Self-Help for Stoners
Stuff to Read When You’re High
By Robert Chazz Chute
Copyright 2011 Robert Chazz Chute
ISBN 978-0-9877807-0-6
Cover design by Kit Foster at
www.kitfosterdesign.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed to you for your personal entertainment. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thanks you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Ignorance Isn’t Smart (but it can be bliss) Part I
The Broken Promise Repair Girl
Ignorance Isn’t Smart (but it can be bliss) Part II
Captain Bossypants Strikes Again
Do or Do Not…Be a Comfort Junkie
What Your Brain Isn’t Forgetting
When You Worship, You’re on Your Knees
The Revolution Will be Televised
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Two people inspired me most for this book: director, master raconteur and emperor of SModcast Kevin Smith and Joe Rogan, comedian and uber Pot Whisperer. These guys are twelve kinds of cool. What do Smith and Rogan have in common? Their art inspires art. Their thought begets thought.
In November 2010, I saw Kevin Smith on stage. Mr. Smith read my post bout that night and tweeted a little encouragement. That was the right push at the right time. I have a long history in the publishing industry and I was already thinking about writing ebooks. But that was the problem: Too much thinking and not enough doing. I’ve turned my life upside down to write full-time. I’m a doer now.
I saw Mr. Rogan on stage at Massey Hall in Toronto in June, 2011 and love his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Watching him have so much fun made me want to play, too.
Thank you, gentlemen. You’re just the right mix of creativity, kindness, compassion and “Get off your ass!” This book reaches for, and I hope touches, your encouraging, truth-telling spirit. The fun is found in exploring lies that tell the truth.
INTRODUCTION
Some people don’t like the cannabis emblem, but they get the meaning all wrong. It’s not merely an image promoting a naturally occurring drug. It’s a symbol of autonomy over one’s own consciousness. It’s about your freedom to express yourself and your art. When I see a guy wearing a goofy t-shirt with a plant on it, I don’t jump to the conclusion that he’s a loser stoner; not all drinkers are alcoholics, either. What I see is someone with whom I share a common value: Each individual should have the right to be left alone if they aren’t hurting anyone else. The emblem is about freedom, just as a book is a symbol of free thought.
Which brings us to Self-help for Stoners. A few good stories, parables, explorations and exhortations can fill an empty afternoon. A great story can fill your brain and transport you far away from banality. From the campfire circle after the hunt, to surfing the Internet with a cappuccino in hand, we escape into stories. Effective fiction and thought experiments possess ample power to juggle your brain chemistry. Self-help for Stoners can amp your dopamine and trigger neurotransmitter somersaults.
If you’re hooked on reading and jonesing for some sugar, I’m glad you found this book. I’ve been waiting to sit you down to inject some happy into your head. There are bits where I’ll ask you to join me in confronting our inner demons, too. Do so with compassion for yourself and please receive the message in the spirit it is sent: one ingredient of this book’s self-help recipe. Squared away? Now we can begin our trip.
This book is about fun and escape, thought and surprise. I’m telling you up front that these stories will surprise you. Then I’m going to surprise you anyway. Fiction is a magic trick plus a brain tickle that way, isn’t it?
You don’t have to be a stoner to enjoy this escape from reality. In fact, if you’ve ever watched South Park and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you’ve probably already exposed yourself to all the fun, all the moral lessons and thought experiments you’ll ever need. But lessons are repeated until they are learned. (I know, because I’ve messed up, too.) And we all crave art’s high to make life more tolerable. We are all running from the reaper and that pitiless wraith will run us down and enfold us all, one by one. Fiction is a happy rest from that race.
In an article titled, Drugs and the Meaning of Life (www.samharris.org), author Sam Harris writes, “Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness... Every waking moment — and even in our dreams — we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.”
Harris argues convincingly that in everything from the food we eat, the alcohol and caffeine we drink and the relationships we form, we’re altering and diverting the mind flow. We are comfort junkies, idea addicts and we’re happily hooked on all kinds of highs. We are constantly trying to interpret our world and escape it, avoiding pain while pursuing pleasure. Add fiction to the list of things that alter your consciousness.
Please enjoy Self-help for Stoners with whatever stimulant you choose safely (because, as the costly failure of the War on Drugs has proved thoroughly, you’ll do what you want to do, anyway.) I advocate fiction itself for your high. Stories are harmless, portable, easy to stick in your head, have zero dire side effects and they’re legal just about everywhere.
This book is a magic mirror. It is only an illusion that it’s full of stories about other people. Look closer. You will see yourself in others. You’ll find yourself, staring back from the page. Reading is ultimately an exercise in compassion, because there is no Us and Them. There is only Us.
Happy reading! Enjoy your trip.
~ Chazz
Legs Gabrielle Breaks Out
As you roll into town, you find yourself babbling to Chili about the sights, such as they are. “There’s where I went to elementary school. There’s the bank. There’s the high school football field. Under those bleachers is where I let my first boyfriend disappoint me horribly.”
“I recognize that line,” Chili says.
“Oh, look, there’s the town post office...in case you forgot how to read signs on the flight down here.”
“Thanks, boss. All small towns look alike to me, but maybe Poeticule Bay seems a little familiar because of your act.”
“This is the epicenter of what was, Chill. The nadir before the zenith, the shit before the flush.”
“Whatever you say.” Chili steers the Escalade into a parking spot. He’s flummoxed when he sees no parking meter. “I grew up in Chicago and moved to L.A. as soon as I could. I’ve never been to a town so small.”
“No parking meters and not one traffic light. It’s super rural Maine. Think Amish but without the Amish flair for technological progress and fun on a Saturday night.”
“Ba-dum-bump!”
