Boohoo, Please Hold Me

 

When you write, I mean really write, when you believe you can write, there is no stopping. 

I never know what I’m going to say or how I’m going to say it when I begin a story. Often I'm half in the bag.

There’s a long list of writers who were lushes, here are a few you likely know—  Hunter S. Thompson, O. Henry, John Cheevers, Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas, Dorthy Parker, Edgar Allen Poe, Truman Capote William Faulkner, Raymond Carver. Just to name a few of the hundreds.

The boozing folklore the list of renowned has propagated is more amusing than their work— particularly in the case of Poe and Faulkner.

Sylvia Plath wrote in her book The Bell Jar—

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

Sylvia needed booze to write because it energized her.

Her psychosis is well documented by psychologists and literati alike. James Kaufman coined the term The Sylvia Plath Effect referring to the phenomenon that creative writers are more susceptible to mental illness. I myself dabble in mental illness, it's a way of life for me.

Being unhinged is a prerequisite for writers.

Charles Bukowski is known as the patron saint of lowlifes. Reading his early biography you understand why he needed alcohol. 

Buk ran away from home at 16 to escape his abusive father, riding buses cross country. He was a drifter who spent time working menial jobs and hanging out at bars, gracefully earning his alcoholic chops in stride. 

Soon, in the haze of his existence, he began writing, finding his calling— sipping wine and beer through the night as he worked.

Much has been written about gonzo king Hunter S. Thompson, including my story on this blog, Hunter S. Thompson, Weird to Most. Anyway, dribble, dribble, blah, here's a segment of his morning routine published in the Associated Press circa 1974. 

3pm— rise

3:05— Chivas Regal with the mourning papers 

3:45—  cocaine

3:50—  another glass of Chivas

4:05— coffee and a Dunhill

4:15— cocaine

4:16— orange juice, Dunhill

4:30— cocaine

4:54— cocaine

5:05— cocaine

5:11—  coffee, Dunhills

5:30— more ice in the Chivas

5:45— cocaine

6:PM— grass to take the edge off

7:05— off to the Woody Creek Tavern in downtown Aspen.

Enough on the over-hyped and well-oiled. Let's stray to something even more demoralizing. What kind of writer are you? Or, the nothing writers of the world versus the renowned and worshiped. 

At times, while reading certain writers, namely, Bukowski and Hunter Thompson I say out loud—

 you can write as good as these clowns.  

Hunter capitalizes words to underscore their importance when italicizing would do— he does it paragraph after paragraph because he’s Hunter Fucking Thompson King Gonzo. Here’s a bit from his book Hey Rube,

There was an exact moment, in fact, when I knew Al Gore would Never be President of the United States no matter what the TV networks said. 

Here's another, why the fuck cap instance?

But what the hell? That’s why we have Insurance, And the Inevitability of these Nightmares is what makes them so reassuring.

His book, Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang— hinges on the Angel's 1964 Labor Day rally to Monterey, California. After leaving a downtown bar the outlaw gang rides their choppers to an area known as The Dunes to party and camp. In the wee hours, two teenage girls, who shouldn't have been there, were raped by the gang.

Hunter refers to the rape and resulting charges by the Monterey Sheriff's Department every ten pages or so, adding bits of information but pretty much saying the same thing. 

Over amped and seemingly desperate to get his point across he uses caps where they don't belong and superfluously pounds away at his story's themes. Which is childish, like a baby crying to be held, contrary to Hunter's barbarian of modern literature persona. 

How many superstar authors are unheard of? Will their work be unearthed after they've kicked in? Or, will their printed books decay on a shelf somewhere while their electric books, blogs, and such fade away on the world wide web? 

With electronic self-publishing, it's easy to be an author. There are thousands upon thousands of would-be authors on social media. 

The odds of a writer making it are minimal.

Nielsen BookScan reported in 2004 that of 1.2 million books tracked, only 25,000— barely more than 2 percent— sold more than 5,000 copies.

I have 200,000 hits on my blog, Busted on Empty. Two of my stories, Hate, Zits & Spirituality, and, Missiles, Fruit Flies, & Psychosis, have over 8000 hits each. 

Yet, I haven’t made it, no publishers have contacted me, and I’m sure when I croak, Google will redline my blog after a year, pulling the curtain on the one-man show— Busted on Empty.

And, I don’t kick around the thought of being discovered when the curtain falls, like— Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Poe, or Henry David Thoreau. 

Give me a second to wipe the tears streaming down my face.

For different reasons, like Hunter, I’m a baby crying out to be held. Please hold me.

Unscrupulously, Fucking in Neck High Water

 

 

Let’s start from the beginning, the beginning of life.

Between 3700 and 2500 million years ago, you wouldn’t recognize the planet earth, the continents, the oceans, or the atmosphere. 

During this time the atmosphere was bombarded by electric storms and ultraviolet rays of the Sun. 

The thunder collaborates with the sun's ultraviolet rays, giving birth to elements via chemical reactions, and turning them into macromolecules able to feed themselves and reproduce. 

Life is born.

I was born forty-four years ago thanks to the miracle known as reproduction.

