1-3-98     12

Lord, don't even let me start coughing.  Hard to write with these hollow plastic pencils.  Dumbest invention ever.  Glory is sleeping on the couch next to me.  Ko is on the other section.  I'm ~~~
Found like a golf course pencil.  Have to outwit a cough.  William moans shortly in his sleep.  Loser, baby.  Ow.  Ouch.  The people we love.

1-5-98 11:54 AM  M
Waiting outside Sh'rill's apartment.  She said to come at noon.  I don't want to be early.  It's real sunny today.  I need to get my brakes worked on.  I got some beer and champagne and orange juice.  I wonder what we'll do.  Drive up the coast?  Spend the night somewhere?  Morro Bay?  Last night was Thing's birthday.  We took him to Marvel Mania, a comic-superhero-themed restaurant up at Universal City Walk.  Carlin drove.  I had two Sams, a Turkey, and a Jungle Thriller or something like that which was basically just a renamed pina colada.  I should probably get a haircut soon.  I'll ask Shrill what she thinks.  It's a matter of seconds 'til I go to the door.  I'm nervous and shaky.  I ask God for help.

1-9-98 12:30 AM  Th
Holy shit, my vacation is over.  We're in the kitchen.  Gip's telling Marge stories.  Thing's smoking a Marlboro, and I'm smoking a Bugler/Ben-and-Debbie mix.  The deaf nympho had to have her dirty talk tele-typed over the phone.  They used to get out of hand.  One night they went out drinking.  His parents were out.  They were in the queen-sized bed.  The lava lamp was working.  They were doing a sixty-nine. She was on top.  He guesses he put his tongue in her ass, and she loved it.  So then he was on the phone, and she asked him to put his tongue in her ass, and there was a pause as the tele-typist typed it.  Gip says he hopes Thing's not jacking off in his room now after hearing that story.  Fuck, its one o'clock, he says.  What else?  Drinking some nasty wine.  Want to call Shrill. 

12-31 1:09 AM W
"...but we won't know for sure 'til we're in the car on the way."  She must be making love by now.  Wish I could call her.  Glory's nice.  She's a little weird when she's drunk.  Beats being a little weird no matter what.  Yours truly comes to mind.  Nothing makes sense.  Read Miller to sleep.  Wake up around eight tomorrow.  Too much fucking smoke in the house.  Sneak away and use the phone.  Call her.  Stop her.  Wicked save her from.  Ugh.  That's what they want.  Typed today.  Just crap, but I typed.  Sweated twenty minutes on my treadmill.  Ate a club sandwich at Shelly's Café, up there by the Galaxy Theater.  Can you believe she's sleeping with someone else tonight?  Having sex with him?  Glorious bit me.  I'm in bed.  I've had this blanket for years.  Want to type her a letter.  Say how I would respect her vision of running a home.  Tom and Glory are watching LA Confidential.  A copy Tom got from work.  A wrapped condom waits on the nightstand.  It turns my stomach.  Why isn't she here with me?  Why does she prefer to be with him?  Does praying do any good?  Fuck.  What else?  Fuck.  The usual fuck, but more so.  Every year life gets sadder.  Til you die.  Fuck.  What the fuck else?
12-31 1:29 PM W
I know today is Wednesday because yesterday was the day Shirelle picked up her boyfriend from the airport and that was Tuesday.  We're in Mojave driving.  Don't wan to believe it's New Year's Eve.  I'm parched.  I'm her voodoo doll.  I can't think of anything to say.  Glory says Dave Navarro looks evil, but he's also attractive.  We are in Incline Village on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe.  I don't feel like I'm really here.  I feel nervous.  "Skiing today was better than yesterday," Steve said.  I'm feeling like a geek tonight.  "Have you ever been to Jackson Hole, Wyoming?"  What the fuck am I doing here?  "Dude, we got the swank rooms."  I'm too much of a fuckin trip.  Glory cannot see Harrison Ford cussing.  ESPN is on the tv.  I put it there.  It was on music videos.  "Did you bring the schwag?"  OUCH.  URG.  FUCK.  Shit.  What if I have another beer?  Guess I'll have to skip skiing tomorrow.  "When I get high, I can't ski."  I told Ko his first name should be Cy, then he would be Cy Ko.  Yeah.  After this I'll have another beer.  I feel helpless here with no car, no cash, no say.  It's from reading that Miller shit aloud in the car here up 395.  Shrill Butt.  Glory sniffs barely perceptible ironies out her nose.  I could go for an Irish coffee.  I wish my real girl was here.  Useless, stupid wish.  Stop thinking about it.  She isn't.  Fool fool foolio.  What else?  Soon another beer.  They went to go pick up Angie.

