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10/13/02
Every morning I get up off the floor Hey Boy, oh boy (starting out slow, I'll get profane as fuck here in a second). Been going close to 2 weeks at a time between these things for a while now, cos that's felt right, all of a sudden here's one within just days of the last. Feel like spewing, which is what this is all about, a least for me. Yesterday started out pretty lousy. Yesterday would be Saturday, I see we've passed the midnight mark. Stop by my parents house on the way over to wrestling in Nitro, check my mail, I've got a letter from unemployment dated 10/4 saying they need more information, I have to contact them by 10/9. There's another letter dated 10/11 saying since I never contacted them by the 9th, my claim's denied, tough shit, fuck you. My mom swears her hand to God both of those letters came in yesterday's mail (10/12) and I believe her. Not a big deal on the cosmic scale, but the kind of shitty dirty trick life has been playing on me lately. I'm gonna go up in the morning and talk to them, but I'm not way optimistic, how do I explain letters postmarked a week apart arriving on the same day, hey, the mail's fucked, but if they believe me, or if it even makes a difference, who knows. I call Sean from my mom and dad's to see what's up with wrestling, he was so damn confident he could get us in cos him and Drew were buddies, he was going to see if we could do a run in or something last night (basically I was asking, do I need to wear my jockstrap or not, always a good idea to have your balls strapped in good and tight when you're trying to lift someone over your head, or they might end up around your knees- that would be your balls I was referring to, not the person). Sean's all raging, the guy pricked him off, what it came down to was Drew, who runs the league, told Sean the only people who work for him are ones he's trained himself, this guy's a goddamn joke, train US? Train us to suck, maybe. That's what Sean told him, Drew said then just pay him the training fee, and we'd be in. He wants us to pay HIM to wrestle, he's supposed to pay US?! That smacks of that old (maybe they still do it, I don't know) 80's L.A. shit where the bands had to pay the bars to play there, which resulted in useless horseshit bands like Ratt and Quiet Riot, which his workers are the fucking equivalent of, we're the fucking WHO goddamit, we're Jimi motherfucking Hendrix, or at least I am, and we don't pay to play. No how. No way. So, no wrestling last night, damn disappointed, I want very badly (I ain't getting any younger, here) to get in a league CLOSE, so I don't have to drive, or have my manager, El Blizzardo Loco, drive hundreds of miles so I can get $20 and my head split open, and wrestle someone new each time, you need to work with the same people over and over, I don't mean to run it in the ground, but it's like dancing, or making love (no homoerotic cracks here) or playing music with someone, the more you do it together, and the more attuned you and your partner(s) get, the better it is. I'd decided earlier in the week if this Nitro shit fell through (I was never as confident as Sean), I'd talk to him about trying to put something together ourselves. Except I was planning on financing my half with my free government money. Fuck. The girls- I know it's futile to sweat things before they happen, but my heart's been just like a brick in my chest ever since I talked to Sarah earlier this week. When I talked to her yesterday, Shriveled Mohandas had brought her a bunch of pamphlets about this school she might be going to there when he came in this weekend, she was reading me some stuff from them, all excited, the good part of me is excited for her, it sounds like a genuinely great place, going to a school like that would be a dream come true for Sarah. It's just the girls moving away continues my life as nightmare come true downward spiral it's been on essentially since '96, when I finally, FINALLY caught on (hard to deny when you're looking at sucker bites the size of half dollars that you damn well didn't put there). Sarah kept saying, "I won't go if you don't want me to, I'll stay here with you," and I believe she's totally sincere, and I love her so much for it, but- what do I say, okay, stay here at redneck hell Poca High where I know you're outcast and miserable, living here with me out at the end of damn nowhere, because if you girls leave it's gonna fucking kill me? I'm not by any means a saint, but I couldn't do that to her, or Rachel. I want the best for those girls, and if that's somewhere else, than that's how it is. But it sucks being me. So- I was in a mood last night. Now, what I normally like to do when I'm tremendously agitated and upset, is something stupid and self destructive, that always helps. Some of you may already be cringing, but it's all right, it didn't work out like that. Well, not exactly. Didn't feel like going to any of my friend's houses, didn't feel like going by the liquor store and getting a couple fifths and going home and getting righteously pounded (yeah, I know, King Harvest is coming, you all better prepare), so . . . I went cruising those sleaze bag bars there along Rt. 60. I know, I know. It's something I've resisted up till now, but- like I said, I was in a mood. And like I said a while back, I'm getting used to- which