Weirdo
I don’t remember how it happened or why it happened it just happened. I guess I remembered, if I think really hard about it. It prolly had something to do with work. O that’s why I began drinking. See I started off late. Real late. Most people start off drinking as teenagers. They get it from their parents or paid an older person to buy it for them. I guess I should started drinking then, but I was under some kinda righteous spell. I wanted to please my mother, or some other kinda dumb shit. Dumb shit why would I say that the reader might ask? Well whenever you are not being who or whatever you are. You are being fake or unauthentic. I hate that. Yet I do it. All the time.
Its like how mom says. “Drinkin and drugs are for weak people. I guess I didn’t want to be weak. I am now though. Very weak. I guessed I missed out on all the fun, and that’s all. Once you missed out you really do miss out. There is no way to recover loss time. That don’t stop many fools from trying though.
I don’t think I ever really felt comfortable in my own skin. And that’s a terrible thing. A truly tragic thing. its like not wanting to brought out of your mother’s womb. So tragic. So silly.
Getting back to the school part though. I hated it. I disliked: the students, the teachers, I hated lunch and recess and gym. All that shit. I’m a free spirit I guess. Always thinking to myself: dreams, goals, desires. That kinda shit. I don’t have time for anybody else. I guess that’s why I’m alone.
Well somehow. I ended up working in a book warehouse. Can you believe that? I guess it beats folding up boxes in a box warehouse. I stayed there many years and it never really seemed like a real job to me. It’s a warehouse with books. Not a library like many people would like to think when I tell them. I tell them that and they think that shit is some kinda cush job or something. But its not. The shit is very hardcore. Most people. Couldn’t do it. I’ve see people quit the very first day. I had this one girl asked me, “how can I do this all day?” I couldn’t really answer her accept to say that I needed to. I’ve had other jobs before and they all sucked: working at a convenient store, groundskeeping, grocery store, loading trucks. It’s hard to believe that anything gets done at all.
Well the first thing I want to do after I leave the book warehouse is get my buzz on. I’ve smoked weed, popped pills, drank. Cough syrup, sniffed VCR cleaning fluid. Anything to get a fucking buzz. Anything to distort my so called reality. Anything to numb me and make me feel like I didn’t do eight hours. All day of being bored to death! I know there are people who liked what they do for a paycheck; but I could never relate to that fucking shit.
In my twenties I guessed I had a romantic view of the fucking world. I related to guys like Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Bukowski. They were fuckin poets and writers and I related to their madness, and being unable to relate to the world.
I found a nice quiet place to drink after work. Then I proceeded to numb myself. It was only way to adjust to a world that didn’t want me in it, or was indifferent to my suffering.
I usually sat in some hooptie and zoned out, even feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I felt sorry for the world in general.
I don’t think any young person in their right mind truly wants to work. You just want to hang out drink eat and fuck. That’s it. And if you couldn’t do that then the world truly had you by the balls. You were fucked.
My nerves are bad, that what my mama all says to me. Her nerves and my father had bad nerves, which didn’t give me a chance to survive this world.
Well when you are chemically dependent the world becomes softer. It doesn’t overwhelm you, and you feel all the shit. All the shit that you hate. I’m a functioning alcoholic . I rarely get stupid from drinking. I just function.
I have known some people who couldn’t handle there drinking. I remembered a dude I work with when I got my first job at a convenient store. He was a hardcore alkie. He just couldn’t stay sober even to work. He musta been forty or something. And his mother was a lead cashier and manager. She got him the job, in spite of a bad reputation. Everyone who was in employed there would watched him come in and mooch his mom. For cash. This guy lasted like a couple days before he got shit canned for showing up late or some shit. When he came in his eyes were already bloodshot red. I got nothing against the guy. Except the fact that some people can not handle drink at all.
I know this kid for instance, early twenties and he’s pretty hardcore to be so young. He slurs his words and talks loudly. But he’s a warm kid. People at the bar stay away from him. He’s a sloppy drunk, yet he’s nice. I guess people feel bad for him, I guess. I don’t get that? There’s no use feeling bad for anyone. That’s just the way it is.
I wrote stories, poems and plays. I figured that was a way out. Being some kinda rich writer like Stephen King. That woulda been the life. I didn’t find that kinda life. All I found was the subway, which became a powerful metaphor for some of shit that I was writing.
The metro link. All those people coming and going. Living their lives. I think of people being born and people dying. That constant cycle that the world can not break.
I caught trains into the city alone. Mostly buzzed on something. Sober I could not take it. I prolly would have jumped off an overpass from the despair.
And I was always alone. It didn’t bother me mostly. I wanted to know what made people tick. You can only begin to understand people from a distance. You’ll miss things if you are too close. The question I still haven’t found the answer to. And will never find the answer.
