Frustration

I'm so frustrated. I just want to get published again. I have so much to give, but I can't even give it away. I just want to be a winner again. I just want to feel like a winner again.

I can't go to a family party without people looking down their noses at me because I don't work. Because I'm dysfunctional. Because I have to survive on handouts. So many places around here where I have to walk with a cringe. So many times I've had to hang my head in SHAME.

So many times I've had to hang my head in SHAME.

And I'm better than all of them.

I'm better than all of them.

If only they knew (not that they would ever care) all that I have inside me. I have infinite universes inside of me. And I want to at least have the privilege of GIVING it away. And nobody wants it.

And I'm a broke, fucking failure. A failure by any measure in this society. I have to fight so hard for not even scraps!

IF I GET A LETTER TO THE EDITOR PUBLISHED IN THE DAILY NEWS I HAVE TO CONSIDER IT A SUCCESS!!! That's what I need now to even feel like I might deserve to rest my head.

THAT is how bad it has become. That is not even a SCRAP.

I don't know anyone else who writes like me and I can't get picked up to save my life.

Everyone in my writers group thinks I'm a genius. They don't understand why I'm not getting published.

There is no one else out there who writes like me. No one else out there has either the cleverness or the courage to write about what's really happening. Instead Kim Kardashian is the only God we have ever known and I'm reduced to penniless obscurity - living off disability checks.

If only they all knew how much is inside of me and how it is just bursting to get out.

Not that they would care.

It's like the novel I'm reading now Of Human Bondage.

When I was younger I always thought that I would get this or that pretty or popular girl as soon as she realized how smart I was, how charming I was, how "deep", how intellectual, how funny, how kindhearted and everything else.

What I did not know was that all of my GOOD qualities WORKED AGAINST ME. Every ADVANTAGE I had is what hurt me. How can I make sense of a world like that? It is a "transvaluation of all values." It's like some bizarre Twilight Zone universe in which up is down and down is up. Everything that appeals to noble human beings disgusted members of the mass.

And, like Philip, I put on displays for them. I BEAT THEM OVER THE HEAD WITH MY BRILLIANCE. I was accused of being an egomaniac more than once. I displayed my wit, my creativity, my inner world, my accomplishments to them - AND IT DIDN'T MATTER ONE BIT.
They were looking for one thing and one thing only and I didn't have it. I wasn't ugly enough, or stupid enough, or mediocre enough or conformist enough. My superiority, the qualities responsible for my best moments, were also responsible for so much grief and heartache.

I still want to share with this world (I don't know why.) Maybe it's not for them. Maybe it is for me. Maybe it is revenge. Because I've had people who aren't even good enough to wipe my ass treat me like I'm nothing but a total loser!

And, yes, everyone who really knows me knows that I have so much more to give than the average Herd Animal that sits in judgment of me.

But how do I go and get it out there?

FRUSTRATION!!!

Damn Worried...

I did not go to sleep last night because I was afraid I would never wake up. Yes, I was having chest pains and heart palpitations. The best news is that I was also suffering waves of panic attacks (the same old feeling: overstimulation, an almost stoned-like feeling of unreality, etc...). So, hopefully, my physical symptoms are related to the panic and anxiety.

But I can't be sure. Just last weekend I almost fainted in the shower. I closed my eyes to enjoy the hot water hitting my body and all of a sudden I lurched over.

In my honest opinion my problems are a result of severe anxiety. The only good thing about what has been happening is that it may mark a definite end to my depression. When depressed I am at the very bottom of the scale. Panic, anxiety, twitches and increased OCD ritualizing are all symptoms of convalescence. When I am depressed I have trouble caring about life or death enough to be anxious, panicky or overly OCDish.

It's understandable why it's happening too. In the past year I have made all sorts of improvements in my life, but when was the last time I've slept, eaten or - in general - lived normally in any kind of way? I can't remember! Despite not even having a job I am constantly under stress (the OCD stress I put myself under.) And this is not when I'm not buffeted with depression. Who knows what kind of imbalances have been created. I just want to live long enough to get checke dot.

I can't die now! I don't want to die now! Things are finally getting better. And I have so much more work to do.

If anything does happen, make sure my mother doesn't grandstand at my funeral. I appoint my friend Chris to be executor of all of my unpublished writings. Spread my ashes wherever I was happy (which means nowhere on the Jersey Shore.) Maybe Central Park or 42nd Street would be a good place.

Am I being dramatic or covering all of my bases?

I guess I just have to get myself checked out. So, what's the deal now with health care?

