An introduction to the man behind the blog, or: god forbid i ever make this an "about me" on a social networking site. PART 1

Well fuck but ain't life just grand?  It's almost noon, which means I've been awake twelve hours now, and I'm drunk, to boot.  I was taking a shit earlier and realized(1) that I haven't written anything since maybe january (or was it earlier?(2)) excepting, of course some half-assed, bitter, drunken(3) missive(4), hastily assembled(5) and sent as a facebook message to my ex-girlfriend(6), who, if y'all'll allow me to digress momentarily, is a tawdry harlot cunt-fucking-shitbag whore who left me the day after our second anniversary for my best friend(7), who I was to later find had been actively pursuing, seducing, and finally fucking said tawdry harlot cunt-fucking-shitbag whore girlfriend for a year; and who is - the ex - more than a year later still the cause of more than a few hangups, interpersonal relationship-wise, and, despite all logical, rational reasons for me to feel otherwise is still the object of my affections, devotion, love, blah blah blah(8).

And but so anyways how the hell do I call myself a writer when I let a half-year elapse without so much as goddamn jot or tittle of ink committed to paper; without the click-clack of keys at a terminal(9)?  Of course, it's not been a lack of ideas behind my inactivity, I posses if anything a surfeit of them(10).  Nor do I feel that my (admittedly rampant) regimen of drug and alcohol use significantly contributed to this period of inactivity in letters(11), seeing as how all my writing is done while drunk, about things that happened while drunk(12).  And I certainly don't think simple laziness played a large part, though it certainly has its part to play in all of my underachieving.  In fact, I can't really pinpoint why I haven't done more writing, because writing is my, if not primary, then certainly most efficient(13) means of self-analysis; the method by which I distill my variegated whims, thoughts, fantasies, observations, critiques, etc. into cogent, comprehensible narratives easily examined to provide maximum insight into my psyche.  All of this is, of course, to say that I have no clue what to write about, except that I know I need to write something.  I've got eight 8.5"x11" pages to fill, and come Hell Itself or high water, I ain't gonna allow myself to stop 'till they're done(14).  Sleep's for the weak anyways.  I suppose lets get some bullshit scene-setting and general info outta the way so I can get back to doing what I do best:  self-deprecating, misogynistic, misanthropic complaints about women and my failures with them.  So, let's dive in, shall we?

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Notes and Errata

1.  Opined, pondered, lamented?
2.  Now that I'm here at the computer I can see it was January 27th.
3.  But do I ever write sober?  Perish the thought!  I mean but goddamn how often am I sober, anyways?
4.  Screed?   I like that word!
5.  Again, aren't they all?
6.  Which reads as follows(all spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and formatting errors kept as in original):
i de-friended you on facebook last night, after we finished talking. it felt good. then. now, i regret it. i miss you. i miss talking to you. i miss my best friend. i miss being happy.


i fucking hate that when i get all depressed like this that you're still the first person i think of calling up to talk to. i fucking despise you, and yet you are probably the only person i feel comfortable talking to about my emotions. and, baby, there are a lot of emotions in my fucked up little head right now. i want to know your secret. how did you turn off your feelings for me so qucikly? i've heard it said that getting over a relationship takes about half as long as it lasted. well, we're only a few days away from that and here i am right back where i started. i want to die. instead, i'm sure i'll get right back to drowning my sorrows and refusing to actually deal with it, with myself. the haze that was this year was still the most miserable year of my life (most likely because i didn't deal with any of it, just crawled deeper into the whiskey bottle). and you, you managed to go from telling me you loved me to becoming engaged to him in like ten days. or less. fuck you, how'd you pull it off?


i was on myspace today, and i was looking at all the old mail i have, and the first message you sent me was on there. we never exchanged numbers, i guess, and you found me through poobert's myspace. then, of course i got sucked in to reading them all, like a fucking moron. i cried when i read what you sent me from italy. of course that just got me running in a whole string of solipsism.

i wonder if you still think about me?
do you ever miss me?
does he make you happier than i did?
is he better in bed?
what did i do wrong?

have i been deluding myself into thinking that i'm getting better? fucked if i know. but what i do know is this: i'm really scared. i'm scared of myself scared of approaching women scared of relationships scared of this happening again and again and again and again because it keeps happening, this story just keeps going on and on and on.


