rust-colored stain.
Reflected perfectly in the perfect non-color of the mirror.
Distorted by memory and grief.
The smell of iron and copper.

Look again. The rust on my face...
Life corrodes without Love.
If only pain were to fall apart too.
If pain would rust like life...

But pain remains; mayhaps this is better?
With the pain the memory remains fresh.
The memories of the good as well as bad.
i must hold tight to my pain, i must not escape me.

If pain be lost,
then memory,
then Love.
Then this fragment of life will fall apart forever.

These sharp shards of Love hold life tightly.
This jagged, broken life holds memory in cracks.
The pain clings to it all,
But the pain holds everything together.

And as i grasp firmly the pain,
The shards of Love
and jagged edges of life
cut me deeply, and let memory flow in.

And fresh life flows out
New memories fill cracks
New pain clings to tired hands
And the rusted life is washed with blood and renewed

Some people reach a certain age and realize that there is only one thing that they want to do with the rest of their life. These people then focus their efforts to achieving that goal. That's some people, I happen to be one of the unfortunate sorts who fall into the other category.

Those of us in this latter category find ourselves devoting our time to finding a goal, rather than achieving it. In a sense we spend our lives searching for goals.

So it was that I found myself pondering this weighty issue while sipping java at a favorite coffeehouse. I was trying unsuccessfully to ignore the pointless conversation that surrounded me. Finally, I gave up and focused my attention on the source of a very materialistic statement. Namely, a 19-year-old college student we'll call "Tom".

" What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I broke in amongst one of Tom's spiels on the virtue of purchasing Tommy Hilfiger or some such expensive brand of clothing. People accuse me of being overly blunt, but I think they're just jealous of my ability to get to the point without hours of BS Regardless, I found myself the recipient of some less than friendly looks.

Tom was quick to respond with a flushed face and a whiney defense of "all I'm saying is that the quality of the clothes justify their cost."

All of the mindless sheep that were seated around us nodded their agreement. Seeing that nothing I say would have any affect on this flock, I chose to end the discussion as quickly as possible. So I condensed my opinion into a single phrase.

"You're a fucking idiot." I declared as I headed for the door. I'm not a religious person by any stretch, but I spent the rest of that night praying that those people never have any children. Because god help us if they do....

This is long because I have a lot to express, and I don't want to have to write you five billion times to say everything I need to say. Please, read thoroughly and carefully.

Every life has its seasons, just like the earth has its seasons every year. In spring, things grow, in summer, they live life, and then things start to dry up, age, die, and the air around these things start to get colder. It's not death really, just change. People change, and the river of time takes them where it wants - some can learn to sail, like most of you guys, and you go to college and try to get a better chance at making a future - setting sail in different directions. It happens to most friends: they split apart, and the center that once kept them together doesn't hold. They find new centers, new people to revolve around like electrons around a nucleus. They sail there separate ways on the river of time. So what if I'm an idiot for standing still in the river and letting the rushing water eat away at me. It's my choice.

It's my choice that I'm what most would term a bum. It's my choice how I live my life, and it doesn't have to effect you. You can turn and walk away if you wish, and think what you so choose, but when you try to organize my friends against me that's where I draw the line. You are an asshole, and you've always been as asshole to me.

Since high school, I noticed you were never much of a person I could relate to. Which was fine. You were you, and I was me - everyone's allowed to be different. I watched, as you liked talking about cars and everything, always trying to fit in. Like when I went over to your house with a member of our team in biology class and you guys wanted to brush through a playboy. I said I found it perverted to look through the magazine. You sighed and said, "I need to get laid."

As high school went on, you met my sister's friend and my acquaintance -- a bouncy, happy, vibrant girl full of energy and emotions swirling like tornadoes in her beautiful brown eyes. You had an attraction to her. I didn't know her well, we only knew each other because when she was over with my sister we used to shoot rubber bands at each other. You guys seemed happy, and I didn't really know either of you, but were happy for you two regardless.

You got a little strange around then. During that period I was going through some hard times, experiencing some things I couldn't explain. I would always talk about how eyes bothered me and how I felt that they were the `gateways to the soul.’ I joked with your brother one day about how I wanted to get sunglasses that had those sort of mirrors on the lenses so I could see out but they couldn't see in. Strangely enough, a few weeks later you added just those types of sunglasses to your wardrobe of growing dementia. Along with your trench coat and beret you had those stoner glasses. And your reason? You didn't want people to `see into you’ because you believe that through the eyes, they could see your soul.

