Excerpt From New Novel V: Stock Market Blues

What is the point of my book?

To expose America for what it really is: Land of the chained and Home of the 1%; To give lenses to those people you see living on the streets in the land of opportunity as you go to buy your froyo and Mocha Frappucino. Why do I keep banging this gong? I’ll explain:

I have friends of mine who once were middle class and now? On the streets, bouncing around hostels, airbnbs. This book is a warning about the future. You might be holding your Frap in your hands now, but tomorrow? Waiting. Waiting for the worms to come.

Do you have any idea how easy it is to lose everything you have without being the one responsible? My friend Carlo used to lead a team in LA, but his program was cut and 15 people lost their jobs that day. Now he works answering phones in Miami. Who’s fault is that?

A fluctuating stock market is like an ongoing game of Russian roulette. Who’s gonna get the bullet this time? What plant has to close and bring a small town under? What pill has to cost more money? What part of Nature will get raped? Will your job be next? Your pension? The crosshairs are pointing at you dear reader, right at your heart and wallet. It’s only a matter of time before you join us victims under the bridge and learn how to warm yourself up with a garbage fire.

Becoming the damned isn’t a choice anymore. It’s a random act of greed and corruption. Many people lose their jobs and can’t find others like it. They are used to a different lifestyle. And when the Team Lead suddenly has to become a grocery bagger, the transition is too violent. The poor victim caught in a spiral, spends more money out of depression to hasten the inevitable: taking a step down.

No one is safe except the 1%. Can we fight this? Of course. Look at France right now. Maybe a French Revolution is necessary and just in America. Maybe it’s the only way. But how to avoid the errors of history? Could this really be the last resort? And what about the militarizing of the police? I spent my adult life trying to prevent this but I don’t see another way out of it. We’ve put as a society too much empathy on the 1% and not enough on the poor.

The pop star is considered brave breaking down in public while the homeless girl is told to get off the drugs and get a job if she does the same. Her crime? Being born. Too many handicaps. Meanwhile I’ve seen upper class teens throw tantrums over a low cell battery. How about a mother who’s a junky? Abusive father? How about getting habitually raped? Would you do drugs then? Would you hit the bottle just a little harder than everyone else? Would you be angrier than the rest? How can the upper classes not understand? How can they not understand that normal ends outside the burbs? Everything is a privilege here, even a normal life. Everything is decided for you when you are born. You open your peephole for the first time and see a worried woman holding you.

“Are you my momma?” You ask.

“Yes my child.”

“How are we doing momma?”

“Not so good child. Not so good.”

I remember the first time I went to LA, I used to hang out at the Starbucks on the corner of Sunset and Vine. I used to see this group of kids charging up their phones, obviously users, minimal rock style. I’m going to say they were into Crystal Meth. A girl in the group, pretty thing, walked back from the bathroom with tears in her eyes. The lifestyle was already starting to show.

“What’s wrong?” Her girlfriend asked.

“My-my face.” The girl was beginning to weep quietly.

“Oh, honey. Don’t worry about that. We’re gonna score soon, ok?”

“And the other night… did I really do that?”

“I would’ve done the same thing if I was you. But he wasn’t into me…”

The girl began to sob.

“Hey,” Her friend tried to reassure her with a hug. “Wow you’re really upset. We got high that day all night, didn’t we? That was because of you. Don’t worry ok? You’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t wanna get used to it.” The girl whimpered, wiping the snot from her nose with her sleeve. “I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home.”

She kept repeating that mantra after that, holding her head as if to avoid falling skies. Her friend looked at her with a concern deeper than druggie friendship: She was looking at herself.

That’s when the boyfriend walked through the front door.

“Guess who got… hey… what happened here?” He asked upon seeing his girlfriend.

“You alright?”

“You.” The girl gave the boyfriend a hateful glance but kept her voice down. “I did this for you.”

“She’s just having a panic attack withdrawal.” The other girl said. “Nothing major. It’ll pass.”