i met a girl a few weeks ago. she is really cute with perky little tits and a great ass and she has a david foster wallace tattoo on her arm and so obviously she loves books like i do (like you do) and we talk really easily with each other and i can't for the life of me figure out how to approach her. the night i met her i got drunk and was full of liquid courage and used the same played out "can i take you out to coffee sometime" line that got you and i got her number and i bet it would have worked too if i hadn't dreamed about you that night. if i hadn't realized i was just pursuing you all over again and that it would all end the same way and she would end up just leaving me for my best friend again, maybe it would even last longer this time since i'm working (hahahahah what a fucking joke that is i sell weed and barely make enough to buy myself cigarettes and beer every night) and but besides i'm homeless and i only own one pair of shoes one shirt one pair of jeans a hoodie and my leather and i'm sure that would get old quick and so i never called and instead i just show up to her work like some pathetic fuckbag shell of a real man, hanging on the idea that maybe she'll just fall madly in love with me because i'm not like the douchebags i see her flirt with there when she's off and i actually read books but really what good is that?


anyhow the point is i can't take this anymore. i can't take having you in my life, but i can't seem to get rid of you. so thats why i hope you understand that after this i don't ever want to talk to you again or hear from you again or see you again but i needed to get this off my chest before i did.


i love you and will miss you every day, even if i do hate you. congratulations on your wedding. i hope it goes well, i'm sure you will be beautiful and everyone will have lots of fun and you and him will have a wonderful life together. sorry to be a downer. but hey, knowing you, it won't take you long to get over it.

7.  At the time
8.  Sorry 'bout that.  Had to get it out there, ya'know?
9.  Oh yeah, so I guess I did write some stuff besides the pathetic "I still love you" letter, to wit:  a two page paper on the art installation Spiral Jetty, 8+ pages on the Olmec's colossal head sculptures at Teōtīhuacān - both hired gigs for a friend who is in school for art history or some such nonsense - and, something in the area of two handwritten pages about RVA for a friend's as-yet-unpublished zine about life in Richmond

10.  Which i will try to list now off the top of my head:

• Why I Drink
• Why RVAMag is horrible
• The Saddle Sore's "Mathlete's Revenge" alleycat race is neither decadent nor depraved
• Cycleslaughterama 2010:  Did the "Bros" finally win?
• All Hail Four Loko!:  an ode to alcopop

and also some show reviews and of course ideas, character studies, plotlines, etc. for my fictionalized autobiographical novel (and godfuckingdamnit but I hate being part of that aspiring-writer "blah blah blah my novel blah blah blah" cliché), tentatively titled Clayton's Despair.
11.  I mean, I probably haven't been sober much more than a month or so, cumulatively, in the past 5 years!

12.  See note 3, and also the title of this blog
13.  And I don't think "efficient" is quite the right word for it, but I mean, I've let myself get out of practice; for God's sake I've been using double contractions like "y'all'll", and questioning whether I mean "who" or "whom", "its" or "it's" - things I know when I write regularly!
14.  I was writing this by hand.  And while neither hell nor high water came, hand cramps did.  I got about half of the pages filled.  Oh well.

CLAYTON'S DESPAIR: COMPARE/CONTRAST

Clayton paused to catch his breath. Panting, he supported himself by means of his shaking hands, transferring the bulk of his weight's burden onto Christine's hips which he observed twitching, slowly inscribing two overlapping figure eights of anticipation by means of her luxurious rump - dotted with sweat and red from the repeated contact of its skin against forceful thrusts and slaps of his - further transferring pressure through her toned thighs to her knees, which delegate their responsibilities to the dingy stained futon mattress on the dirty dank floor, which distribute the weight through joists and beams to the foundation of the apartment building, laid in 1927 and distributing the weight of those getting laid there ever since. The figure eights - to be completely honest, they struck Clayton as instead infinity symbols, her ass seductively promising that the bliss of adrenaline and endorphins and sweat and skin and breasts and lips and moans could be his forever, that this time it wouldn't end with a cigarette and a sunrise, a nap, a goodbye kiss and an erection in the morning that he'd have to take care of himself in a much less erotic encounter. An eternity greatly to be desired.

