Metaphors Are for Poets

Two times this last week I’ve had to think about my writing on the subject of women. You know that post Thermite and Tholeiite? That one caused some minor melodrama.  I wondered why that particular post would cause any drama whatsoever.  The thing is beautiful. I reread it when I feel shitty about myself.  It’s awesome, thus it is in the Anthologies.

Of Awesome.

Anyway.  Here’s my answer to the question I asked myself: because that girl actually exists.  That post was 100% true with no bullshit, and no exaggeration. Just like everything I’ve ever wrote about her.  That’s why.  A friend of mine mentioned after reading something a few months back about the same girl (Later, Love) that she was jealous of her.  Also, that other women reading it would be, too.

Then I have posts about guitars or rocks or cars that sort of sound like they’re about women.  I can think of a few off the top of my head.  They get comments, sometimes dirty comments, but they don’t draw emails or the type of comments that ‘real girl’ posts do. In some cases, no one even gets that I’m not talking about a real woman.

The reason I go into all this detail is that it raises a question.

What changes when I’m being honest, and how does it effect the reader?

Three pages, MLA format, due by class tomorrow.  Oh, and class tomorrow is meeting at the at the bar.

Hank Fucking Williams

Did you win again?

Will I fix us up two bowls of chili?

How about fuck you?

I ain’t got the hotrod Ford anymore (ditched for a bitch, sorry sweetie), but I got the two dollar bill. And you know this guy knows all kinds of places over the hill. Shit, I know places over hills you never seen. I know places you never thought to dream of seeing. They weigh on me some days like one giant argentine blast of all that I have and all that I am. Because guys like me are nothing but memories. That’s why I’m on this lost highway. You wouldn’t understand.

It’s too bad that mystery is my main capital. I got no drama. I got no dark secrets. I lay it out there. My fucked up history is not nearly as entertaining as it should be. What can I do to change that?

Unfortunately, my way of dealing with confusing malfeasance is not to pick up an acoustic guitar and grow effeminate hair styles, but to break bones and destroy facial features. I am not going to jail over you.

So I just go home. Calculus, etc.

You know the drill.

Note: Before I get concerned emails, I wrote this drunk last week thinking about my blown radiator.  Thus the ditching of the Ford comment.  Cars really make me punchy sometimes.

Bury Them Deep

How many times have I got to tell you fools? Fuck with my chrome, I break your motherfucking dome.

That’s why I put a trout in your night deposit box.

Try me one more motherfucking time.

Thermite and Tholeiite

She’s got a dance style all her own. She throws one hand up and jumps and down. It’s not the most impressive move out there, but it’s hers. It’s her dance, we named it after her. Her medium length brown hair bounces around and her long tall body holds together damn good. That time she spends in the gym pays off, but she’s not vain enough to know it.

And it’s time for her to go. She comes by the table with me and some new friends and yells out over the music that she’s heading home. I tell her I’m glad she came out and that I miss her. It comes out a little less casual than I meant it to. She rubs my head and tells me the music is lame tonight. It is. It’s melancholy. She asks me why I never wrote her any songs. So I give her an awkward side hug and she pulls me to her and kisses my cheek. She pats me on the back, between the shoulders. She has to go pick up her baby and spend some time with her man before he leaves town. And her hand runs down my arm and she’s gone.

And when I come back to it, one of new friends asks me who she was. I never know what to say. It’s like when the ground is hot and dry, but the air is full and cool and heavy. The clouds come over the desert and the heat pushes them away, up into the blue where they lose their energy in the cool air. The clouds go silver and the sun shines on the veil of rain looking like heaven come down.

She’s just a friend and those drops are just rain.

I’m nice to the new friend at my table because I have a feeling I’m walking home from her house in the morning, so I spare her the metaphor. She’s just a friend. She’s just a prophet. I think I mumbled into my drink that that girl is always like the ocean to me.

My sister comes back from the cold outside and she smells like Camel Ultralights. It’s a new habit for her, but she’s doing her best. She comes over and asks if our friend went home. She did, I tell her.

And then, before I can think to say anything else, I pull my sister to me and tell her, “You know, I’m over that girl ninety nine percent of the time.”

“That’s funny,” she says, “She just said the same thing about you.”

I never wrote her a song. It would be one chord and the world ending in fire.

Confession Time

I don’t read poetry.  I can’t stand that shit. Like, I’ll be hanging out and guys will be like, Dude, read this poem, and I’m like, Dude, you’re a fag.