Then you guys broke up. She simply didn't believe it was working, and you boldly insisted it could if she just let it. And, as it seems to be mandatory in my life, I heard all sides of the ordeal while keeping my mouth shut. People often come to me to confide in me because (or so I believed at the time) I wouldn't judge them, just listen, and, just perhaps, suggest. I always told them to listen to themselves and figure out what they wanted to do first and foremost, not worrying about the other person so much. What good would it have done if she was to go back out with you and she only did it to make you happy? She'd be miserable, annoyed, and then you'd feel even worse, especially when she inevitably dumped you for a second time. It would tear you up and it would break her down because of what she would've done to you. So I always stress to listen to your own heart above all else; me, the guy with the Psychic Grip.

I remember you back then. You were a fucking mess. In gym you'd sit in the little depression by the door that led from the stage and the gym - across the stage from `My Office’ - before every class and cry your eyes out. My heart went out to you, but you wouldn't listen.

"I can't live without her." You said. "I love her. You don't know how I feel. I need her."

Your face was red, you wouldn't do anything, and you were depressed for what seemed to be centuries. Nothing could pull you out of it, and it was your choice to destroy yourself over something you couldn't change.

I've noticed that this is how it goes with many people, if not most. They need somebody to hold, to be with, to melt into, to control. They want to go out with someone to possess them, to own them, or they themselves want to be possessed or owned. Morbid look on intimate relationships, yes, but it doesn't have to be that way. Everyone seems to need something to center around - like planets center around the sun, or electrons center around a nucleus. Something to concentrate on, something to focus on, something outside themselves to give them meaning. Something to feed them light. They strive to find this nucleus, and when they do they hold on - but when that nucleus doesn't want you focusing so much on them anymore, as has happened with a few relationships in the group, the little planet or electrons go hopping about in space, like a little lost child, looking for something else to center around. That's you. You need something to center around, because you can't find that nucleus within you. You can't find yourself within yourself, so you try to find someone else you can hold onto. You can't own yourself, so you try to own another. You can't control yourself, so you project that outside you, and try to control another through a relationship.

That's why I tell people to find themselves first, before pursuing anything, before making any outside commitment. That's why I don't want a commitment. I haven't found all I want of myself yet, either. I revolve around finding that center within myself.

The problem with many is that they don't want a specific person; they want someone. They don't want `her' as a girlfriend, they want A Girlfriend. Like you. If you can't have N, you want S, if you can't have S, you want T, if you can't have T, you want D. It's just a place to heal your insecurity and relieve your raging hormones. You don't want someone, you want anyone who will give you the fucking time of day.

I don't want just anyone. Maybe I set my standards too high, but I don't think so. I don't think I really know who I want. I consider myself in love with M because I've never found someone I admire so much, hold so much value in, as I do her. It's the only word in the English language I can find to express how I feel for her. You pronouncing your love for N one day and then `not sure' the next makes me laugh. You poor, lost, horny soul. Close your eyes; try delving within for awhile. I laugh when you think you have yourself all figured out. Then why are you apparently so jealous of me? There's not much to be jealous of, I assure you. Except maybe characteristic substance.

M, who I'd went out with hardly a week before dumping, attached to me like a `leech,’ or so people said. I seemed to be the only one standing up for her for awhile. She wouldn't back off a little.

Why I didn't keep going out with her is a hard thing to explain, but I'll try. I was confused, and she was confused. I knew I really cared for her, but I wasn't sure she cared for me, and I didn't want her falling in my arms just because she needed `somebody.' I wanted her to want me for who I was, not simply because I was there. I wanted her to admire me, not my open arms. I wasn't sure how she felt. Three years later she confessed that she, at one time, thought she loved me. I love her. Maybe she doesn't love me. It saddens me, yes, but unlike some people, I can accept that and wait. Perhaps we'll be together, perhaps not. Maybe she'll find a true love elsewhere, maybe I'll find someone I love as much. I won't find her to revolve around her.

