Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine
12.30.05 (11:42 pm) [edit]"It was rainin' from the first and I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your longtime curse hurts but what's worse
Is this pain in here
I can't stay in here,
Ain't it clear
That I just can't fit
Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit
When we meet again, introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world."
- Bob Dylan
Tomorrow is our New Year's gig up in Marion. We're getting paid well, we're throwing a few new songs out there (I'm doing my first lead vocal with them in seven years, Cinnamon Girl doesn't fully count since I really share that one with Mark) ) and I've got a very good feeling about it. We've got five gigs in the next seven weeks. A very nice talk with Mark tonight got me excited all over again about playing. I enjoy it more now than I did back then, even though I preferred some of the older material. Oh well.
A phone call out of the blue from Sheryl. Just to tell me where they were and how much fun they were having. It felt like a gift. I think we're slowly coming around. The physical distance between us is a good thing, and I have no intention of getting in her way any more than I have to, but it feels we're on better terms than we've been in a long time. I've felt terrible things towards her for some time, mixed badly with the good things and the realization that some of these things really aren't even true or viable. I'm sure she knows what I mean, from her own side of the table. But healing is happening. We'll never be together again, it's just not the right thing to do for either of us. But if we go on at the level we've been on this week, I think it will be very good. For all the shit we've gone through, we're lucky. Lucky it hasn't been worse. Lucky to have an amazing little girl. Lucky to know that the other one is fully committed to making that little girl happy. It pains me to hear Katie tell me how she wishes we were all back together again (it's so pure and honest and hopeful and it fucking shatters me every time) but in the long run it will be better for her. She has to learn lessons now at age four that I didn't really learn until my mid-20s. About love. About black. About white. And about the vast expanse of gray that separates the two.
It will color her whole life, but art needs some more colors than just black and white. With Mommy and Daddy there to help, her life's art will be something to be proud of.
We're still a family. Not the one we were or that any of us wanted it to be. But as little faith as I have inside me about much else, I have plenty that this will be good.
I hope they sleep happily tonight.
Love,
Doug
A Great Evening Of Surprise And Music
12.29.05 (10:43 pm) [edit]"And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice."
- Bob Dylan
I knew about this when I wrote last night's entry, but it wasn't set in stone yet - I got to see Katie tonight.
Sheryl and Sean (her friend I talked about last time) came up to Indy so Sean could see his kids. He's recently divorced with two kids, living two hours from them. Sound familiar?
I only talked to him for a couple minutes, but between that and talking to Sheryl, I felt SO much better. It was a very, very nice visit. His daughter was sick, so he only had his son, sitting in the back of Sheryl's new van in his booster seat next to Katie. Little Sean is five. He and Katie had a lot of fun together earlier in the day, apparantly.
They dropped Katie off and went away for an hour and a half. A short time, but it was wonderful. She came in and jumped on the bed and told me how happy she was to see me again. She crawled under the blanket and I heard a familar noise. Her head popped out. "Daddy, I tooted in here!" We laughed our fool heads off. Fart jokes with the kid. It don't get much better than this.
We went to the store and came back to draw with colored pencils. She talked a lot, and it was just a great time. It wouldn't have happened if not for Sheryl and Sean being so nice as to give us this time together. It meant a LOT to me.
I felt that the field was levelled. Talking to him and to Sheryl, now knowing his divorce situation (which is really a lot worse than mine) I know that he knows EXACTLY the feelings I talked about here last night. He has to be feeling them himself now that he's away from his own children. And just a really nice guy. For the life of me, I can't think of who it is, but he reminds me of someone I've known, another musician. I really enjoyed tonight. Wow. Who could imagine? It doesn't change the basic feeling of powerlessness being this far from Katie and not being able to have mor einput in things, but I feel better all the way around about it.
Dennis showed up a few minutes after they left. We got off to a rocky start (weak performance, technical issues) but we hit a groove and managed to get four songs recorded, a couple quite well. Lay Lady Lay, The Needle & The Damage Done, Well All Right, and Love Hurts. I have to put backing vocals on the last two and do some creative reverb/eq work (and I'm NOT an engineer, I have to say) but I think we're just about ready to hit the road with this thing. We have to add a few more songs, but that will be easy. Dennis suggested that I sing two or three tunes, which I was going to suggest anyway. After yesterday's adventure, I've decided to take on Dylan and do Stuck Inside Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again. Not sure which others yet. I've got a pile of stuff semi-ready to go (I'm still planning on the solo thing once this is rolling) but I want to get the strongest stuff out there. I love our concept- we have yet to learn anything released after 1972. I love that purism in this context. I want to try a lot of different ideas, and this one is perfect. There's a hell of a lot of variety to be had even just within the time period we are covering, and we've got a few unique arrangments to foist on unsuspecting listeners. (I think our Time Of The Season is especially interesting, and it's really very simple.) I like working with Dennis a lot. He knows what he wants, I give it to him. Bam. There ya go. Of course now we have to find GIGS for this shit, which should be interesting. We'll see.
Lots of band activity coming up. New Years Eve, then a week off. Then five gigs in six weeks. I need the money bad, and I'm looking forward to picking it back up after nearly a month off. I wish the Cincy band was still going, it's been August since we've done anything, but oh well. With that band, I mostly just miss having drunk girls flashing their tits at us. There's definitely a place for that in my heart. But mostly I just want to make money playing bass. I NEED to do this. It feels good to lock into something that I feel total confidence in. Dammit Jim, I'm a bass player, not an engineer.
Dylan and his blondes are massaging my ears. I'm feeling strong. Reasonably healthy, albeit with a few concerns. As mentally sharp as I've been in years. Not saying much, but fuck it. i'm movin' along.
Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want,
Dougie
Out Of Freakin' Control
12.29.05 (2:16 am) [edit]You can't always get what you want...but sometimes you almost do...Steve Morse is a fucking hellbastard...stuck in the mud with those dead ancestor blues again...stories about dead people no one else gives two fucks about...progress marches on...so, IS she really going out with him, Mr. Jackson?...fuck control...
Got up early for the weird work day. Due to my toilet visit just before lunch, I wasn't around for the quick meeting which resulted in me having a half day at work. The rest of the week is fine, there's going to be far less of us and we'll have plenty to do (two different projects this week) but this is going to play hell with next week's check. I'm still behind on bills I thought I would catch up on this month, I STILL haven't got Indiana plates on the car and the Ohio tags are invalid at the end of the week, I've made an appointment with a psychaitrist about my medication that will cost too much just to show up to, and fuck knows how much other stuff I havne't considered yet. Oh yeah, I knocked a filling out of my back right top tooth last night. LOTS of Ibuprofen today.
But the good news is that I MIGHT be teaching guitar again within the next two weeks. I zipped down to Decatur Township (southwest corner fo the county) after work last night to look for land records since i've REALLY been wanting to do some genealogy and have had almost no time for it. I didn't get what I wanted (every county has some different bullshit process of how they handle their records and which closet with which leopard guarding it to put the files in that YOU want to read) but I saw a guitar shop just off High School Rd. off Highway 67 (more on that later) and went back.
We hit it off great. He's into Keneally, Bill Monroe, and Yngwie. Good mix. Cool guy. Needs a teacher, has a big waiting list. He can only give me two nights with his space limitations, which means I can only take on so many students since I can't quit the temp job without at least 35 students, so I'll be doing this part-time. Ten or twelve students. A couple mro eif I can work out a shift change with the warehouse. Ten students is $100 a week in five hours. Uh, I don't think I feel like arguing. It's not my ideal gig at all, I'm still pissed about not getting the 60 students down in Greenwood this summer (which you can't tell when I'm rambling about it for five minutes at a time, which I did to two people today) but fuck it, it's extra money and might be a doorway into something else.
I am not so much into "divine intervention" theories these days, but I do think that people can create certain energies which can bring certain results. Maybe not what you want, but the way it lines up can be shocking. That I found this place (and more on the place itself in just a minute) while looking for soemthing else entirely says SOMETHING. I don't know what. I don't think Uncle Jesus is looking out for me. I don't buy that horseshit any more. But I have been more determined this week to make things happen, and things are happening. I hope. I've been burned on a few teraching gigs in the past couple years, so I won't believe this one until I'm actually sitting in a sterile studio with some little snotty bastard and a cheap guitar asking me how to play some third-rate alterno-metal riff, but I do think it will happen this time. I fucking hope so.
By the way, i'm listening to California Screamin', a live album by the Dixie Dregs. I could have SEEN these shows this was recorded at. I was in L.A. back in '99. My first opportunity there tanked and I left for Indiana the same night Dweezil Zappa came up and played Peaches En Regalia with them, and he and Keneally talked to each other for the first time in yearsbbackstage afterwards. I could have BEEN there. Mike told me to come. And I was flying over the desert listening to Nonkertompf. Well, that's not a bad deal. I don't know if you know this, but The Dixie Dregs are gods, and Steve Morse is a fucking hellbastard of a gee-tar picker and if you don't own any of their albums, you SUCK. Just thought you might like to know, kiddies.
Since I had more time than i'd planned on this afternoon, I made another run for genealogy in Decatur Township. The Indiana State Library downtown is a GREAT place, mroe so than I had even begun to realize the first time I was there a couple months ago, and I had a GREAT time. A very cute thin blonde librarian-geek girl (I( mean this all in the best possible way, and had a flash of a Bill Hicks reference go through my head - "Pink Librarians" IS a great porn title) went out of her way to dig up some maps for me.
I did some online census research, going through census records, which confirmed some very good hunches I had. I tried the microfilm of maps used by the fire department in 1930. They were great, but it would take DAYS to find what I wanted to in the mindset I was in. Buzzing like all hell. Super-uber-focused. Doesn't happen often. but when it does, I cna only go in one direction, and I have to move QUICKLY. I can't explain if any other way. I hate the way my brain works, but I'm learning to live with it.
She came by and I said, "These maps are fabulous and I'm thrilled you found them, but my ADD is going haywire and I'd need seven cups of coffee to make it through this stuff without my head exploding." So she graciously went back to looking for more stuff.
I found what I needed. Nailed the motherfuekers down. I've got a very excellent (though I'm finding some errors) map book of Indianapolis and surrounding areas from last year. Twenty dollars, and it's saved my ass a lot fo tiems since moving here. I pulled out a pencil and compared it to the plat map from 1889. wnet apeshit. I can't believe this! I know where this shti is at! I've BEEN THERE!!!! HOLY FUCK! I know where my great-great-great-great-g randmother LIVED! And her sister! And others in the family! They're right there! THERE! On the map in front of me! I can see their house from here!
The money I was losing didn't seem to matter. I was high. The best blast of brain chemicals I've had since sitting with Katie in that Mexican place in Rising Sun on Monday, just having my little girl's love while we ate lunch. I can't wait to share these things with her when she's old enough to really grab onto it.
Take a little trip back with Father Doug-esias...
Esther Furnas was born in 1799 in Newberry, South Carolina, near Bush River. The Quakers at Bush River underwent a huge migration in the first ten years of the nineteenth century, mostly moving to southwestern Ohio. Esther's father Robert moved the family near Waynesville and the Little Miami River in 1804Robert was a prominent member of the local Quaker community. He and a friend boughbt the land on which the Ceaser's Creek Monthly Meeting was built, where the cemetery still rests with the remains of him and his wife Hannah. His son Seth built a log cabin that is now part of the Pioneer Village at the state park, along with the meetinghouse.
Esther married Daniel Mills there in 1820. I've walked through the clearing where the church once stood, so far off from a main road you wouldn't know it was there if you weren't looking for it. I imagined her here, and wondered what lead her and so many of her family west to the indianapolis area.
Daniel died young, after the birth of their children Hannah and David. Esther returned to Ceasar's Creek (the site of at least two partially written short stories I've been working on, and a place where I've felt seeimgnly otherworldly energy that I can't begin to describe) and married Jesse Conner. The hot librarian's name is Jessie too, by the way. Any Rick Springfield jokes will bring curses of death upon you, you fuckers.
Jesse and Esther Conner moved back to Indiana, and attended the Fairfield Monthly Meeting just south of Plainfield, southwest of indianapolis. A beutiful church and cemetery still stands there. A large number of Esther's family and closely related other familes moved to this area as well, and the roads are often named after Quaker familes such as Milhouse, Mendenhall, Furnas, Mills, etc. The "Quaker highway" runs out of Plainfield towards I-70, and when you hit the light at Stafford Road, you can see the office of a certain temp agency.
