The organization of Eyes.

  ALT.COM

Jared had been on his computer for 6 hours now.  Now and again, because of the large amounts of soda he was drinking, he’d get up to take a piss.  Otherwise,  he’d be plastered in front of the screen.  From time to time he would log off of AIM, get out of his chatrooms to go on pussy.org for a quick wank to goth and braces porn.  He had developed quite the method for doing this by downloading all of the images, before looking at them, to a temporary folder on his desktop.  After collecting about 30 or so pictures he would put a dime-sized amount of petroleum jelly on his fingertips of his left hand, pull down his pants slightly, and take out the rag from inside his desk.  He would then open the first image with Windows Picture Viewer and quick through the images wildly, and would have reached climax in seconds.  With that urge out of the way he was free to pursue what he was really on the internet for - to meet girls that wanted to have sex that night.
      He had subscribed to a few online dating services such as Adult Friend Finder and MatchTrust, but the service that had enthralled him lately was Alt.Com.  This was the only site that had cut away all the dating and love façade bullshit, and gotten down to the core elements of people’s natural desire for sex.  The site was geared towards nothing but.  The great part was that it featured a search engine to find people who shared similar fetishes.  They’re all listed; klismafilia, BDSM, blood play, breath play… even a group that fancies ‘nunplay’ and ‘preistplay’.  Jared, like so many others, had deep unfulfilled desires.  The world didn’t just get fucked up when the internet came around, the internet just exposed it.  Most people are fucking sick, but most sick people don’t talk about it; such as any unacceptable behavior in society.
      Jared was particularly fond of rape.  He had come to terms with this psychosis however, by comparing this behavior to animal nature.  When female dogs, cats, lions or lizards do it, they’re not just getting fucked, they’re getting fucking raped.  The she-animals cry and run and bite, but it’s just a part of the male’s natural instinct - his duty. 
   User AloneAndDead has sent you a message.  Would you like to Accept?
AloneAndDead:  I saw your profile on alt.com.  It seems like we have many things in common.
And what would those things be AloneAndDead?
You can call me Jessica.
What do we have in common Jessica?
Let’s just say that I like it rough.
What city do you live in?
Why don’t you check my profile?  www.alt.com/userprofile%4759434index_aloneanddead
      She was from Los Angeles as well.  My my, was she into some bad things.  Asphyxiaphilia,  Transvestism, whips,  power exchange,  humiliation,  discipline… the list went on as my affection deepened.  Her user picture was of a corset with heavy cleavage - no face.
I like your profile Jessica.  Are you into all of these strange fetishes, or do people just pay you to like them?
I never charge.
Send me a picture of something more than your tits, will you?
      User AloneAndDead is attempting to send you the file me.jpg  Will you accept?
As I was waiting for the incoming file me.jpg, I perused her profile a bit more.  Dacryphilia…arousal from tears,  confinement and cages, hair pulling… all implications of a rather fucked up psyche.  The rape fantasy is implied, but not listed.  It’s perhaps one of the few fetishes not listed on alt.com.  It may cross some indefinable border of ethics that the website has a hard time dealing with.

What are you doing tonight?

I have made myself a habit of going for a walk in Griffith Park…
…near the embankment?
…yes…

This would happen tonight.  It was another trial and test and experiment and exposure of aloneness.  We decided almost instantly that we would meet.  I was fairly attractive, or could make use of the long jaw and stubble criss-crossing my eyes in the night.

-We’ll meet at 1:35am at the embankment. 
-We will.

*user -AloneAndDead- disconnected*

I showered.  Not because I wanted my hair to look neat, but because chronic masturbation leads to a wafty oatmealy smell….you know, around the crotch.  I toweled myself dry, looked in the mirror; combed, back and forth, longest hairs on the tip of my nose.

My car isn’t nice, nice, but it’s ok and gets good gas mileage.  Fuck the Earth.  I entered through the gates at night and crept towards the embankment and saw a flutter of white bra strap, pulling it down, perhaps. 

During our internet conversation we had agreed on the ‘safe’ word: TarzaN

Unintentionally dropping something from my hands, the girl looked up behind the chalky background, covered in green.  She seemed like she was about to mace me, so I did the only thing I could but to hold her down and tear her clothes off, one by one until I slid my tongue into her clit.

At this point I had pulled her hands into her gaping, horrified face to silence the screams.  She was unbelievable.  She was a good actor, and could have belonged in porn films or something. I knee her in the thigh to spread her legs wider but I force myself on her and that face, being so aroused and getting harder and harder.  With her screams came a watery feeling on my arm where she was biting me. I noticed how beautiful her eyes were, smeared mascara, and I know that we will both want to do this in the future.

I orgasmed in her and held her hair was echoing in the reservoir pipe steel.

She layed with me, not saying a word, just softly murmuring.

A voice was heard in the background, as a man’s face appeared, not out of bewilderment but of loss.  Bums living in and around the area; poking in and out I thought.  The girl was getting up and then, with a fierce fright on her face began to run.  She went home, I thought. 

And that is the entire truth. 

As I sit in my cell I began to wonder who AloneAndDead really was, because the girl didn’t want to be raped.  It was her lover, boyfriend, into drugs a bit, but a fine gentleman; I just wish I could see him more often to know that face, frightened but hurt, and what it had meant to him.

This one is a work in progress: Try and see what will happen... perhaps I don't know myself.....  DIARY OF A ROCKSTAR

Introduction:

“There’s a lot to be said in the short time I have left.  The military has located our position and we’ve been subjected to numerous attacks over the past few days.  I would like to tell the story from the beginning; omit nothing; and leave it up to the author to go through my journals and audio tapes to assemble a non-biased account of what happened.  I have no doubt that the truth will exist through this myriad of fabrications surrounding my name; but power does document history according to power.
I feel that none of this would have happened if the tragedy that strikes our protagonist at the very beginning hadn’t happened; so I expect to tell this part of the story as much in detail as the build up to fame and my departure from it into what has now been resentfully titled the “Heaven Stands Alone Cult” by the media.  If nothing else I would like the world to know that my ideas alone are not absolutist; only society can solidify them; and that people tend to create other meanings based on what I have said; which would be positive if they could only think for themselves.  But the rise to power could not have occurred without this Following. 
The story begins here, but does not end here; because only the future holds what will become of this unmitigated disaster.  I implore you not to judge what I say from the Psuedo-Holy-Icon I have often been shown on television as; the bootleg video taken in our jungle-home as any overall truth that our group might stand for; and overall, that I alone am not the head; that these beliefs are the result of this generation’s greatest minds.  I have no doubt that after I’m gone, It will have the ability to operate without central leadership. 
    So now I must begin.”

