I Am Movement Part 11111

I'm toying with them, like a savvy naughty kitty many times their size that likes the sound of its own little bell. This is the position advancing age puts you into. Exaggerated sense of omnipotence. Yet my suffering is so great that it seems to envelope all of us in the Fellowship Hall of the Lutheran church as a drizzle freezes the parking lot. I walk up to the coffee pot.

How could I not cause a stir. A great big faggot simply cannot just blend in anyway, so you may as well try and manage the reaction rather than freak out about it. What if I just let loose with an unending gay hilarity of shade and cheer. Would this not attract even more suspicion and dread? It's really more me to take on a sort of biker Susan Sontag look and feel.

Are you the coffee person? No, he is. You're the coffee person? You have a commitment? How did you get that? From the secretary? There's a business meeting. You have to go there and talk to the Key Committee. And then what. I want a coffee commitment, so I have to go and appear before a  committee. What happens after that? Do I have to fill out a form? Do I need ID...?

This is when the coffee person, a cute olive blob in the middle of the swarm of straight white maleness beneath the primitive rendition of the Last Supper but many times bigger on the apse-like wall that stretched around us all, broke down and smiled a little giving me the benefit of the doubt that my affect was dry humor rather than killer-y. Every one of the enrobed and slightly crazed looking gentlemen sitting half-circle at the Last table were lightly-tanned Scandinavians and none of them was an easily identifiable Judas.

I'm thinking about the great power/ great responsibility ratio and how yes, I will probably start pissing these guys off more and more the more they get to know me, and that will provide them an opportunity to work their programs, after going off on me in one way or another, coming back to apologize/ 5th-step me, and the process would begin again, but that would be how I-- a way into having a relationship with these men, like the lovable punching bag maybe it could be.

Or I feel like I could drive these men insane if I wanted to. Really push them to their limits at least as much as I have a whole string of men, many of which I was able to work on most deeply in the confines of our own homes. In. Sane. I shared in keeping with the Persistence theme that sure, I think I've been persistent and steadfast, I haven't picked up a drink in 7 years in spite of X, Y and Z happening, making it as exotic and dramatic as I can so they all are secretly wanting my transgressive but glamorous experience strength and hope. How I'd accidentally almost married some autistic guy and he called the police on me when I slammed the door too hard. How he kicked me out suddenly but only after he already had somebody else lined up and in operation. How he had his neighbors call the cops on me when I called him on the phone too many times. How he'd kicked me out and ended up under the power of drunken landlords who proceeded to also kick me out. How I'd ended up in Chukka Chank wanting to just find a safe place to burrow in and be safe after all that had happened. How I wanted to buy a gun today because if the cops were going to come and try to drag me off to jail from my home in the middle of the night, I will have a way to prevent that from happening.

I Am Movement, Part 111

That was J. I was right! That X of his is up to no good, and I think it's time to call the police! Do you remember when we were walking the Circle yesterday and we saw him pull up with his driver-side mirror all taped on and slide a suspicious package into J's mailbox!?

Darling you look a little funny when you're angry in your pussy hat. Were you at another march?

[FEELING HEAD, REMOVES PUSSY HAT] Don't try and distract me. J is just so special and so nice-- like a crazy-smart savant child!

He's in his late 50's.

Listen to this. That asshole X of his called J. 100 times.

Whut? My God. Are we... are we in danger?

[PHONE RINGS, COUPLE STARTLE-REFLEX IN UNISON]

Oh. Maybe it's Officer Caviar.

So you already called the police.

Just with an initial report.

Of what?

Probably just criminal stalking, but possibly a bomb or bomb threat.

Whuh-whut?

Hello?

This is Officer Scrum Caviar from the Rolling Riches PD. Yeah that suspicious package you had the bomb squad come over there for turned out to be a letter from the boyfriend or whatever.

You mean the X. He is not welcome in this neighborhood.

Well Ma'am...

Someone who calls someone 100 times? His voicemail was completely full.

Do you know why your neighbor didn't answer the phone, or why he did not contact us himself?

Oh he's too distraught. And out of town. He's put me personally in charge of keeping an eye on the property while he's gone. There are definitely some criminal damages going on here.

Well from the letter it appears that the X is trying to revisit the history of his relationship with J, which appears to have only recently ended. We see this kind of quarreling a lot, oh who are you going out with now, must be a whore, all that kind of thing. The seniors these days are really worse even than the young ones on that score. But of course it can always lead to murder, torture, or mass violence with bystanders being injured as well so better safe than sorry.