“Yeah, yeah. My town is so small...”
“How small is it?”
“My home town is so small — ” you begin.
“I know! I know! No bigger than my dick!”
This is old material but you both laugh. As your friend, bodyguard and general do-all, one of Chili’s duties is to keep up morale. And you need that now. You need it hard, so you don’t mind his phony chuckle at all.
Chili punches a button and unlocks your door. “You sure you don’t want me to go in and pick up the flowers, boss?”
“Nope. I’m in no rush to get home. I can’t show up without flowers or my sister won’t start off with ‘Hello, it’s been ages.’ She’ll start off with, ‘Where’s the fucking flowers?’”
“Lovely,” Chili says.
When you step out from behind the safety of the Escalade’s tinted windows, people freeze. Something has changed. The few people on the street, young and old, all have cell phones. That’s new. And they’re all whipping them out to take pictures of you. Just like home.
You glance back through the open door and you can tell Chili’s irritated. He’s used to walking ahead of you, a massive muscled arm out front, ushering you through the world. You think, where were you when I was walking through the gauntlet of mean girls in high school? But that’s old material, too, so it’s time to let it go and keep that stuff between you and your therapist from now on.
The girl behind the counter goes stiff as you walk in. You smile and ask for a dozen yellow roses. She doesn’t move. She stares, brain gears grinding.
“Yes,” you say as gently as you can. “I’m her.” You produce a fifty. “Tell everybody I pulled that bill out of my bra and you can probably sell it on eBay to some creepy whacko.” That makes her laugh and has the added benefit of getting her skull engine in gear.
A crowd gathers outside in the time it takes the girl to get the roses from the fridge. The telephone tree must be working, alerting the villagers that the monster they made here has returned. You grab the roses, tell her to keep the change and breeze back into the truck without getting sucked into any smiles or allowing someone to grab your hand. The trick is to move with purpose, smile and keep moving. “Hi! Hi! Gotta go! Sorry! Bye!” Rinse, repeat. Ad infinitum.
“Legs! Legs!” someone implores from the sidewalk, but Chili already has the Escalade in gear.
You wonder if you managed to strike the right note of decorum since you’re home for a funeral. Once, after a night on the red carpet, a couple of movie critics wrote, “Legs tries to make her smile look friendly, but her eyes just say, ‘Nyah, nyah-ni-nyah, nyah!’”
Like always, Chili says the right thing at just the right time. “Home town girl makes good.”
You give him a wry smile. You wish the voice in your head was so kind. “You know better than that. Just as often it’s, ‘I knew her in high school and she wasn’t so funny.’ Or, ‘I thought she was taller.’ Or ‘Who does she think she is?’ Turn left at the next stop sign, Chil.”
“That’s just words,” Chili says as he turns the wheel. “A little mean, maybe, but better than all those dudes peeking in windows or climbing fences.”
“I know. So many sperm donors, so little time. And not enough condoms, penicillin and flea collars in the world.” You watch for his teeth in the rear-view mirror, but you do better than a smile. He throws his head back as he laughs and you know it’s real. One of the things you love about Chili is his reactions have to be honest. He was a terrible actor before he was your bodyguard.
“On the right with the big oak tree in the front yard.”
“The one that —?”
“I swore I’d hang myself from if I didn’t get to go to prom, yeah.”
When you spot The Little Beige House of Parental Tyranny, the anxiety rises. Out of reflex, you look for some gratification from your audience of one. “The courts should have a dedicated hotline to expedite paperwork for celebrities hounded by stalkers. Like...1-800-RESTRAINING ORDER.”
Chili laughs politely.
“A swing and a miss, huh?”
Chili shrugs. “The troubles of the overly privileged probably won’t play well in the red states.”
“Maybe if I do the East Indian call center voice and amp it up.”
“Sounds hideous.”
“Hey, hey! Girl with dead father here! Girl with dead father who signs your exorbitant checks!”
“Sounds great, boss.”
“Nah, you were right the first time.” Before you reach for the passenger door, you reach over the seat and squeeze his shoulder.
Then photographers emerge, two from parked cars across the street and two from behind a hedge.
“I stay away from this town since I was eighteen years old and this is the thanks I get,” you say. You wanted to put more breeze and bounce in your delivery, but instead you sound like you discovered a dead squirrel at the bottom of your shampoo bottle.
“Go straight inside,” Chili says. “I’ll do my big and black thing.”
“Careful. They’re rural. They’ll be more than suitably terrified. You might kill them with a hard look.”
“Only if you want me to, boss.”
Walking into the house should have worked fine but the front door is locked. The cameras click away behind you as you stand on the porch ringing and ringing the doorbell. When Jacqui finally lets you in, your cheeks are burning. The headline will read: Legs Gabrielle, Not Welcome.
“Hey,” Jacqui says.
You hug her. It’s like putting your arms around a fire hydrant in January. “Hi, sis. I tried to call on the way from the airport.”
“The phone keeps ringing. I finally took it off the hook.”
Jesus, you think. Incommunicado? Really? I either come from an alien culture or I left to live among aliens. “Keep the door open a hair,” you say. “Chili will be here in a minute.”
“You brought people? I really don’t think that’s appropriate, Sheila. Couldn’t you have left your entourage —?”
“Chili is a big guy, but he’s only one guy. You start calling him my ‘entourage’ and he’s going to start feeling self-conscious about his weight.”
“Ha,” Jacqui says. “Ha.” Bloodless.
“So we’re already fighting?” you say. “Is that the plan? I just came for a funeral. I left my boxing gloves and slingshots in my party clutch purse.”