PART I – (The Façade)
Chapter One: Initiation

The engine starts and my car begins to drift down the driveway and out to the road. I have a stick shift.  It’s a bit older, the Car, but it has a nice sound system.  The music starts softly and a joint is lit.  The houses passing by me are traditional boring Florida homes; devoid of any characteristic… The sun cascades through the passing trees and morning fog rising from the asphalt.  It was very rare that I ever got the chance to see the sun rise, but today was an exception.  Out to the deserted highway; only few cars in the pale dawn.  The field was about 15 miles away, looking strait down into the clear infinity of power lines for the brief second the car floats by.  As I became stoned I realized what a good feeling waking up early in the morning was…
 I made a right onto a small dirt road, one of those little dirt roads in Florida where the limestone dust rises and covers the palmetto plants with a pale chalk.  I turned off my music, and slowed the engine to a gentle coast before parking on the grass.  After stuffing a plastic bag into my pocket, a large red one with gray stars, I locked the Car, walked up the road and jumped over the barbed-wire fence.  It’s not as if I was breaking into a military compound or something; the fence is only about four feet high or so: enough to keep the cows from walking out onto the highway and being smashed by a Mack truck.
The tranquility of the morning in a cow field is accompanied by the occasional insect or bird and the faint passing of distant cars.  I came to the first small patch of psilocybe cubensis, and gathered them into the bag.The mushrooms look beautiful to me… a pale cream color with a yellowish sunspot coloring on the top, and a perfectly purple ring around the stock.  I stand in one place and pivot around, looking for more, and walk towards the next patch.  The patches seem to lead to deeper patches, and they’re never the same from year to year.  Sometimes they are close to the powerlines, or a fence.  Sometimes they are right in the open, and other times just under the shade of the pines and oaks; the Shrooms.  I mean, the cowshit is everywhere, but the mushrooms don’t grow from fresh shit.  They grow from the dried stuff that Tibetans use for fuel in the winter.  A symbiotic relationship is formed between the mushroom and the Cattle Egret where the spores are carried long distances to other fields…

Some people might disagree with me, but I swear, that in shroom season, merely walking around in the field itself is intoxicating.   Perhaps it’s the spores themselves.  When I would get high on them, I would see their image for hours and hours.  It’s like when you go to a waterpark when you’re a kid.  You go home, lie down to go to bed, and you still feel the motion of sliding and whirling and splashing.  I would still see myself spotting these caps, the way they feel in your hands when you pick them, the taste… I have heard stories about ancient cultures attributing this feeling to a soul; like the mushroom actually contains a spirit, or something like that.  It’s not hard to believe just about anything after you take them…
El honguillo viene por si mismo, no se sabe de donde, como el viento que viene sin saber de donde ni porque.
The little mushrooms comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes we know not whence nor why.

I had an experience one night where I drank a bit too much shroom tea at a party;  I needed to leave immediately, so I headed out to a spot that my friends and I called the Jim Morrison desert.  I pulled my car up the dirt road, that lead into deeper and deeper sand.  I got out and felt the drug strobing through me with its nearly unbearable euphoria, looking at the stars beaming their energy around me in different color spectrums.  On mushrooms you can see not only the visible spectrum of light, but also traces of others: Gamma rays, X-Rays, Radio… so, as you can imagine, the stars will give you a bit more information than they normally would. 
 
So the stars were pulsing rings of light thermal energy through my mind, out onto the ground as I walked with my head facing strait up and shoes filling with sand.  The night was clear with faint black lines of pine trees to the sides of my vision.  It suddenly became very obvious: I was now, at that moment, in the center of the entire universe.  In about 100 A.D. Ptolemy formulated a model for the universe in which the Earth was the center and everything revolved around it.  This, of course, was overthrown by Galileo Galilei and Copernicus’ heliocentricism.  In the 20th century however, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity would hint otherwise.  Everything is relative to each individual observer; and what I was experiencing at that moment was within me.  Everything that I was experiencing was me.  Everything came and started from me: the way I interpret colors and reality and people and shapes were all coming from me; therefore, I was the absolute center.  It made perfect sense then, and makes perfect sense now, although it seems I lack the vocabulary to describe the situation better…

It’s not as though these things just happen when I’m on hallucinogens, and when I’m sober I will consider myself a fool for thinking so unrealistically… I learned something once on acid: “All reality is reality.”  It doesn’t matter whether you experienced it drunk, sober, or dreamed it; because it still, within your mind, happened to you. 

By the way, this writing is like a mind on hallucinogens: it begins and pours into something else and adds up thoughts before pouring back into the present.  Don’t expect to derive too much logic from it, but you’ll experience it.  That’s all that matters…

I have been out in the field now for about an hour… the bottoms of my pants are soaked with the condensation of the grass and I’m sweating through my shirt. The sun has now risen deep above the horizon and it’s starting to become hot.  I make my way over to the edge of the forest and head back.  The caps that I’ve picked will probably dry out to about a pound, at least.  I figure that we’ll eat a few grams a piece, and still have plenty to add to my pile in the freezer.  In the wintertime you can make a killing because the lazy old Grasshopper forgot to fucking collect any.  The wise Ant then slings them for an exorbitant price: such is the way of the animal world.

Chapter 2: The Car Trip

I swing over the fence and get back in my car.  The engine turns and I turn the A/C on max, leaning into the vents, drying the sweat.  I take off my shirt and peel away.  No need to be careful now.  I’ve got what I need.  I fly down the dirt road and out to the highway; picking up speed and head to Meredith’s house. 