“Look what you turned me into.” The girl was starting to raise her voice. “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror!”

At this point, people started to look, and the Starbucks employees started to hover.

“Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else.” He suggested looking afraid.

“I hate you.” The girl told him quietly.

Two of his friends rushed over with worried expressions.

“Come on.” One of them said. “You got it right? Let’s go. It’s getting hot in here.”

“Got? Got what?” The whimpering girl looked hopeful.

“I was gonna surprise you but… I got some a little earlier than usual. And hey!” He addressed the whole crowd. “She gets more than us ok? Especially for the other night.”

He turned to her.

“How does that sound?”

She nodded gratefully, tears still spilling out of her once rosy cheeks.

“I love you.” He told her.

“I love you too.” She whispered in defeat.

He gave her a Judas Kiss and they all left to get high.

I made a point remembering the exchange. That poor wounded dove! My battered heart leapt for hers. She wasn’t born into privilege. She was born into a broken household, a broken heart. A poor soul from Alabama trying to find someone to care about her, because no one else did.

Sometimes we do crazy things for love, and she probably thought love conquered all, but not in this world.

In this world, love is the ultimate act of rebellion.

Excerpt From New Novel III: Homeless America

LA was another terrible bump in my life that put to the test my greatest convictions.

I would get to know the marginalized and rejected, the addicts and the hustlers, the pimps and the prostitutes, the mentally ill and the most marginalized and forgotten people of all: The homeless of America.

Who are they really? What is their story? How did they end up the way they did? Like a journalist on a mission from Seymour Hersh, I sought to find answers to these unasked questions, to make the most of my deteriorating situation.

My story? A lawsuit I took my life away. A lawsuit I had no choice but to be involved in. The poor classes have no rudder in life and aren’t given any real tips when dealing with lawsuits and entertainment lawyers and crooked judges. Class warfare.

I made every mistake in the book that I was never given because when I looked outside my tenement growing up, I didn’t see a picket fence or afront yard with purposeful plants made from loving responsible hands.

I didn’t inherit the book of life and so I never stood a chance dealing with demons in Armani suits. I honestly thought I did. I thought I was smart enough. I was wrong.

Without the experience you are dead on arrival.

So the floor fell away beneath me and I ended up crushed and alone in sunny Southern California.

LA was another terrible bump in my life that put to the test my greatest convictions. I completely lost my mind. I can still hear the hammering of the pickaxe to wall, the pickaxe in my blistered hands, when I realize I am utterly and absolutely alone, hacking away in the distant mines of Mercury. You can’t hear a whisper of life anywhere around you and you keep tunneling because that’s what keeps you alive.

I also realize I’ve never truly been alone before. The fear of loneliness was something I always teased and scoffed at with disdain. Now it had me by the throat and I couldn’t fight it off. I always claimed to be stronger, but loneliness won that day. And it wouldn’t be the last win.

In high school I laughed at those whom rather be with someone bad than alone. Now I understood the fear, but it wasn’t emotional abandonment (that would come later), it was about being alive. I couldn’t look after myself. No Ichy Thump. I am listed as ‘dependent’ on the forms. No true identity of my own. An expired visa, an expired life. Who am I? Does Jackie Chan know? Who am I? Does anyone know?

I’m someone with nowhere to go. I’m someone who is headed nowhere. Where am I? In the Mines of Mercury, forgotten and alone, where the only sound is the pickaxe slamming against the wall. I don’t ever want to feel like I did that day, but I would again.

I didn’t know what was going on, but I suspected it was brutal bad. My girl Jessica wasn’t texting as much. Sometimes days would pass and I was crushed with panicked worry. Something had happened her. Something terrible.

I remember not sleeping for a week for the very first time. In Vegas I had only gone four days. I was raw and exposed. My mind begged me to shut down, but i couldn’t on the streets, nowhere safe to sleep. Cops and robbers on high alert. Not sure who to be afraid of more. In Hollywood you can only be a teenager to find a shelter to sleep. Everywhere else was too far to go, no money to get there, dire times. I walked so much. I walked til my right foot ripped open and bled without me knowing it.

