When I look back at day planners and calendars from my younger years (not usually a wise way of passing the time) I marvel at how much I used to do in a single day. Waking early for breakfast before class, finishing a reading due just before the course started, three or four classes in a row, rushing to a commuter rail into Boston to work a retail shift from 5 to 9 PM, scarfing down dinner amid some more reading for school, trying to hammer out homework on the commuter rail back to campus at 10:40 PM, then showering and trying to finish more schoolwork – it makes my head spin.
The idea that some nights I would skip the 10:40 PM commuter rail and wait for a 12:30 AM train just to have a couple more hours in Boston boggles my mind. If I tried that today I’d be dead.
Contrasted with my days now, that life of busy business feels far away, and largely foolish. What really came of such busyness and all the rushing around? Graduation from Brandeis? Big deal. A retail job I could hold down and do well? Bigger deal. A day in which every hour and minute was filled with being busy for the sake of being busy? Biggest fucking deal of all.
These days I find more value and worth in simply taking a quiet day and mindfully meandering through it – a walk in the garden, a spell of reading on the couch, a bit of writing while sipping a cup of hot tea. I didn’t realize then how much being busy was simply filling a void that could have better been spent meditating or working on calming the runaway train of thoughts that once barreled through my mind. It still chugs along at varying speeds, but I’m better at enjoying the ride rather than worrying about whether it’s going to fly off the rails. And perhaps that’s just me getting older and a little wiser.
It’s a lifestyle change that has made me more calm. It feels strange – because all that running around and going non-stop was always in the purpose of finding contentment. That peace was within me the whole time – I simply hadn’t paused to find it, and hear it, and truly listen to it.
Way back in 1994, there was blessedly no social media, no blogs, no TikTok or FaceBook or Instagram – and I kept in touch with friends the very old-fashioned way: writing letters by hand and sending them out through the postal service. The method of blogging then, at least the style of diary-like blogging I do here, was the journal, and I’d write in one by hand, then transpose it on a bulky Mac (in Grape!) ~ ahh, the good old days. Having rediscovered a journal from 1994 – the last time I kept one in such painstaking detail – I ran across this ridiculous passage from exactly thirty years ago. It’s from an evening in Boston when I was just embarking upon this romance with a guy I met on the street, the quaint way we used to meet people. It also offers a novice’s look at Boston back when things were very different – it’s almost impossible to find a decent adult theater these days… Have a chuckle at my 19-year-old expense, it’s ok. How were we ever so young?
October 1, 1994: I hadn’t heard from Tom in a few days. He had told me that he was going to Maine in order to get away from Boston for a while and collect his thoughts. I wondered if they would have anything to do with me… When I went into Boston one night I purposely walked by the Meridien Hotel, if only to get a feeling like I was closer to him. I decided to miss the 10:40 PM commuter rail which left me there until 12:20 AM, when the next one would leave. So with a few hours to spare, I walked to where we had eaten at the Moka Cafe. I remembered Tom pointing out to me that just down the street the area became very bad and dangerous. I walked a ways down it, not crying anymore. I turned towards Park Street, where I knew he might be working. He should have returned by the time, I thought. I made my way through Downtown Crossing, where all the department stores bustled during the day. It was deserted now, save for a few weekend stragglers.
I passed a man on top of a woman, who was whimpering. I waited beside the curb to see if he was hurting her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps she was too drunk. I passed an adult theater and an adult store, the owner of which was screaming obscenities at someone, who was shouting even more vehemently back. As I passed, the guy threw his bag down and challenged the own to a fight outside. I turned the corner into Chinatown. Two men wearing hoods walked by me, smelling like pot. As I came into the bright intersection where Filene’s met Jordan Marsh, a car going much too fast for the area slammed into the curb. I looked back to see that he had flattened his front tire.