Esther's son from her first marriage - David - moved west to Iowa, settling near the Quaker town of Earlham in Madison County. Home of John Wayne and some bridges you might have heard of. His sister Hannah stayed near her mother their whole lives. Hannah married a man named James Pruitt, who, after her death, moved throughout Indiana and eventually Iowa, for a time being a member of the Quaker church on Deer Creek just south of Marion, Indiana, next to the woods where , over ninety years later, his great-great-great grandson played in long before he knew or wrote any of this shit.
Esther's second husband also died young. She married again, this time to William Kenworthy. Her second cousin, also born in South Carolina. Indiana farmers fucking their cousins. I'm getting use to my heritage. I have to. I know of at least four of these damn marriages. but hey, it's the 1800s. Nobody but family for miles. Somebody needs to make kids to work those fields. Gotta fuck SOMEBODY, right? Besides, you should see a couple of MY cousins. Damn,,,
William had children from a previous marriage as well. William and Esther lived on the north side of Decatur Township, near Valley Mills. William's son Robert lived there as well and owned the property when the 1889 plat map was drawn. his sons lived there as well. The property was in the family at least as early as 1866 and as late as 1930.
I went there today.
Going down I-70 heading west towards Hendricks County and Plainfield, the indianapolis International Airport is on your right. After you see the FedEx building, wave to the control tower after it - my gggg-grandmother used to eat oatmeal with the other Quakers right where those 747s are flying over.
To your left before that towere, you'll see the other land they owned. But there's no real way of telling it apart from the rest. The houses are all gone now. There's nothing but trees and overgrown grass on these abandoned lots. A field here and there. Mostly nothing.
I whipped around the Six Points exit and found myself on Thompson Rd. I live just north of Thompson Rd. on the opposite end of the county. It runs east-west and cuts off and picks back up a few times, so I cna't make a straight drive there. But it ends at a barricade just before hitting I-70 (even though my 2005 mpa book claims that it runs parallel to the highway for a minute before hitting Bridgeport Rd. It doesn't. Those roads are gone now. I was told today that Thompson was cut off there less than two years ago and that the Six Points exit has been open since aroudnt eh time I drove right past this place on my way out west in March.
It's fucking depressing out there. No houses. Empty lots all around. You can see the trees they planted. Obviously next to invisible homes, torn down and now on property owned but not used by the airport.
Heading east toward highway 67 (and Decatur Rd. where I worked for a day when I first came here with the temp agency) you come to Scott Rd., which doens't have a sign. Or anyone living on it. Actually, there is a sign. It says "No Dumping." It SHOULD read "Go ahead, eat the fucking apple, you snake-loving, leaf-wearing cunt." Hang a sign, ask for the exact opposite results. I saw chairs, tires, fuck knows what else on the side of this dead road.
It makes a turn left then right (hang a left, hang a right, Kenworthy Manor) and veers right and goes parallel to I-70 while...shit...I was looking at the fucking map and....it's fucking DIRT! No, it's MUD! It's...oh mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck in this fucking mudhole with those Dead Ancestor Blues again?
I dug a hole with my tires trying to get out for about three minutes. I turned the engine off. The brain chemicals were still set on "stun", aimed squarely towards my goal. Fuck the car. I've done stupider shit than this before. Focus. Control. A year ago I'd been violently digging in the mud with my bare hands screaming to the cars on I 70 to get off my land, you damn kids! Fucking mental, over-reacting.
Not this time, bitch. I've got my work boots on and I'm goin' for a walk in the brown stuff, baby.
I walked through the shit, looking out onto the highway covering part of this ancestor's former property, the wire fence to my left. The barren waste to the right. An airport weather station up ahead.
The property lines are still visible. There's an empty field clearly showing where the neighbors where. Esther and William lived where there's a muddy path, a lot of overgorwn grass, some old trees, and...nothing. Not a scrap of legacy left. An empty shell of my past with things that Condoleeza Rice could never dream of being used to bring down buildings flying overhead. Hey cunt. They brought down THESE buildings years ago.
Back to the car. In what must have been their front yard (the grass is shorter there) lies more scrap metal thrown aside by asshole locals. The pieces of a Rudd Furnace sit on land once occupied by...a Furnas. Holy fucking Christ on a crutch...
I was waiting for the dad from Six Feet Under to come walking out of the weeds. "So, drove your car into the mud, didn'tcha, dumbass? Hey, Esther says hi. It's getting crowded up there in Heaven. Too bad YOU won't be around, sinner-boy. Enjoy those old Amboy Dukes records for me, 'k?"
I feel like Nate Fisher a lot sometimes.
I got the car out in less than two minutes. Had to do some fancy wheel/accelorator work to pull it off. I've had worse. Only a flesh wound.
It was goddamn creepy. I'm sitting here on the opposite side of the county waiting for ghosts to walk through my door. An ugly place, trampled by the unloving, unfeeling boot of progress. Cast aside. Esther's daughter Hannah gave birth to a girl named Rebecca, who moved to Lafayette after marrying a nice boy named David Muston from Westfield, where I'll be helping a stony friend move back to in a couple nights. They moved to Lafayette and had twins. The boy died at birth. The daughter, Emma, was a "mean ol' biddy" (according to her grandson I met for the first time two years ago) and her son Zora was an alcoholic rotten bastard, at least according to his first wife, my grandmother.
It was a terribly depressing place. Cold. Empty. Desolate. Light rain fell from the gray sky. Death and disease seemed to hang in the air. But...but...
It was beautiful. It was...home?
No. Not home. Not mine. But a part of me. The family that makes me fucking crazy, that made me want to get the fuck out of Indiana in the first place. They're everywhere. I keep running into their corpses on the street, in the libraries and courthouses. And on the back roads of forgotten communities. These people made it posisble for me to exist. I'd probably not like most of them. They'd likely be completely baffled by my ass. Doesn't matter. I owe them my life. The least I can do is visit every once in a while. They're fucking dead, so they don't give two shits (Excuse me, Garcia, my great-great-great-great-g reat-nephew is up there roaming around and I've gotta go say hi to the little prick. Yeah, I know, I'm a fucking skeleton. What's yer point, asshole?) but *I* need it. I don't know what the fuck I'm searching for, but it's out there in these desolate forgotten places that you'd never know a goddamn thing about if I wasn't wasting your time with it right now. Why are you reading this shit? Go get some good oral sex. What kind of time do you have on your hands anyway?
I stopped at the only house on that part of Thompson Road, which turns out to be some kind of farm equipment business in a house. I talked to an intensely beautiful, delicate yet business-like blonde girl who has lived in Decatur Township her whole 28 years. She knows and went to school with several Kenworthys. She knows the name Furnas and asked me if I knew the road of that name nearby. I did. Her cousin knows their family history and she too has a lot of Quaker ancestors. She's probably my tenth cousin or something. So of course, I'm going to jerk off all over myself later, because my cousin is fuckin' HOT.
Yeah, I'm a redneck too. Might as well just be honest with myself. If you've ever spit a cigarette butt out of your mouth through the car window while backing out of a mud-filled road while wanting to fuck your relatives, you MIGHT be a redneck.
I drove back to the highway. If you ever get off at the Kentucky Ave/Highway 67 exit on the southwest corner of I-465, pay attention to the scenery. My family used to live there.
Esther's sister Hannah married Abner Mills. The week I moved here, I went off to Decatur Township (knowing almost NONE of the shit I've just written, and this was only six or seven months ago) for a temp job. I was turned away since they had too many people. I went back up 67 towards the beltway and stopped for breakfast at Denny's. in 1889, Abner Mills lived there.
Next to him to the south was J.W. Furnas. I don't know how he's related yet, but he is. Mr. Furnas (and his brother Allen) were members of the indiana State Legislature in the latter part of the 1800s. J.W.'s land now has a major highway cutting across it. A BP is on one side. A strip mall with a Karma Records and a Subway is on the other, at the corner of Kentucky and High School Rd. If I'm reading the plat map right, I'll be teaching guitar in two weeks at a place where I can throw a rock across the street and hit J. W. Furnas's former land.
I found these kind of bizarre coincidences back in Waynesville, Ohio. Half an hour from where I lived with my daughter, where these people lived before moving to Indiana.
There's a reason for all this. I dont' know what it is. I almost don't even care. The trip is so fucking fun it almost doesn't matter.
Some people into genealogy are content to fuck around online (despite the fact that the Internet - astounding resource though it is - still has nowhere NEAR all the info you can find in the back rooms of libraries and courthouses in the back holes of this great nation's towns and cities) or maybe do a little mor ebeyond that, only really collecting the outlines. the names and dates. The place names. A couple documents. Construct a tree.
It's the core of this all-engrossing hobby I've only been obsessed with for a few years, but it's not the MEAT of it. Not for me, anyway.
I like to stand in muddy ruins and look out across the horizon and wonder what they saw. Wonder what brought them here. What they did with their day-to-day lives. How'd they'd react if they knew what has become of their homes. I'm no Luddite. I'm all for progress. But does it have to be so fucking UGLY? Apparantly so. Our evolution has come to this. Destruction, abandonment, alienation. We're wasting ourselves, you fuckers. We're capable of more than this. Here I am believing in the great untapped potential of the human race if we'd just pull our heads out of our assholes, and *I'M* the cynical one because I think we suck at forging our priorities. Fuck you. YOU motherfuckers are the cynical ones, because you'd just as soon walk all over your own past without a single look back as you would to build another goddamn mall that NOBODY NEEDS. Have your fucking malls. but for Christ's sake, don't just throw shit aside to rot and expect everyone else to take your cash-grabbing shit seriously. Have some goddamn respect for what came before, you scarecrow people. I've got quite some message for you. If we don't start living well, we're all gonna wind up scarecrow people too. Some bird (I think he's from England and not a pear tree) tweeted that in my ear recently. But it's all just apples and oranges. Or oranges and lemons. Or something.
------------------------- ------------------
Had a nice talk with Sheryl tonight, and I feel I can now loosen up about what I was being vague with the other night. I met Sheryl's boyfriend Monday night. I worked through the standard jealousy bullshit months ago (OK, most of it, it doesn't quite go away for anyone TOO soon, does it?) but I drove home a trying not to become a total wreck because I had to watch my daughter interact with him and it hurt like fuck.
But I do not and have not ever questioned Sheryl's ability to take care of our daughter. That is NOT a problem. I tell Katie often that she has the best mommy in the world and that's not a lie. We've got our differences, but we certainly are united in one thing, and that's in making sure our daughter grows up as healthy and happy as possible.
I just have to deal with very uncomfortable emotions that I know have little true basis, but they're there anyway because...well, fuck. how can they NOT be? I'm very powerless five or six days out of my daughter's week. And I've made it that way myself. I've taken a very fucking twisted path this year, and have ended up two hours away, barely able to survive financially, and the simple act of seeing my daughter once a week is killing my bank account, all because I saw a slim chance to make something work up here that I still don't know will actually work or not. I had to do it for me, because as stupid and full of self-important shit as it might sound to you, I'd be dead otherwise. I'm not saying I was right, or even remotely sane. But I HAD to come here back in May or lose my goddamn mind completely. I was sucking down a pint of very evil shit every night and hoping to be run over by large trucks while singing jaunty songs about death. I was an idiot, but I had no other way of dealing with shit at the time. Ya know what? I don't regret a minute of it. I got some good writing out of it, and I think I'm a better musician for it, and - even though it nearly left her without a daddy at all - I think I've become a better father for it. I drink very little now, less than I have since before all this began. I might even be able to quit entirely. It seems very attainable. I'm NOT going to become my grandfather, and if I do, I'm digging his emphysema-ridden ass out of that grave in Lafayette and killing him all over again. I hate that sonofabitch for what he did to my mother, and I'm not about to repeat that with my girl. I'm NOT running away, goddammit. He told my cousin Wally (who I never knew until recently and lived with my grandfather longer than Mom or Grandma did) that "I can't go back there. She hates me." Fucking coward. Your KIDS didn't hate you. But they sure came to love you a hell of a lot less, because you were GONE. I've spent four fucking years digging up your back history, and every goddamn one of your ancestors were better than you, you fucking swine. These people sailed the ocean for a new life, and left those new homes for another one as part of a protest of what they saw as injustice - slavery of their fellow human beings. They helped build America west of the original colonies, building whole towns that still bear huge marks from their influence. They built schools (including the first schools for black kids) and retirement homes and were key players in the Underground Railroad. They stood for peace in a way that most religious people in this country have forgotten, they were decades ahead of the curve on women's rights, racial issues, gay issues, and countless other progressive causes. Some of your mother's family did everything from serve on the Indiana state legislature, to become a governor of Nebraksa, start a nationwide ice cream company, and be the first passenger on an airplane flight with the Wright Brothers.