The first time that I can remember being seriously interested in drugs was when I was 11 years old.  I was in 6th grade in elementary school, and the principal and some cop dickhead came in to teach us about D.A.R.E.  You know, Drug Abuse Resistance Education… the dog telling you to take a bite out crime or some stupid shit.  Well, I was quite intrigued really.  They had a police officer and the principal up our asses with these booklets and charts educating us on the various drugs and their effects.

“Marijuana use is also a gateway for other negative behaviors, not just more dangerous drug taking. ‘Marijuana smokers are also more likely to get into fights, carry weapons, attempt suicide, and engage in high-risk sexual behaviors,’ say government researchers.”

I was always wise enough to the score to know that a cop trying to convince kids in an elementary school was at least partially full of shit. One day we watched this video called The Green Dragon, which was about a mom and her son.  After the mom divorces the dad and they move away to a new town, the kid meets a bad friend.  That friend tells him that he would feel much better if he smoked the magic pipe with him.  The kid was all sad, so, of course, he turns to marijuana to make him feel better.  No sooner after he becomes hopelessly addicted to this substance does he get turned onto other drugs.  He takes a hit of acid one night and sees the Green Dragon flying around his room.  I mean, this movie was animated like this too.  It was kind of PBS cheesy animation, but effective enough to make me crave acid until I finally found it when I was 14….

I had talked to others too.  It wasn’t just me that became excited by the idea of using drugs because of the DARE program, but actually quite a few others.  I had many friends that were initially turned on to drugs or graffiti or violence because of the DARE program; unfortunately, it seems as if the government had gotten wise to this little error and fixed it… the newer generations of kids are dumb to the idea of altering their consciousness.  Hardcore and positive hip-hop crap scenesters reinforced by the Christian Coalition.  They have no idea what they’re missing.

The problem is, that in America, there isn’t really anything to do.  Kids in Florida will tell you that it’s boring and retarded and all that cal to live in a place where nothing is going on.  Kids in every other state in America will tell you the same thing.  Gas stations, malls, and parking lots are common social gatherings.  I was shocked when I went to Germany and kids would actually go to their school and hang out in the courtyard on the grass.  They’d drink sometimes, sure.  But these kids didn’t even smoke pot.  It’s practically legal over there, and these kids, for the most part, were strait as arrows.  Strange situation.

I pull up to Meredith’s house.  She’s rich.  Well, her father is rich.  They own this nice three-story house out by the water with a boat and gazebo and swimming pool.  Fucking doctors, man.  They really clean up in a place where most of the population are dying and there’s a constant supply of them pouring in from other states, looking to turn reptilian in the sun with a bottle of sunscreen and golf cart.  Meredith is waiting outside.  She knows by this point that I’m a little standoffish with her family.  I don’t like talking to this family any more than I have to.  I mean, for an 18 year old guy courting a chick 3 years younger, it makes for a sour situation with the ‘rents.  It’s just as bad as someone makes it out to be, of course.  She knows what she’s doing.  There is this real sense of consciousness within this girl; something that’s so rare, hard to find. 
She looks great today.  Long black hair, dyed blue in parts; gray corduroy pants with a tight shirt and bracelets about her arms… she pulls the hair behind her ear and smiles at me, picks up her bag, putting it in my trunk.  She gets in, we kiss.
“I burned a cd for the trip,” she says.
We’re off.  I feel the speed of the car against me, lightly shifting, mesmerizing.  The light is hot on my skin with the windows down, and wind blows back the hairs on my arms.  Her hair is darting this way and that.  I roll up the windows and turn on the AC.

The music rolls on slowly and steadily… hypnotic.  She listens to some great tunes; does tons of research on the internet, downloading the newest bands.  As a musician, I’m actually secretly jealous of this attribute.  I don’t really know anything about new music, other than what my friends listen to and what I casually come across: a name that I would hear four times before checking on it.   I’d rather smoke pot and lie on my back for three hours playing the same chords and dreaming about the perfect band.

“This band is called Explosions in the Sky,” she says.
I get it.  The whole Godspeed You Black Emperor hypnorock thingy that’s been going on since Can in the sixties.  Great for scenesters.  It’s uncool to stay loyal to one band anyway.  A statement I will hear out of someone’s mouth occasionally is “There is no good modern music coming out.”  Jesus Christ, with a laptop and Pro Tools you can produce an album yourself.  If modern music isn’t good enough for you, you’re not listening to the right stuff.

We drive for quite some time, an hour, a few hours; exposing slowly the area that we would be staying.  The pines became thicker, and hills started winding around us.  The sun would disappear behind the trees sometimes.  We had just a bit to get to the Spot.  We started eating some shrooms then talking about how we wanted to peak on sunset.  I figure it will be more important to me since I watched the sun rise that morning.  These things have been planned since the beginning.

Chapter Three: Arrival

When we arrive, the sun is at a nice distance.  We’ll still be able to watch it set, but it won’t be too hot hiking up the trail.  We have a lot of stuff to carry, though.  A radio and sleeping bags and the tent and bags of food and clothing and everything you need to keep yourself happy whilst tripping in the woods.

 We park on thick grass.  After we strap all of our stuff on, it didn’t seem like such a load.  We walked through the little trails and across grassland, to this greater, bigger woods that encapsulated us.  The forest is thick with plants.  We’re getting some shadows from the trees, but the sky is still light.  It rains here every day in the summer for about an hour, so the growth is enormous.  There are caves too.  Caves that we’ll visit tomorrow with pools of water to search through with a flashlight.  We’ll probably stay up night anyway…

“The forest looks so utterly beautiful right now,” she says.
“It really is.”
“I wonder what it would be like if you were a little animal in this forest.  You hear the sounds,”
“Yeah,”
“And all of the other animals moving about and making sounds and calling to each other.”
We become still for a moment, listening to the sounds around us, hugging each other...  There is a chirping of frogs somewhere close… the combined effort of all of these frogs becomes like a sine wave, an ebbing and flowing; blending in and out… almost like prayers. Gregorian Chants.
“Weird.  That’s awesome.”
“What?”
“I’m tripping really hard.  This is awesome.”