I'm so excited! Jury Duty is Food and Fuel

I got called for Jury Duty today! This is a dread to most people, but for me it's a chance to sketch. If I were a painter the holding room would be my picturesque landscape! I can sit there with my notebook and record my spiteful observations of everyone around me! The bigoted and nosy old ladies, the vapid community college kids, the dorky middle-aged white men who will never know art/life/love and so on and so forth. Juries do indeed represent a nice cross-section of the population - and I intuitively dislike most normal people (though through dialectics and self-improvement I am learning to overcome this soul-blocking bitterness - WE NEED THEM MORE THAN THEY WILL EVER NEED US! Bigoted old women and vapid community college kids are FOOD for the artist.)

Not only that, but Jury Duty will give me plenty of opportunities to be rude to others and to become the least popular person in the room! Yippee! Now I'll be forced to act superior for up to 8 hours at a time! I can sit there with satisfaction as I watch the Herd Animals guffaw at some dumb, inane Romantic-Comedy provided by the Monmouth County courts system. This is FUEL for the artist.

So, Jury Duty is Food and Fuel for the artist and I could always use a quick pit-stop!

This is great! Time to break out the sketch pad!

Paper Tigers

I want to bring Dr. E back to my writing group. Dr. E was a huge hit when I first joined the group but I have since gone on to bigger and better things.

Dr. E, of course, is a real person. He was my therapist for 20 sessions - paid for by the great State of New Jersey. They sent me to him to support me in my quest for gainful employment. Who says that capitalism and the mental health field are not intertwined??? Didn't Foucault say that since the Industrial Revolution the "mad" have come to be defined as those who can't or won't work?

Dr. E was, of course, filled to the brim with every bourgeois piety in the book, but I've always felt bad making such delightful fun of him because he is a genuinely good man. He's just desperately, desperately lost - further from enlightenment than Your's Truly.

He was not quite up to my speed. I still have trouble getting my head around this. I knew more at the age of 28 than he did at the age of 60.

What ASTOUNDS me is this: THESE ARE THE GUARDIANS OF OUR SOCIETY!!! He is a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar!!! He's a grown-up! He's a man! He's made his money! I'm sure he has a nice bank account!

MEN LIKE HIM (maybe not him) but MEN LIKE HIM control - to an extent - the destinies of others. The psychiatrists who admit people into mental hospitals are MEN LIKE HIM. The judges who make decisions that affect the lives of others are MEN LIKE HIM!

They may be better men or worse men, but they are MEN LIKE HIM!

In other words, MEN WHO KNOW NOTHING!

I remember one particular appointment. He already knew that I was somewhat smart.

"Hi, Will. So, how are you this week?" asked Dr. E.

"Good. How about you?"

"Good, thank you. I visited my brother in South Carolina last week," he said.

"Oh, good. How was that?"

"Good. I drove all the way down to Charleston."

"Oh, how was that?" I asked, sounding more like the psychologist than him.

"Great. I drove for hours because I had a really good audiobook."

"What was the book?" I had to hear his answer on this one. He did not disappoint.

"Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Have you heard of that one?"

"Yeah." Oh, this was getting good!

"I'm telling you, man! It was so good I could not stop driving! I mean, it was just riveting! Captivating! You would really like it! I mean there's some heavy stuff in there! Some really deep, heavy stuff that just bends your mind around."

You can't make this stuff up! Classic! In the eyes of our clueless society this guy is a winner and I am a loser! This man has power over others and - for the longest time - I did not have power even over myself! I was in a depressed hole so profound I read Schopenhauer just to cheer myself up (actually I didn't read too much Schopenhauer because my OCDs would not let me.) But this guy knew nothing about Schopenhauer. Or Nietzsche even. Or anything.

A now classic episode (which I've now recounted several times) is the time I mentioned something about Aleister Crowley.

"Who's Aleister Crowley?" he asked.

How could you not know who Aleister Crowley was? I told him to look up Aleister Crowley online.

"Will do." He jotted down Aleister Crowley's name.

When I saw him the next week he said, "Hey, I researched that Aleister Crowley guy."

"Oh yeah? What did you think?"

"Wow! Weird stuff, man! Scary stuff, man! I mean, the stuff those Golden Dawn people were doing was really crazy, man! I even checked out a few websites. Just really, really weird stuff. There was one where they had all kinds of weird hieroglyphics and stuff. I couldn't even look at it. I was afraid that if I investigated I'd get sucked into some kind of whirlpool I wouldn't be able to get out of."

The wicked grin I have on my face as I write this! They sent me to him so that he could straighten me out and instead I had him eating out of my hand. I was more a threat to his sanity than he was to mine! I spent the sessions just completely undermining his entire belief structure. He probably still - in his quiet moments - goes over some of our conversations.