You were an abusive alcoholic shitstain who ran away from your wife and kids and never looked back. FUCK you. You aren't the genetic link I choose to hold onto, you fuck. If not for the things Mom told me about the few good times she had with you, I'd have pissed on your grave when I finally found it.
But I'm paying for these decisions. Moving away from her. I don't regret the choice. I do have to play coach to myself every goddamn hour of every goddamn day because I know I need to be here, but I know I need to be THERE. Not living with them. That door is closed. For the better. Sheryl and I are happier now. I need to be away from what was for me a very over-comfortable (and therefore destructive) environment, she needs to be away from my ridiculously high-maitenance horseshit. It's of no use to detail the things I still feel that will only hurt her if I write them here. What matters (or should) to me is MY shit. She can take care of herself and is quite capable of it. I was a wretched excuse for a husband, but all I can do now is slowly fix myself (and it happens VERY slowly, goddammit) and try not to think too much about stuff that she surely doesn't want to have to think about either.
She's an incredible mother. She did her damndest to help me through five very painfui, torturous years that I still can't quite believe I put us all through. It should have been over a long time before that. But maybe not. I had the chance to get much closer to my daughter than most fathers are able to, and while I still feel like I owe her far more than I'm currently giving in this fucked-up situation I've put myself a hundred miles away, I know my little girl is in the best place she can be. I know she's taken care of and more beyond that.
And I want them to be happy. It's what really tore me up Monday night, because, there was NOTHING WRONG with the picture I saw. I just wasn't part of it. That hurt like hell. The woman who once loved me in her home with her friend, who oddly enough seems to have more than a couple things in common with me (I drive to Cincinnati from Indianapolis to see my child, he does the opposite drive to see his) and...who the fuck am I to question any of this?
I just want my girl to be happy. And I want to be with her more often. And I want to be here. And I want to be there. And I want to be...fuck, I loved that desert...FUCK. Goddamn fucking FUCK it all anyway.
I told myself I was giving myself a year to get my shit together here or I'd be moving back when the lease is up in June. But I'm not so sure now, even after all this.
A year isn't long enough. Not for me. I'm slow as shit. I've barely begun to have my shit together in ANY way here. And it won't happen in another six months. Some things have to change come June or I'll certainly be having to give up this apartment I like so much for some cheaper shithole, but I'm willing to take the chance. I HAVE to. I lived too goddamn comfortably for too goddamn long and it fucked me up and made me soft. It nearly killed whatever creative impulse I carry inside me, whatever THAT shit might be worth.
And I only have myself to hold responsible and now deal with.
I just wrote a really difficult paragraph and had to erase it all. But Sheryl, I'm glad you're doing what you need to do to be happy. And I know you'll take care of Katie. But I have to feel some things right now that aren't a lot of fun, because I don't get to be the part of our girl's life I once was and wouldn't be able to even if I'd stayed down there close to you guys. You know I need to do this, I know you need to do for yourself. I want us all to be happy. We all deserve it.
Fucking hell. I really miss Katie right now.
I'm too tired and sad/happy/whothefucksknow s to go back and edit this shit. You all have a great night.
Love,
Dougie
H.P. Lovecraft Fans Are Some Sick Motherfuckers
12.27.05 (10:03 pm) [edit]www.hello-cthulhu.com/?date=2003-11-30
Dougie
Control, Part 2
12.26.05 (11:14 pm) [edit]Did almost nothing on Christmas Day. Stayed in and burned CDs and stuff. A nice day off. I don't get much of those these days.
Today I picked Katie up in Louisville. We took the long way back to Cincinnati, driving along the Ohio River. It took nearly twice as long, but it was very nice. We had lunch at a Mexican place in Rising Sun, Indiana. I'm told this little town has something of an arty community, but I know nothing about it. Must find out more sometime. It's right across the river from a town in Kentucky with one of my all-time favorite place names - Rabbit Hash. Try thinking about that one for a while...
Eventually we ended up at a toy store in Covington (with a great play area in the back that Katie loves to visit), then Katie took her nap as we drove back north. We got her mother a gift certificate to Half Price Books (Sheryl got me the Jethro Tull Christmas CD and a book that claims to be a "survival guide" to dating, about which I asked her "does this have anything to do with lesbian college girls?")_and had a salad/fruit dinner courtesy of the Kroger produce section.
It was a great day. The best part was in the restaurant in Rising Sun. Katie sat next to me, and leaned into me for a sunggle while she ate her lunch. We said very little. Just listened to the Latin pop music and had lunch together, It was perfect. I felt very close to her.
Things took a wrong turn later.
Or maybe not. It's really just me and my reactions, not truly the situation itself. I know that. I can't really write about it in an obvious way. But something happened that was inevitable, I knew it was coming. I've had fucking NIGHTMARES about it. It finally happened, and it went well, but I drove back home fighting off the onslaught of bad brain chemicals. I won that battle. Which says a lot about the distance I've travelled in recent months. Six months ago I'd been a goddamn basket case. Tonight I just smoked a couple extra Newports and cranked up the CD player. But it took half an hour of beating myself up, talking to one of my friends on the phone, and finally driving home to a Bill Maher CD just to divert my attention.
Nothing is really wrong. I know that. But the space between what I know and what I feel is huge, and it mostly has to do with having this thrown at me right after a beautiful day with my daughter. How this affects HER. And I know she's OK. I know she's in the right place. There are very, very few actual doubts there. But it doesn't stop the feeling.
I know, I'm being vague. I can't really say anything more. But it IS OK. I just have to work out my own emotions and try to adapt. It's out of my control. It's not mine to control. What I think and feel doesn't mean SHIT. It never really has in this context. Fuck knows that nothing I feel has ever been acknowledged as relevant or worthwhile in this place anyway. So I'll do my best to adapt and take what comes my way.
There's a giant gulf between the past five years of my life and the place I inhabit now, and there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it. I didn't ask for it, but I deserved it. I brought this shit on my own head. And it's all OK. It is. I know that. Now I just have to pound it into my head a few thousand times until I REALLY know it.
Listening to Vampire City, the recent album from Dennis Most & The instigators. Dennis and I will be recording here at the apartment Friday night. His brother called tonight to tell me that the band up north has three gigs now in January. Things are happening. Slowly. But they're happening.
I just erased two paragraphs full of shit because there is only one deadly sin I care about - the sin of taking yourself too goddamn seriously. I'm about to cross the line.
Fuck! Shit! Poop! Cunt-spray!
OK, I'm ready for bed now. You fuckers have a good night.
Dougie
Opulent Bathrobes In Velcro
12.24.05 (9:42 pm) [edit]Mom and Dad showed up as I was posting my last entry. We went to G.T. South's, a bbq place down the road from here. Excellent stuff.
Then they asked if I had any ideas for something to do for a while, and I suggested we drive down to Edinburgh. Half an hour south of here, my dad's grandfather was born, the grandson of the man who carried my family name here from Ohio in the 1830s.
We drove through Camp Atterbury, where Dad was in the National Guard in the early '60s. I have to look through more plat maps, but I think we drove right past where my ggg-grandfather lived, near the entrance to the camp.
Just north of there is a tiny town called Amity, halfway between Edinburgh and Franklin on Highway 31. I've been there a couple times. A little roadside cafe is right across from the turn to the cemetery. My ggg-granfather William Boucher is buried there with both of his wives, and a few of his children. I think his son Henry is there too. Henry died during the Civil War in his 30s. I don't actually know yet if the war had anything to do with it, but that's my assumption. I can't find Henry's grave. I assume he's buried there with his family without a stone, but I don't know that for sure.
Henry's son John ended up in Greentown, nearly two hours north, and 20 minutes from where I grew up. John was my great-grandfather, buried in Greentown with several others of my family, including a few on my mom's side.
Dad had been stationed so close to this place when he was younger, and didn't know his family had lived there. He never knew his grandfather - John Boucher died a few years before Dad was born.
It was cold, but not too bad. We tried to make out the writing on the stones. It's gotten worse there even in the three years snce I first found the place. It's a well-kept cemetery, but the stones are old and badly worn. William and Sarah's are still legible. Sarah's has a different spelling - Boutcher. I've seen several spellings in the places I've gone. I ended up with a French spelling for a German pronounciation. My first ancestor (Daniel) in this country spelled it that way on some documents, but he also spelled it Bauscher, which I've come to believe is the original spelling, at least from the time he came to America from Alsace-Lorraine, currently in France, but having changed hands between French and German occupation several times. A distant cousin in Ohio (I have no idea who) has his German Bible. He crossed the ocean in around 1750 and is buried in eastern Pennsylvania. His son William and two other sons moved to central Ohio in 1803 (near Chillicothe and Circleville, I found William's grave the day before I started packing my bags back in March) and William's son William moved to Indiana in the 1830s, buried there in Amity. That William was the only one of Daniel's grandchildren to retain the Boucher spelling. Most of my distant relatives in Ohio spell it Bowsher.
It was good to share this with my Dad. I have an odd relationship with my father, but today was very good.
I've been floundering around since they went back home this afternoon. I felt a burst of anger - seemingly completely out of nowhere, but related to the frustration in my last entry - and spent a while trying to get over that. It's unnecessary and probably completely unfair to the person I felt it towards. I'm not sure why it had to hit me so hard, but it didn't overwhelm me, and I finally broke free for a while.
I watched Beavis And Butthead Do America. I love stupid shit like that. I saw it in the theater when it was first released. But I didn't enjoy it as much this time as I thought I would, and found myself depressed after it was over. Depressed because of the anger I'd felt before. I haven't let go of several months (years, even) of frustration and anger, and I know I have to. I want to let go. I need to. I don't know how just yet. I live everyday with my own flaws and inconsistencies. I despise them. I feel that I'm still working out some major battles inside myself. I can't change other people, and have no business doing so in the first place. It's hard enough to change myself. But that's where I have to start. I've done a lot of work in that direction, and the past few months have been spent trying to figure out which parts need to be changed, which parts to make priority. I have little confidence in my ability to do this shit, but that's not fair either. I've BEEN doing it. It's slow. But it's happening. I'm seeing the results. They are few, but they are there. I can't do this shit overnight, or in a month, or a year. It's lifelong. Especially for me, the guy who seems to take five times as long to accomplish anything as everyone else does. That's probably not true either, but it sure feels that way sometimes. But it beats sitting on my ass watching TV. A little of that is fine. But it seems to be what most of the people I know spend their time doing, and I don't understand that. I'd rather fight these battles inside my head and try to hammer out a new reality for myself. I fail constantly at it, but it's better to fuck up than do NOTHING, right?
I want to be a better person. Religion didn't work for me. I'm too controlled by my emotions to do it with a strictly rational approach. I believe too much in that rational approach despite my inability to take it on to be able to rely only on my emotions and instinct. I think a balance has to be found, and I'm getting there, but I'm doing it in the dark.
And I sound like a pretentious fucking twit when I try to write this shit out. Fuck! Tits! Blowjob! Poop!
There. Now I feel better. Let's move on.
I only believe in what I can observe and feel myself. I also know that my powers of observation are very limited. I also know that this reads like total horseshit. Poop! Tits!
Absurdity. I live for it.
I really want to write something serious right now, but I'm not sure I can without being a douchebag.
So instead, I'll do this:
Fucko bee-bap
Yuah-hoo string bean
My hair dryer is reddish iguana hair
And you are a bear reen
Ooogah! Semprini! Batshit pie!
I can't light my match, no matter what jello I try!
This is art! This is art!
Fuck me!
Sorry. Don't know what came over me there.
Merry Fuckin' Christmas, assholes.
Love,
Dougie
Control
12.24.05 (10:16 am) [edit]Nice day at work yesterday. We did a gift exchange. I bought one of the guys a good set fo gloves. One of the girls got me a hooded Indianapolis Colts sweatshirt. We had lunch from a local bbq place. Bob - totally out of left field - got me a $25 gift certificate to Wal-Mart. I'd got him nothing. Nice guy. I really like working with him.
