These are short stories. @nickperryperry
Nick Perry's prose confronts madness and esotericism while maintaining a deep respect for consumer luxury and a rapist's wit.
—Initially a thin hipster with a full red beard was in the bathroom at Nick-A-Nee's, peeing at the tall urinal, but when I went in, after he walked out, I made a point to pee at the kiddie urinal, a trademark of mine, for whatever reason I find myself more at ease at the kiddie urinals, as I'm long-torsoed in addition to being of only average height; yes, the kiddie urinals are essentially made for me, and peeing at the kiddie urinal I took note of what looked like a piece of asscrack lint connected inextricably to a long piece of ass hair. This is what it struck me as at least. I thought back to parking on the street fifty feet from Nick-A-Nee's, to my consternation with the driver wearing a snowcap in his maroon pickup truck cursing me through his windshield as I slowly scoped the one open spot on the street. At that time, with his perturbed expression and prehistoric facial features, he struck me as the worst person in the world and frankly still does. I wished nothing but the worst things on this person as I pulled over to let him pass, haranguing him through my windshield as he simultaneously screamed at me through his windshield, then calmly hit reverse to move back into the middle of the street, to parallel park in the only open spot, just momentarily lodging the right rear wheel ever so slightly onto the attenuated curb. In my mind this man in the pickup truck was a grotesque stain on the face of our planet. His face, in both its structure and expression, sticking with me at the bar in Nick-A-Nee's, more or less revolted me in the most extreme of ways. The man to my left ordered an impressively grotesque smelling soup from the bar—it was all I could smell at the time, and the stench was such that it struck me as frankly a little unbelievable it wafted from a bowl a man was actually eating from, yet if anything this made me enjoy Nick-A-Nee's even more. The band playing the bar employed a white saxophone player, and each respective instrumentalist was drinking a separate, distinct variety of alcohol—one whiskey, one craft beer, one some type of mixed drink, one nothing at all, all four frankly looking little like typical musicians, and I found it notable how easily the saxophone, I presumed tenor, sat in the mix with just a microphone next to it, given the accompaniment of electric guitar, electric bass, and acoustic drums that were played in a thoroughly rock, as opposed to jazz, style. I guess I never knew that about tenor saxophone. Rock drums have increasingly distressed me of late. When I think of a style of drumming that offends my taste, rock drumming immediately vaults to the top of the list—in my opinion Stratos most rock music would be immeasurably improved with the simple removal of percussion, or at least with a more muted substitute of percussion. Maybe a tongue drum? Amplified tongue drum? Distorted tambourine? But honestly that's just me, because I fully realize most people love percussion, that percussion is viewed as the so-called backbone of modern composition, that tons of listeners still venerate rock music. In any case I guess I should start to explain how I got here, shouldn't I?
—From your parallel universe you mean?
—Exactly Stratos. It now seems to me that I crossed over into this universe, or I should say I became aware that it had happened, precisely at the point where the bozo in the snowcap in his dark red pickup truck began yelling at me through his windshield, as I attempted to parallel park up the street from Nick-A-Nee's, where a man would then order one of the most disgusting smelling soups I've ever encountered from its bar. It was obvious as the man, who I despised, looked exactly like someone from Alabama—he was wearing a snowcap despite it being a moderately temperate day in early April, and given these facts it was obvious something had shifted significantly, but I couldn't draw any conclusions quite at that point. But these are the types of cues you have to take into account with regard to things such as these Stratos, parallel universe conundrums so to speak. How exactly it happens I'm not at liberty to detail at this time, as it's possible I'm ignorant of the mechanics of the process, or I'm aware of the process in a way I can only communicate in indirect ways.
—This makes sense, Markos. There's obviously only so much we can put into words when it comes to parallel universes.
