Back-Burner

I hung out tonight with someone I thought I should hate.  She is beautiful and probably smart...I don't even know...and well-dressed and eloquent in speech and manner.  I thought I should hate her because she seemed so very different from me.  Not for all of the things mentioned above but because I thought I already knew her.  Let's face it.  I did.  I do.  She kind of sucks.  I let my guard down.  Free wine tends to lean a twisted branch in the general direction of drunken desultory.

I spoke to said girly-girl.  She was kind enough, just really boring and predictable like most girls that dress and act like her.  She's bought in.  She bought in to the house, the car, the husband and her inevitable brood stirring in her loins as we spoke.  Gross.  She stands for everything I find so distasteful in society.  I was nice to her.  I was feeling all jolly warm and drunk inside so I didn't rip her meager empty life to shreds.  Now I'm the gross one because she will now go through existence not hating herself and her choices.  Dammit.  She will grow to be someones' role model.  She will create a bunch of offspring just like her and the world turns once more.  Boring.  Desolate.  Certain.  Perhaps that's what pisses me off most;  These people are certain in their creations of nihility.  This is the way my parents did it, therefore...I am.  So it is.  So fucking question-less.  So content.  I can pretend too, you know.  I have.  I did.  It felt good to feel included.  Like I was part of something collective, connected and bigger.  Then I realized these people have not the foggiest clue what they speak of.  They are scrambling for meaning in a world that bears fruit of no sort.  It's sad.  It's embarrassing.

I don't think I've ever wanted to be one.  Really.  I've played the part once or twice but I grew so very weary of the performance.  The posturing.  I want to be a Thai dude speaking at TED about saving seeds and building houses for my neighbors cuz apparently land is free in Thailand.  Let's all stop dedicating our lives to things we need to follow and create something real.  Let's feed each other more than the bullshit pictures we take on Facebook.  Live your life for you, not your following.  Travel to go deeper into yourself, not for the constant photo ops people are screaming for as they sit in their homes they can't afford to view the world through the computer lens.  Go to school for your brain and the benefit of society, not for the achievement and bragging rights about how difficult school was to manage with your drinking and social nights.  Love the world because you love yourself and fuck the rest.  Stop showing us the you you think we want to see.  Everybody gets one.  Only one.  Make it count.

Taken

I have an irrational hatred of Liam Neeson.  The famed actor known for his stoic Irish presence in a myriad action flicks.  I fucking hate you Liam Neeson.  You are a taker.  You set a girl up with all of these expectations, like who you are as a person is truly unique and awesome.  You are none of these things Mr. Neeson.  You appear to be sexy as all get up...you're intelligence and calm demeanor save the lives of those you cherish most.  You are a fraud.  You are as fraudulent as your movie scripts and public relations persons.  You told me one thing and acted one way and now you're a shell like all the rest.  No amount of Ricky Gervais illustrating you as a hilarious and disturbed individual will win me over.  You suck.

We use to be cool, you and I.  Strangers, literal strangers would comment on how adorable we were.  I've never experienced that before.  It was like the entire world was conspiring to have us be awesome.  Together.  Now what are we?  Struggling to cobble together something that may very well be impossible.  I am your sister, mother, secret lover and you do nothing in return.  You offer nothing.  You expel no energy in even my general direction.  A few texts here to keep tabs on me?  To make yourself feel like you're in a relationship?  You have no fucking idea what kind of work it takes to keep a life afloat...to breath life into something that we let die time and time again.  I want a love story you fuck.  Instead I'm settling for a smattering of attention when you feel like it or can work it into your busy schedule.  Oh Liam Neeson how you've fallen.

It's my fault.  I fell for you first and have made it every effort to make this fucking nightmare prosper.  That's what I want most in life is to prosper in what I do.  Not just to get by, not just to do what is expected but to fucking grow and pulse with the energy I've been granted for this limited fucking time.  I'm tired of waiting.  No, I'm fucking exhausted.  I will allow Martha Washington* to elucidate further:

'I am young and I am strong but I feel old and tired, over-fired.  I've been poked and stoked it's all smoke there's no more fire, only desire...for whoever you are.  You say my time here is some sort of a joke.  Some sort of incubating period.  You have no idea.  How it feels to be on your own, in your own home with the fucking phone.  I will not pretend.  I will not put on a smile.  I will not say I'm alright for you.  When all I wanted was to be good.  To do everything in truth.  To do everything in truth.  I wishIwishIwishI was born a man.  So I could learn how to stand...up for myself.'

