Behemoth702
09-28-2011, 05:46 AM
Hi all,
Month long lurker, first time poster. Not sure how this will be received although any feedback would be very much appreciated. In passing, I would also like to convey how much I have enjoyed this forum since my stumbling upon it and hope to become a worthwhile member of its community.
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A God in Chains
1
Deliberate, calm and arrogant, the timbre of his voice barely reaching above decibels heard even by dogs, themselves. Half way through the process of losing another job and moving to ****tier pastures, I blanked out. I am very sure he will soon finish. Peppering my answers convincingly with yeahs and you knows, sounding like a bad episode of Maury. Feeling my fingers begin to move over one another slowly starting a game of rhythmic motions, his stiff unapologetic grasp shakes me back to reality. His words cascade splashing relentlessly engulfing my eardrums, "...and this is why I have to let youuuuuuuuuu." His words trail off, up and out of my seat before the magic word relieves me of my duties here; I reach for the knob and in classic American fashion, "Shut the **** up."
Hopelessly, the drive home went well. I really tried to swerve the car a few times, but to no avail. I can honestly say now that I can relate with the emotion many felt when the trains finally stopped at Auschwitz. As the door begins its long march towards the frame, the first of many f-bombs drop clearing out the living room. Scattering images of rot, my balls, a vice, innocent balls in that vice, me connected to those balls locked in that vice rotting. I am not sure what her first words were, but I am quite sure it started as I said aloud for all the world to hear. "Hey...Hey babe..." no answer, nervousness cloudy, flies so huge and thick, "Hey Babe, I was fired!" Like an old reliable Swiss watch I cannot afford, she quips back with her tired and true, "You lousy piece of ****." Man..., I have heard that 'you lousy sack' line for now, what is it, 14th, no it was...oh the 12th...August. A beautifully cliched four years. She is what she is, I am what I am, and shoe leather always needs a buckle. It is the only thing I am truly good at. Falling to the wayside under the heavy feet of important 'soles.'
2
Do you ever sit in a room by yourself and figuratively beat the **** out of yourself? Maybe this is my problem, I am too introspective, I understand my problems and I have identified their roots. Huh...how do I say this? Well this is better than any, so I'll just throw it out there and you draw up the picture. I am the root of all my issues, while all those others who play bit parts in the longest running reality series in my opinion, are mere branches and leaves. Only if my life were a ****ing cudgel, I would have stripped the leaves and bark away pulverizing it all to mulch. Giving credence to and nutrients in growing my very own garden. Exploring like a roach furrowing through the grossest fattest corpse you can imagine, I hit the darkest parts of my being. Playing in scenarios, bold, so lifelike, a bloody drenched exquistion of sexual promiscuity driven through humiliation, positions of power so overwhelmingly intoxicating. Veins beat hard, fast, the body's guitar strings wail and jump. Power shakes the body; the devil shakes the hand of power. I cannot imagine the ferocity with which control, control of everything hits you. Do you feel it; can you tell you have it? Or does it e-mail you? When you have no control, no control even over yourself, I can let you know from experience, you feel it. And it hurts.
3
The essence of power however lies in the fact that freedom can only breathe, thusly, only exist in power's gracious hands. Those hands as well can only be the hands of a magnamic and courageous god. Aww, the crux of the matter now raises and rears its ugly ****ing head in our direction. But who is god? What is a god? If such a being does then truly exist, is it our right to know? It is in seeking that one shall find truth. Once the truth is found, can then plans be laid for such a bold ascendance. Maybe I should back this **** up a little further for some of you out there. Not everyone here reading this will just understand what it is that happened nor happened to me through this long arduous, painfully deep discovery. I discovered love, but most importantly I, and only I discovered the most elusive, freedom. For when I found poor freedom, I first ran up its steps, down great halls filled with monuments to those that tried and failed to find my good friend freedom. But it was in the very last room unattached from the rest of the building, copious and dingy. Poor freedom had fallen into disrepute from lack of use and heaps of wanton abuse. It was in that room, four barren scarred walls opened to me like a dream and there in the middle of the room lay a blanket. Wrapped in the warmth of freedom, I tired and within a yawn, the fire within was smoldered.
"The eyes of this man opened as a boy, before the sky azure to the once great sun and at the end of his long travels this boy closed his eyes an old and dying man." With a gentle sigh expelled, the lights burned out, “Sleep well, son.
...
So many contradictions yes, but what is life without the constant struggle of one's very soul. The very art of being human is the act of maintaining composure, orientating oneself with control or some semblance of it, at least. What can hold freedom to power, when in most instances we believe it is the force of one or the other, which destroys its very commingling? Something magnamic?, something courageous?, are they not also at the very same instance absolute evil, absolutely vile? I guess you could describe the problem closely to a Jewish guard working for the Nazis. Or as one of my favorite songs goes:
See the devil kiss the hand of god
See the devil crying tears of flame
See the devil bite the hand of Christ
And know the devil is the work of god [Danzig]
This is the story with which I will lay at your feet, you may judge me or not. I on other hand do not care what it is you do. I only wish to open up the cage of my mind and let you all in too see the beauty and horror for which I am made. Believe me when I say this, if Andy ****ing Warhol can be called an artist, I can be called a god.
4
The day is bright, hot and arid. Blood boils beneath the skin in a convent of heartfelt emotion. Staring into the oblique possibilities of frustration, I move towards the opening in the corridor. Light breaks the darkness, flickers fast, uncontrollably.
"Get up...get up now you lazy bastard."
Eyes open, it was just a dream. What it was I really cannot be sure, where was I going? What was I doing?
"Are you seriously going to lie there all ****in’ day? Huh?"
Wiping the **** out of my eyes, scratch my sack, I dutifully reply, albeit stubbornly, "Fine, I'll ****ing get up...alright...Hey, where are you going baby? Baby? ...Hey!"
"No, the question is where are you going? You better find a goddamn job today." She puts her hands on her hips, a demeaning scowl hits me dead, "It's been nearly two weeks since you were fired, the rent isn't going to pay itself..." A look of wanting, waiting, half expecting an answer; what the hell does she want me to say, what good would it do. I'll just do what she wants me to do, as always she wins out over me. "Well...see you never have anything to add, you’re such a faggot! Find a job, or maybe I just might find a real man."
**** you, yeah **** you. That's right ***** I told you to **** off. Find a real man? Any other man with half a testicle would have laid her *** out, but here I am again squirming under her thumb. The pet project of some laboratory, I'm Odo to her Mora. But, she is right. A job is just what I need; the kids can't be put through this, not again. Plus I can't stay another minute in this ****ing house with her; I'll end up killing her.
5
Its twenty past twelve, an interview later, I’m hungry for death but no one is serving. God how I hate the dehumanizing experience of being interrogated by some halfwit son-of-a-*****, dull-eyed corporate ****ing stooge. I sit back and wonder whether or not it’s even necessary to breath, I feel like I am going to combust. Essence, facticity, being-in-itself, being-for-itself, could it be that I am the existential nightmare. Wake up Sartre, I have a ****ing tie for you to put on. The ongoing process driven towards self-valuation strikes me hard and unpleasant, every glance, every innuendo whether real or imaginary; every set of eyes passing by plunges me into a chaotic paranoid downward spiral. How I wish to destroy so much of what the world has become, yet I cannot rip myself away from the comfort and destitution that has engulfed me. Feelings of inadequacies overshadow any sense of belonging, they smash the pieces of humanity that bring you closer to the fabric that make up the family that is man.
“Miss…” She walks completely passed me, I know I am not a very assertive individual; but for **** sake, I am not invisible. “Miss…yeah you. I would like to order now, please.” In her blue grease covered outfit coupled with Payless shoes and a white, well used to be white apron she plaintively goes about her business. I really am getting mad however, I stay calm like a Buddhist monk. A moment passes; she finally comes by leaning cockeyed to her left her weight shifted on her right hand to hip, in what could be termed the half-akimbo bimbo position, “Hun, just to let ya know from now on, I don’t go by yeah you, alright?” This woman must be a ****ing comedian, here I am waiting for this ****ty meal, listening to trivial banalities on the television about Britney Spears’ roast beef sandwich and this woman gets mad about, “yeah you,” you have to be ****ing kidding me. God Britney’s ***** looks disgusting. “Well, I'm sorry, but I have been waiting patiently for now more than twenty or so minutes. I would just like to have some food, if that would not be too much of a problem for you?" Her eyes, her whole face fades from decency to outright insincere delightfulness, she really knows how to pile the bull**** on thick. Her smile reaches from wall to wall, teeth clenched, “What is it that you would like to feast upon today…” gathering all her sarcasm together mixing heavily with anger she finally blurts out, “sir?” Every ounce of strength, of pure will its taking for me not to get up and pulverize her dull empty face. Afterwards, I stand over her, unzip my pants and pull my dick out to urinate all over her pathetic lifeless body. However, as usual I regained my composure, an infallible sense to reinvigorate my humanity. Simply put, I swallowed my pride at being mockingly disrespected, as always.