—For example it was precisely at Nick-A-Nee's that I happened to log onto the basketball-reference dot com webpage Stratos, which only confirmed my suspicions, which had been steadily rising, which only acted as another clue as I delved deeper into the statlines I'll detail right now. Specifically, as I recalled it, beyond a shadow of a doubt it sat in my memories, the Boston Celtic Jayson Tatum owned a statistical profile that exceeded that of Dallas Maverick Luka Doncic, whereas Luka Doncic had a statistical summation that lagged that of Jayson Tatum. And yet on basketball-reference dot com at Nick-A-Nee's, only moments after said bozo in snowcap in the Alabama-esque maroon pickup truck berated me through his windshield, it occurred to me that Luka Doncic had by far the more complete statistical profile compared to Jayson Tatum, despite both Luka and Tatum averaging above thirty points per game this NBA season. Specifically, on this side Stratos, it seemed that Luka differentiated himself from Tatum by getting to the free throw stripe at a much greater clip, by making plays for others at a clip that more than doubled Tatum's rate. Where Jayson Tatum assisted on just twenty percent of his possessions, while turning the ball over on ten percent, Luka Doncic assisted on forty three percent of his possessions while turning the ball over on only twelve percent, while both rebounded just about thirteen percent of their possible possessions and shot an aggregate percentage of sixty (true shooting percentage) on their thirty points per game. Yet I explicitly recalled Jayson Tatum being the far superior playmaker, by more than double, when compared to Luka Doncic, in those exact terms of assist percentage and free throw rate, yet when I logged onto basketball-reference at Nick-A-Nee's, to my great surprise, Luka Doncic separated himself from Jayson Tatum by his higher propensity of getting to the free throw stripe and by his stark contrast in setting his teammates up for made shots (especially when compared to his propensity to turn the ball over). It's only in the most minute of ways that we can detect these transitions Stratos, if that makes sense, that we can conclude we've traversed across potential dimensions, if that makes sense?
—Oh, absolutely!
—And to add to the confusion it was only a night later, in a vivid dream, that I found myself in a desolate house covered with orange wallpaper, curiously preoccupied with bathing myself, apparently getting ready for something I couldn't quite put my finger on—it was in this home with the orange interior that I felt again this psychic energy with near strangers, near strangers who seem to pop into my mental space unannounced, that has increasingly struck me as an actual physical phenomenon. That I can actually think back toward these near strangers in a physical fashion. Yet this was before a particular shadow from my past appeared to me yet again in dream, in the most vivid of manners, and I began to run from something, something I couldn't identify, while simultaneously reconnecting with this shadow without either of us saying a word to each other, until I stumbled upon what looked like a locker room in an open field. I entered the building, a so-called locker room in an open field, and realized all of its memorabilia was from nineteen ninety eight—and I realized I'd traveled back to nineteen ninety eight, that everything I touched was totally nineteen ninety eight, that my own so-called identity was just a clumsy block across something that could be traversed if approached properly, and then suddenly the thought occurred to me: Time starts in the middle and winds around, always in the middle, I thought, that this notion of time beginning at the beginning is entirely false, perhaps even nonsensical. When awake I frantically wrote a note that simply said: Time starts in the middle and winds around. And as I encountered this idea streams of green for lack of a better word time shot out, like Nickelodeon Gack or something, various streams of time overlapping each other in joyous bursts of green, like the word Go, and it was a sort of joyous event even in its ambiguity. I was a little disappointed to wake up.
—Did you do shrooms at all?
—No sadly Stratos I was completely free from hallucinogens when I went to sleep, when I went to Nick-A-Nee's, when the red-bearded hipster peed at the adult urinal, when the man next to me ordered the disgusting soup, when the bozo with the snowcap screamed at me, when the saxophone was surprisingly high in the mix. No we don't necessarily need to travel in the traditional sense in order to travel great distances, that much we can be sure of.
—That makes complete sense to me, Markos!