Anyone who knows me well (and, yes, this is pointed at the beautiful Indian girl who reads my blogs everyday) knows how dangerous I can be in a philosophical argument. Anyone who knows me knows that I am an expert at inverting normal values - what's up is down and what is down is up. I can back up every unconventional opinion with valid, rational arguments - like the nasty child who is intelligent enough to defend his bad behavior (I got that line from some customer's Amazon review of the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom.") Think of what this poor guy had to deal with. He was an eating disorder specialist so he was used to treating High School cheerleaders and suddenly he has a junior Faust in his office.

But again, a part of me almost feels bad writing this. Dr. E was a good man and he is still eager to work with me. Like most people, he found me intensely interesting and charismatic.

I just can't help but to notice that most of this world must be an illusion. All these people who always seemed so much bigger than me, stronger than me, smarter than me and more powerful than me are really just paper tigers! This whole world sometimes seems to be nothing but a big paper tiger.

These people may not rule the world, but they are certainly the bureaucrats who are in charge of its administration.

I was watching YouTube clips of Robert Anton Wilson yesterday and he said that he prefers to think of him and his friends as the Power Elite. That, he said, was a "Winner Script" and he chose to think of himself as a winner.

I too think of myself as a winner.

I can't wait to flesh this out for my writers group! The Dan Brown line is great! I can't take any credit though! It was Dr. E's line - not mine!

Going to the dentist was a great experience.

To most people this would simply mean that I had a good visit.

For me it means so much more.

Going to the dentist was enough to cheer me up for an entire day. Maybe an entire week.

See, I've come out the other end of my depression. I can't believe it. I look at stuff I wrote just a few months ago and I think: "Wow! I was really angry!" Most of the stuff for my writers group, etc... was good and even my blogs are good - but too much anger!

I've come out the other end of a long and violent storm, to use a lame metaphor.

Going to the dentist is a NORMAL experience. The whole day I kept pinching myself and saying to myself: "Holy...! Wow! It feels so weird to do something NORMAL." Wait until I go to Europe - it will be like going to another galaxy.

I forgot that dentists even existed. A dumb reality home improvement show was on the t.v. in the waiting room. I grew scared. This society! I'm allowing this society to enter my mouth and flood me with fluoride; or infect me with AIDS; or to drop Mad Cow prions into my mouth. The same society that produced this show will be invading my gums!

But then I got a good vibe from the doctor and his assistant and I said "To hell with Mad Cow disease! I'm ready! I want to do this."

I couldn't help but to look at all of the equipment he had in this office. It was hard for me to believe that we still have electricity and advanced machinery. In so many other ways we live in a profound DARK AGE. So they weren't going to pull my teeth out with wooden pliers?

DO YOU MEAN THAT THERE WAS A MODERN ERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????

Really? Holy shit! I can't believe this! There was a time when people were still conscious of light, hope and progress?

Do you mean there was a time when discoveries were made? Einstein existed? Planck and all those others? Pasteur existed? Jonas Salk existed? Or was he just one of the Jonas Brothers?

I couldn't believe this! Wow. Going to the dentist has never been such a trippy experience.

Come on, doc! Hit me with the brain-destroying fluoride! It will be a fair trade considering all the insights I've gained! Normal humane life and safe, middle-class civilization still exists?

I felt like I was high.

Not only that, but the dentist must have been a good guy because he allowed his assistant to keep her German Shepherd in a side office. He is obviously a good man.

Vern Yip (one of the reality t.v. home design guys) is not out to infect me with prions? Great. Maybe I should trust society again.

I had a dream the other night that I was an inmate committed to a mental hospital. The Ben Kingsley character (okay, I did see "Shutter Island" recently) offered me a brew that made me feel better than I've ever felt before. After what Prozac did to me (thoroughly destroying years of my life) how could I have such a blasphemous dream?

Maybe I can more deftly navigate good/evil, right/wrong, society and the individual now.

I'm not creepy enough!

First of all, an old poem I dug up (I told y'all I've been going through my old notes.)

This is from 2007/2008

If only I could
play
Kmart
glass and plastic chess
forever
slide on the hardwood floor
in my socks
have contentment and concubines
and a warm soft bed
(not a blue futon)
with all of my memories
and a smile of present
flesh-sated satisfaction

Now back to my exercise today. Today my exercise was to only think nice things about every Herd Animal encountered. So far I've done a fairly good job. I saw Porn Star this morning (if you don't know who Porn Star is then read the previous blog.) I'm certain Porn Star likes me (she even asked me if I wanted to buy a blueberry muffin this morning.) I think I'm going to ask her out.