I mean, I got keg stands to do and iron to pump. I am way too not gay to read poetry ever, let alone like it.  I mean, I like girls who like poetry, but that shit ain’t for me.

One day I was, like, killing something or driving a fast car, I can’t remember right now, and I accidentally saw some poetry.  I thought it was just a story without punctuation and shit, like men sometimes write stuff. You know.

But then I was like, Whoa, this has a meter!

And then I was like, Fuck, now I’m wearing glasses and I know what ‘meter’ means in relation to word choices!

So I went to the gym.  For like, hours.  Days, even.  On the way home, I beat up a huge homeless dude that looked like he was on the roids.  I mean, he must have been a washed out UFC fighter or something, but I totally IN A NOT GAY way wrestled the guy down and like bit off his face.  Because that’s what dudes do.

I may have accidentally seen some poetry today in my Google Reader while I was drinking my caramel mocha-chito with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.  I swear it’s the first time I’ve ever drank anything but black Folgers strained through my socks, because EYEtalian coffee drinks are gay as fuck, everybody knows that.  So after I totally got a BJ from the barrista, it’s like a NAPA parts counter chick only for coffee, because like, that’s what dudes do, I sat down at my table and there was some bullshit post that was not about engines and stuff.  I just paged through it not knowing what it was.  Then I was like, whoa, this is really good. FOR FAGS.  That was after I noticed that I totally got suckered into reading poetry.  Like, I think the dude was hitting on me, because I’m so manly and was so SO gay.

Because I’m not some dweeby faggy dude, yo.  Have you seen the size of tires on F-350?  Have you seen my motorcycle? See, I’m not gay.  Look at this leather jacket I wear when it’s like, a million degrees out.  Gay guys don’t do that.  They read poetry.

And I don’t.

Training

It has certainly been a while since I was punched in the face. Standing toe to toe and throwing punches is a practice I have not even tried since elementary when I got all my good tactics from The Dukes of Hazzard.  I mean, tackle someone and beat their face, sure.  Get in a good hit and back off, absolutely.

So, I joined a gym.  Not one of those sauna and back waxing parlor gyms.  This is a gym where they hit you.  Or have other students hit you.  I caught a pretty good right cross to the mouth.  It hurt.

But in one hour of getting my ass kicked, I actually felt some sort of tickle of a burn, which I haven’t felt in the last two months of regular gym going.  I knew I had to change it up, so I did.  It’s nice to be sore again.

This is a stupid post, and I apologize for making you all dumber, but the other post I had planned was even worse.  I think I’ll just start drinking.  The cold glass would make my knuckles feel good.

I make myself feel better by thinking I could probably work an arcsin function faster than that string bean Muay Thai kid that lit me up.

Advice

So, I promise at some point to write the story of this weekend out.  Too good to pass up.  Ever shown up to a formal wine social in your jeans with an ass pocket of whiskey and a date in hooker heels and a cleavage baring party dress? No you have not. Because I am awesome and your shit sucks.

Unrelated!

I remember one of my favorite departments of an old website I had was the advice collumn.  Or how-to or something.  People would write me and I would purposely give them bad advice.  I don’t know why, right now, I am reminded about it.  I had some illustrations, too.  That was because my friends would ask me how I had fixed the truck that weekend along the side of the road with a stick and some bourbon.  I would think the repair would be obvious.

The reason I mention any of this is because Jill, long time word lover and fairly decent person, wants to start a group or team blog involving me and someone who wussed out.  I think an advice column would be fun, even if it was just a minor aspect.  Would you ask me for life, spiritual, and/or mechanical advice? You should.

Unrelated!

A while back a friend and me came up with the psuedonym “Dozer Lee.” It is a combination of a nickname I got sort of from a belt buckle I own and my middle name.  The fake name is retarded, but I think would work well for any sort of country artist.  Or possibly a cowboy poet.  Or a Jet Ski.

Help

Did I just quote the most over rated band of all time? No, I did not. Because the Beatles suck.

I did ask for help. If you were me, and I realize that is a tall order, what would you write as a 2-3 sentence bio for magazine publishing purposes?

Now, don’t get too far into character. If you’re not ready to be some sort awesome all the time, you may not be able to handle it.

Unrelated!

I am a character on someone else’s blog chronicles now. It is a little weird.

Also: my sister in law said when I get drunk I am like a mix between Dwight Scrute and Kenny Powers. Yeah. It was supposed to be a compliment. You decide.

