”I set your temporary password to 12345.”

“That’s it? 12345?”

“Yes.”

“12345? That’s the same password I have on my pussy!”

“That was rude.” *click*

Then came the inevitable explosion — something like that day the boiler burst in Wombley’s Clapboard Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear and frustration fell over the group.

When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter wrote the Foundation office. He said he wished he’d paid some attention to A.A. experience. Then he did something else that was to become an A.A. classic: It all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover read “Middleton Group #1, Rule #62.”

Once the card was unfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to the eye: “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”

Re: /2017/05/11/all-or-nothing/

It would have only been polite for her to go sit outside in the trash bin and wait to be hauled away so that they could all enjoy their stupid fucking meetings without her.

But she didn’t do that. Her organization helps thousands of Los Angeles residents facing homelessness, or needing support with mental health or substance issues. There are a ton of non 12-step based support groups for everything: Grief, survivors of sexual assault, anger management, etc.

They use behavioral intervention techniques: No one is banned, punished, excluded, or turned away.

You get used to being compassionate towards people who might otherwise frighten you on the street.

I am so inspired by her.

For awhile, I used to keep an eye on people on court ordered supervision at Share. It mostly consisted of showing them where the Windex and rags were kept or making sure they weren’t fucking in one of the conference rooms, or hiding in some staircase texting while earning community servuce hours on their timesheet.

Faced with the same problems, I sat silent in meetings for years. I didn’t want to be “crazy” or annoy people.

**************
I listened to this new Blood Orange CD on August 24, 2018. It’s a dope CD.

But the samples with Janet Mock blow my fucking mind.

I’ve changed my mind.

No matter how quiet you are, no matter how much you try to change your behavior, someone is always going to try to throw some shit in your face or speak ill of you.

Yes, people might be irritated or annoyed or think you’re fucking crazy.

But some people might think you’re hilarious and love you for who you are and never forget you too.

When you shrink yourself — I love the way Janet put that — you may protect yourself, but you might also prevent anyone from knowing you or loving you.

I tried to remember how we are all connected at the source, how we are all one, living in this illusion together, and how kids at the playground accept each other and play with each other fearlessly and without even understanding that they are boys or girls or different colors. These kids don’t even understand that numbers or letters from the alphabet are different from one another yet for fucks sake..

Then something slipped off its axis and I was no longer enough of an ally in the current political and social environment.

It makes me a little nervous and afraid to say that I have a hero who happens to be transgendered.

It makes me a little nervous and afraid to say that I have a hero who happens to be a woman.

It makes me a little nervous and afraid to say that I have a hero who happens to be black and proud.

When you get look at the pain that comes with our struggles with queer identity or our communities or our places in the world, our differences from one another and what appears to separate ourselves appears to be a lot different on the surface.

I have shrunk myself for the sake of others, trying to not stand out or to blend in with the wallpaper in these last couple of years.

I might come out of my shell and snipe a group with something funny once in awhile.

I figured out that I wasn’t any happier for this. I figured out that I wasn’t any less lonely for it. Hero.
“This is who the fuck I want to be.”

That album has some themes of queer, black, identity, and/or gender depression intertwined into it.

I have had so much of this shit rattling around in my head and my heart and it’s as if Janet offered me a new pair of eyeglasses and said “Here, try looking again now.”

If you’re going to survive in the rooms then you need to read this:

So, like, my favorite images are the ones where
Someone who isn’t supposed to be there
Who’s like in a space, a space where
We were not ever welcomed in, where we were not invited Yet we walk in and we show all the way up

People try to put us down by saying
“She’s doing the most,” or “He’s way too much.” But, like, why would we want to do the least?

… My eternal resolution will be “to do too much.”

I choose to interpret everything I just wrote in a metaphorical context:
My words this morning are the blood spewing out of my emotional wounds.

“Our movements have torn a hole through you.” 

I assume… the movements of whatever force guides and loves me and works around me and through me and occasionally uses me as a tool … or a weapon as the case may be.

Your movements haven’t torn a hole through me.

They’ve filled a hole in me.

“Nothing worth having comes without a fight. Got to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight.”

It was a lonely Christmas,
but I wasn’t alone,
at the Dead Hooker Motel.

It was somewhere south of Pico,
where the city of Los Angeles
stopped giving a shit
about naming streets anymore
and just gave them all numbers.

