What Fresh Hell

 As it stands, I don't expect to survive this Trump term. Figure January 20, 2029 at the latest. Until then it all depends. For now be happy for me that I've lived long enough to be this disgusted. In 1983 I took the breakup of my marriage so hard I tried to kill myself twice in one month (I should've been more careful); now I'm waiting for the start of yet another four years of societal meltdown. The PATRIOT Act should have been enough, but now some morons have voted for Trump three times when they should've known better. What fresh hell will your world throw me into next?

Now this degenerate curmudgeon is sitting inside away from the Arctic windchill basking in free heat and puffing on a cigarillo that cost 27.4 cents. ($1.29 plus 6% tax divided by 5 = $0.274; we lack an easy way to type out fractions of a penny, but pretty soon we won't have pennies themselves.)

2:50 PM EST would be too early to start drinking yet if I hadn't gone on naltrexone and been good for a year, and I don't feel any real need to do so, so I won't. it's cheaper that way. I didn't feel like I had to drink last night either, it's just that I've been disgusted with life and too wintered out to feel like doing any of the better things that'd be on my list if I'd bothered to make one.

Last night I had about two shots of 50% ABV rye whisky and half a 4.5% can of porter. That took about 90 minutes to imbibe. My tolerance is still very low and thanks to the naltrexone getting really smashed wouldn't have been any fun, beyond a certain point it feels like the poison it is, so it's so far so good; I got a slight buzz and stopped in the middle of a perfectly good beer, so not only did I not get a hangover I didn't even get dizzy standing up. I gather that's what naltrexone is supposed to do, keep it optional and non-problematic. To go back to hard-core boozing I'd have to go off naltrexone, which is free to me, while decent whiskey costs about $20 a bottle.

I stopped boozing last year because I couldn't afford it, and drinking like I had been is still not cost-effective. Note that I can now afford to drink as ethanol as I was doing, though so far it'd have to be cheap-ass vodka instead of the "surprisingly good for the price" whiskey I prefer; that's my idea of degeneracy, a point I'd rather not go past yet.

For one guy I know his self-drawn line was that he'd become totally unable to afford pain pills, so to keep on being an addict he'd have to resort to buying smack with fentanyl off the street, which he resolved by blowing his brains out in his basement. That was his choice and I respect him for it, but so far I've not let myself get into such a bad situation. (Not over "substances" anyway.)

Luckily for me alcohol is cheap, common, and legal, so I have that $10 a gallon vodka option to fall back on, and unlike him I don't consider it weakness to seek help for my problems if lowering myself that far still seems like a bad idea.

So far it still seems that if I took a poll on whether those whom it may concern would rather see me become a degenerate drunk or just get it over with, with those being the only choices I've give you, most of you would rather see with crippling alcoholism (there's even a subreddit for that) than put myself out of everybody's misery. That still seems like a fucked up priority to me, given what's a fucked up situation in the first place , but then I avoided becoming a crippled drunk last year by drying out, and then lucked into a 30%-of-my-income apartment.

Last year my obvious "or else" was giving up living inside and going to a place like California to be a tipsy derelict. I wasn't quite ready to murder myself and I did have a plan to make being homeless bearable -- joining a gym to shower and work out, finding a safe place to camp away from fentanyl junkies, etc., -- but fortunately I was able to find a way to dry out for as long as need be that didn't involve any of that Twelve Step bullshit that's on my "die rather than commit" list of sins so that's what I did.

And it worked. For a while.

But October 2023 was still over a year before the next Presidential election, and putting up with this world you give me to live in didn't seem totally pointless. But y'all normies had to go and crown Cheetoman again, which would make being homeless (drunk or not) even harder than it was last year; from what I understood about what those people had to put up with in 2020 I've decided I'd really rather not. Now you've done it: you've made being homeless sound worse than death to somebody who used to consider homelessness rather inconvenient but not a disgraceful tragedy. It's hard enough to foresee a worthwhile future in my life as it currently is.

The electorate of the USA has put me in yet another existential crisis I don't need to go through. Things were bad enough already. This is what I mean when I say stupid people shouldn't vote: there are plenty of Americans who'll benefit from Trumpism, but most of those who voted for him are not among them. The USA is about to become a corporate oligarchy like Russia, after a few years of which it'll descend even further into failed state status.