And in case you don’t know Dwight Schrute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW7cJpjuIY

Noted Thursday

These are the things I have been scratching word shaped objects in my notebooks about:

1. Have you ever had a friend who you help and help and then they don’t need you anymore and they can go back to just being your friend? Then did you take a sort of undeserved superior air (in your head, you’re not that kind of asshole) and then she made you feel like a complete idiot when she nailed one of your worst habits down in a second? Considering that you are one of the most self actualized people possible, how does this make you feel?

2. Vaguely related to No. 1, how many times in your life do you find asymptotic behavior in everyday life. Specifically in relationships. I have a feeling that anyone ever widowed knows how tangent functions feel. You were infinitely approaching only to find yourself approaching infinity away from them.

3. Should I knock off the calculus and esoteric geology references? I mean, there’s metaphor, then there’s parable. Or should I just figure that most people are too dumb to read me and charge on?

4. How would this lead to situations reminiscent of No. 1?

5. Why do lists always seem to appeal to such a broad range of people? Really, look at posts on most blogs and comments stack like cordwood for some dumbass grocery list while well thought out and high quality writing languishes on the same site. I am mostly immune to this. Is it because of those things that concern me in No 3?

6. Last night I was more hostile and angry than I have ever been within easily accessed memory. Violence is still wrong, right?

7. God I hope so.

8. I should have thought more about God during Easter than I did, probably. Mostly, I have just heard the guy’s name drug into a situation fairly disgusting and inhuman. If he exists in some odd theistic way, he’s probably used to it. If you were God, where would you draw the line for your will and your wrath?

9. Would you let things happen anyway? Even if they weren’t your will?

10. That seems like a very emotionally secure God. He probably runs some other universe.

11. What if you knew the Bible better than anyone you knew, almost to the point of being a Bible scholar, would it add to or remove your faith, whatever that faith may be?

12. God seems sort of creepy and codependent in the Old Testament. He seems sort of over-sentimental and codependent in the New testament. Discuss.

13. Really, the asymptote thing is bothering me. I need some help.

14. So did the asshole who I wanted to kill yesterday and want to maim in some spectacular way today, but he wasn’t man enough to sit through those lame-ass VA meetings and discuss his feeling like a girl. Do excuses exist? (Causality issues.)

15. If I killed him, would that be some great radical expression of some approach vector to a diminishing, decaying end of my own life? What if he killed her?

I <3 Hookers

That used to be a t-shirt I owned, it was of the new style where it fits like a trashbag around your waist but chokes up on your arms like dirty stripper pythons.

See, Hooker is a manufacturer of fine headers. It’s like an exhaust manifold made out of pipes. Nevermind.

It’s all sonic aesthetics, anyway. They rumble and gurgle and, supposedly, give you a minor increase in power at high RPM. Usually, that increase in power comes at the extreme end of the power curve. In other words, if you don’t plan on wrapping the bitch up to eight grand don’t bother. The typical small block Chevy or Ford that gets that treatment can’t even rev up that high without floating its valves.  It’s white trash engineering.  The more you know. Star.

The t-shirt was stolen by a girl I was sort of dating. She was a lawyer way off down in LA and I was a perpetually drunk, recently divorced ordie stationed three hours north of her. She would drive up, play with the dog, make me dinner, and then get all sorts of immoral and crazy. Then she would leave. We would send each other emails throughout the week, with subjects themed to the day. Ruby Tuesday, Manic Monday, etc. I could probably delve into the wilds of that Hotmail account and find them.

One time my friend Jamesbob No-Pants came by. I had a vase of flowers (my own personal decorating style is of the austere variety) and a bottle of Wild Turkey with a ribbon around it on the bar. He took the ribbon off and took a man sized pull (we typically shared one (1) bottle of bourbon a night) and set it down. Then he evaluated the flowers. Then he said:

“Dude, you’re a dick.”

Why is that, I enquired of him as I took an equally irresponsible slug.

“Because, this girl obviously cares about you.”

Interesting, said I.

We drank on in silence. I watched the dog worry over a hock of cow in the back yard. James cut on the playstation and started conjuring attack helicopters to help him regain the upper hand in Vice City.

“What’re you going to do with her?”

Fuck man, I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me that she would actually care. Like, care care.

She was a really good person who, I am sure, has since found something amazing to do with her life. And so did I. But I wonder about her sometimes. If I could apologize to every girl I fucked over during that three or four years of asshole behavior, I would start with her.

But she did get my favorite t-shirt. That’s worth something.