My pussy was poppered up
and trembling like a shitting dog.
I heard the desk clerk say “damn, bitch”
as he used his key to open the door,
Then he fucked me too.

The walls were stained,
The mattress creaked,
We humped and pumped
in a heated frenzy;
and when I left, I leaked.

Meh, it’s LA. You don’t need a pool to impress me. I’d be like “ooooo, this bitch has a YARD.”

If I get any last minute offers to meet your parents for the holidays my favorite thing to eat on Christmas is Xanax.

“How do you like living in Los Angeles?”

“Uh… well. I didn’t think I was going to be your Uber driver when I grew up. But when I look at the smoldering ruins of the life I left behind, I suppose this is a blessing.”

There’s tagged cars on the grass 
And we’re all fucked up on weed 
I cook like Walter White,
And I’m obsessed with ICP
There’s plastic on the furniture 
J-Lube and Vaseline, 
In the popper scented air, 
Somewhere that’s greeeeeen. ❤️

I had a dream that I was swinging from a rope on a tree.

I was distracted by all sorts of events unfolding in front of me, all in the form of random artistic, visual, and musical imagery.

So much so, that I didn’t immediately notice that the rope I was clinging on to was on fire and it had burned through all but the last frayed cord.

I snapped out of it and looked to my left and saw what everyone was trying to warn me about just barely in time to save myself from falling.

I opened the program to the first page and I was confronted with the following:
We’re here because we’re people who have heard a rumor that there’s life to be found on the other side of death.

We’re here because just the rumor is enough to bring us hope and just the hope is enough to bring us a moment of life.

We’re here because even though it is only a flicker, a moment, a breath, it’s changed our death forever.

Welcome to Liturgy.

Everyone started singing a hymn that wasn’t in the book.

My companion for the day was another fellow traveler, a pastor on sabbatical from her congregation in Kentucky. I learned a trick when you’re a visitor or a newcomer — find other new people and make them feel welcome.

“You don’t know Let it Shine? It’s an old Black hymn. Didn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses ever sing that?”

“No. They had their own hymns. Terrible stuff like From House to House, From Door to Door.”

I’ve said a lot of horrible things recently. I’ve failed to resist or speak out. Forgive me and help me to bring Justice on Earth.

During the quiet time I walked past a cubby where they offered “anointing and spiritual healing.” There was a woman in a blanket being embraced, sobbing with a twisted look on her face. God only knows what she’s going through but it was intense.

We returned to our seats and they read through the prayers anonymously submitted by the congregation.

People were lonely.

People were addicted.

People were grieving.

People were struggling with depression,

Someone left an abusive relationship and didn’t know where they were going.

Damn the darkness that makes me feel separated from God.

It was like a punch in the gut realizing that somewhere in this room someone was going through all these things and putting on their bravest face. Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone anymore.

I lost my shit and bawled.

They offered communion:

Child of God

The body of Christ

Broken for you

I wasn’t sure what you were supposed to say. I raised my wafer, giggled nervously, and said “Cheers.”

The communion volunteer busted out laughing.

It was everything I hoped it would be.

I had showed up feeling hopeless and dead inside. I have to figure out what I’m doing
next but I don’t feel like it matters and I don’t really care what’s next.

Maybe I can put one foot in front of the other and do this one more time.

I tried going to an AA meeting afterwards.

The speaker droned on and on and on and on and on and on and on. I’m not saying his story wasn’t compelling, just that after 45 minutes I was squirming in my seat and I had to go.

I got back to the hotel and dug out those drink coupons.

I’ll take another two glasses of um… communion… please.

Just kidding. I wasn’t able to finish the first glass.

I complained about my few remaining beat up possessions and my run down apartment a couple of weeks ago.

I kind of wanted to get better furniture or make the place nicer, but I also didn’t want to fall into that trap and blow a couple grand on doing so.

I should have put two and two together when maintenance showed up with an exterminator two weeks ago and casually asked me if I’d had any problems with bed bugs. 

Why no, I hadn’t.

I got back into town this evening and I saw one crawl onto the bed.

I’m not even fucking around. I booked a hotel, put a load of clothes and my backpack in the dryer, and called 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come over tomorrow and take it all away.

I checked into the hotel, showered, bagged up and threw away my clothes and shoes.

I’m surprisingly okay with absconding with my car and just enough belongings to fit in my trunk.

I don’t care.

I hate my life.