Forty years ago, when Reagan had just gotten elected to a second term, people would reassure me that my dread of the future was a paranoid exaggeration, that the American people were too smart to let things keep getting worse. In 1984 people told me a situation like Trump's first term was extremely unlikely. But 40 years ago you also didn't expect the Patriot Act, or the 20 Years War, or a global pandemic. It would never come to that, normal people said. "Stop being paranoid -- and maybe go on medication."

How could the US electorate even allow Trump to get nominated in 2016? What so great about a "democracy" that would let something like that happen?

Cippola's Third Basic Law of Stupidity is this: "a stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

Keep in mind that we're not talking only about Trump base here, we're talking about Trump being on the Presidential ballot AT ALL. Say what you will about the Founding Fathers, but when the Constitution was written they simply could not imagine a situation when the American people would let such a raving moron run for President.

One good thing about Putin and Orban and the other autocrats of the world is at least they're not spluttering idiots. Hell, as dictators go Xi Jinping is not as horrible as Mao, for example.

You've really fucked me over this time. The only question is how soon it will get really bad. I've already stopped reading the news for the most part, shutting myself off even further from the world around me; I've already decided that total abstinence from alcohol (and 5/$1.29 cigars) is more trouble than it's worth. You've shown me that aiming for limitless longevity is ridiculously silly, in fact four more years of things as they are now might well be too much to put myself through.

And y'all tell me there's something wrong with my brain.

You people disgust me.

 

"Spamming or other bot-like behavior."

 

61 [M4F] - Kentucky/Anywhere - Inspire me, damn it!

Trigger Warning/TW

In this iteration I'm looking for a younger woman, say 30-45, who's experienced, intelligent, engaging, and a bit intense. Bisexual and/or bipolar are optional pluses; mental and even physical scars are probably required. Visible scars and piercings usually mean you're trying too hard, as does dressing & acting all sexy & seductive. And makeup is usually a turn-off, except sometimes blatant red lipstick has the right associations. And I don't really care how women dress as long as they don't look like cartoon characters who stepped out of Vogue or something. You yourself should be enough.

As for me, I'm not suave, or charming, or witty, and I'm not interested in trying to impress anybody with anything. The only selfies I've managed to take lately come out fucking hideous or just plain depressing. (I take much better photos of other people, I've even got an actual "analog" camera I bought from a pawn shop in 1993.) I'm in okay shape for a man my age in my ZIP code, which ain't saying much; "if I'd known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself." So you'll probably be glad to know I'm not very interested in sex, two antidepressants take the edge off that urge, but you might be disappointed to know I'm pretty much a pauper. You'll have to find a sugar daddy and/or husband elsewhere.

Which you'd be welcome to do: I was never much good at normal typical relationships (insert " " where they seem to fit), monogamy felt too restricting until I just aged out of fucking around, and for over half my life I've felt sorry for anybody who wanted to be monogamous with me. That last thing really matters, because it puts too much pressure on me: I do what I do so you get what you get, to put it bluntly, so if somebody else can do what I can't or won't that's fine with me. It's been over 30 years since I gave a damn where else a woman goes. Go have fun and then come back, or get around to me when you feel like it, whatever. When it comes down to it I could be perfectly happy with the right married lesbian, for example. What matters to me is loyalty, not fidelity. (And you can pretty much take it for granted I won't be fucking anybody else: at my age I'd have to try too hard, and it's been years since I've felt like bothering at all.)

What I am looking for is a friend, an ally, a confidant, a comrade in arms... A partner in crime for honor among thieves. (There's got to be a less cliched way to put that but whatever.) Someone who's easy to look at, usually easy to be around, who can make me want to know her and who's up to knowing me. This is one reason I want somebody with a history: it's only in the past few years that I haven't been having one myself. Normal people with normal lives bore the hell out of me, and I generally tend to scare them or at least make them uneasy. I'm not a serial killer or anything, at least not in real life, but for most people out there I might as well be. "Yea though I walk through Uncanny Valley..."

Oh. By the way.