Clayton shrugged away this thought, and resumed fucking this nearly impeccable specimen of female beauty and seductiveness briefly, his hands grasping her rosy mountains of upturned flesh, but paused again. Another thought had entered his head unannounced, and somehow he would have to uncover its full nature despite Christine's mewing for a renewal of their depravations. Still inside her, he inclined forward, accomplishing a multitude of actions in a simultaneity that narrative structure seems ill-equipped to handle, but so at once he reached with one hand - his right - for his beer on the foot locker-cum-nightstand while allowing his left to slip first laterally across Christine's ass, down across her hips, and then following the groove her belly, hip, thigh and pubic mound formed, that seductive "V" whose point is orgasmic. Rotating his left middle distal phalanx as if either describing the orbits of the planets around the sun, or perhaps coaxing a tone out of a crystal goblet 1cm in diameter, his right was able to bring the beer to his lips and so quench his parched throat's thirst. She moaned, loudly vocalizing a formant tone and not much else, A-flat above middle C.

He set the beer down, playfully slapped her quivering cheek and let out a chuckle; as she turned her head to look at him he flashed her a sly half grin, lower lip held in place on the left between his teeth, the right rising enough to cause his eye to narrow, eyes filled with perverse thoughts only appropriate in a situation such as this. Clayton swears he can literally FEEL a glimmer arise in them sometimes. As he glides his left palm now upwards, brushing past her left breast, its nipple a thick pink stalactite, he caresses her face gently and keeps grinning as she seductively begins to lick her own come off his finger.

The thought is back. This time he knows exactly what it is, and knows exactly what he has to do. Clayton grabs her breast tightly with one hand, her long dark hair nearly at the scalp as if he was going to smash her face into a concrete wall. Forcefully. In CPR classes you are taught that the mouth naturally opens when the head is bent toward the back. And but so while "yank" is probably a better word than "bend" in this situation, the effect is achieved. Clayton again leans forward towards her this time leaning enough that his head reaches hers and they kiss. As he nibbles her earlobe and whispers to her his love for her, he realizes he has no clue what that means.

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Clayton reclined his head back so that he could watch Seinfeld, and cursed his father for killing himself before teaching Clayton about baseball. Millions of men all over North America have used the recall of memorized facts about baseball to delay ejaculation, but Clayton can't remember enough of them to grant himself an extra fifteen seconds in the sack. Instead, he watches TV.

Clayton, a self-absorbed misogynist if there ever was one, somehow made it through puberty and his sexual awakening not as an uncaring lover: he rarely rolled over to sleep after sex, unless he was very drunk; he usually offered oral services to his partner at some point during an encounter, understanding that the vast majority of women cannot come without it; while not harboring any serious fetishes or kinks himself(1), he always considered himself to be open minded about them, and certainly would not begrudge another theirs, and, barring anything that might cause him bodily injury or more-than-minor discomfort, was more than willing to indulge his partner's predilections. So why then, was Clayton paying more attention to Seinfeld than to the Hoover vacuum of a girl currently attached to his flaccid cock?

Clayton racked his brain on this. Certainly an odd position for a borderline sex-addict to be in, actively trying to stay limp so that he wouldn't have to fuck. He had just had sex with her not 10 minutes ago, and suddenly he understood all the complaints his ex-girlfriends made about his insatiable appetite. He wanted to send some of them whom he was now discovering he had seriously transgressed against a nice handwritten note of apology.

Dear Heather Lee,


I know that you would be most delighted in your life if I never was a part of it again, as you made more than passing mention to the effect of some three years ago, however a great and onerous burden has been placed on my heart and I knew that to clear mmyself of it I would have to contact you, and, seeing as how this is a note of apology, I apologize for that as well as for the reasons which I will elucidate below. Think of it as working the eighth step, if you have to.



I have come to the realization that my persistance in pestering you for sexual favors multiple times during the day and often soon after one had already been given was rude, inconsiderate, and most supremely annoying. I apologize for my behavior and humbly wish to offer my recompense if any restitution can be made to right this wrong.



Sincerely

Clayton



PS: you are still a fucking cunt whore and i still hope you rot in hell after a life of utter misery.

Still, though. Usually Clayton was the one begging for another round. It's not that she was unattractive; she wasn't his usual type, and wasn't nearly the arm-candy he generally went after, but he'd done worse before without any sort of dreading of the sexual act. The sex itself wasn't bad, either. Nothing mind-blowing or earth-shattering about it, but that was rare even with the best of his conquests. Even Christine couldn't promise a touch-the-face-of-God orgasm every time. She(the one fellating Clayton as he thinks) was a good friend and Clayton appreciated her for that. What was it? Something was missing, and he just couldn't put his finger on it.

