<\/p>\n
There are lots of things I\u2019m missing in life.\u00a0 I know this because other people are happy and not all<\/em> of them are lying.\u00a0 They can\u2019t be.\u00a0 I look around the bar and, for the most part, I think they are liars.\u00a0 Increasingly, I\u2019m starting to believe that they all are either figments of my imagination or in the employ of a greater force that can only destroy me through roundabout tactics.\u00a0 But I know \u2013 see, I\u2019m not crazy \u2013 that such thoughts are simply part of an ongoing delusion.\u00a0 The people do exist, they are not trying to kill me, they are not all in the employ of a cosmic force aligned against me, ergo, they are not all liars.<\/p>\n I may not be using \u2018ergo\u2019 correctly.\u00a0 Or my punctuation might be off.\u00a0 I\u2019d check on that, but the Wifi\u2019s slow tonight and, when that happens, I start to truly believe that there is a cosmic force out to get me.\u00a0 One that\u2019s based in 1995, reaching out to me across the great expanse of time, screaming like a modem as it bears down on me, stops to load, continues bearing, stops to load, continues bearing\u2026eternally closing in \u2013 blip\u2026blip\u2026blip \u2013 and I\u2019m unable to get away because I\u2019m trapped and also moving at whatever the fuck disgusting internet speeds we tolerated a decade ago.\u00a0 What a savage world we live in.<\/p>\n The time has come for another move.\u00a0 Bouncing out of the family \u201chomestead,\u201d a little five bedroom three bath rancher in upper Silver Spring on a wooded acre lot.\u00a0 Sweet paradise every morning as I wake up in my 10×12 room.\u00a0 Wraparound windows show me nothing but trees and flitting birds, like the final scene in Star Trek II<\/em> where we\u2019re going through the sun-drenched forest and settle on Spock\u2019s coffin.\u00a0 As with all such things, I eventually have to leave the room and the rest of the house is like in Labyrinth<\/em> when Jennifer Connelly bites the poisoned apple and looks down in horror to see the rotten, maggoty core.<\/p>\n No, too romantic.\u00a0 It\u2019s more like the face peeling scene in Poltergeist<\/em>.<\/p>\n But the crazy family thing\u2019s a tired old saw.\u00a0 I talk about it all the time.\u00a0 Hell, I talk about everything all the time.\u00a0 So we\u2019re, collectively, a million dollars in debt.\u00a0 So my grandfather confessed to a twisted Ghost Story<\/em> style murder and disposal of a hooker.\u00a0 So my grandmother\u2019s slow and hideous food-oriented suicide is quietly tearing us apart.\u00a0 So my cousin and my aunt are\u2026 Well, let\u2019s call them eccentric.\u00a0 Satanic, perhaps.<\/p>\n I hate the family story thing because other people always go oh, yeah, Uncle Leroy once threw a toilet out the window.\u00a0 What a weird family!<\/p>\n People want to outdo each other on that stuff, which I find deeply insulting because I spend every Christmas peering sadly through cheerful windows like Scrooge.\u00a0 I\u2019m jealous of people who have a mom and dad even if they\u2019re being raped and beaten.<\/p>\n The time has come to put the old folks away into what is called a \u201ccommunity.\u201d\u00a0 My grandmother\u2019s really sort of faded, and she needs professional care from what are called \u201ccare specialists,\u201d and my grandfather is going to go back to his roots in West Virginia and, doubtlessly, murder a few dozen hookers before his time is up.\u00a0 My aunt is being exiled to a home somewhere down near the high school where she teaches retards for the public school system.\u00a0 She and her demon child are renting a big house from a conservative ex marine.\u00a0 By \u201cdemon child\u201d I mean that \u201cmen\u2019s voices\u201d tell her to murder animals when the lights are out and she crawls through hallways speaking in tongues.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 By \u201cconservative ex marine\u201d I mean someone who has been sold a bill of goods by my grandfather \u2013 single mother schoolteacher!\u00a0 She\u2019s a darling.<\/p>\n My aunt and cousin are famous for destroying everything around them, and that includes mortal souls.\u00a0 Nobody actually cares except that we learned my grandfather is co-signing with her.\u00a0 And when something goes wrong \u2013 which it will \u2013 then there\u2019s going to be\u2026and\u2026oh my god\u2026with\u2026and the\u2026<\/p>\n Wait.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve served my time.\u00a0 I\u2019ve attended to the family, saved my money, and been nice to the madness.\u00a0 I have done whatever it is I\u2019m supposed to have done, whatever that was.<\/p>\n Moving\u2019s easy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really live.