I'd had every intention of going out last night. Looking for fun. But I didn't. Just didn't feel like it. Was much more into just being alone once I got home. Stayed up and listened to toons, fucked around, drank, and read some Hunter. Good night.
This morning I felt the urge to see Amanda. So I went to Steak & Shake for breakfast. She was wearing a Santa hat. Almost over her eyes, that big sexy smile still on full display. She's so cute, and I told her so. She sat down across from me for a minute and we talked Christmas and kids and stuff. I made no move whatsoever, didn't ask how she liked the card I gave her early in the week. Just enjoyed talking to her. The Santa hat made me think about "opening presents", so to speak, but it all felt very warm, very friendly. She likes talking to me. I like talking to her. She's really cool. It's nice to have a friend. Ya know?
Definitely better than the psychotic 2AM cravings from the other night. In daylight I'm a pretty nice guy. Well, sometimes. At night...man, I've been fuckin' twisted lately. But this morning I felt very in control. Relaxed, confident. Control.
But another lesson in control (and my too-strong need for other forms of it sometimes) came later. Something I'm not happy about, something that fucks with my plans a bit. I don't have control in this situation, it's not mine to have. And it's OK, I know it is. It really doesn't matter and I'm trying to remember that. but my initial reaction spoke volumes about part of myself I don't like much. I hate feeling out of control when my time is concerned. I like to use my free time my way, and if I can't, I'm kinda pissy about it. Too much. This situation shouldn't bother me, but I'm sitting here now trying to type it out of myself, because I'm pretty agitated. Mostly in control of said agitation (for once, I'm not exactly nuts over it, just not happy at all) but not in control of what I want. I need to bend sometimes for other people, and that's OK, but sometimes you just have got other ideas and suddenly you're thrown off. Dammit. It'll be at least a month before I can have another chance at what I was hoping for, probably longer than that. I'm trying to remember that it's OK. It doesn't really matter. But right now, it kinda does, and I'm gonna have to work through it.
I have little patience for control freaks. Then I remember I am one too. Must work on that. Calm down, Doug. It's gonna be fine.
Mom and Dad and my sister are coming down here, should be here soon. Tomorrow I do nothing. Probably not leave the apartment at all. Monday I'll go see Katie. Everything is really pretty good right now. Not bad at all. I'll try to focus on that instead of this other relatively minor inconvinience.
Onward,
Dougie
A Reading
12.23.05 (9:26 pm) [edit]Recorded tonight, me reading a section from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, by the late great (and terribly missed by me tonight as I sit in the dark eating a 33 cent can of Mexican style chili beans, drinking cinnamon schnapps, and listening to a Bruckner symphony) Hunter S. Thompson:
http://geocities.com/eraserhead667/FL-Dope Fiends.mp3" title="http://geocities.com/eraserhead667/FL-Dope Fiends.mp3" target="_blank"http://geocities.com/eraserhe...
Dougie
I Can't Frickin' Sleep
12.22.05 (10:42 pm) [edit]Highly perverted thoughts. Ravaging my brain cells. Sleep not an option. Night time is getting weird. I feel like a real bastard right now and I'm not even DOING anything. I should probably become Catholic. Those fuckers. I can't even daydream about it without feeling dirty.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Dougie
DUH-DUH-DUUUH DUH-DUH-DA-DUUUH!! DUH-DUH-DUUUUUUH-DUH- DUUUH!!!!!
12.22.05 (9:12 pm) [edit]Currently listening to Dylan's Nashville Skyline. The Bobster in country mode.
But earlier tonight I took a trip back to when I was 17 (half a goddamn lifetime ago) and cranked up one of the seminal albums from my youth.
Deep Purple's Machine Head is etched into my soul. I used to play bass along with the whole fucking thing. Everything wonderful and ludicrous in rock music can be found in this work.
It amazes me to look back and remember how clueless I was. I was 17 in 1987. I was VERY sheltered, finding my way through the back-history of rock music in a very erratic manner. At this time (a decade after their best work was released) I barely even knew anything of Zeppelin. I knew almost nothing of Sabbath. I was a prog-rock geek, convinced that metal was complete horseshit (and in 1987, most the shit being inflicted on the public WAS horseshit) and I barely had a clue that the true pioneers of hard/heavy music were so fuckin' great. I was a high school kid with my head up Peter Gabriel's ass in 1987. What the fuck did I know of Smoke On The Water?
But I found out. I got into Rush and Deep Purple because I was told they had kinship with the prog-rock I was worshipping at the time. I went insane over Rush and started learning Geddy Lee bass lines like a motherfucker. Roger Glover is Deep Purple's bassist, and I stole many a lick from him too. Like Geddy, he was a Rickenbacker player with a bright tone. He was also rather active, not as much as Geddy, and usually buried under the pyrotechnics of Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord, but he remains one of my favorite bass players. I learned Highway Star when I was 17. A couple years ago, I went back and listened and realized that I had only SORTA learned it. Roger played a LOT more notes than I had worked out.
There's a reason guys like Jack Black have jobs. Why Spinal Tap was so popular. Purple put out an album called In Rock with a cover featuring the members' faces carved into Mount Rushmore. How Spinal Tap is THAT shit? They had severe classical influences, yet they could write mongoloid-level gee-tar riffage with the best of them. Gillan's voice gets so over-the-top sometiems (Child In Time? PLEASE.) it's no wonder he played Jesus H. Christ Himself in an Andrew Lloyd Weber epic.
But it ROCKS. I love it as much as I ever have. It makes me feel like I'm 17 all over again. It's full of sweat and balls and jizz and stuff I can't even name. It makes my cock hard. You listen to this album, and you just KNOW that Ian Gillan has had more pussy than you ever will. It and the stunning double album Deep Purple In Concert (with an ungodly 18-minute Wring That Neck, which taught me more lessons in full-on jamming than even a box set full of Cream tunes could have) are part of my musical psyche in a way that cannot be denied.
Tonight I heard the newest Purple album for the first time. Rapture Of The Deep. Very nice. Not great, but very nice. It's weird to hear a Purple without Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore, but it works. Don Airey is a great player. Steve Morse is a FREAK of a guitar-mutant. It's good stuff. Even has another Zappa reference.
I wrote this a while back:
http://www.geocities.com/eraserhead667/machead .html" title="http://www.geocities.com/eraserhead667/machead .html" target="_blank"http://www.geocities.com/eras...
I found a few typos, (it's been a few years since I read it ) and the whole thing is a tad awkward and silly, but what the fuck. I hope you like it.
Space truckin',
Dougie
She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow
12.21.05 (9:16 pm) [edit]Shaved the fucker off tonight. I'm going to try again. I'd been shaving around the upper parts of it to keep it from looking like some crazed Ted Nugent thing, but I'm starting to think that would have been better. It was getting far too polite. And with so little moustache growth and my black baseball cap, I looked like an Amish relief pitcher. I grew this thing because I thought it might help score a couple women. i've got news, guys - Amish relief pitchers (are there such creatures?) get even LESS anal sex with hot nympho coeds than I do. Which is NONE AT ALL. Goddammit.
So I'm not sure now. When it was all shaved clean, my first thought was "Hey, that looks like me." but for a couple days I liked the beard. So this time I'll grow the moustache out first for a few weeks (after two, it was almost starting to look kinda vaguely like a moustache, so we'll see) then grow the rest in afterwards. Or maybe I'll shave everything. My nuts too. I haven't buzzed the ballsac in a long time. Such a nice clean feeling down there.
Listening to Can's Tago Mago. Wacky shit from 1971. I'm more used to the symphonic prog-rock, THIS shit is another matter entirely. And I like it bunches. I'd enjoy making this kind of noise with the right group of wackaloons.
Had a terrible dinner tonight. There's six Mexican restaurants within a couple miles of me. Three of them have been quite good. I tried one tonight - just past the Kroger - and was highly non-impressed. The "salsa" tasted like third-rate ketchup laced with bad garlic powder. The rice was evil. The beans were acceptable. The taco and enchilda were barely passable. Then I got to the burrito.
I don't know what diseased horse had to meet its untimely end to furnish my dinner, but the sonofabitch had poor dietary habits, I can tell you that much. The first bite went down weird. The second brought up my gag reflex. Within 30 seconds I was in the toilet ready to ralph up chunks of Mystery Meat.
They didn't charge me. Were very nice about it. I got the fuck out. Next time I'll go have the high quality gourmet shit at Taco Bell, for fuck's sake.
And now my asshole is paying for the rest of it. Fuckin' hell. I just had to take a multivitamin and a shitload of water to offset the result of the bad pseudo-Mexican dinner and the bottle of cheap-ass blackberry wine. First itme i've drank in days and it had to go down after THAT shit. How could I be such a fool?
Had to fight a terrible urge the last few days. The urge to not go back to work after lunch. Monday I actually found myself taking a right turn and nearly going down the exit onto the highway back home. That was not intentional. I turned around thinking "Well, I must be trying to tell myself something."
But yesterday and today I REALLY didn't want to go back. I did anyway. I can't afford to take ANY time off right now. The next two Mondays they'll be closed down, and I was already going to see Katie next Monday (I'll likely take the next one off to do some kind of genealogy trip if I can scrape up the cash) but that time off will fuck with me in a bad way. I thought I was going to get ahead on things this month. Ho ho. Not gonna happen.
But next week is weird hours (technically they're shut down for a week, but us temps got first crack at some outside work) and I'll be off early enough to get a few things done. Like look for a new job. I'll hit a few music stores again, because what I REALLY want is to get back into the money of guitar-teaching, but I'll go about anywhere where I can make the money I do now without having to endure the overtime.
Saw a girl at the dollar store tonight named Nikki. Very nice. Dark curly hair just past her shoulders, cute narrow glasses, a very ample rack. Slightly overweight in a way I really like. I like some meat on 'em. She had a very pretty smile. I didn't say much, just the typical "Working hard?""Have a good night" shit, but I tried to deliver it with as much charm as I'm capable of. You know, not a fuck of a lot.
I came home with dark animal cravings. Bend her over the kitchen table and see if I can throw my back out going at it. Not a trace of kindness, basic human respect, or love. Just pure fuck-energy. And ya know what? No guilt whatsoever. Oh, I'll have plenty of that later. i'm a goddamn bipolar basket case, after all. But right now, even though it's died down considerably, the basic poon-drive is still running strong.
I wake up in the morning a little more sane, a little more human. Craving connection, warmth. At night it's all about fucking and sucking. I tend to wake up now wanting Amanda. A girl I felt the fuck-drive for (and still do) but it's been tempered by discovering how much I actually like her too. In the morning, there's wood, but there's also a need to connect, feel loved, and give some back.
But after dark, it's all about my dick. I recognize a fundamental flaw in my desire for companionship - it's mostly about CONVINIENCE right now. Maybe it's always been. Give me what I want and get the fuck out of my way so I can be alone again. I like living alone. I don't like not getting what I want. Enormously selfish. I'm not sure what to do about it, because I also recognize that I have very little true desire to change. Oh, it's there. There's something good in here. I can be exactly what another person needs when I absolutely HAVE to. I just don't usually go out of my way to do it. Sometimes. Not often enough.
I'm definitely better off alone right now. Better not to fuck with people the way I know I will.
Ah, but Nikki. Some girl I saw for 60 seconds tonight. With firm round tits just about to pop out of that tight blouse. Evil, evil thoughts. Jesus H. Christ with a strap-on. Is this really me? It must be. It's half of what I think. The good half gets buried a lot. The half that wants to be caring and giving and sweet and charming and fun and all those other things that I'm really not. Oh, I have a few good parts. I've got great jokes, and I like to eat pussy. That's about all I've got going for me right now. Everything else is pure vice, greed, and selfishness. And I feel like the only way to rid myself of it is to let it run for a while longer. Let it go out to its extreme end. Feed it a bit until it no longer is such a goddamn weight. Seems to be the way everything else has gone lately. When I was trapped in self-hatred earlier this year, I had to ride that rail out to its end. When I followed that with vicious hatred towards others, I had to ride THAT wretched shit all the way out. Now I'm on the Lust Train, and I think I need to make the scheduled stops and get back on to the end. If I'm going to find the place I want to inhabit in my head, I've gotta give myself SOME of what I want. I've got to be realistic about it, but hey. I need to get laid. Period. End of story. This shit is building up in ways that are only going to get more twisted. I know me. I'm fucked up that way.