Chili fills the doorway and gives your little sister his sweetest smile. To her shock, he gives her a kiss on both cheeks before he says anything at all. Damn him, you can tell he’s genuine. That’s not Hollywood horseshit. The bastard is sweet and means it.
When he sees your jaw hanging open, he guesses, correctly, that it’s up to him for the formal introduction. “Chili Gillie,” he says. His high voice always takes newcomers off guard. He has the look, but that high voice of his didn’t get him past a first audition unless it was a seriously bad no-budget comedy. “Your sister calls me her handsome, hairless assistant, but I’m just here to help out. You need anything, you let Chili know.”
Jacqui nods and you can almost see her knees turning to warm wax. Chili has this effect on both women and men. He’s effortlessly charming. Sometimes he makes you wish you were a gay guy, too, but Chili’s so smooth, he’d cheat on you within a week.
“The funeral is at three. I didn’t think you’d get here in time,” Jacqui says. “It wouldn’t have looked good for your fans if you missed your own father’s service.”
The way she hits the word “fans” makes clear she thinks people who like your brand of humor are idiots and she’s no idiot. They way she said “your own father” makes your upper lip curl, too. She must be a bitch on wheels with those luckless third graders she teaches.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Chili tells Jacqui.
Again, you look at Chili in awe. It would never have occurred to you to answer your sister’s passive aggression with kind words. The family pattern has always been: when somebody sticks a knife in your back, pull it out and have a knife fight.
You sit in the den, the room that, on stage and in high school, you often called “Dad’s Petty Fiefdom of Horrors.” You look around the room. It looks the same. “When you last saw him, did Dad say anything?”
Jacqui sits behind Dad’s desk, like this is a job interview. “The last I saw Dad, all he said was that we were out of bread and that I should bring home a loaf after work. Those were his last words,” Jacqui says.
You look at the pictures on the mantel: Dad in his navy uniform; Mom just before she died; Jacqui in a cap and gown, holding her diploma. There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of pictures of you out in the world. Not one has somehow squeezed into this room.
“Maybe those weren’t his last words,” you say. “Maybe he got a call from a telemarketer and got to tell somebody off one more time before his stroke. That would be nice for him.”
Jacqui looks sour.
“We can hope,” you shrug.
“Sheila!”
Before you two can start bickering, Chili picks up the picture of your father in his dress whites. “He was a handsome man. Will there be a picture like this at the service? It’s a good picture. Or...will there be a viewing?”
“Viewing? Oh. No. My father’s already been cremated.”
My father, you note. Not our father. Well, maybe that’s kind of appropriate. When this was your childhood home, it certainly wasn’t “Our father who art in heaven.” It was “Our father who art always pissed because what the baby of the family thinks is funny is really too much back-sass.”
When you come back from the Land of Lost in Thought, you can tell Chili has been busy melting your sister’s knees again. His charm is a blowtorch as long as he doesn’t have to fake it for a movie audition.
Jacqui makes him tea in the kitchen. You hear her say, “How does one get a name like Chili?”
“One gets it because Gillie was the name I was born with. I got saddled with William at birth. Now, William’s a nice name. But Willy Gillie? Ridiculous.”
“Did you choose Chili because of that character John Travolta played in that movie?”
“Used to tend bar in a Mexican restaurant,” he says.
She giggles, which you can’t remember her ever doing. Chili is your No Man’s Land between what you were and what everybody thinks you are now.
The house smells the same. It’s not a bad smell. It’s just that every home’s smell is a distinct mixture of the people who live there. There’s a bit in there somewhere and you dig out your notebook. Something like, “Every house smells different. My childhood home smells like a blend of daffodils, fear and the sweat of racists.” After another moment’s thought, you scratch out “blend” and pencil in “dour cornucopia”.
But you remind yourself you’re trying to move away from that kind of material. Go back to the same well too many times and you go from bitter-funny to shtick-funny to maligned hack. You take more notes: If I keep my game up, I’ll be a has-been faster than I can say, “Remember me? I thought it would last forever but fame went so quickly I’m now considering taking up an addiction so I can get on a shitty reality show. I’ve never done meth but I’m willing to learn. Please love me.” Shaky start and too long around the bases for a home run…but that “Please love me”? That has potential for a bit.
As worried as you are about repeating the small-town American mind material, the hardcore fans love that stuff. The fans want more of the same. Everyone is in love with preconceptions, so a little small-town mindset lives in everybody. Your agent, Mort, wants you to make your onstage persona sweeter to show you’re growing and changing “into a range”.
“Persona? What persona?” you asked Mort, genuinely mystified. “That’s me on stage, you asshole. If I could pretend childhood pain this easy, I’d have three Oscars already.”
Mort wants you to move from the quirky pretty girl to the lead in a couple of rom-coms next year. He has you seeing a nutritionist to make you angry and anorexic; working out with a personal trainer to make you so buff women will hate you; and talking with a therapist to transform you from a bitter, hilarious stand-up comic into a much less funny, neurotic actress who men will find “sexy instead of scary.” That could work. Or maybe you should fire Mort’s ass and torch his Porsche.
When you look up from your notebook, Chili pokes his head into the den and his face says, “Help me!” Before you can say anything, he excuses himself to field phone calls. The bastard’s running away. You had to wait years before you could run away.
Jacqui comes back into the den. She carries her teacup to Dad’s desk. “Are you and Chili...?” she says coolly.
“Constantly. He exhausts me. But when you pay for it, man-whores have to deliver every time.”
“Uh-huh.”
What is it about coming home that makes you rabid about riffing? You can’t seem to help yourself. So you resolve to play nice. You take a deep breath. “Jacqui, I have a secret to share with you.”
“Oh?”