The man stopped his car. He was white-haired and he got out and made motions to repair the tire. I walked to him and asked if he needed my help. He looked at me. I was wearing a long black coat and a backpack, and must have seemed a little scary, and I knew what he must have been thinking. Of course I knew that I was nothing compared to what might happen to him, but he refused me nonetheless. He said he got everything all right. I reluctantly walked away. I didn’t want to leave him there like that, but what could I do? I watched him for a while. Another well-dressed couple offered to help, but they ended up walking away too. I really had to see if he din’t need anything, so I returned to him and offered to at least call a tow truck. Again, he merely went back to work beneath the car, so I left him for good. I walked some more. I went to the waterfront. I tried calling Kirsten but there was only the answering machine message.
Greetings, October – month of ‘Sex’ and ‘Erotica‘, month of gourds and pumpkins and lanterns of jack. You are the month that seduces like the antithesis of March – in like a lamb and out like a lion. Your gentle entry is a welcome one – your exit will likely not be as benign. Everything that happens in between the two will be our little secret.
I’ve taken to inhabiting the nights, even as it saps my daily energy, and in this darkness the fall offers an enchantment like no other season. I will walk in seas of dead leaves at the edge of the day, where grasses brown and dying spill their feathery seed. On the hazy line between wild and cultivated, I traverse the boundaries as if following them on some faded map, straddling two sides and two lives – the past and the present, split in a way that usually doesn’t bode well for the soul. Double the work, double the maintenance, double the required sanity when I can barely muster enough for one.
Here in October, the clocks get pushed back, since our country still doesn’t seem able to stop bullying time. The days become darker earlier, and the acceleration of such darkness begins the slow cocooning that doesn’t end when winter’s first day begins to barely add light to the proceedings. It is a time ripe for reckonings…
These past few weeks I haven’t been outside as much as I should have been. We’ve had some wonderful weather, but when the heart feels downtrodden a sunny day doesn’t much matter. When last I made a studied inspection of the garden, this pink petunia was throwing its vibrant neon blooms face-up to the sun. On a recent walk, I noticed all the blooms had gone, and all the stems and eaves had turned brown. With the sun comes a dryness that has taken the last efforts of the annuals.
September has come and gone so quickly, I fear I’m losing track of the days. Now firmly entrenched in the fall season, the long and slow fade-to-black will bring us to the doorstep of winter. I can see by the red weight of the dogwood fruit that fall’s gifts have begun to appear, if you know where to look. On with the weekly recap, right before October arrives…
Throughout this fall’s tumultuous online trajectory, one of the unheralded and all-too-often unseen pillars of support has been Andy. That’s typical the case in a general sense, but when I’m down or unsure, he seems to know when to be there, such as in this delicious comfort food dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. When the weather dips into the cycle of usual fall doldrums, a spaghetti dinner is one of those easy pick-me-ups that can shift the emotional arc of a day, or at the very least make dinner a bright spot.
Andy makes amazing meatballs (as previously celebrated here) – it was one of the first meals he ever made for me back when we had just started dating. Over the years, he has experimented and perfected his recipe for sauce, and there is always a ready pot of it in the fridge on days when you need a little extra comfort.
It also makes for a happy post to finish this early week of fall – come back for tomorrow morning’s recap to catch up on all the drama you might have missed for the past 49 years…
Boston’s bright and bountiful beauty shines in these flower photos, taken on a rainy day and proving that sometimes a gray sky and drops of rain can add to the beauty of the world. I’ve long maintained that the colors in the garden seem stronger and more saturated now than at any other time of the year. Recompense for having to slip into the winter slumber perhaps.
There’s a certain shameful relief in the realization that one of my most traumatic childhood events wasn’t one of molestation or sexual abuse or losing a loved one. It didn’t cause any sort of pain on the level of all those other atrocious things, or turn into so many other possible events that could have befallen a child. If you can make it out of your childhood years relatively unscathed, you might stand a chance at surviving in the world with some sort of moral clarity. Or maybe it’s all just a crap shoot and we will turn out to be whatever monsters we will be. I don’t know anymore.
