I’m a little neurotic, but only in the most amusing ways. I’m chaos reordering chaos, dizzyingly destroying unseen boundaries only to redraw the line with dots and hyphens, hanging chads and discarded vowels. Step over. I’m an eternal optimist until you are and then I’m assured of your impending failure. I can do a wrong thing right as well as a right thing wrong but you can’t make a right on red without breaking your stride, can you? Look, you broke it. I use words that flatten your banana and inflate your ingrate. I’m the CEO of no, head mother of kill your thunder. I pocket facts for arsenal, I table feelings for the upper hand, I take the stand for the guilty man. I’ve eaten plenty of regrettable meals but never uttered a regrettable word. I’m a fool for kicking things that might be dead just to check with the hopes they are, or aren’t, which one requires less work? I like run on sentences but not the kind made by people who make them naturally. I planned to leave and never come back, then I found drugs, children, the Constitution, in that order. Here I am.
I dated a guy who was straight edge. Late 90’s, coffee shops, Daria diarrhea dispositions, combat boots and how depressing is this story? Straight edge was the precursor to my belly flop into the underground. No drugs here, no meat, no leather, no alcohol, no CHEESE! Not me, that weird pre-emo kid with the VW bug and gaping earlobes. One day he drove past a McDonald’s, smelled a filet of fish and that was it! The next week he was a meth addict. Never saw him again. That was fun, wasn’t it? He’s probably your senator now.
Only recently did I realize that everyone didn’t freebase hydrocodone in high school, have dates in the graveyard, find Iranian boyfriends on the internet that were clear across the country to bring home to dad, perform interpretive dance during the movie introduction or pay (literally & figuratively) dirty men to let you bathe them. Nope, I swear, there are people who went to school and came home. I shit you not! They did homework, chores and never once received compromising photos from their local rock DJ. Mind blowing stuff right there.
When I was twelve I could hold my own with a forty year old. I know this because I was prepared to marry an old man I met on Compuserve. Do you remember Compuserve? If you do, you are old too. Also, if you had a phone relationship with a man named Chris Cox from Iceland, you should probably see a therapist yesterday. Not me. I count it as proper preparation for things to come.
One time, which was many more than one time, I did enough ecstasy to completely deplete my natural resources of dopamine and serotonin. One day, which was more than one day, I screamed and ran out of 12th grade 20th century history class. One time which was only one time, I enrolled in college and the screaming stopped. There I learned absolutely nothing except that you don’t shower your hopeful boyfriend with bongs because he will just break them and then pawn you off on his friend with the same name. Daniel, Dan. Who can remember which one I destroyed private property with during that ice storm? The ugly one. Nice ugly Dan. They are always nice, aren’t they?
I am on or I am off. I am inserting myself in a dog pile of violent car salesmen or I am asleep. I am arguing my point or I am silently arguing it and letting you run off unawares. I am completely befuddled until the moment I master it all instantaneously. I am stockpiling pieces for sudden synergy. I demand justice, I decry your version. I laud morality bathed in reality, detest formality sheltering depravity. I see the value in a lab rat, the entry level, one’s long-suffering, yet grieve their necessity. I can’t create a character I hate or hate a thing I’ve done or do a thing I can’t justify or justify a thing another did which I wouldn’t do in like circumstance.
Once I thought I’d write a book. I put all of the people who wrecked me on to the page and learned God is the greater story teller.
This is the life of a thought without
The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes 