Gambler's Ramblins

To be Irish is to know that, in the end, the world will break your heart.

2011-11-01T19:35:00.003-04:00

The day that you learn that, even with everything that's happened over the past half a decade, you were but a footnote in someone else's drama - is awful.

Shocking, eye-opening, and awful.

You realize that everything you suffered through for the past five years was all for nought- but worse, it was ALWAYS for nought.

There was never any chance that there would be any other outcome, even with all of her promises, and you were too fucking stupid to realize that all you were was a brief interlude, a small intermission in a longer story, for a girl who went slummin' with a roughneck for a couple of months before returning to the life that she was always going to lead anyway.

I was too fucking stupid. Too fucking naive. And that will never happen again.

This will never happen to me again.

I have tried to not this world harden my heart, but there was been no return on these futile attempts.

This will never happen to me again.

Breaks My Heart

2008-08-17T11:26:00.001-04:00

A man should never have to go through this...

A promising professional boxer and three-time Daily News Golden Gloves champion was shot to death early Saturday after getting into a fight at a Bronx bodega, police said.

Ronney (Venezuela) Vargas, 20, a junior middleweight who turned professional last year, was pistol-whipped and then shot in the chest in his car in East Tremont.

Vargas' death comes just as the Bronx native's undefeated professional career was taking off, making him one of the city's hottest boxing prospects.

"He had a future," said his distraught father, German Vargas, 52. "They didn't just kill a boxer, they killed a champ."

Police said Vargas and five friends got into a beef with two couples at the 2001 Delicatessen on Clinton Ave. about 3:30 a.m.

A police source said the men became enraged after they noticed Vargas chatting with their girlfriends.

"It was a dispute over some females," the police source said. "He talked to the wrong girls, and the boyfriend didn't like it. It was senseless. Stupid."

The dispute so enraged the men that when Vargas and his buddies drove off in a Honda Accord, they followed close behind in a white car.

Several blocks away, on Hughes Ave., the suspects pulled up and blocked Vargas' car.

Then a man came to Vargas' driver-side window and pistol-whipped him before shooting him in the chest.

Cops said Vargas tried to drive off backward, sideswiping several cars before he got out of the vehicle and collapsed in the street.

"His friend got on his knees and held him in his arms, like a mother rocks a baby," said a woman who watched the shooting from her apartment window. "He said, 'Don't die on me.'"

Vargas was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital. Police haven't made an arrest.

A dramatic surveillance video obtained by The News shows the scene of the shooting, including Vargas' car careening backward and his friends frantically calling for help afterward.

The victim's older brother, Ronald Vargas, 24, suspects the boxer's good looks and rising profile contributed to his murder.

"He was famous in the neighborhood," the brother said. "They called him 'Venezuela.' He was good-looking. He was on his way up."

Vargas, who trained at the Webster Police Athletic League in the Bronx, made his professional debut in 2007 after earning Golden Gloves titles in 2005, 2006 and 2007. He had a stellar 8-0 record with six knockouts since turning pro.

"He was a good kid. You don't believe it's real," said Michael O'Connor, who worked with Vargas at the Webster PAL.

He lived with his father and two brothers in the South Bronx.

"I love my block," Vargas said during an interview in January. "I love the people around here. Everyone knows each other, so it's hard for me to move out and start my life somewhere else."

Summer

2008-08-03T16:15:00.002-04:00

There are people sitting on folding chairs in a half-circle around an old stone fireplace that is the last remnants of a house that stood here during the Civil War. The fire gently paints the stone with its orange light, as the fireflies do drunken dances through the cool, humid air. I sip on whiskey-laced coffee as friends throw cupfuls gasoline into the fire, enraging it but for moments before the night swallows it again. These summer nights are tearing by.

The other night I was at Giants Stadium for the Springsteen concert, another defining moment of my life to be sure. He sang with flair and fury, with the urgent beauty that only passionate men can create. When he ended, he sang to us the three songs that he knows are for New Jersey, and Jersey alone.

As the crowd howled the lyrics to "Jersey Girl" under the view of the peaks of the massive cranes that are building the next Giants Stadium and young couples made out by the cavernous lights that steal the darkness from us, all I could think of was that I wish she was here, and that oh, amigos, life is beautiful... fleetingly so, but beautiful nonetheless...

Go see it

2008-07-30T18:59:00.002-04:00

Just saw "Dark Knight", the Batman movie.

It's one of the five best movies I've ever seen. The monologues on truth and justice intertwined with Heath Ledger's immortal performance makes for a beautiful piece of legendary proportions.

Wow. Just wow... and I'm not even a comic book nerd.

Shockey and Estelle

2008-07-22T15:00:00.003-04:00

I am so glad that that weeping, whiny bitch Jeremy Shockey has been sent to New Orleans where he can flood them with his tears instead of his touchdowns, just like he did in NY. Good riddance.

On another note, it upsets me that Estelle Getty died. I got so many text messages today from assorted people about this because they all know that I've watched the Golden Girls since I was a little kid (thanks Grandma).

Estelle, we will always remember you as that tough talking Sigi grandma that you were. Hope God greets you with open arms... and we know that if he doesn't, you'll smack the shit out of him.

2008-07-13T19:54:00.003-04:00

"In the spirit of the Irish people, Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish ass" - FDNY Firefighter Michael Moran

The Empire State building was red, white, and blue last night.

When I was a little kid, I remember walking by the World Trade Centers with my grandmother, and asking her why they had those massive cement planters in front of the lobby, taking up most of the entrance.

"That's so you can't drive a car with a bomb in it through the building."

I was not a stupid kid, even at that age; it's arguable that actually, I was smarter than. There were no naive thoughts about why someone would want to do such a thing... I knew politics. I knew war. I knew terrorism.

But also, what I knew, was that they didn't happen in America. I knew bombs went off in places like Israel, or Croatia, Chechnya. I didn't know it would happen to us.

As I looked across the river last night, again feeling that cool breeze come off the water... sometimes it's hard for me to comprehend that 9/11 really happened. It's hard to look at that skyline that I've lived next to my whole life and realize that something like that truly went on, and that I saw it, an 18-year-old kid smoking a cigarette in his pickup truck with friends, listening to the radio, wondering if we were going to war...

It still brings tears to my eyes.

Hoboken is Decadent and Depraved (Version 2.0)

2008-07-06T14:05:00.010-04:00

The night is oppressively hot, and the only thing that keeps it tolerable is the winds coming in off of New York Harbour. The heavy bass of the drums land in time as Santana's guitar notes drift out of the bar and ride the currents; whoever sings "Maria, Maria" is serenading the streets of this town that is so often packed with wandering masses of overdressed men and women but is tonight a ghost town; empty, echoing, hazy, a reminder that the state forgets everything but the Shore during the Glorious Fourth.

View of NY from across the river...

"She don't believe in shootin stars, but she believe in shoes and cars...."

She is about my height in her heels, wearing a black dress with her long blond hair strewn about. She is cute, but my friend's girlfriend tells me that she would be ugly with short hair; evidently this is a measuring stick for good looking women.

All I really want to do in this town is go to a damn rooftop bar, because I'd imagine that drinking on a rooftop would be entertaining (at least as long as I stayed away from the edge). Of course, that doesn't seem to be happening on this night.

It's been about a month and a half since I've been drunk and my tolerance is lower than ever. The beers hit me quick and furious as shots of Jameson come over the top, doing damage like check hooks from an infighter. One great curved, wall is tiled in gold and looks like it should be covered by a waterfall; cone-shaped lights with an oriental feel hang lazily over the bar, bathing the bartenders in red lights.

She walked up to my buddy immediately after we got there, and started her game. It's a street hustle on a higher class; she flips her hair, twirling it around her neck, bats her eyelashes. She talks to him for a while, and I'm momentarily jealous. Ten minutes later he wanders back over.

"Fuckin girl came out and asked me, 'You gonna' buy me a drink?'"

"You did I guess?" I ask.

"Yea. What the hell am I gonna' say? That's like ten bucks for one of them, but I had to."

Later on it looks like his ten bucks might get him somewhere, as he's sitting on a couch talking to her, trying to work his way in.

Again, he appears after twenty minutes this time.

"Said she had to go home," he says. "Says she was a model. Had a photoshoot early tomorrow."

"On a Sunday huh?"

"Yea... she was full of shit. That's OK though, cause I was an accountant tonight."

---- --- -- ---- --- - -- - - - -

This town is remarkable; I bitch about it but I love it, and in all my hypocritical glory I will end up living here at some point. A writer for the New York Sun once wrote a series of articles on the Mafia violence that owned the Hoboken waterfront, leading to the movie that changed the way people perceived "corruption".

Line after line of old factories still sit here, strewn amongst the row houses that have become some of the most expensive property in the state. Bars, restaurants, and expensive stores line the streets during the day, and the lights go dim for the drinking crowds that rule the nights. All of this, while the heavy multicolored lights of New York City loom across the river, the eyes of the great bustling metropolis with blinking bulbs that brawl with the darkness.

People come out to this town to see each other, to be seen, like celebrities do at a Laker's game. Not that anyone knows anyone, mind you- it's certainly not the kind of place where you see old high school friends... Bruce Springsteen does not sing about Hoboken bars, Kanye West does. Things like that used to grate on me, but that anger isn't there anymore. I have much to lose, and by getting blind drunk at town bars, I'm only setting myself up for the inevitable arrest on a multitude of charges.

It doesn't mean who I am has changed at all, mind you. I'll always laugh at girls like that one who conned my buddy out of a drink, and any man that wears capris is going to get a "Where's the flood, asshole?" comment from me; it's my nature.

Regardless of that, the thing I really like, and cannot find anywhere else except for NYC, is the feeling I get when I'm there. It's one of the few times that my overactive mind never feels like it's missing something. I'm across the river from perhaps the greatest city in the world, and likely with some very interesting people. I'm in good bars with beautiful women, and the world is, for however fleeting, at my feet.

This has been important to me in the last few months, because there has been a nagging emptiness that was there in heavy formality last night. I've dealt with it by sobering up, which is a hell of a change for me... but feeling decent physically has still left me hurting. It's not a straight depression- no, I'm too lively for that.

What it is is a strange existential feeling that simply says, "Is this it?"

I don't have a job so much as a career now, and all my sights are set on that burning city across the river. I've got a car that's far nicer than anything I should own, I get a decent amount of women, and I have no true worries of any sort... but it's missing. The only time I feel good is when I'm lifting or boxing (my only respites in this troubling world) and even those have had to take the backseat since I separated my shoulder.

Other than that, I'm just sitting and wondering, constantly, what I'm doing, where I'm going, how my life is going to be. I hear US Census projections for 2040, and realize that I'll be 56 then. A year older than my grandfather when he died, 34 years older than Ryer when he died. Throw 20 more years on that, and I probably won't be around anymore. Someone will then likely be bitching and moaning about how badly I fucked'em up by dying.

For months, there have been no answers. Drunk, sober, from every height to every depth, there have been no answers. Not in the grimiest strip clubs of the Newark ghetto to the swankiest Hoboken bar, not from the hilly highlands of West Milford to the sand at the Shore. Nothing.

I blew the cigarette smoke out through my mouth in the shape of an "O" when I was on the streets... big holes in the center of the smoke..

I'm assuming this feeling is the reason that women by three thousand dollar purses and guys buy Maserati's.

Red, White, And Bruce- The Campaign to Get the Boss Elected to Governor

2008-07-02T19:51:00.002-04:00

BELMAR, N.J.— What started off as typical day at the beach nearly ended in horror for a Bayonne couple and their young daughter, if not for the heroics of one man who put his life on the line to make sure the young girl was safe.

27-year-old Andrea Calamazarotti came to Belmar on Monday with her daughter, Nikki, and her boyfriend of three-and-a-half weeks, Tony, to celebrate, amongst other things, the Fourth of July holiday.

“Well, you know, me and Anthony have been dating for almost a month, and I thought that maybe we should do something special to celebrate…this is my longest relationship in a long time and I wanted to go out, you know? It’s been tough, because he got laid off from the lumber yard a couple of months ago, and my job at the tanning salon has barely been getting me enough money to get a babysitter and go get drunk on a Thursday! Can you imagine?” the blonde Andrea said, snapping her gum incessantly as she talked to the Belmar Sun.

Sure enough, where do all hardworking or laid-off New Jerseyans go when they’re down on their luck? The Jersey shore. And so Andrea and Tony loaded up Tony’s mid-80’s Lexus and drove down to Belmar to enjoy a few days of sun and fun on the beach.

However, the fun almost ended abruptly when the ocean’s dangerous currents reminded beachgoers that while the Shore may be fun, attention must always be paid, especially to little children.

Tony, who is a solid 230 lbs. at nearly 5‘4” and for some reason shows heavy acne scarring on his shoulder and back area, was incredulous at the events, even taking off his sunglasses to look at reporters at one point.

“So, uh, Michelle went to go get me a beer and left me with the kid. I mean, I mean Andrea. Andrea went to get me a beer… ahh, you’re not gonna’ print that right?”

“Anyway, I mean, can you believe they don’t serve beer on the beach? You gotta’ walk all the way the fuck down to Point Pleasant to that place… that, uh… Tiki Bar! Yea, that’s it, to get a beer on the beach. Anyways, I’m smoking a cigarette, watchin’ the kid play in the water and shit, and I go to bury the butt in the sand cause you know they can give you a ticket for that shit, when all of a sudden I hear screaming. So I figure some bitch may in trouble, so I take my shirt off and run down the beach looking for who’s screaming.”

Although no one is quite sure where Tony actually ran too, Andrea came back to her towel and Glamour magazine only to find the lifeguard lamenting at water’s edge as Nikki was getting swept into the ocean.

“I asked her, ‘What the fuck? Why aren’t you going in to save her? And the lifeguard, she just said she forgot her orange floating thing and that without that she couldn’t do anything because she didn’t actually know how to swim.”

The lifeguard, when questioned later, declined to comment, saying only, “They only teach us how to blow whistles- what the fuck do you people want from me?”

“But that’s when HE came,” says Andrea, a bright light appearing in her dull eyes. “It was Bruce Springsteen. He pulled right onto the beach in a red Ford Roadster, and asked me, really calmly, if there was a problem.”

“I told him, ‘Oh my gawd, my daughter’s caught in a riptide’. I pointed out to her, but by the time I did he was already in the water.”

Witnesses allege that the Mr. Springsteen swam in boots and jeans approximately two-and-a-half miles out to sea in order to save the poor wailing girl and swam with her back to shore. Some also say that he managed to grab a wounded seagull that was later found to have the popular candy pop-rox in its stomach, and at least one observer has said that he pushed a stuck party boat off a sandbar.

“I don’t care about any of that. He brought her back to me,” says the thankful Andrea, who now holds her daughter close at all times, having bought one of those retractable children’s leashes that West Virginians are prone to use.

“I’ll never let her go again. Bruce, you’ve got my vote.”

Tony has not yet been found, but it has been alleged that a fight at the nearby bar “Bar B” later that night was started by a short, shirtless, Italian looking man with bad tribal tattoos who was wearing sunglasses.

Although the local Irish cops say that this description has them looking for a “needle in a haystack of needles” in the words of Sgt. Cahill, it is possible that there is a connection between the two events.

Local Republicans have said that it is likely that this was simply a publicity stunt, and have even questioned if Ms. Calamazarotti was paid to let her daughter out of her sight. They have also questioned the existence of “Tony” at all.

Local Democrats were quoted as calling them “assholes.”

Shallow End of the Gene Pool

2008-06-10T23:03:00.004-04:00

So how come the girls who are smart are either cunts or they're ugly, and the girls that are hot can barely concentrate on one thing for more than three fuckin seconds? Is this a genetic thing?

I mean, damnit, I got the total package here! I may have a boozing problem and be prone to throwing my life to the gutter once in a while, but I'm a dangerously good lookin fella who is smarter than shit and has the body of damn welterweight fighter. Not to mention, women don't know how misguided I am until after it's too late.

Of course, I've only met a handful of girls that can keep up (and are good looking at the same time) in the quarter century that I've been punched into this place.

Maybe it's time to do what colleges do when they want a better football team and lower the admission standards?

I've already given up looking for brains- I'm going purely for looks nowadays; I've come to the conclusion that as soon as any woman looks at me and opens her mouth to speak, my life becomes miserable.

As a result, my strong deductive reason has lead me to believe that if a woman never says anything of consequence, then my life will never be miserable. They keep talking about shiny things or what song is on the radio, and I'm fine. And like most men, I'd rather have a good looking dumb girl than an ugly smart one... although it is getting to the point now where I really wonder how ridiculously idiotic someone can be and still function day-to-day in life successfully (and I think by "successfully" I just mean feed and clothe themselves and end up in the same place they woke up).

Do I sound bitter? I'm not. It's more incredulous, I guess. People are strange fuckin creatures.

On the bright side, I found out that not only can I change the colors on the display of my Mustang, but I can make my own colors by combining the three primaries on the display.

Between that and the marvelous creation called "interior ambient lighting", I swear this car is like a damn fireworks display. I don't so much want to drive it as just sit in it with my sunglasses on and sling people the six shooter all day as they drive by. Maybe I should be a cop. That's what they do, ain't it?

2008-06-07T01:50:00.003-04:00

Hey Trash... man i'm drunk....and that poison, it's thick... trying to resist... it's like motherfucking cancer... she's under my goddamn skin..

Bragging

2008-06-07T01:20:00.004-04:00

I am tired. I say my obligatory goodbyes, and begin making my way out of the bar that I frequent so often.

I parked down the block some because the cops pass by there a lot less often, and if I am a bit merry when I walk out, I've got a better chance surviving coming out of down here. As I walk, I see a guy fall into step with me behind me.

He's far too drunk to mean any harm, and if he did I'd end his day very quickly because I'm sober as a priest and on my guard.

"Hey bro.. you need a ride?" I ask.

"Ahh, I'm walkin home dude, I live like, I don't know, down there, not far. It ain't bad."

"You sure?" I ask.

"Ahhh well.... if you don't mind..."

Being as I walked three miles last Saturday morning trying to get home, I feel this poor bastard. It was an hour before someone I knew pulled over and told me to get in because I was obviously too drunk too function, even at 8 in the morning.

"C'mon fucker. It's over here."

As we walk into the vacant lot, he asks, "Which one's yours?"

I point to her. She's silver and the light is gleaming off every corner, and it's clear in my mind that I've replaced women with material things and I am fucking FINE with that.

He opens his gaze through drunken eyes. "Wow... nice ride man," he says, a kind of stunned sound in his voice.

"Goddamn right," I say with a grin. "You puke in her, and I'll kill you."

I say it with a smile, and he half-laughs, like he knows I'm kidding...kind of.

Later on I will gun it through a red light even though I shouldn't, but I can't help it.

I did what I went to the bar to do, and even did a good deed on the way, and walked out sober. Some days, you feel like you ate your goddamn Wheaties.

Who'd have thought...

2008-06-01T19:43:00.003-04:00

When I had initially looked at the twisted scrap metal that has become my once glorious black Dodge truck, I could only shake my head as I blew smoke out of my nose and mouth simultaneously. My mother thought I would cry when they towed her away, the shattered wreckage the constant reminder of why women should not be allowed to drive.

She's come around the corner hard, and hadn't seen my poor old girl parked on the road. She's lucky to be alive.

But if there's one thing that can make life a little bit better, and make you realize that certain things are blessings in disguise, it's looking at the brand new silver Mustang that resides where your old girl once was. Leather interior, old school grill, and a purring engine... and it's like the movies, when the lights fade out in the background and "Blue Moon" starts playing and the object of your affection comes to the forefront of the scene and your heart skips a couple dozen beats.

I've got my Eleanor now... and my God, she is straight fuckin' pimpin.

Someone in my family looked at me, and looked at the car, and shook their head. "You know, as you get older, the guido's startin' to come out in you more and more."

"Oh I know. It's horrific... but I can't help it... all I need now is that red pepper thing that those fuckers hang in their rear window."

"It's a horn."

"Whatever."

The Dangerous Fat men

2008-05-30T16:17:00.004-04:00

I have heard in the past few elections that there are people in this ridiculous mess of a country who like to decide who to vote for "when we're at the polls."

What? What?

Are there really such despicable retards alive in this country that will vote on such short notice and decide which way to go as they're pulling the lever? That's like deciding whether or not to shoot someone as you pull the trigger. Stop pretending you've been paying attention, stop acting like the three minutes of the debate you watched last Tuesday gives you any right to have your vote count equal to mine. That polling lever is dangerous, like a hairpin trigger on a .45 in the hands of a cop at a protest: STEP AWAY FROM THE FUTURE, YOU FATTENED MADMAN RETARD AMERICAN, YOU! Cast away your FOXNews coloured glasses and your McDonald's bag of D grade meat! Open those glazed over American Idol eyes!

I respect people who belong to parties; at least they're trying to pay attention. Sure, both are both horsefucked messes of American politics, most folks probably agree more with one than the other. And I respect Republicans- it's hard to respect such scum, but you do have to respect pure evil when you see it just based on the fact that it's proven to you that it's actually there, and yes, it's that fucking evil.

What I cannot respect is the rambling mass of loons who vote for people based on who they think they would have a better time at a barbeque with, or who they think would change their tire for them if they were stuck. Let me save you the trouble- none of them would would change your tire; McCain especially can't change your tire because it would crush him, and if you have a Jeep you're out of luck because he can't raise his arms high enough to get the tire off the tailgate.

And all of them would get drunk at your barbeque, piss on your table, shoot your dog ("Inadvertently," says the spokeswoman), and then fly your wife to Vegas and get her drunk off of dirty martinis before they banged her. Let's not forget that they are not only "politicians", but they are also "rich", and the last thing that rich care about is your macaroni salad or the roofing nail in your tire or that your wife hates dirty martinies. It's all a means to an end.

I am supporting Obama. He too would probably try and bang your wife, and he might eventually be convicted of some heinous crime that only a politician would think that he could get away with. But I doubt it. He has some kind of honesty in his voice, some sense of urgentness and importantness and swagger that makes you think if another September 11 came around, he might actually be able to handle it instead of riding his tricycle around the White House lawn with cap guns and a WWII helmet over his eyes trying to catch evildoers in the bushes.

He might not send kids to die in the desert sands of countries of foreign countries. He might realize the absolute, resolute ridiculousness of the contradiction in terms that is "preemptive war," something so bizarre and asinine that it could only come from the "President" who invented the word, "irregardless."

I said a while ago that a storm is coming; I was wrong. The storm is here, the torrents of blood and death and horror are here, and the future of this country sways as the ground shakes with the artillery fire in the dunes. Our future is a drunken Jenga game that the billionaires toy with, and every step nearer to the election we get, another piece is drawn out by their long, wicked fingers.

I don't care who you vote for, but if you vote Republican, you have no right to complain when my generation eventually lights you on fire and puts it out with a chain.

2008-05-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

Quick vote for all you motherfuckers that read this: 2008 black Dodge Charger, or 2008 Black Ford Mustang?

These are my choices. I'll explain later.

The Ballad of the Hanged Men

2008-05-13T21:42:00.004-04:00

There's a lot of "Mikes."

Probably millions in the US... maybe more. There's probably another million in Ireland. Hell, I'm sure there's millions in other countries; they've all got their linguistic variations of how you say it; Miguel in Spanish, Mikkel in German, Mícheál in Gaelic. However, in all languages, it means the same: it is to be named after the mighty archangel, the warrior of God who cast Satan out of Paradise so long ago, entombing him in his fiery pit.

Somewhere, 35 years ago, in a county in New Jersey, a mother gave birth to a son, and gave him this strong name. She probably had hopes and dreams, like all good mothers do; she probably prayed that he might be like the other millions of Mikes, the ones that had good jobs in offices, young wives, and would raise good, compassionate children that would lead good, strong lives.

But that was not the path that was to be taken for this lad.

I see him now, doing the diddy-bopping shuffle that only people with chained legs learn, as he steps down from the jury box and towards the defense table. The orange jumpsuit stops around his elbows, and his arms are heavily tattooed. He's got a cross on the back of his neck just above the collar line, and his eyes are sunken in that heroin-throttled way.

As I look around the courtroom, I can see it all. I see the kid from Cali with poofy yellowed hair who's wearing daddy's suit; he's probably hear for a DUI. I see the cracked out hood rat who was on the lam for a decade until they finally caught her with large amounts of some drug or another. I see the thick black guy sitting in front of me, his hair wound in tight cornrows. He's waiting for his turn.

And there I sit, with my collared shirt, leather jacket, and small pad to write the notes out, and I am just thankful that for once I'm staying on this side of the bench. I remember how it was to have court dates hanging over your head; it's always in front of you, like when you see a great rising storm in the distance but, for now, only feel the wind slowly getting colder. When you laugh, it's there, and it ends your glee abrubtly. When you're having sex, there's still a part of you that knows when the moment is over with her, your court date will be there. When you're drunk, you'll talk about it. But only when you're drunk.

35 years ago, Mike's mother never knew that this is where he would be. She didn't know that he'd make all the wrong choices, and become a product of the system, in and out of jail for a laundry list of violations. She didn't know he'd be all inked up, the needle's veteran, and begging a judge for mercy... again. I wonder what she would think.

After his case, they bring my boy in.; I'm hear to write about him. He is of average height, skinny, shaved head, white-trash looking. He stands accused of molesting a child multiple times. He looks right at me, and his eyes aren't like the rest of these guys; they aren't sad, they aren't regretful, and they aren't hopeful.

No. These are cold pin prics of ice. It chills me, makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise, and immediately I know that he is guilty and wish that men like him were executed. Slowly. Mercilessly.

I think that if I could kill him with my bare hands, I would do it. If I could twist that scrawny neck 'till the body went limp, and watch them the ravens eat him, I would do that too.

I wonder if his mother is in hell for having him, or if she knew not what was happening when she gave birth to this incarnation of evil.

I wonder how God handles such things.

When in New Jersey...

2008-05-09T18:03:00.003-04:00

We're throwing a baseball around in a friends's backyard, playing some kind of accuracy game that does not bode well with my "Wild Thing" arm (like a rocket, but watch the car windows).

Another friend from high school is fixing something on the patio table. He went to college in South Carolina, and has only been coming around again since graduating. Another guy is drunk in a lawn chair and mumbling.

During a bullshit conversation, the guy at the table begins cursing about in frustration.

Then he says it, under his breath, so low that we almost don't hear it: "This sucks almost as much as Bruce Springsteen."

In shock, I miss the ball, but don't bother looking for it. I look right at him, and then at the thrower; he's staring at Table guy. The drunk in the chair is also staring, mouth agape, and then shakes his head as if clearing out the fog and says, "The fuck did you just say?"

Table guy looks at us, an incredulous look on his face. "Jesus Christ, I was kidding."

A tense second goes by.

"Oh.... You gotta be careful with that kinda shit," I say.

"No shit," he laughs. "Forgot I was back in Jersey."

True

2008-04-28T22:03:00.002-04:00

To be Irish is to know that, in the end, the world will break your heart.

- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Go on and Run Off To LA and Lose Your Mind

2008-04-25T16:11:00.006-04:00

The more you change, the less you feel...

"I have to tell you... I'm not around anymore. I took a transfer in my job...I live in LA. I'm not in New Jersey anymore... and I met somebody. I need closure on this."

Fuck. Me. Sideways.

When my phone had rung and I saw her name, I stormed out the heavy doors of the fancy "lounge" on the highway ("whorish upper class broads and the guidos who love them" place) and practically sprinted to my car. "Taken aback" isn't the word for what I was.

"Why did you call me? I was doing fine without you. I didn't need to hear you," I said.

"Because I needed closure. I had to tell you that I'm not around."

Closure. She always said things like that that I never understood.

Closure. I need time. I can't date now.

"Is he rich?"

"That's neither here nor there."

"Funny, cause it was both here and there when I wanted to date you."

"Why do you want to do this now?" she says, a hint of tiredness mixed with arrogance.

"Cause you fuckin' owe me, that's why."

There was no heart in her voice. It came through in squeeks and snaps, but it was not there like it used to be. And call me delusional, but I don't even think it was because she was talking to me that it was absent... it wasn't there at all.

It might be the product of too many business meetings where you hustle some motherfucker just like the slingers on the street... it might be she actually feels bad for what she pulled on me this last year and a half. Who knows. But it was sad.

When I talk, I am emotional. There is that tough darkness under my gravelly voice, but it always shows elation, or sadness, or anger. There is a tone. There is heart. I couldn't change it if I wanted to- I've worn my heart on my sleeve forever, and it's gotten me in brawls, gotten me fired from jobs, but I love it because it keeps me truthful. If nothing else, I am always truthful.

Her... well, she's perfected the art of lying. The art of self-preservation. I doubt whether I could ever be with someone who lied so obsessively and profusely, and they flowed like water over a broken dam. Constant, reasonless, meandering and hammering. It wears you down, like the way salty waves wear down the rocks closest to the water.

Our paths will cross again I think. I hope not, because I hope to never see the lying green eyes again. But they will, because that's what happens in my trainwreck of a life. Anything else would be, simply put, too easy. And then God would get bored. And I can't get boring...

I saw this coming. I have a keen sixth sense with people, as if I can predict who's going to screw me, and who's going to be there. I knew all of this... I foresaw it long ago. I was not looking forward to it, but I knew it was coming.

I'm a different guy then I was, though. I do wish I had never heard from her, but it was not my choice to make. I'm made of tougher stuff than I was, and this heartache is nothing new. If anything else, it's dulled... like getting morphine before you get shot; you still bleed, but at least it don't hurt.

She tells me she won't read this blog anymore. I don't believe'er. She's done nothing but lie to me, and this is another in a long string. It's fitting that it comes from a girl who's been hiding now for years... and now it's not even figurative- she actually left the damn state. That speaks volumes to me.

But what I can say is this car crash won't lay the hustla down.

What can you do, except listen to Kid Rock in that song that always reminded me of her anyway....

Why dont you run off to L.A.
And lose your mind
You've got 15 minutes and
I think your wasting time
Its easy to see when you've lost your mind
But here I'll be when you decide to come back blind
And even though i might break down
And cry tonight
Please pack your shit
And take the first train out of my life

So after all I did, all that I put up with, all that I hoped for, the motherfucker sells me out like that. Well, I got one thing to say to her...

Hey Alex.... Fuck you.

We'll crucify the insincere, tonight, tonight...

Bill Maher catching heat

2008-04-25T16:09:00.000-04:00

A poll on The Orlando Sentinel’s website has 46 percent of people saying that Bill Maher should be canned for his comments on the Pope last week. I have heard an uproarious outcry about Maher, who in his apology for calling the Pope a Nazi, said, “The main point I was making was that if the pope, instead of a religious figure, was the CEO of a chain of nationwide day care centers who had thousands of employees who had been caught molesting children and then covering it up, he would have been in jail.”

Let me remind that 46 percent of something that too many people are eager to ignore these day: once, long ago, in the forests and hills of this shining land, men tread with grim determination and rifles in their hands determined to secure the rights that they felt were “inalienable”. They fought with purpose, with the strength of the ideal that no oligarchy, no Establishment, and no King should be able to limit the God-given right to voice one’s thoughts, and no one organization should be able to crucify those who with different opinions. Evidently, this noble ideal is a fleeting one that can be shredded with nary a thought as soon as someone gets offended.

Maher has been thrown off of TV before, once in 2002 when ABC bowed to pressure and decided not to renew “Politically Incorrect” because of his comments about the 9/11 hijackers. If you watch his show (which I do religiously), then you’ll know that he is fond of incendiary commentary meant to disrupt and anger the general public. I don’t always agree with him.

But let me ask– is he lying? If the Pope was indeed a CEO, and that many members of his company were not only convicted of molesting children, but also of shuffling locations so as to avoid indictment, would he not be arrested? Or at least forced to step down? Is this such a reach to think that it would be possible?

As to the “Pope is a Nazi” comment, I think we all know that being as Benedict was a child when he was in the Hitler youth, this is more of a potshot than a concrete truth; Maher knows this. Let me remind you that the man is a comedian by trade, not a news anchor; he is trying for laughs.

Regardless, my point here is not to argue Maher’s ideals- he does a fine job at doing that himself. What I am arguing is the power of certain organizations to silence the valid opinion of a known critic of all that is Powerful. I am arguing the innate right that we all have of believing in our own Gods, following our own politics, and criticizing those who exercise their power at will, and many times carelessly as the Catholic Church does.

Freedom of speech is a precious thing, perhaps the most precious of things. It can slip away in the fragile breeze of oppression, and can be annihilated completely if we as Americans do not constantly watch its back for the wicked daggers of those who refuse to accept alternative viewpoints.

Now, the Great Evil is someone who spoke out against the Church; next, it’s someone who speaks out against the party in power; it is a slippery slope. Do not be caught up in the burning of Galileo’s that we should have done away with centuries ago; doing so is willingly disgracing the tombs of every patriot who has bled the ground red on the slopes of Bunker Hill, in the woods of Gettysburg, on the banks of the Marne, and in the frozen woodlands of the Ardennes Forest. If you are a true American, you will, as Voltaire said, not defend Maher himself, but defend to the death his right to say it.

Day Hood Look

2008-04-14T21:25:00.004-04:00

"I want you to go to the Courthouse, go cover his trial. 10 AM Monday. It's hard to find parking there, you should probably go down Gra-"

"Don't worry, I been there," I say.

"Huh? What do you mean?" My editor gives me a strange look.

Whoops.

"Ah, nevermind. Don't ask questions. I can get there."

-------------------------------

I'm coming back from the Courthouse, and it's been so long since my youthful indiscretions made me an expert on the location of the courthouse and probation office that I've gotten myself completely lost again. I've been driving around the hood for maybe an hour, making rounds in the same roads, nearly running out of gas a couple of times.

As I finally find my way out, I pass the collection of project buildings that rise straight from the ground, dead grass surrounding the brown pillars, piles of garbage and old plastic chairs on the balconies.

It's as if the Earth itself has died around these places. Cracked out hood rats wearing heavy winter jackets in the 60 degree weather stumble along, eyes blazing under flat brimmed hats.

Black kids walk around in groups. One is wearing an oversized red t-shirts, rapping as he walked walked. He leers at me when I drive by, dark eyes under a red hat. If I had been walking instead of driving, this is the motherfucker that would mouth off about a white boy in the hood. I'm not good at much, but I'm a pro at reading people, and I can tell by his smirk that he would mouth off, and then not do a damn thing except let his boys come after me. He might get a kick in should I go to the ground, but that challenging smirk screams about where he's at in life.

One thing that's changed for me, and has changed me, is that I'm no longer that guy with nothing to lose. I'm not working where I used to. I'm not hopeless. I'm not angry, and I'm not so quick to do the things that would get me locked up. I like to think I'm using my brain more. But that kid... no, he's got nothing to lose. And that's the most dangerous type to tangle with. Just like the Peruvian in the club, as opposed to his friend with the wife and kid. One has a reason to stay out of jail... the other has nothing.

When I was walking from the courthouse, I saw a nursery school, with young kids riding around brand new red tricycles. I watched them as I walked by, my view cut by the heavy metal fencing. Across the street, there are signs saying "Vote Santiago- Put Children first!" This is the future of this once great town- the kids. It's a great political catchphrase, of course, but it's the truth. And I look at these five year olds, these purely innocent little beings that deserve to be safe and taken care of, to have their potential fostered and saved.

The next guy I drive by is another black guy, this one maybe in his mid-30's. He is pushing a stroller with his son in it, and he never takes his eyes off of him, always hovering, protective. He is a tough looking cat, but tough in the way that a bear would be if you came near it's cubs- he's not going to start trouble, but be wary of any man who is with a child he clearly cares about so much. It gives me the merest glimmer of hope.

But then I see those dark, smirking eyes again, and I think that these are just the next generation of bangers and wannabe rappers. I hope I'm wrong.

But I doubt it.

Hood Look

2008-04-12T13:09:00.006-04:00

The dance music is pounding, crappy techno like stuff that makes my ears burn and makes me want to hit someone. I keep hoping that they'll play some type of rap that I know, but it never happens.

"I'm going back upstairs, dude," I say.

This is the kind of place where they play hip-hop from 105.1, softer stuff that the girls can shake their asses to. Puffy's Come to Me plays at one point, and it's just like that video- laid back joint, fancy, girls slinking around in sexy skirts, trying to hustle you into buying them a drink.

It was just like this joint.

"Alright, me too," he says.

A friend is dancing like an asshole on the dance floor, looking like a stickbug having a seizure, and I just can't watch it anymore. He'll tell me later that he does it so women assume he's "No threat" and will therefore talk to him.

Sure.

I make my way back upstairs, look for the two girls I was talking to at the bar before when I was ordering my beer; Erin and Carly. Of course, I think Carly got stood up, so when she came back from the bathroom and saw me BSing her friend it got awkward, and I got caught in the, "My friend is a cunt" trap.

They're gone, but there are wonderously good looking women everywhere. We got here too late, and the beers are $5 a piece, which hurts me on the inside, but I'll pay that much to get into where the dime pieces are, as opposed to the white trash, "I just got out of a Bon Jovi convert" lookers that are normally so attracted to me.

There are candles everywhere, and the walls are a deep shade of maroon. Many of the guys smoke their cigarettes like they're gay, and some jazz band that has enough people to represent the UN is playing "Lady Marmalade" in the back room. There's a lot of 43-year-old guidos around, trying to spike the remaining strands of hair up the way they used to back in the 80's, looking around in vain for their third wife. If there's anything sadder than a guido, it's a past-his-prime guido.

It's getting late, and this place is clearing out. We bounce. But we'll be back. Save your nickels up for this place, but it's worth it.

On the way home, five of us are in the car. I am outvoted. Instead of going up the hill, we are descending.

I look at my buddy. "You motherfucker."

"I love this place," he says.

The buildings are getting worse, delapidated and dark, and the air is threatening. It's raining, so the hood rats aren't out tonight, but when I tell you we're in the worst ghetto in the East Coast, I ain't bullshitting you.

It is dark, very dark, inside, and the girls are still horrendous. Not regular woman ugly, either, but stripper-crack-whore-motherfucker ugly. There are buffet trays out, with some kind of rice and seafood in catering platters, and the chairs look like the ones you get when you're at a party at the American Legion, gold legs and brown seat backs. One guy is getting jerked off at the bar.

One of the black strippers with hazy eyes runs over and rips my dancing buddy's shirt right away, starts kissing his chest, until she gets yelled at by pimpette behind the bar.

The strippers do their thing, begging for money in the way that only those with no way out can. I'm drinking, though, and having enough fun, when the stripper offers to take me in the back. There's no lap dances here, though, and "the back" means "let's sit over there, ten feet away." Grimy.

I smirk. "Sorry honey. No money for that." She keeps trying to kiss me, and I'm bobbing my head and rolling my shoulders so she always misses. I tell her, "I'm going to go get money, I'll be right back."

I'm really going for a cigarette, and have no intention of letting this broad near me again. I smoke outside, crouch down and lean on my knees like I tend to, like the guy from Gladiator does before he fights. I rub my hands through the puddle of rain that's been draining from the skies all night. Grimy ass motherfuckers... you ain't getting near my dick honey, I think to myself. Contrary to popular belief, I do have morals, and flatly refuse to consider paying for any type of sex.

When I walk back in, my stripper shoves her lazy tits together. "You have dollar?"

"I got nothin baby. Sorry."

She gives me a hell of a look, storms off. I probably gave the cunt $15 in an hour for being ugly, more or less. There's nothing worse than a stripper with a sense of entitlement.

The soundtrack for this joint is still hip hop, but of a whole 'nother nature. One of the broads puts on 50's first album, and the tracks are hardened and biting, straight from brutal streets.

"You got the realest and illest killas tied up in a knot..."

My buddy is at the bar, talking to a couple of Hispanic guys. One looks like someone I used to work with, tall and skinny with a shaped up beard, so I join the conversation.

"You mothafuckas are cool, man. I ain't down with that hatin' on white boys shit. I got me a job, a wife, a kid. I work, you know? Some of these mothafuckas down here give you shit just for walkin' through, but I ain't down with that shit. You mothafuckas seem like guys I would work for, you know? Like I'm hanging with my boss or some shit."

I know what he means, cause I've had tons of guys like him work under me, and so has my friend (who owns a construction business). That's why I get along with these guys. I don't pretend to be from the hood, but I know what they're saying, how they act, and how they think. But they can get testy when you're on there turf, and I'm surprised at getting so much respect right off the bat from this guy. It's disarming, and I can tell he's a good guy who gets mixed up in bad things. The cut over his eye that's still healing is blatant, and though he tells me he boxes, it could be from anything.

His boy is cool with us too, but he's far more dangerous. Wide eyed and Peruvian looking, he is short and wearing an oversized black teeshirt with a closely shaved head. He's flipping dollars at one of the hideous strippers who's missing teeth.

We got out for a smoke, three white boys and these two ghetto bangers.

"Motherfucka, I just got out of the county. I aint' never goin back to that motherfucka. But I down with you white boys too, I don't be hatin. When I be in there, motherfuckin white boy came up to me and offered me-" he pauses, counting on his fingers- "six cans of tuna, loaf a bread, three snickers bars, and coffee, jus' outta respect. I said, 'Man you ain't gotta do that shit. I 'preciate it, but you ain't gotta do that.' So I down wit' you white boys. Y'all some cool motherfuckers.'"

"When were you there?" I ask.

"Ahh, 2000, 2001, 2004 I think."

"Who helped you out?"

If there was a white guy in County, the odds are I know him or someone he knows.

"White boy named Paul. Paul the second he call hisself."

I know him. Goddamn. Small world.

As he finishes, a tall Italian kid in a blue Yankees shirt and slicked back hair wobbles outside. The little guy looks at him.

"You a bouncer? We in trouble?"

"Bouncer? SHIT SON, I jus' got out County! Look nigga, no laces!" He holds up his foot, showing off the laceless workboots he's got.

"OOOOHHH shit son. You be gettin' that watered down coffee? That shit SUCKED! An, an, the eggs, fuck, that watered down Gatorade."

Just in case you're curious if someone is lying about going to prison, get them around someone else who's been locked up. The FIRST thing they will talk about is how bad the food is.

Before we leave, a one of the other three with us begins antagonizing the little one, doing small things that piss guys off. He does it intentionally to fuck with people, but he doesn't understand how these guys work.

"Let's go. Now."

On the way home I look at my construction worker buddy, and then the drunken retard in the back who was pissing off our ghetto compatriot.

"He doesn't know you can't do that to those guys," I say.

"I know. You can't do that shit," he says.

"Those fuckin guys... you say somthing little, shit starts, and they're not gonna fight. They're gonna stab you and run. Especially if it's two on five."

"Oh I know."

That's Right Pimpin

2008-04-09T14:15:00.002-04:00

We're drinking in the back of the tremendously crowded bar on Route 46, and the place is overflowing with women and the spattering of guidos that follows the former around like dogs.

I met an old friend of mine from my blue collar days here, along with the broad he hates but bangs anyway. He looks like he just got out of work- torn up jeans, work boots, a long sleeved t-shirt with holes by the elbows. Me? I wore what I wore all day- a pimpin' collared shirt, nice jeans, actual shoes.

He starts breaking my balls about it instantly, "Look at you all suave and shit. And your damn hair never moves, how the fuck do you do that?"

His girl-whatever... is eyeing me the whole night. Later on she'll smack him and point to me, saying the words that no woman has ever said in reference to me: "Why can't you dress more like him?"

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. VICTORY! NO MORE "SCRUFFY" HERE!

He looks at me, shakes his head. "I'm losin' faith in you dude."

Yea, but your girl sure ain't.

Again, I rule.

FUCK!!!!!!!

2008-04-05T13:18:00.001-04:00

Beyonce, Jay-Z Tie the Knot.
report 1 hour, 8 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AFP) - US singer and actress Beyonce has married her longtime companion, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, at a private ceremony in New York, People magazine reported on its website Saturday.

FUCK!!!!! My woman is off the market. FUCK!

Damnit Beyonce, we coulda been somethin...

Tagged

2008-04-04T16:28:00.002-04:00

Trashman tagged me 'cause he's a whole bunch of gay. I don't really know how to make links and all that crap, so you're gonna have to bear with me. Damn that Trash is gay.

1. Write your own six word memoire.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play....

Here's mine:
1. "I fuckin kick ass shit. Really."
2. Visual was down a bit with me holding a bottle of Jameson screaming like a black preacher.
3. Don't know how to do this. Big gay Trash did it, click on his link to the right of the page if you'd like to see my queer friend getting a facial (mountains of gay right there).
4. Don't know enough bloggers to pull this off.
5. Might do this later. But it's Friday, so I'll likely be drunk.

Slainte motherfuckers. Hoboken tonight... we ride to ruin...

2008-03-26T21:10:00.003-04:00

I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come inta my life somehow. And he didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does.

- Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old men

It may just be coincidence that I picked up Gettysburg and watched it again, or grabbed the soundtrack and played it in my car on the way to work today, but Ghost Hunters is exploring the Cashtown Inn tonight. It's a place that I have passed in my travels, and is nearly legendary in the lore of we that have studied the Civil War extensively.

The brief history is that the Cashtown Inn is just that... an Inn at a hole in the wall town in the Pennsylvania hills named Cashtown. What makes it special? It was the headquarters for Major General A.P. Hill's III Corp in the few days before Gettysburg. On the night of June 30, General Henry Heth, one of Hill's brigade commanders, asked Hill if he had any objections to Heth going into the town of Gettysburg the next day. Many of his soldiers had made the long march from Virginia barefoot, and he'd heard there was a shoe factory in the town.

Hill uttered the words that would send over 50,000 men to the boatman- "None in the world."

General Hill

The next day, Heth brought his boys down the Chambersburg Pike, heading towards town... and came under fire from General John Buford's Union Cavalry. Heth's men broke off the Pike, formed battle lines, and attacked... and when they did, every soldier on both sides began making a beeline towards the small crossroad town of Gettysburg- in a day, there'd be over 170,000 men facing murderous hails of bullets on these gentle rolling hills.

On Ghost Hunters, the fella that owns the Inn said something about how when people go into the basement, sometimes the water heater and piping is gone. The whole thing. Gone.

In it's place is a scene 150 years old, where two soldiers are helping one man who seems mortally wounded... and the indicators of the present are erased, like God swiped it away with His mighty hand.

They say it's a residual haunting, like a memory caught in time, bound to replay itself again and again.

Hell, search it online. This is the first picture I found- there's a face in the window at the top.

Here's a close up of the face:

Now, I know more ghost stories about Gettysburg than I could tell you. I know more about the battle of Gettysburg than any scholar you've seen on TV. I know the position and troop strength of every brigade throughout the battle. In seventh grade my teacher let me teach the class for two days about Gettysburg, then concluded it by saying, "You know more than I do."

They say some folks are just drawn to the town, like magic, like they know they should live there.

I think I'm drawn there because these stories... they're all I got. They're as American as can be. For instance, the story of Winfield Scott Hancock and Lew Armistead, two men who were close as brothers before the war, only so they could split up, with Hancock going North and Armistead going South. In a Biblical twist of irony, Armistead led Pickett's Charge against Hancock's men at Gettysburg. Armistead was mortally wounded in the charge. Heaving, on his deathbed, he asked to see General Hancock, only to have someone tell him that Hancock had also been hit. Armistead went nearly hysterical, dying soon after. Hancock survived.

It is said that on the last night before they left California, where they were stationed before the war, Armistead grabbed Hancock on that last night, and with tears in his eyes, said, "Win, if I ever raise my hand against you... may God strike me dead!" I never caught the significance of this story until my own best friend was dead. I could picture me saying something like that to Ryer, because I am overly dramatic like that... and then one of us not making it out.

It is the story of the dead Carolinian, where on his body, they found a note saying, "Tell my father I died facing the enemy."

It is the story of the boy Liutenant who cut the last tendons of his leg off with his pocketknife after an artillery ball shattered it.

These stories, and the stories of their hauntings... they're all I got. I always keep thinking that one day, when I'm old and ready to die, that God will have entered my life, and I'll have made peace, and I'll get to heaven.

But He doesn't seem to be getting any closer. And what if I don't make it long enough? Then I die a half-Catholic, and go... to Hell? If I die in a car accident tomorrow, which is as likely as it isn't, I'm FUCKED.

So I'm left with Ghost Hunters. I'm left with the recording they got of a picture frame sliding across the table, as if A.P. Hill himself saw something important in that old brass frame. I'm left hoping that I'm not one of those miserable, trapped souls that has to reenact the bad scenes in my life over and over. The energy doesn't leave this world. The love you have, the anger, the strength, the loneliness.... that stuff doesn't dissipate. It changes forms... but it doesn't leave. Some things are forever.

Let me be honest with you people- I am absolutely terrified.

Don't ever wonder why I drink so damn much. Although I doubt any of you do.

The Fights

2008-03-24T20:57:00.002-04:00

I was going to just throw this back in last year's revisions, but it's fucking good, so you're all going to read it.

“Tell Me" is pounding through the speakers in the heaving, sweating bar, and the floor rumbles accordingly. The announcers on TV howl over the din as Mayweather puts on his sombrero and saunters to the ring, 50 Cent rapping next to him: “When I’m out in NY boys blunts and phillies, when I’m out in LA boys wraps and swishes.” The noise in the bar increases ten fold; being overwhelmingly close to Paterson, it’s mostly blacks and Hispanics at this joint.

This crowd is evenly split between Mayweather and De La Hoya, and it's predominantly along racial lines; blacks with dreadlocks and oversized white t-shirts rooting for Floyd, and Hispanics with their chinstrap beards and curvy girlfriends pulling for Oscar. I'm with the Spanish guys, hoping Oscar will pull off the upset.

From the opening bell, though, the fight goes as I thought it would. Mayweather bobs and weaves, going from his flat footed, taunting, open stance to sudden jabs and straight rights, immediately angling out, moving with a grace rarely seen in a boxing ring. De La Hoya tries to cut off the ring and corner him, sometimes successfully. He flurries body shots that appear to land but really don’t, all blocked by Floyd’s elbows. De la Hoya doesn't have enough power to put him down, and although he’s certainly the busier fighter, he’s not hurting Floyd at all. Looks just like every fight I’ve watched Mayweather fight.

Like a switch, Floyd turns it on around the fifth. Oscar’s not catching him on the ropes as much, and the fighters are circling far more in the center of the ring. This is Floyd’s game, and Oscar should know that. Floyd catches him with a straight right with fifteen seconds left in the round that shows Oscar that he’s going to be in for a long night.

It progresses like this, and Mayweather is taking control more and more in this kinetic chess match. Floyd is landing more 1-2’s, fighting his fight and outscoring De la Hoya consistently. The winner is decided in my mind in the tenth, when Mayweather lands another hard straight right that seriously hurts Oscar, knocking him straight back. It might look like just another right to someone else, but I see that Floyd, after the punch lands, immediately pulls it straight back to his chin and is looking for another shot. It’s the tenth round, and he’s not dropping any of his technically flawless punches… and it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing heavy. Oscar doesn’t have a chance in hell.

For the next two rounds, Floyd counters and parries, always throwing punches that land as he’s backing up. It is like he is made of liquid, disappearing and reforming somewhere else. The only other man I have seen move like this is Barry Sanders, another that seemed like all of his body parts could move completely independent of each other, but were somehow not only connected, but in sync. In the end, the judges see it my way, and when they announce the winner I’m hardly surprised.

There are only two things in this world that can stop a fighter with such spectacular hand speed and defensive ability like Floyd Mayweather. The first is a taller fighter with an incredible jab and similarly stunning hand speed. Zab Judah, with his quick hands, hurt May weather a couple of times, more seriously than I’ve seen anyone else be able to. And on May 5th, the only times that Oscar remotely hurt Mayweather was when he began to work his jab (of course, he miraculously holstered it somewhere around the ninth when he decided that he didn’t actually want to win).

Yes, Castillo, the phenomenal body puncher, also gave Mayweather difficulty, but it is that combination of hand speed and strong, hard jab and quick follow ups that may beat Mayweather some day. Ironically enough, Floyd might only lose to someone exactly like him.

The second thing? Well, you know. It’s the boxer’s greatest fight… the one they always lose. One day, Floyd will be a half-second slower, and those hard straight rights that he once dodged with ease will connect. One day, those elbows won’t come down so quickly, and the hard shovel hooks thrown by the Castillos and Hattons of the world will land, and destroy his liver. One day, he will get knocked down, and out. My only hope is that he has enough sense to get out of the game before that happens, before he becomes a shell of his formerly fantastic self, another Joe Louis getting knocked out by a young, hungry Marciano, or another Roy Jones Jr. getting taken out by a mediocre Antonio Tarver.

Like all fighters, though, he will refuse to admit defeat, and will continue until the game has taken more from him than he has taken from it. It is the saddest part of our brutal, beloved sport: the inevitable wearing down of the body by Father Time, and the horrific realization that we are, indeed, mere mortals…even the inimitable Pretty boy Floyd. Maybe I’m wrong, and he’ll retire a champ, giving us the image of this fierce, young killer to hold in our heads until we’re gone….but I don’t think so.

One Ricky Hatton

2008-03-23T13:14:00.003-04:00

I'm strapping the glove to my right hand, which is impossibly hard when your left also has that thick black pad over it.

"Hatton's back on May 24th. Fighting Lazcano."

"I love how you love that stupid limey fighter. He fuckin' sucks. Leads with his head all the time. He's gonna' be retarded."

"That's not my problem. But he's all heart, and that's why he's my man."

I've stated before that fighting isn't like anything else. There's not a team to root for, or some nobody that can fuck it up.... no, the fight game is one on one. You root for one man to go into a ring and be as violent and brutal as he can. Along the way, you learn certain things. You get to know his style. You get to know his personality. You know how much heart he has, when he'll quit and when he won't. You'll see looks in his eyes that mean something, that mean that you know what's coming. No other sport has that, because no other sport has boxing's nature.

You'll never learn more about somebody than when they have been physically knocked down. The reaction that immediately follows is what tells you what kind of persona you have. Do you sit there stunned? Or do you get up angrier? Do you charge back in, regardless of the fact that the next time you get put down, you might die from it? It's never about winning or losing. It's about heart. It's about how you react, and how hard you'll keep on coming, even after you get knocked down.

Ricky Hatton is my favorite because he's just like me. He's not that tall, not that big, and not that talented; however, he does all that he can do, charging in and pounding to the body with brutal hooks, taking advantage of openings upstairs with whipping uppercuts. He'll never outbox you, never out-flair you. He's just going to hustle constantly, and keep pressuring you like his life depends on it... because it very much does. He's not the cleanest fighter, and certainly adverse to rabbit punching or wrestling. It's a streetfight every time with him, and you better be ready to brawl when he walks in.

He is a modern day Micky Ward- not too much talent, but all heart and soul. He dips his head, wraps your arm, and delivers the hard looping punches that he relies on. He likes drinking Guinness and playing darts, and never takes himself too seriously. Maybe it's an act, but I doubt it. He sincerely seems like the type that would buy you a beer at the end of the night when you're out of cash, and there's something to be said for that, especially amongst famous athletes.

Yes, he lost to Floyd Mayweather. But Mayweather, who is the most talented boxer alive right now, is unbeatable. If you have to lose (as all champions do) then it may as well be to the best fighter on the planet.

But on May 24th, our lad will come charging out to the strains of "Blue Moon" once again, and he'll show what champions are truly made of. He'll show us that it's not flair and style that makes champions, but grit and determination.

And once again, like always, we'll be here singing... "There's only one Ricky Hatton."

On DRAMA!!!!

2008-03-15T15:05:00.003-04:00

I recently bitched at the world on a Myspace survey about how women constantly say, "I don't want drama", or "This is a drama free zone". You see it all over online, especially with broads. I am convinced that it's the stupidest damn thing in the world to say.

----

Looking at me through whiskey drunk eyes while we're outside smoking, I see him glaring at the door.

"What the fuck are you looking at?"

"Waitin' for that motherfucker to come out the door, I'm gonna hit him."

This is my big Irish Army friend who lies to women constantly and gets far too hammered drunk for his own good. He told me years ago that Ryer and I were like the older brothers he never had, and even after all this time it's clear that I'm one of the only people around that can keep a handle on him, that he'll actually listen too.

"Like fuckin' hell you are, he's one of my buddies," I say.

"He's a dick."

At that moment my buddy walks out, and they start jawing at each other, low mumbled threats meant so that the other one could overhear. Both of them are tough kids, and a fight would be hideously ugly and end badly.

I look at my buddy, and now I'm between them. "You don't fuckin touch him, I know this guy."

Then I turn and grab Army's arm, leading him away. I turn to him and point directly in his face. "You don't fuckin do anything. You fucking hear me?"

"But he's a dick, he's-"

"I don't want to hear it. You remember The Departed? You remember the guy who tells people who they can hit and who they can't? Well, that's fuckin' me. And I say you don't fucking hit him."

He looks upset, like a puppy you just kicked, but this is for his own good. "Fine," he mumbles.

"Where do you live? How you gettin' home?"

"I'm walkin, I live down there. Look, fuck that kid-"

"HEY! I don't want to fuckin hear it. This ain't optional. Get fucking moving."

He looks at me open mouthed, as if he has something else to say, but all he manages is a resigned, "Fine..." He turns around, begins to trail off, stumbling down the road.

Had it continued any more, I would have had to pull the Ryer card with my other buddy, and tell him that if Ryer was here he would kill him for laying a hand on Army. I don't like bringing him up, because it can ruin a night quickly and depress the hell out people... but I was not about to watch anyone touch him. As much as I'm like his older brother, he's like my younger one, and I have to watch out for him because no one else will. His parents hate him for being a stupid drunk, his grandfather threw him out, and his friends are shakily loyal. That's bad when you like whiskey and have a big mouth, but there's nothing I can do. I won't watch him get beat down by anybody.

-----------------------

"DRAMA!" And you know what? When I'm on my deathbed, I will wish like hell for ten more minutes of that same "drama" that all the broads hate so much. If you want to drink, fight, fuck, live, then drama is entwined in all of it. Good luck getting away from it.

I fuckin loooooovvveeeee it!

Characters

2008-03-14T17:06:00.009-04:00

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones. - John Steinbeck

I will miss them, these fuckin idiots I work with at the shop. They are always whistling at each other, sharp whistles that would make a dog heel. They call out, tap fists every time they pass, call your name and hold their fists up as they walk by, wordlessly. It's strange until you figure out that they're just saying what's up, and that's the way they do it. There is a strong sense of camraderie that pervades the place, as if they were going to war tomorrow instead of just fabricating metal parts.

---------------------------------------

He's a short, stocky guy with a thick Indian accent. He always adds an "S" to the end of my name; it might because of his serious lack of teeth. We are standing by the time clock waiting to punch out for lunch when one of the Mexicans comes up behind him, reaches around, and grabs his chest.

"Motherfucker! See Irishes, you gots to watch these motherfuckers, there a bunch of fuckin fags around here. Watch yourself Irishes. Especially this fuckin guy, he a fucking tinkerbell." He looks at the Mexican with disdain. "You motherfucker."

The Mexican gives a hearty laugh, and mumbles, "Pendejo"

--------------------------------------------

He stands at a mighty 5'2", ironic because his name is Maximillion. He's older, and wears glasses when he's doing work that requires his close attention. English is not his forte, but when he talks to the other Hispanics he uses great swooping gestures and his voice rises and falls like the waves. Don't ever think that people who don't speak your language are dopey, for this guy is certainly as animated as anyone I've ever met. He is also quiet and watchful, and those qualities often belie a sharp mind.

Alicia Keys' No One reverbs through the shop, ringing off the metal machines and echoes off through the walls. When it gets to the "Oh oh oh oh ohhhhhhh" chorus section, he raises his arms and starts swaying, yelling out the words as he goes. He sees me laughing at him, and he looks at me and smiles, raising his arms in a shrug as you would if you were saying "I don't know"

"Who?" he asks me.

He answers himself definitively: "NO ONE, NO ONE, NO ONEEEEEEEE!!"

He does this every time the song comes on, which comes out to about three times a day.

-------------------------

He strides through the garage door, a cigar blazing and his head bopping to my radio, and Biggie Smalls is halfway through Hypnotize when he catches the beat and starts smiling, bopping his head in the cloud of smoke that trails him and he's singing the words, "Biggie Biggie Biggie, can't you see, sometimes your words just hypnotize me".... This is my tall black buddy, a genuinely intelligent man who is wasting his time working the grunt work that this shop provides. He married a Puerto Rican chick, and has a little daughter who I'm sure, like so many women of mixed heritage, will be a knockout one day. If she's anything like her father, then she will be smart as hell, too. It bothers me that he still works there- there is alot of things he could do using his mind instead of his hands... not to mention the world needs smart black men out there proving that the stereotypes are unequivocally wrong.

I picked up the phrase, "That's right pimpin" from him, and he's truly one of the coolest cats I've ever met.

I bought him American Gangster as a parting gift, and we start watching it at lunch. He gets antsy as Denzel owns the the screen and the tension builds like a glacier, but one where there's an avalanche at the end.

"Irish, you the fuckin man. Thanks man."

------------------------------------

He's cool in the way that only an old black man can be. He's another short one, and ambles in the way that old men do. He's got a graying goatee that is often obscured in sweet smelling smoke from the pipe he always has, which he often smokes while simultaneously chewing tobacco and wearing a nicotine patch.

"I'm glad you leavin. Ain't no future here for you. I keep telling these other motherfuckers, "What the fuck you doin here? That tall motherfucker especially. He's bright, ain't no reason for him to work here. I mean, you get hurt and they don't give two shits about it. Look."

He takes the glove off his left hand, and shows me two deformed fingers that are, honestly, a mess. "I done got mashed up twice here. They don't care. You go to retire, ain't no pension. They give you a shit party and throw you out. I'd leave if I was younger, but I'm old, don't nobody want an old motherfucker like me. I'm glad you leavin'."

He's got a calender in his welding booth that has nearly naked women posing, and one shot is of a girl at the beach as the sunset. Her ass takes up most of the shot, and it is a fine ass at that. Apparently he thinks so too, because I haven't seen that calender change months since I've worked there. At one point he calls me "daddio", and it's the coolest damn thing I've ever heard.

He comes up before he leaves and shakes my hand. "It's been a pleasure working with you. I hope you make it. See you when I see you."

----------------------------------------------

He's an oak tree of a man, with a black goatee and a black hat perched on his head. A tan flannel jacket covers his back. He's Hispanic of some type, and he diddy bops through the shop every day yelling out, "Ju liiike it? Ju like it? I looovvveeee it." He doesn't say this once in a while, or even often. He says it every time someone walks by him, or he walks by someone, or he's yelling it across the shop to someone. It got to the point where I really thought that's all he could say in English.

"Hey man! Hey man!"

"Yo!"

"Ju like it? Ju like it?"

You answer back, "Hell yeah baby, I like it!"

He smiles, "OK baby, I fuckin' loooovvveee it"

You never let on that you have no idea what he's talking about.

He surprised me today, with perhaps the best thing I've ever heard from a person's lips. We're cleaning metal phalanges when he starts talking.

"Man, life is fucking beautiful man. I a poor old man, ju know? I sixty-four years old. I fuckin happy. I see these young guys, they walk around with lots of money, they miserable! Not happy! Fuck that man! I happy! I like it! I looooovveeee it! Is beautiful!"

This guy is talking about life. Regardless of the fact that he's old, and that I think his foot is rotting off, and he is barely at work because of it... he walks around saying every second "Life is beautiful, and I fucking love it".

Why I really will miss blue collar work is because of the characters. I'm sure there's people like this in the professional world, but there is one thing that seperates us from them, and this fella epitomizes it when, ten minutes after telling me this, he says how he wants to stab one of the other guys in the kidney twenty times because he's an asshole. He then acts out what the guy will look like when he falls, and even though he's serious I can't stop smiling.

I'm going to watch out for these motherfuckers, these crazy, beer drinking, life loving idiots. Management would rape them in a second if they could, and it's guys like me that have to watch their asses, and publicize it when someone tries to screw them. I'll be, like Steinbeck, a watchdog for the working classes, to make sure these hardworking fuckers get exactly what they deserve for doing the job that you don't want to do.

They'll teach you a lot, if you listen. But you have to listen.

I fuckin looooveee it too baby. I really do.

Some call it better...

2008-03-02T10:06:00.009-05:00

He's fat, with a goofy jacket that only makes him look fatter and a hat and sunglasses that make him look like a tourist. He lights a cigarette, and starts talking to one of my friends who leers at him with curious disgust. I'm right there with him. We've just gotten off the train and are heading into the heart of Hoboken for the St. Patrick's Day parade and celebration that is a couple weeks early.

"Look, I fought some guy." He holds up a swollen right hand that's not in good shape. "Last night, I fought some guy. He was like 6'10". I got'em though. I always get in fights when I go out... will you guys help me if I get in a fight?"

It takes all I have to not laugh at him. It takes even more to not be terribly dickheaded and tell him that we don't want him following us and BSing. We're being pretty nasty towards him though, being as none of us want to be bothered with this annoying fat man.

"No, we won't," we all say, nearly in unison.

"Oh.." He looks disheartened in a pathetic way. "They told me people in Hoboken are nice... you guys aren't nice."

I look at him when dead eyes. "You're looking for the Yuppies. They're off today."

We swing into a liquor store and buy a couple pints of whiskey for the walk. I put it in my breast pocket, and grab a long straw so I can slide it down into the bottle in the midst of a crowded bar. It's working well, and I'm all over trying to keep a handle on one of my compatriots who is walking up to every broad in front of him and dancing and talking. I am apologizing and bullshitting with a mediocre looking Polish girl about Warsaw or something when I see my friend whirling like a gyre, resisting the futile dance towards the door that the bouncer is making him do.

"Isn't that your friend?" the blond says to me.

"Ahhh fuck me yea it is."

It's been a long while since I got thrown out of a bar, the last time being last St. Patty's day when I connected with a right hook so big that it shattered the bones in my hand and started all my problems. I've never had a bouncer put his hands on me, a good thing because when I'm drunk enough to not listen to you telling me to leave, I'm drunk enough to hit you. It's likely that I'm the guy that Rob the Bouncer complains about all the time (minus the coke habit that the guidos have.)

It's a two way street with bouncers. I'm very respectful to most people, and I don't go out to cause trouble. I know your night sucks, and I'm not there to make it worse. But if you think that the black "STAFF" written on your shirt gives you the authority to talk to me like the cops talk to me, you are sadly mistaken. These bouncers were assholes, and I decided when I was sober that if this guy put his hands on me, he was getting my signature right hook to the body.

"Let's go to Trinity".

"Let's go to City Bistro".

My buddy looks at the girls, blowing smoke up with a quizzical look. "Bistro? Sounds like a fag place. I won't drink anywhere called a "bistro."

I realize how oddly out place I feel here. The people aren't dressed any better, and certainly aren't as good looking as me, but there's a heavy arrogance that wafts off the water, pervades every bar here. The guys are, well, complete metrosexual bitches, and the women have their noses so far in the air that it's a wonder they're not walking into chairs. The bars are hip places, but the people just suck.

I remember playing Hoboken for the State Championships back in my football days. They were all blacks and Puerto Ricans, tough, lean kids and you saw it in their eyes, that look that boxers have when they're coming up through the ranks- they were hungry. They wanted out. No more ghettoes- these boys were playing for their mammas, playing to escape and get to college where the white kids would idolize them for the talents on the field, and there'd be no more bangin'. They weren't like playing the Paterson teams, which were lazy, fundamentally unsound messes. No, playing them was like playing guys who were fighting for their lives.

As I look down Washington Street, with its lines of neon lit bars, $3.50 dark roast coffee latte joints with fake ass French names and red signs, and liquor stores where a pint of JD costs $15, I can only shake my head.

Some people would say the place is better now. You'll hear the catchphrases, the same ones they're throwing around about Newark and Jersey City now. "Safer." "Cleaner." "Happier." I say it's lost it's heart, sold out amongst a sea of commercialism.

Where those kids at now... where's that hungry look? Even though I have a job that is going to be filled with actual professionals, I always want that connection to the streets. I'm not from them, make no mistake; but I know plenty of guys who are. When I start boxing, that's who I want to be around. They'll keep you down to Earth, they'll keep you jabbing, they'll never let you sit back.

That's why I say give me a strip club in Newark any day over this souless mess, give me the place where people are struggling and striving and there's flames in the streets burning like an flash fire and riots are always a step away. That's passion baby... That's fire.

This?

This is baby boomer shit. And you motherfuckers can keep it.

That's Right, Pimpin

2008-02-11T19:04:00.001-05:00

I am listening to so much goddamn hip hop because of the guys I work with it's sickening. However, there's so much good stuff out that I can't even knock it. I used to only half-heartedly listen to it, but a lot of people with a lot of soul are going all out... Jay Z and Kanye blow me away, to be honest.

I've even picked up an incredible saying from the black dude I work with- "That's right pimpin."

"Pimpin" is used as a noun here, not a verb. So the subject of your sentence, he's called "pimpin." He does something smooth, and you lay it down- "That's right pimpin!" I could put a comma in between the "right" and the "pimpin" to let you know that "pimpin" is the subject, but it's said all in one shot, no breaths.

So Eli Manning scores the game winning TD in the Super Bowl? "That's right pimpin".

Your buddy hooks up with a hot blonde after he lies his balls off and tells her he plays for the New York Rangers? "That's right pimpin"

Manny Ramirez hits a game ending, walk off homer? "That's right pimpin".

It's gotta be something you do with style- you can't really call it that if, let's say, your buddy knocks a guy out at a bar. Even a one punch shot.... it's still not really "pimpin". It's "badass", to be sure, but not "pimpin". Now, The Rock in the first ten minutes of The Rundown, that's "pimpin", especially where he flips the clip out of the gun while he's staring the other guy down. It's all about style.

Deion Sanders is "pimpin".

Mike Tyson is not.

Michael Irvin is "pimpin".

Tom Cruise is not (although he was in both Top Gun and Cocktail).

If you have to wonder whether or not you're "pimpin", well, then you're not, and you shouldn't try to be. I'll explain this more later.

Hate it or Love It

2008-02-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

I place the letter I wrote below in a plastic bag, and lay it on the ground. Through it I stick the small Giants flagpole, pinning it down, and lean over.

"You'd have loved it buddy. You'd have fucking loved it. I hope you saw it."

I lean over, kiss the cold metal, and rise. I turn and walk away.

As I walk, I slowly turn around and look one last time towards his grave. I stop, and smile. I raise my arms and yell it, like Rocky... "Hey yo Ry-Air, the underdogs on top! They did it!"

I know he heard me.

Hey Ryer

2008-02-04T16:54:00.000-05:00

Hey Ryer,

They did it. They did it. They fucking did it. The Giants won the Super Bowl (and without your boy Shockey) in the biggest upset since the Jets in '68. Oh you motherfucker, you would have loved it.

It wasn't like how miserable we were when they caved in 2000, getting hammered by the Ravens in the Super Bowl in as terrible a game as I've ever watched.

It wasn't like how pissed we were in 2001 when they dropped that game to the Vikings, losing by a point, one fucking point, in the last minutes. No, it wasn't like that.

It wasn't like when they dropped that lead in 2003, when the Niners found their legs in the fourth quarter and the Giants caved again, and I was furious and swearing this Goddamn team off... again. No, it wasn't like that either.

No, Ryer, it wasn't like that at all.. Know what it was like? It was like that last game in 2004, a month before you died, when everyone somehow got tickets for that last Giants-Cowboys game.

That was the day that you didn't want to come over by where we were all tailgating because you were being a bitch like you tended to do, crying about some thing or another. That's when Chud called you, saying "If you don't come hang out, I'm burning your ticket, and you're not getting in". That got your ass over there. Really quickly.

We got drunk for hours, all fifteen or so of us, and went in to that Stadium expecting the Giants to blow it like they always did, to dissapoint us in all the creative ways that they'd mastered over the years. Big Blew it? Yup. For a long time they always did. They had lost eight in a row at that point, and our season was down the toilet. But tickets were tickets, and drinking was drinking. So more like loyal drunks than Giants fan, we took the oppurtunities.

But you remember that shit? The Giants kept it close, fighting as hard as they had all year, but were still down in the fourth quarter. I thought it was over, but then I'm a pessimist. What we saw in that last two minutes of that game reminded us again why we loved football.

We watched, in shock and fucking awe, as Eli Manning marched that broken down Giants team down like a Field Marshal, showing flashes of his pedigreee, and an innate strength of character that we never knew he had. When Tiki took that ball in for the last touchdown as time ran out, breaking records as he did, we watched the future of the Giants walk off the field for the first time... as a winner.

One of the last things I remember from that night was asking you if you were driving home, and you closed your eyes and put your head down and said, "Man, I am so fucking drunk. I can't do anything."

Well, that's what this day, this game, was like, Ryer. It was horrible and beautiful and senselessly stressful to watch, and I thought it was over at the end. But Manning took that team, grabbed them by the scruff of their neck, and dusted them off, marching them back down like a fucking warrior in the two minute drill, just like the first time we watched him. With that last touchdown pass with thirty-five seconds left, he put a nail in the heart of New England, and struck the bells that signalled the death knell of these 18-0, undefeated Patriots, the twelve point favorites.

I hope they have TV's wherever the hell you are, and I hope you saw it. We were all thinking of you when they won. I'll be there this week sometime, and I'm leaving a Giants flag on your grave. I said all along that God willed the Giants to win... but I like to think maybe you had something to do with it, too.

Rest in Peace brother. Go Big Blue.

We Believe

2008-02-02T16:03:00.001-05:00

C'mon Big Blue, you amazin' motherfuckers...

Boredom

2008-01-30T19:46:00.000-05:00

Pull down on the drill press. A 3/8 bit screws itself through the half inch thick metal. It might be steel, might be something else. I still don't know shit about metalwork, and I only halfheartedly try to learn.

It pushes through, the sweet end to about 30 seconds of work when you feel that last sliver give way and the drill lurches through. I let it go back up and turn the metal pipe over, aiming the drill at the other black marked pilot hole... and begin all over again.

After seven hours of this, you begin going a bit nuts. My only reprieve is that there is some great rap out at the moment, and Hot 97 has been saving me from the monotony that has become the classic rock station. The radio becomes your only salvation, your only contact with the world. Sure, the guys at the shop are cool as fuck... but you talk to them maybe once every couple hours. The other hours are filled with watching little wires of metal dance up the drill bit, and eventually whip off and try to lash you, flailing like a drunken boxer in their vain attempt to break your skin.

It is one thing when a job is kind of dangerous. It's another when it's boring and your whole family thinks you have ADD because you can't sit in one spot and do anything for shit. What that means is that by hole #422, I'm thinking about weightlifting or fucking or movies or anything to keep my mind off the task at hand. Which, I believe, is when you lose a hand.

What a conundrum. The sooner this job is over, the happier I'll be...although is does seem like it will likely be back out to one stone yard or another for me. I guess I was right about when I used to say about what happens when you bring us outside dogs in... we piss all over the carpet and you throw us back out.

And we bitch and moan a lot. Or at least I do. But if I didn't do that, you motherfuckers wouldn't have anything to read, so fuck yourselves if you're shaking your heads in agreement.

2008-01-26T11:31:00.000-05:00

I have been watching this clip alot lately. It might be corny to be thinking like this, but where I'm at mentally with my searching for a job has got me down in the dumps. I get shot down for positions more than I get shot down with women.

The other day I was sitting there on my shot out swivel chair for my ten o'clock break, smoking a cigarette with blackened hands, calling some dickhead editor for a job.

"You have any experience with Dreamweaver?"

The only thing I can think of is Opie and Anthony at this point. If you listen to them, you know what I'm talking about.

"Ahhh... no".

"Well you need that. It's all layout stuff... you need experience. It's a very technical position."

"Oh. OK. Well, thanks for your time."

"Yup. Best of luck."

Fuck yourself.

"Thanks."

I put my phone down, pick up the grinder, and go back to annihilating diaomaceous earth off of the filter pads.

America

2008-01-23T20:13:00.001-05:00

America... ahhh you strange land of opportunity, robber of souls that swim in vaults of money like Scrooge McDuck.

Everyone is talking recession now. The stock market fell four thousand points when the word was first mentioned, and it didn't matter whether they were talking about receding economies or receding flood waters- you mention the word "Recede" and immediately the world's economy falls to pieces.

We hear about 2001, how it was a CEO's recovery after that short recession. Well let me ask you, my friends, how much did the CEO's lose? How could they recover what never left them? Strange, but the villainous swine who so often carry those three stained letters in their job titles normally make about 50 something times what a worker at their company makes. Good thing they recovered, eh? God knows what we would have done had they not come back from their tough losses; they might not have gotten a million dollar bonus that year! The horror!

So when we have a CEO's recovery this year, you can bet that we will be assured that the American market is strong and stable, and that we, the lowly workers, will eventually benefit because things trickle down. If by "trickle down" they mean, "the rich are pissing on you", then I think they're dead right.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm on the floor of a machine shop sweating my ass off hoping that I make it out of the day with all ten fingers and no stitches. There is no recession on this floor; we are so busy that for nearly 11 hours a day, someone is on this floor somewhere grinding, hammering, welding, cutting, or tacking something together.

"Roc boys in the buildin' tonight! Oh what a feelin I'm feelin life! "

Jay Z lays it down smooth out of the battered black radio adorned with Jets stickers, and my supervisor, a tall, cigar smoking version of Dave Chappelle, is breaking it down at his swivel chair where he's spot welding massive filter leafs together, head bopping to the beat.

We talk later on, ten minutes before he's supposed to punch out. "These mothafuckas talk about profit sharing- how come they gettin' more of a share than I get?"

He's asking the wrong guy. I could tell him that they really don't care all that much, as long as they make a profit, but he's been around the block; he's from the Bronx, born and raised. He knows. The question is, by far, rhetorical.

"That's how it goes man."

"Yea, well it shouldn't be that way. I'm the one out here getting burned and sliced and all, and they sit in the office all day and play solitaire and take home the most. I got seventeen stitches from slicing my leg on a piece of that sheet metal- almost made a Vietnam Vet puke. See that guy over there? His glove got caught in the band saw and dragged his finger in, cut it right up the middle."

My stomach is getting queasy. "Listen brother, I'm telling you right now, if I get sliced, I'm going to pass out. I can take beatings. I been beat with fists and bottles and knees and anything else... but I get cut and I'm out."

He's laughing and shaking his head.

It occurs to me that Marx is right- if you ever want the beginnings of a socialist revolution, go to wear men are making things and not getting their fair share. Hell, for all I know this guy might be getting a plenty fair share, but all he knows is that there's other people who get more. Me? I take my 10 bucks an hour and go home, and when I blow my nose it's actually shiny from the metal I inhale. My forearms are wobbly from running the hand grinder all day, but I'm getting used to it.

I don't want to get used to it. I applied to three other positions at various newspapers, and I'm going to call them on my lunch break tomorrow and harass the shit out of them for an interview. This place, it's not bad money for now, but what I truly want is a job that I can't lose a hand at. Recession or not, I've still got to make my own breaks. But I would be lying through my teeth if I said that I wasn't discouraged as hell.

After I leave, I go straight to the Dunkin Donuts on the highway. I catch my reflection in the mirror before I open the door: a backwards Red Sox hat, about five days' growth beard on my face, my red flannel jacket zipped all the way up, beat up jeans and work boots.

The welders were right. When I went in for the interview for that job, they said I looked scruffy, like one of them. That day, I went home, and immediately grabbed my mother and went straight to Kohls and bought all new clothes (she was there to make sure I wasn't picking out shit that would make me look worse). No more Wranglers for this scruffy guy; I got fancy jeans that have that pre-faded thing going on, and I bought a belt that screamed "Kid Rock" as soon as I saw it. Needless to say, when I go out on the weekends now, I look like a rock star.

If a welder calls you scruffy, can you imagine what women were saying about me? My mother said to find out what welder said that so she can send him a case of beer; all of the women in my life have tried to upgrade me, but what it really took was one off color comment from one guy in a welding booth to get me to look classier.

I think about this and smile while I'm on line for coffee. A fat blond woman stands in front of me clad in a massive fur coat that nearly reaches the floor. She has gold rings on her fat little fingers, and sunglasses on. I hate fur coats with a passion. It has nothing to do with animal rights, but more of a class thing; if you wear a fur coat, you're really showing that you think who the hell you are.

What a great country that America is, however, because she has to wait in line, huffing and puffing and impatient, behind a guy in a torn gray sweatshirt, paint stained jeans, and work boots that only cover half his feet. She gets her ice coffee, all the while yapping on a cell phone, then walks absentmindedly out to her Beamer, and I can't help but laugh.

I bet her husband is a CEO.

Wow

2008-01-20T23:08:00.000-05:00

If you weren't in NJ tonight, you missed out.

The chant goes up over the din in a crowded bar with dark wooden walls in New Jersey- Let's go Giants, boom, boom, boomboomboom, Let's go Giants boom boom boomboomboom.

People are arm in arm, holding each other up, some have their hands folded in silent prayers.

When the kick is in the air, we hold our collective breath, hoping against hope that our underdogs, the Pride of Bergen County, can pull off the impossible.

She sails through the uprights, true blue, and the place explodes in a roar, people are dancing and stomping and everyone is jumping up and down and the bartenders are wailing and Bon Jovi comes on the jukebox, singing, "RAISE YOUR HANDS!" and we are utterly stunned that our boys have pulled it off.

I said it before the game, that win, lose or draw boyos, we were fucking proud of you. But now we got one more game to go.

Jersey loves you, you amazing motherfuckers. Holy hannah montana, we are going to the Super Bowl.

Walkin in a Commi Wonderland

2008-01-19T12:37:00.000-05:00

APPARENTLY, some bars around here don't like it when you stand outside their place of business singing the Ricky Hatton song when you're very intoxicated. SOME bars might even be moved to call the cops in such instances.

Well, I ain't naming any names (Dexter's), but it's my God given right as an American to have freedom of speech, and those bars can go fuck themselves, because they're fucking Communists, and if there's one thing in this world I hate more than Communists, it's the Jews.

A couple other things also.

1. You know why I like P. Diddy? Cause he dances like a white guy trying to dance like a black guy. On top of that, there's a striking similarity between his dancing and that of the legendary Blues Brothers. If you don't believe, watch the video. So fucking awesome.

2. I have to stop meeting my one buddy's ex-girlfriends. When you bullshit about everything with a guy, including sex, it's hard to meet his ex-girlfriend and keep a straight face knowing that she squirts during sex and she gives you the ass on your birthday.

3. I finally found out why my nose hurts. I fell out of a car drunk and somehow landed only on my nose. I must have landed hard, cause it hurts a week later, but not hard enough that any other part of me touched the ground. I really need a video camera team to follow me around. I'd make an awesome reality show, although the liability insurance would likely be tremendous.

2008-01-14T23:21:00.001-05:00

Thank God Bill Maher is back on TV.

Giants

2008-01-14T10:08:00.000-05:00

When Romo drops back, the place holds it's breath. He slings a perfect spiral into the end zone, and our season hangs by a string. It's hard to see what exactly happens, but all I know is that when the ball lands, it is clutched by one man in Giants blue.

The roar shatters the silence in this dark Irish bar until it shakes the walls, and people are pounding on tables and dancing and we are on each other's shoulders and New Jersey explodes in a chorus that hasn't been heard in years. Sometimes, a team puts together something so beautiful, so fucking ballsy, that you can't help but be amazed.

We are stunned. All of of us. You are a team of nobodies, a team of rookies and journeymen. The jerkoff with the biggest mouth is hurt, and our "star" running back is retired. We were not supposed to do this. We were supposed to go quietly into the Texas night, like we always have.

But not this night. Our cinderella season continues, running on pure balls and the will to win.

They say that as they were walking in to halftime, Toomer looked at Strahan and said, "This isn't the last time we'll be on the field together."

And how about that shit, Plax? You motherfuckers actually brought this thang home on Sunday night. It is rare that I say this because of our ugly history... but Goddamnit we love you New York. Thank you.

Hey Texas, this is for you, with love.

For all the faithful departed...

2008-01-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

"You think any girl likes that? You stumbling around drunk? Why can't you just go out and have a few beers? Why do you have to get so fucking drunk?"

I sat at a bar on the highway last night, taking back shots of Jameson and bottles of Coors Light with my old friend who was in the Army. He's on crutches now, because he's as dumb a drunk as me, and somehow broke his leg wrestling.

I don't remember a lot about the end of the night. My nose hurts like hell, so I believe I got clocked, but my right hand is fine, which means I didn't get into a fight (as soon as I hit the air too hard, it swells up because of all the busted bones, so it's a good indicator). I am chalking it up to being drunk and fucking around.

"You remind me of Leonardo Di Caprio, you know, in the Departed? You've got that brooding thing..."

"Nah... I'm not as violent.."

The ugly truth is, don't expect anything worthwhile from me this week. This Saturday is the three year anniversary of my best friend dying. Although I am over it on the day to day basis, I am not over it in the greater sense. I get depressed in the winter consistently, and this only adds to it. I am tired of it. I am tired of doing all the shots for him, all of the stupid toasts with shots of Jagermeister. I am tired of seeing that blackened metal plaque in my head, the one that says his name, the reminder that he is dead.

I sat at the bar last night, a place that was crowded with people after a pretty decent show. I sat at the end of the bar for at least a half hour, alone, stewing over my whiskey and beer. There was an overwhelming sense of sadness that pervades me, where I don't wish to talk to anyone, and more or less want to be left alone. It's very unlike me, the social creature that I am. These days when I go out, all I want to do is fucking hit someone. I want to beat someone to the point where they lay bloody on the sidewalk, dripping a red puddle from their face. I want people to look at me and cringe, to wish that they didn't fucking know me.

"You fit the model of drug seeking behavior"

"Why don't you just give me a bottle of scotch and a handgun to blow my fucking head off ..."

She saw that movie with her boyfriend, and thought of me...

I don't know what to do anymore. People are angry when I come home furiously drunk. It's not a good thing when I'm just happy I didn't wake up in a jail cell.

Giants

2008-01-11T17:54:00.000-05:00

Normally I don't get excited for them. They aren't like the Red Sox, who I live and die by every year. No, I've had more dissapointments with my New York Football Giants then I've ever had with anything else in my entire fucking life, and therefore I place no faith in them, ever. All of us fans, we're all the same when it comes to that.

But now... finally, I'm starting to get that itch.

Stephen A. Smith: "So Plax, can I get a prediction from you?"

Plaxico Burress: "Well Stephen, we gon' bring that thang home to New York City on Sunday night, don't you worry..."

Don't fuck with me, Plax. I'm ready for a letdown. I'm ready for a three- interception, 38-point-blowout horrific loss where the Giants fold up like they always do when shit comes down to it. Don't be leadin' me on brother, I can't take any more heartbreak from you motherfuckers.... no more last minute field goals that beat us, no more failed onside kicks, no more season-opening 75 yard runs by Emmit Smith that sink our year, no more Dave Browns, no more Ray Handleys, no more 18 years without the playoffs, NO FUCKIN' MORE. Don't patronize us Plaxico. We know how you guys are.

But alas.... I will be there cheering. I will be hoping and praying, and I will barely be able to watch the fourth quarter, no matter what the score. And there will always be a part of me that hopes that you fuckers can pull through, and deliver the impossible. I saw my Red Sox do it against the greatest odds any team has ever faced; they make the Giants' path seem like a cakewalk.

Help me remember Plax, that nothing's impossible, and that there is always hope. And I bet if you win, Plax, Jessica Simpson will suddenly be all about the Lousiana blacksnake, if you know what I mean... and that alone would make it worth it.

2008-01-10T23:56:00.003-05:00

I want to believe in meself once again,
So I dream of a man who's hopes never end
To kiss with a girl who's as lovely as you
I'd give ya my heart
If you gave me the truth..

Books

2008-01-09T20:20:00.000-05:00

I just finished two.

One was the book by Rob the Bouncer. Is it written like a blog? Yea. Repetitive once in a while, especially when he's explaining a few basic points about his job. However, there are some great stories in there, and he does have quite a bit of talent, as well as that kind of miserable analytical-ness of mind required to be a great fucking writer. Plus, as a blue collar type Jersey guy, I appreciate the hatred of guidos... apparently the rest of the country doesn't have these scourges of humanity, and there's few that could explain the mind boggling idiocy of them without just breaking out into a stream of expletives. God I fucking hate them, and I hope Belmar burns this summer...

Someone on Amazon said the book doesn't have a good ending, just kind of leaves you hanging... that's when I swore I would never read another rating from those dolts again. It's a memoir that the guy is still living... what the fuck do you want? Explosions and strippers? People amaze me.

Either way, he's a genuine cat who has had a tough time. Read his book. It's well worth it.

Besides that, I've finished the book Brutal by Kevin Weeks, the strongarm #2 man of Whitey Bulger's South Boston mob. If you want to see why if someone really wants you dead, you will be fucking dead... pick up this book. Not a guy I'd ever want to cross. Besides that, you get a hint of what it was truly like to live in that underworld, as well as a portrait of the mythical Whitey from a different point of view. Especially intresting considering John Matarano was just on 60 Minutes this Sunday; apparently him and Kevin don't see eye to eye on exactly how Bulger should be treated. I would like to see how this all plays out, being as he's still on the run.

The Meanest of Times

2008-01-03T22:26:00.000-05:00

First, they don't give you a raise for a couple fucking years. But that's OK, this is a college job, you know? It pays you alright, works around your hours, you can deal with it.

Then, you graduate college. WOOO HOOO! Though you despise the old job with every ounce of your being, you stick with it, simply because you're comfortable, and you like the guys you work with. You're looking for a real job, the writing job that's going to come and save your ass and make you famous, the journalist job that's going to start you out. You'll have your own beat, your own portfolio, and hell, maybe even TIME will pick you up someday. You never know, right? The future is butterflies and fucking rainbows.

Well, you get shot down by every place you apply to. Hell, they don't even grant you an interview. Every paper, every publishing house, every magazine. Four years of college, and you can't buy a fuckin' seat on a park bench. Sure, I should have done an internship when I was there, maybe I could have some contacts, some experience... but you know what? I was too fucking busy. Busy with what? Working. Driving a forklift all hours of the day so I could pay my bills, my ridiculous car insurance ($7 G's a year, fellas, for three years), pay for my gas, and anything else that can be tacked on there. That was my fucking internship. It was an internship on the hard knock life, working with Puerta Ricans and blacks and white trash, learning all the bad shit and how to get away with it. But alas, there's no "contacts" that come out of that, no "references" to list on your application.

All that working 35 hours a week while going to school full time, all the literature and classes and professors and BULLSHIT, and this is what I'm fucking left with. Working 28.75 hours a week, getting paid absolutely nothing for it (cause it's been four years since I got a fucking raise), and praying that when I go into a metal shop in Ramsey on Monday, black Notre Dame hat-in-hand, that my buddy's boss (who may as well be a stevedore during the fucking Depression as far as I'm concerned) will grant me $12 an hour to pour metal and drive a forklift.

It'll be a new job, sure. And they'll pay me better. But the fact is, I am as jaded as one motherfucker can get. I am pissed. I am pissed at all those fucking high and mighty professors who made it sound so simple, who made it sound like you get out of college and people just fall at your doorstep to hire you, like so many dominoes. Well I guess that's what happens when you have fat motherfuckers who never have worked an honest, backbreaking day in their lives, teaching what they call, "Higher education".

The sad fact is, if I had joined the Navy right out of high school like my buddy, I'd be hired at $15 an hour and be moved up quick. Instead, back to the basement I go, with heavy gloves and a tired heart.

Writer's Guidelines: "It's not easy to break into Men's Health. Don't even try if you haven't been published in a major magazine. Still with us?"

NO I'M NOT YOU MOTHERWHORING JERKOFFS. I'M POURING FUCKING METAL BECAUSE YOU WON'T GIVE ME THE TIME OF DAY CAUSE I'M NOT RICH AND FAMOUS. FUCK YOU MEN'S HEALTH.

Wisdom

2008-01-02T22:34:00.000-05:00

"We both agreed that the most stress in a man's life came from women, who create more stress than complicated and danger filled business deals. "

Know who said this? Kevin Weeks said this about him and Whitey Bulger. If you don't know who they are, go look it up, and you'll see the massive irony in this statement. All the shit these guys had to deal with, and they all agreed that women were by far the biggest problem in a man's life.

No shit, Kev.

2008-01-01T15:44:00.000-05:00

He's tall with a shaved head, with a leanness that could make one describe him as "rangy". There is a laid back demeanor about him that betrays his Southern roots, a calmness that disappears as soon as he downs a couple beers. He's been one of my closest friends for at least five years, and he's one of those people that no matter where the Army sends him, he'll always be in contact with me, and it's always like no time has passed.

Leaning against my refrigerator with a Miller in hand, he talks to my father about all kinds of things while his fiance, who is sincerely one of the nicest girls I've ever met, bullshits with my mother about... well, whatever women talk about. Probably candles or cooking or something.

"I'm out in February. I go to Fort (whatever) on January 2, and then they deploy me."

They are sending him to Afghanistan, for our other bullshit war with another third world country that will never amount to anything except death. People talk about putting a human face on the war... but it is all too close for me.

I understand why he's in the Army. His father was in the 82nd Airborne, his grandfather was one of the Rangers who climbed the cliffs in the Normandy Invasion. It's in his blood. He votes Republican, goes to the Army-Navy game every year, and thoroughly enjoys America. He tells his girlfriend that he wants enough kids to start a baseball team (including a bullpen).

"Wow Court, looks like you're going to be pregnant for about... three decades. Enjoy your time now," I tell her.

Now every time I see it in the papers, "Soldier from New Jersey killed", my heart will race again and I will hope that it ain't him. His girl is too good, his father too cool, for anything bad to happen to him.

Pray for him. When I pray, God turns a deaf ear.... but maybe if some of you do, he'll be out of Afghanistan in twelve months, and he'll have kids and do all the normal things that every man should get a chance to do.

Rock N Roll Jesus

2007-12-27T18:38:00.000-05:00

If you haven't bought the latest Kid Rock album, then you are missing out on a piece of genuine American beauty. This motherfucker smokes. It is hard to get me to dance unless I've been drinking rum... but this CD had me rocking out all the way home from work, almost crashing at least twice.

That would have been hard to explain...

"So son, what were you doing when you rear ended that beamer?"

"Bein' a car dance mosh monster."

"What?"

"Sorry dude, Kid Rock was on."

Christmas

2007-12-25T14:11:00.001-05:00

Am I crazy about it? No, not particularly. It is very commercial, and being as I'm never quite sure about my religious beliefs, and as I'm truly uncomfortable with the sitting, standing, kneeling, "worshipping", and donating that goes on at the Church, it can be an odd time for me. When I have a girlfriend, I dread the family garbage that comes with major holidays; when I don't, I kind of wish I did, just because the holidays can be tough. There are high expectations that are rarely realized, and things can sometimes just be overly fake.

What I can say is this, however: for all my bitching and moaning about everything, I am a fucking blessed man. I have a good family, and for all their issues and addictions and tramas, I love them, and appreciate them. I have a massive circle of friends who create an aura of invincibility, and indominableness of spirit that has picked me up and dusted me off many times, and perhaps never so many as in the past year. It is neither youth nor naivete that allows me to say that these guys, the older brothers I never had, will never leave me in the cold. They are the source of all my strength, and without them, I would not be around right now.

And perhaps most importantly, I know that I am held dearly in the hearts of some women. Some have come and gone but remember me, some keep me in their minds as you read this.

These are things that are important to me. No one has died this year. I laid some old ghosts to rest... and the Goju-ryu is now my salvation, the thing that gives me the peace of mind that the Church never could.

The presents mean nothing... what means everything is being with the family for a dinner that runs far longer than everyone wants it too, and then going and picking up two of your closest friends so you can go meet others at the bar and celebrate this holiday with shots of Jameson and genuine smiles. Sometimes life is just absolutely worth living.

As always....

2007-12-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

The Grove

2007-12-24T00:47:00.000-05:00

"Yea man, I'm partying down in the Grove."

"Haha. Alright, I'll be there soon."

Now see, if you're not from North Jersey, you're not going to know what the fuck I'm talking about when I say "The Grove". Well, picture the worst, most badass white trash motherfuckers you can think of, and then downgrade it a notch and think about what their house must look like.

The Grove is a floodzone built under a couple of railroad tresses that is supposed to be knocked down by the city a week and a half ago. They are shit houses, to say the least.

One of my boys is drinking down here, and I've come to see him. The house he's at has an above ground pool and what looks like a pool table covered in hay where his mother is growing garlic, evidently. These boys sling the white lady like she's going out of style, and smoke the green leaf every fucking second. The lad that owns the house is a good sort, very tall with about six teeth, but a good soul lies in him and you can tell as soon as he opens his mouth. He likes me even more when he figures out that we like the same music. That's the thing with the people down here, and it's probably why my buddy invited me to come down- he knows that I can deal with them. As we talk, it's clear that I know alot of the same people that these fuckers know.

Another kid is down there, a guinea who looks alot like Christopher from the Sopranos, aside from the wide eyed coked up gaze he casts on everything and everyone. One look at him makes me remember very quickly why snorting just ain't for me- this motherfucker is everything you don't want your kid to be. I'm careful with him, agreeing when I'm supposed to, because getting this fucking guy angry isn't worth it. I could hurt him by himself, but he is certainly the kind that would stab you if he got the chance, and wouldn't realize it until he's been locked up for three months.

We drink a bunch of beers, and the coke that they're supposed to get never comes through, and I am grateful (that shit is just bad news, and I'm not fond of being around it). There is probably some moral to this story that I'm missing, but it won't come through tonight. The fact is that I've got more people I know that would be willing to pull a gun on someone quicker than look at you, and I dig that. I've been invited back for a bonfire at some point, and I will probably end up there. It is funny, but some of those guys are the most loyal motherfuckers you will find, because they don't give two shits about how muc money you got, or what part of my town your from- if you're down, they'll lay down in traffic for you, and their's something to be said for that.

I'm too fuckin drunk to keep typoing, so if you're not down with this, then fuck off.

Every Girl Ever

2007-12-22T13:27:00.000-05:00

Normally I don't post things that other people write because most people who aren't me suck. But this was just too fucking funny... and too fucking true.

It's me! Every girl ever.
Date: 2007-11-07, 10:38AM EST

Knock knock

Oh hi, how's it going? It's me! Every girl ever. I'm really looking forward to this date. I'm not nearly as attractive as you remember me being because when we met the bar was dark and you were drunk. Come on in.

Let's start off with the unavoidable tour of my incredibly typical post-college-girl apartment.

You'll notice that I went ahead and purchased everything that Ikea and Pier 1 have ever produced. There's my decorative birdcage over there even though I don't have a bird, and there's my gay wicker basket with bamboo poles in it. I don't know what the hell that's thing's all about, but I bought it.

Hey check it out, I have more candles in here than a Roman Catholic Church. Doesn't it smell like Hazelnut!? If I were to light all of my candles at once you could see my apartment from space! I fucking love candles!

Come on into the living room.

Oh, I see you met my cat there. That's "Freddy Paws Jr." Why don't you pet him and act like you like cats even though you hate cats? There you go. Oh, he took a little swing at your eye there huh? Yeah, he'll do that. Hey, let's check out the kitchen.

Hey look at my refrigerator. There are pictures all over it! Look at all these pictures of me and my equally vacuous friends from college! We were so crazy! You can tell we're really good friends because our faces are all pressed up against each other like that.

And check it out, we're holding up alcoholic beverages to the camera in every single picture. That's to prove that we were partying. College was so fun! But of course I don't talk to any of these girls anymore because now they're all bitches.

Let's go back into the hallway!

Hey, before we leave I'm going to go in the bathroom for ten minutes for some mysterious reason. Why don't you sit awkwardly in my big, stupid, round papizan chair over there while you wait for me. It's like you're sitting in a hug! Be right back...

Sorry that took a half an hour, I don't know what the hell I was doing in there. Let's go!

Wow! Thanks for opening my car door for me! I'm totally going to blow that meaningless gesture out of proportion and delude myself into thinking that you're a really good guy because that's what I want to believe.

Well, here we are at the restaurant. No thanks waiter, I don't need to see a menu, just bring me some expensive things. Hey I know, while we wait, I'll tell you all about my unspeakably boring job. I hate my boss. He's a jerk! I might get another job. Maybe something in pharmaceutical sales.

Now let's talk about my family. I love my family. I want you to love my family. I want my family to love you. I want you to make love to my family! I want you to go golfing with my semi-retarded brother Travis. That would be so God damned cute!

Wow! I can't believe I ordered all this food! I have no intention of eating any of it. No thanks waiter, we don't need a box. Just throw it out.

Hey, I've got an idea, let's go to a bar and have an after dinner drink! It'll be great, it will be just like how we're drinking here, only it will be louder and we'll have to stand up. Come on!

See, isn't this better? Oh hey, what a coincidence. Look over there! It's a group of my friends that I knew was going to be here. Let's go over there so that they can judge you!

Hey, I have to go to the bathroom for a half an hour again for some reason. You can stay here and talk to my unbelievably hideous friend Christine! Christine's so ugly she scares kids! Talk to her! She has a job and a family that she wants to talk to you about too. Be right back.

I'm back! Sorry I was gone for three hours, there was a line. I want to go home now.

Well here we are at my door again. This was really fun for me and not you. You should pretend like we're going to do it again sometime! Maybe I'll see you at Target a few months from now and we can avoid eye contact because you never called me. Here, have this awkward goodnight kiss that's as empty as my soul. Good night!

Ghosts...

2007-12-19T00:29:00.000-05:00

I sit at a bar, my bar, the rundown shithole of a building that I always end up at no matter how much I try to excape it. Even though the old girl's gone severely downhill in the past couple years, I still don't mind it... the worse it gets, the fewer people that go in there, the more it feels like the old Irish pub that it always claimed itself to be. A dark wooden bar with far too much lacquer on it, lights that are never quite bright enough, and a crowd that always seems depressed. There is a boxed-out corner with a couple of pinball games and that old basketball game where you shoot hoops to beat the clock. It gives the place the atmosphere that the boardwalk in Atlantic City has when you get too far from the casinos... attractions, multicolored blinking lights, a magnificient atmosphere... but a massive sense of sadness that lays in the air like a woolen blanket, as if all the brown buildings are telling us, I've had better days than this. Where have they gone?

I am talking with my longtime compatriot about our dead friend. We go through our stories, the ones we have told each other a million times but never tire of hearing.

"One month dude. One month from tomorrow..." he says.

"And then it's been three years," I say.

"Yup."

"It seems like it was twenty years ago that he was alive, like it never fuckin happened... but at the same time it seems like yesterday I was at his funeral.. Jenn didn't know what the fuck to do with me... It all seems like it never happened, like it was a distant dream that fades into myth as I get older.. we will tell stories of him one day, and he will be no more real to them than Julius Ceaser..."

An olive skinned girl walks by me, dressed to the nines in a black jacket, tight jeans, and high boots. Her yuppie compatriots trail behind her, clad in their sport jacket blazer looking things (or whatever the fuck you call them). The smell of Prada overwhelms me instantly, sits next to me at the bar. My heart palpitates. So familiar... Ignore it, boyo.

My buddy is quiet for a moment, a break in the conversation, and I catch the song that is playing on the jukebox. It is, of course, the one fucking song that I have never heard in a bar because it is so very sad...

I'm sorry I'm bad, I'm sorry I'm blue,
I'm sorry bout all the things I said to you,
And I know, that I can't take it back...

My friend begins talking again, but I am ignoring him for a moment, catching this moment where the senses are being hit so deftly, and this song means so much. And... then my phone vibrates.

I know you worry when I fly. Letting you know my plane didn't crash and I'm checked into my hotel. Be good you jerkface. Goodnight.

My heart screams and tears and claws at my chest, and I realize that what I said to my buddy about fifteen minutes ago is deadly true, a promise that I made to myself long ago to not let this fucking girl slip through my fingers as so many others have.

"I'm going to marry this fucking girl. She is fucking it. I don't give two shits what anyone else thinks, but after this one, I am done. Never surrender.."

Later on, I drunkenly tread across the ice to get in my truck, slowly pulling out of the icy lot, and Flogging Molly comes on the CD player. This is the CD I had on when we made out last December in a parking lot outside a Dunkin Donuts, and I remember how badly Track 5 ruins the mood, as the accordian in the intro completely fucks up the Irish aura.

On the way home, I begin to wonder if my life is ever going to be more than just missing people. It has been a long time since I was content with anything, especially myself. There has been an overwhelming emptiness in me for the past month, something that I cannot understand and have not had before. It is not a depression, or an anger... those things have long since flown from me. It is just emptiness... like when Hunter S. Thompson talked about Phoenix.

"It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get..."

Learning to not live in the past is the toughest thing for a smart man to do. Learning to regret nothing is even tougher. When I die, my heaven will be sitting in a dim but peopled Irish pub with a thatched roof where the Pogues and the Dubliners play together in the corner singing songs like, "The Irish Rover" and "If I Should Fall from Grace With God" and Alex is next to me and Ryer is on the next stool and a pint of Guiness is in front of me and I never have to cash out... just sit and listen to those old songs, and want for nothing, and miss no one. Then there will be no more emptiness... only happiness, the indelible happiness that comes with good friends, good drink, and true love.

The song that made me realize that we're really only here once.

2007-12-16T20:10:00.000-05:00

Some people think that the Lord of the Rings is gay. They'll look at it in the same way that I look at the people who play Warcraft for thirty hour stints- a hint of disdain thrown in with a shot of pity, mixed and served ice fucking cold.

And that's fine. But I, for one, enjoyed it. I read the book long ago, before there was a katrillion dollar movie made with flashy scenes and big name actors. I sat up one summer and read all thousand pages of it, coming home all drunk from cheap vodka, reading as long as my heavy eyes would allow me. The battle scenes enthralled me, and Tolkien, who is perhaps the most underrated writer of all time, described them with amazing clarity. You could see the gleaming walls of Minias Tirith, the old wooden floors in Rohan, the Vatican-esque calm that Rivendell inspired. It all came through those pages, danced and roared like a fire in its death throes. He invented his own world with it's own languages, its own history, its old vendettas and petty differences. He created human nature and dumped it all in, with all the fury of the World War I battles he had witnessed, all of the destruction and creation and beauty and horror.

What he also created was a perfect world... a world that we, as Americans, can no longer identify with. These are dark days in America now. We have gone from being the country that always rooted for the underdog, always helped its friends, always was looked at as the shining city on the hill... and we have destroyed it. What we have become is a nation that uses brute force to subjugate those who disagree with us. We are the nation that flounders in foreign wars like a two legged dog trying to swim, our men bogged down in deep desert dunes that despise us, wish us dead, gone. We are warlike, angry, fat, miserable people whom capitalism has left without a soul, everyone constantly in search for the bottom line, the money, the commission, the paycheck. We have forgotten our hearts in these days, the hearts that flailed and fought in the '60s, only to be crushed by the violent grip of reality. It seems now that there is no room for the caring, the innocent, the decent. Helping your fellow man is seen as "pussy", and the only attitude that prevails is the rough hewn "every man for himself".

People see this. We may live in our boxes, our little cubicles, where we think that America will always crush its enemies, that the Irans of the world will crumble and cower before our might, and the Iraqs will stablize themselves because, hey, we only came here to "free" you. We might have that attitude of, "Fuck the world, we'll do it ourselves". But the sad truth is... what exactly are we doing? When did we become this meglomaniacal demon country intent on fighting the world? What was once a bastion of freedom, a bastion of pure ideals from the Enlightenment, is devolving into posessing an increasingly racist, ultra-religious, thug mentality. We, my dear friends, are not so much the good guys anymore.

I know the excuses. The same old rhetoric from the same old people, "God freedom blah blah blah We're right we're always right cuz we're America". Well... that is a dangerous thing. If everyone in the world hates us, it's not because they are four and a half billion retards. It's because instead of stepping on toes, we have punched them in the throat consistently and hard. You may think that this is the same old liberal whinings from an East Coast limo elite, or whatever the fuck they're calling educated people who live in the cold these days. What it is is a regular, working guy's plea that we save this world, so one day my kids can grow up on a planet where you don't have to wear a Canadian flag on your backpack when in Europe for fear of reprisals because of your "President". It is a plea to return America to how it used to be, the thriving, heaving country where industry was second to integrity. Make America once again the country that does not start wars, but finishes them; the country that saved freedom for the world, not once, but twice, against incredible odds and brutal opponents. Give me back my country, my flag, and give me the freedom to burn the motherfucker if I want. Give me my bastion of idealism, of hope.

What the Lord of the Rings gives us now is the same thing that World War II gave America: a clear enemy. There was no question in the LOTR who was the evil ones- it was orcs, the goblins, the men who were intent on destruction, on ruling the world with a heavy iron fist. There was no question in WWII who was evil- the Nazis, the horrendous oppressors who showed nothing but absolute disdain for human life, for the beauty of the world. It was the American working men, streaming from the factories and onto the battlefields, the tough men with thick forearms who moved I-Beams all day at the top of skyscrapers, that ended that. It was pure America. Now, of course, it is far more unclear exactly who the good side is, who are the ones who appreciate human life, and who are the ones who wish only to end it, all by saying, "Fuck those ragheads, they're not like us".

My friends, we are all people. Those who have never laid at the end of the spear are always the first ones clamoring to use it, and our boys in the White House are no different. I don't know who can fix this fine mess, but when they do, it must be done with gentle firmness and genuine goodwill. Take that away for the Christmas season- live the color of our creeds! Be good men, and make our leaders be good men. Let them serve us, and make us the wonderful land that we once were. Choose to return us all to being good, honorable, honest men, who lead the fulfilling lives that we are so close to.

And for God's sake, vote for Barack Obama when he gets the nod. He is the last, great hope... or this darkness will continue enveloping us, and our country will end in burning tinders, in one way or another... a shadow of greatness covered in ash...

Am I seein' what I'm seein?

2007-12-16T11:27:00.001-05:00

One day, I will be able to watch the end of Cinderella Man and my eyes won't tear up. But that day is not today.

There is something about all the guys jumping out of their seats and rushing the ring, the people in the Church rejoicing, the bartender handing out the beers to a crowd four deep, the celebration in the streets, the announcer reading, "The NEW heavyweight champion of the world"... it is just gorgeous.

The REAL last rounds of Braddock's fight.

The Horror, the horror

2007-12-14T00:42:00.000-05:00

The movie Blood Diamond has disturbed me greatly. I wonder if women knew how many gallons of blood were traded for the shining medallions on their chests, or the litter flickers of light radiating from their fragile fingers...

What a beautiful movie... another one that gives hope to us bad fellas... that maybe we will have some redeeming moments in our lives.. where we can die happy men.

Ugh

2007-12-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling old lately. My left shoulder is continually deteriorating from an old football injury, my right elbow is still torn up from that strip club incident in Newark, I have a strained left tricep that refuses to bow out, my perenially broken right hand is fucked up yet again from boxing, and my hands are so dried and cracked from working in the cold that I've actually turned completely homosexual and started using hand lotion.

Things aren't looking up for me.

Or maybe you can tell I'm feeling old because I'm getting crochety and bitching about everything. Oh where's my fucking AARP card....

Devastated

2007-12-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

Upset isn't the word... but as I have said on here many times, life isn't like the movies.

Ricky, we love you anyway. Every champion loses once in a while... and we'll be ready when you fight again. Slainte.

Weigh In

2007-12-08T18:47:00.000-05:00

There are tears in my eyes as I watch the end of the weigh in.

Hatton grabs the mic, and he is fired up, and his timing is perfect. "Who you come to see?"

"YOU!" the crowd roars.

"Floyd?"

"NO!"

"Me?"

"YEA!"

"Who's takin the belts?"

"RICKY!"

"Then let's fuckin 'ave'em."

Make us believe Ricky. May the angels fly with you tonight.

There's Only One Ricky Hatton

2007-12-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

I have been waiting for tomorrow for over a year. I waited and hoped and prayed that it would come, and tomorrow it's finally fucking here.

Tomorrow night, we shall be privy to watching a pugilistic duel that will be one for the ages... and hopefully Ricky fucking Hatton will leave Floyd Mayweather's black ass in a bloody mess on the canvas.

It is a fight that is very nearly out of the movies. We have Floyd Mayweather, the loud, pompous fighter who pops off at every oppurtunity, telling the world how wonderful Floyd Mayweather is and how he is annihilates all challengers. Consistently bejewled with endless bling and trailed by a posse of hanger ons, the man is the absolute epitome of the joke that boxing has become. The issues with his ex-boxer father, the senior Floyd Mayweather, and his trainer and Uncle Roger Mayweather, are a well documented triangle of anger and hate that makes him even more ridiculous and petty.

Normally prima donnas like him don't last long in any sport- they cause too many problems and end up out in the streets. What saves Mayweather from this fate is that he may unfortunately be one of the best fighters that has ever lived. He is the finest counter-puncher in boxing, perhaps in boxing history, and his hand speed and reflexes are simply amazing. The man was born to fight, and his split second reactions to everything flying at him are proof that being in the ring was simply in his genes.

As impressed as I am by him, as a fan of boxing, I must be honest and say that I'm tired of him. I'm tired of the boisterous bullshit, the never ending shit talking, the family drama.

My message for the Pretty Boy: No one gives two shits that your father and your Uncle don't get along, Floyd. The world of us regular working folks are rife with family discord, and we don't even have your money to comfort us. We know you're fucked up- you're a fighter. That's not a career normal people choose. So please, for once Pretty Boy, spare us the crap. Shut up and fight. And please, lose.

And then, there is our boy Ricky Hatton. He trains in an old red brick steel mill in Manchester that's been converted to a boxing gym; his trainer is tattooed and toughened up by a hard life in England's ghettos (which are far, far, far tougher than you think they are). He howls every time he slugs the heavy bag, moving and swarming around the rocking black cylinder like a wolverine fighting a bear. He is the man, our working class hero that everyone expects to lose. He is Rocky, Micky Ward, and the '68 Jets all rolled into one, our body punching hero with the heart of a lion. Though he's a massive underdog, there are those of us that have faith in our boy, the Hitman from Manchester.

Ricky grew up in a family owned pub, and his garrulous nature stems directly from the old wooden barstools he learned life on. Anyone can watch him train, for the gym isn't his- it's the same old gym he's always trained in, and he is the local hero that the children come to watch, that the old women bake treats for and bring to the gym. He accepts them all with dignity, holding out some baked thing to the camera and saying, "This is how you know you've fucking made it."

He swears constantly, and they have to drag him out of the bar to get him to train. He is the man who is more comfortable on the local dive's barstool than in the Las Vegas lounge. While Mayweather wears fancy 3 piece suits and mountains of gold, Ricky wears a t-shirt and smile. He, my friends, is just like us.

Now, my message for Ricky: Go out there and do it. Do it for us. Do it for the regular working guys who punch in and out every day, whose eyes close prematurely in the night because of ten hour days in the cold. Do it because there are those of us in America who haven't given up rooting for the underdog, and haven't given up thinking that the impossible can, in fact, be achieved. For tomorrow, Ricky, you are Jim Braddock. You are the garrulous lad from the pub, the young tough who needs to prove to us, to make us believe again that we should never surrender, no matter if the odds are against us and all the bets are in. We will be praying for you, Ricky. FUCKING DO IT.

Can't You Hear Me Knockin Part IV

2007-12-06T20:23:00.000-05:00

Read the first ones before you read this. The link is on the sidebar. Or not, of course... I could give two shits.

I get directions to the bar, then return to the hotel to shower and shave, trying to look somewhere near human. I wipe my face off in the bathroom with a towel as my smoke curls up from my fingertips. The tiles are breaking on the floor, and the walls that were once white are now colored a grimy tan. I close my eyes for a minute, lay back on the bed and stare at the ceiling that looks like the top of a lemon meringue pie. When I'm in places like this, I imagine what has happened here before, what terrible things went on in the last thirty years in this very room that I'll never know about. My imagination wanders, and scenes run through my head like a movie... a man with a stripper, doing lines of yak off of the table until they're both so fucked up that he thinks it's a good idea to beat her ass instead of paying her, and she's lying a bloody mess on the floor between the two beds... a panicked man with a blonde beard wearing a red flannel trying to hide a gun in the drawer of the night table, next to the King James Bible...smoking cigarette after cigarette and shaking nervously.... a formally beautiful woman with stringy hair tying a ripped piece of a shirt around her arm, furiously working to get that needle in the arm to make the ripping feeling in her stomach go away....

This happens to me all the time. I see ghosts, memories, things that may or may not have happened, things that I know occurred things, things that I wish occurred. It used to happen in my living room; nights when I would watch my ex-girlfriend walk out the door for the last time as I slept soundly, ignoring, as I always do, everyone else's trials and tribulations in favor of taking care of myself. I would see dead friends standing next to me when I would have lonely cigarettes outside parties, and they would be leaning on railings, grinning, looking out into the woods. Sometimes I see happy things, good memories where my grandfather and I would sit out on the deck of his massive house and watch the bats fly over at dusk searching for food. I would worry that they were going to attack me, like they do in the movies, and he would laugh at my goofy fears, signs of a dumb kid who had a lot to learn.

Other times, I see the black truck flipped over, blood all over, the piece of glass lodged in my cheek, my eyes rolling around. I didn't know what to do when I came to, so I lit a cigarette, sitting there upside down in the crushed cab of the pickup.

It always ends the same way, with caskets going into the ground, and roses on the lid as I kiss my hand and lay it on the gray metal, again, and wonder when He's coming to collect from me. That is normally the end of my wanting to remember anything, and the ghosts fade out.

I look at myself in the mirror, and even though I look better than I did ten minutes ago I still look like hell. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m sick. I think about doing some pushups to get my blood flowing, but I’m too damn tired. I need a beer.

I don’t want to attract attention to myself, and so I don’t put any gel in my hair, sticking with an old Red Sox hat with a broken brim that I’ve had for about ten years. As I’m walking out of the lobby, I ask the broad at the counter where the nearest bar is.

“Four miles west.”

West again. Of course. “OK. Is it a shithole?”

She says nothing, just gives me a dirty look. My Jersey accent is coming through, and the farther in I get, the less everyone seems to like it.

I head down some road that winds through the hills and climbs up for miles only to drop and wind again. I keep thinking I passed the fucking place, until I happen upon a house in the middle of the woods that has a big porch and a huge gravel parking lot off to the side, and the only thing that tips it off to me that it’s a bar is a neon "Budweiser" sign in the window. I pull in, get out of the car, and I hear loud blugrass rolling out. It slowly winds down, and again the lot is silent except for a howling in the distance that sounds like babies crying.

The porch creaks under my boots, and I open the screen door and then the heavy wooden door, and I’m seriously hoping that this is a bar and not some rednecks’ house that I’m walking into. My fears are allayed when I see a gray haired, ponytailed guy asking me for five dollars.

I pay him, then keep my head low as I walk to the far end and sit in the corner. The haggard bartender comes over, and I order three shots of whiskey and a beer.

“That’s five dollars,” she says with a toothy grin. Another ugly one. At least the beer is cheap though.

“Here," I say, handing her a ten. "The extra is for you.” She smiles at me and I cringe on the inside.

The stage is at the far end of the room running from wall the wall. There are tables set up in front of it, and we at the bar remain in the back. There’s a couple young guys who have ragged beards and sound like rednecks sitting next to me, and I can barely understand what the fuck they’re saying between the noise and their accents. It’s a constant reminder that I’m nearing Appalachia with every mile southwest I go, that accent. That, and the Denny’s that New Jersey got rid of a long fucking time ago.

The band is good, led by a tall man in a tan cowboy hat with a brown goatee. He is smoking through some Stevie Ray Vaughn song, and he plays it as well as the dead guitarist ever could. I am amazed. Some broad is dancing and screaming to the song, and she’s the only one on her feet in the place. I can’t tell if she’s black or white, and even whether it’s a “she” or not is up for grabs.

This is an old time bar, and this broad is definitely out of place. There are a lot of old hillbillies here, and it’s certainly not the kind of place I want to start a fight at. There’s a couple of guys with wearing blue flannels at the end of the bar, and they’re giving me looks that make it seem like they don’t like that I’m here. There are a lot of older people here, friends of the band or of the bar, and I am not safe here.

"You all got that same damn look, you know that? Them bewildered eyes... you’re all the same." The voice came from behind me.

“What?” I turn around.

There's a woman standing there who I didn't notice when I walked in. She seems like she might have once been beautiful, but that has long since left her.

“You heard me. All you boys from the East thinking that running out of your homes is gonna help something."

“The fuck do you know about me? Christ, you hillbillies are crazy.”

“Crazy? Maybe. But we know about people. We seen men like you. You’ll never be here again, but you’ve been here before ten, twenty times. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen you. Once you’re gone, another one will come with another story. You can’t hide out here forever."

"Really? Thanks for the advice." I turn away, getting more pissed.

"Ghosts don’t get lost on these highways or in these hills. Sometimes, there just ain’t anywhere you can go. Sometimes they stalk you, and flood you. Other times they’ll just knock on the window of your hotel room and make you think that it’s a tree branch. They’re patient, you know? They got all the time in the world."

This broad is creeping me out, and as I walk away the hairs on my neck raise again. This whole fucking state is creeping me out. I knew that when I started driving out here, I should’ve listened to myself. I buy three more shots, and get lost in my head again as the music blares.

You should know that since I was little, I’ve hated the country. I know I said that before, but the reasons have changed as I got older. Now, I think that it’s too open, there’s too much space, too much room to get lost. Men can disappear out here, and that woman said something that I’d thought forever- the ghosts here don’t forget. There isn’t progress out here, there isn’t civilization, there aren’t bulldozers and buildings and things collapsing and being rebuilt and changing. There’s just woods; the same woods that were here, that have been here, the same woods that will always be here. They can talk to each other, they can tell the stories that we have forgotten. The ghosts wander aimlessly here.

The houses have seen the Civil War, some have seen the Revolution, some were hospitals for both. There have been ten or fifteen generations of men that have never left the same ten square miles, and there is a mysticism down here that we don't have back in New Jersey. These folks take their lore seriously, so seriously that sometimes it makes me wonder if the things are true.

I want to leave, but I’m less comfortable out there then I am in here. The band has filed offstage, and only the guy with the tan cowboy hat is left. He plays the guitar like it’s no one’s business, and right now all he has is an acoustic with him, and he’s sitting on a stool. His eyes are closed, and his goatee covers his mouth as he looks at the ceiling. Suddenly his head is back towards the ground, and he begins stomping his foot. The bar is still. He’s going into his own version of Johnny Cash’s “God is Gonna Cut you Down.” The black broad is still shaking her hips in accordance with the music, and is slowly backing over by me. She’s getting a little too close, and I stand up off my barstool. She’s singing.

She turns around towards the bar, grabs someone’s beer, and drinks whatever is left. When she puts it down I see there’s a cigarette in the bottom of the bottle.

She looks up and is mumbling, then looks straight into my eyes, her wild short afro soaked with sweat, singing, and it seems for a second that the whole bar is stomping along with the beat that the guitarist.

“As sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”

The hairs on my spine rise again, and I start backing away from this thing. She’s seething and staring, my head begins to hurt, and room begins to spin. All I can hear is the chorus, over and over, “You can run on for a long time…sooner or later God is gonna cut you down.” Everyone in the bar is staring at me and the bartender leans over, her ugly grin right next to my ear, and I hear he utter in a low whisper… “Guilty.”

Why I'll Never Make it in the White Collar World

2007-12-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

The Appolonians are making their last stand. Glaucus stalks back and forth, sword in hand.

"Soldiers of Troy! You men are warriors! To lead you has been my honor!" He pounds his chest as he says this, and they scream their doomed reply.

Paris enters the torchlit chamber, and he and Glaucous exchange stares and handshakes.

"My prince!" He turns to the remaining men, who stand shirtless and furious.

"The boatman waits for us! I say, we make him wait a little longer!"

He pounds his sword to his shield as his men scream again, and the Greeks break into the room, and Glaucous gets a sword between his shoulder blades courtesy of Odysseus. They fight until none remain alive.

Where, oh where, have men gone? Where are the men who would pound their hardened spears to their shields and welcome honorable death at the point of a sword? Where are the men who would stand firm as the shadows of darkness drew near, fighting without hope because that is what they were meant to do? We are gone, gone in the dim light cast by the headlights of BMW's and the fancy comfortable houses born too large. We have forgotten hardship, sacrifice... we have forgotten what being men actually means.

When the deep snows drift and you huddle around a crackling fire for warmth, looking at your cracked knuckles and your aged face... maybe we think that not all is lost, that the office buildings and pussified yuppies will always, always take second place to those of us who they know could beat their asses into a bloody mashed pulp.

Tell me nothing of where the power lies. It lies not with money or prestige or the illusions of grandeur that so many of my generation share. It lies not with their apartments overlooking the City, nor with their jobs paying 100k right out of college. It lies on no stockholders' floor, on no computer screen. It lies in the scarred hands of us, for they all fail to realize the simple truth that those of us on the underside have long known: The power lies, and will always lay, in the hands of those of us that are physically stronger. It lies in our hearts and our muscles, the ones who know, even though you may drive a motherfucking Land Rover and have some fucking spoiled cunt wife who doesn't tip.... you know that if it was me and you in an alley way, and only one of us would walk out alive.... it wouldn't be you.

There is no man that shouldn't be put in this position at least once in his life. I have put my fist in someone's jaw; I've put my knee into their eye sockets and watched them fall limp backwards. I've beaten guys till they couldn't fucking move, and I've choked them until they puked on hardwood decks. I know I won't win every time.... but at least I know what I'm made of, what I'm capable of if put into that situation. Sadly, that seems a rarity in today's American world.

Some say there's too much violence on TV; I say that there isn't enough in real life. This world is a terrible, dangerous place. No amount of preparation is too much...

Shadows and Dust

2007-11-30T19:57:00.000-05:00

It is a frigid day, and as the sun sets behind the hills I feel the temperature drop another ten degrees. It is days like this that I truly like working outside; the Christmas trees are stacked six feet high, and the contrast between the warm green laying against the hardened redstone ground as the snow begins to fall makes me think of the opening scene in Gladiator. It lets you know that you're alive, makes you feel like your spine is made of stone and you will never die.

Out of the lads I work with, I am most certainly the alpha male. Though not the oldest and far from the largest physically, my personality overwhelms theirs consistently. I am more garrulous than the other fellas that are around my age, many of whom can only hold a conversation when it comes to things like fuel injection and link kits and all the other things that I know nothing about. The younger kids look up to me for some odd reason, probably because I give lectures on History in between drinking stories. I can't tell you how many have said to me, "Man, I wish you were my teacher, I'd have learned the shit." It's amazing how much some guys will absorb when you take them out of a classroom, let them light a cigarette, and swear a couple dozen times while you're talking... I should teach seminars.

I won't lie, I'm not easy to get along with. I am extremely confrontational, (a product of being 5'7") and very physical. I swear too much, and bluntness is my only virtue. I am either OK or pissed off, there are few in betweens. I have a terrible tendency to make a mess of my life consistently, and this can put me in some pretty foul moods. However, for some reason, these fuckers like me. I guess I'm entertaining with my tales of fights, strip clubs, drinking, and whatever other misguided adventures me and my compatriots have embarked on. Besides that, though, I think that they can sense that I'm not a bad guy- I don't have stories about heroin or jail or any of the other really bad things- just dumb drunken ramblings that always have a punch line that everyone can laugh at. I mean no harm.. I'm just completely wild at heart, and appreciate good roaring stories that never let the truth get in the way. I always tell my bosses that after I leave there, things will likely go alot smoother, but it won't be half as fun.

"You ever gonna get married?" one asks me.

I grin. "I suspect one day some poor girl will sucker me into that. Not soon though. I'm not looking forward to it... and fuck me, forget kids!"

"Why?"

"Man, because it's already been declared by my mother and all of my exes that I'm having all daughters."

"Why do they say that?"

"Because I don't know how to handle women. I can't smack them around when they fuck up like I could with a son... and plus, they'd be like me, good looking as fucking hell, and then I'd really be in trouble. I already see it. The first one, she'll be the decent one, the one with a conscience, a good heart, all that. She will most likely take after whomever her mother is, because she's likely to be a far better person than me. So #1 will be fine. It's #2 that I'm scared of. She will be like me, dark and Italian looking and a knockout. And she will have my fucking attitude, my hatred of authority, my smartass wit, my Irish heart. And she will be the trouble maker. When she is born, I'm going to buy many guns. I'll grow a beard, grow my hair to my ass like the old guy in Blade, and when her first boyfriend comes over she will say, "I'd let you meet my father, but he's busy downstairs cleaning his shotguns." I'll work my fucking forearms the hardest in the gym, just so when I meet the cocksucker I can crush his knuckles in my grip and smile."

I see myself, some day, looking into the dark and undoubtedly devilish eyes of something that came from me, and I know in my heart that that will be the only thing to truly reign me in. I will hold her one day and sing the Irish ballads about Botany Bay and the Famine, and about how each kiss is a cry we all lost. I used to dread this.

Now... not so much.

2007-11-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

With her killer graces and her secret places that no boy can fill
With her hands on her hips, oh, and that smile on her lips because she knows that it kills me
With her soft French cream, standing in that doorway like a dream, I wish she'd just leave me alone
Because French cream won't soften them boots and French kisses will not break that heart of stone
With her long hair falling and her eyes that shine like a midnight sun
she's the one

That thunder in your heart at night when you're kneeling in the dark, it say's you're never gonna leave her
But there's this angel in her eyes that tells such desperate lies, and all you want to do is believe her
And tonight you'll try just one more time to leave it all behind and to break on through
Oh, she can take you, but if she wants to break you, she's gonna find out that ain't so easy to do
And no matter where you sleep tonight or how far you run
She's the one

Oh oh, and just one kiss, she's fill them long summer nights with her tenderness
That secret pact you made, back when her love could save you from the bitterness

Free

2007-11-26T19:24:00.000-05:00

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Thanksgiving Eve

2007-11-22T21:36:00.000-05:00

We are sitting on the grass field drinking tallboys of Coors Light after the annual Thanksgiving Day football game. I am smoking a cigarette and lying flat on my back, having taken a mighty beating in the hour's worth of my being there.

"I slept outside last night. It seems to be the thing to do when I'm drunk."

"Again?" I'm not terribly surprised anymore.

"Yea. I got my sleeping bag and my mat, took them outside, put my shoes nice and neat next to the bag, and went to sleep. I think I might have jumped off the deck. But then I fucking rolled down the hill at one point and woke up on that wall, and I kept trying to roll back over and go to sleep, and then I fell off it. I fucked myself up." He shows me the bruises that decorate his elbow and hands.

"Dumbass."

"I always wonder what the neighbors must think, the people on the left are new. I thought I woke up at like 8, but it was really noon."

"Oh yea. They're probably getting home from Church or something and they see you sleeping drunk half in the street with a sleeping bag twisted around you."

"We're the salt of the Earth dude."

"Indeed."

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T14:15:00.001-05:00

I sit in and dwell on faces past
Like memories seem to fade
No colour left but black and white
And soon will all turn grey
But may these shadows rise to walk again
With lessons truly learnt
When the blossom flowers in each our hearts
Shall beat a new found flame

Happy Birthday

2007-11-21T08:36:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday Ryer. You'd have been 25 today had you lived. There is not one of us motherfuckers that doesn't think about you every day.

I slap my buddy on the back of the head. "We got everyone here. Let's get everyone to do a shot of Jagermeister."

"You buying?"

"It's for Ryer's birthday dickhead. Get your money out."

He looks at me, then looks down. "Yea. Good call. Let's get a collection."

Ten minutes later I'm standing on the barstool, handing back fifteen shots of Jagermeister. "Alright lads. For the barroom hero who is no longer with us. We'll see you in hell brother."

Slainte' brother.

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, 5
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay, 10
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man. 20

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head 25
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Idealism at it's Finest

2007-11-19T21:33:00.001-05:00

Thank God for the martial arts. It is the one thing that brings some kind of serenity to my otherwise turbulent life.

I have come to the conclusion that there are just three things that a man should revil in:

Number One is winning a fight. It doesn't particularly matter what type of fight it is, as long as it's a physical one, and not the guys who think that getting a promotion over someone else makes them a warrior. I mean a fistfight, a boxing match, a wrestling tournament, a bullfight, whatever. "Mundis Ex Igne Factus Est"- the world is made of fire. When you're exhausted and your muscles hurt and your inhaling gasoline and blowing out fire, but you push ahead and win anyway, nothing makes you feel more absolutely alive.

Number two is loving a woman passionately and purely. Not just for the sex (which kicks ass, of course), but also just for her, for her mind and soul. These don't come around too often, and there may be but a couple in all the years of living. But when they are around, they are worth holding onto, worth fighting for.

Number three is pissing in the leaves when you're drunk. There's something wonderfully primal about it, especially if it's in your own yard.

Can't You Hear Me Knockin Part III

2007-11-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

I'm driving on Route 80 towards the sunset, and I see the green sign that says, “Allamuchy Exit” right above the highway. I'm almost to Pennsylvania. I hate this state, but right now I just have to get away from that damn strip club, because I’ll be damned if that guy isn’t dead, and the cops will soon be looking for me.

This state is tough on me, brings back a lot of memories. When I was young, my grandparents had a house where I would be every weekend, going to swap meets in the burning sun, visiting whatever old Pennsylvania Dutch town they made into a museum. Day after day I smelled the scent of horse shit that permeates the streets there, some of which are still made of that swirling brown dust that exists only in the country. I got used to noticing when we crossed a river, and would imagine in my child's mind Yankees and Rebels fighting on the banks, charging next to the car, bounding through the woods like dear in their pursuits of each other. The rebels always won.

They are both gone now; one dead and in the ground, the other's heart as stony as those bottom of the Delaware that I was passing over. Memories still haunt me; there are always ghosts standing guard, eyes burning a special brand of red when they see me coming. When I smell horse shit now, it no longer smells like home... it smells like fucking Judas-in-the-ice-Satan’s-wings-burning-for-eternity hell, and if I inhale too much of it will suffocate me and I will drown slowly.

I always wondered why Pennsylvania has a toll getting into their state; there's nothing there, so why do I have to pay seventy five cents to see it? The Delaware is low and wide, as it normally is during these massively hot days in August, and I can see the bottom of the river shake through water so clear that it shimmers like a piece of ceran wrap. This bridge is maybe fifty or a hundred feet up... if I jumped, would I live? Or would I crash upon those old rocks and break myself into pieces, and have my teeth float down and end up in Delaware Bay? See here I go, getting all philosophical and shit. It is a curse, one that I’ve just attributed to having an overactive mind. But see, again, I know what you’re thinking already. This guy, this fucking guy, can think like that?

Sometimes you regular folks mistake “not caring” for “not understanding.” People like me, we can appreciate stupid, cornily beautiful things just as much as you, be it an auburn sunset over the mountains to a single green stalk of life raging it’s way through the concrete. We just look at it differently is all. We see the hope, we see the great fight for life- don‘t underestimate us. It’s just that at the same time we see the world for what it is- a cruel, vicious place that will kick you in the teeth when you are down. We see the beauty and all that, of course, but we also refuse to be the ones who’s teeth get kicked in.

I’m am awfully articulate for being such a piece of shit. Don’t let the movies fool you; there’s plenty of smart people out there that never went to college but still read books once in a while, and some of us can even sound educated when we want to. But don’t let that make you think that we’re not still lowlifes. Reciting Shakespeare while you kill isn’t any more noble than reciting Roadhouse.

I know you’re wondering if I feel bad about the guy at the strip club. The honest answer is that it depends on whether he’s dead or not. If he’s not dead, then no, I don’t feel bad. He was a sucker who got caught in the middle of me trying to stay alive and that stripper trying to make some extra dough. That’s capitalism baby- knock out who you can and take what you need. It’s the American way.

Now, if he’s dead, then the story might change. Then, I just killed some mother’s son, and maybe some poor wife’s unfaithful husband. Some kid is going to wake up tomorrow with a dead father, and it’s likely that this kid will end up as fucked up as his old man just because of the two seconds that I saw a knife flash in the dark night. If nothing else, this doesn’t help me sleep at night. These are the things that I can’t think about, the things that I have to push out of my head and attribute to my war for survival. One day, God will come for me. I know this. But I hope it ain’t today.

I pull off of 80 and into the blackness that blankets the countryside. In five minutes I’m on some backwoods road that no one has seen since 1916 and I grab the bag from underneath the seat. The white powder cascades down the sides of the clear plastic like a Guinness when it‘s poured right. I cut a little line out on the center console, and though the plastic makes it a pain in the ass, I snort it and my head shoots up and my eyes are huge and ready and I’ve already forgotten what I did and how I got here.

I've been driving all night into the sunrise, and my eyes are beginning to shut involuntarily even as the light pounds their lids. I pull over at the nearest hotel, which is about ten minutes south of 80. The haggard woman at the counter gives me my key, and the room is 222. Second floor, left hand side. I drag my sorry ass in there and collapse onto the maroon comforter of the twin bed that hasn’t been washed since Pearl Harbor. I sleep soundly for thirteen hours.

I awake with a jump, startled by some dream that I can’t remember. For a second I am entirely disorientated, like when you wake up staring at a ceiling that isn’t yours after a night of hard drinking. I shake my head quickly while falling back onto the pillow, my hands wiping my eyes clear of the fog. I glance at the alarm clock. 10:00. I need food. I get up, a mess of coughing lungs and heavy conscience. Why can’t I sweep this under the rug? I’ve killed before. My conscience always hits hardest when I’m hungover. When I’m sober, I can rationalize things, take life one shot at a time and roll with it. When I’ve been drinking, I forget all my problems. When I’m hungover, I just feel guilty. There’s been times that I felt like offing myself after a night of drinking even though I know nothing bad happened last night. The sins of the past, though, they crowd upon me and hold my head under the water, there lithe fingers strengthened with hatred and anger.

I wander down the staircase with it’s white paint chipping and flaking off and head to the front desk.

“Where’s the nearest diner?”

“About three miles west. You’ll see signs.” The haggard broad has her perennially annoyed face on. I hate her immediately.

“Alright. What about a bar?”

“Same road, another mile at the intersection. Ask the people at the diner.”

“Thank you kindly.” I fake like I’m tipping my hat to her, and, while I really want to give her the finger, I bite my tongue and my wit and walk out the glass doors and into the cool night.

I light a cigarette, and am caught off guard by the amount of stars out here. It’s not something you would think about, especially coming from where I come from in Jersey. But it’s kind of like how some city people can’t sleep when it’s too quiet out- I can’t walk when there’s too many stars. Sometimes, amongst the city lights and sirens, I forget all that’s out there.

I follow the directions she gave me, and they lead me to a low brown building that lies on the side of the road with a lit up sign that says, "Food, Coffee, Cigarettes" written in red script. There's a line of bikes outside, along with maybe three or four other cars, two of which are minivans, both of them a maroon color. One has a "Baby on Board" sign in the window.