In Vegas, I had my shoes on for a week without taking them off. New woes. I finally found out why my shoes suddenly smelled like the Red Death. I had been bleeding after continuously ripping away at my foot. I tried to take them off and air them out at a casino but the attendant gave me the eye and followed me in the bathroom. What is wrong with casino employees? They remind me of self important windbags from back in Florida. I tried to be fast but his wingtips were outside the stall.

“Excuse me, is everything alright? There are people waiting.”

“I’m fine thank you.” I cry out in the bathroom stall. “Just a minute.”

“You have two minutes. Then I’m going to have to call security.”

I was barely able to dry my feet. I frantically put the shoes on and exited the stall when I noticed he left to answer someone’s question. I sneaked by him and walked at a brisk pace. Mission Impossible theme was playing. Everyone seemed to eye me suspiciously.

By the front of the casino I broke into a run and saw that the enterprising casino employee had followed me with a couple of faceless security. I ran as fast as I could and changed my shirt as soon as I was out of sight. APB in progress. Looking for a Hispanic male, age 32, in dire need with no options left. But I dodged them, thank God.

That night I sat on a bench pelted mercilessly by freezing desert winds. Not the last time that would happen. I sang the songs I wrote one after another to keep my mind off of it, as cruisers passed by, feeling too sorry for me to haul me to jail. I shook with cold and my voice sounded like a speedfreak singing, but I got through that terrible night.

LA was definitely better than that, even though it had its own horror shows. Like this one:

What happens when you stop sleeping? A depression bigger than a hurricane slams your psyche, a desolation so intense that you break down in front of strangers. The bleeding foot needs tending, but I still don’t know what it is yet. A week in Los Angeles. I talk to Jessica but not much. I’m afraid all the time. I spend the night at bus stops until the coffee shops open early. I still hadn’t figured out my survival routine in LA yet.

A public library, the stench of feet and that sour smell of spoiled milk. It’s the homeless, the dejected, the transients, all trying to pass the time in relative comfort, with the cops staring them down. Don’t go to sleep! I’m in a Freddie Krueger waking nightmare. Why can’t they let me sleep?

Something special happens to your self-worth when you start to smell, and when the people avoid you because of it: what a terrific sorrow! When even the fucking bums are wondering… what’s that smell? Can you feel any lower? Only in your coffin, six feet deep…

So you start to cry when you find out you’re the worst smelling of the homeless Brady Bunch. Library employees are scoping out where it’s coming from. I see people in the periphery pointing at me holding their noses. The staff are spraying an air freshener and pump up the AC. It gets chilly. I cry harder. What did I do? What did I do? Monsters roam free every day, but here I am in the smell of my failure and spilled blood pooling in my socks. I tried to do the right thing my entire life when others laughed at the idea and never did. So, why am I here? Why is this happening? The sorrow perforated my heart and my mind was collapsing. I’m not sure what happened after that. I suddenly looked around and the whole library was there, many faces in concern and fear. I thought the cops were gonna take me away to a sanatorium, but they look… sad. LA is a miserably sad city and we’re all under the bridge in some way.

That LA public library felt my grief that day. I wept like they were laying my parents into the dirt. Some kind stranger told the cops to back off but I can’t remember the face. Was it a man? A woman? A kid? The mysterious stranger is trying to convince the cops to let me sleep or at least let me go. I look around. Pitying eyes. Even the bums are uncomfortable. So I stumble out, and the cops make no attempt to stop me. They felt too sorry for the poor kid in way over his head, abandoned in the mines of Mercury with a smoking ship that’s beyond fixing.

The brain plays tricks on you when you don’t sleep. Dreams and real life collide and confusion is the only currency. You fall asleep wide awake and the two realities turn you into a zombie that can’t quite wake up.

What just happened? Oh my God, I caused perhaps the biggest scene in my life but it’s so hard to recall. Flashes of memory is enough to know it happened. I walk blinded by the LA sun in Hollywood, still wondering.