Officer Caviar, I have here in front of me an instrument, a precisely worded legal instrument in which a trigger has been installed, and the trigger is set to start off a chain of actions that cannot be stopped once set in place. It is a set of instructions from J., a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, who only wants to see justice done and peace restored to our neighborhood.

Actually, he's been living on disability for decades.

How would you know that?

Another neighbor mentioned it to us. He inherited money from his parents to buy that house. Though he does seem very smart.

The instrument states that the X must be warned immediately to cease and desist.

Well what I can do is just give him a very stern talking to, and I think he'll...

I hope so, officer. We are in possession of a written legal instrument devised by J's lawyer at great haste just this evening that includes a trigger clause. If there is one more call made to J's number by the ex, this must trigger the official request for a restraining order is to take effect at that point. I can fax that over to you right now using this... contraption on my phone, I... haha! I'm getting so old, I...

Haha.

Well, I'll bring it by tomorrow and pick up that letter to pass along to J. 

I understand, Mrs. Pu...Hat... Citizen.

[ALL LOOK DOWN AT THE PINK PUSSY HAT IN HER HAND WITH THE WORDS "PUSSY HAT" SEWN IN]

My husband Lucas would like to have a moment.

Officer Caviar, thank you for your service. I am just wondering if there are any precautions we should be taking. And to think we spoke directly to that "X" guy during our holiday luminaria participation drive!

Well sir, I can assure you that there are no further precautions that you will need to take in that I will-- I didn't want to put it to your wife that way of course, but I will call this asshole at night, in his own home, and scare the living shit out of 'im. That usually helps them see a better way.

I Am Movement, Part 1

It's a little hard to organize my thoughts while pressing Call, then Disconnect, then Call again every 40 seconds or so. I was able to drive while doing that yesterday because I have the Bluetooth controls embedded in my steering wheel, and driving gives you the feeling of getting a job done even when you are just sitting there staring ahead of you at crispy acres of cornrowed soil, ashy and devoid of snow during this other-worldly warm January week in the Great Lakes Region. I and so many others may have just stayed home otherwise.

Yesterday it was also quite sunny, so I thought I had a good chance of finding my ex and the new boyfriend perhaps out on the driveway with one of the garage doors open and a barbecue going, or in the back yard behind the iron fence he'd put up all around the tree line for my dogs after we picked out that house on the wooded lot together only 2 short years ago. In case I didn't find them, I had a padded manila envelope all stamped and sealed with an SASE enclosed (remember those?) to drop in J's USPS mailbox up at the top of the driveway on the street for him to answer the questions I've been trying to get him to answer for days now by calling and emailing:

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WHOSE ANSWERS WILL HELP ME MOVE ON

1) Did you know him before you kicked me out?

2) Did he encourage you to break up with me?

3) Who is it-- the foot fetish guy who gave you dark socks to wear? The scumbag therapist in St. Dick? Someone from the group I introduced you to?

4) Why didn't you spend Thanksgiving with him? Why did you come to my family's gathering instead and allow my mother to give you a welcome-back kiss?

5) Did you also have sex with M's friend in Oakland? You know, the guy sitting across from you when we had my colleagues over for maiale al latte?

6) Who else, how many others, did you have sex with during the time we were together?

7) You always said that the one other serious relationship in your life, supposedly, ended because he “cheated” on you. Was it really the other way around? Did you cheat on him?

Please respond asap. Consider it a last merciful act so that I can let you go. I believe these questions are lingering because you do not conduct yourself or communicate normally with other people. I just need some closure and some answers, J. You can at least do that even though you have not thought to apologize to me.

And I didn't find them, even at two of J's favorite forest preserves for taking walks on days exactly like yesterday. When I pulled into the parking lot at the first one, an advertisement for a "SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE" jumped out at me from the glass case where the trail map and nature notes can normally be expected. Though there was no sign of J's car, they could have taken the boyfriend's. Out on the trail, it appeared to be a normal day with neighbors and dogs, but these were no longer my neighbors, fact of which created an out-of-place, dreamlike, this-is-wrong feeling, and I was using my own dog only as a prop; she would have been happier on our regular route around the new neighborhood in our new house at the end of a dead-end street; there are DEAD END signs both as you enter my block and when you get to my house, which is next to a park, which has a large red/white striped barricade posted with the DEAD END sign at its center.