I love her in my definition of the word love. Love means something different to every person (what doesn't mean something different to every person?), but what I mean when I say `love' is two people who find value in each other at a deep level and respect one another; two separate people who meet at a nexus of value and passion. It's a link between them. If it's nurtured, together the two can grow. If you nurture too little, it's still there. You nurture too much, you get lost in the person. I would nurture too little, occasionally reaching the middle. I demand my individuality, and my freedom.

I want freedom, while most people, like you, want to either smother or be smothered. You smother, boy. That's why people come to me. I listen, but I draw the lines. That's why I'm still a virgin. I can hold back. I don't have to remind you where your dick popped up and into, now, do I? And you insult me.

Then, a few years later, the whole S issue comes to form. You like her. She just wants to be a friend. Me and Scales hang out more, fooling around. Me and S start fooling around. I start questioning my `morals,’ but don't declare it cheating because there's nothing official between me or either one of them. You don't seem to be too upset at first.

J bursts out, right in front of Scales, that I should `tell her.' What he means is that I should tell her about me and S. Perhaps he was right, but it's not his business. My respect for him declines along with his respect for me. Why? Because I refuse to own or be owned.

Scales goes away to the Army. Me and S have our differences. I meet up with Tracey. We start hanging out, but this time she's the one that doesn't want anything official, just "someone to be around; to talk to." Nothing new. I hang with her. I don't see her for a few days. Then I meet up with S. She gives me an ultimatum: I choose either Tracy or herself, and if I chose Tracy there's no more S, if S there's no more Tracy. I choose S, after a few moments.

We go out for a week. We're at Eat and Park, I break up with her, she cries, I feel like an ass. We hang out with Evil Mike, up for a twelve hours at night stretching into the afternoon. I love M, I say, and I don't really want anybody else.

Eventually, S talks with me one night, reveals that something is going on with her and you and she's uncertain about what to do. She said she gave up on me. I said that was a good idea, as I've always said. She's unsure about how she feels. She says she really wants to have her solitude for awhile, she's not ready for something and you seem so willing for commitment. I say, basically, to `follow her heart.’ I tell her she should be open with you, tell you her doubts so she doesn't lead you on to thinking it's something concrete when she's not sure. She says she just wants to try it out for awhile. I said that's cool, but you should really let him know you're just `trying it out,’ because you've been hurt before.

Recall that my advice - me, he who has the psychic grip - respected your feelings overall.

We're watching Event Horizon. We all get in a conversation about the ideas it spawned, and me and J are mostly in the conversation, but C brought in a lot and every now and then you'd actually speak your mind (a hard thing for you, I notice, but we'll get to that later). I didn't want to pursue the conversation with J because there's a key element in his character known as assertiveness and you can't win a conversation because you can go on debating with him for hours, which can be fun – at times. It's not always that he's right, it's just that he uses his confidence and strategic argument against you. I know this, I've talked with him often. It’s usually fairly productive. You, however, merely throw your two cents in when he's throwing in logic straight towards me. You hitch a ride, so you can join in the fun. You're so funny. All you have is insults. You're like my mother, in a way; you only kick me when I'm down. When you find a weak spot, you poke at it as much as you can.

This has happened ever since I've known you. I remember approaching you one day in high school and questioning you on your harsh attitude with me.

"Why is it that you seem to envy me and despise me at the same time?" I asked you. You shrugged, and said that it was true. I said I know it's true. It's been that way since shortly after I met you. Why the attitude?

"Because everyone always comes and talks to you," you told me, "I'll listen, too. Why don't they talk to me?" Idiocy and jealousy intertwined. And I've heard this so many times from you - only I never knew how deep the jealousy went, or how wide a fault-line it ripped into your soul.

After the conversation between J and C, I went outside for a smoke. I was writing down some bits and pieces of the conversation I'd had with J and C that inspired me to write. I saw a dark blur in the shadows and thought maybe it was T. I called out her name, but then I saw who it really was.

You were silent as you walked up to me. You had that look in your eyes, and there was an uneasiness in the air. The scent in the air was an omen of a rare occasion - you were about to actually speak your mind. Something, after you began saying it, I realized you'd held deep for a great many years, and not just weeks or months. This had been swelling in you. And no, that doesn't make the allegation true.

I'm sure I don't have to repeat it all. You were there. I'll just wrap it up in a short summary, stressing the main points of your accusation and the proceeding argument between you and me.

You rush to judgment on something you don't take the time to understand by saying what you said.