Then, I sleep as I walk and in my dreams I follow a long procession of people, other zombies like me. Whether we’re headed to salvation or the slaughterhouse is a complete mystery but it’s the only way to go. The scene is reminiscent of totalitarianism: sharp edges, dark colors, dark neon, and we are all wearing the same thing, walking with the same stare devoid of emotions.

“Stop following us!”

“Huh?”

I suddenly come to and a teenage couple is looking at me. The girl is afraid and the boy is madder than hell. It took them quite some time to build the courage to tell the weird kid to stop following them.

“I didn’t, I wasn’t – I mean – I’m sorry…”

They storm off and I look around. How long have I been following them without realizing it? Poor kids. I felt terrible.

Santa Monica Boulevard. How did I get here? I was always fascinated by the splintered mind as a teenager. Now I had the inside scoop and it was more terrifying than I ever imagined.

So was LA really better? I like to think so. Still I was cursed at, spit on, tripped on one occasion (unsuccessfully), threatened and nearly killed. But I was never afraid of people’s violence. Is dying really so bad when your life is like mine? I was afraid of my own self, of my own broken mind and hemorrhaging heart. I was afraid of what had happened to Jessica. She deserved a better life but karma doesn’t work in this world the way it’s supposed to. Can anger explode a star? Mine could. Are natural disasters just cosmic beings invoking disaster because they’re so despondent at how the universe works? Then death is only right! Then the end of the Universe is only right! To hell with this dimension!

By the time Jessica finally came, I had hell down to a routine. I hung out at the library all day til close, then went to the soup kitchen in Hollywood to have my only meal, then walked for 2 miles to the Mall on Hollywood Boulevard to take my second daily dump.

Two years later, I’m back in LA and I notice how much more homeless there are, and the entry level employees have had enough. I’m including the supervisors too. The dead-end dive jive. It seemed like everybody was poor and getting poorer and more pissed off by the minute. I noticed familiar faces, ones that made a pain for me and Jessica years back. Still in the same job? No creativity, only in relationships. Gotta keep that fire burning, ya know? Oh well. If it gets you horny and it’s consensual then go with God, just let me be.

Anyway, this waitress made hell for me the second time. I developed the habit of going to Dennys to avoid the unusually cold weather that had me paralyzed in chill. There was this one nice security guard from Ghana, who spoke English with a very thick accent who let me hang out. Nice man, warm and compassionate. He took a shine to me and told me to try to stay awake so the Dennys managers leave me alone, no easy task.

I sat in the Dennys waiting area – perhaps in the same diner Quentin Tarantino pitched the script of True Romance – and pretended to wait for Jessica, who I knew after a few times that she wasn’t coming.

One time that damn waitress told me I had to leave or she’ll call the cops. It was 2 in the morning. No one was there. But she hated me the minute she laid eyes on me. Some lesbians hated the very sight. I think it was unwanted attraction. I am very androgynous and can easily pass for a provocative woman if I dressed the part.

After having a loud fight with her girlfriend in the back who also worked there, (I found this out later) she came out and said:

“I’m sorry you have to go.”

The weather outside was 39 degrees and I didn’t have a jacket, but off I went. Once again I focused on music so I wouldn’t freeze. Every muscle in my body was tense from the unrelenting cold. I just jammed on my ipod to whole albums, doing a shivering dance at the bus stop to kill away time and hopefully live to see the sunrise and warmth again.

In the terrible beginning, I walked all the way from the Greyhound station near downtown to Hollywood, getting lost many times. My feet were about to rot away. I’m not sure what I was thinking. Oh yeah, now I remember: I’m going to need that $2.50. So in a way, I knew it was going to be rough, but I just waltzed in there.

The bad things were awful, like worrying about what happened to Jessica. Car accident? Fire? With her I had hope for a future. Without… what would happen to me? I would be completely stranded in the mines of Mercury. And then… I would have to turn that pickaxe on myself.