I've been finding good things about Herd Animals all morning. For instance, I saw a fat Herd Animal and I thought "Well, there is a man who is jolly and knows how to appreciate food!" so on and so forth.

But as soon as I give the Herd Animals an inch they take a mile. I must be putting out a friendly vibe today because I moved myself and my laptop to the most isolated corner of the library and what do you know, but despite about a million open seats a middle-aged female Herd Animal - with green shamrock earrings (it is St. Patty's Day) for Christ's Sake - had to sit right the hell next to me. Now she's making all this damn noise!

Okay, so my experiment failed. Apparently I'm not putting out enough of a creepy, leering rapist vibe. I guess that's something I need to work on.

Today was a nice day for leering.

I've been in a fairly good mood all day today.

This morning I stopped at Quick Chek to get a bottle of orange juice. Guess who was working the counter? That's right: Porn Star.

Porn Star is the name I have given to this old woman - in her mid-60s - who works at Quick Chek. She is old, fat, gray and saggy - but I sense depravity in her. It's just a hunch.

I call her Porn Star because I have seen many women who look just like her in porn videos. Many websites feature women who are decidedly unattractive to most normal men. The things I have seen women like Porn Star do!

The woman in front of me was a relatively harmless Herd Animal of the garulus vulgaris variety; a frumpy, middle-aged woman in a green jacket. She was there to buy Entenmann's Donuts and Basic (one of the no-frill brands) cigarettes. That's a very healthy combination right there! Oh, I feel so superior to others!

She talked about some trivia or another as Chris Christie's voice blared over the radio like some kind of compulsory propaganda. Who gives a shit about cutting this or cutting that? Local, national. Blah! Blah! Healthcare - blah, blah, blah! This, that, the other thing - blah, blah, blah! Now my depression only acts up when I think of politics.

What difference does it make what we do to tweak this or that? No matter what happens most people will continue to not think and not feel. And this is the way it should be - 90% of people are good for nothing but slavery!

Anyway, I did not even allow any of this to bother me. I sat in front of the boardwalk and ate a burrito, hoping to watch ass pass by. That's pleasant - eating and watching ass go by. Maybe I could see a hot female jogger in tight spandex.

Oh, but it was all brutal - not one was worth writing home about. Well, I'll have to return to Belmar boardwalk in the summer and watch Guido ass walk by. Guido ass is profoundly greasy and worthless - but it is still very nice. The ass is fine, but it's usually attached to a cuntshitfuckbitch.

Instead I ate my burrito and read Of Human Bondage. Bravo! It is an anti-Herd Animal book. But nothing can be anti-Herd Animal - we should love them because we need them! They fill out our lives! I love Herd Animals - I just wish they were a little less oppressive.

Finally, I was not failed.

A good day.

An Eerie Exercise

Sometimes I go through diaries and journals of the periods when I was most severely depressed. I sometimes do not recognize the person who wrote those notes.

Here are some examples:

I think my eye is twitching, either from too much caffeine or too much tension. Thinking that makes me feel better, but I also do think that explanation is closest to the truth.

I need to either lessen or channel this anxiety about death.

Compulsion to read or learn. Compulsion to pick up a book. Novels can be escapes from death. I wish I could scream. Yes, I am or wish to be a scientist of myself and others, but to also catharsize myself enough to stay sane.

My intense dislike of others. Why, exactly? Why do I hate inferiors? Is it because of what I went through at the hands of inferiors? Oh, I'm certainly drinking tonight - it can help here and there to relieve, at least, my constant muscular tension.

I am both an impetus and a conduit.

Who am I trying to impress? Am I mean to others? Get back in the flow. Is my life resolving itself? Hopefully not tragically.

When I told Kathy I took pride in the flowers (which, comically enough, is true) and she said, trying but not succeeding in disguising her condescension "Pride's important." If only she knew how much pride I have in myself. If only she knew the real story - who and what I really am!

The whole purpose of having sex with as many partners as possible is to relieve compulsions. I wanted to become more human through sex.

All of this was during one of the relatively light periods of my depression. Maybe I will one day share notes from some of the darker periods of that long depression.

But I don't want to think about those times now. I am now happier than I have been in probably 5 or more years.

I chalk it up to a few things:

1. The people in my life.

2. Cutting out caffeine and alcohol.

3. Taking a load of supplements throughout the day.

4. Improved diet.

5. Exercise

6. Meditation

7. Forcing myself to stay busy and to get out of the house.

8. Finding a focus and once again channeling my Will.

I've become so happy at this point I am growing OCDish about once again sabotaging myself. But I doubt this will happen.

I JUST DID NOT KNOW ANYTHING BEFORE.