“The last weekend before I left home was Labor Day weekend. You and Dad went up to the cabin and I had this great idea. I promised myself I was going to make it to Hollywood and make it big. I wanted to commemorate the beginning of my career, so I found a case in the attic and I made a time capsule. I buried it — ”
“In the corner of the garden. I know,” Jacqui says.
You have one of those rare moments when your brain empties out so fast, the wind makes a whooshing sound and you have no idea what to say. The inside of your skull feels like it’s lined with peppermint gum.
“You didn’t bury it very deep. It came up a little. The frost heaved it up three years ago. Dad was upset. He looked for that aluminum case for a long time before he spotted it planting beans. He was sure you had stolen it before you took off, which, I guess you did.”
“I was eighteen,” you say.
“So?”
“Dad took you to the lake and left me to my own devices. It-it seemed like a grand gesture before the big expedition.”
“I was only nineteen,” Jacqui says, “but I would never have done that.”
And the silence stretches out. Your sister, it occurs to you, was born middle-aged. Risking nothing, she had never made any mistakes. That tragic level of success had made Jacqui unbearably smug. She didn’t have any funny stories, like the one about the manager who sent you to a porn audition. Or how you got a new manager and you had to fire her for doing the same thing.
“I have stuff in the time capsule I want,” you say.
“I know,” Jacqui says. She sips her tea, pinky out.
“Did you go through it?”
“The songs? And the jokes? Yeah. I can see why you want them back.”
You take a few more deep breaths. Chili is still in the backyard, off the battlefield. “The case. Where is it?”
“Yeah, about that,” Jacqui says. “Dad was angry.”
“Royally pissed, you mean. As I recall, he had no other emotional settings.” (And critics say you don’t have range.)
“Royally pee-o’d, yes,” Jacqui says primly. “He never got over you taking the tuition money to run off to California. Hollyweird, he called it.”
“My gamble worked out, don’t you think?”
“Yes. You were very lucky, Sheila. Dad called you Lottery Girl.”
You sigh. “Earlier you asked how Chili got his name. Did you ever wonder how I got mine?” Before she can answer, you add, “If you use the word ‘spreading’, I’ll make you eat that teacup and you’ll choke on the saucer.”
She shrugs. She puts the teacup down and to the side of the desk, away from you.
“Did you watch my first HBO special?”
“I saw it on DVD eventually,” Jacqui says. “Dad couldn’t get through the first half when it was on TV. You went off to your glamorous life and made a mint tearing down your hometown, burning down your family. We had to stay here, Sheila. You embarrassed us. Dad and I lost friends.”
“I guess you couldn’t make very good friends, then. I would have thought Dad would be more worried about losing a daughter.” You take another breath. You feel hot, like the air is going out of the room. “Mom would have laughed her ass off at my act. You were always Daddy’s little girl and I was Mom, but shorter. I wish she were here now.”
Chili comes in, too late. “You want me to dig that thing out of the garden, boss?”
“Apparently I didn’t bury the body deep enough, Chili. Dad dug it up already.”
“You should have seen it, Chili,” Jacqui says. “All that teen angst stuffed into one case smelled pretty sour.”
“Hm,” Chili says.
“Jacqui was just wondering how I got my show biz name, Chili.”
“Not desperately,” your sister says.
Chili smiles. “Few think to ask. I mean, look at her.” He gestures your way. “They see your sister’s gams and think her nickname is too obvious.”
“I wanted to be called Gams Gabrielle,” you say, “but the only focus group that liked that was from the 1920s, so Legs it was.”
Chili ignores you and pushes on. “Management never disabused anyone of the sexy assumption. In fact, for every tour and press jacket and movie, they put her in shorter and shorter skirts. Driving home the Legs Gabrielle brand, you know?”
Chili opens his custom double-breasted suit and squats to perch his bulk on the ottoman. The room looks like it has shrunk around him. “But the truth is different,” he continues. “The boss went on her first audition. She comes in cracking jokes. Your sister’s got more charisma in her little toe than most actors put out there in a year with a staff of five writers to make them look clever. On camera or on stage, your sister doesn’t know nervous.”
Jacqui looks at you, but she still sees the brat who ran off to Hollyweird. Dad’s been drilling that image into her head for eight years.
“The boss goes through the audition and everybody’s breathless. She flipped the table around. You know what that means?”
Jacqui shakes her head, but her face says she doesn’t care.
“To flip the table around in an audition means that the person auditioning isn’t getting judged. Instead, the boss was in the position of deciding whether the movie is good enough for her to bother. First audition and she stands out that far. Everybody knows instantly that your sister is going to be huge. They expect pretty, but they never expect pretty to be married up with that smart and really funny.”
Chili can see that Jacqui isn’t impressed, but he presses on. “Sheila became Legs Gabrielle that afternoon. The director turned to the producer and said, ‘Triple threat.’” Chili looks at you with shining eyes. You wish your father could have faked that look just once. “The director says, ‘Sheila, your career is going to have legs. We just have to change your name and you’re a shining golden goddess.”
“Lipshitz was great for stand-up...” you say.
“Lipshitz is a burden,” Jacqui says. “But Legs Gabrielle made it worse.”
“Thanks for telling her, Chili. If I’d told it, she might have thought I was bullshitting. Around here it seems I have another name: Lottery girl.”
A cloud crosses Chili’s face. “But lottery implies luck, not talent.”
“Oh, you’ve done very well for yourself,” Jacqui admits.
But why add “for yourself”? Does that imply you should have brought her out west so her sneering could have point-blank impact?
“So can I have my stuff?” you ask.
Jacqui shifts in her seat and, before she can say anything, you’ve guessed. “Dad destroyed everything in my time capsule, didn’t he?”