Taking a seat inside, I light another cigarette, silently thanking God that the Democrats haven’t made Pennsylvania into a pussy state yet by banning smoking indoors. My mind rolls like a gyre as I stare out the window into the lot that is lit by a few small bulbs. Is that motherfucker dead? How far do I have to run? If he isn’t dead, I get assault, possibly assault with a deadly weapon or attempted murder, depending on which way the broad goes. If I she says she never saw me, then I’m good. If she already rolled, then I’m fucked and I’ve just got to roll with it. Fuck, there’s not any fucking money for an attorney, I’m damn near dead broke except for the little that’s in my account, and that-

“SIR!”

She scares the shit out of me. Whoops. A scowl decorates her face, like she has been standing there for a while and has something better to do besides wait on me. I know she doesn't.

“Coffee," I say.

“No food?” she asks. I look at her. She is ugly, with matted brown hair and fucked up teeth. I don't know how these rednecks get so damn ugly... although I bet it's probably the same process that makes most rich families beautiful- they breed the ugly out. It's kind of Aryan, if you think about it, just in reverse.

“No. No food. If I want food, though, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

I know she’s going to spit in my coffee now, but fuck her. I look out the window again, and see the bikers smoking cigarettes by the line of Harleys. I don't know how they got out there without me seeing them, but they look like hell, most of them just wearing the colors and no shirt, which gives them that rugged look of guys who haven’t showered in a couple weeks and don’t give two shits. Most of them are smoking cigarettes, and half of them are drinking beer in open view of the road.

I see man walk towards the door, leading the way for his wife and kid. She is wearing black pants and a pink tank top, and she has a perfect ass and I can just see the trouble lining up right here. As soon as they enter the night, it becomes abundantly clear that the wife has made the mistake of being gorgeous and blonde, and this has attracted the wrong kind of attention.

The bikers swagger over towards her, and I can see their mouths moving. The husband is getting nervous, and he should be. As the bikers talk, they begin to circle the couple, and now these poor folks are caught in something that is going to get very out of hand very quickly. One of them grabs the husband firmly with a hand on his shoulder, and begins snaking between him and his wife. The man's eyes remind me of my golden retriever’s when she knew she was about to get a bath.

There’s too many of them, and he’s getting pulled away and the rest quickly close in on her. The little kid is starting to cry, and the wife is getting extremely upset, and all I can think about is how I wish I had a fucking shotgun and how I’d blow every one of their heads apart for screwing with this woman like that. I’ve always had a soft spot for women even though I hate them, and right now I feel like I’m watching one of those old horror movies where too many girls die in too many gruesome ways and that sick feeling wells up inside of me. How much of a hypocrite am I, huh? I can’t watch this shit, but I can pull the crap I’ve done. I guess it’s like my mother always said about me having a heart… it will be your worst strength and your greatest downfall.

The kid is wailing now, and the guy is either too smart or too cowardly to really put up much of a fight. I’m considering getting up and going outside to try and break this shit up, but I’m not in the mood to get the shit kicked out of me.

I put the cigarette out, and there is a war going on inside me, because I cannot watch whatever is about to happen happen, but I am powerless against twenty of them. My eyes tear involuntarily as they always do, but as I'm about to stand up, I see a man intently walking from the end of the parking lot. He's a big man who walks with his head down, and he's got on a black cowboy hat that makes him look like a riverboat gambler. He’s got his hands in the pockets of his jacket, this man is somehow dangerous.

He nears one the bikers, and I see a badge flash from his left hand while he pulls a gun out with his right. He’s pointing at the guy, not overtly aggressive but firmly. He motions to the gun with his head, and points between the outlaw’s eyes. There is a moment of tension as they stare at each other, and I back away from the window.

Suddenly the biker laughs, and waves his hand in the air. He puts his arm around this... cop, and starts yelling to the other bikers. They release the guy, and the woman and child are left alone long enough to get the hell out of there and into their car. The minivan speeds off with screeching tires, and the cop turns and begins walking towards the road where he came from. His head is low again, and he’s not nearly as proud of himself as I would be if I just faced down a bunch of bikers. For a second I wonder if he’s thinking about what would have happened if he hadn't been there, and why such terrible things happen in this world that good men like him have to stop... but then I think that he's just thanking god nothing happened, because they'd have killed him too, as soon as look at him.

I look down. My coffee is cold.

I walk out and look at the strips on the pavement from where the bikers burned out when they left the diner empty handed and mighty pissed. I hope a trailer jackknifes in front of them and they all die in a gas fire, burning slowly in flaming puddles.

No One Gets My Sense of Humor

2007-11-15T18:46:00.000-05:00

"She's in my phone as "Eleanor" now."

"Eleanor?"

"Yea man. You ever see Gone in Sixty Seconds?"

"Yea... Ohhhhhhh... I get it... she's your unicorn, huh?"

"Yup. Everything starts out fine, then before you know it shit blows up and goes down and the next thing you know I pull in the lot with a beat down beauty missing a side view mirror. Something always fucking goes wrong."

"Give me her phone number," he says.

"What? No. Why?"

"So I can get all drunk and yell at her. I'll be like, "Goddamnit, do you KNOW all the shit I have to hear at work because of you? Do you understand this? Do I have Doctor Phil written on my fucking forehead? Will you just fucking go out with him finally?". That should do the job and settle all of this."

"Oh yea. That's foolproof."

"Yup. And get this, so now my girlfriend wants me to shave my chest. I told her that I don't want to, I hate even shaving my face, you know?"

"I hear you. I did that once, but I'm way too hairy to even try to keep up."

"Yea, really, with that fucking wool rug on your chest."

"It's manly as hell. You know it. Don't be jealous."

Shortly after this an annoying cashier broad walks over and starts yapping to us about absolutely nothing as women so often do.

I look at him and smile. He knows what I'm thinking. I ignore her, and say to him, "Yea dude, so the next time your girlfriend says something about you shaving your chest again like that to you, just hit her."

"You mean like a donkey punch?"

"No, no, I mean like wail her one," I say, swinging my arm in the air in an exagerrated punch. "Give'er another black eye to explain to the neighbors. Show her who's boss."

His eyes light up. "Yea, yea, and then, and then, I could tell her... that she's not hairy enough."

"Exactly."

The cashier looks at me with wide eyes, turns around and hurries away.

I glance at him. He has a shit eating grin on his face that I could never explain to you.

"Goddamn, is that all I gotta do to get her away from me?" I ask.

"I guess so. Shit man, I wish we'd known this like two months ago."

Can't You Hear Me Knockin Part II

2007-11-14T21:01:00.000-05:00

She looks at me with wide eyes, and shrieks, “What the hell happened?” There’s blood all over my left forearm, and it seeps through my fingers as I try to wipe the remnants of his brain off of me.

“He fucking moved. I go to swing, and he moved his damn head and I hit him on the shoulder. He had a knife”. I look down and see the 4 inch black folder that cost him his life. I don't fuck around with knives, because if I'm slow on stuff like that it would have been me laying there.

I look down at his motionless body, and the massive amount of blood that’s pouring from his head. This is still bad. Very bad.

As I crept up behind him, the dumb broad let him catch her looking over his shoulder. Being the perceptive type he apparently was, he must have sensed what was going on and moved at the last second, causing me to strike him in the back of the right shoulder. He must have fished a knife out of one of his pockets and slashed at my forearm just as I caught him flat against the side of the head with the pipe on my second swing.

“Christ, oh Christ, is he fucking dead?”

I look down. Lifeless isn’t the word for what he is.

“Probably. If the pipe didn’t kill the bastard, then his head hitting the pavement did.”

“Oh God, the cops, oh fuck I gotta get out of here!” She is beginning to lose it, her eyes are wide and those white fingernails are flailing.

I look at her. A knife in the back.

I leap at her, grabbing her by the throat and slamming her against the brick wall. “You fucking listen here, say a fucking word about any of this shit, and I will fucking end you. You hear me? I will kill you soon as look at you. The cops are going to come, and ask you a shitload of questions, and you’re going to tell them you have no fucking idea who hit him or what happened. If you narc me out, I will kill you. I swear to Christ.”

The fear grinds out of her eyes as I tighten my grip on her windpipe. I will blow your throat out the back of your neck. It’s the same look. She knows I mean business… Christ I hope she knows.

My mouth is an inch from her face. “You never saw me, you hear me?”

“Y-Y-yes.”

In seconds I bound around the building and am at my truck, throwing the now dripping pipe in the bed at the same time as starting the car at the same time as hitting drive. My tires sear the pavement as I pull out onto Route 80, and though I'm unsure whether to choose East or West, the exit for West is closer so that's the way I go.

The phone has been ringing incessantly all morning. He knows exactly who it is and what he wants, but is enjoying making him sweat it out a bit. I t is, one could say, his privilege to keep his old acquaintance at arm’s length for now.

He lights a cigarette, looks in the mirror, sees the reflection of an middle aged African American man whose black curly hair has stayed in exactly the same spot for quite a while, although he’s getting a bit of gray throughout his beard. Not bad for such an old fucker, he thinks, fixing his tie. He has been old for a long time, but you would never know that. He walks out of the bathroom and over to the table, picks the phone up before it rings.

“Yes?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“That diner on Route 3.”

“If you want.”

The phone clicks off. He smiles as he blows the smoke out and looks out his window onto New York harbor.

It's beginning to snow as he pulls into the parking lot.mo Another damn cold Jersey day. I should really move South. It truly is depressing here in the winter. He walks up the stone stairs, sees his compatriot at the table inside. He waves off the waitress as he approaches the man he has not seen in quite a while. The man is a muscular man with thick forearms, his dark brown skin covered in a blood red Hawaiian shirt with dark blue flowers cascading around the sides.

“That’s quite a shirt.”

“Sexy, ain’t it?”

They don’t shake hands as he pulls the chair out, sits down at the table while now waving the waitress over now. “Miss? Irish coffee please?”

She nods. The man looks at him. “This early?”

He shrugs. “What do I have to lose? So… what do you want? Why’d you call me here?”

“You know why.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a fresh newspaper clipping, carefully unfolds it, places it on the table and slides it across.”

“Hmmm…. Man Murdered outside Strip Club.” He puts the paper down, looks up at him. "So?"

“He’s mine.”

“And what makes you think you I don’t want him?”

“He killed this guy with a fuckin pipe. That’s some brutal shit.”

“It is. But you have a problem.”

“And that is?”

“That he ain’t all bad. I did my research. Purple heart, ex-cop,-”

“Awwww bullshit. You’re really gonna play that hippie ass, pussy liberal “product of his environment crap” right now?”

“It’s not crap,” he says coldly. “And yea, I’m going to. He’s not all gone yet. I don’t think he did it on purpose. And until we figure that out, until we know which way the motherfucker really goes, he’s on the table.”

“You knew I was calling about him?”

“Of course I did.”

“He could be a big asset if… you know…things were to get rough with you and me again.”

“I know that too.”

The man eyes him up and down, his eyes settling momentarily on the suit jacket. “That an Armani suit?”

“Just bought it yesterday.”

“Aww shit. When did you start getting all classy?”

“I figured… what the hell. Might be time to upgrade.”

Can't You Hear Me Knockin' Part 1

2007-11-12T20:06:00.000-05:00

I am a bad man. I wasn’t always, mind you. But I am now.

See, I could tell you all the things that have made me this way, I could tell you where the scars came from... but you don’t care. You probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. You all live in your happy worlds, your violence free, trouble-less enclaves where the birds are always chirping and the leaves are always green and it's always Friday. I don’t live there. Hell, I’ve never even seen the signs for it.

I could tell you. I could tell you what it’s like to believe all the lies. I could tell you what it’s like to be a little God fearing Catholic who is brought to Church every Sunday and put down on a knee to beg for forgiveness for things that you can't comprehend. I could tell you what it’s like to be told over and over by sickened, twisted priests that we are sinners, all of us, even me, and how you end up walking around as a twelve year old burdened by some great guilt that transcends the centuries. I could tell you, but you don’t care.

I could tell you what it’s like to have believed the greatest of lies, the lie that all nations purvey, that serving your country is glorious and honorable. I could tell you what it’s like to be 18 and invincible, to be charging hard across the Iraqi desert in a chopper going a hundred miles an hour looking down the barrel of an M-16. I could also tell you what it feels like when that chopper flips over because some asshole at the Pentagon never realized that the fine Muslim sands would burrow into the edges of the propellers, causing an imbalance that’s guaranteed to send the thing ass over tea kettle after a few missions. I could tell you what it looks like to have your buddy from boot camp sprayed all over you as he’s chopped in two, and the torso falls neatly away from the legs still crouched next to you. I could tell you how those guys feel about their purple hearts, walking around on fake legs with diced up forearms. I could tell you what the nightmares are like.

I could tell you what it’s like to be hopeful of a better life when you get out of the military, to go through the cop exams and do well and be proud. I could also tell you what it’s like to cradle your partner’s head in your lap as he spits up blood because of the bullet hole in his back from some scumbag nigger with a vendetta against cops in the slums of Newark. You watch his life drip down his blonde goatee, red, runny, and terrible, and it mixes with the tears falling from your eyes as he tells you to, “Please, please tell my daughter I love her.” That blood never comes off your hands, it sits there and burns like acid, it burns in your heart. I could tell you.

I could tell you what it’s like to walk into your home, the house you had built, and walk right in on your wife, your sweet angel of a girl who you loved since the first time you saw her, and see her riding the dick of that Jew she works with. I could tell you what it’s like to slam him against the wall, to make him eat the barrel of a glock, and tell him that if you ever see him again you will blow his throat out the back of his neck. I could tell you about the fear in his eyes when he pisses all over his half raised black suit pants, all over the carpet that I fucking put down. Motherfucker, I could tell you.

But you don’t care. I know you don’t. No, you never told me you don’t care. But I know. I know you don’t care because if you knew what I was about to do, if you were on the jury if I get caught, all you would read is, “Ex-cop with Mafia ties beats man with pipe.“ And then you’d vote guilty, cause you don’t give a shit where I came from or what I’ve been through, all you know is that you sure as hell would never do something like that, even if you had no other options after you got thrown off the Force for getting drunk and shooting up the bathroom at some shithole bar in Elizabeth. You know why? Cause you don’t understand what it’s like to know that no one gives a shit. You watch them kill each other in another country, cutting each other’s throats and strapping their kids with bombs, all over which imaginary friend is real. Then, you get back here after “serving your country“, and they’re blowing each other away under the streetlights over heroin. You never saw what happens when the stray bullet kills a baby’s single mother, or what happens when some drunk asshole lights his old lady’s house on fire cause she banged his brother. You never see the shit that’s left over. I have. Man, I could tell you.

You don’t know what it’s like to lose all your faith in humanity, to watch everyone die or ditch you. Oh, you might know what it’s like to lose everything. But you have no idea how if feels to stop caring if you get it back. It’s like getting to that point of dehydration where you stop sweating- it’s past the breaking point, and things are going downhill from here. Because if you realize that the world don’t care… then you stop caring back. And that’s how we get to where I am right now. That’s how we make a bad, bad fucking man.

The bar is a long rectangle with raised platforms inside it for the girls to dance on. You know the type- they only have this setup at places where room is scarce and the girls don’t speak English. I am sipping a rocks glass of Jack Daniels’. A little knockout with raven hair is dancing up there now with her back to me, rubbing her chest against the brass pole while "Last Dance with Mary Jane" plays over the speakers. She has hair like Jess. Just like Jess… it even moves the same way when she shakes her head, each hair flails individually-

She walks up behind me, wraps her arms around my chest with her long, fake white fingernails

I tighten my back. “Get the fuck off of me. You know what you’re doing tonight. Go get on it.”

I hear her sneer as she rolls her eyes. “Fine.” She saunters away, her black skin wrapped up in a blue dress and white fishnets, teetering on those ridiculous high heels.

I down some more whiskey, trying to stay somewhere near sober so I can do what I have to. My eyes are locked on her as she works her magic. She’s not a bad looking broad, with long, curly black hair framing her face. It’s not a face that looks like the rest of these women, with the wrinkles and lines and the hard shell of makeup, their futile attempt to make the years go away. I daresay she’s beautiful in the sad way that only strippers can be; you would do anything to get them out of there if you could trust them, but they’d put a knife in your back as soon as anyone else’s. The suckers that don’t realize this are the ones that get burned, and that ain’t me.

She told me once, “Give me a break. I hate doing this shit. I’m just down on my luck right now. ” I rolled my eyes.

“Fuck. Aren’t we all, honey?”

She’s flirting with a guy back by the pool tables. He’s a tall, blonde guy with a toothy grin wearing a pair of torn up jeans, a disgusting yellowed white t-shirt, and a green mesh hat. These hillbilly’s never cease to amaze me. How the hell can you walk out of the house looking like these guys do? At least put some gel in your hair if you’re trying to get laid tonight.

I can tell he’s putting on his game face, trying to work his Appalachian smoothness on this poor unsuspecting girl. He whispers in her ear, and she giggles and smacks him playfully. She makes the offer. He smiles. Bingo.

Ten minutes after they disappear out the back door, I order a double of Jameson and put it down, then drop a twenty on the bar and walk out. My truck is backed into a spot right near the highway, and I drop my hand in the bed as I walk by and take out the gunmetal gray pipe that was once on the bottom of a fencepost. I almost feel bad, I think, as the gleaming light from the illuminated yellowing sign reflects off the metal. I light a cigarette as I look up at it. “Centerstage: A Gentleman’s Club.” Right.

I turn the corner, and stop for a second and see the action going on against the building. It’s like clockwork. Her back is pressed up against wall, and she‘s standing like I told her to, keeping his attention on her while he lets her hands are working lower and lower. This guy is getting a good time out of this. I hope it’s worth it. She looks at me in the shadows, must know I‘m here. She’s impatient. I stomp out the cigarette.

In the Streets of Newark

2007-11-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

My phone vibrates at 9 in the morning. I pick it up and the first thing I hear is, "Yes, I have your wallet."

"Fuck man, screw my wallet, what the fuck did you do to me?" I say.

"What the fuck did I do to YOU? You deserved it!"

"I can't move my arm and I got a black eye. What the fuck did we do?"

"Well, we got outside that strip club and you decided you wanted to bareknuckle box outside. So we went at it, and I took you down, and you had me in the guard and we were just hitting each other. Then that bouncer came out and started yelling at us going, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO DOING? What's WRONG with YOU?" and then Prushka came running out yelling at me. Alex was dancing around us while we were fighting, doing that Mick Jagger chickenwalk shit."

"Who's Prushka?"

"The stripper I'm going to marry."

"Oh."

But anyway, we ran to the truck cause we... well, didn't know what else to do. You were a violent little fucker last night- when we were on the turnpike going home you kept slapping me, and I told you that if you did it again I was going to pull over and beat your ass. So then you caught me with a good one right in the ear, so I pulled over and went after you. That's when Alex decided he was going to learn to drive stick shift and jumped in the driver's seat and ran the curb and hit that guardrail."

"Christ."

"Yea. The funny thing was two cops passed us and left us alone. I still can't believe we're not in jail."

"They must have had something really fucking important to do if they passed up arresting us. They would have been doing us a favor if they locked us up... "Christ guys, Save us from ourselves".

Thursday

2007-11-09T19:55:00.000-05:00

Devils Ticket, 5th Row at the Prudential Center: $115

Ten beers at Stadium prices: $85

Brawling with your best friend outside the shittiest strip bar in Newark while the bouncer screams at you and the Russian stripper Prushka runs up in her clear heels yelling, "Frank what are you doing stop!" and when you finally tap out and say I'm done, he looks away and you deck him with a right and it starts all over again while your other friend dances around the madness: FUCKING PRICELESS.

Broken Arrow

2007-11-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

I'm strapping the black gloves onto my hands and clenching my fist around the small piece of padding that makes up the center. There is sweat pouring from my face, but after the heavy bad it's time to do targe mits. I love doing them.

"See, that's why I stopped calling that broad back."

"What broad?"

He gives me confused look as he picks up the mitts, slides his fingers through the grooves in the back.

"The new one."

"Oh, you're not going out with her anymore?"

"Nah, I was never going out with her. Just seein' her. But we were approaching zero barrier, and I had to cut it off before it got worse."

"The fuck is zero barrier?"

"The three month mark."

Another quizzical look from him.

I think for a second. "Alright, you ever see Armageddon?"

"Yea."

"You know that there's that certain point very close to the planet where if they don't blow the asteroid in two by then, both chunks will hit the Earth and end all life, making the whole fuckin mission null and void?"

"Yea."

"Well, they called that, "zero barrier". The three month mark, that's the "Zero Barrier." Once you hit that fucking thing, you'd better be able to make a choice as to whether you're going on further or not. That's why I don't blame my buddy for dropping the "L-Bomb". He'd been going out with that broad for four months, and she said, "I love you." Now he's faced with the zero barrier- he either has to go on and say it back, or he's got to end it right there, because you know if you don't say it back after that long, some shit is gonna go down. I was at about the one month mark, and I figured I'd cut it before the tide got any heavier. She was too fucking hyper."

"Yea, I hear you."

I think of the real reason I ended it with her, and cringe inwardly a bit. Sucker. She has you yet again... a siren who lures you too close to the reef.... I'm beginning to do my beginner's version of shadow boxing, which probably looks like a kid with down syndrome having a seizure in front of a mirror.

"See, I said it to J probably three months in or so, but I meant it, so I was cool with it. Al, now she said it really early, scared the fuck out of me, and it was nearly a month before I could say it back. I knew that I did, it was just one of those things where I had to be sure, because those are some heavy words to throw around. Whenever it's happened to me, I haven't been wrong, but then I've been around women enough. Him, he worries me cause it's his first girlfriend. Gotta be careful with them."

"Right."

"Now see I thought about this a little today, and I figured out what you call it when you drop the "L-Bomb" and go past zero barrier, and then you figure out you made a mistake."

He smiles. "And what's that?"

"Ever see We Were Soldiers? That Mel Gibson movie?"

"No."

"Well, it gets to a point in that movie where the American lines are being overrun, they're outgunned, people are dying, and the Viet Cong is pouring out of that mountain like hornets out of a fucking nest. Mel Gibson stands up, looks around, walks around a bit, and then, with a somber look, grabs the radio guy and calls out, "BROKEN ARROW!" The radio guy's eyes widen and begins hollering into the phone, "BROKEN ARROW! I REPEAT, BROKEN ARROW!"

"Ahhhh."

"Yea, so if you make it to months 4-7, have dropped the L-BOMB, and have gone past zero barrier, but figure out you fucked up, then you've gotta call a BROKEN ARROW.

"And what's that mean?"

"It means you call in all available air support, stack planes up at every thousand feet, and start dropping napalm all over the fucking place. It's a desperation move."

"No, I mean with women."

I'm quiet for a second. I hadn't considered this.

"You know, I don't know for sure. But my guess is it involves calling her a cunt."

When the Fates Flick your String

2007-11-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

My phone vibrates in my pocket as I sit in rush hour traffic.

"What's up?"

"Nothing. Your father totalled the Subaru. Can you call work and tell him he's not coming in?"

"Christ. Is he OK?"

"Yea, we're fine, we were just going to vote, and something happened... I'm sore, his shoulder hurts, but we're alive, so it's alright." How about that Irish morbidity? Never fails.

"Fucking Christ, it was both of you?"

"Yea... but my cell phone is about to die, so can you call them?"

"Yea, yea, of course, no problem."

That could have been both of my parents in one fell swoop. It's funny what you think of during the near misses, when you realize that any given night could be the last that you spend with those you love... Especially when it's not just you that you'd have to deal with, but also your little kid brother.

I'd have to take the kid. I'll be damned if I let any of the other fuckers in the family come near him... and I'd couldn't even drink my way through this one, because he'd be depending on me... I'm 23, and there is absolutely no reason that he should go anywhere else, and I would have to take care of every financial thing, funerals, insurance... sorrow and sobriety are terrible bedfellows, that would be tough... it would be like that Dave Eggers' novel... I'd be paranoid about him for the rest of his life, would never let him go out, never go in another car ever again without me driving it. Oh the nightmares that poor kid would have, oh I've been there.

If they had me at the scene, I would kill the other driver. I would kill him in front of his fucking kids, and I wouldn't feel bad for a second, just put my hands around his throat and choke the life out, How dare you make my brother an orphan! No mercy for you tonight, my friend.. The cops would try to hold me down, and I'm sure that I would hit a couple of them, I'm sure I could plead temporary insanity later on. That wouldn't be for me... though I dread the day, I have come to accept that one day my parents will not be around, but my brother, he has no conception of loss, of death, he doesn't know how to handle that..

People laugh at me when I utter the phrase, "There is no tomorrow." I laugh cause I know they have no idea what they're in for.

The Girl..

2007-11-04T19:11:00.000-05:00

I have to put this back up, because sometimes things just ain't done, even when you thought they were.

It occurred to me tonight that the four or five people in other parts of the country that read this fucking thing might wonder why I have these random posts relating to Johnny Cash, or missing someone, or missing a "certain blonde". I think it's time for me to lay these things on the line for my own peace of mind.

Last year, I had a good thing going for a long time. I was with a good girl for three years, and I thought, "Well, this is it. This is the one. This is the last girl I'm going to sleep with, the last girl I'll ever be with". I was close to settling down and being done. I really did love her, and God bless her for putting up with all my shit over the years, all the drunken mistakes and asshole behavior that I am prone to... but it was not to be.

My life changed one day in early October when, in a writing class of mine, I was forced to do a profile on a subject in the class. I remember the professor sitting at the head of the squared tables, picking who was to interview whom. She said my name first.

"Steve... why don't you interview..." Her eyes searched across the class. "Alexis?" (Name changed to protect the not-so-innocent).

I cringed.

She came to me after class, and we set it up for a Thursday, I think. Oh, how I dreaded this motherfucking interview! It was going to suck, because not only am I terrible at talking to people I don't know, but I'm even worse at talking to girls that I think are attractive and don't know. To compensate, I figured she was a ditz and I would be able to con my way out of it by claiming it was her fault the interview went terribly. I figured the professor would see my point- we were absolutely mismatched. This broad was completely different than me in every way: tall, gorgeous, dressed in expensive clothes, and utterly cheerful in way that normally makes me sick. I remarked to a friend of mine that she was hot, but didn't seem like she was all there, if you know what I mean (It was only later on that I figured out that my professor likely knew how opposite we were, and that's probably why she put us together.)

On that fateful day, I walked up and saw her sitting on a bench by the student center, talking on her cell phone. I passed from a distance, and saw her gaze over at me. She did not look happy about doing this, either. I held my index finger up in the universal sign for, "Gimme a minute" and went down into the building to get myself a drink. I bought a pink lemonade, then went outside and sat down to get this goddamn thing over with.

It started off as any interview with me would likely start- me being difficult. It's a defense mechanism; people have to prove themselves to me before I give them the time of day. Show me you're not an asshole, show me you're not stupid, and then we'll talk. She asked me where I grew up, when my birthday was...standard fair. I gave curt one-word answers. Then, she made the mistake of asking me about my childhood. I did an arrogant half laugh, shook my head... "We're not going to go there." It was at that point that I think she got pissed off, and closed her notebook.

I took over the interviewing, since I was being such a pric and we both knew this would go nowhere if it depended on me. I began asking her questions, and she answered them all with charismatic laughs and giggling answers, frequently flashing a smile that could put any man on his ass. I watched the golden eyeshadow on her eyes as she looked away while talking, flailing her wrists that held a few gold bands... she talked with her hands constantly. Every time she got up to throw something out, I would steal a quick glance at her ass, because... well, that's what I do. She wore a black shirt and silver shoes, and her hair tumbled down her shoulders in a careless way that I knew took hours to achieve.

She was cheery in her answers, and yapped on about anything I would let her. She talked about her family, her father, her friends, her hopes. Begrudgingly, I realized that I couldn't not like her... and I just couldn't be a pric anymore. It was somewhere around then that we began to actually talk. Not interview... just talk. She disarmed me with her prescence, her lack of anxiety or fear. I marveled at her. She was sexy, but classy; she didn't show everything she had, but she still made you want her. She wasn't a girl you just wanted to fuck- she would be far too difficult to deal with for any man just after sex. She was that girl you fell in love with accidentally, the girl that you pined after because she is, unlike so many others, fun. She was the girl that had all the looks but never needed to use them, because she was too busy making you laugh with goofy noises and sound effects for her stories. A glance from her eyes and a smile were enough to make me want to fucking die.