NOTE ADD Ned to the storyline as YOUR character, yet again.

 Here it is now, more beautiful than ever.  The first thing I see is the light.  The colors are indescribable.  The hues seem to pulse with the heartbeat running through my body up through the veins on my face.  The ground is solid and lush, making out the faint blades of grass under the oaks.  The hill is high for Florida.  We can see for miles.  I throw off my bag and tent and radio.  Meredith is walking meditatively with her arms up, spinning and smiling.

I start to set up the tent.  The bamboo poles with steel tips.  I begin to assemble them together, but the elastic string doesn’t seem to slide right.  I begin to lay them out in a line, pushing them into their place.  The poles are foreign and resonating a humanistic quality… I slide them into the nylon holes on the tent… bending and turning.  The tent is old and stained with years of use.  The tent belonged to my mom, who had gone camping in every state in America.  I become a bit frustrated at the fact I can’t figure out how to put this together.
Meredith is sitting watching the sunset with a flower in her hand.

I put down the poles and sit with her.

The golden air of summer breathes a new life into us.  The wind dries our sweat, fake and unforgiving.  The trees around us appear as spectacular sculptures for our amusement…plastic…this scene does look so familiar; as in a dream, once I had experienced before, or beyond death.  She looks amazing.  The calm pastures of her being lull me; darting insects, grasshoppers.  She smiles and holds a blade of grass in her hand, stroking it, wondering.  We were here for a reason.  We were thinking together?  The distance can be seen as in a haze of sunset.  We kiss.  My hand on her neck; her face.  The joy continues. 

The tent is finally set up with Meredith’s help.  My next thought is that I brought food.  Nothing that I’d have to cook, of course… some bread and cheese and pastrami, some potato chips; a cucumber and come carrots… but it would still be cool to have a fire.  I start to think about going to collect firewood, and before I realize it, I am collecting firewood.  The LED white shines through the twilight.  I find some dead scrap wood and look for termites.  I begin hauling it back towards the tent.  It’s really awesome here.  I mean, the woods and light of nature, life and death, above, exposed and raw.
Paper, I need newspaper, or something… paper towels.  Paper towels…  I break off a few pieces and light them with my lighter.  This lighter will be used to burn a couple of joints after we get the fire rolling.  The fire, coming from the lighter creeping ecstatically up the small twigs and branches… it fades from different colors, green and blue geometric energy patterns fill the flat screen that I see as reality.  The fire is beyond that.  It seems as if this world were a 2D image, and the fire was 3D… chaotically changing from it’s blue lines with small atoms exploding everywhere to it’s intense green lines…it’s almost as if the fire is showing me another dimension.  I start setting ablaze these branches…I set my mind on autopilot to control the flame with my hand-eye coordination.  It’s all in the wrist. 
I succeed in burning my hand and drop the branch.  Pretty psychedelic feeling though.  The feeling of getting burned.  Man, it like shocks my system… I see colors too.  The naturalistic consequence of pain is the release of endorphins.  Well, it still hurts.  Gotta try again.  Try not to concentrate too much on the colors this time.
Meredith is interested, poking her head out of the tent. 
“What are you burning?”
“I’m gonna start a little fire.  It’s cool to watch.”
“Is there any wood to burn?”
“Yeah, I found a little bit… over there by the rock…”I nod my head towards the large stone sitting to the edge of the hill.  Meredith emerges from the tent dressed in different clothes.  She has a very loose cottony shirt on and sweatpants.  She looks so fucking hot. 
She sits by me on the ground, wrapping her arms around me, smiling.  She really loves me.  I can feel it.  The presence of ourselves is now in a bright dimension filled with neon colored lights.  We are dragons swirling around each other in a communicative dance.  We put our foreheads together.  The dragons swirl in patterned fire, with every molecule of the fire shown in it’s bright green dots and blue lines… as seen in 3D, or 4D, or 5D… we connect.  We are there.  I never thought it would happen, but I believe I have just entered a Dreamstate with another person.  Our physical bodies lie on the grass, meditating, and I can see it and visualize it, but it’s as if the colorful world of our own imagination coming around us is more real.  The bright lines, the road, she has large lips, dark, brilliant eyes,  fireflies and mystical beasts.  The entrance is here.  I can sense it.  The entrance to something greater.. God, Heaven, Nirvana….something…. she was my key.  She was willing.  The Gods appeared in front of us, perfectly Golden.  Many, many arms and rings of smoke above the golden trees with prayer of a single note.   For whatever reason could I think of not being entered into a realm of  beauty and perpetual solidarity?
The Gods looked up and everything stopped.  I am awake, in reality. 
Meredith smiles and kisses me.  Her lips taste like burnt flowers and candy.  She gets up, and she helps me up, and we go to find some more wood.  We’re going to make a huge fire…

We dart this way and that with the flashlight, only having one, clutching all over each other and stumbling and laughing like the world was going to end.  I felt the spirals of trees above me as little raincoats of plastic perfection.  The stars are out.  I’m rolling on the ground, looking at the moon laughing.  We kiss and find our way onto two feet again.  The bushes look wild in the LED light.  They look alive, like they could speak if you listened close enough… but I have a fire to build, and a girlfriend to entertain.  This is entertaining already.  I’m laughing my ass off, and she’s doing the same… we’re talking, but I don’t even think that it’s in words…
“Youuuu… a ssshenma… koakia?????”
“Whaaaaa?  Niiii, I wanna, getttt through to you baby!!!!”
“Haaaaa….ahHHAAAAA!!”
We’re rocking.  The firewood.  It looks soft in the light, covered in Spanish moss, dry.  We need something BIG though.  We find a piece of fat-wood.  It’s a piece of oak that has fallen for some time, but hasn’t decomposed.  The bark has fallen off and it’s hardened.  The perfect thing to burn all night….
“We’re gonna  a break… this wood… this tree… break it in half…”the laughing continues.  We put a log underneath the fallen oak to use as a fulcrum, and begin jumping on both sides of it.  Meredith is on one side, jumping up and down and I’m trying to destroy this branch and smash it up enough to bring back to the fire…