• Trump is a total buffoon who's got to be somebody's puppet, there are no leftist politicians in the Democratic Party, and (to quote my then 17 year old niece) most people aren't smart enough for anarchy.

• I've got no idea why there's something rather than nothing, for all I know there might be a Creator involved, but the God of Abraham is such a total bastard I'm glad that's all fiction. In general that kind of faith is somehow beneath me.

• What's wrong with genocide is that it's mass murder, not that it focuses on any particular kind of people: there is no race, religion, or whatever that's more special than any other.

• People who'd beg the court for life without parole instead of execution should be put out of their stupid pathetic misery.

• It's not that life is nothing but pain, but forcing existence on another human being is frankly immoral.

You get the idea? And that's just what I tell the world that hasn't met me yet. Put it this way: in my troubled youth people who worked in the mental institutions they put me in usually accused me of trying to shock people with my "controversial" statements, they just could not accept that as far as I'm concerned I'm just talking basic common sense. I might be "emotionally unbalanced," I've already confessed to taking two antidepressants, but there's nothing crazy about my opinions or my general take on life. I'd rather die a lonely miserable death than suffer fools at all. And sometimes it seems like the world is full of nothing but.

Now. To compound what might rule out responding 99.4% of the bare handful of people who've even made it this far: don't bother me if you can't step up. I'm comfortable with this getting no answers at all, and if anybody does answer it'd be okay if we try but just don't click. The only people I've known who I might imagine addressing this to either died years ago or just plain gave up. (And that they're not with me now is my own stupid fault.)

Okay? Okay.

("Here kitty kitty!")

An Inside Joke

[An attempt at fiction.] 

It’s 2:17 PM on the second Sunday in October. My sister turned 60 a month ago. Her youngest daughter, the one I don’t know, drove me down here in her father’s car: Robin and Steve don’t want me driving, not even in a rented U-Haul, because the word is I’m a hazard behind the wheel. The only place I give vent to rage is on the road, and only when I’m driving. Nothing ever really happened, the one time I totaled a car it was from plain inattention, but a passenger read my mind one July while we were on Interstate 64 and called the police in the next rest area we came to.  She’d made up some story about me being suicidal with a gun in my pocket.

So it behooved John Law to pull us over, take me into protective custody, and hold me for three days in a locked mental ward to see if I was committable yet.  Who the passenger was is irrelevant except that I didn’t know her well and she hated guns. Her fantasy that I might hurt somebody sounded convincing enough to the police; she alleged I was a danger to myself because it would be hard to prove I’m not. Or so she thought. 

I told her to drive the car to my place, we lived in the same neighborhood, and then never come near me again. She did, and disappeared. For all I know she changed her hair and I couldn’t recognize her. Faces and names don’t matter much to me, not unless they mean something to me, and almost nobody does.  I made a vow to never go out of my way for a stranger again. “No good deed…”

For three days I practiced reading Proust (I always had my ebook reader with me), kept politely to myself, and acted calmer and more level-headed than I usually bother to be. Then when they let me out I sold the old Chevy on Craigslist for an even $1000, buried my pistol for archaeologists to find if I don’t come back for it, sublet my apartment to a relative of a friend of the landlord, and after 35 years went back to roaming the country. Sometimes I hitchhiked, sometimes I rode the bus; sometimes I stayed in motels, sometimes I hung mosquito netting from a clothesline in the woods.     

The problem was that my sister is in my medical files as my next of kin, along with my psychiatric diagnosis and a bit of my personal history. So some desk worker at the hospital called my sister to let her know where I was and why, and when she called me to hear my story I was stupid enough to be honest with her: I’d been having the fifth or sixth bad day in a row,  that just happens sometimes for no reason at all, and I was probably cussing and muttering to myself about how pissed off I was at all the shit I have to eat. It wasn’t serious, these things come and go, but I can see how it might scare somebody. So the dizzy Scorpio who’d asked me for a ride set me up to get me off the road. A public service, I gather.

And my brother-in-law, who knows me too well, decided that I shouldn’t be driving. Or carrying a gun. Because of my “anger problem.” And if I didn’t agree my sister would get on the phone on Monday, the second day of my stay, and start trying to have me committed. It might have worked, or maybe not, but I like to stay out of trouble. 