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NOTES & ERRATA

(1) Emphasis on "serious". Glasses, facial piercings, French maid-style dresses, thigh-high stockings or socks (especially with patterns like paisley or plaid, fishnets not so much), the clichéd Catholic schoolgirl uniform which Clayton excuses himself by explaining that he DID attend Catholic school so it's more of a nostalgia for a time when hormones flared their most firery than some sordid desire to fuck postpubescent teenage minors, small breasts, short women, female ejaculation, orgasm delay/denial, hot wax, corsets, hair pulling, biting/scratching, light bondage, etc. Point is, he can get off just fine without them, and so they can't be that serious.

CLAYTON'S DESPAIR: SUICIDE BY HEARTBREAK

Clayton's mind had been preoccupied with sex since time immemorial - the passing of a boy through puberty and into manhood no longer celebrated with any sort of formal ritual - and while not significantly intensifying through his early twenties' preoccupation with bourbon and weed, he certainly was not suffering from its (the booze and pot's) narcotizing apathy, libido-wise, as he had hoped. His daily life generally would put him into contact with a significant number of attractive, young, nubile women of all sorts of fashons and races, of creeds and cliques. As an educated man of his day, steeped in Political Correctness and other such emasculating nonsense(1), he occasionally felt a twinge of guilt when his first thought upon glancing at a girl tended more toward imagining, in details hastily and frighteningly quick in their appearance, how she would look performing oral service on him than noticing the sad, distant look in her eyes and wondering what hurt her so, rather than summoning a modicum of human decency and speaking to her, asking her if she was ok and did she need a hug or could he buy her a cup of coffee so she could vent.

Of course, soon enough, the guilt passed, and he was back to summoning new sordid details of their imagined tryst. How long, how hard, how pink or purple her nipples, the ariolas of the same or different shade, wide in their berth around or barely encircling them, textured with bumps or smooth and thin like tissue paper sealing the center of a breast whose dimensions should be easily enough deduced, although brasierre technology is quite advanced in this day and age. Wondering how they would sit on her chest in various positions: below him, with her knees pressed against; riding him in the manner of a cowboy riding a horse, heaving and falling in tempos from molto grave to prestissimo; from the rear, swinging like a pendulum, shuddering and quaking, ripples radiating outward in the pond of her flesh with the pebble fall of the impact of pelvises.

Due to circumstances mostly beyond his own control, and despite desperate clawing attempts to disavow himself of the idea, he was also preoccupied with his own mortality, and how best to expidite the process. He wasn't any longer contemplating suicide on any serious level, and his death wish didn't take the form of a persistent and omnipresent obsession bordering on the pathological. He didn't ponder whether shotgun or belt in the way he pondered shaved or unshaved. Instead, it took the form of a sort of weak nihilism, or maybe an overindulgence: driving too fast, running stop signs and lights, drinking until blacking out, smoking cigarettes, taking any pill offered to him. It was rather like being in a large room with but one candle illuminating; the darkness eveloping you even when the candle burns its brightest, and consuming you when a draft would scatter the flame, but most of all it makes one feel very alone, and very aware of how alone you are.

Mostly despite these feelings [although in moments of weakness he would readily admit that it was perhaps because of them, the author's opinion is that these are basically two sides of the same coin, and so what is important is that the feelings of aloneness are tied to his relationship troubles, and not whether it is to satiate or to spite the feelings], he had of late rabidly pursued committed(2), monogamous(3) relationships in hope of finding a love, and not merely a lover. Of course, the desperation with which he pursued this assured him of thinking every bit of tail he was able to somehow connive into becoming a notch on his bedpost and was still willing to talk to him the next day was his one true love that he had been seeking, so desperately. None were, of course. Even while searching out the next one that would surely fuck him over, he began to wonder: Is love just another way to slowly kill yourself? Perhaps those most desperate for love and to be loved are doomed to remain always desperate for it.

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NOTES AND ERRATA

(1)emasculating used here not as a literal removal of testes of a man, but for the removal of the essence of Man(kind), esp. the free communication thereof.
(2)at least he usually was.
(3)well, he tried.