Something has happened.  I see it.  A change in the air, a slowing of time as Meredith falls, the whites of her eyes opening in a desperation.  The tree she is standing on rotates slightly, she falls back.  She screams.  She’s lying on the ground screaming.  The branch… the branch… she must have landed on the branch…
“FUCCCCCKKKK! Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Jesus Christ…. Jesus Christ…” All that comes from her is a quiet scream coming from her eyes, moaning and writhing about on the ground…
“It hurts…it hurts…”
“Meredith!  What happened?  Did you get hit by the branch?”  I have my hands on her now, kneeling.  She is writhing and moving her hands down her stomach, her spine arches back violently.
“It… I think it hit me…”
I shine the LED light on her pants.  It’s torn right through the soft material of her sweatpants, and a thickness of blood is forming… I start to freak out.  I panic…
“What does it look like?  Is it bleeding?”  She screams at me with intense eyes…
Everything then made sense.  There was eternal blackness forever.  Forever in blackness…

PART II

Days bled on like months without end.  Onward into the blackness that has enveloped me, without a stop.  The darkness around me is inert, and I can hear the whisperings of nothing inside and out.  The weather has turned gray and weary.  These days it no longer storms outside.  All of the grass has died as the clouds dissipate into a solid white sky.  I often wonder if suicide should cleanse this nothingness or whether it would lead to just more nothingness.  It would be an interesting experiment, nonetheless.  I lay in my bed, curled slightly, wrapped in blankets, reading.  My room now is devoid of anything that belonged to or even reminded me of Meredith.  She is a past sight now, a part of time that has changed, died, moved on.  And on that day, I, as well, died.

I feel as if sometimes I am waiting for something; but realize that my life from day to day will just bleed into itself and there is no real end.  No real peak of contentment.  The moment of happiness does not exist.  The moments of pleasure coincide with feelings of discomfort and pain.  One solid retched inertia of black and white; timeless….

Reality is reality, just as drugs are drugs.  From substance to substance, you can have a predestined control over what to feel next.  In a world of drugs we can decide what to feel.  I can feel euphoric, I can feel sedated and conversational, I can hallucinate and enter mad worlds of dreamlike non-being, or I could just face reality.  From melancholy to giddy and fascinated and bored; an always changing chaos of feelings and emotions that can be changed with one pill.
Some drugs are more unpredictable than others, however, like the ill-fated hallucinogens that will never again enter my body.  They just reflect the cold winter of ourselves.  The bitter reality that we are facing but cannot see; the acute awareness of the fact that we are alone in our own minds.
I like knowing and having control over what I am feeling.  I like knowing that, at any moment, I can change my reality into something new; something better.  Everyone who knows this eventually makes the decision to move onto something even better.  A better being; a more pleasant life.  I chose to start doing heroin because it was the next logical step in my pursuit of a predetermined happiness.  It doesn’t matter where the reality comes from, as long as it feels that way.  There is no difference in a person’s mind, neurologically, between dreaming of something and actually experiencing it.  Feeling a way is just that and nothing more.  It is just personal experience from moment to moment.  As well, there is nothing different between wanting to wake up in the morning with a cup of coffee or a shot of H in the arm. 
I find it difficult to read.  I have read the same paragraph again and again, my mind wandering.  I roll over and open my dresser.  I take out the thumbnail-sized bag of H and flick it gently, looking at it in the light.  I have a decent 6 or 7 shots left, but I still want my guy to hurry up.  I got my H from a friend of a friend.  He needed mushrooms and I needed smack.  I open the bag with my fingernails, and pour a small amount of the brownish powder into the spoon.  I feel it already.  My system already knows what is going to come.  I unscrew the bottle of filtered water and pour some in the cap.  The needle pulls in the water and pushes it slowly into the powder, rippling like seawater.  I heat it up with a lighter for about 10 seconds and let it sit.  The burned blackness on the bottom of the spoon has formed black designs of char on my cherry wood dresser over time.  I twist up a bit of cotton and drop it in, letting it soak within, turning tan.  The syringe rests on the cotton and the H is pulled into the dropper.  I look at it in the light and flick out the bubbles by pulling in and out on the plunger… I use a belt, wrap it once and twice around my right arm, holding it tightly… the vein in the light is bluish with bruises and scars, and it swells as the circulation is cut off… I insert the needle sideways and pull the bloodstream into the dropper, seeing the hypnotic twists and turns of blood and H, and push down the plunger.

Contrary to popular belief, heroin does not hit you immediately.  I pull out the needle and push a bit of cotton against the blood, holding it.  I slide off the belt and return to reading.  Nothing lost, nothing gained.  I’m reading a book about an anthropologist in Africa studying witch doctors.  The men in the society do absolutely nothing but eat and have sex, while the women do all of the farming, cooking, build all of the houses…

My phone rings.  It’s Alex.  I tell him to come by and bring as much as he can.

Alex is a rather peculiar fellow.  He told me once about getting high on Baclivin and how easy it seemed to do anything you want.  Like Superman.  He went into a liquor store, grabbed a case of beer, and just walked out; later spending the evening driving around in his car, killing the headlights and rolling up to girl’s houses to watch them undress… he said that it didn’t really matter what you did as long as you believed that you could do it… but that’s probably what those meth addicts are thinking as bullets are hitting them left and right from police officers.

I roll over and squeeze the blankets between my legs and feel a warmth.  I’m neither brilliant nor stupid, hot or cold, happy or sad; but merely, and tragically, existing.  There is no reason to be anything else but this.  Either you are simply existing and realizing it, or you’re a lost soul, working to die. 

These thoughts seem down I realize, my dear viewers; but hold on, because tragedy cannot simply collapse into itself.  It has to change with everything else.