We Spoke Again Last Night

Why is it that the thing I want most in all of the lands, I push away the hardest with both hands?  I am a manipulator and a charlatan.  Why am I such an awful person?  I have photos of me as a kid, picking flowers and being joyful.  I wasn't born negative.  I wasn't born hoping to make relationships only to suffocate the life out of them.  Now I've become so good at it that I don't even realize I'm participating in my own demise.  I think I've become someone I hate, therefore I spread the vitriol like a thick paste over everyone that comes near me.  Is it simply fear that compels me to be awful?  I've fucked up and I don't know that I can remedy it with simple apologies and time.  There may not be enough time.  Life is so short, I tell myself, as I punch holes into everything I've worked so hard to create.  Love is nurtured and in kind nurtures back.  I've forgotten how to nurture.  I've forgotten how to support.  There's only me now, suffocating on my own self-indignation and pity.  I've done this.  I'm sorry.  It couldn't have been you.  You're new.  Fresh.  Open.  I promised myself I wouldn't hurt you.  I promised myself I wouldn't bring you down.  I promised you I wouldn't hold you back and if there ever came a day where I did, I would let you go.  Well that day is here and I brought it forth and now I'm frozen by my love for you.  I am a selfish waif of despair.  How did I get us here?  Slowly, softly...then all at once the pieces fall.  I was a jar on a precarious shelf and now just the sound of me breaking apart is all that lingers.  The pieces were always there but now the whole room can see them in vivid color and I am quietly studied, judged, and labelled.  No more hiding in plain sight on my unstable shelf.  I'm just there alone.  Again.  

When the Hurt has Hurt

What do you do when you see yourself in another person and you hate them and not yourself for it?  Why is the first response blame?  Weak people find solace in blame for it explains away the chaos that we reside in.  I feel chaotic most of the time.  I am a liar and a thief.  I am a taker of time and producer of nothing.  I feel low some days and don't know why.  Some days I lose myself to my inability to be honest with myself.  The ego won't allow me to take responsibility.  It just won't.  There is a very deep part of me that just wants it all out there.  Every wretched piece to be judged and torn apart by a grouping of people I love the most.  There wouldn't be any coming back from that and it would be glorious.  No resets, no do-overs.  Just unfiltered reality and then silence.  What would one have to say after that?  There would be blissful, searing pain and then nothing.  It wouldn't be required of me to fix anything or adapt or change or grow.  I would just be done.  Done trying.  Done feigning effort.  Done.

It's exhausting complaining about everything.  I'm so dreadfully tired of there nothing being wrong.  Other people can only take so much you know.  All people have their limits and I certainly do my damnedest to have them reach the pinnacle of what it means to be fatigued.  Hardly any effort at all on my part, really.  It's become so natural, me being a crazy person, that I don't even notice it happening anymore.  Others have to inform me of the fact by tears, or emitting anger, frustration or just bolting altogether...for fuck that crazy bitch.  I get it.  I really do.  I've forced a hand more than a time or two.  You asked me if I've ever been here before.  I live here, hunny.  I live here.

Dear Millennials,

Fuck You.

You truly are the worst generation.  I know every generation thinks that they are elite in their hatred for every other generation in existence...well I'm elite in hating my own.  Unfortunately I was born on the cusp of being apart of this ridiculous self-interested, wasteful bunch of entitled apathetic suck-faces.  You really are.  Suck-Faces to the ninth degree.  I have never been privy to such a useless bunch of assholes.  Seriously all of you may suck the proverbial dick.

I have never been cancelled on, ignored, forgotten about, or left behind by more millennials than any other grouping of people...ever.  I have made plans with these canker blossoms(thank you Shakespeare), only to be texted moments before the meet-up...'Um, I'm like totally caught up right now...rain check?'  A mere ten years ago, if you broke plans it's because you had something unavoidable happen like a flat tire or death.  Yeah, you had to die back in the day if you didn't meet up for coffee.  That's the way shit use to go down.  Now?  We have texting.  Instagram.  Twitter.  I can see your fucking picture on Facebook with you shaking hands with a local celebrity at the mall at the same time you were suppose to meet me for a beer you fucking fuck.  Most of the time I am not even allotted the courtesy of a 'can't make it' message.  Normally there's just nothing.  No communication at all.  Have we gotten so very lazy that even a text is too dreadfully time consuming?  Gross.

