What they advertise:

What you get:

“Do you want these? They’re brand new. They’re a size ten and a half, but I wear a twelve.”

“Uh, sure. What’s with the blood though?

“Some motherfucker I stomped out.”

Back then the double doors were wooden and green, with big brass Corbin bars you’d push on to open them.

Somewhere about two stories above, a silver bell with the word “Simplex” printed on it would ring and clatter furiously as your Velcro sneakers squeaked down the stairs.

I preferred running away when Robert was on duty. The only thing Robert could ever catch me doing was lying, such as when I’d deny being a homosexual to the other boys.

I had a girlfriend and she was Black as HELL and her name was, um, Aisha!

Robert had started laughing and he asked me what color her eyes were.

I panicked and blurted out “blue!”

“Tell me how you kick your game to Aisha. What do you say to her when you call her up — like hi Aisha, do you want to come over and play? What do you say to Aisha?”

He had me so bad right front of everyone.

Twelve year old me bit my lip, and said very calmly, “Hey Aisha. Let’s get together and fuck sometime!”

That fat bastard dropped his flashlight and fell over on the floor crying and wheezing.

I never heard the end of it from the older Black men after that.

What’s up! You talk to AISHA lately? Gonna get together and fuuuuuck sometime?

I lived for that kind of shit.

Paradise awaited you just outside at the intersection of 89th & Capitol. There was a big and beautiful, if not somewhat foreign world I was a little too impatient to get out there and see for myself at that age.

It was strange out there and it would always remain so.

My freedom was always short-lived and it would always remain so.

If it was cold outside I’d sleep in a little red shed behind the Open Pantry at 27th and Capitol, shivering and huddled up against the compressors blowing hot air into the shed from the beverage coolers inside the store.

I’d ask strangers for bus fare and steal things from the mall.

Malls were heated, nobody asked questions.

I didn’t know about the rocks on the shore of Lake Michigan yet or it’s a sure bet I would have been found there every single time.

I remember being stoned at one of my first NA meetings when they read Step 10 out loud and got to that part about “making amends to the mall.”

I sat there in my chair thinking “Hahaha! Never happening! They tore the mall down!!!!”

I befriended a boy around my own age named Drew, and I don’t know where his family was in all of this but he always had some family to spend the night with. Random strangers taking in a 12 year old with no questions asked. So many people coming and going. I’m not saying that I know shit about the game or about invisible lives and invisible suffering but I’ve seen signs of it.

Drew liked me, he’d do funny things like whipping his dick out and waving it like a puppet and singing along to Mary J Blige’s “Sweet Thing.”

Remember when that album dropped? Whenever I hear “Real Love” on the the radio and those first few opening ticks take me back there, I don’t know about y’all but I loved 1992.

Running away never really worked. You’d get hungry or you’d run out of money or something.

Adulthood turned out to be something along those same lines.

Except now that I’m all grown up, I don’t have St Aemelian’s to come crawling back to.

Off I’d go, back to 8901 W. Capitol.

Until the next time I eyeballed that door and my heart started pounding again as I jonesed for one more push of that beautiful brass bar.

One more clang of that silver Simplex bell.

One more squeak of my sneakers scuffing against that concrete.

One more clack as the doors at the bottom burst open.

One more breath of freshly cut grass in someone’s yard in Wauwatosa.

Never gonna catch me, I’m the Ginger Bread Man.

We’ll do it all over again until the Ginger Bread Man is tired and dirty and hungry again.

These are wounds, not scars
It will only be a scar when it stops bleeding, stops hurting
You can forget about scars
But you cannot forget about wounds
Everyone meets the injured with sympathy or disgust
Do you need a tissue?
No, I need stitches.
— Brother Ali

Some say that a toilet is a fundamental right
But McDonald’s lobby closes at 10 o clock at night
No Public Restrooms in the grocery store
I hear someone pissing all over the floor

I stared at him in horror
And my eyes got real big,
“Why not head over to Folsom
To find a watersports pig?”

A gentleman joins him and I avert my eyes:
“You must be new here,” he impatiently sighs
He squats down on Market and shits on the street
And some of it splashes all over my feet

I head to the Tenderloin ,
Near Felt and Van Ness
I’m trying to find an alley
To leave a big wet brown mess

Some junkie is watching, I expect him to cringe
He says I just left a hypodermic syringe
In my steaming hot offering
Under the Alvord Lake Bridge

I demand to see the mayor of this urine soaked town
(No problem sir, she will be right down)
Ms Mayor, I beseech you, this has gone way too far
She says “Try Uber Toilet, you just shit in the car!”

