Early morning shuffle

By 6:30 AM, I've been awake in the late twilight hours for a little bit. I tossed and turned for a few hours, after spending the day getting sick and being hungover.
Was not expecting that from the relatively small number of drinks I had had the night before. It doesn't help when you look back and can't pinpoint that 'small number', but you know it's in the single digits.
Or at least you think it was.



The 6:33 train leaves Glenbrook station at that time. Mom said it was the one she wanted to be on. We're in the car and I gun it at 6:34, hanging an immediate left out of the apartment complex's parking lot, aimed towards Stamford. The apartment complex's name is Spruce Meadows. There are evergreens dotted around the outskirts of a patch of grass. Smooth.
    "I really wanted to be getting on the train at Glenbrook," she says.
    No shit.
I sped up, racing back roads in hopes to catch the same train further down the line. I zigzag past the high school and down dark roads where ghostly figures in boots and jackets grumble to themselves, scraping the ice from their car windows.
In my head, I'm humming the intro jam to the Blues Brothers. Like this...



She's talking about how we 'wasted our Sundays' being all curled up in fetal positions underneath piles of blankets. She swears she still has a headache. And that she only had three glasses of wine.
I tell her how it wasn't until Sunday morning that I found myself hunched over the toilet bowl, yelling the name of a large-horned, furry bovine. Yaaaaaaaak!



I peel through downtown, get lucky and catch the majority of the green lights.



By 6:42, I pull up to the corner across from the train station. She tells me she's worried about getting in a 'cash expense report' from November. I find myself wishing that I had enough cash that my spending need be catalogued in an 'expense report'. Alas.



"Good bye," she says.
"Love you," I say.



As Mom jogs across the street, I turn the talk radio on and light a cigarette. The air is cold enough to bite the skin off my face. I only roll the window down enough to flick ash through it.
The radio plays a song by Adelle about a lost lover who settles down with another woman. Seemingly content. She sings about how her feelings have never died, how 'for her, it's not over', etc.
I can relate.



Nearly three years ago, I received a phone call. The conclusion of this call left me with a broken heart and an even shittier outlook on where my life was going. I proceeded to drink myself retarded for the next couple of months.
The trouble with Facebook is, even after you've taken the necessary measures in the real world, ending a relationship doesn't mean that you no longer see what the other's up to. I remember a status she posted about how 'She hates all men, and she was glad they were teaching groin kicks in krav maga class that day.'



Excuse me? You left me. Never forget that little fact. I was in love, still in love, and I'm the one who gets left behind. Then I need to see posts about how I'm evil? No, thank you, ma'am.



Several months after the break up, I was walking along a road in Virginia with two friends on the way to a bar. I was still twenty at the time. She called, asking if 'I had time to talk'. My friends saw the look on my face. The sound of her voice, like it was breaking my heart all over again.



I said I was busy. She asked me to call her back.



I did two months later. "Are you kidding me?!" she asks. Then she hangs up.



I guess I am an evil man. The devil. A horrible person only deserving of horrible things.



But in the end, I find solace in the fact that I never strayed from the path my heart has set out for me.



Of course everything will always be my fault in your eyes, and maybe in mine as well. But I want the world to know that you were not without faults of your own.
I want them to know that for nine long-distanced months, I loved a hellkite. An intellectual firecat.
And I always will.
Steps and bounds beyond the silly regrets of high school relationships, where I was used to alleviate virginities when asked to and then discarded when I became attached, there will always be this relationship.
Little over three years ago, I was engaged. I asked the woman I loved to marry me, and she said yes. My feet would never have hit the ground again, had it not been for that fucking phone call.



As I'm seeing it all now, in these still moments before sunrise, it's probably all for the best.



I'm nobody's white knight, but my conscience is clear. Save for the indiscretions of a certain evening involving far too much alcohol and way too many hugs for strangers, but that's another story altogether.



That's it. Now my love is for the redhead on my left, and she actually appreciates it. She appreciates me.

Bananarama.

Yes.
Never gets old. 
Sometimes I just need this. 

Year of Plenty.... (work in progress)

      Father died in the long Fall of 2011 from rectal adenocarcinoma. Which is to say that the pain in my ass had died from just that. The coincidence had me crying with laughter.

