April 13, 2002
I read and destroyed a bunch of journal entries from the beginning of 1992. I had just turned 20. I was still living in my parent’s house in Garfield Heights. I was working at the law firm (somebody had just got shot at the Old Courthouse in a domestic dispute resulting in the permanent addition of metal detectors) and going to Cleveland State University trying to jockey my way into English classes with this girl I liked. This was right before I met a super sweet and very innocent fifteen year old Thea for you Assholier than Thou fans. What, you ask, there was a life before Thea? Well, I answer, maybe a little bit of a life but certainly not much.
I had just played my last show with that band that served as my introduction to the Revelers. The last show was with the Revelers at the Phantasy Nite Club (a benefit for Croatia) and it was the only show that I played with this band that was any good. I was head over fucking heals in love with the Revelers at this point in my life and worshipped them for their apparent togetherness, general sophistication and dedication to the rock and roll way of life. I knew them from school and this band that I was drumming for and they where way out of my league. They were adults and I was still a dorky kid. I think that Joel was already living with his girlfriend at the time and the rest of them lived in the Reveler house on West 91st Street. Trust me when I tell you that it was a completely different world than I was living in Garfield Heights getting smokey with Doug from Quazimodo and plotting our way out of suburbia.
The early journals tell the story of that time of my life. I was reading a ton of Henry Miller. I watched “Parker Lewis Can’t Fail” on television. I was trying vegetarianism. I had a curfew. I was in Latin as CSU. I went to church. I still hung out with people that I went to high school with. I stayed up late every night and watch Letterman. I listened to Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. I went to Euclid Tavern, saw the Poster Children and had that girl that I was chasing from school buy the underage me beers. I was into the album “Goo” by Sonic Youth. I used to skip classes at school. I would never do that now. That is one change from the me of ten years ago. I watched “Hellraiser” with my dad on TV. I drove a Chevy Custom Deluxe pick-up truck that i was trying to sell to afford to move out on my own. I watched “Seinfeld”. I was trying to retrain myself to drum more like Tommy Fox but I was not good enough. Doug and I were called fag at the Denny’s (formerly Sambo’s) on Rockside Road. I was pretentious as hell and trying my damnedest to have sex.
The journal entries quit for a while and picked up after I moved into the Reveler house on West 91st Street. It might have been the best of times or it may have been the worst but I don’t remember because I was on super doobies and the journal entries don’t make much sense except for my bitching about the ladies. By this time, I had met the fifteen year old Thea and she ran me through the ringer even though she was so young. I would get the teenage Thea drunk on beer at the Reveler house and then try to make my move. She never got so drunk where I could get to even first base. Damn. My wife was giving me a hard time at the Reveler house and she was a teenager at that time too. What the fuck? I could not handle teenage girls. Maybe that is why they sicken me to this day. I still had problems with a girl I hung out with in high school and I dated a couple of other broads at the time with similar horrible results. I was as sure as hell a late bloomer. Woo. I think it is truly the biggest miracle of my life that I am not still a virgin.
The first piece of prose about puking is from the first half of 1992 and the second one about the lottery is from after I moved out of my parent’s house and in with the band. Also, the 1992 poems are the worst poems that I am keeping in the rotation. They suck but 1992 was light on content and high on super doobies.
Another Poem About a Woman
It goes way beyond
The Biblical definition of covet
It is not what they had in mind
When they defined adultery
I look at you
I don’t lust
I see your son
I see you as mom
I think I understand what it feels like
You want to be the best mother
You worry about it all of the time
You worry that you are not giving enough
Your days fly by like cars on the freeway
Some honk their horn and scare the shit out of you
Some crash blocking your way
Some swerve around uncontrollably as if they were driven drunk
Some roll by slow like they were a part of a funeral procession
I think I understand what it feels like
Your child
My love
I hope you understand what it feels like
(1992)
I am sitting at home alone on the Sunday before Super Tuesday with only the TV news and its in depth coverage to keep me company. All of the talk of the revival of the American Way of life has revived my enormous appetite. The fat cats of the Bush administration serve BBQ potato chips and French onion dip – a feast of hardcore conservatism. The best kind of BBQ potato chips has a little bit of sugar in the mix of spices. There will reach a point in this country when one more chip is the difference between law and total anarchy. There is no point in leaving a few crumbs. The voter turn out has been disappointing. There is virtually no strength in the will of this country anymore. I know before I eat a pound of BBQ potato chips or watch the TV news what I am going to be doing after I am done indulging. Sticking a finger down my throat and vomiting. The TV news on the Sunday before Super Tuesday and a bag of BBQ potato chips are better consumed and then quickly purged that just consumed.