is not at all the same thing as liking- doing things, and going places, by myself. Jesus, they're all shitholes. Ended up eventually back in Escapes (although I'm not sure it's still called that), just hanging out, not really working it, when who do I run into (actually a couple people, including Diane who used to temp at the office, and some girl who knew me but I didn't have a clue, that's a little unsettling) but Miss Alternative Girl from last fall- I don't call her that to be cute or coy- I still don't know her name. She spoke to me first, which was how I knew it was her, I said hello but kept on walking, she was with some guy. I went up to the bar about half an hour later to buy one last beer before going home, and it was deja vu all over again. She's still at the bar, alone now, so she comes over and we start talking. I asked her if she'd decided yet who she was going home with (I figured she had, so what the hell), she laughed and said she was supposed to meet someone at about one (this was maybe 11) but we could leave for a while if I wanted. Sometimes it's that fucking easy. Well, shit, I'm still up in the air ambivalent about driving to Shepherdstown, but when it's right there . . . we left. Don't know who the hell she was supposed to meet at one, but his ass got stood up. (So did mine, ha.) Now, that was a good thing, and did a lot to help take the edge off, but I'm still pretty fucking edgy. And it only increased the desire to take to bed someone I actually know and like. Need to get back seriously into the writing like I was the first week or so I was off, especially now that it looks like my off time is going to be cut in half. Trying to get Chapter 2 of Drains out to you guys, it's long done, and overdue, sorry, but I'm having trouble with this damn computer, tried to send it out once already and it wouldn't go. Been real good with not falling into that drinking all day trap that being unemployed can do to a soul (especially mine), which makes it sort of ironic that I got a e-mail today from an unknown reader- I haven't addressed too many of them lately, I still talk Lit. with my library girl, still get some from dreamdipper (enough with the Tera Patrick already), but I haven't gotten a lot of new people getting in touch for the past couple weeks- Joe continues to do a great job with the website, he found a photo of Jo Ann Pflug somewhere for the last one- really taking my ass to task for my "obsession with drinking". I don't know that I'm necessarily obsessed with drinking. I had a highly developed alcohol problem by 15- I'm not bragging, I'm complaining- just ask Joe, or Mrs. Bryson, our sixth period, which was right after lunch, French teacher- and I've struggled all my life between being a guy who likes to drink and a guy who has to. I also come from a family riddled with alcoholism, murder, and suicide. I fabricate not a word of what follows. My mother's family, the sensitive Irish side, tend to take out their disappointment with this world on themselves. My uncle Jerry blew his brains out, while drunk, in my grandparent's living room when I was about a year old. Without even knowing that- my mom, being the denial expert that she is, always told me he'd died in an "accident", I got the straight shit many years later from my dad- when we'd go down there to visit and my dad and I would have to sleep on the foldout couch in the living room, I always slept horribly. I'd always have dreams about someone at the front door, wanting in, and in the dream, it was real important that they didn't GET in. My dad, who's sensitive as a damn cinder block, never slept well in that room, either. I asked him why once (hell, I was right there next to him, I knew he was tossing and turning, like to bounce me onto the floor), he just said, "bad dreams," and left it at that. One time I pressed him on it and said, "Do you ever dream there's someone at the door trying to get in?", and he gave me this totally creeped out look and said, "Yes, I do." My mom had a cousin who debrained himself with a pistol around that same time as well, and my cousin Bob's son, also named Bill, deliberately OD'd about 5 years ago on the antidepressants he'd been prescribed because he was despondent over the end of his marriage (oh dear). My dad's family, the Germanic brutes, tend to kill the motherfuckers that have made them unhappy, their creed, macht kaputt was euch macht kaputt, roughly, kill what's killing you. My dad had two cousins, both female, who murdered guys. One of them was having an affair with this local jockey who raced there at Charles Town, apparently he was quite famous in the area for being 5 feet tall and having a foot long dick, (not sure exactly how that'd work considering blood volume, when he got hard did he pass out?) he routinely messed around with local gals and then when he was through with them, went back to his wife. When he told my dad's cousin he was going back to his wife, she apparently told him, "In a box, motherfucker," and shot him, not between, but right in, the eye. That'll kill ya, folks. His other cousin knocked a guy off his horse with a rake (I'm creative, but I couldn't have made that up) and he broke his neck in the fall. Why'd she do it? My dad was never exactly sure, "I figure he pissed her off," he said. Ya figure? But the real king of mayhem in this family full of it is my paternal