Emptiness a revelation in thought, the stark truth staring you in the face intrepidly, grandstanding before you as if to say, “I told you so. I told you that you were nothing more than fraught less haphazard bum without any inclination towards prosperity, you have no ambition, no sense of reward, no interests; you have nothing, but the television. You’re a loser.” What is it that I can say to the emptiness, can I really point out anything of difference; most days I sit couch locked zoned out wrapped within the plastic universe of the media. Replacing real human emotional connection with super fanciful intrigue, the whorish personalities of morons who stake their very being for fifteen minutes of fame. “Do you love New York?” the television asks, responding half conscious, half-dead, “I do, I most definitely do love New York.”
I believe it; I believe it very much so when people say prison is a state of mind. It can be the one entity closing in on you when supposedly the whole world seemingly looks so very open. The mind can turn into your enemy, playing tricks on you every chance it receives, turning the four walls of any room into a dark and desolate dungeon, no need for solitary confinement within the cavity of the cranium. The quizzical riddle, the joker in the deck laughing; that bastard, with his punch line smacking like a right hook out of left field. A putrid being you become, a slothful doe-eyed masochist, you begin to lose all sight of life and whatever it means to be human, you smell, you eat, **** and breathe heavy from the weight you have gained; god double-deckered me from birth.
6
Another week has passed and still I have had no opportunities to look forward to, nothing but failure and rejection. My heart tires of this, my wife tires of me. The kinetic energy of a world mired in superficialities superimposes its will upon me, exerting every effort to mold my soul into a block of ice infused with molten rock. Unless I can maintain stability in their neat little world I will surely melt away, unleashing the burning fire inside, just wishing to be let loose. Pure un-adulterated animal instinct, a chorus of pandemonium singing songs of rage. Every human being has the urge to hunt, every human being. What the hunt maybe is anyone’s guess, for every instance that there is light there is also the darkness of a man’s shadow. The pall which light cast down upon all, which it touches with its warmth. As I have stated before, as I will always state, if there is a god, if, god is not and cannot be perfect; the world he created in his image was more or less a gamble on whether or not order can be made of anarchy. Order is not something man can even grasp let alone create from scratch; I feel as if death is knocking at the door, all we need do is answer.
You may feel that I have exacerbated my position in this fruitless endeavor we call life, or the ideas which I entertain in this demented head of mine, but if I may so myself I feel at times like Krillov. A man desperate, mad with the knowledge burning deep inside his soul, or whatever it is we call the soul. Its tearing away at the mortal flesh, wishing, to have its day in the sun. To expose the fraud we call existence, the rationale that everything we see is precious and worth its breath; that life, most importantly human life is anything but just the work of eons of natural selection, the evolution of a simple beast into to a cold calculated murderer. Prometheus may have had his fire, the caveman may have had his wheel, what worth would any of those objects have without the glory of an others blood. Every move in history like in the gentlemen’s game of chess has its cost, obviously some higher than others; it is the way life works. However, man has become arrogant, he now seeks to save the world from destruction, who are we to believe that we can save the world, when we cannot even save ourselves. Righteous do-gooders and corrupt wishy-washy politicians make it their job to enforce laws and to create an atmosphere where the weak are not just protected but it has become the norm. The weak continue to grow in mass amounts, no longer do the sick and weak willed pass and fall by the way side. No, they are the *******s in power now, the maggots in front of you at the DMV, the bastard who continuously ****s up your order at taco bell. Only if we were to strip away every pathetic pedagogical law that smacks of a brazen self-loathing for knowledge and thus life itself, it most certainly would be a joyous day. But, so long as the leaders and the maggots that elect them continue to inscribe on the banner of weakened humanity the slogan, “Long live the Cro-Magnons,” we might as well blow out the ****ing candle now and get to the final stages of resurrecting Christ for the Armageddon. I challenge you god, to flood this world, to bury this planet beneath a wave of water higher than Everest, you can do much better than forty days and nights; man could have done much better than what they wrote when they strung you together, lousy ****ing bastard. I knew you wouldn’t do anything. Nothing at all! Perhpas I am having a bad day.
7
“To tell you the truth,” scrambling through the mess on his desk, “umm…I’m sorry I don’t usually do this, what was your name again?” I cannot ****ing believe this goddamn guy, he’s about to tell me that, “no, you’re not getting the job,” and the mother ****er cannot even remember my name; god how I have fallen, is there no getting up from this; have I kissed death’s lips? **** this when in doubt just go for it, I can’t believe I am actually going in for this, it surely is a sign of blatant weakness, a weakness on my part I cannot afford to hide. So pluck up the courage and say your name, have pride and then bribe him for the ****ing job. Looking as somber and as meek as humanly possible, I answer this cravenly stupid man, “Hey, it happens right, you’re a busy man. You probably see hundreds of applicants a week, huh? But, anyways the name was Joseph, I know, I know it’s…sometimes hard to remember.” Here, I am again rambling like a ****ing rain man, yeah it’s definitely eighty-six, yeah eighty-six. “Well, Joseph,” his words spoken weirdly, almost delicately, sounding out my name; kind of funny how people want to hurt your feelings, but they wish to do it in the most polite manner possible, what ****ing scared *******s they must be, to cower so deeply in oneself from any trace of guilt. “It doesn’t seem that I have room for a man who needs to be trained in the aspects of the job at this point in time. I’m sort of looking for a guy who can just walk in and be a team player, a motivator; I really do hope you understand…I mean if a position does open up in the near future I still have your number, so maybe I’ll get a hold of ya, you know.”
‘You know!’ **** ‘you know,’ the Maury Povich colloquialism of our times, what a tragedy that has come to men who bring nothing more to the table other than false freedom mired in the clothing of a streetwalker, a freedom that knows nothing of real power. Something alien to the thoughts of these poor individuals, like this fellow, how beguiling it all is that the tapestry is crumbling to dust and not one person dares help to impede it. I truly do pity them all, I really do; whether you believe me is of no significant importance although. I know for certain that this man will take what I give him, I see it like a mirror reflecting back out towards me, showing me the character of a coward, a company man, the dreaded ‘yes man.’ Looking him directly in the eye I muster all my courage, a courage deep within I always pray reflect outwardly though never responds somehow pours fourth, as if I had drug it kicking and screaming from where ever it had been concealed. I say indignantly, confidently, “Look here, you’re going to give me the job and for your trouble I’m going to give you my first weeks check.” What courage confidently displayed. “I need the job. I know I will do everything in my ability to pull around and hone my skills to be as professional as any other man you have working here, just give me the chance. That’s all I ask of you.”
Fidgeting a bit in his chair, he hesitates, is this real he must be thinking, pursing his lips, he doesn’t wish to look me in the eyes; no matter really, just answer yes, **** ethics and the man you were going to hire. He’s not going to give you his first paycheck as reward for hiring him, no, is he, is he? His brow twitches ever so slightly, finally rising his eyes toward mine, he peers deep into me; you’re not going to find it here my friend. I can only lie to reassure you that you are doing the right thing, ****ing people with all their petty morals, ethics, and religious ideals; so many fetters that impede the dark and dirty road to truth and progress. Well, here it goes like no other, I might not have another chance like this again; well, maybe not this week. “Hey, if you don’t like the deal, I can leave.” I poise myself to stand up and turn towards the door, he motions quickly that it’s all right, I can stay. The company man does have a heart and a soul of his own, he realizes that he can breath, eat and **** without the permission of the founders, how scary it must be for him to finally grow a spine. Slowly he doles out his words, probably picking them out carefully as not to incriminate himself if I were to be an agent provocateur of the company, “What you bring up…it is Joseph, right? Of course it is. What you bring up is very interesting however, it is also an action, which can cause me to lose my job. What reassurances do I have that you do not already work for the company as security, as well as what reassurances do I have that if I do hire you, that you will not use this to exploit some type of an advantage over me? You know, many different questions come to mind when taking such an offer in mind. Normally when it comes to taking free money, I’d be all for it; you won’t find a man alive who would turn down free money or free pussy, it just doesn’t happen, but I think you can see my point quite clearly, JOSEPH.” Shaking my head in agreement I lean forward, quite positively, as straight forward as any stranger can be to another stranger, “What is it that you want me to tell you? I’m not a part of security and I am quite sure I’m not here to extort you. I just need a job at the very moment; it is of extreme importance to me, as well as to my family that I walk away with a job sometime in the near future. I still have time to pull myself out of the grave that I have dug myself in the last couple of months. I mean, you can understand my position, any man can understand the undeniable feelings of guilt he must feel in not being able to provide for his family. That whole hunter-gather tribe type of thing between men and women of the old school order, I guess I’m a fifties man.”