So after a few months of wandering the Interstate system, when it started getting cold at night, I decided to move inside for the Winter. But at that point I couldn’t afford the first month’s rent and the security deposit anywhere, and staying in motels would eat up my SSI check so I’d never get ahead, so I had nowhere to go but the sofabed in my sister’s finished basement.  The deal is I pay them whatever it costs to feed me, keep $100 a month for pocket money, and give the rest of my check to my sister to save for me so I could afford to get the hell out by April 15th, IRS Day. Just because that date is easy for everybody to remember, and far enough away so I’ll have a nest egg ready. Oh, and set up a way to get my psych medication there, and never miss a dose. Because my family cares about me and they want what’s best for me. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

So here we are, my mysterious niece and I, at a folding table outside a vegan restaurant.  Neither of us is vegan but she has a friend from high school who manages the place, and they do have good carrot juice. (The secret is the spices, they say.) And carrot juice does well with clear tequila, which I’ve taken to carrying in my “man bag” (‘so it’s purse, fuck you’) for special occasions. And I’m sitting across the table from her, downwind, because I keep playing with a big cigar like I’m thinking of lighting it. I probably won’t, I’ve just taken to fidgeting (hence the booze), but “those things are disgusting, just the thought of them.” Just on principle. And my sister and her husband have always been very big on principles, and they raised their kids that way. And I have been made to understand their thinking, though I was slow on the uptake till I needed to be otherwise. So I’m only allowed to smoke anything outside, and only if it doesn’t bother anybody else. 

So here I am, a bald old man who’s obviously suffered, around the corner from “a prominent research university.” Waiting for somebody I sort of dated for less than a month 39 years ago, a graduate student in something to do with advanced mathematics I can’t understand (I was a poet, you see), whose Facebook page mentions she works in the same school she studied in, whose website informs us she’s been a tenured professor since 1996. And lists her email address. And surprisingly she remembered me, and more surprisingly she admits it. And she’s got nothing else to do this weekend. And she’s always wondered how I turned out.

The last time I saw her I got barred till further notice from Baltimore’s premier gay disco. Because while she and her sister were getting on people’s nerves with their interpretive dancing I started singing along with MacArthur Park. Loudly. Off-key. Leaning against the wall by the dance floor as if I might just topple over. The girls were instructed to help me exit this establishment. Immediately. When I showed up a few days later, hoping to find that cute little twink I’d noticed that night, the barkeep recognized me and told me I was not welcome, nor were my girlfriends. 

She remembered that, she said in her email. And she still thinks it’s funny, though she’s sorry I got in trouble. Oh. “and by the way,” she’s been 12  Stepping for 30 years, and she does Pilates, and she’s vegan. And she’s surprised to hear that I’m not dead of AIDS or suicide or a car crash or something. And I’m the craziest person she ever dated, and the smartest townie she met that year. (“What a waste,” she’d say.) So she just has to satisfy her curiosity, since I popped up. 

And the only person who was available to drive me was the youngest niece, who was an infant when I “ran away from home,” who I’ve seen only a dozen or so times in the past 28 years. Who’s very patient with me, who also has an ebook reader. 

We look like we might be related, she and I, if you see us close together and catch us at the right time, but otherwise we might as well be different species. She looks like a typical suburbanite of her generation, in flowing peasant skirt, a T-shirt about an emo band that broke up before she was born, a paisley headscarf keeping her long brown hair from flapping in the breeze, and brown suede hiking boots over argyle socks.       

While my head is shaved clean, my Fu Manchu mustache is cut off evenly with my bottom jawline, and I’m dressed to impress: a hot pink Oxford shirt, untucked and with the top three buttons open, a black heart pendant on a leather thong just below my Adam’s apple, and camouflage pants bloused over a pair of black leather combat boots that were GI 30-odd years ago when they were first issued. ($27.99 on ebay, with $14.99 shipping.) The boots sport pink paracord laces to match my T-shirt, and I’m wearing every ring I own. It’s a little joke only certain circles would understand, and they’d hate me for making fun of them.