I like making plans.  It helps my brain and gives me something to look forward to.  Is our collective attention span so slight that this is no longer possible?  Do we scramble about attempting importance on our pocket computers, meanwhile skirting over the fact that we hate each other and ourselves.  I feel bad when I bail on someone.  Even worse when I space and miss an opportunity with friends or family altogether.  If something has seriously come up and you can't make it...cool.  Communicate then have a make up date in which the beers be on you.  We're all busy suck-face...your shit is no more important than mine.  Waiting is a fucking disease and I don't appreciate feeling like my time means somehow less because you were raised to only feed your selfish concerns.  Grow up or you'll be all alone in the growing old.

I Deduce I've Been Reduced

The train was out of service.  A stop before I needed and I was stranded with the rest of the doldrums..."momentarily", I was assured.  A man with a scruffy hippy beard, donning a scruffy hippy hat, with a hippy guitar strapped to his poor-postured hippy back, made his way to my location.  On a sardine tight train platform...there was no where to run.  He started with brief small-talk, asking me where I was headed.  I cracked an off the cuffer and he laughed way too hard and far too loud.  Then without hesitation or buying me dinner first, he grabbed my shoulder, put his rotten mouth within spittle distance of my cringing face and said, "You're really beautiful, you know that?"

I being the ever polite commuter muttered, "Thanks", and shrugged off his pass.  He then proceeded to look me up and down rather blatantly, repeating the empty sentiment once more.  I turned my head in disgust.  As if I need some dirty, greasy man on a train platform, brain fucking me with his flaccid, over-baked stinky, twisted junk.  He then went on to speak of how he had a sister about my age.  He asked how old I was and feigned surprise from my response, thinking that would somehow break down my wall of hatred and then freed by this sexy loner, I would be free to hop on his lumpy cock and take a spin.

"Oh WOOOOOW", he proclaims, stifling his halfy, "I would guess you were no more than 22!  My sister's your age.  Well I'm 56...how old do you think I look?"  He says this while pulling back so I can get a good look at his motives...I mean, wrinkled, weathered face.

"56.  My mom's fifty-six."  I say coldly, looking him right in his stupid hippy eye.  He gets quite embarrassed by this and says there's 'no way he looks his age.'  I've hurt his feelings, thank christ but the goof comes back for more.  He grabs my shoulder again, looks me up and down and repeats his adage about my beauty.  So done with his transparency, I thought two things.  This idiot just compared me to his sister, so either he wants to fuck his sister or thinks relating me to his relative will make him seem less off and therefore make me more apt to suck his dick in the darkened corner of the station.  And two,  I just compared you to my mom, who is not a stupid creepy hippy hitting on people half her age(anymore), I insulted your age and you're still trying for it.  Why on god's green earth would I ever hit that?  No amount of compliments from strange men, regardless of my daddy issues, are going to make me fuck you.  You're gross, you're making me feel uncomfortable with your piercing gaze of dirty thoughts and wretched images, and if you lay your hand on my shoulder one more time, you are going to eat the front end of the Expo Line coming down the rail.  What is it about men that they feel like my personal space doesn't concern them as long as I haven't told them to eat a dick and leave me alone?  I have never walked up to a man, asked for the time and then cupped his balls as I pass.  I despise the fact that I am a mere commodity, reduced to a sexual play thing....mostly because I allow it.  I allow it by ignoring the passes, skipping over the ogling stares of passing penises;  I let it go because it's so rampant.  I would have to spend endless hours telling men off, I'd have no time for anything else.  My life would be consumed by the fight so I must pick and choose the battles I partake in.