Grabbing a few indiscriminate papers from his desk I couldn’t quite make out, he slowly wads them up, possibly destroying the futures of other men who may as well be in my very same predicament; only difference being they didn’t have the balls nor the brains to bribe their way into the job, it’s sort of like graft, I suppose in reverse. His eyes turn towards mine, a slight nod of the head, “You have the job, come back in the morning at five-thirty; do not be late, I cannot stand a man who is not punctual. Plus, I will have that money in my hands no later than Saturday; a full check, a full workweek check. Your first week will be short by sixteen hours, I want those sixteen hours you understand me.” I nod in the affirmative. “Also, you will not, I cannot stress this enough, you will not have any special privileges, I will treat you just like every other piece that works here. I will not allow you to **** up what I have here, I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear. Now get out of my office, Joseph…” half way out the door he stops me for that special moment, a sign to show that he’s still a person imbued with an affable heart loaded with sincere pleasantries, “Joseph, have good day.”
8
Upon returning home, I received a hero’s welcome, my wife running up with half a smile, she is more than exuberant I know. She just doesn’t wish to show it so dramatically, she always holds her jovial feelings close by, tight and to the chest; the kids however, beamed with joyous enthusiasm. These are the only moments in this life I find worth living at all, to see the shine of unabated happiness in the eyes of my children. They have no idea what it is to live and breathe yet in the real world, a world uncaring in the sense that it does not allow for actual triumph, that does not allow the soul of ones being to spread out across great plains and engulf the whole spectrum of its horizon. They will however, eventually learn to live with the failure they will surely become, but until then I’ll just sit back and laugh in the presence of such gaiety. After listening to the stories of the day, the, how she did this to me, he did this, followed by all the asking, simple wanton begging for material objects that kids usually do; we put them to sleep. I had not up until this time told my wife how it is I came to receive the position I had received. At this moment I really do not know how she is going to take it, I mean, what else could I do; she shouldn’t be so upset with me. What else would she have, should I go another few weeks without a job, go another few weeks looking rejection in the eyes?
Walking into the room, lights dimmed like dusk, shapes and figures only discernible as shadows dancing along the walls and floors; looking to my right I see a few candles lit in the bathroom. This is not what I had expected to occur, but when it concerns my baby its always up for speculation, Hoping that when I do explain that I will not be receiving a check my first week, she does not get angry with me. Awe inspiring it is to see her there standing before me naked, unclothed as the day she was born; there is always this feeling I have knowing that there is a person in this world that is willing to share and give herself completely to me. No matter, the bull**** we go through together, we always find a way to escape it, coming out not unscathed but somehow for the better. There is something in the beauty of normality, others can have the size two’s and three’s, the silicone, all that is garbage, so much commercial reflected hatred of themselves, its makes them all look so pathetic and ugly. Souls empty forging amongst the ruins of a civilization barren, wasting away ever so capriciously; trying to answer questions with more questions, tying its noose tighter and tighter with each selfish breath.
She slowly dangles her foot over the steaming water inviting me to join her, oh how she inspires me, my beautiful angelic muse. There is no telling what I would do for her and only her. I undress in front of her as I have done hundreds of times before, she brings fourth water pouring it atop her head; I watch memorized as the water comes tumbling downward cascading over and in between the valley of her breasts. She is perfection in the craving eyes of a heathen beast concocting an arsenal of positions in which, to violate her in the ‘most sensual of ways,’ to have her scream in ecstasy, pleasure be thy doom. A wilted rose in full bloom before the eyes of the devil himself, preparing war upon god’s throne; Peter’s gates come tumbling down. Heaving sighs, the gentle tugging of her hips rhythmically lulling to and fro, the grasp a stranglehold between her thighs, Pompeii erupts with delight, a deluge dripping down my shaft down through my thighs. A single kiss, “I love you darlin’.” All is well, we will rest unhindered by the thoughtless actions of a world gone mad tonight.
9
I recall my youth much the same as my days as a young man, filled with nothing, no excitement to look forward to, no parties, no friends, no life besides that which made me eat and breathe. When the most enthralling moment of the day would be the Simpsons, then later as I grew a bit older it became any time I fantasized about ****ing and reached in to my pants to let one go. It is not that I was unpopular or had no social interaction with the herd, it was the fact that the herd scared those that called themselves my parents, paranoid and scared they were of everyone and everything. Their love a bond in chains, so hapless and ignorant that my growth as an individual was stunted, emotionally I feel incapable of expressing much besides petty anger and hostility towards the mass, the world. I have experienced far less than most, I do not mean to put myself in the same standing as those who experience life from the third world, I cannot picture nor do I care to play in such theoretical promulgations. The society I am apart of is the standard I am at odds with, on many levels I can see why it is I am the way I am, a sociopath, period.
Very early on, I knew I had to hide who I was, to carefully control, like the ac my attitude from fear of unleashing the inner hatred within. I modeled all this on the very few words my dad had given me in preparation for life outside his gaze, “Son, don’t do anything that will have your freedom taken away from you.” He always told me that when some situation came up wherein which the outcome could decide whether or not he could lose his freedom he would always tell us, “Just think about what you have and how it would feel to lose it all…to lose your freedom.” For the life of me, I cannot imagine what I am losing anymore, my life, my freedom; or have already lost them both. In the convolution of my dad’s thoughts I have blockaded my very being, I have set up obstacles from proclaiming myself as reward enough, instead I self-criticize and destroy any inroads towards redemption; nothing I do will ever be good enough for him or myself. It takes more than hammers and muscle to destroy the walls and bars of a prison, it takes an impeccable strength of will.
At night, I find myself aware more and more so of my dreams, I relive the days of old, fine-tuning them to my desires, just to reach the end some ****ing miscalculation turning it all back inwards, humiliating me once again. I do not know what it means, I am not Freud, so I know not why it seems that even in my dreams I am not allowed some small victory. It seems to be going well, like the old clichéd movie, the nerd gets the girl based on personality and honesty, allowing pure love to win out over superficial coveting; however, I find myself barely trudging along my legs unable to move, mired in quicksand, some magnetic field only I seem to be caught in, while everyone stares, obstreperously guffawing. I ****ing hate them all. In those days, I was closeted away in a mind filled on drugs, disappearing from reality, slashing through the fabric of space-time, walking on through to the dark side coming out only hours later to find I had not gone anywhere. Drugs were always fun, however hollow in actuality they may have been.
As if by divine intervention I was thrust upon the open empty world of false hopes, an intuition of some unforeseeable guilt, I entered the work force a young man only to be lead down a path laden with failure, with gross shame. I met and interacted with some decent people mind you, however the lot of them were self-centered egoists, no matter their small insignificant social standing. Greed in correlation with the will to lord over any position of power they had was the prevailing attitude I witnessed. Oh, how I detest these smalltime despots, these time-card dictators, company whores who ran the whole gamut on the profession of *** kissing; brown-nosed sycophantic malcontents. In their hollow breasts beats the heart of rules and regulations, whose goals read like corporate manuals, whose imaginations only dreamt of number equations, how to crunch the hours of a schedule, how to get around dwindling fourth quarter revenues. If I could somehow rank where I was in relation to them on the corporate ladder, I would have to say I was the ground on which they put the damn thing down.
For years, I lived solely in the confines of my thoughts, in far off lands, amongst people so diverse and rich, in others where it was the perfect utopia, where I was ruler of all man, the benevolent man-god. Months on end, it would be one ideal society I dreamt of; I would work up elaborate political schemas, envision the culture, the architecture, and then just sit back in awe wondering at my beautifully laid canvas; the social Leonardo I was. Many occasions passed where I would be caught off guard by some random person asking a question two or three times, finally tearing me away from my ideal version of life. Due in part to this type of lifestyle I slept an incalculable amount of hours, twelve or more at a time, by the age of twenty-four I was so pale from sun deprivation I was misconstrued for being one of those gothic pussies. I can tell you also, you need not worry about weight or how much you eat when you sleep that much, your bed can be Jenny Craig and a Solo Flex gym all in one. Indeed, it does sound so very sad, when I sit back pondering on those misbegotten days, I truly do feel they were the best I have ever had. Surrounded by so many innocuous variables clothed as sheep, as the clichéd verse goes, I crawled deep inside my own psyche and slowly decayed further into the paramount of mental disease; what else where my options? I must have been the only man alive on earth who did not need psychoactive hallucinogens to trip harder than any dirty hippie at a Phish concert had or would.