THE CRUSHING GRIP OF SOBRIETY or Why I'm Pretty Sure Ward Tefft Is Trying To Kill Me. Part The Second

I arrived at the chill spot with a 40 of high life, a book to read, and some soaking wet clothes that I laid on the porch in the sun to dry. OK, I kept my pants on. Inside there were four chill BMX dudes from St. Louis, who were completely engrossed by the menu screen of an FBM bike DVD (I'm looking it up and I believe it is titled Gypsy Caravan) which I found odd as there was neither sound or video looping on the screen, just an image of a fuckload of people in front of a van. An image is worth a thousand words, sure, but really? I suppose this tells you just how chill the chill spot was (and I will try to stop using the word chill so often, I swear) and ditto for the dudes. In fact, the chilling was so hard that they didn't seem to even know that it had rained, much less that it was now over. We shot the shit for a while about important, hard hitting topics such as where the river is and where to get some whiskey -- tangenting into a discussion of how the ABC laws are seemingly different everywhere you go. They left me to my book and beer -- presumably to get the aforementioned whiskey and then go to the aforementioned James River -- and shortly thereafter Ward and Curtis arrived, followed shortly by Shelley, her sister Erin, and a few other people whose names unsurprisingly escape me (I really am HORRIBLE with names, but I digress) Ward, Curtis and I sat and made up funny misspellings of band names for the set time sheets (exemplorum gratiis: Strike Anywho, Nun More Black, No Fiends) and had a few beers. And but so I end up volunteering to help score manifests (which are the sheets of paper that contain all the places to go and things to do and so forth for the Scavenger hunt teams, if ya didn't know) at Alley Katz for the first day's end.

NOW, THE PART WHEREIN I SEVERELY INJURE MYSELF, AM TOO BUZZED AND WAY TOO EXCITED TO CARE, AND CONTINUE ON MY MERRY LITTLE WAY ANYWAYS, WHICH WAS WRITTEN UNDER THE WORKING TITLE "STITCHES ARE FOR BITCHES" AND WHOSE TITLE WILL PROBABLY TURN OUT TO BE ALMOST AS LONG OR LONGER THAN THE BODY TEXT ITSELF (NOT REALLY, BUT THIS IS STILL A DAMNED LONG SUBHEADER!) AND UPON REALIZATION OF WHICH (THE COMPARATIVE LENGTHS OF TITLE VS. TEXT) I WAS WELL AMUSED, AND HOPE YOU WILL BE TOO. ALSO CONSIDERED WERE "FUCK BYRD STREET" AND "NOW I REALIZE WHY YOU SHOULD TEST THE BRAKES ON A BIKE *BEFORE* YOU RIDE IT SOMEWHERE"

Now, my bicycle caught a flat tire sometime Wednesday night, and I have no money to fix it until this upcoming Friday. This was a big reason why I had originally decided to go a house show with my friend instead of the show at Alley Katz, but now I figured I would catch a ride with someone driving and then walk to Couch Heaven from Alley Katz. I helped score the manifests last year when I discovered that the rest of my scavenger hunt team had bailed on me; I had a great time. Unfortunately (for reasons more than pure laziness on my part, as you will soon find) there was no room in the truck to catch a ride, so I either asked to borrow a bike or was offered one to ride; the details are relatively unimportant and my memory starts getting a little fuzzy right around here. Point is, I get on my (borrowed) bike and start riding out of Oregon Hill, trying to decide which way to bike to Shockoe Bottom. The options I considered are depicted below. (the image is a link to a Google map, so open it up!)

GOOGLE MAP OF MY ROUTES

Everyone got their map open? Good! Now, My first consideration was The Going Around Your Ass To Get To Your Elbow Route, which although longer is a fun ride and I figured I might just see some other bikes going down to Alley Katz and so get to ride along with them. I was working on a bit of a timetable though, so the decision came to be between The Spring Street To Byrd Street Route and The Canal Walk Route. The CWR is the way i often get to the bottom, and is definitely my preferred method of going home from the bottom, as there is little in the way of hill climbing. However, next thing I knew, I had turned onto Spring and was sailing down the hill past what used to be a prison but is now a beautiful campus for the Ethyl Corporation or what-the-fuck-ever they call themselves now (NewMarket Corporation), up 2nd and onto Byrd. As a child, we used to call this particular hill Dead Man's Hill (no one said childern were terribly original!) and as our day care van would sail down the hill we would put our hands up as if riding a roller coaster. the hill is particularly in the back seat of a bumpy Econoline van or bumpier still school bus, but not unexceptionally in a car a thrilling little ride. On a bike it is breathtaking, exhilarating. And fucking terrifying when the traffic light right smack in the middle turns red on you when you're hauling major ass in high gear going down it. Reference again your maps. at the top of the block the light turns red, as noted by my marker 5TH ST LIGHT TURNS RED HERE. Now, lets try to understand a little bit about visual reaction time in humans. Exerpted below from the Wikipedia article entitled "reaction time"