But the good things… potential. This one distinct time – I’ll never forget – I walked with my tight jeans, and wallet chain proudly, even though I was homeless for days, backpack and all, and I saw the rich goons on the sidewalk with their arm candy, getting out of their Maseratis. I kept my stride, locking eyes with any girl I could, something I never did before. Two gorgeous bombshells in tight shimmery dresses stood near one of the clubs and one of them looked in my direction. I watched her nudge her friend to check out the emo rocker kid from another lifetime, now replaced by hipsters.

I walked by and smiled as they smiled back.

How is it that those women look at me that way, but I could never get a lay from a common hoodrat? I wondered that walking by. They were completely mesmerized and never stopped looking to the point others began to look. I was so proud and so annoyed. What can I do in that situation? Sure, I can rock the sheets but I’m Thomas O’Malley, the alley cat, no home in sight. It wasn’t something I could hide with no cash in my pocket. I couldn’t take another disappointed look of someone when they realized I had nowhere to go. So I just kept walking, back to the Starbucks that closes at midnight on Hollywood and Vine with my old cup I pretended to buy so the entry level staff wouldn’t give me dirty looks.

The everyday life of the homeless of America. I’m chronicling how it really is here, how many forgotten poor are roaming the streets. They are not all drug addicts. They are not all hustlers. Most are people screwed over by the maw of unregulated capitalism, by the movers of the world that care more for profit than keeping bees from going extinct. The EPA is O-U-T. And mother nature is fighting back with raging fires, more earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, you name it. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a stock market report.

I read somewhere that during the 1890’s, an enterprising journalist took pictures of people living in New York in absolute squalor; horrific images; people piled on top of each other on cardboard boxes, children eating trash, babies frozen blue with cold. He pulled together the biggest richest families of New York at the time, put them all in a room, and surprised them by showing them the world they had neglected for Operas and snuff boxes.

Some wept at the images. Others got angry. Some even – I suspect the Morgan family – sat in stony silence and sighed because they knew this was going to cost them.

That was when the super rich of New York took a giant bite of the shit sandwich; the sandwich the rest of us eat three times a day our entire lives.

And it made America better.

Views From a 21st Century High School Loser

The boy walks to the girl. The girl is in the bar, near the bottles and sea of plastic cups. The music plays from the jukebox now called an Ipod. It’s selling like hotcakes, you know? Have you heard what it does? Fat chance the boy will see one any time soon.

The party upstairs is one giant room, almost as big as a two bedroom. The dance floor is covered mostly in girls and a few lucky chumps. It’s bright inside and groups stand alongside, drinking and looking at the dance floor expectantly. Its days like this that howls at the moon over the land of sex and cocaine. Most came out in style, in typical style, wearing the wears, digging the skirts, adjusting the tight tops and loose ends and pouting those lips for another drink, another smoke, another fuck, another snort, another tumble in the concrete jungle. How cool are they? How hot are they?

And the boy? He clumps around in shoes too big for him, in faded baggy clothes that didn’t have the ghetto swagger. A rubber band is wrapped around his head to keep his hair up, and the hair was getting long because the gel just started to dampen his hair, so the rubber band was always in place, like a rat in a cage. In his pockets were his empty wallet (why did he have a wallet?) and emergency bus fare in case he got stranded. Snap, snap, snap… can I get yo’ coat suh?

One step, two step, stumble and fall. The boy does his own dance, his own jig, his own loser jitterbug. Snap, snap, snap… the boy boogies inside with his secondhand soul and pretends to be one of them but the people don’t buy it. No one buys it. And does he buy it? What can he buy with his own wit and his own mind? What is he worth and what good is he to anyone? He never says what you want to hear. He always puts you in the center of your problems. He calls you selfish, can you believe it? He calls you a lot of things and thinks about what you do and why you do it. When no one’s looking, he imagines your most terrible fears, lies, deceits. He reads them like a book when you are around. And you want to think he’s wrong, and you want to scream it at him and do… but why then, oh why, is he so convincing? Why does it stay with you when he leaves? Why is it harder to forget? Seriously who wants a guy like that around? What a stick in the mud! What a buzz kill! What a fucking loser! He’s just sorry that he’s not a better man, a richer man, someone like us! What can we do about it? Why does he blame us? You know what? Take that analytical I’m-better-than-you attitude and fuck off for once in your life! Go analyze your own damned self and see if you can take it!