It happened around this time of the year. As if the return to school wasn’t bad enough for my social anxiety-riddled system, my parents had been asked by our priest if I would start serving as an altar boy for St. Marys church. At least, that’s what they said. Hard to know how much of childhood is really true. They also made it clear that saying no was not an option, despite how clearly my entire existence was rebelling against it. The suddenly-stressful idea of walking in front of the entire St. Mary’s congregation on a Sunday morning and having all eyes on me with no idea what I was really doing filled me with immediate dread. My insides coiled up into a sore knot of worry – one that would last until well after the actual event. It was a slightly strange lesson, now that I think of it – that saying no to a priest was not an option (stranger still now that we know that particular priest would end up having credible charges of abuse against him). But back then no one spoke of such things, and the overriding sentiment was that if a priest picked you out to be an altar boy, your family should be honored and touched and blessed fucking be. My parents certainly weren’t going to refuse a priest just because their son was having a nervous breakdown.
When the priest gave my parents the altar server’s schedule, I frantically searched to see when and where my name appeared. It wasn’t far down – a few weeks from the date we received it. Above my name was the name of my fellow server – Brady. Everything about the whole experience was already tainted black; the whole idea of it made me sick, and being powerless to say no or voice my dread made it all the worse. I didn’t want to let my parents down, I didn’t want to let the priest down, but above all I didn’t want to have the eyes of the entire church watching me on that altar. I’d always been shy, and this was the most nightmarish of horrors for a socially-anxious introverted child.
I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old.
A week or two before I was scheduled to serve, the priest had me come by the church and learn what to do as a server. My heart sank as I realized there was no way out, that I would be standing there in front of everyone shaking and on the verge of crying and no one was going to help me or stop it from happening. My mother sat in one of the front pews as Father showed me when to kneel, when to bow, when to genuflect – one sad submission upon another, and at the end of it all he thought I had it down when I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to take the first step into the church.
In those weeks leading up to that first Sunday of serving, the idea of what was to come haunted my every step. What should have been a carefree stretch of September weeks, when school was still new and we hadn’t even had to take a test yet, were weighted with this burden – something none of my other classmates had to carry, and of course something that my brother didn’t have to worry about yet. When I got lost in laughter over something, it quickly ended as soon as I remembered I would have to serve in a week. It ruined weekends because one half of the weekend was Sunday.
To this day, I remember the night before that Sunday. My brother and I were allowed to stay up late and watch television in the family room, where we would set up sleeping bags and fall asleep there. My sleep, what little there was of it, was fitful and tormented. My stomach, always troubled as a young child, had retained the knot of worry that had tied itself tightly over the previous weeks. When I peeked out of my sleeping bag and saw that it was light, I pulled it back over my head for one more minute of pretending I was at peace.
That was, of course, the worst of it – the waiting and anticipating – that was where the real trauma was. I remember trying to find a cassock and surplus that didn’t drown me – there was only one that didn’t pool at my feet, it was the one that the shorter of the altar boys would fight over every Sunday. I remember ringing the bells right when I was supposed to ring them – the priest had a little hand motion for alerting us if we didn’t start the ringing at the right time. I remember handing him a white cloth after Brady had poured the water over his hands before communion. And then I remember walking out, and sense of relief wash over me when it was done – short-lived because I was on the schedule in another few weeks, and the dread began to build up again.
I would serve many masses – many more than my brother who would start in another year or so but somehow never got held to the same strict standard I was – maybe when you’ve traumatized one child you step back on traumatizing the ones that follow. Of course, whenever there was a no-show and the priest would come into the congregation searching for someone, he’d point to our family and I would somehow always be the one to go up.
That’s just one of life’s little fuck-overs I guess. And who knows – maybe I saved my little brother from getting molested before one of those Sunday morning masses.