Reproduction is the biological process by which new individual organisms are produced from their parents. It’s the fundamental feature of all known life.

Each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction. 

In the heat of the moment, most homo sapiens are so captivated with fornication that they forget it's for reproduction. 

My Cuban wife Lucia and I have spent thousands of dollars on contraceptives of every shape, size, and kind.

We don’t want a kid. Lucia’s afraid, and nervous, to give birth. She's apprehensive about— stretchy vagina, stretch marks, and getting fat. She’s vain. 

We have two Chihuahuas, they’re our kids, they're tuition and diaper-free, and non-stick-like Teflon.

For a mega-second time travels to a different dimension, you’re two inches tall, inside the TV set and on-screen at the Hooterville General Store— where Sue Drucker is behind the counter, nattering with Ralph, Shiela Burns, Mr. Haney, and Alf Monroe.

Lucia's having an erotic flashback in the shower— she’s fucking Dirk the Lifeguard in the sea during high tide, it’s pleasing, the fine granules of sand grade on her body as he rubs against her. 

It’s a flashback, what you desire but isn't— she knows Dirk’s a slut, everyone in town knows.

This town is boring you to tears

Nothing in the world ever happens here

It’s all right hey lawdy mama, it’s all right

Don’t you know you gotta help

Nothing ever happens by itself

Hey lawdy mama

                          Steppenwolf, Live Steppenwolf 

Maxine— How about a rum coco? 

Shannon— No, no, I want some cold water. If I start drinking rum cocos now I won't stop drinking rum cocos. (The bus horn is heard blowing from below)

Maxine— Why doesn’t your busload of women come on up here instead of blowing that bus horn down there? 

Shannon— Let em blow it, blow it (Bus horn blows again, he sways a little) HANK! HANK! GET THEM OUT OF THE BUS AND BRING EM UP HERE, TELL EM THE RATES ARE OK.

Are they getting out of the bus or staying in it, the stingy daughters of bitches, school teachers at a Baptist female college in Blowing  Rock, Texas.

Maxine— here they come, a football squad of old maids.

Shannon—Yeah, and I’m the football.

                 a segment from Act I         

                 of The night of the Iguana            

                 Tennessee Williams

I was going to write a mini-bio on Tennessee but didn't. If you’re interested, read The Tennessee William's Sugar Bowl, here, on this blog.

Last night, in a dream, I met a girl, a grad student in Seattle on the banks of Lake Washington.

The two of us were queuing at an ATM machine—wrapped in a black cape she crouches and a sagging tit tumbles into my hand, then we're groping.  

In no time we’re transported, riding on a mist of air to the entrance of her room on the bank of Elliot Bay, an odd structure, open in the front and covered with strips of thick plastic.

Things feel witchy, I walk a patch of grass to hang my overcoat on a tree branch, and three deadheads show. I disappear into the mist I rode in on, feeling horny.

In bed at my Key West house, half-awake, half-asleep, I roll over and fuck Lucia— one of those fucks you love, a superlunary fuck, neither here nor there. 

The same morning over Jack and coffee in the kitchen she asks, 

did you fuck me this morning Querido?

Yes, I fucked you thinking it was a girl in Seattle.

Was she a good fuck? 

Yes, of course, dream fucks are the best.

Better than me Henry? 

Baby, no one is better than you, you’re my Latino sex-machine.

I’m a machine Querido? With no heart and soul? 

I adore you, darling, don’t think too much, where are we going today? 

Dog Beach, 

OK let’s clean up. 

We shower and change, choosing beachwear, Lucia picks out a lime-colored thong and wears a T on top. I wear cutoffs with a tank top that reads, 

LAZY IS A QUEER WORD 

I PREFER TO CALL IT

SELECTIVE PARTICIPATION

Come on, let’s take the Vespa, I’m too loaded to drive.

Lucia straddles the scooter, I hop on the back, at Dog Beach she parks on Vernon Ave. 

We're greeted by our friend Lazy Carlos. He slips us a joint and we grab a couple of beach chairs and a large umbrella, dragging the goods to an area between two tall coconut trees, parking ourselves there.

Lucia takes off her T, laying on her back— most of her large chest is exposed, she covers her nipples with loose bits of dried coconut husk. 

I light the joint, take a long hit and pass it to her. 

After a few hits we're tripping— the sky turns yellow, raining minnows on the shore. The little-bitty fish sprout tiny legs and crawl back into the sea. I ask Lucia,

did you see that? She answers, 

see what? 

The minnows with little legs crawling into the sea. 

No bebe, your tripping, I’ve been playing with my nipples— my pussy’s dripping wet.

I grab her hand, she pulls her top up— her nipples push thru the material as though they're sprouting.

We swim out into the surf until the seawater is at neck level. I drop my cutoffs and bone her from behind, grabbing both tits with my hands, pushing and rubbing. 

In a few minutes, seemingly longer, I blow a blistering wad inside her. As she screams as Dirk the Lifeguard blows his whistle, signaling us to come ashore. 

Dirk's jealous, he would rather be fucking my wife than playing lifeguard.