(Candid Author Photo)
—So anyway we were at the Hot Club for the first time in ages, a bartender I hadn't seen in at least four to five years was still behind the bar, she recognized me immediately, with a new purple dyed haircut that, although probably a smidgeon young for her age, suited her nicely, I thought. She poured me a healthy amount of Mezcal into a short glass, and only minutes later I'd notice her carrying a bottle of Del Maguey Vida, my favorite brand of Mezcal, back to the bar, and right then I surmised that I was drinking my favorite type of Mezcal. Of course healthy pours are double edged swords when you have a tendency to chug whatever's in front of you, which for better or worse is a tendency I've never entirely managed to discard, especially when in social settings. Socially, historically, I've always found myself sprinting toward liquor, with reckless abandon almost I perform fifty yard dashes toward whatever my spirit of choice is that month, and even though on balance I've reduced these excessive tendencies with age, I'd be lying to both myself and you if I said I'd discarded them completely. And to be honest I'm unsure if I'd wish to discard them in totality, to extinguish my child-like idiocy once and for all, because sure from a certain vantage point I suppose I remain a man-child of sorts, but on the other hand man-children are necessary, no? It's man-children who make the greatest philosophical strides. To think like an adult is to take on the guise of utter rationalism, which hardly ever if not never innovates, which refuses to become idiotic enough to alter fundamental axioms, as axioms are inevitably created by the child-like thinkers, by idiots of the spirit. Even God Himself allegedly said Let there be light, which is a man-child like statement in my opinion. Personally I still refuse to sleep in the dark.
—The dark is contemptible in my mind.
—There's something inherent in being itself that's synonymous with light in my opinion.
—But how was Hot Club?
—It was interesting, intriguing, better than I anticipated, given the last couple times I'd been I felt the atmosphere to be a bit too clubby for my tastes, a tad too adolescent for even my man-child palette. I saw the doorman from The Parlour there, because apparently he works security at Hot Club as well? In any case as the party increased in size Dara and I ended up engaged in an extended conversation with a petite fair-skinned female who adamantly claimed to be of New York origin, yet when an appropriate opening emerged for me to ask her what part of New York she was from specifically she prevaricated, saying she was quote-unquote from all over, but then saying The Bronx. She was from The Bronx? She didn't strike me as someone from The Bronx, and for someone whose identity seemed to be so tied with being from New York, a New Yorker, which is the case with so many people from New York, it's actually kind of sad to me, this violent melding that seems to occur with people who identify themselves with New York City, yet this female, who for the record I found pleasant, oddly enough refused to explicitly claim a borough, until she reluctantly said The Bronx, which I think struck everyone as totally misguided. She wasn't from The Bronx, that much was clear. She could be from anywhere in the world except The Bronx. This idea that this female's origin story began in The Bronx was completely absurd. Which borough she was from, assuming she was from a particular borough, now that was still ambiguous, but it was clear she wasn't from the Bronx. Queens, that I could give some credence to I suppose. It might be a reasonable speculation to suggest she was from Queens. Perhaps from an opulent family in Upper Manhattan, now that was even more likely—because she certainly struck me as someone who came from money, there was no trace of a New York accent in her speech, or of any accent in her speech, and the geography of Upper Manhattan is close enough to The Bronx that she could, in her mind at least, perhaps justify claiming The Bronx as a borough, even though I find that to be a bit ridiculous, to conflate Upper Manhattan with The Bronx, to think any thinking person would buy the idea that Upper Manhattan is in any way synonymous with The Bronx. Staten Island and Brooklyn strike me as more remote possibilities of her origin, and then we could also speculate on outer-areas as well, because while Yonkers strikes me as a stretch, I think Westchester County or Long Island are both certainly in play.
—Do you think it possible that she could have been from, say, Westchester County, which would explain her moneyed demeanor, yet moved to The Bronx for work later in life, and now, and I agree that this is misguided, feels as though that working experience justifies her claim that The Bronx is a place she's actually from?
—Giorgios, that actually strikes me as perhaps the most sensible explanation of all. I also noticed, and I think it's worth noting, that when she sat her posterior was a tad more ample than I'd imagined, that this posterior along with the ambiguity of her origin began to strike me as almost ominously out of place, as if another plane of existence was forming.
—That happens at times—posteriors and their relative amplitude can vary widely from expectations, the posterior is almost impossible to estimate based on face alone.