Chapter of Change

Alex knocks and I come outside with him, pulling my sunglasses down onto my nose, squinting at the endless white.  He offers me a cigarette, and we smoke as we drive down the hill where this adventure first began.  Alex turns to me:
"So how do you feel today?"
"I'm feeling ok.  Sluggish."
"Yeah."
We have a long history together that doesn't require conversation as the details fill themself in with silence.
"Well, don't give up man.  We've gone through some shit together; we all have, and things always DO get better."
"Well maybe I'm fine not getting better."
"Why wouldn't you want to be better?  You've got a whole family and friends that-"
"If you're fucked beyond repair, and everyone knows it, people don't have unrealistic expectations of you, you're just fine the way you are."
"You'd be 'fine the way you are' if you could just start being more.."
"Positive?"
"Well.."  It was actually rare for Alex to express outward feelings about the situation.  This was why I've allowed him to be so close; my parents and "well-meaning" friends would talk about the condition all the time and the problems.  I know that I have them.  Everybody knows - I just don't want them to know.  I want to stay in my bed and forget about all that shit and wish people would leave me alone. "...I mean, we miss you.  It has been a year now.  Do you realize that?  A YEAR.  Mourning is one thing but you need to start living again; being happy,"  He must have smoked up before he came.  "It's like, I know who you are- and EVERYONE knows your potential.  You're a fucking artist man, we just don't want you to---"
"Wait, what do you mean "we"?  There's no fucking we.  Who the fuck are you talking about?"
"Just everyone man..."
"You've been saying shit behind my back?"
"Dude, listen, of course people are going to be interested- I'm the only person that sees you.  You're a fucking hermit LEGEND."
"Those people don't know shit."
"Well, I don't want to push you if you're really not gonna budge."  I glanced at Alex, and this new look appeared on his face that reminded me of my mother more than anything; a genuineness that I would hope to forget.  I’m angry at myself so much already that it makes it worse if I drag other people down with me.  Everyone uses the buzzword “Positive” like God is crapping it out in little comet streams across the universe, emanating throughout mankind, making us do nice things, like care about your friends.
I spoke. “Listen, don’t worry about me; I’m fine, I’m living day to day, taking one step at a time and I’ll eventually-”
“You live day to day high in your room, reading crazy books. You’ll end up dying soon and just…”  He was upset.
“Well what the fuck do you want me to do?  Huh?  Oh, I’m sorry, since now it’s WE’RE concerned about me,  What the fuck do you and everyone else that you’ve talked about me with expect me to do?  I’ve fucked up everything.  I want to just be left alone.  FUCK.”

The silence followed us like a black stream until we arrived at the house.  I gave Alex the pound of mushrooms and left me to the cassette deck playing a Lynard Skynard track..
“Don’t you smell that smell…. That smell…”  Waiting.  I think that I might as well; yes, I’ll get my fix ready.  I take the water bottle from the seemingly endless pile of clothing in my back seat.  Where did this clothing come from?  Is it mine?  If I washed it at the house would my mom ask, “Who’s bra is this?”  I pulled the syringe from my bag and filled it with water and had it ready for Alex’s return.  This fucking town, I thought.  If I just got the fuck out of here I could just start over without people knowing.  I could grow a beard perhaps; start hanging out with the ‘Rainbow People” that live in the Ocala Forest.  Was that just a myth, or do people really live out there?  Did they make the decision to ‘get the fuck out of here’ like I was pondering; did the mysterious people in Ocala base their decision to move to the forest with a bunch of people that never take showers because they were tired of sitting in a hot car, listening to Lynard Sknard, waiting for their friend to come back with 5 grams of H?  Waiting.  It reminded me of those parts in Naked Lunch when the random junkies would be “waitin’ on the man”.  Jesus.  This way of living is just..ughh.  I recollected what Alex was telling me just 20 minutes before- that I really did have two choices: no continue to be nothing, or to actually try.  I do have good memories of before; I was in a band playing the drums, and I would do weird art at the high school, and the teachers and I had an ok relationship;   after she died I stopped going.  At first it was because I really couldn’t.  Really; I was just embarrassed at how often I cried.  I couldn’t concentrate on anything.  After about 4 months of day after day sleeping all the time in fetal postion my parents took me to see a psychiastrist that gave me Celexa, but then I was just sleeping all the time, in fetal postion and taking Celexa every morning.  So I dropped out of school, at that point probably more out of lazniness than sorrow, and started shooting smack. 
            I got out of the car and flipped my glasses down to my nose and sneered up to the apartment Alex was inside of.  I had been here a few times, but never inside; a hermetic drug dealer selling to other hermits, keeping everyone on an even keel.  What in the HELL is taking him so long?  Jesus, there’s only so much half-sober existing that I can take.  Fuck.  I didn’t have a cell phone, but Alex did.  I checked my car to see if he’d left it, but he didn’t.  I took another glance up at the square windows in rows along the wall of the apartment, looking for a sign and turned to walk across the street to the gas station phone.  I could barely see my car within sight.  50 cents?  50?? To use the phone?  I dug in my pockets, and started asking people for a quarter.  It was one distrust worthy look after another which finally ended when an older lady caved and gave me two quarters, more out of fear than pity.  I put the quarters in a dialed and was brought back, quickly, to reality.
“Who the Fuck is this?” a voice spoke that was not Alex.
“Who is this?”
“This is Deputy Ray of the Lecanto Police.  Your friend is being arrested.”
“What the fuck….” a great many feelings and thoughts came over me, chiefly, my pound of shrooms and the fact that this probably wasn’t a police officer.
“Put Alex on so I can talk to him.”
“Alex is gone motherfucker.  Don’t ever call this number or come by here again.  Faggott.” *click

My anger was demoralizing.  I wanted to kill Alex.  I knew that Alex, the fucking junkie, stole my shrooms and came up with the lame excuse of being arrested; even though  I could hear the dumbass flophouse sound effects in the background.  I had been ripped off.  And by a lot too.  I was just as pissed at myself, but I still wanted nothing more than for Alex to die because I would have never done that to anyone, especially a friend. 
And it occurred to me that he wasn’t my friend and that I was now alone.  I picked up my shattered emotions and drove my shitty car back to my parent’s house, where I didn’t belong.