"You're too nice to them. If they ask you to go somewhere, even if you don't want to go, you'll go just because they want you to. They control you. That's why they seem to like you."

This is funny. Above you just said they control me. Now you go on to say that I have some psychic way of controlling them, but perhaps it's just at an unconscious level where I don't realize what I did.

"Girls fall in love with you. S, T, N, Tracy, Scales - they all fall in love with you. You control them, and you're ripping me apart. Every time I get a chance with a girl they always end up with you. You flirt too much and it's got to stop."

Then I went on to tell you that I never flirted with any girl while I knew you were going out with them. I didn't touch S while you two were going out.
"For what? A week?" You said.

Yeah, well, had you been going out with her longer I would've stayed away. I've stayed away from her while she's with D, and I'd do the same for you, no matter how asinine you are. Which makes your argument amount to jealousy. Pure jealousy. I never once wanted to go out with any of the girls you've mentioned, save S, which ended quickly after I realized it began for the wrong reasons.

By saying I control them you insult them, their intelligence first and foremost, by saying that I could control them and they have no willpower. You also insult me in many ways. First off is this bizarre theory about `subconscious mind control.' You never have theories such as these, and the fact that you used your first ever `occult' theory on me states that you think I have to control them at some psychic level because my outward persona is so unappealing.

"Ew, he smokes, drinks coffee all day, has no job, isn't in college, still lives at home, believes in aliens and reads up on the Occult, he's weird as hell - and he doesn't even try to get girls or talk to people, but people flock around him like flies to a nightlight. He must have a psychic control over them! He must be bending their will!"

That's at the root of it all. You see me as a pathetic human being that doesn't try, and yet I seem to attract a load of people and `get by' in every aspect of my life. You see yourself, on the other hand, as some attractive buff dude with everything in his life figured out, and who's looking for the right girl and really tries with his friends but never gets called or anything. Who do you make your enemy? Me. I see why, too, and it makes me feel better because I realize there's someone more pathetic than me. An asshole. A jealous child who can't accept he's lost. That's it. I'm open, I can talk about everything from the minute size of my dick to the nature of the universe, and, even more so, I openly admit I'm lost. You can't do any of this. You're closed off, closed minded, ignorant to everything - even yourself.

We never had a friendship. You've kept this locked up for a long time, and obviously you've always held this against me. I have no desire to continue to be around you. I'll be friends with those who I respect and who respect me back, not those who can't express their true feelings or thoughts to me. Fuck you.

About that psychic grip, that control I magickally have over people? Do yourself a favor:

Tempting the fate of madness
Burning at midnight
Feeling the nocturnal itch take flight
The moon pings the mind's eye
Tapping its cellophane lid
Tears a hole inside
And the clear cover softly billows wide
Gently falls away from the virgin retina
Invisible light pours in
Infrared cross the new skin
The iris pulls closed tight
Like the lips of the moon
Against the hollow sight
Of the black sky, the world is asleep!
The earth disappears three hours before sunrise-
And leaves only the empty runnels
Of the eye's open corridor
Tinted by tiny trails in its tunnels
Of grey smoke blown through.
The fire dies of loneliness
Haunted by dreams of the sun's caress,
And in its quiet wake
Ashes sink, and cannot take
The place of tears dried out to salty streaks
On the cheeks of the aching moon-
The morning mysteries are slowly unveiled
By the predictable sun as it is hailed
In the hiss of blind fortunetellers
Who do not know their own futures
But do not miss the rays of the sun
And all but one with a story to tell,
The last one can only yell-
His mind lost in the night.

The needle on the tachometer shot hard to the right as she stepped on the accelerator, the sound of the Ford 279 engine drowning out all other sounds on this cool night. The mustang parted the light fog as it went, leaving a trail of swirling mist behind. Above the roar of the engine was the sound all but one of the seat belt tabs flapping in the wind, banging into the door frame. All four of the girls were chatting happily.

One of them glanced casually out driver's side window; her eyes widened in fear. Before she could so much as scream, the other car plowed into them. She was instantly shot out her window, somersaulting through the air. She made contact with the ground face first ripping flesh and muscle from bone. Her neck quickly snapped as her body tried to twist in ways no human should. Her limp form rolled to a mangled stop, blood streaming from her many wounds.