This Can album kicks ass.
So, any lovely ladies out there reading this who want to have "meaningless sex" with a tried and true rotten bastard? Come on, you know you want me, baby!
Yeah, right.
Dougie
Ah, The Sweeping Majesty Of Young White Republican Love
12.18.05 (9:02 pm) [edit]"Folks, it's time to evolve ideas. You know, evolution did not end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right? It didn't end there. We're at the point now where we're going to have to evolve ideas. The reason the world is so fucked up is we're undergoing evolution, and the reason our institutions and our traditional religions are all crumbling is because THEY'RE NO LONGER RELEVANT. Hahahahahahahaha! So it's time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion, you see. And that's OK because that's our right. Because we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything and that's...kind of our role." - Bill Hicks
Fire in the nuts...she makes me feel almost human...the pain of pining for poon...drummerless love... merry fuckin' Xmas...and, I love everything....
Just before leaving home to take Katie back to Cincy, I had to take a massive shit. You're welcome. You needed to know that, I'm sure.
So I'm sitting there with a good soft big healthy dump exiting my orifice (for once) and I decide I need some Icy Hot on my wrists and arms. I have this wrist thing, you see. Hurts sometimes. Icy Hot is a great product. Shoots this cold heat through wherever you spread it, and it works pretty well for a while.
So I put some on my right arm. I figure I'll wash my hands after the poop, so I'll use my left hand to put the Icy Hot on my right arm, then use the right hand to wipe, thereby not putting icy hot sensations into my bunghole, which is a bit sensitive to begin with, what with all the years of habanero death I've already inflicted upon it.
So I spread the stuff on my right arm and wrist with my left hand. Then, I wipe my ass with the right hand.
I forgot that I had the shit on my wrist.
The Tingly Compound Of Doom on my right wrist brushed against my nutsack, and within seconds, my balls were doing the Dance Of Depravity, screaming "Please! Washcloth! Washcloth!" like the Tin Man yelling for his oil can.
But you know, it was almost not so bad. It felt weird enough, but I'm thinking, if I slather THIS shit all over my balls twice a day for a month or two, I might not need that vasectomy after all....
Two nights with Katie. For the first time since I left back in March. It worked out great. Sheryl brought her over at 6:30 Friday, and we had Chinese food, the three of us together for the first time since at least May. It was super-kind of Sheryl to do this for us, and she rocks in at least 14 dozen ways I hadn't considered before.
We hung out a while Saturday morning, then Katie and I packed up for Marion. We made what was supposed to be a quick stop at the library. but I hadn't known thata Santa impersonator was going to be there, so we got to be the first in line for that. Katie seemed a bit weirded out, (who IS this creepy old bastard?) but played along. We got a picture with him. It's on my desk right now.
Then we had lunch at Steak & Shake. I battled with this for an hour before deciding to do it, wondering if it was the right thing to do. But fuck it, I'm not even seeing Amanda, she's just some chick I like as far as anyone else is concerned. Besides, she FREAKED OUT over the picture of Katie I showed her, let's see how she does with the real thing.
They were great. Amanda mostly ignored me, but did it with a funny smile that let me know where she was coming from. She's so cute. She brought crayons and took Katie's order from her. Was super-duper friendly.
Katie talked to her about the drawing she did while we waited on food. A good lunch. Amanda likes the beard. Woo hoo! The desired effect!
She looked fabulous. If I didn't have the kid with me, I might have pushed it a bit, just to see where she's at. I didn't touch the subject, but I wanted to touch her. Hold her. Fuck the living hell out of her. A very real, very strong pain in the chest cavity stayed with me for hours. The pain of pining for poon. Well, yeah. And more. Connection. Damn, I want it right now. To feel like I belong next to her. If just for a while.
When we walked out, Katie (perceptive kid she is) asked, "You like her, don't you Daddy?"
"Yeah, I do. A lot."
"She's very nice."
There was a lot of understanding in those few words.
She sang a little bit for me somewhere around Noblesville becfore going quiet while I cranked up some Todd Rundgren and Badfinger. I sang along for her. Then we got to Marion. She stayed with Mom and Dad while i went off to practice.
The drummerless practice was mostly an excuse to discuss the drummer. We were offered nine gigs at one place next year. He committed to three of them. The rest of us can't afford that shit. We need a substitute. We'd like to keep him on, he's a nice guy, but he's also the only one who can afford to turn down gigs.
Then we had a really fun rehearsal without him. It Don't Come Easy sounded so fucking good, I suggested finding a couple gigs where we don't need a drummer. I'm doing the harmony vocals on Jumping Jack Flash. We recorded bass and keyboard parts for two songs on our new demo. The guitarist's wife (five months preggers and as radiantly beautiful as I've ever seen her) gave me a bag of home-baked cookies when I left. It was a good time.
Katie had a blast with her grandma and grandpa. Dad played hide and seek with her for a long time. She got a bit of rest and we headed off to my grandma's for dinner.
It was chaos. Several crazed sugar-fueled children and a dozen or so adults all trying to share the evening. I went upstairs and laid on my back in an empty room for ten minutes with my head pounding. I remembered the first year Sheryl came up with my family, and all the kids yelling downstairs. She looked at me and held up one finger. "One." A perfectly clear message. She's funny as hell sometimes.
Katie got a ton of presents. Then we left. She was tired. So was I. She slept, I drove. When we got back here, she woke up and we stayed up late watching MST3K together. Slept good, then hung out most of today watching TV.
The best part was when I woke up. She'd woke up around 6AM asking for Mommy, then fell back asleep. When I woke up around 8:00, she had crawled up into bed with me and was hogging the bed, me practically eating the wall. "When I'm close to someone, I don't have nightmares", she'd told me the night before.
We woke up and just hung out for half an hour, snuggling and talking and being close. It doesn't happen often enough. I want more than anything for her to feel loved. I want her to have some real self-respect before hitting the wretched rails of this stupid excuse for a society, because she'll need it to retain her sanity. And her sense of wonder. I hope she never loses that. I lost it a long time ago. Being around her, I might actually regain some of it. I want to be like her when I grow up.
I bought her a bear at the dollar store while shopping for soap and sugar-free energy drinks. When we got to the car, she informed me that her little black bear's name was Black, and that "his nose isn't right, but I love it just the way it is." His nose was slighty off balance. Hey, he cost a dollar. She loved him anyway, and fell asleep for the whole drive back to Cincy with him in her arms while I listened to Emerson, Lake & Palmer Live in Poland.
Sheryl told me that Kate had been wanting a certain toy, so I bought it for her. I bought her a few things. I let half of her Christmas be her own customized shopping spree, letting her pick her toys. I'll do the same thing for the other half next week, and I'll have a pile of CDs for her too.
Last year for Christmas, I burned her these, sometimes fitting two albums on one CD:
J.S. Bach - Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould's 1955 version)/Two-Part
Inventions (Andras Schiff, piano)
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme/Giant Steps
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
Frank Zappa - The Grand Wazoo/Waka-Jawaka
Igor Stravinsky - The Rite Of Spring/Fireworks/Firebird Suite
Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon
Mussorgsky - Pictures At An Exhibition (NY Philharmonic w/Zubin Mehta,
followed by Isao Tomita's version)
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Mike Keneally - Wooden Smoke
Neil Young - Harvest/After The Gold Rush
Genesis - Selling England By The Pound
I don't know yet what all I'll be doing for her this week, but a copy of Bob Marley's Legend is already done, and Miles' In a Silent Way is next on the list.
(Speaking of Miles, in the new Keneallist, Keneally mentions Paul Tingen's website for his brilliant book Miles Beyond about Miles' electric period, and notes that "longtime uberfan Doug Boucher" left a comment about said book there. Yay! Mikey still likes me! Yay! The book rules, and Miles kicks the shit out of everything, by the way.)
It's been a great weekend. My little girl amazes me more all the time, and I felt more human with her around than I ever do during the work-week. I saw the woman I'm crazy about, I spent time with the fam without losing my mind, played some toons with the band, and slammed down an Arby's French Dip and some cheap beer when I got home right before I started writing this. I'm broke and behind on bills again (after thinking I'd catch up this month) but fuck it,. I'm having a good time. I love everything. Well, not that Icy Hot shit on my ballbag, but hey, even that's not so bad...
Love,
Dougie
Gonna Be A Good One
12.17.05 (7:10 am) [edit]Had a good easy day at work yesterday (Bob was gone and I had it to myself, bu Fridays are slow there) and came home. Sheryl brought Katie up and we all went to Chinese food for dinner.
I'm glad we got to spend time as the three of us. That's good for Katie. Sheryl looked great and I enjoyed being around her for a while. I tried to be relaxed, but I was so happy to have them both here that I was a bit of a blabbering idiot. Oh well. nothing new there.
Katie was a little loon last night on a sugar buzz from the (insert chosen name of holiday here) celebration at school. We watched TV and played with Play-Doh and were very silly. She took a bath and went to sleep easily after I read her a few stories.
(Is it just me or are many of these old stories fucked up? "The big bad wolf tried to blow the pig's hosue down, so they boiled him alive when he came down the chimney." Shit, maybe I'll read her some Lovecraft tonight. "And when the Miiskatonic explorers went into the cave, a big hunk of protoplasmic goo with eyes all over it slithered over and ate their heads off. The end. Be a good girl or Shub-Niggurath shall possess your soul! Nighty-night!")
She woke up at 5:30AM saying she missed her mommy. First time she's done that here. but she went back to sleep and woke up very happy and talky and ready for the day. "Where are we going first?"
To the library then downtown to pay the power bill. Then lunch. Then up to Marion. She'll spend a couple hours with my mom and sister while I do a drummerless band practice. (He's in Boston on a consulting job for three weeks.) Then back to Katie and we'll go to my Grandma's and have Christmas with the family and her little cousins. Then back here late. Tomorrow we'll ahng out and watch MST3K stuff and when we get back to cincy I'll take her by the store where she saw something she wants for Christmas. Get that and back home to Mommy.
Should be fun.
Got five new songs to learn for the band. Much of what they do is new to me, but they've been doing it for a few years without me and are wnating to learn new material. I like where we're going. We each picked a tune off the 8CDs our singer made. This week we're working out The Seeker by The Who, Good Lovin' by the Young Rascals, Junior Brown's Highway Patrol, The Stones' Jumpin' Jack
Flash, and my choice, Ringo's It Don't Come Easy.
I'm having a good time with these guys and I'm much more into it than I was when I left back in '98. We're playing New Years Eve (for twice the normal pay at a well=-playing Eagles club) and they've already asked for nine gigs next year. We'll probably have to turn down the March one becuase of our guitarist's baby on the way, but we're playing two gigs in January and Feburary, and I think we'll keep busy. this makes me happy.
Katie just put on a beautiful purple dress. She's really into dresses. And she looks wonderful. She's such a happy, fun, beautiful, smart and perceptive child. And now she's spitting into the sink after brushing her teeth. I just heard seven big spits in a row. That's my girl!
The beard is coming along and I almost like it. Almost. Still not sure about this, I did it totally on a whim and it'll be a few more days before it's really grown in. I'll post a pic when it doens't look like I have a pile of shit on my face. I'm 35 and I've never grown a beard. Go figure.
Love,
Dougie
The Important Things
12.15.05 (10:25 pm) [edit]Still awake. Things on my mind after the last post.
I feel like I've come a long way in the last few months towards some real inner work. I'm happier than I've been in a very long time, even though my circumstances are still pretty shitty. I'm eating better, drinking less, feeling stronger and more mentally sharp. (Though the latter is a relative thing, I still blank out in a fog at least seventy-four times a day.)
But I'm still carrying some shit, and I wish I wasn't. I'm not even sure why I am. I don't think it's necessary anymore. The anger, resentment, jealousy, and need to know things that I really don't need to know is just useless now. Why is it still there? Not nearly as strongly as it was even a few months ago, but it's there.
I feel that I've left a lot of things unsaid, even though I've said a lot and probably don't need to say anymore. But I still feel the need to unload some shit. I'm not sure how to do it or even if I should. I'm not interested in hurting anyone, I just want this shit out of my system so I can move on. I haven't really moved on enough. Progress has been made, but not enough.