I remember those days so vividly, like a digital camera painstakingly re-imaging colorfully lush landscapes, that I can also feel the pain of loneliness just as if I had torn my arm out its socket just yesterday. As it mounted its visceral attack on my already damaged mind, I sought refuge online, at first, I prowled like a teenage pervert, exchanging pictures, and gaining access to porn websites for free; I swear to god I must have filled one dumpster a month in tissue boxes and crusty socks. Then as I lost more hope of ever really connecting with a woman, I said **** it, these people will never see me any ****ing way, I slowly let go of all my inhibitions. It was the perfect domain for the crippled emotions of a child now a man, a man only in the realm of age and not in the more concrete sense of the meaning; I could hide, I could be discreet, anonymity is the cornerstone of the world wide web, the possibilities endless, every dot com could potentially be another me, another varying personality. I was the decrepit miscreant who worked and paid bills, who was at once also the shy emotive poetic sympathizer who listened to any woman’s problems, or I was the ego-maniacal narcissist who dabbled in the misogynistic fantasies of sex crazed online nymphos', who indulged them as he bragged he was Lothario, Casanova, Romeo and John ****ing Holmes rolled into one outrageous phallic package. At the beginning I made it a rule never to take any of these online encounters any further then the chat box, but the urges one man has are sometimes too difficult to counteract, the desires were wrote out in clear cut detail, words became too little, the need to press flesh against flesh was yearning mad, the urge to act had become deafening. The oceanic tide of male testosterone ‘came’ all over them, while some played the game, tooth and nail, a lioness who would rather die than give in to the hyena its meal, others were ‘whet’ in more ways than one, laying bare Eve’s fruit before the devil had even commanded her.
I was already at this time barren and soulless, how can that which already is barren and soulless become more barren and soulless; how can one condone the usury of a gender for the purposes of self fulfillment, can it be depravity for simple depravity’s sake, or are these the questions of a man mired in moral finalities? You may counter at this point with such a conjecture, that this is normal male behavior in concordance with social norms, it is at this point in time that I may have to disagree with you; the actions of a man more ‘conscious’ than most others are the actions of a calculated mind and not the simple random actions of cum-induced neo Neanderthals, so it becomes much more than that, its grounded in much more complex terms, the crystal ball can no longer tell you what it sees, it has become too foggy. I may perhaps at times over step my bounds, conjuring up myself with a bit of braggadocio, delineating my own personal history as that which is extraordinary, however in the end who does not see themselves in the limelight of their very own broadcast television show, who? “Cum grano salis,” is what I think personally; but I do believe that I, perhaps others are different when it comes to the interrelations between men and women. I do not just want sex, sex is something tangible, its concrete, while its fleeting; what drove me was the ‘will to power,’ to exert my control over an individual person, to mold them into a mirror image of my being. To create a shadow of imperfection, to destroy them as I had been destroyed, at once objectify them with pure nothingness and subject them to the cruelest of intentions; I was at once a maniac, I truly do believe. I infected them at once with cold uncaring emotions, emptied them, hurt them, albeit not physically, but psychically; I was imbuing slowly but surely my worldview, my craven set of morals upon them.
It was at these key moments in my life that I had felt more alive than I ever had, a ball of energy I became when I entered any room. When I came in close proximity, I could literally feel their lust for life fleeing from them. They all became as black and as dark as I had been. A man on a mission to conquer, to quench his thirst for victory with the rotten dried p****** of the innocent. These misbegotten days of yore, so fond to relive, soon came to an end.
It is at this time that my angelic muse danced into my life, over confident, strong willed, taking no bull**** from me whatsoever. See saw through my games, my treachery so then blockaded, discarded were the thoughts of ruining this young woman, as she soon transposed on me her will. I became at once my old self again. I had once again traded in my love of life, my fleeting moments of true happiness to a longing wish for normalcy, for a life wanting to be happy as others seem. My angelic muse, my baby had tied me to fence and beat me into submission, I relented into bondage, alleging my allegiance for all time unto her, as I had earlier with my father’s principles, for her I became a boorish slave of a man. I once again hid, covered up who I was, I was no longer strong enough in my own right to repel her, I broke, shattered into a million pieces before her, within the clear virgin expanse of her beating heart, I saw vigour, I saw vitality, a strength unbeknownst prior to me in all of the world, it was here that I sacrificed my very life.
10
As the morning opens through cheap apartment blinds’ I wake to see the world through pleasing eyes; something I have not felt for years, for the first time I feel at ease, a peace that brings with it the notion of clarity. The birth pangs of a happiness finally reaching out towards the sun, I may have been potted in rotten soil, tended with the heavy hand of a novice, but I hear something burgeoning fourth yelling intently, “I will avail, no matter the obstacles blocking my path, I will avail!” The past few weeks have been something of a conundrum, work, has to an extent been liberating to say the least, while the bonds have strengthened within my family. With the culling of the surge in debt, it has released us in many ways; we now find laughter in the niceties of banal everyday living, much more content than in the days before pre-fabricated indentured servitude. While we may still live check to check, scraping by as most others do in this tortured society, it is the breathing spell we have needed before the war breaks.
Upon the arrival of the darkened skies, I wake again to the trumpeting wails of the clock, work beckons on me like some unknown ghost, an appendage I cannot see. The perpetual life of rituals, mundane ceremonies in the act of pleasing others with no wish to care for me as I do myself. Shower, shave, dress in the appropriate attire, overall oiling of the cog for that perfect fit hiding deep within the caverns of the machine. Facetious as all these actions may be they certainly do have their place among our tattered realm of logic, within the realm of our schizophrenic desire for mastery in all things. The human spirit is also just another stepping-stone, a victim in the distorted theological story of man. Nothing at all can be left to chance, not one iota of creativity can be left un-smothered, not one brave bone can be left un-broken; the courageous heart burns with tears, dripping with loneliness in knowing there is absolutely nothing left. However, my day does push onward towards the time clock and nothing will keep me from it now, certainly not my loathing for it all; a wage slave I have become again.
Rolling to a stop in a deserted half lit parking lot I see the sign blaze, from space the phoenix can be seen, at least they know where to shop when they leave MIR. A gargantuan box of cement, floor to floor cheaply made linoleum tiles, cancer-inducing fluorescent lights spaced every four or so feet apart blanket the ceiling tiles made from recycled whatever, they have the grey recycled color appearance. Isles upon isles go on seemingly for miles, with each one holding enough product to feed every poor starving African child in Darfur for years, charity would start here only if the dumb ****ing people who claim to care would simply open up their pathetic eyes. So much food, so many precious ****ing commodities, with so many wantonly empathetic people it seems so outrageously hilarious that they all will die hungry. This is the paradise I now work within, the beast, the glutton who out gluttons anyone Dante ever saw, the American grocery chain. I work the graveyard shift stocking shelves; we first come in and pull these massive pallets from the back storeroom, a cluster **** if I ever saw one. After which, we talk amongst ourselves, myself I really do not include in that specific foray, being the new guy, but they talk amongst themselves; to tell you the truth I really do not know how the hell they get any work done around here. Most of the time I see these guys, they’re smoking cigarettes, eating some god-awful **** packed to the brim with caffeine and sugar; corn fructose, America’s bread and butter. With every zombified induced action the embedded effervescent codified language of the moronic spews fourth in heaps of so much unwanted waste. I find myself the unknowing victim at times spouting these tautological phrases, I see Spock raise his hand to say “Live long and Prosper, my servile son.” I wish to cry myself to sleep and dream that I will wake from this nightmare, but the nightmare wakes me from the dream I wish I could only live in forever; why can I not be like Schiavo. I hear from isle to isle, “Dead…dead,” a few moments go by until the next, “dead,” reverberates through my ****ing ears again. Flashing lights, the contextual verbiage indicating that the item presently being thrown; ‘throw’, another word I shall yet describe. However back to the point, dead means the item in question will not go to the shelve; it’s too ****ing full.
Too ****ing full, some item ordered by the manager which will not fit on the shelve in its present state, it has not sold enough in order to fit, thus the idiot must have another. The manager makes it his duty to pile up enough garbage and excess **** in the back room, that we must mark it down so as to get rid of the surplus on the unsuspecting populous just before it spoils. Which, isn’t to say too much since we get in on regular basis maggot filled jars and cans of just about whatever; the smell can literally make you puke. Not to mention the crudity and the abject ignorance that these people I work with profess with every soporific breath, “Time to trow dis ****, man.” “Let’s pop this **** up, man.” “Get this **** up, man.” Almost every sentence will contain the word **** in it, followed by the holiest of holies, man, ending the sentence as if by presidential decree. I feel trapped in the everyday comings and goings of Maury ****ing Povich, how he must feel after a day of taping, he really must just curl up and crawl into the opening of any liquor bottle just to keep from pulling back the trigger.
Which, brings me to the word ‘throw,’ it’s quite easy to understand and relate to when in the environment of Neanderthals, in the simplest of terms, it’s to put the case or cases to the shelve itself. Another ubiquitous phrase is ‘face,’ to bring the product on the shelves to the fore in seemingly military rigidity, straight to a point, as if any customer gave a **** what the isles look like so as long as the prices are abysmally low. Facing is so repetitious, so meticulous, and time consuming; it sucks dry like a vampire your very life source. You first feel your body begin to shut down, it appropriates energy for the most important limbs, those that are needed for the task at hand. Then the loss of mental activity begins to show, all creative thought soon dissipates, rendering zero cohesion between input and output; everything melts in to one another, no semblance can be made between you and the shelves. Buddha would have been a great night stocker, the Zen master of the facing universe, the nirvana of deadening repetition. To return night after night clocking in, to experience such an incongruous manner of life natural to that of man, would be the very definition of insanity, an insanity for which I am all too comfortable in subjugating myself unto, for she is the master, her will my universe.