They’ll send one to you,
wherever you are:
You can leave them a tip,
and they’ll tweeze your brown star!

No thank you, I prefer to squat on a bowl
And wipe my bottom clean with a soft Charmin roll
Your sanitation problem is out of control,
I will see myself out of this filthy shithole

the difference

between a kaleidoscope and a telescope;

is that the telescope:
shows you reality from a distance

and the kaleidoscope:
shows you a distance from reality

On my bed by night I swiped through profiles and sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.

I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him who my soul loves.

I sought him, but found him not.

The Leathermen found me as I went about the city:

“Have you seen him who my soul loves?”

One of them asked if I’m into father/son role play: He paddled and flogged me and I reported him to child protective services.

I said to him: “I never liked my father.”

I sought him, but I found him not.

I created an account on Recon: They immediately banned me for saying that my fetish was “monogamy.”

I sought him, but I found him not.

I traveled to Europe in search of self destruction and romance: I was offered something called Meow Meow in Belgium and then I woke up without any clothes on in Portugal.

I sought him, but I found him not.

My date from Grindr stole my wallet, car keys, and a wireless keyboard: He wasn’t even cute.

I sought him, but I found him not.

O, daughters of Scruff, I adjure you: by the incels and the hoes playing the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

Orange jumpsuits are durable
Orange jumpsuits are comfy
Damn, I look fresh in orange with a new pair of gleaming white K-Swiss Velcro shoes

Beige khakis are ugly
Beige khakis arent snuggly
Strike a pose against the cinder blocks in a crisp white clean Hanes crew cut shirt.

Blue scrubs never fit right
Blue scrubs, too loose, too tight
But they’re easy to wash, just give me clean undies and socks

Orange jumpsuits are durable
Orange jumpsuits are comfy
I’d wear them on the outs
If cops wouldn’t scream “FREEZE” or “HALT!”

My milkshake brings all the boys out to the rec yard.

Facebook.gov Cryptocurrency: Hahah yeah right, lots of fucking LUCK with that when they ARBITRARILY suspend your account (and your money) and you have ZERO chance of finding a human who gives a fuck!!!

Or an account recovery tool that fucking works!!!

(update: oh god and now The Peoples Republic of Twitter’s hair trigger ass wants to integrate banking with Twitter – just. fucking. NO. for the exact same fucking reason, you say something that triggers hasanabi or fucking ben Shapiro or whatever and no more banking for you.)

DON’T DO IT, YOU WERE WARNED.

Daddy’s worth millions but he left you where he found you busting your ass working your second shift for the day in a restaurant off of some dirt road over in this rural town.

I’m not sure why you wish you were his and only his.

Maybe it’s the way he checks up on you.

Maybe it’s the way he keeps you from your friends.

Maybe it’s the way he keeps you at arms length and doesn’t give you what you want.

Doesn’t that just make you weak in the knees?

You say this man could change your life, if only.

You sound lonely.

Maybe someday Daddy will whisk you away to that factory town that the rest of the world rolls their windows up and holds their noses for and drives through as quickly as possible. Perhaps you can take a tour of the cannery together and learn everything there is to know about black beans.

And then what?

A quiet lifetime of whispering to faceless men a hundred miles away in their homes with their great big walk in closets in which they will neatly fold and put their sexuality away at night along with any scent or trace or memory of you before they kiss their wives goodnight?

Changing people’s lives doesn’t give you a lot to show for it other than changing people’s lives.

I wonder if Daddy ever thinks about the patterns in your irises when you’re not in his arms at night.

In 2008 or so I was working for ACS Healthcare doing the re-design work for health.gov and healthfinder.gov — new Dell servers, some shit had been hacked by China, some other issues.

I was working out of SAMHSA’s offices in… fuck I don’t even know where, Rockville Maryland or something like that? I always called it Rocktropolis in my old blog.

I used to do rails of coke in SAMHSA’s office, which I thought was fucking HILARIOUS.

It might have just been the call center. Small world huh?

You probably don’t believe me, but I guarantee you anyone who knows me will be like, yeah, if anyone did that it would be that fucking queen.

For what it’s worth I carried a sack and was sniffing it everywhere, it’s not like SAMHSA was special.

