booze

About a week earlier I had finished a book (on the Hell's Angels, scheduled this fall by Random House) and I felt that I needed about a week of total degeneration to cool out my system. To this end I went down to Big Sur and Monterery and filled my body with every variety of booze and drug available to modern man. For six or seven days I ran happily amok - spending money, sitting in baths, and futilely hunting wild boar with a .44 Magnum revolver. At one point I gave my car away to a man who paid $25 for the privilege of pushing it off a 400-foot cliff. - to Max Scherr editor, Berkley Barb 7/20/1966

An empty bottle of Jack is almost just as beautiful as a new and unopened bottle...in the same sense as looking down at muddied feet, and looking back the way you came. The journey you've taken to get to this point, the experiences and sights and music listened to, the shit scrolled down on paper. An empty bottle may hold more promise than a full one in that regard...

So you mean to tell me you won't fuck anyone you don't share some kind of deep emotional connection with? What a sad, depressing, truly horrible life you must lead...

Being crazy, for the rest of us, is a form of sanity.

Let me ask you this: How many days do you have left, if any, in the life you promised for yourself yesterday?

I've always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe's way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us...they're happening right now, cradled in the palms of our hands. But that doesn't change the fact that the whiskey, weed, and romance eventually runs out and the night will soon turn to day.

If you drink anymore, you're going to be positively flammable.

I decided to masturbate with shampoo instead of conditioner today. Because yolo. Things Jesus never said.

I didn't recognize it as such then, because I was only thirteen years old, but later I found it a bit ironic that my first time seeing a woman in all her form and glory and saggy drug-tainted tits, arrived at the same exact time as my first introduction to death.

Reaction timeTouch the underside of a penny you find on the streetDoesn't feel any different unless you close your eyesI can taste the copper in my mouth nowseeping from between my teethThere's an explanation I'm sureall this bloodit's from all the times I held the glass too closeAnd forgot to tip the dancerA storm just passedand like every other one that came before itI was left unharmedThe dogs are all barking and the catshiding in the basementAnd the sky is colored that bright yellow glowmakes it feel like you're wearing sunglassesthat you can't take offWherever you are nowit's not herebecause I missed itI missed the showI missed the curtain callAnd forever more I am cursedlike a blanket without a body to keep warm

...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.

~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~ The doctor told me something onceshe saidSTOP DRINKINGI slapped her across the face with thisNOI walked right out of that officewent right down to the holeI told the bartenderWHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKERhe poured and he pouredand I slapped my money down on that barthe man I had been driving around withhe just sort of sat there next to this hookershe probably had something rottenway down there between her legsher eyes told of no soulI emptied the bottle down my throatand ordered some chipsthe bartender told meTHEY'RE STALEand I give him a I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE,GIVE ME SOMETHIN'He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and saidENJOYI went back to my roomand talked all nightso much conversationit turned the toilet bowl pale

...people who don't live at least a little bit in fear, have nothing left to live for.

People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking "not much has changed" is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back.

To all the boys, for when you become men: you'll leave women all throughout your life because they're holding you back, and even after she's gone she'll still weigh you down. To all the women: stay away from us men. We don't know anything about you, despite what we try to convince you of.

I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting point from which I have never stopped running.

The door is crackedWe used to meetlike water does landnonot thatmore like when skin touches skinkissing fingertipsor when air escapes a lung and is felt across the worldI've leapt over cracks in sidewalksand swallowed away troublesome back painsthat could only be fixed with someone else's pillsWe met by your house one stray dayand you drove me to the baywhere we sat and kissed like it was yesterdayAnd here you told me that you loved meand that you always loved meand that you would always love methe wind blew and I held youYou rested your head on my shoulderand the wind blew warmLater, in your big red truck, we smoked some greenand I kissed you harderand held your breasts, and felt between your legsand with a gaspyou told me you were in love with meAnd then you drove me backand we promised it wouldn't be the endnot this timeThe quill and inkwell on your footI'm a writer and you are my greatest artI returned to my hell and dreamt of you once more

You know one day, you're going to look back on these days. And everyone you went to high school with will either be getting married to each other, shitting out kids, or dropping dead like flies," when she spoke, Miss Jenson sighed at the end of every few words; she must have been narrating her own thoughts she might have otherwise kept to herself, "and everything you never did, you'll never be able to even try.