M.F.
Month long lurker, first time poster. Not sure how this will be received although any feedback would be very much appreciated. In passing, I would also like to convey how much I have enjoyed this forum since my stumbling upon it and hope to become a worthwhile member of its community.
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A God in Chains
1
Deliberate, calm and arrogant, the timbre of his voice barely reaching above decibels heard even by dogs, themselves. Half way through the process of losing another job and moving to ****tier pastures, I blanked out. I am very sure he will soon finish. Peppering my answers convincingly with yeahs and you knows, sounding like a bad episode of Maury. Feeling my fingers begin to move over one another slowly starting a game of rhythmic motions, his stiff unapologetic grasp shakes me back to reality. His words cascade splashing relentlessly engulfing my eardrums, "...and this is why I have to let youuuuuuuuuu." His words trail off, up and out of my seat before the magic word relieves me of my duties here; I reach for the knob and in classic American fashion, "Shut the **** up."
Hopelessly, the drive home went well. I really tried to swerve the car a few times, but to no avail. I can honestly say now that I can relate with the emotion many felt when the trains finally stopped at Auschwitz. As the door begins its long march towards the frame, the first of many f-bombs drop clearing out the living room. Scattering images of rot, my balls, a vice, innocent balls in that vice, me connected to those balls locked in that vice rotting. I am not sure what her first words were, but I am quite sure it started as I said aloud for all the world to hear. "Hey...Hey babe..." no answer, nervousness cloudy, flies so huge and thick, "Hey Babe, I was fired!" Like an old reliable Swiss watch I cannot afford, she quips back with her tired and true, "You lousy piece of ****." Man..., I have heard that 'you lousy sack' line for now, what is it, 14th, no it was...oh the 12th...August. A beautifully cliched four years. She is what she is, I am what I am, and shoe leather always needs a buckle. It is the only thing I am truly good at. Falling to the wayside under the heavy feet of important 'soles.'
2
Do you ever sit in a room by yourself and figuratively beat the **** out of yourself? Maybe this is my problem, I am too introspective, I understand my problems and I have identified their roots. Huh...how do I say this? Well this is better than any, so I'll just throw it out there and you draw up the picture. I am the root of all my issues, while all those others who play bit parts in the longest running reality series in my opinion, are mere branches and leaves. Only if my life were a ****ing cudgel, I would have stripped the leaves and bark away pulverizing it all to mulch. Giving credence to and nutrients in growing my very own garden. Exploring like a roach furrowing through the grossest fattest corpse you can imagine, I hit the darkest parts of my being. Playing in scenarios, bold, so lifelike, a bloody drenched exquistion of sexual promiscuity driven through humiliation, positions of power so overwhelmingly intoxicating. Veins beat hard, fast, the body's guitar strings wail and jump. Power shakes the body; the devil shakes the hand of power. I cannot imagine the ferocity with which control, control of everything hits you. Do you feel it; can you tell you have it? Or does it e-mail you? When you have no control, no control even over yourself, I can let you know from experience, you feel it. And it hurts.
3
The essence of power however lies in the fact that freedom can only breathe, thusly, only exist in power's gracious hands. Those hands as well can only be the hands of a magnamic and courageous god. Aww, the crux of the matter now raises and rears its ugly ****ing head in our direction. But who is god? What is a god? If such a being does then truly exist, is it our right to know? It is in seeking that one shall find truth. Once the truth is found, can then plans be laid for such a bold ascendance. Maybe I should back this **** up a little further for some of you out there. Not everyone here reading this will just understand what it is that happened nor happened to me through this long arduous, painfully deep discovery. I discovered love, but most importantly I, and only I discovered the most elusive, freedom. For when I found poor freedom, I first ran up its steps, down great halls filled with monuments to those that tried and failed to find my good friend freedom. But it was in the very last room unattached from the rest of the building, copious and dingy. Poor freedom had fallen into disrepute from lack of use and heaps of wanton abuse. It was in that room, four barren scarred walls opened to me like a dream and there in the middle of the room lay a blanket. Wrapped in the warmth of freedom, I tired and within a yawn, the fire within was smoldered.
"The eyes of this man opened as a boy, before the sky azure to the once great sun and at the end of his long travels this boy closed his eyes an old and dying man." With a gentle sigh expelled, the lights burned out, “Sleep well, son.
...
So many contradictions yes, but what is life without the constant struggle of one's very soul. The very art of being human is the act of maintaining composure, orientating oneself with control or some semblance of it, at least. What can hold freedom to power, when in most instances we believe it is the force of one or the other, which destroys its very commingling? Something magnamic?, something courageous?, are they not also at the very same instance absolute evil, absolutely vile? I guess you could describe the problem closely to a Jewish guard working for the Nazis. Or as one of my favorite songs goes:
See the devil kiss the hand of god
See the devil crying tears of flame
See the devil bite the hand of Christ
And know the devil is the work of god [Danzig]
This is the story with which I will lay at your feet, you may judge me or not. I on other hand do not care what it is you do. I only wish to open up the cage of my mind and let you all in too see the beauty and horror for which I am made. Believe me when I say this, if Andy ****ing Warhol can be called an artist, I can be called a god.
4
The day is bright, hot and arid. Blood boils beneath the skin in a convent of heartfelt emotion. Staring into the oblique possibilities of frustration, I move towards the opening in the corridor. Light breaks the darkness, flickers fast, uncontrollably.
"Get up...get up now you lazy bastard."
Eyes open, it was just a dream. What it was I really cannot be sure, where was I going? What was I doing?
"Are you seriously going to lie there all ****in’ day? Huh?"
Wiping the **** out of my eyes, scratch my sack, I dutifully reply, albeit stubbornly, "Fine, I'll ****ing get up...alright...Hey, where are you going baby? Baby? ...Hey!"
"No, the question is where are you going? You better find a goddamn job today." She puts her hands on her hips, a demeaning scowl hits me dead, "It's been nearly two weeks since you were fired, the rent isn't going to pay itself..." A look of wanting, waiting, half expecting an answer; what the hell does she want me to say, what good would it do. I'll just do what she wants me to do, as always she wins out over me. "Well...see you never have anything to add, you’re such a faggot! Find a job, or maybe I just might find a real man."
**** you, yeah **** you. That's right ***** I told you to **** off. Find a real man? Any other man with half a testicle would have laid her *** out, but here I am again squirming under her thumb. The pet project of some laboratory, I'm Odo to her Mora. But, she is right. A job is just what I need; the kids can't be put through this, not again. Plus I can't stay another minute in this ****ing house with her; I'll end up killing her.
5
Its twenty past twelve, an interview later, I’m hungry for death but no one is serving. God how I hate the dehumanizing experience of being interrogated by some halfwit son-of-a-*****, dull-eyed corporate ****ing stooge. I sit back and wonder whether or not it’s even necessary to breath, I feel like I am going to combust. Essence, facticity, being-in-itself, being-for-itself, could it be that I am the existential nightmare. Wake up Sartre, I have a ****ing tie for you to put on. The ongoing process driven towards self-valuation strikes me hard and unpleasant, every glance, every innuendo whether real or imaginary; every set of eyes passing by plunges me into a chaotic paranoid downward spiral. How I wish to destroy so much of what the world has become, yet I cannot rip myself away from the comfort and destitution that has engulfed me. Feelings of inadequacies overshadow any sense of belonging, they smash the pieces of humanity that bring you closer to the fabric that make up the family that is man.
“Miss…” She walks completely passed me, I know I am not a very assertive individual; but for **** sake, I am not invisible. “Miss…yeah you. I would like to order now, please.” In her blue grease covered outfit coupled with Payless shoes and a white, well used to be white apron she plaintively goes about her business. I really am getting mad however, I stay calm like a Buddhist monk. A moment passes; she finally comes by leaning cockeyed to her left her weight shifted on her right hand to hip, in what could be termed the half-akimbo bimbo position, “Hun, just to let ya know from now on, I don’t go by yeah you, alright?” This woman must be a ****ing comedian, here I am waiting for this ****ty meal, listening to trivial banalities on the television about Britney Spears’ roast beef sandwich and this woman gets mad about, “yeah you,” you have to be ****ing kidding me. God Britney’s ***** looks disgusting. “Well, I'm sorry, but I have been waiting patiently for now more than twenty or so minutes. I would just like to have some food, if that would not be too much of a problem for you?" Her eyes, her whole face fades from decency to outright insincere delightfulness, she really knows how to pile the bull**** on thick. Her smile reaches from wall to wall, teeth clenched, “What is it that you would like to feast upon today…” gathering all her sarcasm together mixing heavily with anger she finally blurts out, “sir?” Every ounce of strength, of pure will its taking for me not to get up and pulverize her dull empty face. Afterwards, I stand over her, unzip my pants and pull my dick out to urinate all over her pathetic lifeless body. However, as usual I regained my composure, an infallible sense to reinvigorate my humanity. Simply put, I swallowed my pride at being mockingly disrespected, as always.