grandfather, who was a legit madman, and a stone killer to boot. He went away to World War I, I guess a fairly normal guy, had some ungodly hellish experiences- he had a scar down the back/side of his neck, from his ear to his collar line, put there by the knife of a German he was strangling to death- and was never right after. He wouldn't talk about it, but back in those days they put everyone from the same town in the same units, and people who were there with my granddad came back and told these stories of him crazing out and becoming just this kill 'em all machine, like shooting these guys who tried to surrender, apparently they were Austro-Hungarians, came walking up with their hands above their heads shouting, "Don't shoot, me Hoongary, don't shoot" and my granddad dropped them both (it's said he shot one in the back, as he tried to run). When asked why, he said, "They're all Dutch to me", Dutch being what he called Germans, I guess from having heard Deutsch somewhere, I remember as a kid telling him we didn't fight the Dutch in WWI, and quite literally having to run for my life. He also allegedly bayoneted some French deserters he found hiding in a barn. He came back with an absolute shit pot full of medals, for killing lots of guys who were trying to kill him, basically. I don't know what they were because he threw them all away long before I was born, he also received all these commendations from the British and French, the only one he kept was this scroll like thing that used to be framed in their basement, had this angel on it (she was kind of hot, as I remember, in fact I think she was showing a tit, you know them Frogs) with this soldier kneeling in front of her, head bowed, and she was putting her hand on his head, like she was absolving him. He kept it because he liked the picture, which I think is quite poignant, and says a lot about the person he was before he went over there. Don't know what the words on it said, it was in French, probably something along the line of, Thanks for killing all those damn Huns cos God knows we can't do it ourselves. He came out of all that shit a man who drank whiskey like we- well, like you- drink tap water, and with the prototypical temper from hell. He killed three men in fights in the 1920's- two he beat to death, one he drowned- and didn't serve a minute of time, in fact, was never even arrested. To answer the first question first, how do you drown a man in a fight? You beat his ass unconscious, tie his bootlaces around the legs of his overalls, load said overalls with rocks, and toss him in Opequon Creek. Why wasn't he arrested? First off, he was a big time local hero, when I was a kid in the early 60's and would go into town with him and my dad, there would be people who would STILL point at him and say, "That's Raleigh Bitner, he won World War I", and second off, the two guys he beat to death were black, which meant in the climate of the time, they must've been asking for it- not excusing it, but that's exactly how it was- and the guy he drowned was a local farmer who also doubled as a bootlegger, who was infamous for cheating people, including, I'd guess, the local officials. He cheated the wrong damn son of a bitch when he cheated my granddad, and his death was ruled, "Death by Misadventure." Yeah, no fucking shit, you can't get much more misadventure than that. Having both these bloodlines running through me is probably the only thing that's saved me so far, considering my current situation- "Kill her, kill myself, kill her, kill myself- ah, fuck it, I'm gonna get drunk." This e-mail guy also wants to get into some kind of religious debate with me, holy shit, dude, it's not happening, just go away. I refuse to discuss religion in any but the briefest and most superficial terms with anyone, but especially my friends, and extra especially the religious ones, because I want to keep them my friends (you, whoever you are, I don't give a shit). Personally, I think organized religions- all of 'em- are fucking abominations, just horrific, dogmatic, divisive SHITSTORMS, that do a hell of a lot better job of keeping people away from God than they do bringing them to Him, as well as being a source of genuine evil on this planet for hundreds of years. Honestly, don't get me started- I despise them as much as I do anything in this world. However, to all of my religious friends, I'm not in any way attempting to belittle you, or say you're stupid, or you're wrong, or misguided, or whatever, if being part of a religion makes your life better and more bearable, I support you in your beliefs 100%, and I mean that with all my heart. But it's not for me. I've never been in a church in my life where I didn't immediately feel like an outsider. I thought about scanning and putting some pictures of my granddad on here, got this dual frame thing with a picture of him at 17 on the left, at 75 on the right (he never saw 76) but it feels kind of exploitative, like I'm putting this crazed thing on display. He was scary as hell when I was a kid, but he also always had this- haunted- air about him, and however much I expose the warts of my family, they are my family, my fucking blood, and I stand by every damn one of them, warts and fucking all. Well, this has probably rambled on long enough. Joe, see what you can do with it.
Later Bill
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