CHAPTER 3

The withdrawals are terrible; let no one convince you otherwise; and no, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for a curled up, crying, suicidal piece of shit that can’t do anything but lay and puke.  I turned my head over, Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums was flapped halfway open and turned it to the page where I left off where the Mad Morley, with them, were taking a hiking trip up into the mountains.  My eyes were crossed but I could retain the information.  They needed no wine because the altitude was intoxicating enough, it read.  I scoffed.

 Days they bled on like hours and weeks but they were merely seconds; my diet consisted of cornmeal in the pantry and cherries from the jar.  I couldn’t eat, and was dying, I knew it.

*knock*

“Leave me alone”
“Alex, there’s someone…. Here for you, she says she knew Meredith…”
“I don’t fucking care.  Tell her to leave.”
“Ok, sweetie.  Why don’t you come something to eat… we were going to go over to Bob and Sherry’s house… well, for dinner.  We hope you’re feeling better.”

Mother walked away and a voice was transmitted back and forth, an exchange of words so unknown that it made me ache all over.

CHAPTER  4

I awoke, and it was daylight.  My shit clock chimed 7:20am.  I got up.  I went to the bathroom and looked at myself.  I looked like….. absolute shit, sort of, but I hadn’t showered in a week or so; and brushing my teeth, no I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a while; quite some time.  I showered and shaved and looked at myself and there was a revelation: I had been sleeping and dying for weeks; I think, but which week was it?  I struggled through my memory for something; some sign of what day it was.  Clothed in a towel, my hair dripping everywhere, I checked my parent’s calendar in the kitchen. 

July…. 20th? July…it had been two weeks since the incident with Jared.  I yawned and made coffee; slumped down on the sofa; no one was up.  There was a piece of paper laid softly on the coffee table that said:

            Alex, I know how close she was to you.  She was close to me too.  It’s been a year, and well… I thought we could talk face to face about what happened. Call me – 563-5478 – Amanda.

I stared at this letter with bewilderment.  I had not talked to anyone in months; I told everyone they were not welcome in my life any longer.

The coffee was good, with the spot of honey and soy milk; went down well with this deer-in-the-headlights look upon on my face…should I look in the mirror again?  I was anxious, but not dead.  Not any longer.  I was struggling to understand why I had suddenly been awakened, the coffee?

I picked up the phone and dialed the number.

*leave me a message*
-click

            I didn’t know anyone that knew her, that was long ago.  Too long.
The phone rang, and it was Amanda.
“Hello?”
“Alex?”
“Yes.”
“This is Amanda.”
“I know.  What do you want?” I felt strangely bad for saying it in such a way.
“Well… when you’re… you know…. Well again…. Maybe we could meet.”

            I stared around me, the ceiling so high.

“I don’t really want to see anyone.”
“But I need to see you”
“Need?”
“Yes, need.”
I pondered this for a moment.  This girl could be anyone; Jared’s girlfriend, some bitch I forgot to talk to and now she’s taking it out on me…
“Ok, AMANDA, come by my house at noon.”
“I can’t…. I’m working, at a hospital…I could come by after work.”
“Ok.”
I hung up and spent the rest of the morning cleaning the shit out of my room and tearing down posters and blaring music and fucking getting PISSED OFF.  I knew now that the withdrawls were gone.  I would do anything to get another hit but that would end up with me face to face with Jared again.  I slid open a box that had used needles and two blackened spoons, some pictures of Meredith, and a bottle of Valium.  I took the cap off and put a few in my hand, thinking.  I thought, and took 3. 

Knocking Knocking Knocking

“I love your room”
I awoke, blinking, and there was a girl with a tanktop standing above me, blinded by the ceiling light, thinking how I didn’t want this beautiful girl to see me in this light, I mean the light of withdrawls…
“How are you? Are you sleepy?”
I sprung up and introduced myself.
“Alex.”
“Amanda”
“So why….why are you coming to me… I mean, now?”
“Yesterday was the anniversary of her death… and well…I heard through the grapevine that you needed ‘A Year’ of recovery.”
“Recovery?  From whh….”
“From the accident.”
            Blackness fills my heart; but the girl’s eyes comfort me.  She takes my hand.  We sit on my bed not saying anything.

“Do you want anything…cherries… cornme-“
“A glass of water would be good.”
After talking a while I had realized that this girl, this unknown knew about me.  More than I knew about myself, in a desperate attempt to forget.  We talked, and talked.  She was Meredith’s…

“I’m her… cousin, I mean, I think – through sources…I’m adopted.”

She rambled on about a band that I had at the time of Meredith’s Death called “The Posers” I played guitar and sang, recorded a few copies from a reel-to-reel.

“I’m sorry, Amanda, this is just coming too fast…”
“I know you need your space.”
She kissed my forehead, grabbed her bag, and walked out, smiling one last time before closing the door.

I passed out.

I awoke to the same girl standing above me, smiling before realizing that it was my mother.

“WHERE ARE THEY?”

Shock to my system.

“Where are what?”
“The DRUGS Jared!!”
“What drugs?”
“WHERE ARE THEY?”
She started tearing through my room like a madwoman, which is what she was.  I’m just blinking awake noticing the black stained cherrywood where my spoons had once been.
“This isn’t a joke, Jared.”
“What are you doing, mom, would you just leave me alone?”
“WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?”
You would have to understand my mental state at the time, I suppose, for you to understand the decision I made next:  rolling over in bed and throwing the box of blackened spoons, bags, and cottons and syringes at my mother.  They flew everywhere.
“Jared, I….”
She ran out of the room crying.

Fuck.

The next following weeks were my “at-home-rehab” program where my parents were trying to get me to see a councilor, the same asshole that quizzed me during the death of Meredith.  I had appointments, soon I guess.