\u00a0 I have no woman, no hobbies.\u00a0 I watch movies, read books, listen to music, download stuff all the time, drink coffee in the mornings and alcohol from midmorning on.\u00a0 And I complain, quite often to my plants or the occasional stuffed animal gifted me by any number of failed girlfriends who (because they\u2019re in the employ of a cosmic conspiracy centered in 1995) maintain contact with me.<\/p>\n I\u2019m moving to a smaller space, and more urban, with less of a view, and I\u2019ll have a roomie.\u00a0 Being near a person is both calming and\u2026well, tempting.\u00a0 Not like stand over their bed with a katana in my ninja Halloween costume from 1988 tempting (why do I still have that outfit?) but more like push off the balcony tempting.\u00a0 You know, just to see what happens.\u00a0 Because the men\u2019s voices I hear in the dark tell me that people fall up!\u00a0 And, if that\u2019s true, where do they go?<\/p>\n The new place is wildly convenient.\u00a0 It\u2019s within walking distance of the Metro, all the shops and movies, and dozens of bars and restaurants that put on airs, service yuppies, shy away from real drinkers, and are fearful to serve a beer anytime before 4pm.\u00a0 I swear, I think we\u2019re finally getting to the point where raping a four year old in the street in some sort of faux Wild West dusty street lynching freakout is more favorably looked upon than getting a comfortable drunk up.<\/p>\n I know, I know.\u00a0 Now all the puritans are saying how the comfortable drunk is what leads to raping four year olds.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to argue.\u00a0 I\u2019m just going to say that smokers know exactly what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 And so do pederasts.\u00a0 It\u2019s tough living with a taboo, I know.\u00a0 I\u2019m with you, my brothers.\u00a0 Fist to the heart.\u00a0 Recognize.\u00a0 Hispanic shit with my hands.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been trying to figure out what this move represents.\u00a0 For the last week, I\u2019ve been thinking that it represents panicked desperation.\u00a0 But, well, everything in my life has a sort of desperate edge to it.\u00a0 So does it matter?\u00a0 I think it\u2019s more like stopping off at the space station before I go on to Venus and buy a house where, ultimately, financially and spiritually speaking, I\u2019ll be like that girl in the story where the sun only shines for one day every however many years and the bullies lock her in the closet and she misses it.\u00a0 That Venus story.\u00a0 Whatever it is.<\/p>\n Ah, Venus.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found great comfort in living in desperation.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only way to survive, actually, because everything is just so terrible and heartbreaking.\u00a0 These words are spoken by a man who is living his last few weeks in a house where pentagrams have been formed outside each door using the bodies of mutilated mice and birds.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 Did I mention that?\u00a0 Come closer.\u00a0 Okay, it\u2019s the men\u2019s voices in the dark thing.\u00a0 Queer, huh?\u00a0 We all don\u2019t mention it.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t acknowledge it, then it doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 That\u2019s easily done because we\u2019re Americans.\u00a0 Poof \u2013 into the ether.<\/p>\n Or maybe into the black tar knotting in your stomach and shoulders and slowly burning behind your eyes.\u00a0 The only way to extinguish that kind of burn is a sort of shamanic Wages of Fear<\/em> journey \u2013 200 miles of jungle road with unstable dynamite in the back.\u00a0 When I get home, I\u2019m going to tell my wife that I–KABOOM!<\/p>\n I think that\u2019s what this move is.\u00a0 I think the next year is going to be the first 50 miles of the Wages of Fear<\/em> journey, where everything is kind of tense but it\u2019s working.\u00a0 This is gonna work out.\u00a0 We\u2019re gonna be cool.<\/p>\n Then, at some point next summer, there\u2019s that rotten timber reinforcement along the side of the washed out mountain road.<\/p>\n By that analogy, my life will end horridly because I\u2019ll get cocky and drive too fast.\u00a0 But, at least, there\u2019ll be a pretty girl forever waiting in my time of dying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[125,353,124],"class_list":["post-2532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-childhood","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-nachos-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2648,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532\/revisions\/2648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}