(1992)
I am a nun
I am a nun
In the order of Ginsberg
I wear the habit
Of corduroy and black
I read the bible of Whitman, Yeats and Elliot
I cloister at the coffee shop
I pray at the open mic
With a hymn of metaphor and obsenity
I am celibate with my art
I know it is always of god to be
Self absorbed and moody
Sexual deviance and drug addiction will always be
The apostle’s creed
(1992)
I Am Different
I am different she said
Can’t you see that?
My heart is pure
My head has been kissed by an angel.
I only want you dead
So I will never lose you.
I dread life without you.
I fear the lonely.
I am different she said
My soul is clean
I am not like all of the others
I will not hurt you
I long to be free
Free from longing
You are stronger than me
But you can’t change that
I am different she said
(1992)
Being blind, deaf or having any handicap must be like a poor person waiting to win the lottery. Everyday you are waiting for it to all be better – better than the normal that you remembered it. I wake up on Thursday and Sunday morning with the hopes of picking up the Plain Dealer and seeing those magic numbers that will say to me that it is all better. I never check to see if I won the lottery on the night that they pull the numbers because that would take away one night of dreaming and all of that extra hope. I have been hoping on the numbers that I have chosen, my numbers, for almost three years. That is more that two and half years longer than I have been living away from home and the mall bought treasures of my parent’s suburban stronghold. The house on West 91st Street is in a rapidly deteriorating urban neighborhood. This is the hood – complete with housing projects, nightly convenient store robberies and drive-by shootings.
(1992)
posted by Thea at 6:50 PM
April 11, 2001
I am sad to report that I wrote more poems as youth than I thought I did. I am sickened at that the thought there were even more that these – way more – that I wrote and tossed in the trash can. I only hope that the garbage man is not still making fun of me with his buddies. Maybe tomorrow we will get to some shocking journal entries or unfinished one act plays.
The Suit Makes the Man
The suit makes the man,
Brother.
Did the Man get you that suit,
Brother?
Nice shoes.
Nice shirt.
Nice tie.
All day long
A single wire earphone from
A transistor radio
Tuned into the station
Delivers the message
Act like they do.
(1991)
Baseball Bat
I wonder
If the baseball bat
That hit me in the head
Was made
From a tree
From the rain forest?
(1991)
Naughty Fun for Aspiring Poets – Starring Dick (giggle) and Jane
Dick – Yeah, blank. You blank it.
Jane – Yes. The only thing blank than your blank is blank.
Dick – Oh, yeah, blank it.
Jane (moaning) – Blank yes.
Dick – Blank it. Blank it.
Jane – Oh my God. You are making me blank.
Dick – I think that I am going to blank. Holy blank. You are blank.
Jane – Heavens to blank. You are a blank. Blank. Blank. Blank.
Dick – Blank. Blank. Blank. Yes. I am blank.
(1991)
Number Four
Number one was in my pants with your hair and your ass
Number two was in my heart when you looked and you spoke
Number three was in my soul when you answered and I called
Number four
Is the image that I have of you as something that I want to be
Your intelligence
Your spirit
Your freedom
Your beauty
As a young boy I looked at my dad and Brian Sipe
Heroes
Men.
As a teen I looked at Henry Miller and Pete Townshend
Heroes
Men.
At the beginning of my twenties I look at you
Hero
Woman.
My definition of manhood
Is embodied by a woman.
You are all that I want to be.
(1991)
posted by Thea at 8:13 PM
April 10, 2001
What is up?
What have I been doing since the diet ended? How about fighting for my life? How about fighting for the salvation of my very soul? How about participating in the battle between good and evil?
How about just working?
I have been involved with work both day job and otherwise. There is plenty of bullshit happening at the office, which definitely interferes with the whole idea of me ticking away the clock - blissfully unaware of the passing of time. I can't wait for the issues at the office to be over. I need to get back to being oblivious to the fact that I have a job. I don't need any reminders of the fact that I am employed.
I am working on my next (third) book. Hopefully, this will be the one that actually gets finished and not just added to my collection of unfinished manuscripts. The writing is going good with 30,000 words in the can (What is up, Thea?) and 10,000 of those are actually readable.
I am dealing with my desire to be a writer. I have wanted to be a writer since reading “On the Road” and “Catcher in the Rye” in junior high. I have wanted to make my living at writing since I found out that it was possible to do so at about the same time. It seems like a good gig. I am nervous and excited about the first attempts that I am planning on making at getting published later this year. When are you going to send your work out to publishers and agents? Later, I tell my wife. Later.
I have been thinking about being a writer and what writing means to me. There are parts of it that I enjoy but I have always dealt with the fact that I think I enjoy the thought of being respected as an intellectual and a wit more that I enjoy the actual act of writing. Sometimes it is tedious and boring. Sometimes I don’t know what to write about. Most of the time it is more fun to watch women’s softball on TV.
I have been writing, with varied results, since before I hit puberty. I wrote poems and sporadic journals as a kid. I have always carried a notebook around with me. I have always written stuff in it.