The back passenger met with a similar fate. She turned as she flew out the window, the middle of her back meeting with a tree, snapping her it like a twig. The second limp body of the evening hit the ground, a trickle of blood seeping from her mouth, her lifeless eyes staring onward into oblivion. She had hit the tree with such force that, as her spine snapped, it pushed her ribcage forward, almost ripping it out of her. It stuck a full inch out of her.

The car took flight by this point, a mere second into the crash. The driver was now half-in and half-out of the passenger-side window. As the car hit the ground and rolled, she was torn asunder. She was disemboweled, pieces of her scattered across the full five hundred feet the car had traveled. It was lucky for all involved that ones innards are not necessary for an open-casket funeral.

As the car skidded to a stop, only one person was left in it; there she hung- upside down. Blood trickled from numerous scratches on her unconscious body. Her arm bone stuck out near her elbow, yet another source of the flowing red liquid. She was not, however, dead. That small belt, tab, buckle and God had saved her. She would go on to return to California having come to our small town to visit when the car ran that stop sign and her world came to an abrupt halt. Could three deaths have been prevented if the rest had been wearing seat belts? Yes.

So many times, I have seen my friends die, only because they were not wearing a seat belt. It has saved my life on a couple of separate occasions, and I believe that it is one of the best safety devices ever created. I do not understand why more people do not wear it. It is a simple harness system that is not at all cumbersome. It is a strong belt that is anchored to the body of the car, and fits one belt over your shoulder and upper body, and another across the lap, fitting a tab in a buckle also attached to the body of the car. It takes one to two seconds to put on or remove; it took only two seconds for three girls to die.

listen to your breath
And though it is quiet
It fills the depths of my senses,
As if its silence were an energy
That gently echoes along the walls of my heart.
You stand in the stillness,
Moon at your back, highlighting your form
Against the warm darkness.
I feel a tingling sensation come over me,
Some invisible electricity
Drawing me, foot by foot, toward your lips.
In the moon's glow I can make out your eyes,
Where tears have formed.
And I raise a hand to caress you,
Realizing that I too am crying,
As if in this pacific dark
We alone feel each other's beauty
So intensely that our emotions
Cannot be contained.
Our arms find their way around each other's backs,
And we embrace, two candles burning bright,
Our wax melting together into a single shape.
The moon blushes as we move deeper
Into the cavern of love,
Desires become physical,
Our bodies are like shrines of worship,
Where fresh fruit, wine, perfume and jewelry
Adorn the images of Gods...

I, of course not knowing what she meant, just shook my head up and down like a retarded child. Unable to speak, I began to wonder if she had cast her evil black magic spell. I felt her gaze penetrate through my eyeballs, looking into the window of my soul. I felt so naked..... I closed my eyes and hoped that when I opened them, her stare would be gone. But even with my eyes closed I could still feel her presence coursing through my being. Like a hundred volts of electricity, I felt her power flow. My flesh tingled with anticipation and fear. My senses were confused; I could taste her smell, and smell her touch. I could be in her without being near her. Thinking about cotton-candy skies, I smiled to myself, remembering a childhood tainted with rage and sprinkled with the savory flavor of gluttony. She was making me remember my past, in all too vivid detail; the hate toward an unseen entity, who denied me the pleasure of pain. Oh, sweet youth, where have you flown away? I could feel only joy mingled with the sickening sweet tinge of guilt. Like eating an ice cream cone covered with bird droppings; beneath the birdshit was the tasty morsel that I eagerly devoured, not caring about the putrid refuse atop my tasty treat. Life is like an ice cream cone, vanilla flavored with a fudge swirl, covered in birdshit and broken glass. The sweet part satisfies your need for fulfillment. The bird crap satisfies the need to ruin the experience with guilt (because we can never accept good things without feeling guilty), and the shards of broken glass fills your hunger for the sweetness of pain. Without pain, we have nothing to compare pleasure to. Swallow that down, and you have swallowed all existence. And I was being swallowed by the voodoo lady....down her moist throat into the stomach which churned in an uneasy state. A state of restlessness. Now I'm inside her, her heart pounds and makes me lose my balance. Falling down, I grab hold of something that is not really there, but it must be. Because I am no longer falling, but instead I find myself swimming. There's an ocean, in which I am merely driftwood, floating atop gentle waves. I am flotsam, waiting and hoping to find a sandy beach to be washed upon. And above me she soars, the voodoo woman, in the form of a giant bird flying overhead. She diminishes in size and substance until she disappears and is no more. She vanishes, like my youth. Oh, childhood, how cruel a joke to leave me on the rocky shores of adulthood; staring across the bay to old age, and death is an island in the distance, slowly looming nearer. She has gone, the woman, the bird, and all memories I have of a life once lived. And I am alone. Truly, utterly, demonically alone. And there's laughter in the form of mystical silence. I have to scream to drown the laughing out. "You bastards! You fucking bastards!" I sob, clutching my chest. There must be a way to rip out this heart. My fingers fail at the task of murder, leaving me a laughing, crying, howling jackal of a man lying naked on a desolate beach.....a salty shore in some place and time that only exists in my poisoned mind, and in the magic of the voodoo lady.