Fa La La LA LA LA Land

12-21 1:30 AM
Upstairs.  Radio on.  The door clicks open.  It's Thing.  I put a beer bottle on top of the Christmas tree where the star or the spire or the angel should be.  The G.I.P. fell asleep on the couch at the party.  I cracked about taking his pulse and calling him Farley.  Here's a Bud Light in a can.  GIP gave me a Wild Goose calendar.  That's his favorite strip club.  Glorious was comparing herself to the girls in the calendar. 
"The horror," says Thing.
 "What's the horror tonight?" I ask. 
He looks at a loss for words.
 "General principles?" I suggest.

12-22 1 PM M
If I go to a bar will I just get more depressed? First day of a three-week vacation.  I hope I make it.  What will I do?  Buy a diamond ring?  Miller is feeling pretty bad about losing a girl.  Am I just absorbing that?  Shirelle hates that I write in my journal.  She said I read the newspaper and never talk.  That's why she left me.  I think about getting an easel.

12-28 7 PM Su
I guess I better start writing again.  I'm on the front steps.  The house across the street is all lit up in blinking Christmas colors.  An electric bell dings out a litany of carols.  I'm waiting for Glorious to come back.  She must have gone with Carlin, and now they're talking about what a fucking idiot I am.  I can't bear to tell it.  Shirelle, the bitch, called and was all upset that I am with Glorious.  She said, "Here's your chance, asshole, come over and bring some weed."  Glorious and I had spent a happy weekend together.  I read her my work on Jim while we sat in the tub and she liked it.  She says she's falling in love with me.  Shirelle called, though, and I told Glorious I still loved Shirelle and had to go to her if she wanted me.  I'm a fucking idiot.  I walked to La Brea and Highland and caught a cab.  Shirelle only wanted to fuck with my head some more.  She is a dangerous bitch.  I left her telling her that the damage she causes would come back to haunt her.  I caught a bus back.  I ran here from the bus stop.  Glory's car is still in the driveway, but she's gone.  I'm a fucking idiot.  Joy to the World.  God hates man.  Forgive me. I'm a selfish bastard.  Born the victim of demons.  Mac came in through the upstairs window this morning.  He was reading my shit while Glory slept on my chest.  I wonder what he thought.  We went to a party in Topanga last night.  Drew Passage came and got Glory and me and we drove up and met Hosebag and Kayo.  Drew and I were talking about one drunken night in Manhattan (NYC, not Beach) five years ago when we got all fucked up because I was all fucked up how it always turns out women don't actually love me.  After a night of drinking and titty bars, Drew decided I needed a hooker, but the bars and liquor stores would be closing at 4 AM, so we quickly picked up a six pack of tall boys and were sipping them in the car driving around in the Z half-heartedly looking for hookers when I got pulled over.  There's nowhere to pull over in Manhattan, though; the streets are lined with parked cars.  I stopped in the middle of the street.  Drew and I were both laughing.  We didn't even try to hide our beers.  I kept mine right between my thighs.  "Looks like this it."  The cops came up to both windows.  License and registration.  "You're from California?  You can't make a right turn at a red light in New York," he said. "Who's that?"  My wallet was still open from taking out my license, and in there is a picture of my old man in his LAPD uniform with the American flag behind him.  "My dad," I answered.  "What department is he?"  "LAPD," I said.  "LAPD?  Okay, follow us."  The drove around until they found a parking spot for us and pointed out a diner they said was good and told us to go get breakfast and not get in the car again until the sun came up.  Somehow though, Drew and I got separated, and I was walking around midtown sweaty, lost and alone in a cold drizzle with my shirt off and the street people calling out to me for two hours before the sun started coming up.  I bumped into Drew again in front of Madison Square Garden, and then it was another hour or so before we found the car and drove back to his place on the lower east side. 
Last night I told Drew nothing had changed I was still that big of a fucked up idiot. He laughed and said, "Cool, man." 
In the backseat on the way home, I searched for Glorious' hand in the dark and held it while she slept.  A guy at the bar told me I look like James Dean.  "Tell it to the chicks," I said. 
Let heaven and nature sing.

