Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true

Sitting on the toilet, my mind still reeling from the strong Turkish espresso and American Spirit cigarettes. Other drugs, I could roll with the best of them. Drink with the best them, smoke with the best of them, talk the most audacious amounts of shit -- given my size anyway. But for some reason cigarettes always got me heady and sick, but they made me shit, and that's what I wanted to do, was shit.

I crawled into my parents bed. Our 2 bedroom Glendale apartment was always too small for our family, and whenever my sister was blasting idiotic TV shows in "our" room, it's been routine for me to flop down on my parent's king-size bed in their bedroom, enveloped in the mixed smell of my parent's skin and cigarettes and perfume, dozing off, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming about this or that, listening to music or trying to read a book, which never lasted long due to the comfort, physical and mental, of the bed. My dad would be passed out on the couch, hogging the living room TV watching mindless action films (the more shooting, the more of a simple good-guy-vs-bad-guy plot, the better), while my mom would be busying about in the kitchen or little table next to the nearby window taking care of business as usual. MGMT said "I miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone." Indeed I have.

Two great things about this room of my adolescence, where I sit and type presently. One is the large oval mirror, painted in eggshell white and framed by a thick wooden panel with a carved ribbon on top. In this mirror I have humored my vanity for years. Directly oppossing this mirror, where I smeared on my first lick of pre-pubescant eyeliner, is a giant window spanning almost the entire length of the wall and hip-height to ceiling. From this window is a conflicting view -- directly south is my parking garage. To the right is a dirty sidewalk; to the right of that, a dirty street. Then a dirty backyard attached to a red brick picture framing store, attached to a cocktail bar, both which have been there as long as I can remember. Living next door to a trendy bar hasn't made my life any cooler, just noisier. The drunken yells and screams of groups of night-crawling bafoons stumbling back to their cars has been the constant background noise of my 3 a.m. mornings. Thanks to this, late night college dorm life has been a breeze.

Adjacent to my parking lot and in head-on view is a lot whose occupation has changed numerous times over the past 15 years that I've been living here. Years ago it was a metered parking lot; years ago it was a Cuban restaurant; and years before that, a house my grandmother lived in during the few years she consigned to live in America. A lot of the time, it was simply a huge pile of dirt, festerning with overgrown weeds, abandoned in various stages of construction by whoever was the last frustrated investor who deemed the project too damned expensive to carry on with. Right now, it's a hovering cement monstrosity that houses a cancer treatment center as well as my mother's deepest fears about radioactive waves, dangerous invisible laser beams and toxic air.

But across from all this, on the clearest and most beautiful of Los Angeles evenings, is a spectacular view of the San Fernando hills. Purple-grey outlines of grand mountains obscure darker and smaller mountain-shapes in front. Above sits a sometimes breathtaking view of the Los Angeles skyline; on the best nights, wisps of clouds - big, medium and small - smear the skyline. Palm trees of varying sizes and ages dot the panorama of mountains and billboards and streets and buildings.

A deep colorful sunset to the right will make you pause for a moment and serve as the visual equivalent of a Led Zeppelin song on an evening convertible drive. Neon green lights from the Armenian dance hall across the street, dots of bright and severe city lights from the clump of downtown buildings to the east, and a sudden onslaught of traffic will all remind you that it's a Friday night in Los Angeles. What the hell are you doing just laying around, you've got places to be, baby. Now where did you put those damned boots?

vegas

I had had it! It was time to choose, and I had to do it quickly. It was either here in this smoke-filled hotel room with 20 or so animals I knew and could control, or out there on the mean streets of Las Vegas, where the savages roamed at free will. I gathered what was left of my wits and did the next best thing. I started drinking immediately.

"What are you doing?" I heard someone scream. "Where are we going?"
The question wasn't directed at me, but I answered anyway, to no one in particular. "I don't know, but let's go faster!"

A double shot of Jim Bean here. A triple whiskey there. I waited, and waited, but still I didn't feel anything. Fuck! This was no good. I silently cursed myself for eating so much at that damn buffet, I should have known this would happen! The only remedy was to drink more, and faster. I grabbed a bottle of Jagger and began chugging. I was chasing Jack Daniels with Jaggermeister, consuming liquor as fast as humanly possible. I polished off what was left of the fifth of vodka. Still, nothing. I kept drinking.

Suddenly I had to pee, urgently. I staggered to the toilet, and sat there silently contemplating my madness in between swigs of more Jack. And then finally, it happened. I was drunk.

you're so handsome dressed in black, see you in the shadows, i'd love to see you on your back

so strange, so lonely, so confused. my birthday was amazing.

naked, wet, and freezing fucking cold.

what a way to start off the New Year.


what can i say? i am finding it increasingly difficult to give a fuck about this academic drudgery.

as long as i can remember, my life has been a perpetual eternal daydream. i live as another person that doesn't quite exist. i'm always saying something i'll never say. i'm always seen as a person i'll never be. i'm always in someone's arms that i'll never meet. sometimes i can't feel anything at all and those are the best times of all. the people that i love are as they are, and not the way i wish them to be.

i want to spend my days lost and lonely in a ceramics studio, drinking wine and crying into clay in the night. i want to live on wine and coffee all night and sleep during the day.