I don’t know why it starts or why it goes on, but it’s impossible for me to ignore any longer. I can meet her almost anywhere. At first she’s wary of me, but however I act towards her – with my nervous mask of silence or my more lunatic, exaggerated persona – I eventually sneak in probing questions trying to tap at her depth, always with open ears and eyes, ready for one little nugget of information to add to my mental files. I want to know why she is. I want to delve far below this land of banal superficiality and mundane bullshit.

Once that she realizes that I’m truly interested and am, in fact, listening, she begins to get less wary of me and lets her guard down, slowly but surely. She begins to answer questions honestly after giving them some thought; she entrusts me with information vital to her life, throws out clues to me, even invites me into her vast intellectual or complex emotional life. I stare deep into her eyes at every opportunity. She is a puzzle to piece together; she is a mystery to solve. She is a question to answer, like everything else. Like everything else, after a taste I’m thirsty for more.

Then one of two things happen. I either begin to desire her in a sexual way alongside my mental and emotional curiosity towards her, or she merely thinks I have that sexual interest for some stupid reason. Either way things get fucked up.

If I like her, I think of telling her or making a move on her, because in such instances it usually seems as if she’s interested in me at a certain level as well. I hold back, though, even if she openly declares that she desires me in the more animalistic sense. At the threshold, I suddenly realize that if I were to suddenly make a move, I would do it with the risk of destroying everything. All trust she has in me would be lost. The previously likeable portrait she had been painting of me in her mind would be whitewashed, and over it would be drawn a gruesome, perverse creature run my it’s passions and dominated by it’s lower drives.

I was respected when I wanted nothing more than to hear her speak her mind and it appeared as if I had no sexually-based motivations. It was all fine and dandy when I wanted nothing more than to probe the depths of her psyche, but in one fateful moment in which I try to, with one single move, bring the relationship to a sexual, physical level she might suddenly assume – and incorrectly, by the way – that my apparent desire to probe her mind and build a strong, healthy intellectual bond between her and I was all a strategically-orchestrated illusion, a subtle manipulation of her mind to make her think that I am something I’m not – specifically, less dominated by my nether regions – and that all of this was nothing more than an elaborately-planned strategy to get down her pants.

I never make the move, of course. I do talk to people about my desires for her, however, with the full knowledge that in all likelihood it would get back to her. Why do this, you ask? Because I want her to know, and I want to judge her reaction to it, and still be able to effectively deny my sexual attraction if approached by her with the question as to whether such an attraction exists and her reaction seems to be one of disgust or disappointment. You can always deny information that’s second, third or fourth hand – first hand as well if you’re careful, but as a general rule the more mouths and ears between you and her, the easier it is to cough it all up to a miscommunication or misinterpretation of someone down the line – the whole Telephone Game Strategy.

Then I see her backing off, giving me that wary eye, like there was some violation – as if the thought, for some reason, frightened her. For the record, this reaction does not result in a boost of ones’ ego, whether the sexual attraction was actual or was a misinterpretation.

Then she goes on to slip in words – through direct communication with me, or through communication with another that is made within my earshot and purposely made due to my presence – in order to get the message across, subtly but completely, that she’s not interested. She says she `has a boyfriend’ or goes in to talk about him as if the fact that she has one was already in my mind or should be taken for granted; or that I’m good friend, with emphasis on the friend; or that `no one in their right mind’ would like her, and so on. She’ll also remark, as if seeking a reinforcement in her beliefs, that in relation to a sexual relationship I’m `not interested in that sort of thing’ and that it’s `too shallow’ for me.