      I couldn't help myself at his funeral, happily sloshed and feeling giddy, from bursting out with laughs at the mention of what a "great man" Leopold Artemis Brokenshire Jr., Esq. was; what a fantastic life he had lead.

      I laughed in all their faces.

      Had they spent just a day in my shoes, under the constant abuse- both verbal and physical- they would have been celebrating along next to me. This was the same abuse that chased my Mom to a quiet closet on the third floor, in one of the innumerable guest rooms where no one ever stayed, with a pair of bottles. The first was an '02 Paloma Merlot. The other was a recently filled orange-plastic, prescription bottle: 7.5 mg Vicodins. I found her days later, after the police had been there to question Father and me about her disappearance, her face swollen in cobalt and violet star bursts. Her tongue and lips were still wine-stained. That was five years ago. I had just turned seventeen half as many days before. The coroner said it was a clear-cut suicide. Though, "why the esteemed actress-turned-billionaire's-wife would want to kill herself" was an absolute mystery to masses. I left for college two months later. There was no interest left there for me. Once, I had wanted to follow in Father's footsteps, take the reins of Brokenshire LLC. over from him, as he had from his father, the famous oil tycoon of the same name. I've studied History, Business, Art, Engineering, Music, Physics (both Theoretical and otherwise), Psychology, Bio, Chem., English. You name it, I've had some sorrowfully old, disgruntled professor show me the rudiments.

       These are the same professors who long ago lost their passion for molding young minds and now skate through life, babbling nonsense, living comfortable lives with their tenured minds.

       So, I found myself one final away from attaining my third degree in whatever, when my father died.

       I never went back.

       Now, I'm not a fool; I've had my schooling (as just mentioned), but I've never quite found my niche. In all honesty, the only classes I had ever enjoyed were those on the subject of Philosophy. Historically speaking, the stories we [humans] make up in our mind to get us through the day-to-day struggle of existence astonished me. Greek and Roman gods, Daoists, Shiites, Hindus, even the God(s)-damned Pastafarians had their own story. I never knew what to make of it. I'd like to say I'm an Agnostic, if only because I'm hoping that this isn't it. That this sad, lonely life of mine isn't the only series of experiences I'll encounter before there's no "me" left.

       My name is Leopold Artemis Brokenshire the third. If I had friends, I'd ask that they call me Leo. Or Art. Or Arty. Or Labs McGee. I'm twenty three years old, and life confuses me.

       And I know that there are those of you scoffing at the existential diarrhea that has enveloped my every thought.

       "Oh, he's out 'to find himself'. He could hire a thousand thousand professionals for that. Unhappy with all that money? Snobby little shit."

       And so on.

       I've got two words for those of you out there who think that somehow emotional suffering only applies to the poor: Fuck Off.

       It's true, as sole heir, I inherited the lot of it. All told, that's $19,875,982,417.82-- give or take a million or so. Nearly twenty billion dollars. What's a man to do?

       I had a bonfire. Beyond the lagoon-style wave pool, with pink granite waterfall, past the award-winning rose bushes my Mom had been so fond of, I lit a pyre for Father. The stern, always-smirking portrait he had commissioned of himself, the twelve-piece, cream colored Italian leather sofa sectionals, the red oak China cabinet that had passed down two generations already. Pictures, trinkets, jewelry, clothing. Anything I found, that even faintly reminded me of Father in my whirling purge of the homefront, went into the pile. At the pile's heart rested the '56 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith. I fed the end of an Egyptian-silk bedsheet into the gas tank. I didn't care. When the pile reached a monstrous size, after I had sent the myriad of maids and cooks and butlers and gardeners all back to their quarters, I doused the edges with a tank of gas. I sang and frolicked. Jumped and shouted. Then I lit the mess and scoured the emerald green lawn with a blaze that could be seen for miles. The grass would never grow back.

       The next day, I collected my passport and packed a knapsack full of clothes, a toothbrush, four pairs of socks, a picture of Mom, a carton of Kamel reds, and an empty, leather-bound journal. My first stop was the lawyers. He spoke in grossly patronizing tones, as though sounding out the words slowly would somehow convey their definition to me. I signed some papers transferring all of the money into a single account in my name with a worldwide bank. Banking ideas like "interest" never made sense to me. Where is that money coming from?