—I guess it's reasonable to assert that we often look at a person's face and almost algorithmically create a simulation of their body from this face, that our mind works essentially algorithmically, we should admit that, that our minds are probably just composed of algorithms, and that we perform a similar process with voice, which actually happened to me just recently as well, where I spoke to a person on the phone and inevitably created an algorithmic simulation of her face in my mind. When I saw her face at last online I was struck by how much this picture differed from the simulation I'd made in my mind—who was it I believed I was speaking to? I look at someone's face and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their body without consent, whereas I hear someone's voice and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their face without consent, but in both cases my accuracy is totally stochastic, and by stochastic I mean terrible.
—From voice to face and from face to body, we make ill-advised, ruthless speculations regarding everyone who enters our periphery!
—In this sense the simulation of the human begins with voice. From voice alone we algorithmically simulate both face and body, because from face we simulate body, as you said. In any case as the conversation progressed we—myself, Dara, and this female—began to touch on the topic of what exactly this female had been doing since leaving New York, and in the midst of this it came up that it just so happened that her and I were actually the same age, that she'd been finding locales she liked at our age, although she noted how difficult it was, compared to New York, where she knew the ins and outs of where to patronize and when, what establishments she enjoyed and which ones she despised. I agreed immediately, noting that at my age, at our age, it was one of the main deterrents to moving to another city, particularly New York, which I'd strongly considered moving to more than once, but as I said explicitly to her to have to relearn every single place that I like to go, and how to get there, to relearn which places offend my palate, at my age, it just struck me as way too daunting of a task to take on. It struck me as a task that would consume so much of my energy that it would essentially mute all of my philosophical energies for at least five years. She mentioned a Lebanese bar where “you walk downstairs” that she liked a lot. I said the entire city of Providence has become essentially one extended hookah lounge, which I admitted to her, full disclosure, appeals to me deeply, which, full disclosure, seemed to genuinely surprise her, that the entire city of Providence was an extended hookah lounge. I said the city is littered with Greek and Lebanese places like that, which of course Giorgos we know isn't true in the least, that there are only a fraction of Greek locations compared to Lebanese locations, yet I stated it with so much aplomb she didn't question it at all, although she did immediately question whether Greeks smoked hookah, to which I simply said Ottoman Empire, to which she said of course, immediately connecting the dots.
—My goodness, I have to say that's fairly impressive, that a fair-skinned female from New York would connect those dots that quickly. The Ottoman Empire, I mean at this point it's basically a piece of arcana. No one knows anything about the Ottoman Empire anymore.
—Oh I completely agree! I totally feel like there are just very few people in our general age range who know anything about the Ottoman Empire, and I'd one hundred percent wager that not one other person at Hot Club that night who knew anything about the Ottoman Empire, never mind its very specific ethnic components, who could put the pieces of Greeks ancestrally smoking hookah together by the utterance of two words: Ottoman Empire. In fact it seems to me that the Ottoman Empire is maybe the most neglected empire of the past half millennium, that it inherited its Byzantine predecessor's characteristic of being completely discarded by modern scholarship. No one knows what you speak of when you so much as mention the Ottoman Empire, people are flummoxed, except apparently this female who may or may not be from New York, but certainly isn't from The Bronx. In short I quickly found that the ambiguity of what New York City borough characteristic was inherent in this female became reflected right into the ambiguity of the ethnic blocks of the Ottoman Empire, in a post-Ottoman American diaspora, in an America that is itself multi-ethnic, and not entirely differently than the Ottomans, Ottomans who were only trumped in their importation of African slaves by America's out of control love affair with the African slave. No one imported more African slaves than the Ottoman Empire, except of course the United States of America. The ambiguity of the traits displayed by a Greek versus a Turk versus a Lebanese versus a Kurd versus an Armenian in the seemingly limitless Providence Hookah Network was suddenly a direct analog to the ambiguity of the New York City borough characteristics inherent in a person who perhaps dubiously claims to be from New York City. In one instance we're unsure if we're witnessing a Greek, a Turk, a Lebanese, a Kurd, an Armenian; in the other instance we're unsure if we're witnessing a person from The Bronx, from Manhattan, from Staten Island, from Brooklyn, from Queens; in both cases the overlapping characteristics, outside of their original context (of the Ottoman Empire and New York City, respectively), become vague enough in their nuance that the identity of each bleeds into the other, until the individual identities are erased completely. The New York City diaspora in Providence can reflect characteristics associated with Staten Island, with Manhattan, with The Bronx, with Brooklyn, with Queens, while the median hookah smoker this New York City transplant may encounter in the extended Providence Hookah Network may display characteristics of the Greek, of the Turk, of the Lebanese, of the Kurd, of the Armenian. In both cases what's Staten Island, what's Queens, what's Kurd, what's Greek, what's Brooklyn, what's Manhattan, what's Lebanese, what's Turk, what's The Bronx, what's Armenian all bleed into one another until they're essentially indistinguishable from each other, until they're essentially extinguished, until we reach a fundamental oneness of an Ottoman New York City, a legitimate plane of existence that came into being only at the Hot Club via conversation this past Friday night.
