I’m too old for this shit

You’ve seen those Buzzfeed tests with results revealing what “Friends” character you are, which 70s rock band, what sandwich — what arbitrary thing you are – these tests are clearly out of control.  By the way, I’m Courtney Love, the group Heart, Captain Kirk, and should live in the State of Washington.

Facebook friends who got the State of New York were pleased, proud to be associated with a high-powered, sophisticated city.

I was born and raised in Manhattan.  My dad, an artist, had a studio in the west 20s, and my friends and I took trains all around the city.  My mother’s from Harlem.

But when my results said that I should live in Washington, I thought – exactly!  This city was always too much for me.  My dad thought that I should live in Berkeley California, where it’s laid back and bohemian.

He had to make me go out and play with the kids yelling up at our window for me to come outside.  I was content to stay in my bedroom and dream, play with dolls, and write stories.

So I went outside, and before you know it, I was an alcoholic.  The cliques, the rules, the pace to keep up — I wasn’t suited for it.  I didn’t even care about going to college, though I scored high in my elementary school tests, and could read when I was three.

Early on I was anti-establishment – I saw how people were influenced to think the same way, and to follow trends.

I still live in Manhattan with filth, noise, and rude people.  I have principles and try to have manners, but in the city it’s hard.

In Whole Foods, I was nearly run over by shopping cart speeders.  I wanted to yell, “Where are you all going!!”  There were mostly upper-middle class young people, who pretty much own the island.  Yes, Manhattan is Dubai now — very expensive.

I was on the Upper West Side, a place where the gritty, the working class, and the intellectuals coexisted way back; the northernmost tip of that area being Columbia University.  At the base was the area immortalized in “Panic in Needle Park,” where junkies were.  A lot of that area was dangerous.

We knew a doctor in the seventies who bought a brownstone in the west 90s.  She was warned against moving there.  That house is probably a couple of million dollars now.  The people in that area today are wealthy, designer people.

Where I live is not like that, but it’s a matter of time.  Even though my neighborhood is considered good, in pockets it’s still noisy, dirty and overcrowded.  Even the airplane traffic is excessive.  I can’t take a decent nap because I’m hypersensitive to the noise.

I would love living in the woods of Washington State.  But for now I’m thinking about New Mexico.  I’m too old for this shit.

Chilean bass sex tapes

The man who sold it to me told me, “It’s, mmm! – like butter.”  Oh well, yeah then, shit, give me some, I said.  I didn’t know how much I had paid for it.  I ate it and almost passed out.  How much did I pay for this?  I ran to the refrigerator to look at the wrapper around the rest of it to see what I paid for fish that almost made me come.  Okay.  Yeah, expensive but, oh well.

I’m too consumed with changing the trajectory of my life to be a foodie.  I keep it basic with food, but now I wonder if there’s other fish out there I missed.  While I don’t spare cost for good food, it can’t be too expensive.  I spent half my unemployment check on that fucking fish.  But I did buy it again.  Oh I just had to hit that up, like, two times…

The earth is just toilet paper for us to wipe our asses with until it’s all gone

When my friend Jeff lived on Fourteenth Street in the eighties it was sleazy. He lived in an SRO, a three story walk up. I went there once and we smoked a lot of cigarettes. He introduced me to Charles Bukowski, underground comic books and OTB.  He wrote me a poem that had the word ‘equatorial’ in it. Sometimes he was called Angry Jeff. Fourteenth Street isn’t what it was years ago. But nothing is what it was years ago — silly me.

Now there are modeling agencies in that region so there are gorgeous people parading up and down that street. Union Square is there with that farmer’s market everyone loves. Whole Foods is there and DSW. I like to go to that Halloween store on 10^th St. Today I went looking for green spider webs and purple candles.

When I left I walked across Fourteenth Street to the west side. There were so many people sucking at the air. You had to scoot and slide to get around them all. Oh my — I’m glad I didn’t breed. There isn’t enough air. Some of the people didn’t look happy to be here. I always say I wouldn’t want to create another lost soul. There are just so goddamned many people and a lot of them are populated here – oh I know there’s China but – good lawd!

What are all of us doing here? I suppose we buy things, use energy. Some of us think we’re special but if we thought about how many of us exist, maybe we’d change our minds. How could so many of us be special when there are so many of us?  It’s like bugs.