       From there, I gave the lawyer strict instructions to wait by his phone. I was planning a trip around the world. I would need access to some funds, of course, but I assured him I was planning to travel on the cheap. I remember the quizzical smirk he had adopted there in his office. As I stood to leave, he rose as well.

       "Mister Brokenshire," he smirked as we shook hands. There was a grating tone to the word 'mister'. As I turned to leave, I flipped him the bird.

       "You'll be hearing from me soon, asshole." I slammed the door behind me.

    

       The previous night, after the glorious bonfire of my Father's former possessions, I had an epiphany. As previously stated, I had never found 'my niche'. I had never discovered a skill or talent and thought to myself "This is what I need to do for the rest of my life". I know other people have and more power to them. I had met plenty of students at University who were digging themselves into lifelong holes by getting loans for their schooling. I saw what it was like to live well below what could be deemed as a comfortable means. But I was utterly jealous of these peers of mine. They may not have had the funding, but they had vision for their life, something I lacked. Funding, however, was not something I ever needed worry about again.

       I set out to discover those trapped by the banking systems. To locate the masses trapped behind counters and in cubicles. Free them from their confines built from the paper-capatilist system we all found ourselves dealing with. These artists, musicians, writers, engineers, inventors, and all in between. This would be my niche. I'd work with financial advisors and get them started. With my money and their talents, we all could have find the love for life that we had been missing. Everyone deserves years of plenty, and I'm going to provide it.

         One at a time.

Bad dream...

           I will never understand the necessity of dreams. I understand how a dream is created in the mind, but it's those same dreams that scare me out of sleeping some nights.

I gather that every face, every location, everything in a dream is extrapolated from a lifetime of memories. It all jumbles together until you're unable to recognize anything. Faces of loved ones are misshapen and constantly shifting in the dream world. But my lack of recognition is not what frightens me. It's how I act in these dreams. There's a monster in my subconscious, and it's name is Andrew.

Scene:

           Me walking alone down the middle of a street. Decrepit houses line both sides of the road in clumped masses. The street may be sloping downhill whilst simultaneously climbing to a peak. It may have been mid afternoon or dusk. I have a smile on my face and I pause to light a cigarette. I pass by a group of guys lounging on the front lawn of one house. I can feel the cold stares I'm receiving from them as they all go silent. I'm twenty feet away when the youngest is sent stalking after me. Since this was my dream, I knew where he was; I knew he was following me. I knew this was his initiation into the "sit-in-the-front-yard-on-these-ratty-old-sofas" gang.

        He broke from is stalk into a jog and yelled, "Hey!" I wheel around and the kid approaches me, his brow wrinkled in fury. He can't be older than fourteen. He's reaching across his body with his right hand. It disappears under his shirt and reappears moments later with glinting steel. Down the side of the gun barrel are the stenciled symbols: Colt Auto .45 . "Give me your money," he says.

        I'm broke, I tell him. He cocks the hammer, which I've always found to be a silly action on a semi-automatic pistol.

       "Give me your fucking money," he growls again. He's inching closer. I open my palms outward towards him briefly in the international sign for please don't fucking shoot me in the face. I have no money. That's the honest truth. In my dream, I recall having just spent quarters all counted out in stacks of four to pay for the pack of smokes in my pocket. That, my zippo, cellphone, and my empty wallet are the only things I'm carrying.

      I don't have any money, I insist. He's livid now. Does he think all white people are walkin' around with stacks of bills in their front pockets? He's within arms length from me, the pistol twitching at the end of a scrawny limb. I know he's about to shoot me. His fingers dance on the grip and he resettles his trigger finger. 

      That's when I make my move.