Weirdest little known fact about the Department of Health is that it’s actually a separate branch of the US Military! They have uniforms and  rankings and these cool skirts and stuff. They salute each other and then I guess they go down into some bunker where they get the missles ready to deploy on my ex boyfriend Will’s supergonnorhea.

I’m making that last part up.

The missles, not the supergonorrhea.

The kitty was aiight I’d still –

Anyway!

During the re-design there was a huge push to edit the content to a (sixth? eighth? fourth?) grade reading level. A couple of a people were copying and pasting articles manually from the old template to the new redesigned template.

So, yeah I know who and what they are and yo hablo un poco some evidence based approaches or whatever I guess.

I just remember someone casually handing me the article for alcoholism.

I finished that one.

Then they’d slide me the one for addiction.

So I finished that one.

Are you… tryna say something?

Fuck that’s so shady we should have been friends! 😭😭😭

And then I was asked to not return.

Story of my life. “What the fuck was he ON?”

*whips out the adding machine and starts punching buttons furiously*

Fuck!! What wasn’t I on? I don’t even know what’s in the trail mix!!!

I remembered them and included some info about them this time.

Mormons believe that the earth will be renewed and rebuilt to its paradisiacal glory. I hope they carefully disassemble Utah, put it away in storage, and then put it back exactly the way that it is. Except maybe without the plastic litter.

The five Cs (confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance) were the process of life changing undertaken by the life changer.

Confidence: the new person had to have confidence in you and know you would keep his secrets.

Confession: honesty about the real state of a persons life.

Conviction: the seriousness of his sin and the need to be free of it.

Conversion: the process had to be the persons own free will in the decision to surrender to God.

Continuance: you were responsible as a life changer to help the new person become all that God wanted him to be.

Only God could change a person, and the work of the life changer had to be done under God’s direction.

Check out my “misc” blog for “How the book Alcoholics Anonymous came about”:

— excerpt —

Well, God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. It didn’t look like a wonder to me when Mr. Scott, head of a large engineering firm and Chairman of the Riverside Church, looked at us and said “Gentlemen, up to this point, this has been the work of goodwill only. No plan, no property, no paid people, just one carrying the good news to the next. Isn’t that true? And may it not be that that is where the great power of this society lies? 

St. Therese loved nature, and often used the imagery of nature to explain how the Divine Presence is everywhere, and how everything is connected in God’s loving care and arms. Therese saw herself as “the Little Flower of Jesus” because she was just like the simple wild flowers in forests and fields, unnoticed by the greater population, yet growing and giving glory to God. Therese did not see herself as a brilliant rose or an elegant lily, by simply as a small wildflower. This is how she understood herself before the Lord – simple and hidden, but blooming where God had planted her.

Therese believed passionately that Jesus was delighted in his “Little Flower,” and just as a child can be fascinated by the grandeur of a simple flower, she believed that Jesus was fascinated by her as his “Little Flower.” Therese understood that she was just like the tiny flower in the forest, surviving and flourishing through all the seasons of the year. Because of God’s grace, she knew that she was stronger than she looked. Following the Carmelite tradition, Therese saw the world as God’s garden, and each person being a different kind of flower, enhancing the variety and beauty which Jesus delighted in. When various people tried to explain her powerful inspiration and her place within the Church, it always seemed to come back to one title “the Little Flower.”

In her autobiography, she beautifully explains this spirituality:

Jesus set before me the book of nature. I understand how all the flowers God has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understand that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers. So it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden. He has created smaller ones and those must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.

source

I feel raindrops falling washing off my tears
I been walking through a daydream all my years
Oh I do believe in world peace my dear, I do
Wise women will call your name
If you believe in impossible things
If you believe if it grows from seeds to a beautiful tree
What you want, what you want, you want
Sun don’t shine
And we all know why
Bullets keep flying
So many shooting
In the darkest times
Through the darkest night
What you want what you want
Sun don’t shine
And we all know why
Bullets keep flying
So many crying
In the darkest night
Through the darkest times
What you want what you want
I can feel it in the air it just grew thin
Then the numbers they be counting coming in
Do you believe in world peace my friend
— Kaytranada, Bullets

I graduated with honors from a correctional boot camp in Wisconsin when I was 15 years old.

And on my graduation day my father didn’t show up. He called in to say that he’d remarried and him and his new wife decided they didn’t want a kid after all.

Among other things, he complained that I was (at the time) a vegetarian and they didn’t know what to cook for me.