There was a tall man in green scrubs on the train. Maybe he was a doctor. I guess we should make more people to fix other people. Doctors are needed to fix all the people being born. And people have to have cars, so there have to be people made to make all those cars. And then there have to be people made to sweep the floors and there have to be people to put in jail so other people can feel lofty.

So I get it — generally, people have to be here to make stuff for others to buy and use. That’s it. In other parts of the world they have different notions but the idea of having stuff even in those places is seductive. The ‘good life’ is pushed on us like heroin. A lot of people imagine they’re here looking for something better or to be a part of some phenomenal movement that they’re going to start and they think their kid’s gonna help. Maybe. But like I always say, maybe the earth is just toilet paper for us to wipe our asses with until it’s all gone.

Ma wants to sit down yo!

A mouse had babies in my apartment.   They don’t know shit from shamrock because they’re too young yet — they don’t know they’re supposed to run when they see me.  The one today just walked around my apartment with impunity, exploring, sniffing at my books on the floor.  He stopped to drink droplets of water on the kitchen floor — while I stood there.    Maybe he knew (she?) that I referred to mice as cute Disney creatures in a previous post.  Maybe he knew that I don’t kill mice, that in the previous days I merely trapped his brother and sister in a shoebox with bread, took them outside and let them free in the woods.  “This nice lady likes us,” they think.  How did the one sibling wind up in my bathtub like Sisyphus?  He’d get so far up the porcelain curve before sliding down.  I gotta admit he was kinda cute.  But how?  It couldn’tve climbed up the outside of the tub.  Baffling.  The one today I didn’t capture so it could still be in here.  It just better stay the hell out of the crack of my ass!  One time a couple years ago I swear one flitted across my ass while I was in bed.  I’m not infested.  And I’m not a dirty girl.  I think they just know I feel their pathos.  I left the little runt here today and went on my way.

On the train I fell asleep and was awakened by a man who sat across from me grumbling about some fellow black folks he was fittin’ to kill.  Talking to himself the whole time, using the rapper’s expletive, the so-called N word — he promised to kill up all of them because they had done something to him.  He was so angry, spewing all that killingness that I left the car.  I have a choice you know.  As this was one of the cars that you couldn’t walk through, at the next stop I got out of the car and ran to the next car before the train pulled off.

I went to my doctor’s.  She thinks the tingling in my face and arm may be because of a nerve healing after the oral surgery I had — so I’ll have tests.  I left there and tried to find humane traps at Whole Foods and Home Goods.  No go.  I thought my friend who I’m hanging out with tomorrow might know where to get them.  She knows about stuff like that.

The train going home was crowded so I had to stand.  “Yo ma you want to sit down?”  A man says, pointing to a seat next to a giant suitcase.  I thought he wanted me to sit on the suitcase at first.  I knew he was off — I shook my head and cast my eyes down.  He was a white male using black street vernacular, tall, wearing urban gear.  He had piercing eyes and a threatening demeanor.   He then yelled at passengers with a psychotic testosterone fueled rant, “Ma wants to sit down yo — let ma sit down!”   He walked toward me.  I shook my head and moved further away.  He targeted an Asian gentlemen reading a book.  “Yo, you smart.  Let Ma sit down.”  The poor guy looked at me and began to rise.  I shook my head furiously, determined not to speak as I didn’t want to say anything this man could attach himself to.  Thank God this was a car you could walk through — I made my way closer to the area between the cars.  The man continued bullying, “Ma wants to sit down, somebody gotta git up yo!”  He waved an arm at all the passengers.  A woman offered me her seat.  I thought about her personality type.  Was she easily intimidated, somebody who didn’t feel worthy of her own seat?  I swiftly made it to the next car while the train was still moving — I love being able to escape a car if I have to.  Looking behind me constantly, I could see the champion of my cause peering through the window.  I leaned back so my view would be blotted by a standing passenger.  I wondered if I should move still further, but I was fine for the rest of the ride — what the hell was going on in New York City’s subway system today?

At home I called my friend about our date for the museum tomorrow, planning also to ask about the humane mouse traps.  She has a consciousness about these things.  She’s into healthy eating — her sister is into holistic health.  I imagined a little box with compartments for food and water, maybe with a steel mesh window so the little buggers wouldn’t feel claustrophobic.  “Hey, do you know about humane mouse traps?” I said, telling her my mouse stories.  “Just kill the little motherfuckers with a bat.  You let ’em go they’re gonna be killed anyway,” she said.   Ah yeah, the day.

Mariah Carey’s

 

On the A train platform a man banged on plastic pails with drumsticks.  He sat on a low wooden stool.  His spectators were a tall well-dressed woman, a few men, and some fidgety kids.

It annoyed me, this banging in the cavernous station.  Perfect venue, I suppose for a street ‘musician’ wanting to expand his acoustics.  With his head turned upward, he banged repetitively, furiously, entranced.  I was impressed by his dexterity, but I wondered how he’d do on real drums — the rhythm was so isolated and his instrumentation was limited.  He was good enough for a plastic pail drummer I supposed.

I could have done without it.  I had just finished shopping at Whole Foods after a long day.  Because of my run down status, I pat myself on the back for doing anything more than just going to work.  This day I had come from the other end of town after work and a meeting no less.  I forced myself to be out and about, alive and moving, living, bleh blehhhh.  When one does this, one must accept that they are mixing with the forces, unable to control what happens around them.  Bang, bang, bang, bangidity, bangidity, bop, bop, bangidity, bang, bip, pop, pop, pop…

I didn’t like the pounding on the plastic pail drums coinciding with my movements, my heartbeat, footsteps.  It was intrusive.  When I got down to the platform and began walking toward the middle where I like to get on the train, I walked purposefully out of synch with the plastic pail beat – I didn’t want to appear as if I enjoyed walking to the beat – plus it would be corny, as if I were perhaps fantasizing about being in a video, or being a runway model.  I have my own agenda.

I walked to the newspaper stand and put my Whole Foods bag on the floor between my feet.  I wondered briefly if I should hold it in my hand in case some urchin tried snatching it away.  These are the kinds of bad things I think about when my body doesn’t have its defenses about it because it’s run down.

Standing at the side of the newspaper stand I entertained myself by staring at the various and sundry magazine covers, glass encased on the side panel.  There were glamour magazines, sport magazines, those ‘very specialized’ hip hop magazines like XXL, and fashion magazines.

Mariah Carey.  She lost weight.  She was on one I don’t remember which one now – in a jogging bra type shirt and, panties.  The plastic pail banging went on.  I fixated on the magazine cover.  Probably airbrushed, but nonetheless the bitch has googobs of money and can afford expensive exfoliates and probably has skin like honey.  She looked like candy.  I like Mariah Carey, even if I don’t have any of her albums.  I thought, I’ll bet her pussy is really nice.  Pretty.  On the cover of the magazine it is easy to imagine with that luxuriance. I’ve seen different ones.  I thought about it.  It probably doesn’t have any hair on it.  Oh well, and then the train came.

What can I say, I escaped the drumming, but there was a man sitting across from me on the train whose looks I didn’t like.  He was generically dressed, pretty average, but there was a sinister undercurrent about him, soulless.  He looked like one of those guys you could mistake for being a nice guy, and you might go too far with him but get a rude awakening because he would have no qualms about shooting or stabbing you.  Also he was one of the million assholes who turns his iPod or headphones up too loud.  I could hear hip hop.  I like hip hop.  I used to love it.  I don’t know what’s happened to it now – maybe I’ll start listening to it again and see.  I told you in other words that I really had no business being out because there were poison vibes coming out of me, so everything seemed worse than what it really was.   Except for Mariah Carey’s…

This guy, when he didn’t close his legs when a nice older woman sat next to him, I really hated him then.  The woman could easily have had more space but this guy wouldn’t budge with his legs wide open.  He stared ahead, but you could tell he was really conscious of people around him like he could see you though he wasn’t looking at you.  He drooped his head down then toward his knees and started bobbing his head to the hip hop beat — which of course irritated me.  There was a deadness to him though.  He scared me.  When more people got off of the train, I moved my seat because I couldn’t stand being near him with that music too loud and, just him!

When I got home I thought about how wild this world is, and how you had to get something good out of the day because all you really have is the moment.  I also thought about how wrong I could have been about that guy that I hated on the A train.  I’ve been wrong before — especially when I have poison gasses coming out of me…