Emptiness a revelation in thought, the stark truth staring you in the face intrepidly, grandstanding before you as if to say, “I told you so. I told you that you were nothing more than fraught less haphazard bum without any inclination towards prosperity, you have no ambition, no sense of reward, no interests; you have nothing, but the television. You’re a loser.” What is it that I can say to the emptiness, can I really point out anything of difference; most days I sit couch locked zoned out wrapped within the plastic universe of the media. Replacing real human emotional connection with super fanciful intrigue, the whorish personalities of morons who stake their very being for fifteen minutes of fame. “Do you love New York?” the television asks, responding half conscious, half-dead, “I do, I most definitely do love New York.”
I believe it; I believe it very much so when people say prison is a state of mind. It can be the one entity closing in on you when supposedly the whole world seemingly looks so very open. The mind can turn into your enemy, playing tricks on you every chance it receives, turning the four walls of any room into a dark and desolate dungeon, no need for solitary confinement within the cavity of the cranium. The quizzical riddle, the joker in the deck laughing; that bastard, with his punch line smacking like a right hook out of left field. A putrid being you become, a slothful doe-eyed masochist, you begin to lose all sight of life and whatever it means to be human, you smell, you eat, **** and breathe heavy from the weight you have gained; god double-deckered me from birth.
6
Another week has passed and still I have had no opportunities to look forward to, nothing but failure and rejection. My heart tires of this, my wife tires of me. The kinetic energy of a world mired in superficialities superimposes its will upon me, exerting every effort to mold my soul into a block of ice infused with molten rock. Unless I can maintain stability in their neat little world I will surely melt away, unleashing the burning fire inside, just wishing to be let loose. Pure un-adulterated animal instinct, a chorus of pandemonium singing songs of rage. Every human being has the urge to hunt, every human being. What the hunt maybe is anyone’s guess, for every instance that there is light there is also the darkness of a man’s shadow. The pall which light cast down upon all, which it touches with its warmth. As I have stated before, as I will always state, if there is a god, if, god is not and cannot be perfect; the world he created in his image was more or less a gamble on whether or not order can be made of anarchy. Order is not something man can even grasp let alone create from scratch; I feel as if death is knocking at the door, all we need do is answer.
You may feel that I have exacerbated my position in this fruitless endeavor we call life, or the ideas which I entertain in this demented head of mine, but if I may so myself I feel at times like Krillov. A man desperate, mad with the knowledge burning deep inside his soul, or whatever it is we call the soul. Its tearing away at the mortal flesh, wishing, to have its day in the sun. To expose the fraud we call existence, the rationale that everything we see is precious and worth its breath; that life, most importantly human life is anything but just the work of eons of natural selection, the evolution of a simple beast into to a cold calculated murderer. Prometheus may have had his fire, the caveman may have had his wheel, what worth would any of those objects have without the glory of an others blood. Every move in history like in the gentlemen’s game of chess has its cost, obviously some higher than others; it is the way life works. However, man has become arrogant, he now seeks to save the world from destruction, who are we to believe that we can save the world, when we cannot even save ourselves. Righteous do-gooders and corrupt wishy-washy politicians make it their job to enforce laws and to create an atmosphere where the weak are not just protected but it has become the norm. The weak continue to grow in mass amounts, no longer do the sick and weak willed pass and fall by the way side. No, they are the *******s in power now, the maggots in front of you at the DMV, the bastard who continuously ****s up your order at taco bell. Only if we were to strip away every pathetic pedagogical law that smacks of a brazen self-loathing for knowledge and thus life itself, it most certainly would be a joyous day. But, so long as the leaders and the maggots that elect them continue to inscribe on the banner of weakened humanity the slogan, “Long live the Cro-Magnons,” we might as well blow out the ****ing candle now and get to the final stages of resurrecting Christ for the Armageddon. I challenge you god, to flood this world, to bury this planet beneath a wave of water higher than Everest, you can do much better than forty days and nights; man could have done much better than what they wrote when they strung you together, lousy ****ing bastard. I knew you wouldn’t do anything. Nothing at all! Perhpas I am having a bad day.
7
“To tell you the truth,” scrambling through the mess on his desk, “umm…I’m sorry I don’t usually do this, what was your name again?” I cannot ****ing believe this goddamn guy, he’s about to tell me that, “no, you’re not getting the job,” and the mother ****er cannot even remember my name; god how I have fallen, is there no getting up from this; have I kissed death’s lips? **** this when in doubt just go for it, I can’t believe I am actually going in for this, it surely is a sign of blatant weakness, a weakness on my part I cannot afford to hide. So pluck up the courage and say your name, have pride and then bribe him for the ****ing job. Looking as somber and as meek as humanly possible, I answer this cravenly stupid man, “Hey, it happens right, you’re a busy man. You probably see hundreds of applicants a week, huh? But, anyways the name was Joseph, I know, I know it’s…sometimes hard to remember.” Here, I am again rambling like a ****ing rain man, yeah it’s definitely eighty-six, yeah eighty-six. “Well, Joseph,” his words spoken weirdly, almost delicately, sounding out my name; kind of funny how people want to hurt your feelings, but they wish to do it in the most polite manner possible, what ****ing scared *******s they must be, to cower so deeply in oneself from any trace of guilt. “It doesn’t seem that I have room for a man who needs to be trained in the aspects of the job at this point in time. I’m sort of looking for a guy who can just walk in and be a team player, a motivator; I really do hope you understand…I mean if a position does open up in the near future I still have your number, so maybe I’ll get a hold of ya, you know.”
‘You know!’ **** ‘you know,’ the Maury Povich colloquialism of our times, what a tragedy that has come to men who bring nothing more to the table other than false freedom mired in the clothing of a streetwalker, a freedom that knows nothing of real power. Something alien to the thoughts of these poor individuals, like this fellow, how beguiling it all is that the tapestry is crumbling to dust and not one person dares help to impede it. I truly do pity them all, I really do; whether you believe me is of no significant importance although. I know for certain that this man will take what I give him, I see it like a mirror reflecting back out towards me, showing me the character of a coward, a company man, the dreaded ‘yes man.’ Looking him directly in the eye I muster all my courage, a courage deep within I always pray reflect outwardly though never responds somehow pours fourth, as if I had drug it kicking and screaming from where ever it had been concealed. I say indignantly, confidently, “Look here, you’re going to give me the job and for your trouble I’m going to give you my first weeks check.” What courage confidently displayed. “I need the job. I know I will do everything in my ability to pull around and hone my skills to be as professional as any other man you have working here, just give me the chance. That’s all I ask of you.”
Fidgeting a bit in his chair, he hesitates, is this real he must be thinking, pursing his lips, he doesn’t wish to look me in the eyes; no matter really, just answer yes, **** ethics and the man you were going to hire. He’s not going to give you his first paycheck as reward for hiring him, no, is he, is he? His brow twitches ever so slightly, finally rising his eyes toward mine, he peers deep into me; you’re not going to find it here my friend. I can only lie to reassure you that you are doing the right thing, ****ing people with all their petty morals, ethics, and religious ideals; so many fetters that impede the dark and dirty road to truth and progress. Well, here it goes like no other, I might not have another chance like this again; well, maybe not this week. “Hey, if you don’t like the deal, I can leave.” I poise myself to stand up and turn towards the door, he motions quickly that it’s all right, I can stay. The company man does have a heart and a soul of his own, he realizes that he can breath, eat and **** without the permission of the founders, how scary it must be for him to finally grow a spine. Slowly he doles out his words, probably picking them out carefully as not to incriminate himself if I were to be an agent provocateur of the company, “What you bring up…it is Joseph, right? Of course it is. What you bring up is very interesting however, it is also an action, which can cause me to lose my job. What reassurances do I have that you do not already work for the company as security, as well as what reassurances do I have that if I do hire you, that you will not use this to exploit some type of an advantage over me? You know, many different questions come to mind when taking such an offer in mind. Normally when it comes to taking free money, I’d be all for it; you won’t find a man alive who would turn down free money or free pussy, it just doesn’t happen, but I think you can see my point quite clearly, JOSEPH.” Shaking my head in agreement I lean forward, quite positively, as straight forward as any stranger can be to another stranger, “What is it that you want me to tell you? I’m not a part of security and I am quite sure I’m not here to extort you. I just need a job at the very moment; it is of extreme importance to me, as well as to my family that I walk away with a job sometime in the near future. I still have time to pull myself out of the grave that I have dug myself in the last couple of months. I mean, you can understand my position, any man can understand the undeniable feelings of guilt he must feel in not being able to provide for his family. That whole hunter-gather tribe type of thing between men and women of the old school order, I guess I’m a fifties man.”