From these ghosts of my Boston past, we fast-forward to a much happier and more tranquil Boston present, as Kira and I had a fall-entry rendezvous in our favorite city last weekend. Friday’s weather was perfect for the penultimate day of summer, so we did a little strolling to make the most of it before the rain arrived. The typical accoutrements of fall were all around – unpins lines the storefronts, gourds spilled out from straw baskets and bales of hay, and corn stalks were tied up at various entrances, like soldiers of warning or protection; fall is cagey that way, playing both sides in infuriating fashion.
We opted for a casual dinner nearby, at House of Siam, and returned to the condo just as summer began its teary goodbye. By the time we awoke the next day, there was the usual tapping on the air conditioner signaling that the rain had begun. It would last the entire day, but for this weekend I didn’t mind it; it felt like a fitting finale to summer’s last day. We slept in a bit – no one wants to rush a rainy weekend morning – and when we at last ventured forth for a few errands, we decided it was late enough for an early lunch, and this season’s first bowl of pho at Pho Pasteur.
Meandering through Chinatown beneath umbrellas, and battling wind and rain through downtown, we picked up our necessities (a light bulb, a black shirt, some Vetiver Sage soap) and hurried along to have an early siesta.
Back in the condo, we lit candles, turned on a few lamps, and luxuriated in the warm illumination they afforded – such a simple but effective mood-lifter: light on a dim day. A quick cat nap later, it was time for dinner plans, and a cologne selection for a early night out. Rarely do I mix and match fragrances, but Tom Ford’s Private Blends lend themselves to various indulgent combinations, some more combustible than others. On this almost-fall rainy evening, I chose a bit of ‘Bois Marocain‘ and a sliver of ‘Arabian Wood‘.
As the day darkened further, we decided to stay again in the South End, opting for a spicy dinner of Indian food at Mela – a spot that I hadn’t been to in years. My mind went back to a dinner I had with Alissa and her mother way back when it was her favorite restaurant, Geoffrey’s. Boston has more ghosts now than it did when I was young, but they are friendly. Mela was a lovely revelation, and I made a note to bring Andy here the next time we were in town.
When dinner was done, we took our time walking back. The rain had mostly stopped. Summer had finished its crying fit, but as we neared the fountain at Braddock Park, it started up again, pelting us and suddenly coming down harder. It was suddenly impossible to tell where the fountain started and the water ended – we were all a part of the fountain now, all a part of the water, and there was something comforting in the way nature would level the day whenever she felt like it.
Back inside, I gave Kira an early birthday present as I checked on whether my phone’s hotspot would fuel a website update to take place at, or as near as I could muster wakefulness to, midnight. It worked – and it turns out all this time I could have been blogging in Boston. Further proof I should just retire at Walden Pond and call an end to this technological nightmare in which we are so messily ensconced.
Boston closed its arms around us on this final day of summer, and this blog went into its current dark mode, as you’ve seen over the last few days of posts. I wasn’t sad about it. Sometimes you need the fall to cool the riotous heart of summer. Kira and I made date plans for our Friendsgiving weekend and this year’s holiday stroll. Will they happen? No one can say. I am weakly hopeful, but a bit too preoccupied with other issues at the moment to dwell much on it.
There are still colorful fall days to be found in Boston, and I hope to make it back before November. Here we are already knocking on October’s door, so that may not quite happen. We’ll see how long the leaves stay…
A sex scene, then – and one of my earliest – recalled from the time a 34-year-old-man picked up a 19-year-old me, and I still held the foolish notion that people – even men – were intrinsically good, and that when given the choice they would do good things. This fun little excerpt comes courtesy of the journal I kept at the time, and I uncovered it when realizing this was the thirtieth anniversary of that fall. The photos are from that time as well – and all of it was one big mess. A song to go along on the joyride, for our fade-to-black fall: the original ‘Paint It Black’ and all its somber fury.