—This is a physical plane of existence now, the Ottoman New York City of Oneness.
—It can no longer be denied, an Ottoman New York City where all identity has been extinguished into a monadic Oneness came into existence on a Friday night at the Hot Club.
—Yet that girl—could she have actually been from The Bronx?
—With one hundred percent certainty I will assure you Giorgos, that the girl I spoke with Friday night was absolutely not from The Bronx—
(Unconscious Author Photo)
Well Mr. Kazantzakis, if I'm being honest with you, completely honest with you, if I'm holding back next to no honesty whatsoever, I should note that, yes, it's indubitably true that of late I've found myself gluttonously chewing four to seven slices of gum in simultaneity, for a variety of reasons—in fact, it was just yesterday afternoon, prior to leaving our apartment to go grab a coffee that I indiscriminately shoved an entire pack of gum into my mouth and exuberantly chewed this large ball of gum, wondered if chewing gum was actually good for your teeth, when the thought occurred to me: Is emo the highest form of classical music America is historically responsible for?
When discussing American music, I thought while chewing an entire pack of gum, a litany of genres, from post-bop jazz, to experimental rock, to avant-metal to the so-called classically trained composers of American descent, are discussed as ‘the truly classical music of America.' ‘But what if emo is the truly classical American music?' I thought to myself, chewing an entire pack of gum, preparing myself to pay full-price for a coffee out somewhere, despite the fact I had an entire pot of coffee at my apartment, waiting to be imbibed for free.
The primary conceit of emo music is that its creators are young and white and male, and that they originate from neighborhoods that are safe if not opulent and utterly hate their lives. Nothing, it should be noted, is ever proceeding well for the emo band, as the slightest deviation from the emo band's best-case scenario is always apocalyptic, despite the fact that, sociopolitically at least, they have everything going for them.
The emo participant exists at the apex of the American totem pole, and despite this fact everything remains essentially objectionable to them. Nothing is going well! The emo song is, in practice, the antithesis of the virtue signal. And it occurred to me, as I left my apartment to pay four dollars for a coffee that would inevitably be co-opted by an art school professor, with no regard to socially acceptable decibel levels, pontificating about people as brands to a foreign exchange student, that this type of wide-eyed narcissism, that this unironic ignorance of sociopolitical totem poles, this obsession with direct, lived experience at the expense of everything conceptual—is perhaps the apex of what should comprise American classical music?
And I nodded my head at this notion as we entered the Honda asking Tina if she'd be willing to play 'One-Eighty by Summer' on our way to the coffee shop.
I suppose you could say it was fortuitous, if not a direct product of fate itself, that with these thoughts in mind, while browsing my Shopping List on Amazon dot com, while considering the merits of the so-called university professor after my encounter with this pea-brained art professor from Yoleni's, I noticed that the Constantine Eleven monograph by my old college professor, Marios Philippides, was now on sale—reduced from the borderline-insulting price of ninety dollars for the hardcover, to the increasingly palatable price of nine dollars for the Kindle edition.