When I asked her what star she thought should play her in a movie, she mentioned Debroah Messing. I had no idea who this was.

"Well, she's on Will and Grace. Have you ever seen that show?"

"Ahh...that's the one with the two queers, right?"

She looked at me in half amazement. "Yea, the two gay guys and the girl..."

"Nah. Never watched it. I'm not much for those shows."

She laughed at my blunt crudeness, and flashed her smile again.

"Well, how about Reese Witherspoon? I've heard people say that about me, too."

She struck a nerve. I was on a Johnny Cash kick at the time because I'd just seen Walk the Line, and I had literally fallen in love with Witherspoon's June Carter.

"Yea... I could see that." She reminded me a lot of her. A tough chick who didn't take any shit, but genuinely could care about people; it was too ironic. She'd never seen it, but she took my word for it.

She had a boyfriend of years. They were set to get married, and she had it in her head that it would be inside of six years; it seemed an odd number to pick, but at least she was aiming for something. I figured that being as she had a boyfriend of that long, she was safe, because I would never get anywhere with her (no matter how hard I tried). She wanted to own a personal relations company one day, but recoiled at the idea of being just a career woman.

"No! I want kids. I want to see something I made grow up... to treat them as well as my parents treated me."

She freely admitted that she was spoiled, and I would later learn of other traits that were not so flattering, such as a tendency to be selfish, or to disregard the feelings of others. Even being aware of this, however, I knew she had a good heart, and good intentions, and was just wary of letting herself get fucked over. The reasoning for this became clear later- her boyfriend had cheated on her once, and it tore her apart. Rarely do I feel sympathy for people, but this time it tore me apart for her, because even though I'd been through all the shit I've been through (that you've read on this here blog), I've never had someone so close to me absolutely betray my trust like that, and I couldn't imagine what it felt like. Count me among the lucky few that have not been cheated on... I hope never to be in that spot, because I would likely react terribly. I could tell she was still bitter about it, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

Much of the interview is a blur now. She poked fun at my tough guy image, my incessant smoking and black Harley t-shirt. "What kind of tough guy drinks pink lemonade?" The thing lasted nearly two hours, and it ended with me telling drinking stories (of course). When we both decided we should go, a strange feeling hit me that hadn't been there in years: I don't want this to end. Alas, it had to. We got up, I lit a cigarette, and we said our goodbyes.

As I walked away from that thing, I was in stunned silence on the way back to my truck at what had just happened. Over the course of two hours, I had fallen completely in love with a girl that I should, by all means, have completely despised. I broke up with my girlfriend soon after.

It was much later that I would tell I was in love with her, when she pushed me to the edge and I feared losing her so much that I was forced to reveal how I really felt. On our coffee dates on the blistering cold days of November, there was a thick tension that one could slice with their hand if they moved too fast. We first kissed in a parking lot at the college, and it was one of those heart-stopping moments that people dream about and writers put into movies while "Boys of Summer" plays in the background. As I held her white soft white hand in my calloused, sun-raked paw, I realized that something inside of me had changed. My heart melted when I looked at her, and there were times that I could not talk for fear of losing my composure. I'm typically a hardened stoic... but around her I was made of clay.

There were many coincidences, things I used to tell her were "signs from God." Both of us were supposed to be graduated already. We both took that class though neither of us required it to graduate, and both of us were in our last semesters of our college careers. We both had other relationships, and seperate lives to deal with. And, of course... we both thought we would hate each other. It was only later on that I would find out that she figured I would hate her, and so she immediately disliked me- she thought I would think of her as a "dumb blonde with small boobs" being as I had once made a remark about Playboy in class. She figured me for a womanizer and an arrogant bastard (she was right on one, at least.)

Before I knew her, I thought she was a ditz, a dumb blonde, a high-maintence, unsatisfiable whiner. What I found was a girl that stole my heart from my chest in the first seconds, and has held it in her grasp since then, holding on firmly despite my half-hearted attempts to take it back.

What has blossomed between us is an intense love that is so fucked up and strange, but so real, that neither of us could explain it hard as we try. Never once in those first minutes did I ever think that I would be looking back on this the way I am now. When I looked in her eyes, never did I think that I would still be with her, around her, eight months later. I never dreamed of the passion and despair that could come with loving such a woman, and I never realized that my emotions for someone could run so deep.

In those eight months, it has been up and down, always incredibly passionate but never anywhere near stable. There have been countless dissapointments, moments of absolute joy, and hours of lust. Through all of this, she remains scared of me, somehow. She fears something that I cannot understand, some type of feeling that she has never had before or does not want to deal with. It is tearing me up because I simply don't get it, and I guess I never will. She still keeps me at arms lenth, never quite letting go of her inhibitions, and we go through frequent trauma that is not helped by her tendency to blow things out of proportion... and then there's always my drinking. We go through long periods of not talking, bare bones contact... only always end up back together, if only for a little while.

During those times of tortured silence, this fucking thing, this blog, is the only way I can really communicate with her, because I know she reads it. So, in essence, when you see Johhny Cash references here, they are messages to her, and her alone. When I say I am missing someone, it means that I am missing her... and her alone. And when I say "I love you" , it means that I am loving her... and her alone.

And no matter how much hell she puts me through.... I don't think that will ever change.

The Greatest of Loves, the Greatest of Heartbreaks.

2007-11-02T00:34:00.000-04:00

I remember the first time I was love sick. It seems like so long ago by now, but in my mind's eye it is a fond memory that only barely seems like it ever happened.

I think I was about 11, most likely in third grade, the age where unrequited love abounded. At that age, you don't know what the fuck you're doing, and the whole school is talking about who each other "likes". It's funny shit to look back on, because I hear my little brother saying the same kind of crap when he talks to his friends. Before I dismiss it as "little kid shit", I remember how seriously we took that kind of stuff when I was that age... it was, of course, a life and death matter.

Her name was Chloe, as I recall. She came to my Catholic school in third grade, and I was immediately enamored by her. I was king shit of fuck mountain back in those days, the only little rebel who grew his hair longer just because the people that ran the school said it couldn't go past your collar. So I rocked a kind of mullet like it was no man's business... cause... well, fuck them.

We had hit it off from the start, this witty raven haired beauty and I. To this day I remember how she used to immitate the accents of people from other parts of the country, and how outgoing and friendly she was. The first day I met her was some unassuming September day, and man was I in love. We didn't sit next to each other, because my name ended in a "J" and hers in "T", so I would do my best to talk to her across the multitudes of seats between us. Sometims you'd get lucky and a teacher would do the rows differently, seating people horizontally instead of vertically, and I would catch a break and sit next to her.

Every quarter semester, our seats would be rearranged, and according to who talked to much or too little, we'd get adjusted accordingly. Every time this happened, it was one of those beautiful young things where every time our seats were changed, I would hope and pray that I sat next to her. The few times that it actually happened, I would dread the passing of time, knowing that the liklihood of sitting next to her two times in a row was about the same as the Red Sox winning the World Series (in those days, it was a rare occurrence).

Being so young, I had no idea what was happening to me. I knew that I "liked" this girl, but had never had that odd feeling before, that warmth inside when she talked to me. It caught me quite off guard...I guess why that age right before teenager-dom is so fucking hard for kids.

By fourth grade, I was a complete sucker for this broad, but never had a chance to really talk to her. But, alas, one day, the day before our Halloween break (Catholic school gave us breaks for everything), our desks were rearranged in a big semicircle, and I was lucky enough to sit by her for the party. Because it was so damn long ago, I don't remember what transpired between us or the words that were said, but it sure as hell left me on cloud nine. We got goody bags that day, filled with candy and all kinds of little chocksky bullshit that only a kid could appreciate, such as plastic rings in the form of creepy stuff and other assorted oddities. My ring was some kind of dark blue skull thing, and hers was something like a hand outstretched in horror movie fashion. I wish I could transcribe what we talked about on that day, because I'm sure it'd be funny as hell, but it escapes me now.

My parents and I went out for dinner later that night to some dark restaurant with wooden I-beams holding the ceiling up and yellowed walls. Christ, I wouldn't see her for another four days because of the vacation... four days! How was I to live? How could I endure? That was longer than God had been alive as far as I was concerned. Hell, by the time I came back, it was assured that I wouldn't be sitting next to her, and my golden oppurtunity was gone! (oppurtunity for what I don't know, but fuck man, I was 12). I already figured that that little Indian kid was trying to edge in on her, and with my luck he'd be sitting next to her on the fateful Monday that I returned to school. I should have whacked that kid, and showed him what's what, goddamnit...

I fingered that little plastic ring as it slid on my finger, and all I could think about was that goddamn girl. When the food came out, something in my stomach flopped over, and the last thing I could think about was eating. Food? Are you kidding? I'm in Loooovveeeeeee! How could I eat at such a time? Life and fucking death, and you people want me to eat french fries? Really? That little fucker is going to be sitting next to my girl Monday and you're asking me about ketchup? No. None of that.

"I'm not hungry." That was my first taste of love. Bittersweet till the end.

We finished out that year, and by fifth grade both of us had left the school. We went to our prospective middle schools, and eventually met each other again in High school. By then though, the "magic" was gone. She was one of the popular girls, and I was one of the fuckups, and never the twain met. But I'm sure she remembers those days just as I did. They were good.

I tell this story because for the first time since then, I am longing for a girl like I did so long ago. The times have changed, of course. I am no longer young and innocent. The skin around my eyes is beginning to show signs of the abuse of the last ten years, and I know exactly where my wrinkles will come on my face. My beard and sideburns grow in thick, and my dark eyes have a sadness that they didn't have in those old heady days. Being a smoker and a drinker has made me look like I'm ten years older... too much life, I guess, both in the good and the bad ways.

But in my heart, that warmth is the same. I am 23, and still here I sit, a 12 year old fingering some old plastic ring, thinking of some girl who I am madly in love with. As old as I get, as tired as I am, I am still that same eager kid, hoping against hope and praying on first sighted stars that my love does not go unrequited this time. This one is the only one who has the wit that my first old love had, that has the beauty and... that feeling. You all know what it is, that intangible something that you fall for before you know what's happening.

It is all so innocent, yet all so heartbreaking, all so devious. It appears that I have been a hopeless Romantic since the beginning... and old habits die hard.

Dia de las Muertes

2007-10-31T18:58:00.000-04:00

"Why are these cars so fucking high? Who needs a car this damn tall?"

I'm standing on the tire and just barely making the roof rack trying to tie on two cornstalks for some dumb suburban broad.

"Stop being so fucking short." Smartass.

I give him the finger as he leans against the fence, and he smiles.

I finish tying the stalks up, and I see her brake lights glare and she drives away. "Your welcome!" I yell after her. I fucking hate when people don't say thank you. If anything, I say it constantly just to make up for her assholes like her.

The brake lights click on again and the car halts to a stop. Fuck.

She gets out and starts screaming. "I said thank you!" she says viciously. And I heard you talking about my car! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!" Huge thundercunt. Great.

"Well, I'm never coming to this store again!"

"Good", I say. "Go to Home Depot instead."

"This is terrible service!"

"Anytime lady." I point my fingers at her like a six shooter and wink.

I almost got fired for that incident about three years ago. Ryer got in trouble too, because when that damn broad asked him what my name was after I walked away, he shrugged and never told her. After that incident, everyone at that store had to wear nametags. They hated us because of it.

-----------------------------------------

I am driving the forklift in the early morning, severely hungover from too many drinks at the pub and irritable as hell. My grandfather died today twelve years ago, and my mother just called my cell to tell me that a single blossom appeared on the gardinia outside the house, just as it always does on Halloween. Gardinias were, of course, his favorite flower.

"He's watching us today."

And then the sunlight charges through the clouds and laces into my face, and something inside me finally breaks, and a voice inside me audibly says it: "Today is the day. You must finally do it. Today. This is not a choice."

"You've never been there? Going on Halloween huh?" my boss asks.

"Yea. Time to put some ghosts to rest."

I'd quite forgotten that today was Halloween. It's kind of like realizing that the Fourth of July is tomorrow while you're lying wounded during the last day at Gettysburg.

----------------------------

I'm driving down Totowa Road, and it's now almost 5:30. If you live anywhere in New Jersey, than some poor soul you used to know lies in Totowa, for it is home to almost all the massive cemetaries for a few miles around- it's the only town in America with more dead residents than live ones.

The whole day, I have been tearing up and choking it back, steeling myself for what I must do. Now, I can't hold it back anymore. This dam, which held fast for so long, has burst.

It's on the right hand side off the road.

As I slow down, I see the massive building, the gray stone square lurking over the road. I begin tearing uncontrollably, and nearly lose control of the car. I pull into the circle driveway in the front where all the roads spider from, and my left arm goes numb from the elbow down. I am hyperventilating, sobbing, and my lungs tightens as if a wire were were tied around my neck like in the Mafia hits. I pull onto the road that I know goes to his grave. Now my right arm turns numb and I can't feel the steering wheel anymore, my hands are shaking violently and the tears pour down like old water from a broken fountain.

Two lefts. A right. Park by the garbage can. There's a green marker on the grass. Go straight.

I am wandering, wandering, "Where are you motherfucker?" These headstones are too old to be yours...

Suddenly I turn and see it, and I know it's his before I read it, a bronze plaque embedded onto a patch of marble. When I see the hints of the initials my knees buckle under the cold October sunset and I fall on his grave and start weeping, unadulterated wails coming from someone who has just held this all in for too fucking long. I have broken.

Forever in Our Hearts

Ryer W. J-------.

November 21, 1982 - January 19th, 2005

Beloved Son and Brother

It all dumps out, all the hate and anger and pain and bitterness, it seeps from me as the feeling starts coming back to my hands, starting from my elbows, as if the rage is draining out of me and into the dried brown dead grass where my best friend lies, my brother, in his eternal rest.

I am so sorry, my old friend! I am so sorry it took me three fucking years to get here, three long years to be able to handle seeing your name engraved on this patch of metal! I am sorry I couldn't fix everything with your old girlfriend, I am sorry I couldn't straighten out your brothers like you could have! I am so sorry!

And then I begin to talk....

"You know all the answers I need to know man. What's God like? He better be cool. That would suck if he wasn't... I hope you didn't feel anything. I hope it was quick buddy, you just passed the fuck out and never woke up, never felt anything, ... I know it wasn't the coolest death you could have had... getting killed by a pirate would have been a lot cooler of a way to go... or even a ninja... even though they're kinda gay and all." This is a conversation I could only have had with him, and he is smiling somewhere at the overwhelming irony of me.

I tell him about his ex. I tell him how I hate that she's living with the guy she is, and so I keep my distance, but I watch her from afar to make sure nothing bad happens to her. I may not like her anymore, may not agree with her chosen path... but he loved her. And that's enough for me.

I tell him about her sister who was a little sister to all of us. "She is a knock out now, Ryer, you should see'er. She is no longer that young, awkward 16 year old you had to carry out of Chud's house after she drank too much.... she has grown into a beautiful, strong woman. You'd be proud of her."

I tell him about my father, how the only time I saw the old man cry in my life was at his funeral, and how he told me once after a few beers that he loved him like a son, would have let him live with us anytime he needed to without question. "He drank that twelve pack of Yuengling you bought him for driving him to work all those times... he drank it on the day you died."

I tell him about how the bosses miss him, still talk about him once in a while, with a twinkle in their Scotch-Irish eyes.

I tell him that me and Jenn broke up. I tell him how I selfishlly wish he was there to help me with that, because I needed a guiding hand, and he was always wiser than I was. "I didn't know what to do... I hurt her so fucking bad, I needed someone to tell me I was doing the right thing."

I tell him about my new endeavor, the great challenging woman who has made a mess of me for the last year. "Ryer, you should see her. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, she looks like an angel put on Earth, luminescent and glowing and wonderful. I don't know if she'll ever be mine... but she is everything to me. Ryer, I'm sorry about the jokes I made after your ex left you. I never understood what it was like to love a girl so passionately and unconditionally, and then to lose her. I'm sorry... I never understood. I understand now. Oh, man do I understand."

Lastly, I told him about me. How much it fucking murdered me that he died, how I thought for a while that I should have died in his place, or at the very least died also, just so he wouldn't have to be alone over there. How I haven't slept well for years, how many times I would break down and tears would stream out and I would just want this life over. How many times I cursed off God in gin induced rages, or how I was thrown from the Church by that voice in the bushes on that hot night where I knew God was angry at me. How many times I was hopeless.

It all falls away from me like an angry shell, shattered into pieces and for the first time in years I feel like myself again, the young hopeful kid with dark cunning eyes who was quick with a joke and had a jovial spirit about life. I haven't felt like this in fifteen years. I draw the smoke from my cigarette, sitting just above the line where the dirt settled so many years ago. There is a prescence here, solid, like he was. I am comforted by it. I get the feeling that in the Otherworld, he has met my stout Italian grandfather, and no longer wonders how I came out so short and dark when the rest of my family is tall and bright. I get the feeling that things are ok.

"My friend, I would have never told you this during life, but I always wanted to be just like you. Strong, tough, a good head on your shoulders, a gorgeous girlfriend, hopes for the future. I will live the life that you should have been able to. I will do all the things that I promised myself I wouldn't, I will get married, I will have kids, and I will raise them to good, strong, righteous people with a sense of purpose, because I am so lucky, so fortunate to carry breath in my lungs, that it would be a sin for me not to. You never had the chance... so I will take mine. I will live."

I take his nametag out of my pocket, slide my thumb over it one last time. Like Goose's dog tags. RYER, printed in big black letters on the white background, faded now from being in my car for so long, from having so many tears fall and hit it. I smile, think of that stupid broad in the car, amazed by the fact that if she hadn't cause such a commotion that day, I wouldn't have had this last reminder of you that I grabbed from by the time clock the day you died.

I lay it next to the headstone, pin it to the ground as best I can. I take out a cigarette and leave it on the base of the headstone. This is the last cigarette you'll bum from me, fucker. But this one is my gift.

I lean over on bended knee and kiss his headstone, and the wind whips on my cheeks that are strewn with dried tears.

"I love you, brother. And I will see you soon. But not yet."

On Hope

2007-10-30T17:57:00.000-04:00

I have a cousin who fought in the Easter Rising of 1916. I don't know much about him. I don't know his name, or how he is exactly related to me, but it is a family story that on that Easter Sunday so long ago, he strapped a cold, gray rifle to his back and marched into the city streets of Dublin, knowing that the day Jesus rose from the dead could well be his last day on this Earth.

Over the centuries, many had cried and lamented and wished and hoped that one day, one fucking day, Ireland would be free. My cousin, well, somewhere down the line, he stopped hoping for a free state... and decided to make a free state. He took it upon his shoulders, as did Joseph Connolly and Patrick Pearse, for as they raised that Green flag of Ireland in Dublin Square, they lowered the noose onto their veritable necks. They knew this. They did it anyway.

Hope is a word that is thrown around far too carelessly today. People hope for things when they should be changing things.

"I hope I get a better job."

"I hope I find a better mate".

"I hope I can fix this."

My friends, I do not knock hope. It is a powerful thing, perhaps the most powerful of things. It kept Edmund Dantes alive in the depths of his cell in the Château d'If, and burned through Frederick Douglass' veins on his race to the North. It glared in the steel heads of the sledgehammers that shattered the Berlin Wall, and flashed in the swords of Brian Boru. It runs thick and deep, and lies in the heart and soul of every oppressed people in all the world.

What it is NOT, however, is a catchphrase. Hope is for those who have nothing left, who have no strength left in their taut muscles, and therefore must resort to believeing (often somewhat irrationally) that some miracle will happen, that some great cataclysm will occur, and change their situation. Hope is for when all other avenues have not only been exhausted, but for when they have become barricaded and wired to explode and have cannons pointed straight down the cement.

If you have the power to change things, then you must do it. Don't hope that it happens, because hoping is equivalent to a begrudging surrender and a dependence on a higher force to do it for you. There is nothing so useless as a hopeful dreamer.

Emerson once said, "Your actions speak so loud that I cannot hear what you say." Like Randle McMurphy, you must put your hardened fist through the spotless glass dividing your current life from the life you want. There are many who can play poker all night and stay in the game, but when it comes to the one hand that they could take the pile, they fold under nerves and pressure, and choose security over victory. You could lay down your hand and lose, or you could fold it... and then what happens? Nothing. And that is the worst fate of all.

The only difference between my cousin and the other few million people in Ireland was the fact that he was willing to take the chance, to try to accomplish the impossible dream. That is what heroes are. They are not superhuman, nor are they born with some extra gene that endows them with talents that are beyond comprehension. They are mere mortals, but mortals that have a sense of conviction, a sense of urgency, and a sense of truth. They realize that their feelings, their lamentations, their voice, is not wrong, no matter what anyone does to attempt to brainwash them otherwise. They realize that their thoughts have relevance, and that they are all too aware of the miserable, anonymous fate that awaits them should they say nothing, even in the face of overwhelming odds. There is nothing in the world that will shut down their cries, and the cry is, as always, for all of us, "Freedom! Happiness! Equality! Truth!" We wish to live how we want, to love who we want, to believe what we want. If we do not have this, then struggle will ensue, and like all good things worth doing, it will be hard and it will be desperate and senseless, but the right side will always prevail, for the spirit of a person with such convictions cannot be broken by bullet or chain or whip or word, but only by a surrender of the indominable will.

The future of all things lies in your hands, in your fists, for though there may be many billions of people, what you do counts in a way that you must understand. The human spirit is forever marked by the need for freedom. Yours is no different. The only difference between you and anyone else, between you and the warrior poets and heroes of the generations, is how far you are willing to take it, how hard you are willling to fight. Look at your hands; they are strong hands. Do not underestimate them.

Beautiful

2007-10-26T18:52:00.000-04:00

We want them to know that we went down, standin' up.

"Ideas are bulletproof"

VIVE LIBERTE

Tell Me

2007-10-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

"Well, you know... I see dead people." She whispers it with a smile, mocking the movie.

"Ha. Oh do you?"

Her expression changes, suddenly serious. "Kind of" she says quietly.

I give her an odd look. "The fuck do you mean?"

"It might sound strange. But yes. They come to me...ghosts... in dreams. People I don't know, never met, but who had some large effect on the lives of those around me. It happened with my ex a couple times... people that he knew that died. They came to me, with messages for the him and his family."

She tells me a couple stories that are creepily disturbing, and I remind myself that she has no reason to lie. I also remind myself that it's no more irrational than believing in some great omniscient force in the sky that runs evey detail of our lives... although being the supersitious Irish prick that I am, I never had any trouble believeing in ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them.

"So that's why you have no fear of death? It has nothing to do with you being a nurse, does it?"

I see the hulking figure, the red goatee covering the smirk that adorns his face as he leans against the four by four.

"How often does this happen?"

"Once in a while. Ghosts have better things to do than haunt people... but they do have a presence around me. They want to pass on something, a message, or whatever, to the living. I read up on it a lot when it first happened to me. Most things said that most people are too close minded to be able to hear them, or let them in... and because I'm so open minded and free spirited, I guess they can get through."

Tell me Ryer, tell me that there are green fields where the red poppies dance where the dead children of the Famine never yearn for food, never utter a solemn plea for life.

"I would have so many questions... that's probably why they don't bother with me. They'd never get a word in edgewise."

Tell me, tell me that there are green plains where the Native Americans hunt an endless supply of buffalo, tell me that there are city squares made of gold where Jews live and fear neither suffocating gas nor white hot oven. Tell me that there is a place, a merry place where the booze flows and the air is free of flying lead, for the World War II verterans who saved us from the iron grip of fascism, who saved civilization. Tell me there is something beyond the flawless rows of white crosses, and tiny American flags that flap in the warm breezes of Normandy. Tell me there is a home for the million mutilated dead at Verdun. Tell me there is a quiet reprieve for the persecuted, shell shocked veterans of Vietnam.

"It makes you look at things differently. Changes your outlook. It's like... when they die, you know they're not gone, you know? They are just... somewhere else. It really is very selfish to wish them to be back with you, but then that's what humans are. It's what we do. It's the human reaction to death."

Oh Ryer, tell me there is a place without cholera or cancer, with clear water that runs forever free of the blood of the innocent. Tell me that Captain Pollard and his men swim in seas of fresh water, and at night wade up on shores filled with midnight feasts. Tell me that there is a place, a gentle home and hearth, for every Molly Maguire that was murdered trying to unionize, for every Zapatista that decided to die standing up, for every Union soldier that caught a bullet in the teeth in order to set other men free.

"I couldn't handle that gift."

"No you couldn't. But God wouldn't give it to you if he didn't think you could handle it."

But most of all, Ryer, tell me that I did a good job. Tell me that you know I did my best, I tried to help her, I tried. I tried to keep her safe, to keep her from making mistakes, the mistakes that I know would have turned your insides. Tell me that you know I tried to help your brothers, I tried to keep them straight... but they have all slipped through my fingers.. it was like trying to hold the rain in your fist. There was too much, it all fell apart too fast. I'm sorry.

Tell me this is all worth it. Tell me Ryer...

Forever

2007-10-23T20:49:00.000-04:00

I have found the only American equivalent to Paradise Lost, and it lies in between the cover pages of the Pete Hamill novel Forever.

The very basic plot is that a young man immigrates from Ireland in pursuit of the man who killed his father. After the initial voyage, he helps a slave escape, one who, in return, endows him with the gift of immortal life. The only condition is that he remains only on Manhattan Island- if he leaves the island for any reason, he will die, and it will be considered suicide, thus barring him from the Otherworld, the Celtic version of the afterlife. Thus, Cormac O'Connor remains on Manhattan Island for over three hundred years, and sees it change from a village on the tip of a wild island to the Metropolis it has become.

The bits of Irish and American history strewn about its pages make it seem more like reading a history book, albeit one with a thriving plotline that twists and turns with the times.

If nothing else, you will come away from this book realizing, truly realizing, that we are alive for the last time.

Things will never be perfect, but they are beautiful because we are here, we are living, we are eating and breathing and fighting. Time passes regardless of what we wish, and events will come and go. O'Connor watches all the people he loves die, and comes to wish for death. We need none of that- we should desire only life, and a good one at that, a wild brawling one that will live forever in the pages of history.

We think our stories are unique. We think that no one has possibly lived our life, felt our pains so severely, our joys so emphatically. We are wrong.

Our story has been told a million times. All of them. A strong kid who dies years before his time in a blink of an eye... that's happened. A wannabe writer who wishes for both extraordinary life and a quick death... fucking cliche. Star crossed lovers who are cursed by outside influences and even worse luck.... even Shakespeare wrote about that.

What makes the stories different are the nuances of our personalities. There are some who will not go quietly into the night. There are some whose personalities will not dictate the plot, but will write the words on the page, filling in the gaps between the covers in a way you didn't think they could.

We all die. It's hard for me to say it, but we all fucking die. Even me- I will be under a big, cold Celtic cross one day But our job as people is to live as passionately, as forcefully, as we possible can. We must make our choices, and forge our own paths, whether or not we think we can, or whether we believe we are capable of doing it well.

For in the end, unlike Hamill's character... we don't have all the time in the world. The clock is ticking to make this shit interesting... and for me to make myself happy. You too.

Make it fucking worth it.

2007-10-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

RED SOX WON THE PENNANT!!!!!!

The crowd roars and screams and rocks and the chords of "Tessie" pump over the loudspeaker and no one is leaving Fenway and they cry, "WE SING ANOTHER VICTORY SONG" and beautiful girls are waving their signs and tears stream from my eyes and life is fucking beautiful.

Books

2007-10-17T18:47:00.000-04:00

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has imparted upon me another hero to be added to my pantheon of greats- Randle McMurphy. That brawling character embodies the best and worst in men, but in the end, the good wins out in a triumph when the psychos in the ward realize that Mack does actually give two shits about them, and that they themselves would rather die standing up then live kneeling down, just as he would. A beautiful thing that Kesey created... I should have read it years ago.