I realize that in order to let go, I have to truly grab a hold of the things that I myself really need. The things I need for my emotional and spiritual healing to really take hold. The healing and the grasping of things so long left ungrapsed. It's important now. I have to make that step. The steps I've made have been vital, this one will be possibly more so.
I need to feel clean again. Whole. Complete.
Which is why I need to assfuck a 19-year old girl.
Sometimes you have to take the long way around to get to the punchline,
Dougie
Dear Whoever-You-Are
12.15.05 (9:34 pm) [edit]I just got a very weird email, and I'm not sure how far I want to go with this, partially because I'm not sure it's worth it, and partially because I'm more baffled by it than actually upset, but it obviously comes from recent posts I've made, and this person's email address is apaprantly bogus since my reply bounced back, so I'll clarify a few things:
1.) Given how many other people on tblog (many of them women) are talking about sex, and how many of them are actually HAVING it, I think some stupid (and yes, pretty filthy, becuase that just happens to be my sense of humour) jokes about the subject from a guy who isn't getting any in the first place are so far down on the list of Stuff That Matters that I wonder if you might be one of the assholes who is in on the Christmas debate I just posted about.
2.) Censoring myself here for the sake of ANY child is a ludicrous idea. My own isn't old enough to read, won't be allowed to read this when she is, and will be smart enough to draw her own conclusions when she's old enough to make that call herself. I intend to have a daughter who can think for herself, not be told how to think. She's already good at that, and it makes me happier than you can know.
In the end, this is just another stupid bullshit blog like anyone's. But I DO take it somewhat seriously in that it's the only real outlet I have at this moment for my writing, which I do hope to turn into some kind of cash-generating device someday. It's a place to generate material for a possible (only possible, I'm not really thinking much about it at the moment) stand-up act, and I happen to put the same kind of thought and effort into it that I do when creating/re-creating a bass line with my band. The Mona Lisa, and the Tom Petty buttsex parody - it's all "art", which shows how worthless a word THAT is. But I don't do this just for my health. It's also practice. And if people like David Lynch, or Frank Zappa, or William Shakespeare, or that asshole who came up with the idea of "reality TV" shut down their work just to "protect the chlldren" at the expense of creating whatever it is they created, then the world would suck a lot more. This is a place for PEOPLE, not just people of a certain age group, and I'm sick of anyone who suggests that "protecting" children from a few words and pictures of titties on TV is somehow more important that those of us who survived childhood being able to have the freedom to do our shit so long as it doesn't actually hurt someone. Your definition of "hurt" (and seemingly that of politically-correct assholes on both the left and right) is not mine. Probably because I have priorities beyond what some idiot like me has to say. There's real problems in the world. Go worry about THEM.
And besides, it's really just a stupid fucking blog. As if anything I do compares to Lynch, Zappa, or Shakespeare anyway.
"You realize that everything I say is horseshit." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
3.) I can see how my recent post about my old girlfriend Susan could be seen as evidence of me "carrying a torch" for years, but I don't see it that way. For a long time, I only thought about her on occasion, mostly regretting how stupid I was. I only really felt the wave of nostalgia in a big way AFTER I was asked to leave my family. These things happen. I know it looks a little weird in context of my divorce, and I accept that. But I also can't help it if I happen to feel a certain way, just like most of us can't, and I don't enjoy being told that my genuine feelings are somehow invalid because of "how they affect others." I KNOW how I've affected others, and I don't like it. I'm also not responsible for other people's reactions to every fucking thing I do or say. There's no reason for this to affect anyone (it all happened NINE YEARS AGO) except that I felt the need to bang together in written form and then share some things that perhaps are more personal than I should have shared. Oh well, not like I EVER do that...
Enough of that shit. Tblog seems to have eaten some of the comments on recent posts. So, tell me. How'dja like the Tom Petty buttsex parody?
Dougie
Christmas Crap
12.15.05 (7:57 pm) [edit]Just watched the Larry King show to see his interview with Bill Maher, which I found out about an hour before it happened.
I won't repeat most of it (it's brilliant shit and you will find the transcripts online soon anyway)but something stuck in my head because I haven't read much news lately and was amazed again at how fucking stupid so many Americans are after hearing about this "issue."
Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? Wow. What a fucking choice. You know what I think the choice should be? Time-Wasting Asshole or Priority-Challenged Misfit. Once again, liberals and conservatives in the US have come together on a completely unimportant non-issue rather than addressing things that actually MATTER. It's our way here in this country, and both sides love doing it, the Republicans are just usually a lot better at inventing the shit.
I can understand that some people on the left don't like cetain religious shit thrown in their face, I don't like it either, but let's face it - we lost this one a LONG time ago. It's the fucking Christians' holiday (there's other religious holidays going on at the same time, but come on, does it MATTER to Wal-Mart's sales figures what those Christ-hating Jews do?) just look the other way and practice some of that tolerance you like to go on about. Because I've got news for you - what you name a TREE is not nearly as important as the name of the asshole who gets to come onto the Supreme Court and overturn laws thereby taking away freedoms that are MUCH more relevant to most people's lives than the overblown celebration of a dead Jew's birthday party.
People are dying in Iraq, people's lives have been completely fucked in New Orleans, corporate greed is poisoning our food supply and obliterating the future of millions, George Bush is drilling holes in anything that isn't a fetus, and Survivor is still on the air. THESE things are worth fighting for. You are inconviniencd at best, you whining self-important, easily-offended little pussy. Get a real job and learn how to pick your battles. If you want to have an edge over the idiots in the religious right who make this kind of nonsense an issue, you might first try NOT DOING IT YOURSELF. Put your energy into a matter of true importance. Like should there be movies about gay cowboys?
Love,
Dougie
Cornhole Country
12.14.05 (9:17 pm) [edit]Listening to Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love. Been a while. What an amazingly unusual, captivating, beautiful woman she is. I need to get her new album.
This should be a great weekend. Sheryl has been kind enough to offer to bring Katie up here Friday night when I get off work. Which saves four hours of driving plus the gas money, but also means I'll have my girl for two nights and a long day (sans all the driving) on Saturday. The last two times Katie has been here, she's said that she wanted to stay two nights. I'm looking forward to it. My time with Katie is one of the few times I feel human.
We'll go up to Marion Saturday. I need to leave her at my mom's for two hours for a brief drummerless band practice (he's in Boston for three weeks) then off to Christmas a week early with my Mom's family. Katie can play with her cousins, and we'll come back here late that night and have most of the day Sunday together.
This past weekend, I spent Saturday night with my Dad's side. I didn't leave until 4PM and it was great to just hang around the apartment for a while.
Something very interesting happened in the Swayzee Town Hall that night. I found myself truly feeling like part of something I never really had before. Getting into genealogy has made me think more about family, but it's always been weird. I was closer to Mom's side, but they've always annoyed me. I've never known my Dad's side enough. We spent more time with my Grandma (who will be 97 in a month and a half) and my aunt and one of my uncles when I was younger, but not a hell of a lot. My cousin Nathan (a couple years younger) is the only one I really connected with. He's a lawyer in Minnesota now, and I was very happy (and surprised) to hear that he was helping the Dean campaign back in early '04.
I made a point of talking to my cousin Pam. I seldom see her. I mentioned her here back in September. Her husband Gene was killed in a car accident.
She looked terrible but held together a good mood. She was laughing more and louder than anyone else, and it was genuine - not forced. But she also looked like a woman who has spent far too many nights crying and not sleeping. She's a very cool and pretty Indiana-redneck lady in her late 40s who has lost not only her husband, but a friend she's known almost her entire life.
Her kids are in their 20s. Amber is a knockout thin blonde who is finishing college this week. Jason came in late with his fiance. His fiance who fucked my head up for a few mintues because she looks a LOT like Melinda. Not actually a lot, but from one side just as she walked in, I nearly shit myself. I didn't talk to her, but I almost asked her "who's your daddy?" just to see what would happen...
I talked to my cousin Jeff (Pam's brother) who is ten years older and I NEVER talk to him. We had a nice time talking music (he's trying to sell his PA and I forgot he even played at all) and listening to my Uncle Neil's crazed bullshit stories. Neil is a true lunatic. Crazy old fart. He told me he'd been eating some hot peppers out of his garden. "Don't touch yer balls after you eat 'em." It looks funny to read, but it's HILARIOUS to hear the old bastard say it. I love him.
Pam and Jeff's dad is my Uncle John, who is the next oldest from my dad. I talked to him a bit at Gene's funeral, but more this weekend. I asked him if he remembered his grandparents. They died when he was very young, so I got the answer I expected - he doesn't remember them. But he does remember going to their house in Greentown. That's about it. Maybe if I can get Neil to wash the jalapeno juice from his testicles long enough to get his brain uncluttered and remember who's who (I think he's losing that) he can tell me about my great-grandparents who died before my dad was born.
I told John the guy two doors down from me reminded me of him. "He must be an old bastard!" John's a great guy. Why I didn't spend more time with him when I was a kid...
Aunt Margaret is the classy-looking one of the family. Always dressed good, always proper. But she has a good sense of humour and is a very nice lady. Her mom is very sick and is staying with her now. I'd never seen her. She was in a wheelchair with tubes up her nose. My Aunt Rosanne (wife of my dad's brother Rex) just found out she has emphysema (she's smoked like crazy her whole life) and has the tubes too. Jeff went over to them as they were talking to each other and said, "What are you two old women doing here? Sharing oxygen stories?"
Another cousin is Jerry, a year younger than me. I wish I'd talked to him that night. He was there with a friend. They had cowboy hats on. And it never occured to me to put two and two together on something that Mom told me the next day - my cousin Jerry is gay. I never knew it. She didn't either. Dad has known for a while.
It would seem that nobody is giving him shit for this, which makes me very happy. My family are all pretty conservative farm-folk, but it's occurred to me in recent years that they have never been as stupid about some things as my Mom's side, who are just nuts. That my cousin felt comfortable showing up to a family holiday with his "friend" is a good thing. They probably don't all like it, but they have much more of a live-and-let-live attitude than I've given them credit for. Mom's side would be weird as hell about that kind of thing.
It occurred to me that I never really fit in with Mom's family, though I was closer to them. Yet Dad's side...I DID fit in. I just never knew it. A couple of them have given me shit about the hair and trying to make my money at music, but not most of them. They've been good to me, even if distantly so.
Why the distance? Why have I never really sat down and truly enjoyed this part of the family? Most of my cousins are a lot older than me, I'm sure that has something to do with it. But not all.
I think it's Dad. He doesn't avoid them, but he's never gone out of his way to involve himself with his own family like Mom has. I don't mean that in a bad way per se, he just hasn't done that. I think Dad felt some distance too. Mom told me that my grandfather (who died when I was 10 months old) used to refer to my Dad as "the odd one" because of his pilot ambitions.
My Dad. Who dared to break out of the normal day-to-day routine most of his family stayed in to chase down a dream.
Holy shit.
I've never really thought of him that way. Probably because he did the SAME SHIT to me all my life that his Dad did to him. Made me feel weird. My goals weren't what he felt fit itno his mode of thought. And I hated him for it. For...the only thing HE had known growing up.
He's always taken care of me. I've never had to worry. But I always felt that it was just his JOB and he would just as soon go hide in the back of the house and watch TV.
I'm more like him than I want to admit.
I wonder if it's why he doesn't use his middle name now. They always called him Hal. He's been using his first name my whole life. I've never heard him called "Hal" except by people who knew him as a kid, and most of them don't call him that anymore either. Halbert was his Dad's middle name too. My middle name is Eugene, after my mom's stepdad who she only knew for a year before he was killed in a car-train accident near Peru.
I wonder if he tried to forget his younger years. He sure hasn't told me much about them. He has NEVER mentioned the woman he was engaged to for five years, who left him. Before Mom. Mom has told me about this. Dad hasn't brought it up. He doesn't talk about much of anything unless it's safe. He didn't tell me SHIT about sex. Anything mechanical he did for me because I was obviously too incompetent to do it myself.
I think he's the reason. Not out of anything malicious, he just hasn't wanted to go the extra distance to be close to his family, even though he gets along with them fine now. Because of that, I barely know these people. People who for all their redneck-isms are a LOT more attuned to my general wavelength than I thought they were. They're a little bit crazy, their sense of humour is a tad on the blue side, and they like to eat good home cooklng and bullshit with each other. I'm more extreme, but not a hell of a lot.