After confirming the price reduction multiple days in a row I finally pulled the trigger and bought the book, only downloading said book during a solitary circular sojourn around Foxwoods, Ike busy attempting to continue his luck on the slot machines—having won two hundred dollars on one roll prior to our high-class Chinese dinner, which he magnanimously comped—and Tina passed out in the car, tired and hungover after an ill-advised decision to day-drink prior to our venturing to the casino for the night.
At first, in preparation of my reading, I sat in line at Dunkin Donuts, surprisingly the only coffee shop open at the expansive casino, and bought a medium iced coffee for myself with almond milk.
Three men stood in front of me and struck me as abutting old men until I began to consider they very well could be the same age as I, clinging, it struck me, to perhaps some fading beacon of youth, one of them adorned in deluxe Michael Jordan sneakers, the other making a long speech to the Dunkin Donuts barista about how much he likes his caramel coffee yet curiously punctuating the note by repeatedly saying he's not that picky.
In the rainforest casino, sipping my iced coffee, with water audibly falling all around me, I got my five dollar double poker game out of the way, realizing slowly that the first two machines didn't work, then slowly realizing I completely forgot how to play double poker, despite being so exuberant at the thought of finally finding a double poker machine to play. I googled ‘How to play double poker' but couldn't seem to find a concise explanation, an explanation that would allow me to play double poker immediately, which was the extent of everything I wanted at the time.
Leaving the double poker machines after immediately losing five dollars, I decided to spend the last of my cash on an ice cream cone, then begin reading Philippides' monograph. The ice cream barista informed me there were no cones left, which was disappointing in the extreme. Feigning no disappointment, I ordered two scoops of the cappuccino gelato and was subsequently given a spoon half the size of my own pinky finger, which isn't a particularly large pinky finger, I've never had my pinky finger described as abnormally large by anyone, to the best of my knowledge, to scoop out both scoops of ice cream from the surprisingly deep cup.
Finally, after washing the cappuccino gelato off my hands in the Foxwoods rest area, I sat on a park bench and opened up my Kindle app to open up Philippides' monograph on the final so-called emperor of the Greeks.
Aware that something was in need of change but unsure of what exactly was in need of change, I approached an adult female on the outskirts of town, where she stood in short jean shorts and a white cut-off sleeve t-shirt, not doing much of anything at all. I'd known Corinne for some time; she was my first girlfriend, so to speak, at the age of eight years old. The two of us, at the time, were the quote-unquote ethnic looking kids in the heavily Anglicized third grade, although, by today's standards at least, it's very possible neither of us would be considered ethnic at all, assuming the word ethnic was ever assigned a coherent meaning in the first place.
The world as it stands, Corinne said, as our conversation progressed of its own accord, is entirely objectionable on multiple fronts. We sit, and perhaps you know this as well as I do, and attempt to deconstruct this or that political faux pas, this emergency, that injustice, obsessed with our categories, but it's precisely our categories that must be done away with. It's our categories that suffocate us. It's our categories that send us on these spiraled sojourns of deconstruction, where we emerge exhausted and useless. It's not the various categories and subcategories of human beings that must be deleted but the concept of the organism itself. The organism, Corinne said, is the first fallacy. History begins with the organism, and history is the most pernicious envelope of them all. I stood there, my thirst steadily mounting in the humid air, but not necessarily in disagreement with anything she said.
It'd been quite some time since I'd seen Corinne. The last time was in a dream where she mothered a small child, where I found myself waiting an elongated period of time for my oil to be changed, only to discover two of my tires would need to be replaced, only to discover the bodyshop failed to supply me with a detailed receipt of the quite costly repairs, only to take a right turn onto the expressway and find the expressway dissolved into fragments of molten rock.