Reaction time is quickest for young adults and gradually slows down with age. It can be improved with practice, up to a point, and it declines under conditions of fatigue and distractions.

RT is fastest when there is only one possible response (simple reaction time) and becomes slower as additional response options are added (choice reaction time). According to Hick's law, choice reaction time increases in proportion to the logarithm of the number of response alternatives. The law is usually expressed by the formula RT = a + blog₂(n + 1), where a and b are constants representing the intercept and slope of the function, and n is the number of alternatives.

Now, I had choices that I quickly, and possibly only somewhat consciously, considered:

1. SPEED THE FUCK UP, AND PRAY THAT THERE IS A GOD IN HEAVEN THAT GIVES A SHIT WHETHER I LIVE OR DIE(AND WOULD PREFER ME TO CONTINUE LIVING). Pros: This would be hella awesome fun if I made it through alive. Cons: I can't see the cross-street's traffic, forcing me to depend on either blind luck or a God I don't believe really cares one way or the other.
   
2. MAINTAIN SPEED, PRAY. Pros: None, really. At least, no unique pros. Cons: same as #1
3. SLOW DOWN AND APPROACH THE LIGHT WITH CAUTION. Pros: I would get the chance to see if any traffic would be going down the cross-street. Cons: I am still going so fast that knowing if there was traffic would likely still make little difference.
4. GRAB THE BRAKES. HARD. TRY TO STOP. Pros: I would actually be following the traffic laws. Least likelyhood of being hit by a car. Cons: I have not needed to use the brakes yet, really, and so I have no clue how sensitive they are.

I chose #4, however even the perhaps total one and one half second that transpired during which i saw the light change, considered my options, decided on a course of action, and squeezed the brake, i was already about halfway down the block (see map marker labeled I REACT AND HIT MY BRAKES HERE). And when I squeezed that brake, the cons of my chosen course became immediately apparent. I've flipped over my handlebars before; to call it an unpleasant experience is a bit generous. I can tell you that I have NEVER in my LIFE been as terrified as I was when the bike violently threw me to the ground with a shudder and I began to skid down the remainder of the block (m.m. I FINISH SLIDING ON MY FACE HERE) -- mostly on my face, specifically the right side of my chin, but I must have rolled over onto my back at some point, because my hands were not nearly as scraped up as I would have imagined, and my right shoulder was scraped pretty badly as well. It's an odd paradox that when traumatic injuries occur like this they always seem to both take place in slow motion and be over so quickly. What little I know about momentum tells me the whole ordeal likely was over in two seconds at the most. And when trying to recall what happened after the fact the whole sequence of events is a blur, but if I try to remember how it felt inside my head, try to recall my inner dialogue, it had to have been minutes, because I know two seconds is not nearly enough time for the "HOLY FUCKING CHRIST SHIT I'M GONNA DIE I'M GONNA FUCKING DIE FUCK!" tape loop in my head to repeat as many times as it did while I was airborne alone. And but so I stood up, looked upstreet for any cars behind me that I might need to immediately avoid for similar reasons to the cause of my wipeout in the first place, and located the bike before I realized I was injured; I dusted myself off, and as I wiped my shorts off I noticed a spot of blood. "No big deal, I probably just scraped my hand", I thought to myself (actually it was more like "meh, whatever, lets get the fuck outta here") and went to wipe the road grit out of my face. My hands had a chunk of beard hairs swimming in a pool of crimson; a leaky sanguine faucet dripping down my chin.

NEXT TIME IN PART THE THIRD ALL THE REST OF THE THINGS I PROMISED TO TALK ABOUT IN THE LAST POST BUT DIDN'T GET TO HERE BECAUSE I THINK I WRITE TOO MUCH. IN SHORT: ALLEY KATZ