Do you see why no one buys it?

Stumble and fall, stumble and fall one, two… around the crater, around the mouth of the volcano. The 30’s stand out in jazzy style but the boy knows it won’t be cool for a while. He walks in doing his thing, waltzing in to his tune, snapping his fingers like he owns the place. He’s one sad Nancy and getting bitter like strong coffee by the minute. The crowd doesn’t get it, doesn’t see it. The crowd scoffs, some laugh, other’s roll their eyes. Everyone is dressed properly and looks over his clothes, shaking their heads. His tie is askew, his shirt has missing buttons, his hat is flat, and his suspenders are hanging limp at his sides. Grease stains and sweat stains are all over his shirt. What a drunken, smoked out degenerate! How does he not bother to straighten himself out? How did he not bother with the pretensions? He doesn’t even bother acting like he has a life! Did they know that in the future nothing could be cooler? That people will admire him? Did the 30’s loser even know that? Probably not… and neither did the boy.

What was so cool about this? The boy wondered. He honestly didn’t get it. No one admired him. Some liked him, some respected him even, but no one admired him. No one wanted to believe his words. It usually turned girls off, and his helpless need to say what he needed to say got in between him and his sex life, if you can call it that. Did a 30’s loser get laid a lot? Probably… but the boy couldn’t dare make such a claim. No way in hell.

But he waltzes in anyway swinging his legs in and out, like he doesn’t give a shit. Snap, snap, snap… make way for the court jester resigned to his dated role people! Wow how cool he is! I mean, no one think so wherever he goes, but in retrospect! Always in retrospect! Hindsight wisdom from a nation with their heads up their assholes! And does the 30’s thug think that? Because the 21^st century loser does, and most losers don’t know it… but the boy is a different story. Past glam and all that! Look up to the past and look down to the future!

The future is the present always on the brink. I guess after a while, like a scoundrel with life in prison, we have begun to get used to the idea, even like it. While we run our mouths about peace and family and freedom and unity, what we really want is the End of the World, and not just the religious. Everyone wants a piece of it. The Apocalypse has become a standard of the 21^st century, and pretty much copyrighted by Hollywood. What a day that will be! But here this 21^st century loser comes along and challenges the faded pictures, and the ancient agents of cool. He challenges the God’s themselves, the ones he loves and admires and aspires to. What kind of person is this you ask? He says it’s because he loves them.

Take the boy’s favorite writer in High School Henry Miller for instance. The man just couldn’t keep it in his pants and the boy thinks old Henry was real lonely in his old age. His relationships certainly didn’t last, probably out of his analytical nature, or maybe indifference or lust.

The boy read about his women and couldn’t believe that he could possibly have anything in common with them other than wild sex. The boy couldn’t help thinking that Miller got lost in the admiration of sex that he forgot what he was looking for. The closest girls were June and Anais Nin. June was a woman so ahead of her time that it literally drove her insane. Anais had potential but it was the same, only more controlled, more shallow.

Did I say control? Most important of all! The food sucks but the portions are too small. We want more shit, more to complain about, to feel like a victim over and over crimson and clover. My life sucks more than yours bit. Is that it? No, it goes on.

June and Anais were frauds in the Freudian sense. The boy saw Anais Nin’s frustration in interviews with Miller. He just took the mike. He just took the spotlight. And what about her green eyes that could bewitch any man, even Otto Rank? Neurotic people creating neurotic psychology fascinated by the psyche… where was Rank’s reason? Her jade eyes… her milky skin… her supple body… the boy stops the record.