My BF asked me recently how I deal with it.  He had a similar experience where he felt the eyes of women on his nether regions and it made him not joyous, as one would assume, but sad and uncomfortable.  He felt the impulse to feel shame about his reduction to piece of meat status as a result of the invasive stares of strangers from the opposite sex.  At first it could be thought of as flattering, then it rapidly turns ugly and overwhelming.  When I feel in danger.  When the bells go off, I take action.  The hippy dude was harmless.  Unfortunately, one cannot go around assaulting hippy-dudes just because they have no sense of personal space, or common human decency.  They are driven by their genitals and their lust for some young piece of ass to fuck away all of their dirty hippy problems.  I ask then, on behalf of all women out there to all hippy-dudes who maybe don't realize how they make us feel; How they can ruin a day for a person out of selfish concern for their cocks:  Think about us, these random encounters in your life, as though you think on your sisters, your mothers, your children.  We are not here for your pleasure.  We are designed for more.  Our purpose is not only to serve a want in your weiner, so think about that the next time you inappropriately touch a girl and she's not having it.  What would you do to the dude on the train platform that did that to your sister?        

Transit Woes

I use to feel so smug about taking transit.  I had it all figured out.  There's no sitting in traffic on a train.  I'm polluting far less than most.  It's cheaper than a vehicle(barely).  I can sit back, relax, listen to music and be driven to whatever destination of whimsy I so choose on any given day.  Somewhere, somehow that's all changed.  Now everyday is a nightmarish torment of epic and absurd proportions.

On my to work this eve, rockin' the headphones and gazing out the window at the gorgeous summer day.  The river below and the trees doin' there thing, this greasy white dude sits down beside me.  He hits me with his newspaper which was troublesome yet tolerable as one must learn to stomach the ignorance and ineptitude of others while travelling.  I stood up as the train was stopped to open the window as the train was quite warm and I do not enjoy breathing in recycled air nor the pits of grease fuck beside me.  As soon as I place myself back on the seat, he promptly stands, slams the window and sits staring at me...waiting for a response.  Not one to back down from quelching idiocy, I removed my headphones and looked him square in the eye.  "I needed some air," I said point of factly.

He positions himself two inches from my reddening face and spits, "This is an air conditioned car, can't you READ?"  The signs on the window are very clear and I'm sure Translink totally pays for air conditioned cars while they're trying to fill their coffers with another tax to pay for the shit they're building which they can't afford.

"That was rude," I spoke with, I'll admit, a little shock that this man was getting ready for battle over an open window on a train with someone half his age and size.

"It was RUDE of YOU to open it in the first place!"

I didn't know what to say.  As much as I practice keeping cool and speaking with intellect...this guy had me totally rattled.  I just kept wondering what kind of a day he must of had.  Or if he's like this all of the time; Stirring up shit out of boredom or some empty sense of self righteousness.  I thought of all the things I could have said like bringing up the fact that his body odor was the reason I required the oxygen, or asked him as I would a child if he was having a bad day?  Or maybe the only language people like that understand is to give back ten fold what they've dished out.  I watch dogs a lot and the only way to subdue an aggressive or inappropriate puppy act, the other puppy lays it out clean and clear.  Woof!  Cut it out.  Or, failing that, a little nip on the neck to show business is meant.  All of these things went though my head...in the meantime, he got off at the next stop and for three hours following this utter oddness, I though about what the course of action I'll take in the future.  I mean, he wasn't even on the train long enough to feel a breeze from the window, yet he still had to make a scene and prove something to the rest of the passengers.  I just wanted to be free of stinky breath filled train and angry greasy pit man.  Have we lost all sense of being able to accommodate and relate to one another?  Are we so entitled and set in what we want that in any given moment if someone infringes on that even slightly we must make a stand and return things to what we thought was what we needed.  I bet he would have enjoyed the fresh breeze coming in though the tiny train window slit, had he been there longer than a single stop.  Perhaps this lesson is to be open to others' needs no matter how small they may seem to you.  Maybe I had completely unbalanced his equilibrium with the world by the ever so small change in barometric pressure that his brain screamed and he had no control.  Or maybe he's just a grease lizard with hate in his heart and poison in his armpits.  In the future people, I beg you, ask those around you what they want.  Cast a ballot on if the window opens or remains shut and after you've tallied the votes and made certain that the train is in consensus, let me know how that breeze of democracy and sanity feels once you've arrived cuz by the time all that shit's been dealt with, you'll be where you needed to go.  I'm buying a car...fuck the planet.