I need to know these people more. This Christmas, Katie will be with my Mom's side. Next year - if it all doesn't fall apart after Grandma dies, and who knows how long she'll be here - I want her to go over to Swayzee and see these people. I need to take a day and go visit John and Margaret. I've got a cousin here in town (Nathan's brother Justin, recently home from Iraq and expecting his second child) and I need to talk more with Grandma before she's gone.
She's really sad to see. Five years ago she was kicking ass at 91. Sharp as hell, driving around. Her hearing was shot to hell, but that was about it. She cooked with lard her whole life, made killer taffy. Quilted a lot. She told me Saturday that she has a new one for me soon. Even now, with the stroke having taken so much of her energy away, she's still quilting.
But it's fucking sad. She wouldn't have appreciated her older self even five years ago. The old woman sitting on the couch hunched over and saying "Well, I'll be 97 soon, I guess it doesn't matter. I won't be here much longer." That's not my Grandma. My Grandma had no time for that. She was MOVING. When my Aunt Ellie was dying a few years back, Grandma said to me "She'll die because she WANTS to. She's given up, dammit." There was no sympathy. You damn kids. Get off yer ass! I can run rings around you little fucks! Where's my hearing aid?
Not now. She's going fast. And I'll miss her. I didn't give her one tenth the love she gave me.
I drove home in the shitstorm. The east-west roads had blown over with snow (Indiana flatland, cornfields barren, LOTS of room for wind to blow the white shit around in) and I headed west to Kokomo then down Highway 31 to home.
Stopped in Kokomo for a little "adult entertainmet." The video store I used to go to when I lived in Marion has 'em for ten bucks. I know my porn mostly from the late 80s and early 90s. Rachel Ryan. Yeah, baby. My favorite brunette. Yummy.
I was joking with Bob today about porn websites. I'm in awe of the names of these things. You remember the 80s metal package tour "Monsters Of Rock"? Well, there's a website called Monsters Of COCK. Gotta love the picture where all you see is the massive sausage and a girl doing this. (Makes eyes-wide mouth-hanging-open holy-shit-look-at-the-siz e-of-that-thing face.) Shit, even *I* made that face. I feel so insignificant...
How about "Anal Adventures" for one? Now maybe it's just me, but I think "adventures" implies something a bit different. Daring adventures on the high seas. Voyages of discovery. Well, come to think of it, I guess that works. "Charting new territory", so to speak. Ahhh, anal adventures...
But my favorite is "Ass Traffic." I'll repeat that. "Ass Traffic."
Let that one sink in.
See, to me the word "traffic" implies MORE THAN ONE. And usually AT THE SAME TIME. In fact, I think two doesn't quite cut it. Doesn't "traffic" mean, oh, I don't know, at least six or seven going in opposite directions?
I don't think I want to meet this woman. Well, maybe. I'll shake her hand. Buy her a drink. Donate a couple dollars towards the reconstructive surgery. "Ass Traffic." My friend D9 suggested that this doesn't have much to do with Steve Winwood. Sure would give new meaning to "The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys", wouldn't it?
Tom Petty comes to mind:
She's a good girl, loves her anal
Loves Peter North and Sweden too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout rimjobs
Loves horses and her boyfriend too
It's a long day livin' in her bunghole
There's a freeway runnin' through her back yard
And I'm a bad boy cos I don't even lube her
I'm a bad boy for makin' her fart
And I'm ass, ass-fuckin'
Yeah I'm ass, ass-fuckin'
All the pornstars filmin' in the Valley
Move south down Hershey Boulevard
And all the bad boys are wackin' in the shadows
All the good girls are home with bleeding parts
I'm ass-fuckin'...
I wanna glide down her butt-tunnel
I wanna write my name on her face
Gonna ass-fuck out her butt-muffin
Gonna leave this splooge for a while...
I'm ass, ass-fuckin'...
I had more, but I can't go on.
Love,
Dougie
Shopping With Jesus
12.12.05 (9:29 pm) [edit]Late night shopping. Kroger as usual. Not a fucked-up lesbo daddy's girl in sight.
But hmmm, what's THIS?
Blonde curly hair, looks about my age. Very curvy. A bit overweight, but not in any unpleasant way at all. Very nice round ass. And...oh, she''s turning around. Damn, what a rack.
I'm walking past the coffee, she's looking at the Folgers.
I suddenly remember that I look like shit. I've decided to do something I've never done - grow a beard. I think it should be pretty cool, but right now I just look like some asshole who hasn't shaved in four or five days. I look like I just crawled out of the alley after a three-day weekend up Jack Daniel's asshole.
She just said hi to me.
"Uh, hi." I slow down, but still walking past her.
"Do you drink coffee?"
She's asking me a question. I'm looking at her tits. She doesn't seem to mind, or maybe she doesn't notice. Fuck, those things could hold enough milk to feed Cambodia for a month or three.
"Yeah. Not a lot. Sometimes." Had some this morning at work. I like the coffee machine there, because it's lying to you. You find that out quick. I get the espresso, becuase it's not really espresso. It's fucking coffee. But the shit that says "coffee" is actually coffee-flavored bat piss. It's good to know these things early, So I push the "espresso" button with sugar and have a decent (not great) little paper cup of coffee a couple times a week at work. And I drink some here at home sometimes. Got some Seattle's Best I quite like. Had some at Steak & Shake when I saw Amanda today. (Barely talked to her, she was on breka when I got there and I had a different waitress.)
"I never drink coffee, but I'm picking up some for my mother and I only know that she drinks Folgers. I'm not sure which one to get."
"I really don't know, but I assume that the Columbian would be a safe bet."
What do I know? There's people paying four bucks for hot sewage at Starbuck's right now. And people across the street at ANOTHER Starbucks. What do I know what coffee people like? But she's cute, she has tits that could envelope my entire skull, and she seems very friendly and nice. Very pretty smile. Big soft brown eyes. I'm thinking as much about how truly pleasant she seems as about how much I'd like to boink her.
She puts a can in her cart. "Thank you."
"No problem." Before I know it, my hand goes out. "I'm Doug."
"I'm Teresa."
Great, the last girl I wanted to fuck named Teresa was back in college, and she told me as we drove home from our first not-really-a-date that she wanted to be a nun. I wondered if she made this decision before or after meeting me. She told me on one of the half-dozen or so times we drove around together (it was never anything official or even anything at all, dammit) that she really liked me. But I couldn't lay a finger on her. I tried to hold her hand once - as far as I ever went - and she seemed both amused and terrified. I went to her house in Greentown once. I didn't see her for five months, and went back. Her mom said she'd gotten married. From a nun to married just like that, no Dougie-involvement at all. I felt so fuckin' loved.
Then there was the Teresa before her. The girl I lost my mind over for three years in high school and college. Nice Christian girl. Always made me feel like utter shit because I obviously didn't have Jesus-based goals for us. I wanted to fuck her and fucking is a sin, right? "I think you want sex more than you want anything else with me."
Well of course. I'm 16 years old. My hormones are doing crazed square-dances in my testicles. When you are in high school that's the only thing you CAN think about. Fuck, i've been out of high school for 17 years and it's still 90% of what goes on in my fucking head. Back then there simply was no choice. There barely is now. But you can't tell these things to some women. Because women are pure. And sweet. And innocent. And completely full of shit when they get to use some twisted Jeezo-logic on your ass.
Back to the present. This Teresa is shaking my hand. And...damn, what a nice disarming smile. I've known her 20 seconds and I feel like she's invited me into her home already.
I almost said something amazingly stupid like "Come here often?" but she's asking me if I live nearby. I tell her I'm half a mile away. She's a little farther down the road east from me. Near the Baptist church.
She said that a little too...oh no...not again...not when I'm wanting to wear those tits on my head like the world's best pair of earmuffs. Huhuhuh, "muff", huhuhuh...
"I go there every week."
Shit. I'm not getting laid tonight. That's for sure now.
Not two minutes into our conversation and we've gone from coffee to Jesus. She's really very, very nice, but she's now asking me where I go to church. I tell her I don't. She looks very disappointed. but still super-pleasant.
She's still standing there looking at me with that smile. It only dropped for a second.
"Well, nice to meet you Teresa. Have a good night. Hope your mom enjoys the coffee."
"You're very nice. Would you like to come to church with me sometime?"
And what? Sit there and...Jesus H. Christ in a baking dish. I'm not being very nice. Wait a minute, did she just ask me out? What the fuck? Out to...to...church. My head is starting to spin. A woman just showed actual interest in me. But I think she's interested in something very, very different.
"Like I said, I don't go. I used to. No offense, you're very nice and thank you for the offer, but I doubt you'd really be interested in hanging out with me."
"Why not?" Dammit, quit smiling like that. I feel like an asshole and I haven't DONE anything yet.
If I'd been five seconds quicker, I would have said "Because my Lord Satan is expecting me down at the titty bar in half an hour, and I've got some puppies to drain the blood from for tomorrow's Baphomet Barbecue out in the woods next to the graven image of Anton LeVay."
I waan't that quick.
"I'm not a Christian. And not interested. Like I said, no offense intended. You're very nice, Teresa."
The last sentence was supposed to come out more friendly than it did. I think it actually came out a mixture of sarcasm and "you're so nice I'd like to fuck you in the ass to old Black Sabbath albums" creepy. Shit. Now I AM an asshole and I was trying to be nice.
She seemed oblivious. She reached into her purse (i noticed the very stiff, zombie-like way she did it and suddenly realized that her lovely smile was practically painted on. Her expression had only slightly changed the whole time) and pulled out soemthing to hand to me. Oh shit, I AM in Indiana. A woman I've known for three minutes in a grocery store is handing me a Jeezo-tract.
"Thanks. But I'm not interested. Have a good night." THAT came out positively shitty. I walked off and didn't look back. Wanted to look back. Didn't.
Fucking hell.
Before I got out the door I had wood thinking some really dirty sinful thoughts. Well, not really. *I* don't think it's a sin to bang a girl with giant funbags until they're bouncing so hard they hit her in the face, but I'm not into Jesus like she is.
Yep, I'm the hood ornament.
I told Bob today that I'm growing a beard. He said, "That should help you find women. They won't have to see what's underneath."
"You're an evil genius, Bob."
The crappy radio station played a Mariah Carey song. I think I got my male-pig quote fo the week in - "If you're going to spend that much time and effort trying to do gymnastics with your throat, I've got a new job for you, bitch."
Damn, that Teresa chick had some big fuckin' tits. Well, time to spank the Franklin, boys and girls. Have a good night.
Love,.
Dougie
A Holiday Toon
12.12.05 (7:13 pm) [edit]While sitting here listening to The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (one of the greatest rock albums of all time, own one immediately) i came across something I wrote last year. To the tune of Winter Wonderland:
Screaming "Shit!", are you listening?
In the snow, I've been pissin'
A pathetic sight, me trying to put up the lights
Christmas is a big fat pain in the ass
Gone away is the extension cord,
Here to stay is seventeen tangled-together cords
I sing a GG Allin song,
As I string these fuckin' lights along,
Christmas is a big fat pain in the ass
In the meadow we can build an effigy
Then pretend that he is George W. Bush
He'll say: Are you safer?
We'll say: Hell no man!
Not with you near The Button ready to push
Later on, we'll conspire,
To burn down the malls in a great big fire
We'll drive unafriad
Less fucking holiday traffic we've made,
Christmas is a big fat pain in the ass.
In the attic we can mix rum and some egg nog (but mostly rum)
And pretend that we're Hunter Thompson
We'll scream, "The bats took all my presents!"
And feed adrenochrome to Santa 'til he falls down
Paris blows, ain't it thrillin',
Though your broadband bill, it is illin'
We'll stay indoors and pray this goddamn shitty weather will go away
Christmas is a big fat pain in the ass
Love,
Dougie
Hey There, Satan!
12.10.05 (8:36 am) [edit]The things I think of sometimes.
Phrases pop into my head at any given time that make me laugh my balls off like some mad scientist. "Cocksmoking fuckfaced shitlords" is a prime example. "The Stain In My Undies" a wonderful title for a concept album.
Greasy little fuckbonnet.
I PISSED myself when that came screaming through my depraved little noggin. What the FUCK does it even MEAN? Greasy little fuckbonnet??? Holy Christ on a crutch, Batman!