Jacqui breaks into a huge smile. “Dad was more creative than you ever gave him credit for. You didn’t get it all from Mom.”
Chili is already getting up and buttoning up.
“Dad got cremated. You’ll be able to visit his ashes, along with the ashes of your little time capsule, at the family plot. I suppose if you want to retrieve your hateful little jokes and song lyrics, you could sift through them at the cemetery. Bring a shovel to dig up the urn. The photographers would sure enjoy that.”
You’re so stunned you don’t move. Chili’s standing beside you, hand out, pleading with his eyes to get the hell out of here.
“You should also know, Sheila, that Dad was so pissed, you aren’t in the will at all. You might have been had you called more often.”
You clear your throat and stand to tower over her. “I asked you to get Dad to come to my show when I was on tour many times. He could never tear himself away from his garden. Or did he even get half of my messages?”
Jacqui goes white and says quietly, “Am I to expect you to get a bunch of high-priced lawyers to fight Dad’s bequest to me?”
You consider that for just a moment and then shake your head. “Honey, I’m going to get much more material out of the half hour I’ve been here. Financially speaking? I will make a metric fuck ton of cash off you forever. Emotionally? Eviscerating you over and over on stage will be worth much more money than anything Dad could leave me. You just bought me another mansion in the Hollywood Hills, bitch.”
At the door you turn back and take the framed picture of your mother. Jacqui looks like she might run at you for it, but changes her mind when you hand it to Chili. “I’ll just take this with me,” you say. That’s all I need now. From Mom I got my sense of humor. From you and Dad, all I ever got was all the emotional pain that fuels my success.”
Hands balled into fists, Jacqui screams, “Don’t bother calling if you ever need a kidney!”
You smile. “That’s funny, Jacqui. There might be hope for you yet. Of course, if I ever need a kidney, I’ll just have you killed.”
You’re out the door, steaming for the Escalade. Chili rushes ahead and opens the door for you. He keeps the photographers back, but they jump to shoot around him.
The headlines will read: Too verklempt to attend her father’s funeral. But the real fans will forgive you that. Tears of anguish stream down your face. This will be good for your brand.
People call it Hollyweird, but it’s no stranger than any small town in America. If you look closely, celebrities are very much like actual human beings.
Mind Bend
A voice, dark and foreboding, tells you you’re getting paranoid. It says the cops are outside, that you’re being watched, that the walls hide judging eyes. That voice? It’s your voice.
Through a bar of light in the Venetian blinds? No cops. All you see is a feathery tentacled fog floating over glistening grass. You wish you could hide in dew’s morning stars. Instead, the great white blanket coils around the world, tightening around your house, pressing the walls in, a closing noose.
People say you’re addicted to drugs. They don’t get it. You’re addicted to the change in your perception. Hallucinations? No. These are enhancements, expanding your awareness of the shrinking space between things. You don’t see a chair, a table, a sofa, a TV. You see the space among them and it almost seems to mean something important. Almost.
Rockets will never take you to black holes in the center of each galaxy’s glazed donut, but you can see between the stars and into the infinite dark from here. You can feel the smooth weight of the moon if you reach out with your mind.
Just close your eyes.
The Foreseeable
When the boss introduces you to his hot daughter and you shake her hand, keep your eyes on hers and smile, but not so big. Just flick your eyes down at that amazing rack some other time. Do not stare at the rack.
But you’ve already lost. Why is it so hard not to do something when you know it’s a stupid thing to do?
When the boss says his daughter will be a summer intern, just nod and say something neutral. “We sure have a lot of work to do around here, so some help will be great.” That would have been good.
Resist the urge to suck in your gut when you she floats through your office. Keep your eyes on your computer screen. Do not slide that picture of your wife and kid into your desk drawer. Do not, under any circumstances, get caught looking at her ass as she bends over to put files in the bottom drawer.
When the boss’s daughter sends you a sext message in the middle of your Power point presentation, erase it. Do not keep the evidence in your Blackberry for later reading. Do not look at her again until you’re saying, “Goodbye and good luck with your second year at college.” Pray she meets a nice boy who lives in Wisconsin and she never interns at her daddy’s company again.
When she says, all cool and smirky, that you looked kind of flustered during your presentation, tell her, “No, I’m fine, thank you.” As if you’re an anatomically incorrect robot, say, “I think you sent a text message to me in error. It must have been meant for your boyfriend so I deleted it without really reading it.”
Do not look in her eyes too long and say, “I guess I was distracted.” (That was a mistake.) By all that’s holy, do not smile and say, “And you know why. Don’t pretend you don’t. You’re too mature a young woman to pretend.”
Pretend you’re a mature man and do not lose your job over this. You know where this is going. Shut it down before it’s too late.
When she amped up the flirtation and sent you a picture of herself in a bikini? That would have been a good time to assert yourself. Tell her you’re flattered, but you’re not interested. Then add, “Gotta go! I really need to get home to my pregnant wife.”
When she persists and sends a shot of her in a bikini without the bikini top? You could have saved your job right there if you’d told her you’re really gay and she’s too hippy for you anyway. Recommending Jenny Craig to her in a thoughtful, concerned tone would definitely have saved your marriage.
When the rest of the staff left the office by five-thirty and she said, with that lascivious smile, that she planned to work late? That would have been a good time to fake a call from your wife. If you had grabbed your coat and run out screaming that your wife was having contractions three months before her due date? That would have been a good play and you’d be holding your baby now.
When the girl kissed you, you shouldn’t have kissed her back, of course. No tongues would have been a smarter move. Reaching up to feel the weight of her breasts under that thin, white blouse? Well, let’s not kid ourselves. By then you weren’t making choices. By the time she knelt in front of you, your brain was not operating with the usual required blood flow.