Sneezing Thru it.

 

I’ve been breezing through an issue of Gaucho Magazine, a special issue lorded over by a lady editor and poetess featuring the work of convict poets. The big-time gal comments rather harshly saying,

these men failed to rise, seemingly, above their circumstances. All they write about is wanting to get out of jail, and why they shouldn’t be there.

Her highness should try— sitting in the can for years and not getting out, not looking at the stars at night, being powerless to sneak away to a corner bar for a shot of whiskey. 

Does she know what it means to walk back and forth in the same cell no matter what you say or yell out to your keeper? Or, what's it's like to live in a cell, knowing the only way out is death or insanity?

Unless you've been to jail, you can't know what it's like.

I'm at home in bed, not in jail. Millions of men and women in the world are doing time as this story's being told.

God bless the blind poets and poetesses doing time because they can’t look up at the moon for inspiration.

God bless your computer and typewriter— they are faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I’ve been reading William S. Burrough's book Naked Lunch, and I gotta fix on how Bill writes, the process of it.

 

Old Ray Lee gets up from the sofa and walks to the rotting wood-framed window of his apartment on West 11th and 63 Street, closing the flower print curtains, then going to his desk and sitting down, relaxing, then fixing easy with a surgeon's steady hand.

William corkscrews into the land of nod, riding a magic carpet through the misty air only junkies breathe. In Naked Lunch, he writes about boys, he admires them.

A boy came in and sat at the counter in broken lines of long, sick junk-wait. The Sailor shivered. His face fuzzed out of focus in a shuddering brown mist. His hands moved on the table, reading the boy’s Braille. His eyes traced little dips and circles, following whorls of brown hair on the boy’s neck in a slow, searching movement.

Ray Lee writes selfishly in Naked Lunch, showing off, writing about opium dreams.  

Junky reads even better than Lunch, it’s Burroughs talking about the street and scoring in more concrete terms.

I've had writer's block for the past week, things are blurry. When you can't write you you feel washed up. 

TODAY'S  different, I'm typing at the speed of sound.

Last night was burning hot.

Have you met your soulmate in a dream? The Book of Dreams says soulmate dreams signal newfound love.

When soulmates have wet dreams, in a dream, and cum together. That's LOVE.

There is nothing as immaculate as a wet dream. 

Nevertheless, the American Medical Association macerates wet dreams labeling night emissions industrial diseases, reporting the following—

Some people believe that wet dreams reduce the size of the person’s penis, or can cause clitoral shrinkage. However, there is no scientific evidence for this.

There are no illnesses, conditions, or natural occurrences that will cause the male reproductive organ to shrink. 

While masturbation may reduce the number of wet dreams a person experiences, it does not guarantee a person will never experience them.

Evidence linking masturbation and wet dreams is lacking, but a person can experiment to see if it helps in their situation.

Try masturbating before bed for a week or more, followed by the same length of time without masturbating, to see if there is a difference in the frequency of wet dreams. 

Por el amor de Cristo, the American Medical Association is a gaggle of fist-fuckers.

Jack Kerouac penned Vanity of Dulouz while he worked as a cub reporter in Lowell, Massachusetts before going to Columbia University on a football scholarship.

A few decades later, during an NPR interview, he reminisced about the novel, his first, written when he was in high school.

At noon when everyone left the tacking editorial office, and I was alone, I snuck out the pages of my secret novel and continued writing it. It was the greatest fun I ever had, writing, in my life because I had just discovered James Joyce and I was imitating Ulysses, trying to write stream of consciousness. It was about the day-to-day doings of nothing in particular of Bob, me, Pater my Pa, the sportswriters on the Sun, all my buddies down at the saloons at night, the girls I went out with, and the movies I saw.

South of Lowell in Key West Florida, my Cuban wife Lucia is on a fucking spree, we're in an open relationship.

A lot of the regular women at Dog Beach have hard feelings for Dirk the lifeguard, his body's tan and laced with sinew muscle like a Kentucky Derby thoroughbred. 

It's no surprise that Lucia ran away with Dirk— the quick lovers are doin the horizontal polka at the Fountainbleau as we speak.

I could say I don’t care but I do, when we agreed to have an open marriage, I was drunk and would have agreed to anything and now I’m stuck with the deal. 

Dog Day Afternoon's on TV: Lucia looks radiant as she walks into the living room. I ask her,

how was Dirk the Lifeguard? 

I missed you Henry, doing the bolo with Dirk the Lifeguard wasn't much fun, he has body oder.

Not fun, but fun, right? So how big was his cock? 

It was just an itty bitty cock, you are hung like a burro next to him. Turn off the TV, let’s smoke marihuana in the hot tub, and hump like conejos on the patio lawn. 

While humping Lucia in the backyard I wondered— if Sal and Sonny escaped to paradise on the jet plane? Where they shot by Murphy the FBI agent? Were they sent to Riker’s Island? Did Sonny live happily ever after with his androgynous wife Maria? 

Later, in a few days, I forgot about the film and fucking Lucia.

Sometimes things you think are epoch-making at the time ain't much at all in THE END—