Grabbing a few indiscriminate papers from his desk I couldn’t quite make out, he slowly wads them up, possibly destroying the futures of other men who may as well be in my very same predicament; only difference being they didn’t have the balls nor the brains to bribe their way into the job, it’s sort of like graft, I suppose in reverse. His eyes turn towards mine, a slight nod of the head, “You have the job, come back in the morning at five-thirty; do not be late, I cannot stand a man who is not punctual. Plus, I will have that money in my hands no later than Saturday; a full check, a full workweek check. Your first week will be short by sixteen hours, I want those sixteen hours you understand me.” I nod in the affirmative. “Also, you will not, I cannot stress this enough, you will not have any special privileges, I will treat you just like every other piece that works here. I will not allow you to **** up what I have here, I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear. Now get out of my office, Joseph…” half way out the door he stops me for that special moment, a sign to show that he’s still a person imbued with an affable heart loaded with sincere pleasantries, “Joseph, have good day.”
8
Upon returning home, I received a hero’s welcome, my wife running up with half a smile, she is more than exuberant I know. She just doesn’t wish to show it so dramatically, she always holds her jovial feelings close by, tight and to the chest; the kids however, beamed with joyous enthusiasm. These are the only moments in this life I find worth living at all, to see the shine of unabated happiness in the eyes of my children. They have no idea what it is to live and breathe yet in the real world, a world uncaring in the sense that it does not allow for actual triumph, that does not allow the soul of ones being to spread out across great plains and engulf the whole spectrum of its horizon. They will however, eventually learn to live with the failure they will surely become, but until then I’ll just sit back and laugh in the presence of such gaiety. After listening to the stories of the day, the, how she did this to me, he did this, followed by all the asking, simple wanton begging for material objects that kids usually do; we put them to sleep. I had not up until this time told my wife how it is I came to receive the position I had received. At this moment I really do not know how she is going to take it, I mean, what else could I do; she shouldn’t be so upset with me. What else would she have, should I go another few weeks without a job, go another few weeks looking rejection in the eyes?
Walking into the room, lights dimmed like dusk, shapes and figures only discernible as shadows dancing along the walls and floors; looking to my right I see a few candles lit in the bathroom. This is not what I had expected to occur, but when it concerns my baby its always up for speculation, Hoping that when I do explain that I will not be receiving a check my first week, she does not get angry with me. Awe inspiring it is to see her there standing before me naked, unclothed as the day she was born; there is always this feeling I have knowing that there is a person in this world that is willing to share and give herself completely to me. No matter, the bull**** we go through together, we always find a way to escape it, coming out not unscathed but somehow for the better. There is something in the beauty of normality, others can have the size two’s and three’s, the silicone, all that is garbage, so much commercial reflected hatred of themselves, its makes them all look so pathetic and ugly. Souls empty forging amongst the ruins of a civilization barren, wasting away ever so capriciously; trying to answer questions with more questions, tying its noose tighter and tighter with each selfish breath.
She slowly dangles her foot over the steaming water inviting me to join her, oh how she inspires me, my beautiful angelic muse. There is no telling what I would do for her and only her. I undress in front of her as I have done hundreds of times before, she brings fourth water pouring it atop her head; I watch memorized as the water comes tumbling downward cascading over and in between the valley of her breasts. She is perfection in the craving eyes of a heathen beast concocting an arsenal of positions in which, to violate her in the ‘most sensual of ways,’ to have her scream in ecstasy, pleasure be thy doom. A wilted rose in full bloom before the eyes of the devil himself, preparing war upon god’s throne; Peter’s gates come tumbling down. Heaving sighs, the gentle tugging of her hips rhythmically lulling to and fro, the grasp a stranglehold between her thighs, Pompeii erupts with delight, a deluge dripping down my shaft down through my thighs. A single kiss, “I love you darlin’.” All is well, we will rest unhindered by the thoughtless actions of a world gone mad tonight.
9
I recall my youth much the same as my days as a young man, filled with nothing, no excitement to look forward to, no parties, no friends, no life besides that which made me eat and breathe. When the most enthralling moment of the day would be the Simpsons, then later as I grew a bit older it became any time I fantasized about ****ing and reached in to my pants to let one go. It is not that I was unpopular or had no social interaction with the herd, it was the fact that the herd scared those that called themselves my parents, paranoid and scared they were of everyone and everything. Their love a bond in chains, so hapless and ignorant that my growth as an individual was stunted, emotionally I feel incapable of expressing much besides petty anger and hostility towards the mass, the world. I have experienced far less than most, I do not mean to put myself in the same standing as those who experience life from the third world, I cannot picture nor do I care to play in such theoretical promulgations. The society I am apart of is the standard I am at odds with, on many levels I can see why it is I am the way I am, a sociopath, period.
Very early on, I knew I had to hide who I was, to carefully control, like the ac my attitude from fear of unleashing the inner hatred within. I modeled all this on the very few words my dad had given me in preparation for life outside his gaze, “Son, don’t do anything that will have your freedom taken away from you.” He always told me that when some situation came up wherein which the outcome could decide whether or not he could lose his freedom he would always tell us, “Just think about what you have and how it would feel to lose it all…to lose your freedom.” For the life of me, I cannot imagine what I am losing anymore, my life, my freedom; or have already lost them both. In the convolution of my dad’s thoughts I have blockaded my very being, I have set up obstacles from proclaiming myself as reward enough, instead I self-criticize and destroy any inroads towards redemption; nothing I do will ever be good enough for him or myself. It takes more than hammers and muscle to destroy the walls and bars of a prison, it takes an impeccable strength of will.
At night, I find myself aware more and more so of my dreams, I relive the days of old, fine-tuning them to my desires, just to reach the end some ****ing miscalculation turning it all back inwards, humiliating me once again. I do not know what it means, I am not Freud, so I know not why it seems that even in my dreams I am not allowed some small victory. It seems to be going well, like the old clichéd movie, the nerd gets the girl based on personality and honesty, allowing pure love to win out over superficial coveting; however, I find myself barely trudging along my legs unable to move, mired in quicksand, some magnetic field only I seem to be caught in, while everyone stares, obstreperously guffawing. I ****ing hate them all. In those days, I was closeted away in a mind filled on drugs, disappearing from reality, slashing through the fabric of space-time, walking on through to the dark side coming out only hours later to find I had not gone anywhere. Drugs were always fun, however hollow in actuality they may have been.
As if by divine intervention I was thrust upon the open empty world of false hopes, an intuition of some unforeseeable guilt, I entered the work force a young man only to be lead down a path laden with failure, with gross shame. I met and interacted with some decent people mind you, however the lot of them were self-centered egoists, no matter their small insignificant social standing. Greed in correlation with the will to lord over any position of power they had was the prevailing attitude I witnessed. Oh, how I detest these smalltime despots, these time-card dictators, company whores who ran the whole gamut on the profession of *** kissing; brown-nosed sycophantic malcontents. In their hollow breasts beats the heart of rules and regulations, whose goals read like corporate manuals, whose imaginations only dreamt of number equations, how to crunch the hours of a schedule, how to get around dwindling fourth quarter revenues. If I could somehow rank where I was in relation to them on the corporate ladder, I would have to say I was the ground on which they put the damn thing down.
For years, I lived solely in the confines of my thoughts, in far off lands, amongst people so diverse and rich, in others where it was the perfect utopia, where I was ruler of all man, the benevolent man-god. Months on end, it would be one ideal society I dreamt of; I would work up elaborate political schemas, envision the culture, the architecture, and then just sit back in awe wondering at my beautifully laid canvas; the social Leonardo I was. Many occasions passed where I would be caught off guard by some random person asking a question two or three times, finally tearing me away from my ideal version of life. Due in part to this type of lifestyle I slept an incalculable amount of hours, twelve or more at a time, by the age of twenty-four I was so pale from sun deprivation I was misconstrued for being one of those gothic pussies. I can tell you also, you need not worry about weight or how much you eat when you sleep that much, your bed can be Jenny Craig and a Solo Flex gym all in one. Indeed, it does sound so very sad, when I sit back pondering on those misbegotten days, I truly do feel they were the best I have ever had. Surrounded by so many innocuous variables clothed as sheep, as the clichéd verse goes, I crawled deep inside my own psyche and slowly decayed further into the paramount of mental disease; what else where my options? I must have been the only man alive on earth who did not need psychoactive hallucinogens to trip harder than any dirty hippie at a Phish concert had or would.
I remember those days so vividly, like a digital camera painstakingly re-imaging colorfully lush landscapes, that I can also feel the pain of loneliness just as if I had torn my arm out its socket just yesterday. As it mounted its visceral attack on my already damaged mind, I sought refuge online, at first, I prowled like a teenage pervert, exchanging pictures, and gaining access to porn websites for free; I swear to god I must have filled one dumpster a month in tissue boxes and crusty socks. Then as I lost more hope of ever really connecting with a woman, I said **** it, these people will never see me any ****ing way, I slowly let go of all my inhibitions. It was the perfect domain for the crippled emotions of a child now a man, a man only in the realm of age and not in the more concrete sense of the meaning; I could hide, I could be discreet, anonymity is the cornerstone of the world wide web, the possibilities endless, every dot com could potentially be another me, another varying personality. I was the decrepit miscreant who worked and paid bills, who was at once also the shy emotive poetic sympathizer who listened to any woman’s problems, or I was the ego-maniacal narcissist who dabbled in the misogynistic fantasies of sex crazed online nymphos', who indulged them as he bragged he was Lothario, Casanova, Romeo and John ****ing Holmes rolled into one outrageous phallic package. At the beginning I made it a rule never to take any of these online encounters any further then the chat box, but the urges one man has are sometimes too difficult to counteract, the desires were wrote out in clear cut detail, words became too little, the need to press flesh against flesh was yearning mad, the urge to act had become deafening. The oceanic tide of male testosterone ‘came’ all over them, while some played the game, tooth and nail, a lioness who would rather die than give in to the hyena its meal, others were ‘whet’ in more ways than one, laying bare Eve’s fruit before the devil had even commanded her.