I look inside myself And see my heart is black I see my red door I must have it painted black
Maybe then, I’ll fade away And not have to face the facts It’s not easy facing up When your whole world is black
I love a song that has been saddled with myriad readings: the loss of a loved one, the Vietnam war, drug abuse… all feasible themes that fit the lyrics and music. For me, this is a song of muffled rage, vaguely based around the death of innocence. Now, before we get into what I wrote three decades ago in childish and clunky prose, allow me to preface this with a word of warning for anyone looking to lay blame: I was entirely and wholly of sound mind and adult presence. No one took advantage of me, and no one did anything I didn’t want them to do. That said, the more I look back at this time in my life, the more I wonder… and the more I want to play a song like this to stave off the madness.
I see a red door And I want it painted black No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by Dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head Until my darkness goes
September 1994: A set of shades opened and someone peered out from a window high above the street. They shut them after surveying the place for a few minutes. People passed by me, and with each set of footsteps my heart leapt in anticipation of Tom. Yet it never seemed to be him. I resumed reading until at last he came toward me from across the street. I wasn’t sure at first if it was really him. I didn’t remember the orange sweatshirt he now wore, inside out. Perhaps I simply hadn’t noticed.
He was saddened by the day’s events, yet I had no knowledge of what I might do to help. I understood he didn’t want to talk about it, so I attempted no further communication on that topic of Bill (his ex). We entered the apartment. There was the same initial awkward feeling that accompanied the start of each meeting, a feeling that I was still not able to shake until well into the evening. I sat down at the table. He was slightly upset, almost annoyed.
“So, come here and sit down, relax. Take your jacket off so it doesn’t look like you’re about to leave,” he said.
I gave him a quick look of disgust and then started to untie the jacket from around my waist. He sat on the bed, fiddling with the television set. I walked over and sat beside him. After finding nothing on, he left it somewhere and pushed me back too the bed. He kissed me. It still hurt. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the stubble. It was clear how upset he was. On the way in, he had said that he now truly felt a sense of loss. I asked him if he didn’t really want to be alone, because it was not a bid thing for me to leave. He said he didn’t want that.
I looked into his eyes. I wanted to make it all better. I wanted to make everything good for him; I wanted to eradicate the sadness that shone through those eyes that night.
“Don’t be upset,” I began timidly.
“I can’t do that… I’ll just be what I am… there’s nothing that can be done. I have to go through it.”
“Well, I can change it, ” I added perkily.
“Really.”
I didn’t think so. All the tactics, all the ways and tricks and means of manipulating a person into feeling something they weren’t quite ready or sure that. they wanted to feel, they al fell away now. My powers seemed to dwindle to hokey cliches, crumbling beneath the weight of their over-the-top lack of power. I wouldn’t be able to charm him out of it, I wouldn’t be able to mastermind the next moments and turn him around. I was completely powerless and helpless, and I turned into a kid. I could only smile at him naively, only offer a hug or a hold or a kiss. And in that moment I sensed I would never be able to control this, any of it. And it almost scared me out of it, out of being there. I felt a new instinct to run away. I wondered if he would find me. I wondered what he would do if I went away one day and never came back to him. But mostly I wondered what would happen if he did that to me. At this point I was almost sure it would happen that way. For now, however, he was mine. Or maybe I was his. I couldn’t be sure. The roles flip-flopped over and over, yet in the end the essence of such a thing was the same, without change.
He took off his clothes and again pried beneath mine. I was reluctant and told him no. He asked why not, like he always did, in that voice, half a whine, half a plea. It was a very persuasive voice, but I heard in it the seed of annoyance as well, and while I removed my shirt I made up my mind that that was all that was to be removed that evening. I also made that clear to him.