      I slap the gun with my left hand in an inside-to-outside movement, clutching around the cold barrel, and making sure it's pointed at the empty street behind me. There's a nerve cluster right below the elbow joint on the inside of the forearm. It helps control your ability to make a fist (try it now... make a fist and feel the muscles contract in your arm). That's where I hit him with my right, chopping my hand into his arm. Unable to keep a grip on the gun, his face contorts and he yells. I smash the pistol into his young face, see the spew of blood from his nose. His "friends" are rousing from their resting places like slinking cats. I know the 1911 holds seven rounds. Excluding the whimpering, bleeding child at my feet, there's six of his gang about forty paces away. One scrambles for his weapon, and I shoot him dead from a single shot. I pick them off one by one, as they spray wildly into the street. Asphalt chips and the metallic pang of parked cars fills the air. One stray round catches a tire, which deflates almost immediately. I drop to a knee and make two more kills. There are two rounds left in the gun, and only one of the gang is still standing. Gun smoke and vibrations whirl and bounce off the houses. The last one is sighting his pistol on me. I shoot faster, taking off three fingers of the hand gripping the pistol. The round touches off the dormant rounds still inside his clip and a concussive blast knocks him flat. There's one round left.

       I clear the chamber. Hold the single round with its hollowed tip up to the streetlight. The child at my feet is whimpering. I dismantle the pistol and gently place the round in front of him. I turn and start walking, reaching in my pocket for my cellphone. Before I wake up, I've reached '911' and explained to them what just happened.

       There was an attempted mugging, and I protected myself, I state clearly in the receiver, I'll wait for police to arrive and give them my story. Send the Coroner.

       I squat down by the child and he looks up at me with his broken face, tears streaming down his cheeks.

       "Why?" I ask.

       And then I wake up...

      Needless to say, my dream-self scares me sometimes. This is one of those times. 

Time time time time time....

We're all a slave to it. We're all wasting away seconds, minutes, hours and days at a time. In college, I always joked with friends that I was getting them a box of time for Christmas or their birthday. A box full of free time. Free from responsibility or consequence.

I think it all boils down to the fact that I wish there were real Hyperbolic Time Chambers. I'm a huge nerd. Dragon Ball Z had it right. 

What would you do with a year of free time that would pass as a day in the outside world? That's right, I'd go Super Saiyin, too.

That book you've always wanted to write, the artwork you never produced, those sit ups that just never happened. It would be epic. Change your whole body, rearrange your thoughts. Come out 24 hours later a new and better version of your past self. Maybe with a little bit of that horrible loneliness factor, but it'd be easy with the buddy system. If you're not alone, it may be easier to survive the year. That'd be an amazing experience. Who would you bring? What would you do?

Then consider: all the time of the day we all spend mindlessly droning over profile pics and status updates. The hours spent half-laughing at memes on reddit whilst complaining that there's not enough time in the day. Make the time. If something's important to you, then just fuckin' do it. I need to write. That's right, need. I've opened up these floodgates, and now my day doesn't feel complete without getting some grouping of words down. Maybe it'll make you consider your own lives, maybe it's just helping me through my own issues. Maybe it's still all futile. I don't want to be selling ebooks. Let's stop chopping down trees for paper. I vow to print anything I get published in the future on hemp paper. Grow magical hemp and help save the world. Silly, silly governments. The world would be a much better place if there was mandatory cannabis intake. We'd be docile and friendlier. Yes, we'd be unlikely to support unfounded evidence involving a mass takeover of distant lands of this planet, but everyone would be happier. Even you.

Toke up, take a look inside and reacquaint yourself with yourself. It's time we took those misspent hours of the day and started putting them towards the actual goals we wish to accomplish. Life's flying by, and if you don't move right along with it, you'll be left in the dust, wracked with solemnity and regret. Get over your qualms and just create your deepest desires.

Create. Create. Create.

The Grudge...

    I'm reading this. I've been rocking out two or three books every week for the past couple of months. I figured that the best way to see what's worked in the past as far as story telling and writing is concerned is to emerse myself in the works of others. I haven't done any writing that I would consider a step toward attaining my goal of Storyteller Extraordinaire in many moons. Just recently started this blog, but none of this means anything to me. I ramble on about personal issues with just enough vagueness to make sure that no one knows what the hell I'm talking about unless they happen to be me. Not really an effective way to draw in your reader, verdad?

    Soon to come on this blog will be my own fiction. My words telling stories that I can't excise from my brain. I just play them on repeat, constantly changing events and characters in this story, and nothing of value has been completed. Over the summer I rocked out about 75 pages of writing that I think will either be scrapped altogether or greatly shortened and abused when the editing process comes about. We'll see.