So I sat there, trying my damnest to explain all of this to a good friend of mine, as she laughed and told me that she knew what I meant.

“Even if that sort of sexual interest develops, it’s not necessarily the only interest,” I told her on the back porch as I held my coffee, and she held her beer. “And it certainly isn’t a strategy of mine put into place to get down her pants and between her legs by first prying open her mind to me or anything. At least I don’t think so – and if it is the case, it wasn’t a conscious intent. But throughout my life it’s become more and more evident that I have an overpowering unconscious, so maybe deep down I do have sinister intentions. Maybe I fool myself into thinking I have higher ideals in mind in order to better fool them. Maybe my true emotions, and the true primitive and animalistic motives behind my unconscious, subtle and elaborate strategies, leak out through my dreams – which would account for the dark, sexual dreams about her in leather. But I’m not trying to –“

The back door opened, and Phloid stepped out onto the porch. Overly critical at times and oftentimes projecting the feeling you get when you scrape your fingernails on a chalkboard, Phloid is nevertheless a great friend and a profound thinker. He had a look on his face as if he was half-afraid that he’d intruded upon the conversation.

“You don’t have to stop talking because I’m here,” he said, always the one to be blunt.

We both went to remark something along the lines that he wasn’t intruding, we had pretty much finished – but I decided to invite him into the discussion and keep it going. I asked him whether he thought that my true intentions in getting to know these women were to delve into their minds or the hole between their legs.

“Well, there’s no single motive for any action,” he said, and then, after some thought, “and no single result.”

Just another beautiful day
In my sorry-ass existence
Just another day that I go out
And try to rekindle the misplaced value I held in
The mundane human ideal.
I could take another 21 years to process what I’ve learned today
Why do I even reach out for truth
When it just feeds the old questions
Further elaboration,
Anyway?
I’m sorry for you and all the bullshit your
Puny life put you through
And I won’t try and measure pain
I’ve been down that long road of semantic conversations
And I won’t go there again
But I’m feeling an overload
And my walls don’t break down
They just grow stronger
Freedom is no inhibition and faith is strength in your eyes
And I’m secure in uncertainty and I see
the strength in doubt that you wizz right by
You could never understand me
So don’t look into me, bitch, don’t even try
I thought it was insecurity
I thought it was fear that held me back
But maybe it’s good sense that makes me resist
And as I try your life in my mind I paint my own world black.
So when you see me, greet me
And walk the other way
You’ll see me watching from afar
And taking my little notes
Reaching for the real by putting the misled under a microscope
Fighting to the ground my primitive hope.

All items in this issue are copywritten by their respective authors, and the Gopher name is (c) copywritten by Rewired and the Gopher Society, 2000. Any fuck-ups are to be blamed not on CIB Man or Mister G, but on the monkey that they both claim lives inside my ear and plays with the tint knob inside my cranium, which accounts for my nose appearing green to no one but those who attune themselves to this psychosis. The highly caffeinated and occasionally deeply-deprived editor would like to thank CIB Man for not getting mad at him for printing about him a few times, within this issue, where he was mad at him – it needed expressing and is now passed, and no one knows that I wrote about you because no one reads the small print these days and I changed your names in the writings in which you were mentioned. And even if they do trace it back to CIB Man, no one knows who you are. Anyway, you’re a good friend. Assertive as fuck, yes, but a good conversationalist, a profound thinker who’s wrong a good amount of the time, but, hey. Hrmm. This was an apology. Did I fuck it up? Any messing around with the contents of the Gopher will result in immediate retaliation by self-aware dead and grilled cow patties, dressed and wrapped by lowly servants of the fast food restaurant I shall refer to as the Burger Bog, Palace of Grease, place of employment of Rewired, regrettably. Dead cow will haunt you, so don’t fuck with the rodents of the underground. Does anyone read this? E-mail me if you do; I am curious. Send me submissions while you’re at it; I need some. We all, need some, but I’d like submissions to. I mean, you know… fucking valley girls rubbing off… Whatever.

Gopher is published erratically, but we're getting better! Less than 2 months between this issue and the last! rawk! You can find Gopher in fine establishments whenever our fine furry friends leave copies around. Barring that, you can find gopher on the web at http://www.trianglepants.com/gopher