I was already at this time barren and soulless, how can that which already is barren and soulless become more barren and soulless; how can one condone the usury of a gender for the purposes of self fulfillment, can it be depravity for simple depravity’s sake, or are these the questions of a man mired in moral finalities? You may counter at this point with such a conjecture, that this is normal male behavior in concordance with social norms, it is at this point in time that I may have to disagree with you; the actions of a man more ‘conscious’ than most others are the actions of a calculated mind and not the simple random actions of cum-induced neo Neanderthals, so it becomes much more than that, its grounded in much more complex terms, the crystal ball can no longer tell you what it sees, it has become too foggy. I may perhaps at times over step my bounds, conjuring up myself with a bit of braggadocio, delineating my own personal history as that which is extraordinary, however in the end who does not see themselves in the limelight of their very own broadcast television show, who? “Cum grano salis,” is what I think personally; but I do believe that I, perhaps others are different when it comes to the interrelations between men and women. I do not just want sex, sex is something tangible, its concrete, while its fleeting; what drove me was the ‘will to power,’ to exert my control over an individual person, to mold them into a mirror image of my being. To create a shadow of imperfection, to destroy them as I had been destroyed, at once objectify them with pure nothingness and subject them to the cruelest of intentions; I was at once a maniac, I truly do believe. I infected them at once with cold uncaring emotions, emptied them, hurt them, albeit not physically, but psychically; I was imbuing slowly but surely my worldview, my craven set of morals upon them.
It was at these key moments in my life that I had felt more alive than I ever had, a ball of energy I became when I entered any room. When I came in close proximity, I could literally feel their lust for life fleeing from them. They all became as black and as dark as I had been. A man on a mission to conquer, to quench his thirst for victory with the rotten dried p****** of the innocent. These misbegotten days of yore, so fond to relive, soon came to an end.
It is at this time that my angelic muse danced into my life, over confident, strong willed, taking no bull**** from me whatsoever. See saw through my games, my treachery so then blockaded, discarded were the thoughts of ruining this young woman, as she soon transposed on me her will. I became at once my old self again. I had once again traded in my love of life, my fleeting moments of true happiness to a longing wish for normalcy, for a life wanting to be happy as others seem. My angelic muse, my baby had tied me to fence and beat me into submission, I relented into bondage, alleging my allegiance for all time unto her, as I had earlier with my father’s principles, for her I became a boorish slave of a man. I once again hid, covered up who I was, I was no longer strong enough in my own right to repel her, I broke, shattered into a million pieces before her, within the clear virgin expanse of her beating heart, I saw vigour, I saw vitality, a strength unbeknownst prior to me in all of the world, it was here that I sacrificed my very life.
10
As the morning opens through cheap apartment blinds’ I wake to see the world through pleasing eyes; something I have not felt for years, for the first time I feel at ease, a peace that brings with it the notion of clarity. The birth pangs of a happiness finally reaching out towards the sun, I may have been potted in rotten soil, tended with the heavy hand of a novice, but I hear something burgeoning fourth yelling intently, “I will avail, no matter the obstacles blocking my path, I will avail!” The past few weeks have been something of a conundrum, work, has to an extent been liberating to say the least, while the bonds have strengthened within my family. With the culling of the surge in debt, it has released us in many ways; we now find laughter in the niceties of banal everyday living, much more content than in the days before pre-fabricated indentured servitude. While we may still live check to check, scraping by as most others do in this tortured society, it is the breathing spell we have needed before the war breaks.
Upon the arrival of the darkened skies, I wake again to the trumpeting wails of the clock, work beckons on me like some unknown ghost, an appendage I cannot see. The perpetual life of rituals, mundane ceremonies in the act of pleasing others with no wish to care for me as I do myself. Shower, shave, dress in the appropriate attire, overall oiling of the cog for that perfect fit hiding deep within the caverns of the machine. Facetious as all these actions may be they certainly do have their place among our tattered realm of logic, within the realm of our schizophrenic desire for mastery in all things. The human spirit is also just another stepping-stone, a victim in the distorted theological story of man. Nothing at all can be left to chance, not one iota of creativity can be left un-smothered, not one brave bone can be left un-broken; the courageous heart burns with tears, dripping with loneliness in knowing there is absolutely nothing left. However, my day does push onward towards the time clock and nothing will keep me from it now, certainly not my loathing for it all; a wage slave I have become again.
Rolling to a stop in a deserted half lit parking lot I see the sign blaze, from space the phoenix can be seen, at least they know where to shop when they leave MIR. A gargantuan box of cement, floor to floor cheaply made linoleum tiles, cancer-inducing fluorescent lights spaced every four or so feet apart blanket the ceiling tiles made from recycled whatever, they have the grey recycled color appearance. Isles upon isles go on seemingly for miles, with each one holding enough product to feed every poor starving African child in Darfur for years, charity would start here only if the dumb ****ing people who claim to care would simply open up their pathetic eyes. So much food, so many precious ****ing commodities, with so many wantonly empathetic people it seems so outrageously hilarious that they all will die hungry. This is the paradise I now work within, the beast, the glutton who out gluttons anyone Dante ever saw, the American grocery chain. I work the graveyard shift stocking shelves; we first come in and pull these massive pallets from the back storeroom, a cluster **** if I ever saw one. After which, we talk amongst ourselves, myself I really do not include in that specific foray, being the new guy, but they talk amongst themselves; to tell you the truth I really do not know how the hell they get any work done around here. Most of the time I see these guys, they’re smoking cigarettes, eating some god-awful **** packed to the brim with caffeine and sugar; corn fructose, America’s bread and butter. With every zombified induced action the embedded effervescent codified language of the moronic spews fourth in heaps of so much unwanted waste. I find myself the unknowing victim at times spouting these tautological phrases, I see Spock raise his hand to say “Live long and Prosper, my servile son.” I wish to cry myself to sleep and dream that I will wake from this nightmare, but the nightmare wakes me from the dream I wish I could only live in forever; why can I not be like Schiavo. I hear from isle to isle, “Dead…dead,” a few moments go by until the next, “dead,” reverberates through my ****ing ears again. Flashing lights, the contextual verbiage indicating that the item presently being thrown; ‘throw’, another word I shall yet describe. However back to the point, dead means the item in question will not go to the shelve; it’s too ****ing full.
Too ****ing full, some item ordered by the manager which will not fit on the shelve in its present state, it has not sold enough in order to fit, thus the idiot must have another. The manager makes it his duty to pile up enough garbage and excess **** in the back room, that we must mark it down so as to get rid of the surplus on the unsuspecting populous just before it spoils. Which, isn’t to say too much since we get in on regular basis maggot filled jars and cans of just about whatever; the smell can literally make you puke. Not to mention the crudity and the abject ignorance that these people I work with profess with every soporific breath, “Time to trow dis ****, man.” “Let’s pop this **** up, man.” “Get this **** up, man.” Almost every sentence will contain the word **** in it, followed by the holiest of holies, man, ending the sentence as if by presidential decree. I feel trapped in the everyday comings and goings of Maury ****ing Povich, how he must feel after a day of taping, he really must just curl up and crawl into the opening of any liquor bottle just to keep from pulling back the trigger.
Which, brings me to the word ‘throw,’ it’s quite easy to understand and relate to when in the environment of Neanderthals, in the simplest of terms, it’s to put the case or cases to the shelve itself. Another ubiquitous phrase is ‘face,’ to bring the product on the shelves to the fore in seemingly military rigidity, straight to a point, as if any customer gave a **** what the isles look like so as long as the prices are abysmally low. Facing is so repetitious, so meticulous, and time consuming; it sucks dry like a vampire your very life source. You first feel your body begin to shut down, it appropriates energy for the most important limbs, those that are needed for the task at hand. Then the loss of mental activity begins to show, all creative thought soon dissipates, rendering zero cohesion between input and output; everything melts in to one another, no semblance can be made between you and the shelves. Buddha would have been a great night stocker, the Zen master of the facing universe, the nirvana of deadening repetition. To return night after night clocking in, to experience such an incongruous manner of life natural to that of man, would be the very definition of insanity, an insanity for which I am all too comfortable in subjugating myself unto, for she is the master, her will my universe.
M.F.