The truth was, I felt fine.  It had been two weeks after I had shot any H.  The bottle of Valium was doing me nicely, and I actually felt like talking to some degree.
Speaking of degree, my mother was pressuring me to get my GED as punishment for this long overdue blackened cherrywood dresser and attitude.  I scoffed and said it would be better to go back to school;  at least at a school there would be daily supplies of various benzodiazepines and opiate pills the kids steal from their fucked up parents and peddle them at school for very much under the real street price.

Three knocks at the door meant my mother was coming in to tell me something or badger me.  She wafted in and tossed a letter in my direction and I rolled over and picked it up from the floor as she locked me in again.  It was from Amanda:

Jared,

I’m not sure how to say this so I will be bold.  I think I love you; and not in a fairytale way.  I look at you and know you’re the only one who would be able to know me and be there for me and… I’m not very good at putting ideas down on paper.  Just call me:
(352)601-2050 and I NEED to see you soon.

-Amanda

Halfway through this note laying on my bed, pillows propped, I almost halfway threw it away out of spite for Amanda choosing to use the word love: a word I have no concept of at ALL.

So I chose to see her.

We took a trip in her car, she picked me up and I smiled, and went to her home, a halfway house for the insane.  I flopped down on the couch, noticing the artwork around the room and spitefully wanting to add bits of paint and gold tinted foil to everything.  A girl walks into the room, Amanda staring down on me.

“Jared, this is Debora.”

Living situation.  Another concept that fails to attract a bit of interest; but we talk about prime numbers and string theory until there is really nothing left to say.  Amanda lets out a giant bong hit before passing it to Debora, and then me.

The weather changed in the room with the inhalation of that toxic plant; feeling more active to DO SOMETHING. 

“There’s a full moon party tonight here, Jared,” Debora says to me smiling.

“Ok.”  It sounded like an excuse for people to get wasted and stupid, and most terribly, sociable.  I glanced around the house that Amanda and Debora had built together and it reminded me of some awful Grateful Dead recollection with posters of music they had never been a part of.  Janis Joplin had never sat for tea with Amanda and Jimi Hendrix never made sweet love to Debora in the nest she considered her bed.
“I’m sort of in a delicate situation with my parents right now,” which seemed plausible other than the fact I could do basically whatever I wanted now that I had become a legitimate psychopath.
“Well, that’s too bad because there are a lot of people that would like to see you.”  Her smile comforted me.
“I don’t really see myself going to any of these parties; I mean, now – it seems pointless.” I shouldn’t have said that, but Amanda, who was in the kitchen making cookies or something belted back, “It’s only pointless if you fail to recognize society around you.”
“I fail, Amanda, to recognize society around me because… I have nothing to gain that I couldn’t gain myself.”

We argued; I pushed the envelope for aloneness, and she finally brought me home.  I ate a few more Valiums before settling into a comatose corpse on my bed.

CHAPTER 5

I awoke again to the mother-figure standing above me, only this time there was no shouting, only smiling and speaking before I realized it was Debora.
“What the hell…”
“Your dad let me in.”
“Oh.  How was the party?”
“It was so amazing, I wish you could have been there.”  I wanted to retort quickly and sharply but her grinning mouth disallowed it.
“I just woke up…”
“I can see that.”
What sort of stupid treatment was God dolling out for me this time, I pondered.  This is a serious situation. 
“Let’s go for a walk.  Do you feel like going for a walk?” I felt like going for a shit.
“Hold on, let me get myself together.”  I looked in the bathroom mirror and what materialized in the reflection was myself, worn and restless.
I put on a sort of creepish trenchcoaty outfit and came back to Deborah looking through my collection of novels. Please don’t ask me to lend them out PLEASE you person I hardly know.
“Is this any good?” Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust.  I would tell her it was great and that she should read it but then she would be intrigued and flash her eyelids at me asking to borrow it.
“I don’t really know what good is anymore…”
She smiled at me and for some reason I feel this awful snakelike bitterness in the back of my cranium. 
“Ok I’m ready to go for a walk.”  We passed the standard one dog one cat and out the door where it had been raining but no longer and were steam.  The sky is filled with quickly moving clouds and sunlight, and I look at the cracks in the pavement.
“So Amanda has really been talking about you lately…” her shoes kicking small pebbles into the puddles.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah she gave me some of your music…”
“My music?”
“Yeah the live stuff… I dunno.” It really beats me how anyone has my music.
“Are you sure it’s not someone else?” I ask. She laughs, covers her face a bit, eyes winking.
            We sit at the culvert to look over the trees and she lights up a joint.
“Why do you smoke so much pot?” I asked as she passed it to me and took a long hit.
“I dunno, it’s like one of those things from the Earth that calms me and helps me recollect…”
“Oh.” I thought it was just pulling serotonin out of her brain at the rate she was pulling in the smoke.  I didn’t care.  I smoked it with her.  And we talked.  And things didn’t really seem all that bad.
“Did you know Meredith?”
“Of course I know….knew, Meredith.” She looked as if she would turn green.
“Huh.”
“A lot of people… I mean… everyone knows who Meredith is,” pausing, “And you.”
And back to Heliocentricism we go.  I wasn’t the type of person that wanted this, or the people knowing and wondering behind closed doors what I had done to her.  We sat after that, exchanging nods and small talk, filled with disappointment.   I really missed her.  Even now.  And now it seems like these chicks are just playing grab-ass with someone who may or may not have killed a young girl in the woods. 

PART III Return to the Sea

Desolation threw me full tilt into a life of sobriety and sociability.  The people surrounding me had the best intentions, and Amanda and I started courting each other.  I started using the word love, however empty it felt to myself, to fill the void of others desires for love, and in turn shaped me into a very approachable person.
            Upon arrival to Deborah and Amanda’s Full Moon party, I passed out a tea I had made from the remaining mushrooms in the freezer, which I was immediately congratulated for as each person passed the line with their plastic cup, reading the sign:

Australopithecus Africanus – limit to one cup
Homo Erectus – 2 cups 3 hours apart
Homo Sapien – One cup now and see where the night leads.

(Work in Progress) about 1/3 way done)