The Fucking Lickety Split Quick Bitch Switch
12-17 1:55 PM W
Fuck you.  Ah, really fuck you all and fuck you all and fuck you all--Soundgarden

The more you suffer the more you know you really care

The Gip and I went to Madison's in Westwood.  I paid for three rounds of Amstels.  Gip's thirtieth birthday was the other day.  We talked about Shirelle.  He said she is a loser.  He said she would be calling back when she needed something, wait and see.  When I said she was with a make-up artist, he snorted, said she was being used, would get HIV, told me not to touch her ever again, not with a ten-foot pole,  He said if she ever gave me anything, he would kill her himself, said if I ever needed an alibi, I could count on him.
The place was full of guys.  We didn't talk to anyone else.  We walked to Monty's.  A band played soft Christmas jazz.  I yearned to dance there with Shirelle like back when things were good.
I want to get an easel and some paints during the break.  I'm going to take Thing to Vegas.  Glorious wants to go.  Zattan is having a party Friday.  There's a work happy hour social in the marina that day.  Carlin has rescheduled her party for Saturday.  Today was the Wilshire Hill holiday program.  Bunch of coked up kids butchering Christmas carols.  A fine Nubian princess is subbing for Webster.  I stared at her, but she never looked at me, though I felt she was aware of my stare.  She passed close.  I wanted to ask her name, but I was too chicken.  Galivan says she'll come babysit me tonight.
What else? I need weed.  What else?  Yeah.  Right.  Read more Miller.  Stole his money back from a whore, allowed a crazy jilted, exiled Russian princess to shack up with him and Fillmore.  She was too tight to enter.  What will I do when I get home?  Jerk off?  Or try to save some wood for a bone with Glorious?  Type?  Read.  Sleep?  Stare at the walls?  Have a drink?  Track down some weed?  Call Susan?  Call Glory?  Call Karen?  Go to the mall?    The first person to line up will be Alcides.  I got more fucking night school.  That chick Lucia I want to do.  Juan Chato saw me staring at her, intimated she was crazy circling his finger around his temple and pointed at her, then recommended his sister.

Shallow Abyss?

12-16 Tu 12:15 PM
Kids play soccer on the grass.  Finally I feel some warmth today.  When the pigeons land they beat up a flurry of sycamore leaves. I woke up at three thirty with the usual anguish.  I read a chapter in Henry Miller in which he goes through exactly what I'm going through.  The streets embedded with cruelty.  Pages 160-166 of the Grove Press edition of Tropic of Cancer.  I won't copy it all here.  "When I realize she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling into deep black space.  And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged."
1:20  Urg.  Back in class at my desk.  Ate a half a bag of Funyons Dijonia gave me for lunch.  Got a cup of coffee so I won't fall asleep at my desk again.    Miller is a genius.  What will I do when I get home.  Type?  Sleep?  Go out for a drink?  Eat maybe?  Jerk off? 
Who used who?       In the end, whose feelings were deeper or stronger?  Turned me into the bitch from the Alanis Morissette songs. 
I was trying to think of a frame for life:  Birth on one side, death on the other, Heaven above and Hell below. 
When will I be able to sleep again?     I don't feel too bad right now.  Sharon said there will be relapses.  Fuck.  I want to go out and drink in public, mix it up with life again.  I'm scared though, scared of evil.  I used to be fearless. 
She wanted to sell me a thirty bag. ShrillButt.  Shrilly Asspain.  It was always fucked up.  I want to drink, but I'm afraid of what it will do to me.  Susan called.  I'll call her today or tonight or tomorrow or something.  Had brunch with Yovonne Ellington last Sunday.  Shirelle said she would have gone with me.       Glorious told me she loved me last night.  I told her I didn't know how I felt, but when Shirelle used to say that to me, I wouldn't respond in kind, cuz I wasn't sure, so she got sick of it and left me, and that's how I found out I did love her, but by then, of course, it was too late.  So why hold back?  I thought those words should be special, but I'll start slutting them out like a ten-dollar crack whore from now on. 
What will I do when school ends?  Read more Miller, I guess.

Pbphhht

12-12 F 8:30 AM
Went to bed ok, but woke up with pain, loss, longing: all the heartbreak staples.
I was getting coffee this morning.  Alice Shapiro, the AH teacher was there.  "What's new?" she asked.  "I can't think of anything," I said.  "Five more days after this and we go on vacation," she said.  "Yeah, I wish there was a fast forward button for life," I said.  "Or a rewind button," she said.  That pricked me.  Would you be able to go back and change things.  I'm a fucking idiot.
9:50 AM Why don't you leave this perfect stranger and come back to the man who has put up with every Lucy stunt you have ever pulled?
"I have some blackheads that need squeezing.  would you please come over and do it first chance you get?"
12-15 M 11:10 AM
Dwayne said he had a chimpanzee he taught to sign.  He had the chimp with him at a basketball game he was coaching and the chimp called a time out. 
Woke up at 2:00 AM this morning and never got to sleep again.  Wicked evil torture truly scared on my knees praying to God.  Can everything really be this bad?  Deep moral confusion.  Fear for Shirelle.  Scared to hold on and scared to give up.  Scared about sex.  The evil of sex.  The evil of Hollywood.  Tore up inside, hurting.  Maybe evil doesn't exist.  She says his and her sexual fantasies are exactly the same.  He's probably bisexual.  Unholy agony.  What could it be?  Give up your suffering.  Save your soul.  She's out there.  Your angel is out there.  But what about Sh'relle?  Can't I help her?  She doesn't want to be helped.  Oh, God.  Could I have saved her if I wasn't such an asshole?  Oh God.  Save us.  Why am I the one wracked with Hell pain?  She doesn't have the awareness.  She is motivated only by pleasure.  Sin is not a factor for her.  What about HIV?  What about death?  Why does this always happen to me?  Am I that fucked up?  Why couldn't I have just held when she was upset and scared and jealous?  Don't count on me, that was my message.  I wanted her to learn independence.  Backfire.  I don't really know her background that well.  Is she more a sexual creature than I?  Am I repressed?  Do I believe in God?  What she's doing to me is evil.  Pain like this is demonic?  I orchestrated it.  God help me.  Maybe He's the one hurting me.