Every year since I was twenty years old in 1991, I have gone through everything that I have written and thrown out anything that I was too embarrassed to ever read again. I used to do it crying over beers and now I just read the shit stone cold sober and feel shame. I am reading my shit again this year. Yes, I am feeling embarrassed. I am also putting an end to these scraps by typing them up and sharing them with the viewers.
I told myself before I started the current book that it was not going to be my masterpiece. I know that. It is just a book I am writing during two months of my life. It is not my “Crime and Punishment”. It is not my “Confederacy of Dunces”. It is just a book about trying to get laid as a kid. It is about heavy metal. Hopefully, it is funny and, hopefully, it will be read by other people besides my wife. That is all that I am asking.
Billy Childish got me thinking about art in general and writing specifically. Shit. I don’t know. It is not like anything that I have written is the Bible. I am just a dude who likes to write. What I write is important to me – important enough that I have spent time looking at this shit every year for over a decade – but not so important where I am blinded by its genius or anything. It is not that deep.
So, here it is.
Some of these poems have been altered since I wrote them because I don’t use certain words anymore. I was trying to sound smarter than I was as a teenager and now I am comfortable with my limited vocabulary. I think it was cute - how I wrote as a youngster and, although the ideas and themes are pretty simple and stupid, I will stand behind them as a thirty year old man.
Without Thinking
Without thinking
Put your hand in the hinge of an open door
And keep it there.
The excitement that comes with the promise of pain
The knowledge of that fact that something bad might happen
Although there is no reason for to put yourself in a situation where you are going to Deliberately
Feel pain,
It works.
Oh, it should all be so easy
Put yourself in a bad situation
Wait
Experience
Feel pain
Move on.
(1991)
Something About True Love
My true love
Lives by a large body of water
She does not swim
She fears
What she can’t see
But knows is out there
I swim
And she cries
Are you all right?
(1991)
Something About an Old Man
There was an old man who lived on the opposite side of the street
All day long he blared jazz records on his stereo and the TV game shows
Nobody ever saw this man during the day
But at night he sat his the rooftop
Holding discussions with Marx, Lennon, Huxley, Hitler, Ruth, Parker, Kennedy and King
All of the dead and remembered
Or tortured
Or infamous
History was up for discussion on his rooftop late at night
It was decided one day by a group of people from the neighborhood
That this old man’s talking on the rooftop was a public nuisance
The children were curious
The children wanted to join him
We will do it for the good of the young people
People who spoke on the rooftop at night were dangerous
The plan was set
The old man would be arrested in broad daylight
To prove that he was not a vampire
It would happen during “The Price is Right”
The local maniac was arrested
His door was broken down
To the sound of Gillespie
Because of Gillespie
The old man went without a struggle
Like Jesus
The children from the neighborhood
Grew up
Grew apart
And grew old
Without ever knowing
(1991)
Another Working Man
The working man
Labors and saves
Counting his pennies
For a rainy day.
The rain comes
But never goes away.
(1991)
Another Beauty and the Beast
What is beauty?
What is good?
Words I’ve never understood.
How can beauty be explained?
How can goodness be attained?
(1991)
Every Idiot
Every idiot has some wisdom
Every scribbler has some art
Humming tunes of false happiness
As it all falls apart
(1991)
Manifesto Song
This is my manifesto song
Here is where I preach my beliefs
Here is where I wear a funny hat
And march in St. Petersburg
I am a socialist
I am a pacifist
I like to kiss girls
I like to cuddle
I do not eat meat
I hate to work
But I work at the Quickie Mart
Would you like a Slushie?
This is my manifesto song
You can try and sing along
You can wear a funny hat
And march in St. Petersburg
(1991)
Fall Poem
What I did lat summer
I was able to land a job
On the “Love Boat”
With Isaac, Gopher, Doc and Julie.
I found no love.
It was like I was an indentured servant.
I was tied to the boat with no chance of ever leading a normal life.
The money was pretty good, though.
I am saving up to take some college correspondence courses.
You cannot hold a good man down
For too long.
I would like to have Charo hold me down for a while, though.
(1991)
Another Oh, God
Oh, God
I want to feel just like you do
I want to know the truth
I want to command the angels
Oh, God
I want all the nations of the world
To fight over me
And claim me as the one who chose them
Oh, God
Can you give me a glimpse
Of what it was like to throw Adam and Eve
Out of Eden
Oh, God
How does it feel to take a life,
Raise the dead,
Or destroy the world?
(1991)
On the Law
The law is just another layer of bullshit
That you place on life
What law?
I smoke marijuana
I drink and drive
I have committed sodomy in all fifty states
I have slept with my first cousin (a minor)
I take the tags off of mattresses
And duplicate video tapes for commercial use without authorization
The law is just another layer of bullshit
That you try to place on my life
I am above the law
I am above you
Go ahead, try to put a tax on my tea
(1991)
posted by Thea at 8:36 PM 