But there were choices that could have been better: Not doing it on the boss’s desk, for instance; locking the door; making sure the boss himself wasn’t squirreled away in the conference room with a client; wearing a condom.
Instead, when your boss walked into his office, there you were in the throes of ecstasy, banging the boss’s daughter doggy style on his desk yelling, “Ride it, bitch! Ride it!”
There’s no established etiquette for that. Say you’re sorry, of course, but since you’re about to get thrown into a shit storm no matter what you do, you might as well come, right? It’s not like you can get into more trouble, right? You’re just as damned either way, so when you look up as that door swings open, the ejaculate is both squeezed and scared out of you.
Remember that moment as if it’s your last. (Your company does sell guns, after all, and the boss has a legendary temper.)
As often as this has happened in the world — and you know it’s happened a lot — no one knows what to do next in this scenario. Do you grab your clothes and put on your pants, hopping around yelling your apologies? Or do you just run naked into the parking lot and hope you left your company car unlocked?
Do not say, “She started it.” That’s for sure.
When you are on the ground and her father, your ex-boss, is kicking you in the balls repeatedly with his shiny size thirteen shoes? Don’t beg him for mercy. Instead beg the pie plate-eyed client standing there uselessly with his jaw hanging open. Plead with him to call the police. This will have terrible ramifications later, but in the short term, it may save one of your testicles, anyway.
When you are handcuffed to a hospital bed, do not ask the doctor to take a picture of your penis. That bright red ring of lipstick is not evidence against the boss’s daughter that will be useful in court.
When the police officer informs you that the summer intern is not returning to her second year of college this fall, make sure to look as confused as possible. When the police officer informs you that the young woman will be returning to classes in the fall but the classes are in grade ten? Piss yourself and induce vomiting if it doesn’t occur spontaneously.
Don’t ask for your job back while you’re waiting for your trial. Don’t ask to hold on to the company car for another week. Don’t call the company to ask for your last check. Don’t complain when the company health plan refuses to cover your medical bills as a workplace injury. And no, they won’t pay for your legal assistance, either. There is only legal punishment.
Don’t even ask another employee — somebody you considered a buddy — to gather your personal belongings from your desk. The court order says no contact and that means no contact. Besides, all your shit was thrown into the bonfire (atop the boss’s desk) in the back lot. The boss burned it all up and threw a half-empty bottle of vodka on top to make sure it burned bright.
Do not look shocked when you wobble out of the cab from jail (still in your hospital gown) to find all your clothes on the front lawn. It’s been raining all weekend so all your possessions have been soaking in mud for three days.
That’s what was happening to your stuff as you sat in a holding cell enduring the jeers from a vagrant boozehound who alternately howls at the guards and mumbles that he wants to hear you tell the story again and again as he masturbates with grim determination.
When you show up on your college buddy’s doorstep — your oldest friend — do not ask his pregnant wife (and your wife’s best friend) to “be reasonable.” When the college buddy says, “Cheryl doesn’t want you staying on our couch,” take the hint. Don’t say, “It’s just for a few nights.” It’s not just for a few nights.
Your college buddy was good for a few rounds of pool and a bullshit session once in awhile. He is useless for apocalyptic events. Just ask him for some money for a motel and thank him because this is the last time you’ll ever see him.
When the judge sends you off to prison for a short stay, resign yourself to the knowledge that this will not feel like a short stay. When your cellmate, who has more tattoos than teeth, hurts your feelings with unnecessarily caustic remarks, do not lose your temper. When you lose that fight and he bends you over a chair and orders you to spread your cheeks? Take it like a man and ride it, bitch! Ride it!
When you get out and try to make up with your wife, don’t expect much. It will not serve you to explain that you picked up herpes in prison, not from the girl. Just be happy the court allows you to spend a little time with your baby, though the visits will be supervised until your baby is eighteen years old.
When the boss’s daughter shows up at your bachelor apartment, don’t even go near the door. When you fail to hide under your narrow bed, just yell through the door that she’s already destroyed you. You have nothing left for her to take.
When you open the door a crack, it’s too late. You are lost again.
Don’t let your eyes linger over the broken orbit of her swollen left eye, the fresh black and blue rising, the old yellow bruises slowly evaporating last. Under no circumstances should you look at the baby in her arms. You should not examine the dark curly hair, just like yours.
You’re in no condition to help anyone. You can’t even help yourself, stupid.
She says it’s yours, but she’s lied before.
But anyone with a fat wallet can help someone. Maybe the impossibility of the task is what makes it noble. For the same reason you fought all that good advice, maybe you should try the impossible. The forbidden pulls like a black hole’s gravity. The quixotic is exotic.
Redemption is unattainable. So what? Allowing others to define you by one mistake, or even a series of mistakes? That’s wallowing.
Your only hope is to begin again.
Same Thing Only Different
Why do so many stoners talk about the potential of a time machine? They’re already high. Life’s not going to get better. Sure, sure. Go back and kill Hitler. We’re all agreed. (Yawn) Then what, Captain Time Travel? You go back and have that threesome you were too chickenshit to follow through on the first time?
That’s just Round One.
Now that you’ve erased one timeline’s regrets, you will replace them with fresh mistakes. One of those sluts from the threesome gave you herpes while the other fell in love with you. The one who loves you rats you out to your girlfriend and ruins your life.
Next thing you know, you’re firing up your time machine again.
New timeline, Round Two, will be every kind of suck but the warm, happy kind. This time you’re living in a trailer park with ugly kids and a herpes-ridden wife who’s addicted to crack and rage.