Forever by Pete Hamill is an intense story that I am about a third of the way through. Hamill is amongst my favorite writers of all time- if you are bored, pick up A Drinking Life, which is still the only autobiography I've ever read that's worth a shit. This story is full of turns... we'll see how it ends up. 600 goddamn pages... thank God work is slow.

Fall

2007-10-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

I am careening up the side of a massive mountain on a road that lies coiled in the high hills of Northern New Jersey while "Last Dance with Mary Jane" serenades me from the radio.

The woods here are full of a dense undergrowth, one that has spawned repeated legends about wild albinos descended from Hessians and runaway slaves that live in them. In a bit of irony, from the highest promenade you can see the brazen lights from the New York City skyline. That only happens in the winter, though, when the life has fallen from the trees in a million fluttering yellow raindrops and leaves a wall of toothpicks along the sides of the road. In the summer, everything is obscured, and you can see little except the fifteen feet of road that your headlights illuminate.

The wheel begins to shake as I hit the brakes on a downward hill. I know my ball joints are bad, and the replacement parts sit on the floor behind the passenger seat. I have no idea how to change them. The check engine light also glares at me. Glare all you want motherfucker. I'm ignoring you until inspection.

I shut the truck off and head towards the house. It strikes me that there are more stars visible here than anywhere where I live. The Big Dipper stares down, a mute spectator to our mundane lives.

I'm not sleeping well lately. I think it's because I'm bored. Unfulfilled. I can't seem to hook a decent job. Martial arts and other athletic endeavors keep me occupied during the day, but as the lonely night arises (slowly at first, and then in a flood), I realize that it's just me and those stars. It is as if when I close my eyes, I'm scared that they will not reopen. For the first time in years, I can feel myself drifting into sleep, with my warring mind fighting at every step.

The other day, a hundred birds flew through a willow tree, little black bullets darting between the limp foliage. I envy animals- life is so simple to them

We are here to live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us

Walk Off

2007-10-06T09:21:00.000-04:00

You want to know why I love basball? Watch this clip. The first ball is low and away. I sighed. I was at a bar drinking dollar beers, with my hands folded like I was praying. I was the only one rooting for the Sox, and, as usual, the bars were filled with slews of useless Yankee fans; this year, they are significantly quieter.

I'd been useless the whole night. I couldn't hit on girls, because I knew that nothing they were going to say was going to keep my attention from the game if something big happened. Some broads, I have found out, consider this "insulting".

If you freeze that clip at 31 seconds in, it is why baseball is, and always will be, America's game. There are 38,000 fans in that stadium, and they all have their own sets of problems. They have their own addictions, hopes, dreams, dissapointments. Their fathers have died, their kids are in college and they don't know how they're paying for it, the mortgage is due and their husband just got laid off. There's a few million more Red Sox fans watching in bars across the country, like me. We have problems with women, we don't know where our lives are going, and we are paranoid for the world.

But at 31 seconds into that clip, Manny hammers that ball and it flails towards the Charles River like it was shot from a brass cannon, and the crowd stands and roars with their hands up and I punch my hand and scream at the TV "GET OVER! GET OVER!" and a million guys in a million bars are yelling and dying and "Dirty Water" begins to blare over the massive Fenway speakers and Manny comes around third and flips his helmet off and leaps onto David Ortiz and the team mobs him and jumps up and down on home plate... and for ten seconds, just ten seconds... our problems are gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZPA54T3hS4

"It feels great, man. It's been a long time I don't do something special like that. But I haven't been right all year round. But I guess, you know, when you don't feel good and you still get hits, that's when you know you are a bad man." - Manny Ramirez

Damn right you are Manny. And Red Sox Nation loves you for it. I love October.

Fights

2007-09-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

I circled to my right continuously, a consequence of my being a southpaw. It fucks with whomever I am fighting, takes some getting used to; I'm rotating in the same direction they are. I know that if I keep outside of his lead leg, I can keep pumping a jab in there and remain relatively safe.

This is bare-knuckle fighting, though, and I'm still not used to catching shots in the face, so I'm hesitant to square up and really bang out. We're not trying to hurt each other, especially with face shots... but inevitably one of us slips, or ducks into a hard punch meant for the ribs. My nose hurt for a week after the last workout.

Eventually he will shoot on my knees, and, even though I try to outmuslce him before we go to the ground, his techniques are far better than mine. In the end we are on the ground in a tangled mess of limbs, and my arm stretches across my neck until something feels like it's breaking.

I tap out when the pain becomes too much. Grappling is first on the list to learn. Karate teaches strikes, elbows, cheap shots... but not a damn thing off your feet... and I hate losing all the time when it goes to the ground.

I have figured out that it doesn't really matter who wins. I spend three days a week learning how to hurt people. It's becoming instinct to react to a fist coming at me, to be able to think clearly for a second before it hits. My ear is showing a few signs of abuse, my jaw clicks a bit. The callouses on my knuckles are becoming like little pebbles glued to my hands.

For those hours, it's just you and the guy hitting you. No girlfriends, no bullshit, no cops, no drinking, no anger, no bitterness. Just you and your mind, trying to outwit the guy across from you. Keep your jaw closed. Left hand up. Left hand up. Duck. Counter with a hook. Shoot.

People think that this crap is hard to do, to keep your head in the game, to not get shook up when you get smacked. It isn't easy, per se... but compared with the other shit that life throws at you, I can deal with my legs feeling like dried up rubber bands pulled to tight, or that someone's poured gasoline down my throat and lit my lungs on fire. It's a whole lot simpler.

2007-09-16T12:51:00.000-04:00

Things are spiraling downwards badly. Posts may be few. If I could break the Earth apart with my hands and hurl it into the sun, I would. My hand is broken again.

Best saying I've heard in a while

2007-09-10T18:40:00.001-04:00

Hold your chin up while anticipating that uppercut and you'll have every chance to avoid a knock out.

An Old Anger Finally Put into Words

2007-09-08T13:15:00.000-04:00

They came over slowly at first, in a trickle. They came because the Great Famine struck the Old Country, and the children crawled out of their huts starving, and fell upon the roads to die. Cats and dogs had to be swiped away from eating the dead babies, and it was not unusual to find a home where four or five dead bodies lay, dead from starvation. A good dinner was one potato boiled in disease ridden water. The English did not care, but kept up their ban on growing corn. My ancestors were forced to flee, and came to this land, this shining city on the hill, not in order to find a better life... but to survive. Not to give their children a better life... but to give them any life at all.

The year was maybe 1845. Maybe 1850. We don't really know. But that is the year that James Symien Lynch came over from the County Galway in Ireland and settled in the blackened heaving city by the water- Jersey City. He, like all good Irishmen, started a liquor store, which means he was probably a tough son of a bitch, although everyone in the 1850's was. He lived in the time when there were signs on store windows that said, "No Irish need apply." My favorite was always, "No dogs or Irish allowed". They were compared to locusts, like their coming was a biblical plague sent from God to destroy this hard working Protestant country. They certainly did not like my great-great-great-great grandfather's Catholicism. They threatened to hurl the foreigners from their land, to kill their families, to burn the Churches... until the newly appointed Cardinal in New York told the Establishment that if one Church was touched, the Irish would burn New York City to the ground. They fought.

In the 20's, another great immigration came, but this time, it was from Southern Europe. At least the Irish spoke English; the Italians had nothing. They looked different, too; shorter, darker, hairy, speaking a language that no one could understand and few cared to learn. They swarmed over the ocean, gathered in huddled masses along the coasts in the great cities. My great grandparents were among these; their first sight of America came from the groaning wooden decks of a ship that sailed under the Statue of Liberty and took them to Ellis Island, where they would plead to get into Promised Land. They were a humorous bunch- they could only speak English to each other, for while the old man was from the upper classes and spoke that kind of Italian, his wife came from the lower classes, so the twain never met for them. He owned silk mills in Paterson, which is the nice way to say that he was likely to be heavily involved in the Mafia back when it was the motherfucking Mafia (don't think Sopranos, think St. Valentine's Day Massacre). He eventually moved his family up out of Paterson, and into the nicer neighboring town where Italians were allowed to congregate. When he wanted to move to the town I now live in, the Irishmen that already lived here woud not let him buy a house; they didn't want "his kind" here. Funny how soon they all forget. He fought.

I don't know the history of the Polish side. What I do know is that my father's father grew up in town dominated by Polish Catholics and Italians, and he went to war at 17 to make sure that I could grow up in a world free from the threat of the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich. He fought for three years, watching his brothers die in battle by the at the mouths of the guns of the Axis powers. Some flew into mountains, others got shot down. It didn't matter. His cousin flew with the Flying Tigers, the men who flew P-40's with shark faces painted on them because they knew the Japanese feared them.

The whole experience scared the man to the point where it is no longer conceivable to picture him as a "normal". He despised war, and would shake his head when I told him I wanted to go to West Point, saying, "If there's ever another damn war, you'll find me last on line to get into it." He wouldn't see Saving Private Ryan. He was also a mean drunk, and not the best example to his kids. I hate to sound apologetic, but I think he could never come to grips with the horror of war, and the terrible things men do to each other. Either way, he did what men do- he did the best he could with the hand he was dealt, and he took care of his family... and his country.

My Lithuanian side was a hardened bunch. That family tree is rife with alcoholism from the tough lives they had to lead. My great great grandfather worked in the coal mines in Pennsylvania, toiled every day in the black dust that eventually suffocated him on his deathbed, dying of black lung. The seeds were planted there for my fondness for animals; every day, he would bring an apple for the donkey that worked in the mines as well. My great- great- grandmother used to give him a quarter a day to go get drunk at the local bar.

Slowly, these families interacted, crossed each other, in the great American country. It was a hundred and fifty years of history in America, and centuries in the Old Country, that got me to the point where I am today. My ancestors have fought in fields and alleys, killed men, to get me to the point where I am today. They fought.

All of this, all that history, all of it, all so you could be told that you don't have enough money, you don't have enough prestige, your family isn't rich enough, to go get a drink with someone.

"Rage" is the only way to describe it. I am proud of where I come from. I'm proud of this family, of all of them. I am proud to be an American, from a middle class, working family who fought and clawed their way over the years out of the depths of the cities and into the suburbs. Sure, there are certain people that stride across the pond and walk into millions of dollars. And that's fine. But that's not what my family did. They worked in the coal mines, they worked behind the bar, they worked in the mills and factories. They toiled and fought and warred to get me to where I am, every second of their work was so that I could be where I am today, and have the shot to not do what they did. They did it so I could write about them with pride, no matter what misgivings and flaws the had. They did it so I would remember.

And believe me... I do. And no derisive comment from any rich man is going to change that.

An Open Letter to God. Or if I should fall from Grace....

2007-08-31T00:11:00.000-04:00

To the five or six motherfuckers that actually read this thing, I got a message for you. If you ever want to understand me, and I mean actually catch on to where my head is at, watch the show Rescue Me. Every single fucking thing that's gone through my head in the last five years is on that show. The only reason I watch that show is because it's the only goddamn thing on TV that has a brain in it, that takes on the ancient old questions that we all deal with. It ain't no fucking "American Idol".

If you don't watch it, and don't know what's going, the odds are is I'm too drunk right now to explain it all to you. The fact is, they're mostly Irish firefighters. They work in an environment dominated by guys, and they act accordingly. They've seen terrible things, and they are fucked up because of it. What they don't tell you is that it more or less emodies the cursed Irish way of thinking and the wars that each of us has with Catholicism.

It was evident in the last episode when Denis Leary's father, a WWII vet, sits in a bar after both he and his son have quit drinking, and says to Leary's character, "I know I'm never seeing your mother again. I know I'm never seeing Johnny or Connor or any of them ever again. You die, then you go in the ground, and your worm food. Makes me want to have a drink.." He's kidding, of course, and at 80 he actually wants to quit. (Good for him.)

That ain't word for word, but that's the gist. Johnny was his cop son who got shot to death, Connor was Leary's kid who got killed by a drunk driver. He isn't gonna see either of them ever again... and this revelation comes just as Leary's character has been sober for a year and started praying again.

If you're not Catholic, I guess there's no way to explain the complex. The nearest I can say, or explain it, is that when you're little, they tell you if you do A+B+C, you'll = happiness. They tell you this shit, they say it to you when you're little and ugly and your family is alive and happy and Christmas reminds you of getting presents and trying to wait for Santa. It reminds you of that big fucking tree that your grandparents used to get every year, the ten foot one that seemed like it touched the ceiling, with the tinsel glittering and dancing under the track lighting. It reminds you of the old man's cologne, and how he used to fall asleep in Church on Saturday night, and how his snoring would alert the Monsigner that he was giving a crappy speech ("sermon" always seemed to Protestant for me to use, forgive me).

"That's right you little children, you lambs of God, huddle around the alter by the pointsettas, and worship the one who gave you life, who saves you, who keeps this world running. We will read this ancient book and repeat after me, "Lord hear our prayer". The world will fall at your feet, the meek shall inherit the Earth, you will live long happy lives and sit at the right hand of the Father, for all eternity. Et Nomini patris, et file, et spirite sante".

Then you get a call.

Then your parents bring you to your Godfather's house, where the Packers and Bears play in their throwback uniforms in the driving rain in Green Bay. It was 11:28 when they woke you up.

Then they tell you the old man is dead. Then you stop believing.

Hey God, I was pretty good. I was little, you know? Not much time to sin. If I did, it was nothing serious, nothing Earth shattering and groundbreaking, nothing that made me deserve anything truly terrible. It was little things. But I was a good Catholic. I went to Church, I went to Catholic school. I listened to them, the old gray haired fuckers, talk about Jesus and his moments of doubt. I believed anyway! That's what you told us, right? Believe! And you will be saved! You are terrible sinners, but we will save you anyway! Ain't this shit great?

Well God, you'll hold this against me when I reach the pearly gates, but fuck yourself. How many more do I have to bury? Who you gonna take next? My grandfather, the old man of 55, my best friend, the young tough fucker of 22.... who's next? What trial of faith awaits me? What could have been harder than kissing my best friend's casket, and throwing a rose down there on a frigid day in January, and watching those cocksuckers lower the gray shining tomb down into the ground?

What more do you want from me? You want me to sacrifice bulls? Virgins? What does it take to sate your bloodthirst? They say you carry those when in their time of need... when did you carry me? It sure as shit wasn't at Ryer's funeral, where the booze took me down and no one carried me anywhere.

If I knew you were there, boyo, I would do anything. All I need is a sign, something to make me think that all this horror and pain is worth all the shit, that one day I'll reside in a paradise with my family and we will be there for the rest of time. But what you ask me to do is to love others, to find a wife, children, others who I care about more than I care about myself, and you ask me to trust that you won't take them from me. Oh, God, I've been around the block more than once. I know that you are not reliable when it comes to such endeavors, and I know that you are merciless at times.

God, last night my heart fluttered. Nothing else. Just fluttered. But I sat up in a start, and I realized again that I am a heartbeat, one single miss fired something, from death. One burst of one thing... and I am with the gods. And I know for my doubting, I will be in hell. All I can do is hold out, hope that I live long enough that me and you reconcile. I want us on speaking terms again, Lord, and I don't want those old voices hissing at me through the low bushed of my church, the ones that told me to leave. I was sober that night, boyo, and I know what I heard. You made your point.

Maybe it is alot for a mere jerkoff like me to ask.. but I need to know. Mother Theresa, even she doubted your prescence. I know I am not like everyone else, because I think about this stuff every goddamn waking hour, but I need to know. I cannot sleep, I cannot live, without knowing what else is out there. You tell me I've sinned? I tell you that you have. To make your people live in shame and doubt... it hurts, God.

Some people, they've got the strength to believe anyway. They think it's all going to happen eventually.. they remind me of the people who play the lottery every week. Other people, they just assume it isn't. My uncle is one of these types. I don't know that he ever stopped believing in God until my grandfather passed... but he doesn't believe in it now. Then there's the fuckers like me. We want to desperately to be happy, to lead good lives, I mean, we fucking bleed God. I can't pass a homeless guy in the street without giving him money. I don't care if he buys food or booze, but either way he needs that shit more than I do. I help old people change their tires. I feel compassion for certain people, no matter how much I shouldn't, and I act on it as best as I know how. I care nothing for money, and tears force their way to my eyes when I hear that good men have made strong stands against tyranny. When troops die in Iraq, I close my eyes and think of their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and hope that they find strength in something. I want the best for the world, I sincerely do. I would give my life in a second if it saved a woman from tears.

But that doesn't matter, does it? I sit here and kill myself with cigarettes and alcohol, and all I can think about is whether it fucking matters or not.

Last night, I fell asleep between 2:14 and 2:20. I thought I was awake, but passed out instantly. Is death like that? Does it fool you into thinking it will not come? Or does it simply converge on you when you aren't paying attention? Is it like sleep, where you are never sure of when you are awake and when you pass out?

Too many questions, God. Your Bible does not suffice. I believe you are there. But I don't know how much I like you.

All this shit.... it kind of make me want a drink. But see, I never quit. So I'll see you later.

Jail Stories

2007-08-27T16:44:00.000-04:00

He's a little bit taller than me, and has a look that certain skinny guys have which makes them seem like they're constructed of steel wire wrapped around bone. His jeans are baggy, and his bright blue eyes belie his Irish heritage. There's a long scar running down the back of his shaved head, a constant reminder of the Paterson drug trade. He gives off the aura that he can handle himself in the gutter.

"Trouble's my middle name bra."

"Oh yea? Sorry brother. That one's already taken," I say.

"You ever been in jail before, Steve?"

"Nope."

He smiles. "Then you ain't trouble." He's right. He lights another smoke, a Newport 100 that all the guys from the ghetto smoke.

I tell him the truth. "I've been in the drunk tank. That was enough for me. It ain't my fault you get caught when you do bad shit. I'm just smoother than you."

I'm bullshitting him, and he knows it. I may have done my share of tremendously dangerous and stupid things, but he's been a dealer in heroin and cocaine, and that's taken him to a place I've never been. I've been seen my share of fights, been hit with beer bottles and what not, but none so bad that I was knocked unconscious by a brick to the back of the head.

He was in the county lockup for a spell. It's a bad place. Not quite as bad as the one in my county, but no jail in Jersey is a good one to be in. You live in Passaic, you get the bangers from Paterson. You live in Morris, you've got the Mexicans from towns like Dover and Morristown, the guys who got nothing left to lose. Hudson, Essex...Jersey City, Newark, Irvington. All bad places.

I've seen a lot of fellas like him, and they always make me feel like a wide eyed kid. There is something alluring about jail, something about being in a place that is run solely on violence and physical strength, that draws me in. Oh, I know- the only type of guy that says something like that is the type that's never been there. But if you think about it, all people are intrigued by it. There have been numerous TV shows about it; Prison Break, Oz, etc. Movies? More than you could count. I am not alone in my interest.

"What's it like?"

He sighs. He's been asked this before, most likely many times. "Well it's a lot of war stories. A lot of shit like that. Guys playing poker. Gambling with their commissary. Working out. A lot of male bonding."

I smile when he says this, raise my eyebrows. "Yea, well that's what I hear."

"Not like that, dickhead."

He reminds me of a good friend of mine who lived on the wrong side of the tracks in my suburban town; there's a trailer park down in the floodplain that amounts to a white ghetto. I hung out there a lot when I was younger, smoking cigarettes while the others smoked other things.

This guy was the same kind of way, with the same gritty feel; another tall, slender Irish kid with sharp teeth and blonde hair. He never had a macho attitude, just a wary, hardened feel that permeated off him, and it followed him the way cheap cologne trails on a drunk trying to hide it.

If you left him alone, he was cool with you, and if you got to be buddies with him, he'd do anything for you. He once gave me a knife that had an American flag on it, later telling me that he'd jacked it from a car because it reminded him of me. He was also always more than willing to bring me smokes when I lost my license and couldn't make it to the store. Perennially in trouble, though, he was constantly violating suspended sentences on assault charges- my boy loved to fight, and was always happy to share a good story about some incident or another.

Around people either of these guys liked or respected, they were like wolverines; give them respect, and they will do the same. Cross the line, though, and it didn't really matter who you were. It's a marked difference from the juiced up guidos in this area who think that they've got to challenge the world to show their manhood. Those spiky haired wannabes would wilt in prison like a Christmas tree in the July sun.

"There a lot of fights in there?"

"Not too many. A couple while I was there. Nothing big. You just gotta be cool in there. Don't take no shit, but be cool. Start working out, stay in shape, just in case."

My trailer park friend said the same thing long ago. "When I was in there, I looked like you- I was doing pushups and situps, pullups off the bars of the cell. When I got out, though...well, I started drinking again", he said, patting his stomach that was larger than I'd ever seen on him. "You see what happened."

Somehow, through all their troubles, the guys who have this kind of history are amiable, talkative types. They enjoy a good laugh, a good cigarette after you've busted your ass all day, a quiet drink right after work. I never understood this until it finally dawned on me: after going through a place like the county jail, how much worse could anything be? If you're not in jail, then it's a damn good day. When the bright sun sets, they do get garrulous... but they know, in the back of their heads, that the last place they want to wake up is back in the county.

At this point, I haven't seen either of them in months. I think the first guy is still out, but my trailer park buddy might be back in. Every time I don't see him ambling around down in the flood section, I wonder where he's sleeping tonight.

Man

2007-08-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

I miss my buddy.

Slainte boyo. See you in hell.

Okinawan Karate

2007-08-21T18:46:00.000-04:00

I will soon be making another foray into the fighting arts- a return to Okinawan Karate may be imminent. I was going to go into boxing... but this face is just too damn pretty too fuck up like that.

It may be just because I have a mind for history, but even the word "Okinawa" seems supremely tough because of the 1944 battle there. You could say "Okinawan bunny", and immediately my mind conjurs up a rabid rabbit with fifteen fangs the size of ice picks that will rip your throat out and fly his cage into your aircraft carrier.

Maybe it's just me.

The Great Escape

2007-08-16T11:23:00.000-04:00

Every summer it comes, bears down on me like a juiced up bouncer during a fight, grabs me by the throat with thick forearms and shakes me to and fro until my back aches and my neck snaps.

Last summer, Morocco was to be my great escape, an infinite trip for as long as I could afford tp a sandy, danerous oasis in a world that has been to safe for too long. Unfortunately, no one shared my zeal to travel the Dark Continent, and that plan was shelved; the money wasted on nameless nights in Irish pubs across Northern New Jersey.

The winter snows can muffle my spirit for only so long, however the heat of the sun again signals something in me to demand escape from this penitentiary that my I live in. Knowing that in a span of two months, my life will be vastly different, upended completely by a massive job search that I have undertaken in order to free myself from the eighty pound forklift chains that hold me to my shit job, to that shit life that I have forseen for myself. This time, however, it is different, and the very real possiblity of doing some freelance writing has given me something I haven't had in ages: hope.

There were dark days when I'd imagine that I would fail, and that I would be trampled into mediocrity by the natural course of life. I would wear workboots for the rest of my days, and would one day end up a blithering drunken old man who never realized, much less lived up to, my potential. I would be old and tough and bitter, cursing my own innate laziness that caused me to lead such a blackened life. My children would never forgive me for my bitterness.

But that is not to be. With every passing day, I am fanning the fire that this hope has given to me, searching for long hours on end for a job where I can finally write instead of searching for internet porn. For years I have held on tightly to the mentality of a type of reverse discrimiation, an absolute and unequicoval disdain for anything approaching a white collar job. That hasn't entirely died- I will forever be on the side of the worker, the toiler, and soldier, and the Union man. However, I have finally realized that the path they tread is not to be mine, and the pride they carry in their weathered, broken hands is not a pride that I can indulge in. My course is a different one, and the power that I have with the pen is something that is rarely replicated, and so I must use it, or be damned.

It is not my duty to this world to heave lumber upon my shoulders on a dusty contstuction site, or to dwell in a dimly lit factory floor putting doors on cars. No, my calling lies in the tight winding allyways of Marrakesh, in a waterside bar in Venice, or on a mountaintop in Wyoming, at the foot of the Sphinx in the great Egyptian desert. It lies in all the spectacular places that I have yet to visit, all the events I have yet to witness, and all the strokes of the pen that I have yet to make. I will be as at home in Rome as I would be in Paterson, and the current of history will carry me to where I need to be.

When I am old, I will sit in a leather bound chair behind a great fat desk like Winfield Scott, and I will look out over the harbor of either New York City or Boston at the glowering lights of a glorious city, and I will look at my hands, those scarred, cigarette burned hunks of flesh, and I will laugh and say, "How lazy I was in my first 23 years! But what I life I led in the last 50 to make it all worth it!

Though I will rave and burn at the close of day when I know for a fact that there will be no final encore, I will have left an indelible mark on this world, and I will close my eyes and die a happy man, and my words will go beyond me and be read for a millenium, and people will know my name, as if it was shot from a brass cannon and exploded across the skies in a great final shout that grabbed everyone's attention and at the same time blinded them.

2007-08-11T02:07:00.000-04:00

Not in good shape... like a blind man, one who was no sense of time or place, but just wanders, rapping his stick on the cold black cobblestones...

Another one

2007-08-01T23:11:00.000-04:00

"Irish Line 1"

I walk inside, a long hike in the sweltering heat that has engulfed New Jersey the last couple days.

"Hey, it's E".

"What's up man? How's the first day of vacation?"

"Not bad. Listen, I had to talk to you before I left though. You remember Rob? The big black guy that drove the Pyle truck?"

"Yea, of course".

"Listen, he died the other day".

"What?"

"Yea, man. The rep came and told me... he was playing basketball with his kids and had a heart attack. I figured I'd tell you before you heard it through the grapevine, cause I know you're the one that unloads the trucks..."

"Ahh... yea, thanks man. Uh, I'll see you... when you get back I guess."

I'll be honest- I never even knew his name was Rob. He was one of those guys that you were never close to, but you knew him well enough that when he pulled that massive tractor trailer into the yard, you smiled because you knew you could bullshit with him for twenty minutes and forget that your job sucks.

When I first met him, he intimidated the shit out of me. He was a huge guy, having played semi-pro football before a back injury ended his career. However, he still retained the bearings of a bodybuilder, with forearms thick as hams, and calves that looked as though they could pound through the pavement, or dent that platform of steel on the back of the big rig he roamed, wearing his red timberlands. He was either black or Hispanic; I couldn't tell, because he had a skin tone that could lend itself either way, and a buzz cut that was offset by the small glasses he wore on his eyes. Ghetto in his actions, he had a high voice and an animated nature that would get continually louder and more brazen the more excited he got, to the point where I would have to look around the lot nervously to make sure none of my bosses could hear his wailing as he explained the intricacies of dissecting a Cover 2 defense while using the Eagles in Madden.

The last conversation I had with him was me telling him I hoped the Giants sucked this year, just so "The Big Boy" (Giant's backup quarterback Lorenzen) could get in, and how much he hated Tom Coughlin: "Y'all'll be better off if Coughlin does terrible this year, y'all can get'em out!" You remember that quote in one of my earlier blogs about how "These niggas can't handle they money?" That was him.

Rough though he may have been, he was also a family man, one with four children, from little runts to teenage. I recal that he took his children to Williamsburg this summer on vacation; we talked a lot about that, being as I had been there a couple of years ago.

What scares me is that he was maybe in his late thirties, and in impossibly good shape. Those kids he had later watched him die on some fucking basketball court... and I worry that they will grow up like him, and have to claw their way out of some ghetto now that their father is dead, the man who drove a truck every day at 5:00 in the morning and worked an honest job. Honestly... it just hurts, and it's dissapointing.

Here's to you Rob... one day we will talk about my Giants and your Cowboys again over a couple of cold Coronas, be it in heaven or hell. The next truck driver I get every day... well, I'll ask him his name this time.

"Are you going to the wake?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Even if I knew where it was... it'd be too fucking sad. And I've had enough wakes to last me a life time."