I have come to the desert to laugh at your love 
He venido al desierto pa’reirme de tu amor 

That the desert is more tender and the thorn kisses better
Que el desierto es mas tierno y la espina besa mejor

I have come to this center out of nowhere to scream 
He venido a este centro de la nada pa’gritar 

That you never resist me what I wanted to give so much
Que tu nunca me resiste lo que tanto quise dar

I have come running, forgetting about you 
He venido yo corriendo, olvidandome de ti 

Give me a little bird kiss, notice hummingbird scares
Dame un beso pajarillo, note asustes colibri

I have come on fire to the desert to burn 
He venido encendida al desierto pa quemar 

Because the soul catches fire when it stops loving
Porque el alma prende fuego cuando deja de amar

El Desierto – Canción de Lhasa de Sela

My first “bad trip” on drugs was at 13 years old during what was supposed to be a minor outpatient procedure to remove a PIC line for chemo from my chest.

They administered intravenous ketaset and then they were supposed to inject me with Valium to counteract the dissociative effects.

Ketaset is used in children up until age 13 or so. It is thought that children do not experience the dissociative effects of ketaset/ketamine.

They are mistaken.

We would later discover that some idiot used a needle in my PIC line, punctured it with the Valium slam, and all the Valium went out the side of my PIC and onto the floor.

So there I was, high as fuck on a ketamine slam floating above my body casually watching them work on me in a “K hole.”

It was fine until they figured out that there was a cuff of skin growth preventing them from pulling it out. They decided to make an incision in my chest, thinking I was sufficiently sedated.

Except that I wasn’t.

They started cutting into my chest.

At that my observer — mind you, I’m a child — switched from trusting the process to worrying:

Wait, something’s wrong. What are they doing?

I felt no pain but I saw blood and I lost it. My instinct to protect myself kicked in:

I fought through the drugs and started screaming and fighting them off of me.

They grabbed another syringe of Valium and that’s when they realized they had punctured the PIC line and not administered any Valium whatsoever.

My progress notes say that I’m apprehensive about receiving medical care.

Fuck, you would be too!

It would take 8 years for me to use Special K recreationally and go “this is what the hell I was on!”

I knew.

End of story.

I still had to confirm it:

I got copies of my medical records when I was 21… and yeah, sure as shit, “ketaset.”

Then and only then did this extremely bizarre perceptual experience make any sense whatsoever.

I had been left to parse and process that one all on my own for years.

I’d been rebuked for swearing like a sailor and inventing a few new curse words as I fought them off.

That was pretty much the only feedback I got from anyone about this experience.

I had a dream I was looking out my window late at night and I saw a lunar eclipse.

I called out to some friends to come to the window and look at it with me.

When it had passed, a brightly colored symbol appeared in the sky below the moon. It looked like fluorescent colors underneath a black light.

Whatever it was, I was awe stricken.

When I woke up I knew exactly where the fuck I was.

[Kathy summons me into her office. ]

[ She is not smiling this time. ]

[ She glares at me and presses play on a big clunky silver Panasonic cassette player.]

“Uh, so that’s .. F as in Frank. W as in Walter. And T as in… uh, I don’t know. TWA Flight 800?”

[ She presses the stop button. It makes a loud clunk. ]

[ She hasn’t said a word. ]

Finally: “What if that had been one of the survivors?”

I looked puzzled.

“There weren’t any survivors, were there?”

“GET OUT OF MY OFFICE.”

I’ve got a fast car,
I don’t trust it to take us anywhere
And it has a mismatched wheel.
Call “Triple A” and have it towed somewhere,
If it dies again I might let her.
It needs new brakes, calipers, and shoes
An O2 sensor or something,
Help me push it, this things gotta move!

We were driving, driving in your car
You broke your strut and your torsion bar
City’s far away, can’t afford to tow her
We’re sitting here broke down on the shoulder

And I, I
Have spent too much at Autozone
I, I
Have a feeling something else’ll go wrong
And I, I
Have a feeling it’ll cost a ton
Cost a ton…
Cost a ton…

I finally watched that video for “No Rain.”

I gathered it was about being so depressed you can’t get out of bed. The little girl dressed as a bee was all over Los Angeles and something of an outcast everywhere she went.

I could relate to that.

When she found the gate and all the other bee people to dance with, I went “Awwwwe.”

I never found that gate in LA.

I never found my other bee people in LA.

Except perhaps Nacuntie, bless her heart.