What was I going to do had I run into J. and his whore? Everything was planned. "Oh. So this is him. What's your name? Mike? Hi, Mike." We'd be standing in a triangle on the paved section of the trail, stepping aside politely for the occasional bicycle. "Did you know that you are not able to satisfy J. sexually as well as I can? No? Ask him. That's what he told me." This was actually true. During the initial telephonic confrontation, J. had confirmed as much. Everything I'd planned was carefully based on either truth or conjecture, no lies. "So you must have a very tiny penis." I was trying to fashion my behavior, which was seeming boringly garden-variety OCD, and in a teenage way, to be more palatable to myself by framing it more in my mind as a crusade of virtuous comeuppance like Karen Silkwood or Norma Rae or even the tear-laden journey of a wronged single mom, the dogged search for answers by the mother of a murdered girl (as recently seen on True Crime Weekend Bonus Murders). And all of those scenarios are true in their way, even the murder, which was the assassination of my plans for the rest of my life. "And what do you plan to do when J. does this same disservice to you? Are you sure that he's not already letting someone else fuck him when you're not there? Did you encourage this? Bad stuff comes back around."

But no luck yesterday and no luck today. I drove back around the circle around the tree where we'd been invited for a Memorial Day picnic which had been cancelled due to rain and a huge rotted section of the ancient oak had crashed down into the grassy area exactly where we would have been sitting in our lawn chairs and left deep wounds in the soft black soil. The envelope I'd left in the box was still there from the day before. So maybe he'd left town, maybe with the boyfriend in tow? As I started pressing redial on the steering wheel again, my poor little bitch just laid in the back seat with her nose between her claws, appearing to disapprove. She was air-throat crying. I myself had waken up crying for days, but it felt great to be off my meds and feeling my feelings for once: nauseous with hurt and disgust and fear for the future, dizzy with doubt and alarm at whatever it was that I was doing.

One way we got here was because J. has Asperger's, and though he is rarely driven by cruel intentions, he often hurt my feelings unintentionally due to communication and self-awareness issues. Because I knew that he knew I knew about his strange proclivities, I felt emboldened to go ahead and exercise my own, like my love for repeating numbers. Yesterday, I noticed that I had called J. 67 times, which was a botheringly random number. I thought about taking it up to 69 times, but what was that supposed to mean in this context? J. and I never once did that, and sucking, in fact, was just not a main feature of our love life. One reason that I took such a hard hit on this one was that after a lifetime of sucking and getting sucked, with J. I had been able to settle into what seemed like what must be a very normal routine for married couples, the seamless bi-weekly fuck you don't even have to think about. No worries on how long it will take you to cum or whether or not that will happen; no problems with all the safe-sex contraptions and complicated workarounds; J. had taken great pains to make sure I was tested thoroughly and even questioned my doctor in person about the results before he would even consider letting me in on a world-class butthole that was the result of decades of semi-professional bicycling and constant running from bullies at recess before that. So the only choice I could think of after 69 was 111, and I had even happened to see the lucky 1's (Grand = the elevens: 11:11) as I glanced at my phone on my way out the door yesterday. So I made 42 more calls.

Then today after taking a whole other trip over there, finding the envelope from the day before, going to the forest preserve anyway, not finding his car, still disturbed by my own behavior and even more sad because the sun had disappeared, I accidentally called him 112 times. Even as I made the last call, I heard myself saying, "If this goes over, I'll have to take it up to 222." But I stopped at 112. I am thinking of it as "111 + 1" in that it could mean, "I started at 111, and today it's 112. You know what to expect tomorrow" (as if he is quaking in his boots because he cares exactly how many times I am calling beyond the fact that I am calling too much). My other way out of having to make 110 more calls to get to 222 was the switch I'd made to letting every call today go to his voicemail. This threat was a little meatier because it might mean that if I continued doing that every day, J. would have to spend a lot of time going in and erasing my blank messages so that other callers would not encounter the "mailbox is full" message. I had already gotten to Mailbox Full at call 67, but I couldn't stop there for reasons that I have already described above.

How can someone move to your state from a completely different state, say they want to marry you, buy a gigantic house and put up a fence for your dogs in the back of it, join you for six weeks teaching summer sessions at a school in a third state, include you in the hospital stay and talks with the doctor during their brain surgeries, recovering alongside you, supporting you in your own substantial struggles with work and health, and then turn out to be a total fucking boundary-less skank with other men?  Someone who does not even talk in bed? How can you plan against or protect yourself from a person like this? They let your mother kiss them on the face and welcome them back into your life and then go the very next day to their non-aforementioned lover? As I pulled away from the last spot I could think of where they would have been walking, my little bitch made a sigh, and I started thinking less about J., and after having sat drinking coffee and pressing the Call and Disconnect buttons for most of the morning, it was more about just getting to a place now where I could pee.