I went down to the bank a few minutes ago. Coming back, I was listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer's Live In Poland CD. I was doing what I tend to do when depravity hits me while driving, singing a scat vocal to it. Emerson's keyboard melody. My little creation centered around the phrase "fung diddy dang dang", which is so fucking RETARDED it defies description.
It eventually morphed into "fuck titty tang tang", which nearly made me piss myself and cause a major traffic accident. I'm a little too proud of myself at times like these.
I'm going to burn.
Bob asked me at work the other day who the singer of AC/DC was. Bon Scott if you mean what I think you're getting to.
He did. "If he was on the highway to hell, you are the hood ornament."
I like Bob.
There's times I enjoy walking through art museums, listening to classical music, and enjoying expensive candlelight dinners. Read at length about religious history, savor a glass of wine.
Other times I don't shave for three days, crank up the AC/DC, down a pint of rum, and sing little ditties about titties. I like being this stupid. It makes me happy.
Love,
Dougie
A Few Other Things, Plus: For Susan
12.09.05 (11:48 pm) [edit]A List Of Ten Fucking Things
1.) First things first:
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The laughably-titled "daily" webpage is now updated for the first time since March, right before I left my family for California. And i'm pretty proud of the new one. It's a perfect example of the kind of shit that pops into my head when I'm doing something so TOTALLY unrelated to whatever appears in my noggin. I was shipping a package of pneumatic products via UPS to Georgia when the phrase "fuck my dirty asspipe" lit a bulb in front of me. This is what makes my life worth living, boys and girls.
2.) I don't think "celebrating" is the right word, but I'm paying tribute to the 25th anniversary (yesterday) of the death of John Lennon tonight. I've told this story here before, I think, but it was the summer after his death when I was 11 years old when it hit me like a ton of shit to the skull. Sitting in front of the radio listening to Casey Kasem play 40 Beatles songs. I went to my mother and asked her why. WHY? Why would anyone gun down the creator of this incredible music? In front of his wife? WHY?
I've never got a good answer to that, but most of the answers to the good questions I ask are shit, so I'm used to it now. Where is God, why is religion so fucking stupid, why should I care, why did John Lennon have to die. At 11, I was very, very sad. I still am, but it's tempered by 25 years of learning just what made John so great. You can't really know that at 11. You can't really know it until you've heard it all, and had time to digest it with the proper perspective, and I'll tell you something - the people who think that none of the Beatles made music after the split that matched the band's output are WRONG. I understand their position. I sympathise with it. But I have this thing called ""Plastic Ono Band", and it proves them fucking wrong. It isn't better, it isn't worse. But it IS something else entirely. And the intensity of emotion, the honesty, the almost unspeakable grinding power and soul of it...it's one fo the most beautiful things in my music collection and I refuse to be without it.
Rest in peace, John. You're still loved.
3.) What a fuckin' day.
I always get my check before lunch on Friday. Not today. The weather last night fucked it up. We had several inches of snow here (it was whiter than the front row at a Pat Boone concert out there) and Fed EX was fucked up somehow, so somebody from the main Cincy office had to bring the checks up.
I had NO money. Typical Friday.
But I thought I had some in the bank. I'm terrible at managing my bank account, so even though there was only SEVENTY-FOUR CENTS in there, I somehow thought I had ten or fifteen bucks I could use my card on for lunch. The tiny bit of emergency money I thought I kept in there for shit like this.
I had breakfast for lunch. At Denny's. Across from the Steak & Shake I see Amanda at. This waitress was very nice, but she was also about 74 years older than Amanda. I gave her my card and...shit. I was fucked. Denied.
They were very nice about it. I left the card and my driver's license there with a promise to be back around 6:00 to pay the bill. Then I got in my car, already late back to work, and drove...
....about 30 yards.
I ran out of gas. Friday. I am always down to the bone on Friday. No money. Which is why having a check before lunch is kinda important. Or maybe I shouldn't be spending that cash from the one guitar lesson I teach a week (on Wednesdays) on trying to get a waitress to fuck me.
I ran out of gas in front of Denny's right acorss from a Marathon station. A guy there gave me two bucks out of his pocket. I was increasingly getting irritated, mostly at how fucking embarrassing this shit was.
i filled up my can and took it to the car.
I got half a gallon in the car. The other half was all over my hands and the ground.
The fucking screw-on cap was broken and I was lucky to get the fuel in that I did. But it didn't crank the engine over. My fingers were almost completely numb from the cold and the gas on them, and I warmed them with my scarf. Currently taking a spin in the dryer after trying to clean the fucking gasoline off it. I called Jenny. I was 20 minutes late. I left a message for her since she didn't pick up. I didn't have the warehouse's office number, just hers.
By the way, John is singing Working Class Hero for me right now. I wish I'd written this.
Nobody at the Marathon station was willing to help me further. I walked. A quarter mile down Post Road to a Swifty station, where I caught the woman who sells them cigarettes pulling out onto Post Rd. She gave me a ride back to work, where I showed up exactly an hour behind schedule.
I was laughing as I told my supervisor what happened.
Something must be going good, because a year ago I would have invented 417 new variations on the theme "Fuck" to go with this scenario. Two years ago I'd been curled up in the fetal position under the back wheel of the car, shaking like a leaf and crying for Gods I No Longer Believe In to kill me.
Today I laughed. And tried to warm my fucking fingers back up.
Absurdity is my whiskey, and I had a few. It was so completely fucking ridiculous that I just couldn't care. It just didn't matter. It just doens't matter. I was Bill Murray in front of a group of horny campers. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!
I practically *danced* through an hour or so of finishing up the little work left to do and went to the supervisor to ask if I could leave early. I had to get the car started, cash the check. The last guy left in the place who left earlier than the rest of us was nice enough to give me a ride. I don't know his real name, but we all call him "T". Very nice soft-spoken guy, who I understand is from South Africa. Looks like a very tall 12-year old, with a baby face and afro. I bet all the girls there want to fuck him. Shit, even *I* think he's cute.
He was nice enough to drive me to the bank and backtrack to the Marathon station that was completley out of his way. I owe him one, and said so.
Bought a new gas can, filled it, and got the car started. Paid the bill at Denny's. Got home about five minutes before I usually get off work. Met the guy two doors down, whose been a neighbor since three weeks after I moved here. Glen. Retired Ford worker. Reminds me of my Uncle John. I enjoyed talking to him.
I had every intention of going out tonight. Down to a bar close to me that looks like a spot to find some poon. I was totally in Poon-Patrol Mode earlier today. No moral conflicts in my noggin. Just pure fuckin' pussy-craving. By 6:00 though, all I wanted was to be alone. Down a couple shots of Bacardi Gold, go out for Chinese, shop for some groceries and blank CDs, and come home to listen to John Lennon. Sounds like a night to me.
And here I am.
It's actually been a good day. Even with the amazingly stupid episode at lunchtime, I actually kinda had a good time today.
4.) There is no fourth thing.
5.) There's a picture on my desk of a girl named Jessie. I gave her online guitar lessons (she lives in Conneticut but knew one of my students back in Marion) several years ago. She's 18 in this picture. She's gotta be 24 or 25 by now. In the picture, she's sitting on a stool, her acoustic guitar is behind her. She has on a Play-Doh T-shirt, and a blue jean skirt. White socks. Nice legs. Long straight brown hair with blonde highlights. Very pleasantly pretty.
I miss talking to her. It's been a long time, since not long after I met my ex. I felt really, really weird talking to her after that and simply stopped keeping in touch. She had a very bad experience, causing a traffic accident that killed two people. She didn't tell me much about it, but I know it tore her up to be the reason these people died. I don't know how it turned out or where she is now. I hope she's OK. She's a good kid.
6.) I saw a woman last week that looked a LOT like Susan. The girl who left me for a drug dealer, nine years ago.
I say it that way - "she left me for a drug dealer" - because it's the truth, but it's more complicated than that. I was the third guy she'd ever been with. She was my first. She'd known him for a long time and spent nine months in jail when they were both busted for a variety of drug charges. (She's the one who planted the seed in my head about wanting to do mushrooms that Bill Hicks made grow into the rather strong desire I have now. I still haven't tried them, though there is an opportunity waiting soon.) He was in for four years. I met her at a job. We worked together a long time and it was a long time before she finally caved into my persuasion (which would be considered sexual harrassment by some people, but she thought I was funny and cute, the poor deluded thing) and went out with me. It was a long time before we got really involved. I remember the first time we kissed, in a parking lot at Indiana Wesleyan University. I remember the night - months later - we spent in Muncie behind a movie theater on McGalliard, kissing and cuddling and groping. She made an offer that night in a moment of weakness. We were both weak. We wanted each other. I loved her. A crazed, obsessive unhealthy love. She liked me a lot. I think she didn't love me until later, almost right before she left. I wish I knew what she really felt when she left. She said she loved me then, and I believe her. but she loved him more.
We drove most the way back hom from Muncie, then she made the offer. It was a warm night. On a dark country road, on the back of my car, outside in the night air, I made love with a beautiful woman with long straight blonde hair and sad eyes. We ended up driving off the road alongside a railroad track, and there she gave me something I always wanted and have been addicted to ever since. I remember how vulnerable I felt. Women claim that oral sex puts them in a submissive position. Not this time, baby. I was her slave. She CONTROLLED me. Just like any woman would, like any woman ever will who gives herself to me that way. I talk a lot, I use coarse terminology and act like a pig. A big part of me probably IS a pig. But when the time comes (and when I do too, hopefully) I am in that moment OWNED by the woman fool enough to be with me.
A week later I met her in Ft. Wayne, where she was enjoying a wekend out with her grandmother. While the grandmother (whose first husband was briefly engaged to MY grandmother, for fuck's creepy sake) stayed in the hotel, we parked behind a McDonalds off Clearwater (across from a music store where I bought some Peter Hammill records, the things I remember...) and I took her into the bushes right next to the drive-through, pulled her jeans down, and returned the favor. And became addicted to something else. I'll never forget the way she reacted, the way her body moved. The taste. The smell. I LOVED it. I needed it. I was 25 fucking years old. A terminally fucked-up Christian boy - only five years removed from turning his back on the ministry in favor of that evil ol' rock & roll - who grew up believing that his penis was an instrument of the devil, laying in the bushes with a beautiful sad-eyed hippie girl, sucking her clit like it contained Manna From Heaven.
It did. They usually do.
We made love in bushes, beside railroad tracks, in cars, in hotels, on top of the car, in the back of my friend's record store, on my bed at home. On my parents' bed, even. The one night we actually slept together. She came over after work (she worked another job and was probably working 90 hours a week at one point) and my parents were on vacation. I had just recorded a weird synth-pop tune after seeing a New Order video on MTV2 (Peter Hook's distorted bass solo making me run to the four-track in a frenzy of fuck-it-let-the-parakeets -cheeping-in-the-back-be- part-of-the-tune inspiration I'd do well to connect with more often in these times) and I made her a bowl of soup in the microwave. It wasn't hot enough for her. She seldom complained about anything, so I put it back in for her, and handed it back to her with love. We watched Teenagers From Outer Space, a REALLY stupid 50s movie on MST3k, and then went back to the bed. We started on my bed, me on my back and her taking sweet rhythmic control of me, her incredible hair all over me like a beautiful blonde version of David Lynch's Curtains.
Then we moved to the other bed. I'll never forget the smile on her face as she rode on top of me. She was happy. Happy to be with me. Who could imagine? She loved being with me, making love to Wish You Were Here, falling asleep in each other's arms and waking me up the next morning between her soft, warm lips. Making soft beautiful love to each other for another three hours before she left. Two months later, she left for good. Maybe only a month later. My memory is clouded by the other memories. The good ones. Most of them are good ones now. It was twisted, not ever quite right. But it was beautiful in a way, and we never wanted to hurt each other. Only to be together for a time. We had our time. We had each other. She told me that she'd always treasure the gift I'd given her - my virginity. I believed her then and I still do. Even after all the horrific pain of losing her - three months of raging suicidal terror that so horribly mirrors three months earlier this year - I'm mostly left with memories of that face when we made love. It's obscured by time. The one picture I had of her is now gone. But I remember those eyes and that soft smile. The endless gentle waves of her hair enveloping me as I begged her to stay. Don't leave me for him. The things he did to you. I'll never do that. Please. I need you. I can't live without you. I'm a complete fucking DOUCHEBAG here for you, for fuck's sake.
I loved her. In a sense.
I cr