We kissed. Mostly we kissed. And then he pulled my hand to him and I did what I thought I was supposed to do. He was kissing me and rubbing himself as I did the same to him. He pushed my head down, down to his erection, and I took the tip in my mouth. I tasted something somewhat salty, and resisted the urge to gag. I tasted it again and I removed my mouth – I’d read somewhere that one can transmit AIDS by oral sex and I had already taken too many chances. I went up to his face and kissed him, letting the mixture of saliva and possibly semen run into his mouth. I had my hand on him now and he told me to show him myself. I was hard and I let him suck me. It was better this time; in fact, this was actually enjoyable. I had never been that close to coming with him before, though I didn’t this time either. Still, it hadn’t been completely awful.
Now I wasn’t forcing myself into liking it or disliking it. It was not the idea of the thing that I liked, or the lifestyle, or the danger of it; it was Tom. It was all Tom. If it had been with another, I would certainly have not allowed myself to be taken so completely. Yet Tom made it good, he made it pure, he made everything dirty and disgusting into something beautiful, and I felt powerless against him. Well, almost. I still adamantly refused anal intercourse and he didn’t push me at all. He joked and told me how much he wanted to fuck me, in a number of different ways, but I refused. He ws not getting me to take my pants off, no matter what. At least not at that moment, and not for that night.
I laid next to him with my head on his chest. It had been his choice; I had complied willingly. The TV was fuzzy and sometimes without color.
“How do you know you’re in love?” I queried; a general question.
“It’s something that you just know; you’ll know when it hits you, believe me, you will.”
I was skeptical. “Well what do you consider love?”
“One of the only guys I was every truly in love with told me that being in love was being able to see yourself living in a tent for the rest of your life with that one person. I knew I was in love with him because I could picture that tent, and how what went on in it would be the most beautiful thing in the world to me.”
I didn’t know if I could do that with Tom. At that moment, I felt I might, but looking back he was right, I would know.
I wanna see it painted Painted black Black as night Black as coal I wanna see the sun Blotted out from the sky I wanna see it painted, painted, painted Painted black, yeah
“The real thing about evil,” said the Witch at the doorway, “isn’t any of what you said. You figure out one side of it – the human side, say – and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It’s like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.” – Gregory Maguire, ‘Wicked’
One of the most fascinating thing to witness is an octopus adapting its camouflage to a new setting. It happens like magic, or some trick of the eye, and they’re so good at it you can merely marvel. It fascinates in part because we so rarely get to see the moment of transformation as its happening. We don’t usually notice the turn until it’s behind us. But what if we were aware of it? What if we felt it, sensed it, knew it to be happening in the moment?
Stop what you’re doing and listen. Find somewhere quiet to be and simply pause there. Maybe you will hear the crickets of the night through darkened windows. Maybe you pick up on the hum of a dryer finishing its tumbling load of clothes. Maybe a television drones on in some distant room or building. When you pause to listen, and allow yourself some quiet, you see there’s not really such a thing as quiet anywhere. I read somewhere that there are rooms created of total silence, but that people are unable to stay in them for very long before going mad. Too many of us want for noise and fuzz and static of some kind – anything to keep the mind from unraveling. Distractions have become a mandatory part of life. It makes sense in a world that has gone so dark.
I’ve inhabited the quiet for my entire life. Of course I’ve made my distractions and created my own noise – anything to escape the harsh and brutal reality of everything around me, but more than most I seem to largely live in a world of quiet and silence. Even when I’m in a cacophonous sea of people or at some high-volume concert I find myself withdrawing into an interior world where nothing exists above a dull, soft roar – like an ocean barely heard from a safe vantage point inland. I can sense the immensity of the scene, I can feel others all around me, but inside I am safely ensconced in a land of sinister silence.
It takes practice and a great deal of self-control to master such a stance; my secrets won’t be revealed, even if I could put them into words. I will say this though: it feels like I am at one of the turns, or perhaps even a fork – and I have a vague idea of where I’d like to end up, but I’m done with taking the high road to get there. And I’m afraid that means leaving certain things behind.