Prior to leaving, I'd asked Corinne, in my dream, to give me her phone number, not because I wanted to pursue a sexual relationship, which I did in the dream, but just in case we ever needed to contact one another in the future. You know, I said, you were technically my first girlfriend, and I guess that means something to me. I feel as though we've drifted unnecessarily apart from one another. Well, she retorted, there was always the whole race thing. I wondered what she meant, but before I could give the comment all that much thought Corinne denied my request for her phone number...
Do you mind if we go inside, I said to Corinne, who was still standing on her lawn, I'm a little thirsty.
Inside, Corinne continued as we sat at her dinner table, both of us drinking ice water with lemon.
The organism, as I said, Corinne said, and I still believe it, is the first fallacy. To do away with the notion that we're physical organisms—a notion that has arisen purely from sensual evidence, sensual evidence that is only corroborated by the senses which, of course, sense themselves and, in turn, generate a completely absurd system of observation—to do away with this notion is to do away with all history. And to do away with history is to annihilate our culture...
When I left Corinne's home that afternoon, I returned to my apartment and almost immediately searched for her name on the internet. The only result populated was from a website that was widely known for disseminating misinformation. The site alleged Corinne to be six months older than I, which surprised me, not only because I'd never thought of Corinne as older than I was, but also because I'd always, perhaps unknowingly, associated her with the Scorpio Zodiac sign...
Later that week I found myself traveling toward my apartment on the deck of a commercial ferry as the sun set in a way that seemed overbearing at the time. I stared indiscriminately into the vast ocean, which extended unimpeded toward Western Europe, gazing at the seemingly infinite rippling of the water, attempting to perceive this body of water in its entirety, suddenly terrified of the possibilities of what potentially existed underneath this body of water, which seemed to extend to a distance so gratuitous in magnitude that it seemed an absurd proposition that it existed at all...
Blowing a shit on a city street outside a JWU dorm and then benignly driving up a big hill to buy a bean burrito at Baja's I fucked up my brand new white vans stepping in a big puddle on New Year's Eve
I wish we'd known one another at another time unfortunately now you're just a memory I've recalled like a thousand rewritten rough drafts
Sometimes the people who fight for just causes are complete pieces of shit possibly because linearity has always been a pipedream for us collectively
A homeless man pants down sitting on the cold cement possibly jacking off on the steps of an architecture firm seems to somehow know it's Veteran's Day so it's okay to masturbate
Two pussy lips form one vagina my dear Watson duality is but an illusion of the mob's sense of the world as representation
Drinking alone is occasionally advisable chalk it up to ritualism a shot of Fernet and a shitty beer I could ostensibly toss my smartphone into a haunted river fuck it all to Hell
Feelings come from gain of function labs gleefully disassembling yourself over a subtle pack of American Spirits are you just a little ridiculous?—
Indulging in animalistic shit or is it that the intellect is ultimately always bereft—hold up the Caucasian chick looks like Wyclef
And she's got a cigarette and a sincere compliment while others present a left hook and an honest guess you should always introduce yourself as a Roulette wheel
Everything you feel comes from a gain of function laboratory everything's an excuse for a ceremony or a photo op or a food co-op
Or an allegory—we genuinely claimed to not recall our names when the shitty parking lot cop called the city cops he's got a heart of slop I wish him the best in his endeavors
Imbibing blended scotch out of measuring cups filled up with ice on a quaint Saturday night The Social bartender although polite deep down definitely held a ruthless vendetta against me
Remembering a comment I made months ago correctly critiquing her slow Corona Light service she's now superfluously charged me seventeen and a half bucks per glass of Mezcal
Faces contorted frozen in time I chugged the cup of agave helpless but at the same time it seems so antiquated investing in things like depression and elation
If you can't annihilate yourself in the midst of Mineral Spring what can you do Rocco's bar's girth got extended the cul de sac streams with lovely ducks got a cement redo the tailor's building is now a gas pump
The Syrian's spots gone too I spit on the terrible white truck after doubling back to spit on the white truck in two decades we'll remain the exact same age the loogie on the windshield was just an illusion of change