Ah, why here's a kibo outside the wildlife museum. I'll just pop in there. Ah. There in the darkness, a light goes on. Men standing in and around the kibo acting casual. Now I know where the boyfriend came from. I can almost hear him now. I say, "Jon, you've been tricking with guys at the kibo in the preserve?" And he'll say, "Can't say I didn't invite you along for those walks. You were just too grumpy." Actually he would never say that. He probably wouldn't say anything at all. Why should he, a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, have to say anything-- ever?

I Blame the World

If you must know, then yes, I blame the world and everyone in it.

I blame the world, and I blame my parents. I don't think, and I speak

without irony, that my life is the result of my own choices either

principally or even significantly. I see geese narrowly missing

skeet practice, lions bringing down gazelles. I blame every mother

fucker with their brights and fogs on. But it's the world does it to

them. Ticking clocks, running out of time. Balls fall into cups over-

flow onto paper disintegrates releases arrow shoots an agent into

a system reacts spinning sending centrifugally innocents into

buildings or sand traps. Fuck them and fuck you. This is not my

problem. I didn't make it or start it or egg it on. No one is that

profound. So is it God I should blame, just in case there is one?

I'd say yes, add Him to the list, and half the politicians; add those

who were less deserving than I but gained more treasure and/ or

happiness; yes, less deserving: they deserved less. I deserved

more. Put them at the top of all the blame only because it might

just be more painful for them there. I, too, then, am to blame,

but only as blame can be shared with every other goddamn mol-

cule that's ever come into contact with sod, meaning soil, except

for the sodomites, because they alone have made right choices.



by Donna
"Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh."

Self-destructive pattern

Hire a witch doctor and a head shrink.

Witch doctor is a fucking Pakistani fucking homophobic bastard, and the

Head shrink is a clueless, suburban, 20-something, blondie twinkle-face.

Force them regularly and unfairly to encounter the limits of their abilities over the course of 2 entire fucking years.
 
Drive for hours in heavy street traffic each week getting back and forth to the appointments.

Pay thousands of dollars, a measurably consequential portion of your income, for the privilege. 

= self-destructive pattern.

Love, Jan

Yesterday, my sister announced she is getting married to C. and showed me her diamond ring. This made me feel like killing myself, so I decided to do some more research on Asperger's Syndrome (YOU):

    Aspies hurt other people's feelings unintentionally.

    Aspies are not aware of social conventions that prevent feelings from getting hurt.

    Aspies are not aware of how their own behavior affects other people's feelings.

    Aspies feel bad when they learn they have hurt someone.

    Friends, lovers, spouses of Aspies get their feelings hurt a lot.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes can't take getting their feelings hurt so often.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes blame themselves when their feelings are hurt.

    I am not going to blame myself. I am not abusive. I loved you and wanted to marry you. I wanted to help you.

    You have Asperger's Syndrome, and I don't blame you for that.

    You refuse to admit you have Asperger's. I DO blame you for that.

    You hurt me over and over.

    Your behavior is not normal.

    This causes you a lot of pain, but it causes me MORE pain.

    I really do hope that you move away so I never have to see you again.

Love, Jan

River of snot

**the photo has been removed by the Mthyuh Preservation Society** assholes

so clean, jesus up with the olive oil
fresh clean robe and falling curls
bought myself flowers and steak

on the threes it was working well
caught a nice snap stepping from
the bath, same idea from back when

and there were bon-bons, and fury
but all for no one but customer
service reps and phantoms from then

already wintry indoor dusts and their
mysteries are starting up the 3-month
river of snot again, trip to springtime

Just assume you're welcome

Ya you surface and disappear like a walrus.
Your beer goes to my gut.
You just assume you're always welcome here.

Just before midnight someone started
banging on a garbage can with a hammer.
Then as the year changed the can crashed

To the ground from a height. Then the silence
returned. Now you can hear them rolling the can
back to where it belongs by the garage.


by Donna
"Fortunes have altered, Mike."

Grayout

As much as i've tried to brush life away
It clings as if to say there's hell on earth

Do i need a clearing, sure, call it dignity
the space an artist needs commercially

I take and sit in it and fall asleep alone
As i defend my right to be with anyone

Looking at times out at trees for friends
See how they've gained a mild hoarfrost



by Cap'm

Choosing down

all along i thought i was choosing down
but i was water seeking my own level

disappointment came as no surprise but
i guess i've just described an oxymoron

love being blind and not contingent upon
how high or low the initial reach was cast

who can imagine and why would one want
to wager as to whether it would last



by Hoolie

It started millions of years before disco

As time progresses, 69 keeps getting colder. How is that possible?

