I’m struggling to write something Survival Guide appropriate. I could relate my venture to Los Angeles, where I went to the wrong Goth club, spent too long in Hollywood traffic, went to the right Goth club, dropped my lover in a fountain, and spent 3 hours going up and down Sepulveda Blvd trying to get to a hotel room that never was.
I could give the diary entry that followed that night, but to be honest it’s too dark. Maybe it was the Goths, or maybe it was because a San Diegan in LA with only scraps for a plan and too much whiskey is destined for shame, baby. Oh, lord, haha my shame.
Because I don’t want to disappoint anyone who may be keeping track of the fact I promise new content every Thursday night (tricked you today by posting last week’s work to Facebook!) I’ll give a more innocuous diary entry. I thought this one was appropriate because I refer to my “audience” a.k.a. my friends <3
My face catches, little gestures of sadness, unfinished frowns. Lately. I’m grieved that I spend no time on my book, grieved that I have no discipline. I have nothing to say. When will the words come pouring out? I can draw myself puking black but it doesn’t make it so.
I’m stretched. So thin. I don’t know who I am. I can borrow other people’s words. Gather them in a little brown book. Publish them to twitter. I can become a filter for the firehose. That’s all anyone every wants these days. Discernment.
How do I produce reliable opinions on subjects? Are all prophets just bullshitters? I stared at my words written in red ink, and I didn’t recognize them, just as I didn’t recognize my face in the mirror when I was young and concrete was so cold it ached inside your lungs are fibers* your bones are glass.
If only, if only, I can become such a celebrity that people will want to read my diary. Then, maybe I am being productive. Gathering a fan club, generating mythos, larger than my ego, 50 feet tall, a giraffe of a girl. I will be so desirable, you will all read my diary. Whatever I write, you’ll eat it up like I eat pussy. It’s not that I want people to worship me, it’s that I’m lazy. I prefer to craft my audience to my existence than my writing to an audience. Love me as I am and let me be as slowly and lightly as I like. I don’t want to filter my firehose.
Anyone reading this would add so much more melodrama than I actually feel. I am just a little tired, a little hungry, a little naked and bored. My insides are immovable and I won’t feel better until the rocks come out of me. Stress and fucking, I suppose. I don’t think it was the cheap food. I feel instead pounded like a slug of clay into a hard lump.
I’m so close to the finish line. I am chewing on ambition like an overworked piece of meat that I’ll never be able to swallow. My mother will offer her hand (to me, as a toddler) and I’ll spit out the soggy, heavy chunk.
*Reference to a poem I wrote in 2008 or 2009. I’m not sharing the whole thing because I’m pretty sure the only people who like poems are people who write them, and then, only their own poems. When I read my own poems I am convinced I am a genius, and when I read other people’s poems (except Matt Steele’s or Rachel Dexter’s) I am pretty sure they are talentless puffs of cotton candy or that I am an asshole who doesn’t appreciate poetry.
Anyway, since you’re not living inside of me with me, and you can’t read my mind, you might benefit from a little context. Here’s the excerpt:
this slick demon
sucked air from my
tiny fibers were my lungs
scrambling like fingers toward a pale
It goes on, and basically it means I should have listened to the doubts telling me to dump my boyfriend.
San Diego Survival Guide 