When you decide to choose the darker path, when you’ve fought one battle too much and reached a point of exasperation, you tend to get bitter, or angry, or rash – and all of it can get pretty messy. Rather than spill such an uncontrollable mess, you might try to build a safe shell to contain it. The danger is when that shell becomes a coat of armor to get you through whatever battles are still to come. You harden yourself off to the world then, keeping your hurt inside, keeping the mess contained.
I’ve always greatly disdained the person who wears their heart on their sleeve, as well as the person prone to the emotional outburst. Get your fucking self together. No one wants to see that shit.
“It was a strangely sympathetic thing for him to say, and we stood there in a sudden, not uncomfortable silence. Men sometimes make friends this way, I think. They decide quickly… There was something vulnerable and temporary about the moment, and I was attentive to it, for a man, let us agree, is a kind of shelled animal. There is the hardened surface he presents to the world, the face and the words and the behavior, but very often these do not correlate very well with the being inside the shell. By hardened I mean coherent, deflective of attack, and capable of being recognized by others; I don’t mean unchangeable – quite the opposite, in fact. But the shell is always there, growing outward from within, flaking and breaking away, and the quivering wet stuff inside remains largely hidden. Appearances are not deceiving so much as incomplete. What you see is what you get, but what you don’t see is also what you get.” – Colin Harrison, ‘The Havana Room’
Every once in a great while I’ll indulge in a clove cigarette – and I mean a great while; I’ve been milking the same pack of cloves for ten years now. They’ve long since gone stale, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t do it out of any desire for fine tobacco, rather for the scent, the sweet taste, and the evoking of memories from falls long ago.
When I tried my first clove, probably thirty years ago, I smoked to be social, and also with an eye for the self-destruction I found so glamorously attractive in those foolish, reckless, dumb days. When the world got you down, there was some small recompense in the brief seizing of your lungs, the slightest push – a nudge really – just a little closer toward death. Tiny acts of annihilation, safe bits of wreckage that could largely go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things; it was easy to disguise one’s degradation if you did it in socially-sanctioned ways. Easier still to disguise a long arc ending in devastation if you knew how to do such things quietly, without a commotion.
Could someone be that calculating, that precisely orchestrated, leaving not one moment to whim or chance or destiny? Who would plan and plot and perfectly execute such a diabolical plan, and see it through to the very end? Only the most jaded and utterly unaffected monster could come up with such a blueprint, poring over it and revising it, night after night, beneath a haze of sweet smoke.
These days, smoking is decidedly not cool or healthy (and vaping is even more ridiculous). Both are rat poison, as my brother and I once recorded in a home-made tape intended to help my Uncle stop smoking. Spoiler alert: it failed. Still, on certain fall days, when the heart is downtrodden, and the wind has shifted to alert us that summer is irrevocably over, I’ll light a clove, feel the little ache and burn, and remind myself that once I was a silly idiot.
“It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one’s own taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person’s love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term “generosity of spirit” applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface, was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…” ~ Bret Easton Ellis, ‘American Psycho’
Did I mention that things would get dark here this fall? Yes, I did, and I meant it, more than you will ever know. The room darkens as I sit here – the tail end of a day all sadness and sorrow and growing ever dimmer by the minute. Yet I welcome the dark, leaning into it, nudging it gently, like an old familiar friend. Here, by my side, where the dark is the only thing that has never let me down, I find solace, and, as I’ve only been able to glimpse in solitude, a sense of the sublime. How strange and sad that my brushes with the sublime have always been by myself – it would seem to go against the assumed purpose of the world, if we can be so bold as to presume that such purpose is to love and be loved. Therein lies the profound conundrum of my mad existence.
Don’t treat me special, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
“There wasn’t a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being – flesh, blood, skin, hair – but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn’t figure out why – I couldn’t put my finger on it.” – Bret Easton Ellis, ‘American Psycho’