     Vonnegut said in Timequake that there are two types of authors: one whose name I can't remember and bashers. Bashers write word by word, making sure they have it perfect the first time. Constantly editing and re-editing even before the work is completed. This is how I feel. He also said that all male writers have attractive wives. I like that concept. I definitely agree with it. Looking back on my past relationships, I've done far better for myself than my physical looks would have given credit for. I don't consider myself a handsome man, but I know I have my moments and my nice features. Off topic, but in any case, all those exes, they'd make a wonderful calendar spread of the female form. We'll just call it, "Yup, I did."

     Reed Farrell Coleman is a mystery fiction writer. He came to speak to my Creative Writing class once and dropped a bomb. He said, "As a writer, he feels a horrible disconnect from the world, as though he's a miniature version of himself, sitting on his shoulders and peering out at the world." So, in that sense, then is he saying that an author has a more difficult time connecting with the outside world. That statement has haunted me for months now. 

     Because it's how I've felt my whole life. It makes me feel like a liar or a fraud, like I'm just floating through life telling everyone what they want to hear and showing them that I can be the person they want, etc. How often do I lie? I would say only when someone else's feelings are concerned and I consider that I wouldn't want to be hurting said feelings. Unless I hate you. We're just not speaking at that point. If I give you the courtesy of actually speaking with you, chances are I think you're pretty fucking awesome. May sound a little self-obsessed, and I won't deny that, but WE ALL ARE. I understand the need to make connections throughout our life, that it's the normal state of things, but the fact of the matter is that no one really can get into someone else's mind and experience life the way they do. We may talk and laugh and share our jokes, but at the end of the day, I'm alone only with my thoughts even whilst laying next to the one I love. It is the Human Condition, I believe, to strive toward attaining these connections, but knowing deep down that no matter how many friends you have or people you're friendly with, when you go home at night, when you step outside for some fresh air, you are alone. All concerned about our own experiences and our bank accounts and where dinner's going to be coming from. I strive to be alone together with some people. We all see the world differently, and that's the difficult aspect of writing for an audience. I don't know how you think. Shall I just cram my thought processes down your throat?

      Probably.

       I recently broke up with a friend. I use the term 'friend' loosely. He was/is/will always be a douche. It's part of his geneology. We shared some decent times. We did drugs together, hung out, argued a lot. I felt like a different person whenever he was around. He fancies himself Barney from How I Met Your Mother. If I were Jason Segel or whateverthefuckhisnameis who plays Ted Mosby, I woulda cut those ties long ago. It feels good, like some 200-some-odd lb. weight has been dropped from my shoulders. His arogance may have been mitigated if only he had some accomplishments in life that weren't displayed on Xbox Live. Greasy fuck. He took a public speaking course, and I believe that was just about the downfall of our friendship. Everything became a debate after that. And then when you say, "I don't feel like arguing about this." He would counter that statement by arguing that he wasn't arguing. I may not have been in many fights in my life, but there's just some people you know that just deserve a memorable thrashing. They need to feel the hot sting of tears mixing with blood. Their own. Feel the cold concrete and hear my footsteps march away. Enjoy your life, I'm no longer part of it. 

      Now, isn't having friends fun?! Sweet jesus, don't ever let me become that dilluted that I need the company of such an arrogant sociopath.

      The point I was trying to make? Oh, right.

      We are all just a little bit like this annoying friend of mine. The only good thing is that there's common decency, of which I am not lacking. I enjoy hearing about everyone else's day and their experiences. I don't feel the need to "one-up" them at every turn-- constantly perpetuating the "I'm better than you" feelings that bounce around in my delusional skull. The last thing he said to me was that "we'd eventually run into one and other. That no matter whether or not I had decided that I didn't want to speak to him anymore that we'd still see each other on the regular." I've seen him once at a party he wasn't invited to, and barely made eye contact with him, let alone respond when he came shuffling up, patted me on the arm and said "What's up?". I walked out of the party and didn't look back.

      The last thing I said to him in response to his last message was this: No, you won't. That's the point.

      And I feel liberated.

     Crisis averted.