Oh, Brother

12-11 Th 9:39 AM
Chase Walker said a little tornado swirled leaves around the playground and she got in the middle of it and danced.
I wrote another letter to Shirelle  I don't know whether or not to send it.  I suppose it really doesn't matter now either way.  I have some ideas for another letter.
Fucking cunt.  Why if God is good does he allow that kind of fucked up evil?

I spoke briefly with Katherine Beuerlein just now.  She said thanks for the message.  She was very warm about it.  I stepped halfway out the door.  "Do you want to go to lunch?"  I guess I was surprised she was considering it.  She told me she was in a long-term relationship.

The kids are working on some science.  I'm falling asleep.  I woke up around four AM with all the usual evil my head.  I hate life still.  Juan Zacarias came up to my desk.  "Finished," he said.  I looked at his paper.  He had the answers but not the questions.  I must have said five times to write the question and then a complete sentence answer.  "You didn't write the questions," I said. 
"Ah, nuts," he said and drooped his shoulders and went back to his desk.

I guess I'll take them outside to play a while.  When I get home, I'll finish that traffic school stuff.  I haven't done any fucking Christmas shopping, and I don't want to.
Life sucks; there's no way around it.  There's no other way to look at it. 
Alcides asked if we can play Prisoner.  I said okay.  Life sucks.
I'm sitting dejectedly now on a green bench on the playground.  The sky is perfectly clear.  A strong chilly breeze blows.  I rolled up my sleeves to feel it and the sunshine on my skin.  I wonder if I should invite Katherine to this party Saturday.  The kids call my name and throw a ball over the net.  If the other team doesn't catch it, the person called sits out.

Egads! One Should Not Read Miller's Tropics During a Breakup

12-10 11:40 AM W
Shirelle never called.  I left messages and paged her, but she ignored me.  I was plagued by insomnia the whole night.  I wanted to go to her house and pour syrup in the gas tank, drain the oil, put nails in all the tires, shatter the windshield.  I called in sick to work.  She called and we talked.  At first she lied about where she was, but eventually she admitted she was sleeping with her new guy.  It makes me nauseous.  The whole world is fucked up.  If nature and righteousness existed anymore, I could kill the fucker who fucks my love.  I cried on the phone again like a baby.  It' so unjust that I'm not given an opportunity to fix things up.  Johnny come lately.  She doesn't acknowledge her wrongs and it pisses me off.  I should not give a fuck.  I should get out there with a vengeance.  Love is so rare it seems.  We almost had it.  A compromise here, a concession there.  None of it could change the simple fact of her dishonesty.  She says I pushed her away.  It was her lies, and possessiveness which made it so.  Even still, I loved her, would not leave her, would not lock her out, would not turn my back.  My loyalty, my dependability, my truthfulness, my trustworthiness mean nothing to her.
I'm grieving and she's fucking around having a good time.  "He's perfect," she says.  "He's just like me," she says.  She can't know that fast.  She's make hot, fast decisions before and been wrong.  Is she sure this is what she wants?
I'm left holding the pieces.  I don't know how I'll meet anyone else.  You never do know, I guess.  It took years to find Shirelle.  I guess I'll write her one last letter and then I'll snip my fucking aorta.  I called Glorious at six AM.  Asked her if she would do me a favor and come see me.  She did.  It helped a little,  We held hands in the market, and I hated myself for not doing that with Shirelle.  I took her to get some dinner and I hated myself for not doing that enough for Shirelle.  I helped her do her laundry and wanted to cry because I wouldn't do that for Shirelle.  I'm afraid that to move on is to look at all the bad, the way she cheated on me, stole from me, lied to me, disrespected me, and see them no longer as symptoms of immaturity, but as lifelong character flaws.  I taught her independence.  Hopefully she learned honesty, too.  Some other fuck will reap the rewards.