So you whip out your handy-dandy time machine for Round Three. The worlds change, but one common denominator is constant, despite all the variables revolving around you. You’re still dragging the same shitty you making new batches of rancid mistakes. You never see the new mistakes coming.
Round after round, you zip back in time trying to fix things. You’ve got a mansion and everything’s cool until you back over your three-year-old in the driveway. You win the lottery again and again, but every time, in every new dimension, everybody still hates your fat, rich guts. Never mind zipping around with the time machine you’ll never have. The one fate you can never escape is you.
Instead, peer through the magic smoke to your future. Your mind is a time machine. Work those dials. You can see your future from the couch. You’re the same, only swollen. That ugly plaid couch just gets rattier and rattier. The future is no mystery. It’s the present stretched out.
To change the future, change your present. Get up from the couch. Aspire, do it and inspire. Stop planning. Go! Go before the future punches you in the dick and bitch slaps you with the herpes-infected fist of The Truth About You.
As soon as you see those flashing red, blue and white lights strobing in your rear view mirror, you begin to sweat and you rehearse saying in a calm voice, “Is there a problem, officer?”
Of course there’s a problem. A cop has just pulled you over. That’s only good if the kidnapper with the sawn off is driving and you’re duct taped in the trunk. But that scenario hardly ever comes up.
So the officer sidles up. What is with these guys? Why do they all have that same moustache and sunglasses? Do they get a bulk discount? Is it a policy that says they all have to look alike or does that happen on its own? And they all have that walk, holding the belt and coming up slow, like he has spurs on his boots going ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Like he’s got six guns on each hip and he’s primed to slap leather.
This cop has swagger, but he’s a careful one. The cop chews gum and peers in the back window first. When he sees the big box in the back seat he slows down another half step just to process what he’s seeing.
He stops and leans one hand on the trunk to make sure the latch is caught so your best and craziest buddy won’t pop out of that big trunk and cut him in two with .00 load from an altered pump shotgun with five shots.
Shrewd cop. He doesn’t hurry. He’s thinking what you’re about. Civvies call it a traffic stop, but cops call it a takedown, with all the ominous connotations the word implies.
You have the license and registration out and ready. Your eyes are watering but you look back with your best disarming smile. Your other hand is on the wooden dowel under the blanket. The dowel reaches into the cage in the backseat.
You tap the window button and as soon as it comes down an inch the cop steps back. Before he can order you to put both hands on the wheel, you jiggle the stick. There’s a hiss from the cage and wham! The noxious spray shoots out to fill the car. Again.
“Whew!” the cop yells and jumps back, plugging his nose.
You can’t pretend watery eyes away, but your smile appears open and friendly and five kinds of dumb. “Was I driving too fast, officer? I have to pee real bad and I was hoping for an off ramp soon.”
“Whew!” the cop says again and shakes his head hard, as if that will stop the stench from crawling up his nostrils and hammering his brain stem.
As bad as it is for him, it’s ten times worse for you. But jail would be much worse, so you just grit your teeth and jiggle the dowel again. Can’t let the stinking little fucker get complacent.
“Is that what I think it is?” the cop says, already knowing the answer but unable to construct a scenario where this makes sense.
“Skunk! Yessir! I’m taking him to get them ass glands taken out,” you say.
“What? Why?” The cop has totally forgotten to ask for the license and registration in your hand, which is good because the paperwork does not belong to you.
“Skunks make great pets,” you say. “You get them ass glands taken out and it’s just like a purty black and white kitten. See, we live out in the woods. My daddy used to get rid of skunks when they crawled under the porch. He got rid of ’em with a twelve gauge, you know? But that’s kinda cruel. You pour a little ammonia around your front step and them’ll stay away just fine. Keeps raccoons out of the garbage, too, if that’s your problem.”
The officer has taken another step back so you’re leaning out the window now, shouting back, eager and cooperative as traffic roars past.
“So, my little girl? She’s six and cute as a bug’s butt? She says, ‘Daddy, can I have the skunk under the porch? He’s cute, just like Pepe Lepew.’ The wife didn’t like that idea at all. You know how that goes. But who can look into the eyes of a six-year-old and say no, am I right?”
The thing in the cage hisses again and you wish this cop would make up his mind because you are about to throw up. Again.
“So I’ve gotta piss like the proverbial race horse and a few exits back I tried to get into a restroom but the gas station prick wouldn’t let me have the key so I could relieve myself. Can you beat that? Wouldn’t allow a man a little dignity. I might be stinky, but I got a butt load of human kindness in me.”
The cop laughs and backpedals. He’s not going to touch the license and registration in your hand. He won’t ask any more questions. He won’t look in the trunk. He certainly won’t haul you out and put you in the back of his cruiser.
“I just got a couple of more exits and I’ll get to the vet who will do the job, ’kay?”
“Yeah! Go! Go!” He waves you on. Nice fella.
For all your suffering, you gave him a fair exchange. He’ll tell this story for the rest of his life. And you’ll avoid the overly punitive pot laws in the otherwise great state of Texas. You’ll also avoid the consequences of some more universally accepted laws, come to think of it.
You peel away, gravel flying, and roll down the windows. It doesn’t help a bit.
You got the idea for this dodge when a buddy called your latest crop “skunk weed.” That was right before he kidnapped you at gunpoint and forced you to take him to your secret stash in the woods. He followed the map fine, but the ruts in the logging roads were so deep you banged your head on the underside of the trunk lid until you thought your brains would shoot out of your ears.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Your ears were still ringing when you popped open that truck and beat him down with the tire iron. Then you took his shotgun with .00 load.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Which was overkill. Now you have a skunk in the back seat and the trunk is stuffed full of weed and bloody chunky buddy. You can bury bloody buddy in the desert along the way to Vegas with an irritated skunk. There ain’t enough skunkweed nor tomato juice in the world to make you smell right.