He said I don’t know just put him back in jail. The staff and social workers were stunned. Mouths fell open.
Some of them cried.

On went the cuffs and shackles.
And back I went.
They totally thought I was going to snap. I didn’t.

I sat in there alone and just broke down and decided the only thing I could do was forgive them.

There was discussion about where I’d go from there.
I didn’t want to go to a foster home and play “family.”
That ship had sailed.
The concept of a family was ruined for me.
I didn’t have one up until that point and now I didn’t even want one anymore.

I said if you put me in another group home I’m going to run away and you’re going to sanction me and when you find me I’m going to come right back here. Send me to my mom’s, I’m going to run away and I’ll just be another face on a milk carton.

Three days and many hushed whispers later they came back and said they decided that was actually probably the best possible outcome.

I got a little graduation certificate signed by some of the staff.

Sandra Jennings wrote “You have the ability to move mountains. And if you can’t move them, then just walk around them.”

My high school tried to get me in trouble for truancy, they tried to have my license suspended… and really … hadn’t they already done enough to me?

I got even with them.

Thankfully some people in the probation office said nope, we heard he has a job in Madison and he’s doing great. We’re not touching him.

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and have professed a good professionalism before many witnesses. 1 Tim 6:12

Whether our warfare be of the more public kind or of the more private sort, there must be warfare; and , more than this, there must be progress and victory, else we can never be accepted by the Lord as “overcomers.”

Another thought should be borne in mind by us all. The Lord in making his estimate will take knowledge of the spirit which actuated us, rather than of the results secured by our efforts. In view of this, let us see to it, not only that we do with our might what our hands find to do, but also that our every sacrifice and gift to the Lord and his cause is so full of love and devotion that the Lord will surely approve it; as done from love for him and his, and not from vainglory.

C. Tell me, what is meant by those who praise themselves by means of the myrtle and the laurel?

T. Those who can and do win praise for themselves by the myrtle are those who sing of love. If these bear themselves nobly, they win the crown of that plant concecrated to Venus who inspires them with her frenzy. Those who can praise themselves by the laurel are those who sing worthily of heroic things, who instruct heroic souls through speculative and moral philosophy, or who celebrate those heroic souls and present them as exemplary mirrors of political and civil action.

C. Are there still other species, then, of poets and awards?

T. There are not only as many as there are Muses, but a great many more besides. For, although one can distinguish certain sorts of poets and awards, one would not know how to define certain modes and species of human genius.

C. I know certain makers of poetic rules who accept with difficulty Homer as a poet, and who reject Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod, Lucretius, and many other versifiers, after having examined them according to the rules of Aristotle’s Poetics.

T. You can be sure, my friend, that these are veritable blockheads, for they do not consider  that those rules serve chiefly to make clear the nature of the poetry of Homer, or the nature of some other particular poet. They do not consider that those rules are there only to show us the kind of epic poet Homer was, and not to serve as modes of instruction to other poets who could in other veins, skills, and frenzies be in their several kinds equal, similar, or even greater than Homer.

C. If I understand you correctly, then, Homer in his genre was not a poet who depended upon rules, but he is the cause of the rules which serve others who are more adept at imitating than inventing. And these rules were drawn up by an author who was not a poet of any sort, but who knew how to assemble rules of that particular kind (that is, rules of Homeric poetry) for the benefit of one who would wish to be not another poet with a muse of his own, but an imitator of Homer and the ape of Homer’s muse.

T. You conclude well that poetry is not born of the rules, except by the merest chance, but that the rules derived from the poetry. For that reason there are as many genres and species of true rules as there are of true poets.

C. How will the true poets, then, be recognized?

T. By our singing their verses, and by this, that when they are sung, either they will be delightful, or they will be useful, or they will be useful and delightful at the same time.

[Heroic Frenzies, Bruno]

I don’t say “sober.”
I don’t have to chant slogans.
I never need to go back in there.
I can stay home – theirs is no solution.
The only thing that is baffling and cunning
Is that these dumb steppers agree with this shit
I can find the Orange Papers and log on
I can find some detailed info about what they really are.
Accept they are a dangerous cult and make some changes.
I can make some new friends
And not go into that stuffy old church basement with my old ones.
A lot of addicts will go back to meetings, but I don’t have to.
Not if I block my sponsor and call him a jerk.
Take a deep breath…
If I can accept the truth and put away my fantasy about a faith healing treatment for a pseudo disorder
And that virtually no one stays sober through the steps,
One day I might finally be clean.