“Yeah, she’s hot and kind of alternative, but what about her mind? What’s in there? I know you can’t technically fuck it, but does that matter above all? Are you saying Anais Nin is the best we can aspire to with women? What about Mary Shelley? What about the woman suffragettes? I don’t buy it. There are way better women, but they are crushed by the high heel of society into becoming ‘normal’ women in bad relationships to heighten their fake girlfriend relationships. The price is unhappiness, instability, poor life choices… and all for pseudo-friendship? Mary Shelley was right, and the legendary boys were idiots to fall for the great Anais.

The mirror of Miller was a woman named June, and he didn’t mind when she lost her mind, because he had already lost her before. He felt the pain, the betrayal, the hate, the sorrow, became a dog and begged, begged, begged… June was sure something… but she was like bad acid, mala hierba, a walking disaster waiting to happen. Any idiot could’ve seen that, even in those hard times, but Miller didn’t, because he was enchanted, bewitched, wooed, cooed, and screwed royally in both the good way and the bad. He was too busy tweaking her nipples and shuddering on her clitoris. She’s got a screwed up brain, can’t you see that man? She’s pretending to be so many people that she’s losing herself to a padded cell and ill tempered nurses with heavy sedatives. Who was the real June? Not the one of history, but the real person? Did she know herself when she found Miller? Or was it already too late to save her? Late from the start? Damn it Miller it was right underneath your nose the whole time! But he doesn’t read between his own lines because he can’t let her body and her rubber soul go.

June was a doomed enterprise, maybe since birth, a doomed enterprise with a hot body that almost toppled a literary giant. What were you thinking man? You weren’t thinking… you were fucking, and pretending you had more than that. But I still love you and your writing and your books. No one is perfect, I guess, but at least you opened yourself up to the world. You gave more than you took, more than your stupid mistakes. Had I been around, I would have slapped some sense into you. Henry Valentine Miller, a literal fucking force of nature. I hated you being all alone you big old coot. You needed another head, not another pair of legs. But I still love you and owe my writing ambitions to you… but was finding a better woman that hard?”

But that’s just a 21^st century loser for you! One World War, another to go, so why not fuck the night away? Bombs are dropping, air raid sirens are blaring, the innocent civilians are screaming, the jet fighters look at the tiny buildings and drop fire from the skies…

Let’s all go to the world below, the one below the belt, and dry hump our way to oblivion. What else is there? The bombs and the unemployment lines and the people with nowhere to go… where do we go from here? We go south of the border, and north of the Mason/Dixon Line. We ignore it and we pretend that fucking is the only thing left.

The boy couldn’t blame Miller or Rank or the people of those times. In the future it’s out of boredom, out of the need to feel something in our technological world of gadgets. No one feels a thing because it ain’t got that swing. Dowap, dowap, one, two, one, two. All that jazz don’t make it to the Top Billboard Charts, but the sex does. Now is the same situation only the bombs are in our minds in our frantic struggle to be interesting and appealing.

We strayed for a while then the World Trade Center fell and America was never the same again. Show me your papers! Heighten security! Protect this country from the evil menace, from the ones responsible for such a crime. Lay that crime on the world outside, on your fellow neighbor, on your grandparents and grandchildren! Will America ever trust again, lay down its guard, or question those in charge? Will it stop suspecting everyone? ‘A House divided cannot stand…’ what does it mean? It means the Nation is broken almost beyond repair. The urge to turn against each other is too great to resist. It calls to us from the graves in the South, from phantom battles of the Civil War. Can you hear the Battle of Shiloh? The boy could, but he wasn’t swayed to join the dead men killing themselves all over again for freedom.

Snap, snap, snap, the boy walks in, infected with the loser gene, the Gen-X Gene. The world outside glorifies the illusion not the reality. The reality is a clumsy boy in clumsy wares with clumsy stares up and down contradictory stairs.

In the land of money and sweet, sweet honey, bullshit walks the line, in Technicolor primetime. HD, LCD, 1080p, surround sound, VR, it’s all there. You just have to look, to give one glance to never be the same again.