Now I have something of a clue.

Thiefy

It's official: I have not spoken a single, solitary word to my cunt mother in over three years! Hooray! If I were still a drinker I would pop open a bottle of champagne! Things did not improve after I cut her out of my life, but it was a beginning - the very first step on the road to recovery. I removed the main source of pain, illness and disease from my life. Then, despite removing the hate I was literally born with, I spent at least two years in the most profound darkness and depression. Around this time last year I had hit rock bottom in the sense that I was no longer eating at all or doing ANYTHING besides drinking coffee all day and getting drunk on cheap beer at night. I could not feel a single, solitary emotion save the black grief that choked me every second of every day. Then even the alcohol did not provide an escape. It was definitely not fun.

Since then I have been slowly but surely improving on a daily basis. Rome was not built in a day. All I want to do is put one brick down a day. What that means is that by December 31st, 2010 I'll have 365 bricks laid down. That's almost a wall.

But enough of the feel-good stuff. I wouldn't be able to save my own self if that worthless cunt was still in my life. She'd be hurting, damaging, undermining me at every turn - and that is why it is so good that she is gone. Her absence does not prevent me from falling into darkness and depression. But her presence CERTAINLY throws me into those states and not only that, but her presence undermines any and everything I do to improve or feel better.

"Cunt" is a very angry word. What I oddly realized last night is that I'm no longer very angry with the cunt. It's refreshing to not feel the old chancre of hate and anger that I used to feel for her.

I mean, don't get me wrong, she is still a cunt, a liar, a THIEF (who shamelessly steals from her own flesh and blood, who would slaughter her own flesh and blood for a dollar - at least now all her harsh judgements of me have been rendered invalid and I have been vindicated), a cold-blooded psychopath and an ogreish child-brutalizing monster, but I now consider being born to her to be just the first in a long line of personal mistakes.

It was sometime in February of 2007 when I wrote her the note telling her that I never wanted to see or speak to her again for the rest of eternity.

Looking back on my "final farewell" letter I realize that the style of the letter was a bit vain and pretentious. I knew she would probably show the note to her friend Toni and I wanted Toni to think I was a great writer and give my "final farewell" letter a good critique! Oh, I suppose I'll always be a bit vain and why not? I am great.

Good critique or not (I suppose I'll never know) I am so grateful that the evil bitch is gone from my life. I'm hardly ever angry with her because I hardly even think of her!

Freedom, here I come!

Last night I was shocked to realize that

Local Queer Politics

Considering that I'm queer (a proud pansexual), I feel I can question the queer lifestyle, sort of like how blacks are allowed to use the "N" word or Jews are allowed to make Jewish jokes.

I live in Neptune, New Jersey which is probably the best town on the piece of shit Jersey Shore. Neptune is largely black and where I live almost looks and feels like a safer version of Jamaica, Queens. I get along well with most of my neighbors because, well, let's face it - blacks are oftentimes much nicer than white people. It's only when I leave my block that I realize how many assholes live around here.

One of the boroughs of Neptune is Ocean Grove. Ocean Grove is a very wealthy and very GAY historic area (what is it with fags and those quaint Victorian houses? I mean, I love Victorians too, but fags shit their pants every time they see a pastel Victorian house.)

Our former mayor was a fat fag from Ocean Grove. A fat, bourgeois homosexual who looks like a fat, balding chipmunk. A fat, balding queen in a decent suit and tie.

This man is still very much involved in the town (we, like many small municipalities have a constantly revolving roster of mayors and councilmen and women.) He is always in the local paper with projects he is working on. Just the other day he was in a photo with a bunch of little black kids - they were all gathered at the local library for a "Neptune Reads!" event.

More power to him! I don't have a problem with this man, I simply don't UNDERSTAND him.

What's the point of being gay if you are going to be, well, NORMAL? What's the point?

Worse than queers behaving like normal human beings, what is it with gay dogma? I have trouble understanding how anyone can stick to just one gender. Women are great, but sometimes I need a man and vice versa.

It sometimes seems hard to find a man because to do so would require wading through the lonely, treacherous and depressing gay world - where one can only find certain types of guys hiding out in their respective cliques, very seldom breaking their own dogma; as determined to find a twink, bear, a this or that as that guido cunt Snooki was to find a worthless Italian juicehead.

But it doesn't matter. I'm not particularly passionate about the issue (or most other issues.) Even if I wanted to marry a man I couldn't picture taking to the streets and marching for the right to do so. Why couldn't we just have our own private marriage ceremony in the privacy of our own home? Who needs legal or religious recognition? All of that stuff is for the Herd, not for us supermen.