You should have been an accountant. If you were, you wouldn’t always have to carry a knife in your sock. You wouldn’t be afraid to tell a friend where you live. You could be banging a secretary on the boss’s desk right about now, if you were a luckier guy.
The sad thing? If your bloody, chunky buddy in the trunk had just asked for some weed and a loan, you would have obliged with a smile. As you drive on, most of the water in your eyes is from skunk.
Face Off
Some days you feel so sick, the only answer is to jack off and, doing your best Jason Statham impression, you give yourself a tough guy pep talk in the mirror.
Some people look like they never have a down day. They skydive before breakfast and that’s the slowest part of their day. They make money by speaking into a microphone or looking into a camera. A small army makes their visions happen. Fans follow them no matter what they do.
And you’re still on the couch, still clueless what you’re next move will be. You’re still a consumer, not a maker, producer, seller. You produce belly button lint and carbon dioxide.
Occasionally you carry heavy things for low pay. You may never be Jason Statham or Kevin Smith or Lady Gaga or Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp or Joe Rogan or Stephen King or JK Rowling or Batman...okay, let’s face it. You aren’t going to be any one of those people.
But you could be the better you that you dream of. You could change.
Or you could turn on the TV for just one more hour.
Choose.
How Irwin Changed His Name
Your older brother was the only Irwin in the whole school. Mom named him (which proves she’s petty and he was an accident, too.) He doesn’t look like much, passed out, drooling, snoring and smelling of stale beer. No one can handle that much alcohol, so his body has gone to Plan B: sweat it out. But Irwin is a man and you still feel like a boy even though you’re only a year younger. Your brother found a way to claim a new name and make it stick. This is how Irwin became Jack.
You never understood Man-language. Men claim friendship is everything — bros before hoes — but when you watch your brother with his boys, their exchanges are cruel, casual contempt. Being mean is acceptable as long as you call your buddy “Short dick” with a smile. Your friends are the ones who know you best, so they have all your weaknesses in their knuckly grip. Jack’s friends say things to him he would never let you get away with. His friends are the brothers he chose. To change his name, Irwin had to go outside his boys’ circle and come back alive, like he’d survived some occult tribal rite of passage.
Back when he was still Irwin, last summer, your brother went to a bush party. All his buddies were there, but one of them, Skate, was saddled with a cousin from out of town. Cuz was a big guy, just back from college. The dude was impressed with himself. He looked like he majored in lifting heavy things, like he went to university just for the boss weight room.
They sat around the campfire, drinking and complaining about the girls who were supposed to show up but hadn’t yet. But Cuz had a one-track mind. He started right in on your brother as soon as he was introduced. All he could talk about was your brother’s name.
“Irwin, Irwin, Irwin! Gawd, that sounds retarded. How do you stand it? Makes you sound like some dumb farmer. Irwin, Irwin, Ir-lose!”
Your brother drank his usual apple juice and Jack Daniels from an oversize travel coffee mug. He looked Cuz up and down. His arms looked swollen; his neck yoked with muscle. Irwin began to drink faster, pouring less juice into the mug each time he knocked it back.
Skate must have said something about your brother on the way over. Before that night, Skate made fun of your brother’s name, too. They all did.
“Irwin,” your brother finally admitted, “is a fucked up name.”
But some people can’t take yes for an answer. The dude, who no one but Skate really knows, wouldn’t let up. Cuz didn’t understand the code. Anybody could be mean as long as they were funny at the same time. And you had to have a track record of being solid. The unspoken social contract states you can be a prick as long as it’s just to your closest friends. (It’s also okay to shout filthy insults at old, unarmed people as long as you do so from a speeding car.)
Skate’s cousin must have figured he was big enough that the code didn’t apply to him. But delts and biceps and triceps don’t make you king among angry drunks. Maybe that shit could fly in a frat house full of pussies bound for careers in accounting. Around a campfire in the woods with a bunch of townies? Different story.
“You a pig fucker, Irwin?” Cuz asked, looking serious. “I think I read somewhere that most guys named Irwin are pig fuckers.”
“Nope,” your brother said, and downed another juice and Jack Daniels in one go.
“No pigs around here, I guess?”
Skate gave Cuz a warning look, but the dude must have been too wrapped up in talking smack to notice no one was laughing now. Everyone else sensed the change in the air. Everyone but Cuz went wisely quiet.
People from the city think country people are dumb. They talk about “street smarts” and acting tough, but country’s got badass guys bound for jail, too. Cuz was balls-deep in piranha-infested waters and had no idea: A perfect smile filled with big white teeth was soon due for massive dental surgical intervention.
“If there’s no pigs, you must have to make do with a hog-ugly girlfriend, huh?” The dude looked around at the faces ringing the fire, palms up and chest puffed out, like he was waiting for applause. He might have had a chance if he’d stopped then, but when he got no approval, he doubled down. “What? Did I get it wrong, Ir-loser? Do you bump uglies with one of these pig-faced motherfuckers, instead of the hog-ugly girls around here?”
“Don’t call me Irwin no more,” your brother said. But he wasn’t talking to Skate’s cousin at all. He was talking to his boys. “Call me...” He looked at the near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. You could see his wheels turning, cog and sprocket teeth clicking in. “Call me Apple Jack. Irwin’s dead. He’s as dead as this motherfucker with the air hose up his ass.”
A nervous chuckle made its way around the fire. Cuz let out a loud bray of a laugh, one of those mocking “haw, haw, haw” noises that sounds like a human-donkey hybrid some mad scientist would invent on weekends.