Hi. I'm Dr. Donna Thong, it's 1:25 PM, and I'm not only not done with my morning coffee, but more so, I'm also not done with my more morning coffee. And I never will be. Morning Coffee All Day is an initiative I've decided to embark upon instead of Christmas.

You notice fluctuations in temperature and thermometer accuracy when you are stretching out a traditionally very limited chunk of a day into an unlimited paradigm. Unrestrained. There is nothing that doesn't get by you.

Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm going with the way the coffee may or may not restrict your body's ability to warm itself-- that along with restricted movement and blood circulation while sitting and sipping coffee at a computer for hours. There are also calculations ripe for having in terms of how a sun moves against a brick building and any interior responses to that or lack thereof.

Now, as for K blood, I've devoted quite a lot of reflection toward it and those, including K's, who carry it. I am now confident in asserting that it's not a "mutation." Referring to new discoveries as such is as insulting to the phenomenon/ life form whatever as it is telling of one's own ignorance of one's own ignorance.

It should also go without saying that the substance which, yes, has a faint purple glow even in daylight and creates a rhythmic pulse aura which sounds to the human ear like a drum, there is not even the slightest biological link between so-called disco music and K blood, K's themselves, or any carrier of K blood, biological or artificial.



by Donna
"May they always fly spread eagle."

Prescribed burn

when i got back in touch with you
suddenly there was lots to do just
like the year before
a year that i spent and meant to
save myself for you in case we did
open up the door again

you conceded a fault or two
explained how you learned what
to do but you'd learned much
more, from another guy you'd
neglected to mention. To
find out tore me up again.

It made me think of the times
I took you for granted and some
other guys too, thought it would
be enough if i loved you, be
important, an advantage, a step
up, a welcome challenge.

But you taught me that I can cry too.
In the rain watching him kissing you.
I can't stand the pain feeling the way I do.
Can't you just tell him now while you can
that it's over and he'll understand?
That it's over and I mean more to you?

Now I'm sad because it's a nice day.
If not for him I'd be calling you and
We'd be walking in a forest preserve
right now. Because I'm usually not
the jealous one, I don't know how long
it will take to feel as though it's gone.



by Missy

My Body Is Like a Cowering Dog

symbol of impermanence

i have a tiny window to save my life

i have a tiny window to save my life
but i'm too fat to make it through alive
maybe i stand back and let another man
through, or just look out on humanity
you know this hole can relieve the strife
or be a reminder of how time can strike



Dr. Donna Thong

Boiling Water Slide

The way I'd put it since we last spoke has been a
giant slide, maybe bumpy, no straight down in
every way. A twisty, like a water slide. Some-
times frozen, that would be an ice slide, and
sometimes boiling. Actually mostly boiling, so
mostly like a boiling water slide, would have
to be stainless steel or porcelain-- yes, that's it:
ceramic boiling water slide with stainless sides.



by Ilyn
"Not long for Illinois."
(before I'm feeling better)

Even if no one believes me, I can still survive

So I'll call on you, and when it's your turn, you can just say your name, a goal, and an idea that came up in your group that either you agree with or that you recall for any reason.

Umm, let's start with you. Yes, you at the end please.

Ok I'm Jan, and my goal is to live alongside my experiences. I...

That's great Jan, welcome. Do...

I do have an idea but they didn't say it in my group.

Oh, well sure, you could give a new idea or-- no one said anything interesting that you recall?

[snickering]

No, no everyone was great, so interesting, really. Ha! No, well Reptily had a thought I liked.

Good. Tell us.

That after her rape, the only form of survival she will ever be able to even imagine is living to see that bastard's brains splattered all over a wall.

[rustling]

Wow. Can...

And she would like it to be one of the walls at the place where they shared most of their time together, their workplace. She mentioned maybe outside the gym next to the fountain under the name of the school the Cement...

[whispering]

College of Cement. It's just a wide open cinderblock wall like where you could have a firing squad.



from The Pastel Notebooks
Thong, Dr. Donna

For good i swear

Moved eight times in ten years and countin'
this time settling down for good i swear
there's been men involved who've shown in
deed misdeed and no deed who they are



by KARZANA HOWZIZ